If the sites you visit are mostly http, you could run your own webserver on port 80 and serve up ads you want.
Like reminders to not surf so much;).
Anyway, on one fine April 1st, I configured a webproxy to show the company's logo instead of some ads. I didn't get fired for that, hardly anyone noticed. I think I did save some bandwidth.
Pay? In the UK you might even get a flat rent free:
Bradley Wernham, 19, responsible for a £1million crime spree, was spared a prison sentence last October after police told a judge he had turned his life around. Wernham was given a community service order instead and relocated to another town where he was given a flat rent-free.
From that perspective I'd think it'll be easier to buy up (or rent) most of a small government than of a big government. Assuming the same level of quality - corruptness, ignorance, etc, it just means fewer people to pay.
Whether it's worth the expense is another matter. e.g. if you buy up a tiny government and just get a small impoverished island, it might not be worth it. But if you buy up a tiny government for a few million and get billions for your investment, then that's worth it.
Similarly if you spend hundreds of millions to buy/rent a bigger government and get trillions that's still a good investment.
> If he looks scared then he clearly doesn't have any idea what he's doing, but goes ahead and does it anyway.
Exactly. If they're doing crazy/stupid things and hitting their own terror levels, it means they're not doing things within their own safety margins, much less yours.
An experienced rally driver might drive at 150kph close to cliff edges or walls with no problems. So if after a few turns, he looks like he knows what he's doing, you just shut up and hope he's not overconfident...
But if your driver drives fast then gets rather close to a cliff edge and looks terrified, you should be scared too.
> The problem is that the voters don't really want smaller government
Uh, that's not a problem if the voters tried to get a better government. As I said small does not mean good, and it's stupid to fixate on size instead of quality.
Not all politicians are bad. Some of them actually seem to try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJqM2tFOxLQ Maybe it's a show, but it sure seems like it'll result in positive changes even if it's all an act.
So if the voters actually bothered to pay attention stuff will gradually get better. Not overnight of course.
> People basically just do whatever the hell they want.
Therefore they're not better drivers. And I think the statistics do indicate that drivers in China are worse than those in the US.
As for anecdotal evidence:
1) A friend of mine has a chinese wife. When he was visiting her relatives in China, he had the opportunity to get into the driver's seat and started adjusting the rearview mirror. His wife's relatives at the back asked what he was doing, and it seems they were unclear on the concept of the rear view mirror, and they used it more as a vanity mirror:).
2) Another friend of mine visited China and his taxi driver drove the wrong way around the roundabout just because it was a shorter distance.
3) When my brother went to China, his van driver drove on the wrong side of the road for a significant period till oncoming traffic almost hit them - then the van driver swerved to the correct side. What bothered my brother a lot was that the driver actually looked scared by the incident.
4) I personally know people who have gone to china and not come back alive because of traffic accidents.
In contrast I do not hear of such problems from friends or relatives going to USA, UK or Australia. I have had friends who had problems with "black ice" in the UK, fortunately nonfatal, but that's a different thing.
Maybe it's a "nerd" thingy, I also would rather not have the greeters bother me when I'm reading the menu.
But my dad on the other hand thought it was poor service when no greeters "bothered" him when he was standing outside the restaurant. He's been in management and marketing though.
Sounds more like an argument against the current patent system.
If you allow patents to last 60 years (whether explicitly or by small tweaks) so that the innovative people decades ahead of their time[1] get rewarded, you would reward far more patent trolls for longer. The trolls would be collecting tolls and taxes on obvious crap for 60 years. I suggest that would slow the pace of innovation down even more.
Hindsight is better than foresight, so perhaps instead of getting overworked patent examiners to decide whether to reward some application or not, perhaps there should be prizes for innovation. And these prizes would be awarded in hindsight. The money from the prizes will come via the registration fees. You do not get an automatic monopoly.
Yes the prizes will be peanuts compared to monopolies, but "everyone" always talks about protecting/encouraging the "small inventor". And what's peanuts to a billion dollar company would be quite a lot to the "small inventor".
Who decides who wins? Perhaps there could be two award categories for all the many different prizes in different fields. One would be decided by "The Public", the other would be by "Experts in the Field". So even if your invention doesn't please some snob, it might please the public and so you can still win one of the prizes.
[1] Another example is Douglas Engelbart and his team.
I would think the quality of government matters more than quantity of government. The popular obsession over quantity seems very stupid to me.
You say "more manageable", so who's "managing" the smaller government? In theory it should be the voters right?
And assuming the elections weren't too badly diebolded, the US voters have already been voting for the existing and previous governments. They didn't vote for "small government" did they?
So are the voters mismanaging? Should someone else do the managing then? I'm sure a fair number of Corps would be very happy to help (if they aren't already:) ).
I don't see why things would improve if you had a small Government (but of similar quality). A small government could better justify needing help from Corrupt Big Corporations a lot more. And that external help is even less answerable to the people than the Government (stuff like FOIA don't work so well on Corps). There are many countries with small corrupt governments working with large (and often foreign, and sometimes US) corporations to screw the citizens.
So just because it's small doesn't mean it's automagically good (or bad).
If a Government is too weak to maintain a monopoly on violence it abdicates by default. Some other more powerful entity will take over and become the defacto government. And would that entity answer to the voters? You can see examples of weak governments around the world. In those places, mob/tribal/war/drug lords can do whatever they like within their areas and the government is powerless to stop them.
The US Gov is far from too weak of course. But it's so powerful I suggest you really better focus on quality than quantity. Making a nuke quarter the strength doesn't reduce the danger as much as just having someone better in charge of it.
> but if you know that it can happen, you should still do your best not to overheat it.
Yeah, don't play games like Starcraft till you buy a proper graphics card that can handle it:).
If the cards were dying even when the fans were working fine,there wasn't that much dust, and the ambient temps were within range, then I'd say the cards are faulty.
Ubuntu is helping in some ways- they've made it easy for normal users to have their home directory encrypted (so all that talk about Ubuntu not contributing enough is bullshit).
Even more than 10 years ago I think many email programs actually had support for S/MIME. But that design required CAs and $$$ (yes there could be free CAs or people could set one up themselves, but good luck with getting the public to do that).
Whereas if the architecture was more like ssh, lots of people would be using encryption. e.g. if you send a message you have an option to "send encrypted" and it would include a public key in the message if it's the first time the email program is sending to any of the recipients.
But of course there would be fewer opportunities for various parties to collect a yearly "tax" on, and I'm sure various governments wouldn't want such widespread use of crypto.
The government could already snoop in on your GSM conversations.
1) If there's encryption enabled, it ends at the tower. After that they can listen in. 2) GSM encryption was intentionally designed to be weak enough to crack:
Slashdot Mirror
I was hoping for something more like General Products hulls ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Products_(Larry_Niven) ).
That'll cut down on fatalities. But not to zero...
> ditch the kids though, especially if their too young.
Too young? Don't worry, time passes swiftly when you play Civ.
If the sites you visit are mostly http, you could run your own webserver on port 80 and serve up ads you want.
;).
Like reminders to not surf so much
Anyway, on one fine April 1st, I configured a webproxy to show the company's logo instead of some ads. I didn't get fired for that, hardly anyone noticed. I think I did save some bandwidth.
You won't get that much more lifting power. And I suspect it won't fail as gracefully as a normal airship/blimp.
Does that apply to those laws on marijuana?
Pay? In the UK you might even get a flat rent free:
Bradley Wernham, 19, responsible for a £1million crime spree, was spared a prison sentence last October after police told a judge he had turned his life around.
Wernham was given a community service order instead and relocated to another town where he was given a flat rent-free.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/08/05/one-man-crimewave-bradley-wernham-jailed-by-the-judge-who-let-him-off-115875-22465784/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7926040/Prolific-burglar-given-second-chance-offends-again-after-three-months.html
I guess you could ask these guys to do a car/hovercraft version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSv2ca-IECc
You mean something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSv2ca-IECc
0-60? It's the 60-0 in 0.1 sec where you really feel the difference between real life and simulation :).
From that perspective I'd think it'll be easier to buy up (or rent) most of a small government than of a big government. Assuming the same level of quality - corruptness, ignorance, etc, it just means fewer people to pay.
Whether it's worth the expense is another matter. e.g. if you buy up a tiny government and just get a small impoverished island, it might not be worth it. But if you buy up a tiny government for a few million and get billions for your investment, then that's worth it.
Similarly if you spend hundreds of millions to buy/rent a bigger government and get trillions that's still a good investment.
> If he looks scared then he clearly doesn't have any idea what he's doing, but goes ahead and does it anyway.
Exactly. If they're doing crazy/stupid things and hitting their own terror levels, it means they're not doing things within their own safety margins, much less yours.
An experienced rally driver might drive at 150kph close to cliff edges or walls with no problems. So if after a few turns, he looks like he knows what he's doing, you just shut up and hope he's not overconfident...
But if your driver drives fast then gets rather close to a cliff edge and looks terrified, you should be scared too.
> The problem is that the voters don't really want smaller government
Uh, that's not a problem if the voters tried to get a better government. As I said small does not mean good, and it's stupid to fixate on size instead of quality.
Not all politicians are bad. Some of them actually seem to try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJqM2tFOxLQ
Maybe it's a show, but it sure seems like it'll result in positive changes even if it's all an act.
So if the voters actually bothered to pay attention stuff will gradually get better. Not overnight of course.
> People basically just do whatever the hell they want.
:).
Therefore they're not better drivers. And I think the statistics do indicate that drivers in China are worse than those in the US.
As for anecdotal evidence:
1) A friend of mine has a chinese wife. When he was visiting her relatives in China, he had the opportunity to get into the driver's seat and started adjusting the rearview mirror. His wife's relatives at the back asked what he was doing, and it seems they were unclear on the concept of the rear view mirror, and they used it more as a vanity mirror
2) Another friend of mine visited China and his taxi driver drove the wrong way around the roundabout just because it was a shorter distance.
3) When my brother went to China, his van driver drove on the wrong side of the road for a significant period till oncoming traffic almost hit them - then the van driver swerved to the correct side. What bothered my brother a lot was that the driver actually looked scared by the incident.
4) I personally know people who have gone to china and not come back alive because of traffic accidents.
In contrast I do not hear of such problems from friends or relatives going to USA, UK or Australia. I have had friends who had problems with "black ice" in the UK, fortunately nonfatal, but that's a different thing.
Maybe it's a "nerd" thingy, I also would rather not have the greeters bother me when I'm reading the menu.
But my dad on the other hand thought it was poor service when no greeters "bothered" him when he was standing outside the restaurant. He's been in management and marketing though.
Hard to please everyone...
Sounds more like an argument against the current patent system.
If you allow patents to last 60 years (whether explicitly or by small tweaks) so that the innovative people decades ahead of their time[1] get rewarded, you would reward far more patent trolls for longer. The trolls would be collecting tolls and taxes on obvious crap for 60 years. I suggest that would slow the pace of innovation down even more.
Hindsight is better than foresight, so perhaps instead of getting overworked patent examiners to decide whether to reward some application or not, perhaps there should be prizes for innovation. And these prizes would be awarded in hindsight. The money from the prizes will come via the registration fees. You do not get an automatic monopoly.
Yes the prizes will be peanuts compared to monopolies, but "everyone" always talks about protecting/encouraging the "small inventor". And what's peanuts to a billion dollar company would be quite a lot to the "small inventor".
Who decides who wins? Perhaps there could be two award categories for all the many different prizes in different fields. One would be decided by "The Public", the other would be by "Experts in the Field". So even if your invention doesn't please some snob, it might please the public and so you can still win one of the prizes.
[1] Another example is Douglas Engelbart and his team.
I would think the quality of government matters more than quantity of government. The popular obsession over quantity seems very stupid to me.
:) ).
You say "more manageable", so who's "managing" the smaller government? In theory it should be the voters right?
And assuming the elections weren't too badly diebolded, the US voters have already been voting for the existing and previous governments. They didn't vote for "small government" did they?
So are the voters mismanaging? Should someone else do the managing then? I'm sure a fair number of Corps would be very happy to help (if they aren't already
I don't see why things would improve if you had a small Government (but of similar quality). A small government could better justify needing help from Corrupt Big Corporations a lot more. And that external help is even less answerable to the people than the Government (stuff like FOIA don't work so well on Corps). There are many countries with small corrupt governments working with large (and often foreign, and sometimes US) corporations to screw the citizens.
So just because it's small doesn't mean it's automagically good (or bad).
If a Government is too weak to maintain a monopoly on violence it abdicates by default. Some other more powerful entity will take over and become the defacto government. And would that entity answer to the voters? You can see examples of weak governments around the world. In those places, mob/tribal/war/drug lords can do whatever they like within their areas and the government is powerless to stop them.
The US Gov is far from too weak of course. But it's so powerful I suggest you really better focus on quality than quantity. Making a nuke quarter the strength doesn't reduce the danger as much as just having someone better in charge of it.
> If we could reduce the power of the government, the corruption would correspondingly lessen.
Reduce the power of the government so that Intuit wouldn't even have to fight the government to get what they want?
Sorry I lost you there.
Maybe she forgot who was her husband.
> but if you know that it can happen, you should still do your best not to overheat it.
:).
Yeah, don't play games like Starcraft till you buy a proper graphics card that can handle it
If the cards were dying even when the fans were working fine,there wasn't that much dust, and the ambient temps were within range, then I'd say the cards are faulty.
Yeah it'll be nice if more people used crypto.
Ubuntu is helping in some ways- they've made it easy for normal users to have their home directory encrypted (so all that talk about Ubuntu not contributing enough is bullshit).
Even more than 10 years ago I think many email programs actually had support for S/MIME. But that design required CAs and $$$ (yes there could be free CAs or people could set one up themselves, but good luck with getting the public to do that).
Whereas if the architecture was more like ssh, lots of people would be using encryption. e.g. if you send a message you have an option to "send encrypted" and it would include a public key in the message if it's the first time the email program is sending to any of the recipients.
But of course there would be fewer opportunities for various parties to collect a yearly "tax" on, and I'm sure various governments wouldn't want such widespread use of crypto.
The government could already snoop in on your GSM conversations.
1) If there's encryption enabled, it ends at the tower. After that they can listen in.
2) GSM encryption was intentionally designed to be weak enough to crack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.telecom/msg/ba76615fef32ba32
The lack of these security notifications just makes snooping even easier than it already is.
I use a phone to communicate with other people. Not to talk to myself and an imaginary friend that uses phonecrypt.
Evacuation tends to take a different meaning in space...
Did you even read my last line?
Until the day you have "Woah, I know kungfu!" tech :).