What we have now in the U.S. is NOT a private health-care system. It's a facist - meaning state-run under the guise of nominal private ownership - system. Basically, it's Socialist, but everyone pretends that the entities are still privately owned. Put another way, the entities can do whatever they want, as long as it's what the government tells them.
The current state of the health care industry is the inevitable result of our movement toward Socialism. Saying we need to Socialize the industry is exactly the same idea as curing someone's headache by shooting them between the eyes.
Incongruity? What makes it funny is that it's the flashing neon-lit elephant sitting in the middle of the room that no one will talk about - the fact that it's true, and they have the balls to say so.
Actually, the wealthy nations pretty much *are* responsible for modern terrorism, but only because our universities have become such cesspools of the comfortably reality-deficient.
The basic pattern is: 1) guy from some backwards country wants an education 2) guy goes to a Western university, where he find that the Marxist and Multiculturalist professors teach him that the West is evil and everything the savages back home tell him is superior to the West 3) guy believes them, goes home, and becomes the most savage of the savages, because he believed what the Western professors taught him.
Terrorists don't usually come from the poorer strata. They come from the people who are affluent enough to find their way into our intellectual death camps.
> Liberal activists are not exactly known for being > the militant types (just ask any Republican), and > are more often than not pigeonholed as hippies, > peaceniks, treehuggers and even cowards by the > more militant right wing.
Errrnt... wrong answer! Thanks for playing, here are your parting gifts.
In fact, the liberals are only non-militant when it comes to defending *this* country (the US) and the principles on which it was founded (individual rights and individual liberty). In all other cases, and for all other causes, the Left is extremely militant.
Remember all those urban terrorist organizations from the 60's and 70's? Were they Republicans? No, they weren't. The Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Unabomber, and all those others were Leftists. In fact, most active terrorist organizations around the world are Leftist (specifically Marxist) either explicitly or by the implication of their stated ideals. The environmentally-inclined terrorist organizations (Earth Liberation Front, any of the Animal Rights groups, Greenpeace) and the anti-Globalization groups such as International ANSWER and the various anarchist groups (yes, anarchist groups.. they're not very bright) showing up at the larger rallies, they all have a track record of violent action or inciting others to violent action.
So, when Leftist organizations start posting names, locations, and other personal information of people who oppose them, the first and only logical conclusion is that the poster expects the people on the list to be at least harassed and potentially physically attacked.
Why should the *government* build roads? Why should the *government* hire teachers? Why should the *government* hire firefighters? Why should the *government* give disabled people money?
Pay with what? Stolen from whom?
The *only* thing on your list that is a government's actual job - in fact the only valid reason for a government to exist at all - is the police. So, that's a separate argument altogether.
But if you want the government to do every other goddamn thing that anyone who doesn't drool uncontrollably should be able to provide for himself, then get thee to the border, go!
You've watched wayy too much Star Trek. The Death Penalty is neither 'primitive' nor 'barbaric'. It is, in fact, the honest response to the fact that sometimes people can do things for which there is no recompense and after which that person can never again be trusted to act as a human being. The Death Penalty isn't primarily a 'deterrent', it isn't a 'punishment', it's the best means of insuring that a person who has utterly broken from civilization and proven so through his actions can never again harm an innocent person.
What can you say of a society that pretends there is 'some good in all of us', or that evil people deserve 'mercy'? Or worse yet, that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'evil'? Is that 'advanced'? Is that 'enlightened'?
The idea that only a 'primitive' society could still have the Death Penalty is bizarre, bordering on the contemptibly stupid.
In other words, I'm sure it's all the rage on college campuses.
For someone who derides others so vehemently for being nothing but subservient herd animals, this Fabian character sure does spend a lot of time deriding people for not being subservient to him. I guess he picked that habit up in the old Soviet Bloc, too. Either that, or from reading way too much (meaning, any) Chomsky, who also has that habit. No one is smart unless they agree with him, and how dare you demand that he prove he's smart, because he's already laid out all the evidence for you, you're just too dumb or dishonest to see it...
If they were really logical, they'd realize that logic can only be applied in situations where one has reliable axioms, which excludes the vast majority of all common situations (I say this as a math major).
You say this as a math major who needs to do one of a) get his money back, b) pay more attention, or c) transfer to a better school.
Ok, that was harsh. You won't find a better school anywhere, so I guess it's not your fault.
Logic isn't a field of study that began in mathematics - it's a field of philosophy, specifically in epistemology (the study of how we come to know things). Actual logic is the doctrine that our ideas, to be correct, must conform to reality. That is, ideas must be derived from reality primarily by observation and by processes which are themselves derived from the actual relationships amongst actual things in the physical world (again, observation). Logic most specifically does not start with axioms from which all other knowledge is then derived.
Yeah, that philosophy was abandoned about two thousand years ago - and look what replaced it: the Dark Ages. If it hadn't been for Thomas Aquinas re-introducing that philosophy through the works of Aristotle, we might never have recovered from abandoning those oh-so-declined ideas.
If I remember correctly, the idealized heat engine is called a "Carnot Engine", and the maximum theoretical efficiency is right at 40%. Note that "idealized" means that all external real-world factors are ignored, so - if this model is theoretically sound - I would expect actual engines to approach these numbers asymptotically.
And I quote: "He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP."
If he employed them to invent things for him, it wasn't *their* IP. It was his. He paid for it. He paid for the lab in which they developed it, provided the materials, etc. He couldn't have "stolen" something that, by agreement, was his already once the payment was made.
Also, did he actually claim that he, himself, sitting at a bench, had invented these things? Or was he giving a sales pitch? There's a big difference between delusional credit-stealing and telling people that you're the go-to-guy to get all the newest, whiz-bang gadgets, no matter what wording the salesman chooses.
I happen to know some of the guys who run The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. Yes, they are independent, and yes, they probably do get some money from Microsoft. That's right... independent *and* taking money from Microsoft. How's that possible, you may ask?
Well, the simple fact is that these guys are acting on moral principle. They would be doing exactly what they're doing whether or not Microsoft ever gave them a penny, and even if Microsoft opposed them as it (and Bill Gates) sometimes do, because the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism believe that their position is true.
I know, I know. Most of you won't believe that people can act on principle, or that ideas about morality can be true or false. I understand. I went to college, too.
There are two books for Calculus that I particularly recommend. The first has been mentioned above several times already:
Calculus Made Easy http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/ -/0312 185480/qid=1059865111/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-943995 5-4464720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
and the second, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, but which I consider much more important:
Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det ail/-/0486 404536/qid=1059865826/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-943995 5-4464720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
The "intuitive and physical approach" really means exactly that. Calculus is developed in the book as the necessity arises to solve certain problems, just as it was developed (mostly) in the first place. Not only that, but the math is continually related back to actual problems, which keeps the concepts from floating off into the academic fairy land where math and logic become nothing more than manipulating scribbles on paper by arbitrary rules.
The framers of the Constitution also included the existence fo slavery as a valid institution, and counted slaves and indians as "partial" people for purposes of the census. The bottom line is that we should ask whether something is right or wrong, not whether or not it's in the Constitution. Plus, in an attempt to set straight an error I see made again and again, anything *granted* by a government is a *privilege*, not a right. Rights can't be granted, they are either recognized or not. Philosophical flubs like that are the "they're/their/there" of the political spectrum..
What's more approximate than one of these so-called Internet Dating Services? Hell, go back even further, to strengthen the argument: the generic "computer dating service". That's prior art on a "method for finding approximate matches in a computer database". All they could argue on the patent is the specifics of implementation - the very detailed specifics.
Oh.. and given the performance of *some* database systems we've all heard of, *any* query on a database exposed by that query engine could be considered "approximate". Can that count as prior art?
I'd be surprised if you could explain the philosophy correctly, in your own wrods, including examples. Or even a part of it. Most people who become "ex-Objectivists" never took the time to become Objectivists in the first place, much less the non-Objectivist "critics" of the philosophy. God help us (irony alert - I'm an atheist), most of the self-described Objectivists evodently don't know philosophy from bathwater. And when they realize that they don't understand what's going on, they'll become bitter ex-Objectivists too, and blame all their horrible psychological problems and stupid mistakes on Rand rather than accepting the fact that they should only blame themselves. So, we keep getting these ex-Objectivists who went through their "Ayn Rand" phase, and can't explain the philosophy beyond "She sais people should be selfish, and everyone else tells me that's bad".
The real problem isn't that you don't want the "bad guys" reading your message. For the real nasties, just knowing your sent a message to someone they don't like would be enough of an excuse to come after you. Encrypting the message might even allow them to put up a "good face" for the semi-free countries. They could hold up the encrypted text and say, "Look! it could be child porn! It could be terrorist communique's! We're doing what you would do!"
I haven't read the original article in any detail, so I'll state the assumptions on which I'm working up front:
1. Each subnet they used to generate requests had 24 client machines 2. Each client machine produced about a dozen (12) requests per second 3. They, at best, set Apache on the server to the highest default child process count (255 or thereabout) 4. They saw a "tremendous dropoff in linux performance" when they added the 24th client machine, continuing as they added more machines
Now, here's the analysis part, based on my experiences administering, hacking the internals of, and benchmarking Apache. Yes, I did this for a living at GeoYahooCities, and later as an independent contractor, so I do have real-world experience to confirm my suspicions.
First, note the default internal Apache limit on child processes. I don't know what version of Apache they used, but the default limit I remember was somewhere in the area of 256. Now for some math... 24 clent machines, about a dozen requests/second each.. 24x12 = 288. Once all the Apache child processes are busy, all requests get stuck in the accept() queues of the tcp/ip stack, waiting for one of the child processes to finish what it's doing and serve the new request. So, if they're seeing things slow down compared to IIS after this point, I'd say the culprit is the default child process limit. Note that this is configurable at compile-time, so it's not an inexorable problem. And it certainly looks like the web server is, in this case, the culprit, rather than Linux as such.
Disclaimer: No Apaches were bashed in the writing of this comment. Any similarity to Apache-bashing, whether flamebait or trolling, is purely coincidental.
No, actually no one would ever learn that in a contemporary philosophy class. They'd learn exactly the sort of incredibly inane and shortsighted crap that Jon Katz spews forth. Property rights? Corporate myth, the attempt to subvert individualism with facist control structures. Individual rights? Individuals have the right to have every whim satisfied, and it is the responsibility of anyone producing anything to satisfy those whims, as a duty. You are nothing, the Consumer is All. A more detailed analysis might compare Jon Katz's views of "The Corporate Republic" to a Nazi diatribe.. but at least the Nazis didn't hide behind the rhetoric of individualism.
No, the cynical view is not that government control of our lives is bad. The cynical view would be that the fall of Communism, at least as an existing social system if not as the ideal of the misguided self-styled intellectuals, was unfortunate. Why? Because the cynic would say that those who support the idea of the interventionist state most deserve to suffer under the weight of it. The cynic would say that there wouldn't be a dry eye among the few remaining advocates of actual freedom when the supporters of the interventionist state go up against the wall after the Revolution comes.
Cynicism is a form of naivite' - they're not opposites. Both the cynic who has given up on morality and the naive fool who thinks that altruism is a proper moral code suffer under the same sort of failure - the failure to see that an ideal that isn't practical isn't an *ideal* case at all. The cynics think that people aren't good enough for morality, the naive think that morality can be imposed on people regardless of the practical consequences.
The opposite of both cynicism and naivite is knowledge, and the realization that a proper morality *must* be practical because morality is supposed to be a guide to our day-to-day lives.
It's easy to become tainted with cynicism, until your realize that people, no matter what leftie crap they're spouting, generally don't practice the leftie crap they preach. Hypocrites they may be, but they're not yet Mao or Stalin.
I have tried extremely hard. In fact, I have a collection of attempted critiques, both in book form and saved electronically. It's something of a hobby.
After reading that work of Huemer's, I've still come up empty in my search. I don't know what he read as his "study" of Objectivism, but some of the things he states as being Rand's point of view are not just wrong, they're bizarre. He claims to agree with Objectivism on several points, but his method of doing philosophy makes me question to what extent he could possibly agree on anything but the nominal level.
He doesn't understand the distinction between concepts (universals), and proper names (which are not concepts). He claims that evaluations (evaluative premises) must be derived from other evaluations (premises), and that evaluations can't be "seen" in reality, therefore they don't come from observation. Without going through the rest of the examples I could give, he basically reiterates Hume and Kant and then claims to have found errors in Rand's arguments. Then, to top it all off, his own "answer" is intuitionism, which in practice means 'whatever you feel at the moment'. It's a common shortfalling of all attempts to claim that ethics is "intuitive" or "revealed" or "intrinsic to our nature" - since none of those are true, all that is left in that approach is total subjectivism.
"Put the book down! Now, step away from the Wittgenstein, sir! Slowly... slowly!"
First, let me say that if ESR's philosophy is "Ayn Rand warmed over", it needs to be warmed a whole lot more. Unlike the majority of posters, I don't fault him for the nature or slant of his views - I fault him for his inconsistencies. For example, minimal government is not "anarchy". Microsoft's dominance of the marketplace, and their competitive strategies, are not morally wrong like government regulation of industry. And last, but not least, intellectual property as such is the *basis* for *all* forms of private property, and must be protected absolutely.
I don't know much about ESR, except from the things he's written and tales of his gun hobby. I've never met him. I don't foresee that I ever will. Thus, any reference to his personality is, for my purposes, not only a fallacious means of attempting to discredit his ideas, it's just plain irrelevant.
However, notice the "arguments" used against his ideas, such as they are: "Oh, he's just a Randroid, and he should grow up", "Oh, the government does all these things for us and always has, so the government must be responsible for our country's prosperity","oh, he's just a wacko", etc. etc. All in all, there has not been a single substantial, worthwhile objection to his criticisms of government regulation or his support of laissez-faire (to the extent he does support it). Everything I've seen so far has been personality attacks, truth by assertion, and other assorted non-rebuttals. (truth by assertion = if you believe something strongly enough, and assert it often and vehemently enough, then it must be true)
There are many critiques to make of ESR's position, but in my case I would do so only to help a fellow-traveller steer himself on a more clear and stable course. In any battle of ideas, the most consistent side will win the day - which is why any advocate of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism, such as ESR appears to be to some extent, must take great pains to weed out any contradictory ideas he may hold.
If he does that, then and only then will I accept him as a fellow "Randroid".
(PS. I use that term proudly, and tongue-in-cheek, as a symbol both of the fact that Objectivism is not just a "phase" for those who actually understand it, and the fact that I have never encountered a critique of Rand or Objectivism that wasn't essentially an attack on her personality. If someone is going to critique her ideas, then please do.. but if one is going to critique her ideas, shouldn't one first be able to - at the very least - present some understanding of them in the first place?)
I'm quite interested in the answer to this question, actually. By what standard are we to judge whether or not a company is "ethical" or not? We can't just say "ethical" without explanation and hope, hope, hope everyone knows what we mean. Think about it.. PETA (People for the Ethical? Treatment of Animals). They're all about "animal rights", But the only *ethical* way to treat animals is as resources for our own use - by the morality I follow. Obviously, they disagree. Likewise, by the morality I hold as true, the *moral* purpose of a business is to make as high a profit as possible by whatever honest means available. That means not using the government to beat down competitors you can't match (Anti-Trust laws are immoral), disclosing all relevant information about your product (no fraud), and getting the highest value from your workforce by paying what the market will bear. Yes, this is selfish. No, it's not self-sacrificial, or altruistic, or "community spirited", or any of those other catchphrases. This is *morality*, which should be a guide to one's actual day-to-day life in the real world. Clearly, my moral views differ from those of most people. If you're going to talk about morality, you absolutely have to define what standard you're using to judge. Capitalist1
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What we have now in the U.S. is NOT a private health-care system. It's a facist - meaning state-run under the guise of nominal private ownership - system. Basically, it's Socialist, but everyone pretends that the entities are still privately owned. Put another way, the entities can do whatever they want, as long as it's what the government tells them.
The current state of the health care industry is the inevitable result of our movement toward Socialism. Saying we need to Socialize the industry is exactly the same idea as curing someone's headache by shooting them between the eyes.
You're worried about atomic vs. astronomical time definitions and sub-second accuracy? Damn... just how fast can you hit the Refresh button?
Incongruity? What makes it funny is that it's the flashing neon-lit elephant sitting in the middle of the room that no one will talk about - the fact that it's true, and they have the balls to say so.
Actually, the wealthy nations pretty much *are* responsible for modern terrorism, but only because our universities have become such cesspools of the comfortably reality-deficient.
The basic pattern is: 1) guy from some backwards country wants an education 2) guy goes to a Western university, where he find that the Marxist and Multiculturalist professors teach him that the West is evil and everything the savages back home tell him is superior to the West 3) guy believes them, goes home, and becomes the most savage of the savages, because he believed what the Western professors taught him.
Terrorists don't usually come from the poorer strata. They come from the people who are affluent enough to find their way into our intellectual death camps.
> Liberal activists are not exactly known for being
> the militant types (just ask any Republican), and > are more often than not pigeonholed as hippies,
> peaceniks, treehuggers and even cowards by the
> more militant right wing.
Errrnt... wrong answer! Thanks for playing, here are your parting gifts.
In fact, the liberals are only non-militant when it comes to defending *this* country (the US) and the principles on which it was founded (individual rights and individual liberty). In all other cases, and for all other causes, the Left is extremely militant.
Remember all those urban terrorist organizations from the 60's and 70's? Were they Republicans? No, they weren't. The Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Unabomber, and all those others were Leftists. In fact, most active terrorist organizations around the world are Leftist (specifically Marxist) either explicitly or by the implication of their stated ideals. The environmentally-inclined terrorist organizations (Earth Liberation Front, any of the Animal Rights groups, Greenpeace) and the anti-Globalization groups such as International ANSWER and the various anarchist groups (yes, anarchist groups.. they're not very bright) showing up at the larger rallies, they all have a track record of violent action or inciting others to violent action.
So, when Leftist organizations start posting names, locations, and other personal information of people who oppose them, the first and only logical conclusion is that the poster expects the people on the list to be at least harassed and potentially physically attacked.
Moron, fuck thyself.
Why should the *government* build roads? Why should the *government* hire teachers? Why should the *government* hire firefighters? Why should the *government* give disabled people money?
Pay with what? Stolen from whom?
The *only* thing on your list that is a government's actual job - in fact the only valid reason for a government to exist at all - is the police. So, that's a separate argument altogether.
But if you want the government to do every other goddamn thing that anyone who doesn't drool uncontrollably should be able to provide for himself, then get thee to the border, go!
Moron? Indeed.
You've watched wayy too much Star Trek. The Death Penalty is neither 'primitive' nor 'barbaric'. It is, in fact, the honest response to the fact that sometimes people can do things for which there is no recompense and after which that person can never again be trusted to act as a human being. The Death Penalty isn't primarily a 'deterrent', it isn't a 'punishment', it's the best means of insuring that a person who has utterly broken from civilization and proven so through his actions can never again harm an innocent person.
What can you say of a society that pretends there is 'some good in all of us', or that evil people deserve 'mercy'? Or worse yet, that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'evil'? Is that 'advanced'? Is that 'enlightened'?
The idea that only a 'primitive' society could still have the Death Penalty is bizarre, bordering on the contemptibly stupid.
In other words, I'm sure it's all the rage on college campuses.
Fabian makes an appearance!
For someone who derides others so vehemently for being nothing but subservient herd animals, this Fabian character sure does spend a lot of time deriding people for not being subservient to him. I guess he picked that habit up in the old Soviet Bloc, too. Either that, or from reading way too much (meaning, any) Chomsky, who also has that habit. No one is smart unless they agree with him, and how dare you demand that he prove he's smart, because he's already laid out all the evidence for you, you're just too dumb or dishonest to see it...
If they were really logical, they'd realize that logic can only be applied in situations where one has reliable axioms, which excludes the vast majority of all common situations (I say this as a math major).
You say this as a math major who needs to do one of a) get his money back, b) pay more attention, or c) transfer to a better school.
Ok, that was harsh. You won't find a better school anywhere, so I guess it's not your fault.
Logic isn't a field of study that began in mathematics - it's a field of philosophy, specifically in epistemology (the study of how we come to know things). Actual logic is the doctrine that our ideas, to be correct, must conform to reality. That is, ideas must be derived from reality primarily by observation and by processes which are themselves derived from the actual relationships amongst actual things in the physical world (again, observation). Logic most specifically does not start with axioms from which all other knowledge is then derived.
Yeah, that philosophy was abandoned about two thousand years ago - and look what replaced it: the Dark Ages. If it hadn't been for Thomas Aquinas re-introducing that philosophy through the works of Aristotle, we might never have recovered from abandoning those oh-so-declined ideas.
If I remember correctly, the idealized heat engine is called a "Carnot Engine", and the maximum theoretical efficiency is right at 40%. Note that "idealized" means that all external real-world factors are ignored, so - if this model is theoretically sound - I would expect actual engines to approach these numbers asymptotically.
Remember, I Am Not A Physicist.
And I quote:
"He employed people to invent things for him, and then he stole their IP."
If he employed them to invent things for him, it wasn't *their* IP. It was his. He paid for it. He paid for the lab in which they developed it, provided the materials, etc. He couldn't have "stolen" something that, by agreement, was his already once the payment was made.
Also, did he actually claim that he, himself, sitting at a bench, had invented these things? Or was he giving a sales pitch? There's a big difference between delusional credit-stealing and telling people that you're the go-to-guy to get all the newest, whiz-bang gadgets, no matter what wording the salesman chooses.
I happen to know some of the guys who run The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. Yes, they are independent, and yes, they probably do get some money from Microsoft. That's right... independent *and* taking money from Microsoft. How's that possible, you may ask?
Well, the simple fact is that these guys are acting on moral principle. They would be doing exactly what they're doing whether or not Microsoft ever gave them a penny, and even if Microsoft opposed them as it (and Bill Gates) sometimes do, because the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism believe that their position is true.
I know, I know. Most of you won't believe that people can act on principle, or that ideas about morality can be true or false. I understand. I went to college, too.
There are two books for Calculus that I particularly recommend. The first has been mentioned above several times already:
/ -/0312 185480/qid=1059865111/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-943995 5-4464720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
t ail/-/0486 404536/qid=1059865826/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-943995 5-4464720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Calculus Made Easy
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail
and the second, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, but which I consider much more important:
Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de
The "intuitive and physical approach" really means exactly that. Calculus is developed in the book as the necessity arises to solve certain problems, just as it was developed (mostly) in the first place. Not only that, but the math is continually related back to actual problems, which keeps the concepts from floating off into the academic fairy land where math and logic become nothing more than manipulating scribbles on paper by arbitrary rules.
The framers of the Constitution also included the existence fo slavery as a valid institution, and counted slaves and indians as "partial" people for purposes of the census. The bottom line is that we should ask whether something is right or wrong, not whether or not it's in the Constitution. Plus, in an attempt to set straight an error I see made again and again, anything *granted* by a government is a *privilege*, not a right. Rights can't be granted, they are either recognized or not. Philosophical flubs like that are the "they're/their/there" of the political spectrum..
It's in a story called "Waldo", and the book as it sits on shelves will most likely be "Waldo & Magic, Inc.".
What's more approximate than one of these so-called Internet Dating Services? Hell, go back even further, to strengthen the argument: the generic "computer dating service". That's prior art on a "method for finding approximate matches in a computer database". All they could argue on the patent is the specifics of implementation - the very detailed specifics. Oh.. and given the performance of *some* database systems we've all heard of, *any* query on a database exposed by that query engine could be considered "approximate". Can that count as prior art?
I'd be surprised if you could explain the philosophy correctly, in your own wrods, including examples. Or even a part of it. Most people who become "ex-Objectivists" never took the time to become Objectivists in the first place, much less the non-Objectivist "critics" of the philosophy. God help us (irony alert - I'm an atheist), most of the self-described Objectivists evodently don't know philosophy from bathwater. And when they realize that they don't understand what's going on, they'll become bitter ex-Objectivists too, and blame all their horrible psychological problems and stupid mistakes on Rand rather than accepting the fact that they should only blame themselves. So, we keep getting these ex-Objectivists who went through their "Ayn Rand" phase, and can't explain the philosophy beyond "She sais people should be selfish, and everyone else tells me that's bad".
The real problem isn't that you don't want the "bad guys" reading your message. For the real nasties, just knowing your sent a message to someone they don't like would be enough of an excuse to come after you. Encrypting the message might even allow them to put up a "good face" for the semi-free countries. They could hold up the encrypted text and say, "Look! it could be child porn! It could be terrorist communique's! We're doing what you would do!"
I haven't read the original article in any detail, so I'll state the assumptions on which I'm working up front:
1. Each subnet they used to generate requests had 24 client machines
2. Each client machine produced about a dozen (12) requests per second
3. They, at best, set Apache on the server to the highest default child process count (255 or thereabout)
4. They saw a "tremendous dropoff in linux performance" when they added the 24th client machine, continuing as they added more machines
Now, here's the analysis part, based on my experiences administering, hacking the internals of, and benchmarking Apache. Yes, I did this for a living at GeoYahooCities, and later as an independent contractor, so I do have real-world experience to confirm my suspicions.
First, note the default internal Apache limit on child processes. I don't know what version of Apache they used, but the default limit I remember was somewhere in the area of 256. Now for some math... 24 clent machines, about a dozen requests/second each.. 24x12 = 288. Once all the Apache child processes are busy, all requests get stuck in the accept() queues of the tcp/ip stack, waiting for one of the child processes to finish what it's doing and serve the new request. So, if they're seeing things slow down compared to IIS after this point, I'd say the culprit is the default child process limit. Note that this is configurable at compile-time, so it's not an inexorable problem. And it certainly looks like the web server is, in this case, the culprit, rather than Linux as such.
Disclaimer: No Apaches were bashed in the writing of this comment. Any similarity to Apache-bashing, whether flamebait or trolling, is purely coincidental.
No, actually no one would ever learn that in a contemporary philosophy class. They'd learn exactly the sort of incredibly inane and shortsighted crap that Jon Katz spews forth. Property rights? Corporate myth, the attempt to subvert individualism with facist control structures. Individual rights? Individuals have the right to have every whim satisfied, and it is the responsibility of anyone producing anything to satisfy those whims, as a duty. You are nothing, the Consumer is All. A more detailed analysis might compare Jon Katz's views of "The Corporate Republic" to a Nazi diatribe.. but at least the Nazis didn't hide behind the rhetoric of individualism.
No, the cynical view is not that government control of our lives is bad. The cynical view would be that the fall of Communism, at least as an existing social system if not as the ideal of the misguided self-styled intellectuals, was unfortunate. Why? Because the cynic would say that those who support the idea of the interventionist state most deserve to suffer under the weight of it. The cynic would say that there wouldn't be a dry eye among the few remaining advocates of actual freedom when the supporters of the interventionist state go up against the wall after the Revolution comes.
Cynicism is a form of naivite' - they're not opposites. Both the cynic who has given up on morality and the naive fool who thinks that altruism is a proper moral code suffer under the same sort of failure - the failure to see that an ideal that isn't practical isn't an *ideal* case at all. The cynics think that people aren't good enough for morality, the naive think that morality can be imposed on people regardless of the practical consequences.
The opposite of both cynicism and naivite is knowledge, and the realization that a proper morality *must* be practical because morality is supposed to be a guide to our day-to-day lives.
It's easy to become tainted with cynicism, until your realize that people, no matter what leftie crap they're spouting, generally don't practice the leftie crap they preach. Hypocrites they may be, but they're not yet Mao or Stalin.
I have tried extremely hard. In fact, I have a collection of attempted critiques, both in book form and saved electronically. It's something of a hobby.
After reading that work of Huemer's, I've still come up empty in my search. I don't know what he read as his "study" of Objectivism, but some of the things he states as being Rand's point of view are not just wrong, they're bizarre. He claims to agree with Objectivism on several points, but his method of doing philosophy makes me question to what extent he could possibly agree on anything but the nominal level.
He doesn't understand the distinction between concepts (universals), and proper names (which are not concepts). He claims that evaluations (evaluative premises) must be derived from other evaluations (premises), and that evaluations can't be "seen" in reality, therefore they don't come from observation. Without going through the rest of the examples I could give, he basically reiterates Hume and Kant and then claims to have found errors in Rand's arguments. Then, to top it all off, his own "answer" is intuitionism, which in practice means 'whatever you feel at the moment'. It's a common shortfalling of all attempts to claim that ethics is "intuitive" or "revealed" or "intrinsic to our nature" - since none of those are true, all that is left in that approach is total subjectivism.
"Put the book down! Now, step away from the Wittgenstein, sir! Slowly... slowly!"
First, let me say that if ESR's philosophy is "Ayn Rand warmed over", it needs to be warmed a whole lot more. Unlike the majority of posters, I don't fault him for the nature or slant of his views - I fault him for his inconsistencies. For example, minimal government is not "anarchy". Microsoft's dominance of the marketplace, and their competitive strategies, are not morally wrong like government regulation of industry. And last, but not least, intellectual property as such is the *basis* for *all* forms of private property, and must be protected absolutely.
I don't know much about ESR, except from the things he's written and tales of his gun hobby. I've never met him. I don't foresee that I ever will. Thus, any reference to his personality is, for my purposes, not only a fallacious means of attempting to discredit his ideas, it's just plain irrelevant.
However, notice the "arguments" used against his ideas, such as they are: "Oh, he's just a Randroid, and he should grow up", "Oh, the government does all these things for us and always has, so the government must be responsible for our country's prosperity","oh, he's just a wacko", etc. etc. All in all, there has not been a single substantial, worthwhile objection to his criticisms of government regulation or his support of laissez-faire (to the extent he does support it). Everything I've seen so far has been personality attacks, truth by assertion, and other assorted non-rebuttals. (truth by assertion = if you believe something strongly enough, and assert it often and vehemently enough, then it must be true)
There are many critiques to make of ESR's position, but in my case I would do so only to help a fellow-traveller steer himself on a more clear and stable course. In any battle of ideas, the most consistent side will win the day - which is why any advocate of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism, such as ESR appears to be to some extent, must take great pains to weed out any contradictory ideas he may hold.
If he does that, then and only then will I accept him as a fellow "Randroid".
(PS. I use that term proudly, and tongue-in-cheek, as a symbol both of the fact that Objectivism is not just a "phase" for those who actually understand it, and the fact that I have never encountered a critique of Rand or Objectivism that wasn't essentially an attack on her personality. If someone is going to critique her ideas, then please do.. but if one is going to critique her ideas, shouldn't one first be able to - at the very least - present some understanding of them in the first place?)
I'm quite interested in the answer to this question, actually. By what standard are we to judge whether or not a company is "ethical" or not? We can't just say "ethical" without explanation and hope, hope, hope everyone knows what we mean. Think about it.. PETA (People for the Ethical? Treatment of Animals). They're all about "animal rights", But the only *ethical* way to treat animals is as resources for our own use - by the morality I follow. Obviously, they disagree. Likewise, by the morality I hold as true, the *moral* purpose of a business is to make as high a profit as possible by whatever honest means available. That means not using the government to beat down competitors you can't match (Anti-Trust laws are immoral), disclosing all relevant information about your product (no fraud), and getting the highest value from your workforce by paying what the market will bear. Yes, this is selfish. No, it's not self-sacrificial, or altruistic, or "community spirited", or any of those other catchphrases. This is *morality*, which should be a guide to one's actual day-to-day life in the real world. Clearly, my moral views differ from those of most people. If you're going to talk about morality, you absolutely have to define what standard you're using to judge. Capitalist1