Pointing out that I agree with those things so you won't think I'm just a leftist. FWIW, I think Obama's health care plan is a monstrosity.
The taxity tax taxes?... spreading it around.
Some food for thought: The strongest period of GDP growth (8 year real GDP per capita growth, to be precise) in US history was from 1955 to 1965. That was also our period of highest taxation and tax progressivity. The current level of taxation and progressivity is the lowest it has been since 1929. During the past 30 years of lowering of taxes and minimal progressivity, the 8 year GDP growth rate has been miserable. Only one year from 1980 to 2000(*) -- 1983 -- saw a growth rate which exceeded the average from 1955 to 1965. The average 8 year real GDP per capita growth rate from 1955 to 1965 (25.19%) was 41% higher than the average from 1980 to 2000 (17.82%). During the past 30 years we also saw the three worst crashes since 1929 (the last time taxes were this low and this flat).
The best reason in the world for extremely high incomes is because high income encourages the best and brightest to strive to achieve. Incentive compensation is an extremely powerful tool for maximizing GDP by encouraging productivity.
The truth of that productivity encouragement applies to the entire income range.
Over the past 30 years, we have systematically depressed incentive income for 99.5% of the population relative to the top 1/2 of 1%. The depressed segment from 99% to 99.5% is the entrepreneurial class in the $365k - $600k range.
Big reduction in incentive income for almost the entire population relative to the top 0.5%, happened concurrently with reduction in tax progressivity, hit the entrepreneurial class as well as the dishwashers. Simultaneously, there was a significant reduction in GDP growth rate. If incentive income is important -- as the most rational reason for extremely high incomes goes -- then certainly there must be some GDP upside in applying that incentive income to, for example, the entrepreneurial class which has been suffering at the hands of reduced tax progressivity.
As for the tax level; we seem to agree that the deficit is a big problem. The United States is awesome, and expensive -- we're have to pay for it. I don't like what we're doing with our money, but we still have to pay our bills. Maybe if taxes were sufficient to cover our expenses, people would get a bit more serious about cutting our expenses.
Just some data worth noodling on, when contemplating GDP maximization and the threat of the debt.
* note that the 8 year GDP growth rate can only be calculated up to 2000, because the GDP stats for 2009 have not yet been published, and the 8 year growth rate requires 8 subsequent years of data
There are some simple questions that can make it easy to choose between competing standards.
1. Are they sufficiently similar quantitatively in doing the job? 2. Are they sufficiently similar qualitatively in doing the job? 3. Is anyone allowed to use them without inhibition?
It's not hard. If one of the potential standards satisfies all three of those requirements and the other does not, that is the better standard. Why? Because we strive to be a free market economy. We do that because it is a better answer -- mathematically speaking -- than being a biased-market economy. Free market means satisfying the customers needs (item 1), their wants (item 2), and their freedom to choose (item 3). Competition is one of the pillars of free market efficiency. Encumbered standards create inhibition to competition.
Economically speaking, this is Dick & Jane stuff. The only people who could fail to get it are the ignorant and charlatans.
'One-Way Public Relationships' in social networks and other online properties, lawyer-speak for what's more commonly known as being a 'fan' of something online.
This is also lawyer-speak for what is more technically known as a directed graph.
I thought the patent system was broken for allowing any half-wit to staple "... on the Internet!" onto an existing idea and be granted a patent. Now they're giving patents for "A directed graph... with humans!" The user interface, storage, and processing of directed graphs are a significant part of computer science history, and trace their heritage to before the Unix epoch. There is no technical invention here, nor by Facebook in 2007. You should as easily be allowed to patent "1 + 1 = 2... with humans!" and go sue anyone who is married for infringement.
A run-of-the-mill malware-laced e-mail that spoofed seasons greetings from The White House siphoned gigabytes of sensitive documents... espionage attacks.
Looking for the upside here: It is nice to have a solid case of espionage as an example against which to compare and contrast WikiLeaks.
Hypothesis: When a person or organization uses deception or other coercion to manipulate a person with clearance into exposing sensitive information, that is espionage. Whether WikiLeaks engaged in espionage is a question of whether WikiLeaks engaged in such deception or other coercion.
Is Slashdot so far toward the anarchist fringe that this is being spun... as some sort of The People vs. Big Brother thing?
Yes.
Are you so far toward the authoritarian fringe that you cannot see the balance that must be considered between increasing the rate of conviction of criminals (a good thing) and the chilling effect on studying unsavory topics? One of the very real downsides of practicing liberty is that citizens need the practical ability to consider and discuss all aspects -- even the ugly ones -- of our society. When such discourse is inhibited by fear of consequences, there is a cost to liberty. That cost may be outweighed by the benefit to the conviction rate (certainly it was in this specific case), but as patriotic citizens it is our duty to avoid shallow advocacy of either side of such issues. To seek to enhance due diligence in contemplating issues which have objective benefits on both sides. To enhance the rationality, and reduce the hostility of the discourse.
And who can we expect to begin carrying that flag with more conviction than a forum of information scientists? We are the exact people who must learn to show the world that rational consideration of the full weight of such topics is the answer -- not counter-knee-jerkism. Step one in that process is for each of us, as individuals, to constantly attempt to be that example of rationalism within this village. (which is not to say I always get it right, as you can readily see by reading my back posts, haha)
Which is why I think URL shortening should be banned.... So as long as we have shortening of URLs and allow the cops to use browser cache as "evidence" then trolls are gonna be a hell of a lot worse threat than ever before.
I think you may be shooting the wrong messenger, or something like that. The problem is not URL shorteners, it is that courts are allowed to use what you have been reading as evidence against you. This causes a chilling effect on research. While I think "what he read" in this case is outstanding evidence of his guilt, we must consider the greater societal cost of creating an inhibition to studying unsavory topics.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are sullied when the right to hear and read such free expressions is harmed. To take a more prosaic case; suppose a person were fired from his job, asserted that it was without cause, and in the eventual court proceedings to follow the corporation used the person's cached searches for "WikiLeaks" to support an assertion that they believed the person posed a threat to the corporation's information security. Or simply got a subpoena for the person's browser history to go fishing for cause. Suddenly any unsavory search puts you at risk of being terminated without cause (which may not be a big deal for all people, but there are many jobs where with-cause versus without-cause is a substantive issue).
Chilling effects are not limited to speech and press. They can inhibit the practical value of free speech and free press by inhibiting the consumption of such free expression. Ultimately we must choose whether it is more important to make it easier to convict criminals, or to have the ability to study and discuss our society -- even the ugly bits -- without fear of reprisal. That may not be an easy question to answer, but it is the rational context in which the full weight of the dichotomy must be considered.
Disclaimer: As far as I know, Mugabe is a very bad man. This post is not meant to contradict that.
The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe.
Hmmm, how could the cable possibly make that portrayal possible?
The topic of the meeting was the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by a collection of western countries, including the U.S. and E.U. Tsvangirai told the western officials that, while there had been some progress in the last year, Mugabe and his supporters were dragging their feet on delivering political reforms. To overcome this, he said that the sanctions on Zimbabwe "must be kept in place" to induce Mugabe into giving up some political power. The prime minister openly admitted the incongruity between his private support for the sanctions and his public statements in opposition. If his political adversaries knew Tsvangirai secretly supported the sanctions, deeply unpopular with Zimbabweans, they would have a powerful weapon to attack and discredit the democratic reformer.
Ahhh, I see. The cable makes it possible to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe because he is an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. What a dastardly cable so shamelessly enabling Mugabe (a bad man, as far as I know) to make an accurate portrayal of his currently-believed-to-be-less-evil rival.
We can just point to existing FCC regulations in other industries for all the examples of "bad" that we need.
We can also point to existing FCC regulations in other industries for examples of "good" that we need. You mention common carrier as the ideal solution to this problem. I agree. Common carrier is an FCC regulation. Clearly the FCC is capable of doing both good and bad, just as corporations with sufficient power to bias the market are capable of doing good and bad. Perhaps it is unfortunate that this leaves us without the ability to hang the boogeyman tag on one or the other in all cases. It requires us as citizen defenders of liberty and the free market to consider the actual evidence of which potential abuser is a greater threat in context. To maintain our constant vigilance to defend our nation from its government and those who would be oligarchs. That is a hard task that requires deeper analysis than facile painting of one side as the eternal bad guy.
Do you honestly believe that the FCC gives a fuck about Net Neutrality?
Rather than discussing our amorphous beliefs, let's see if the FCC grasps the concept by considering the order itself:
"For a number of reasons, including those discussed above in Part II.B, a commercial arrangement between a broadband provider and a third party to directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic in the broadband Internet access service connection to a subscriber of the broadband provider (i.e., "pay for priority") would raise significant cause for concern.229 First, pay for priority would represent a significant departure from historical and current practice. Since the beginning of the Internet, Internet access providers have typically not charged particular content or application providers fees to reach the providers' retail service end users or struck pay-for-priority deals, and the record does not contain evidence that U.S. broadband providers currently engage in such arrangements. Second this departure from longstanding norms could cause great harm to innovation and investment in and on the Internet. As discussed above, pay-for-priority arrangements could raise barriers to entry on the Internet by requiring fees from edge providers, as well as transaction costs arising from the need to reach agreements with one or more broadband providers to access a critical mass of potential end users.230 Fees imposed on edge providers may be excessive because few edge providers have the ability to bargain for lesser fees, and because no broadband provider internalizes the full costs of reduced innovation and the exit of edge providers from the market.231 Third, pay-for-priority arrangements may particularly harm non-commercial end users, including individual bloggers, libraries, schools, advocacy organizations, and other speakers,232 especially those who communicate through video or other content sensitive to network congestion. Even open Internet skeptics acknowledge that pay for priority may disadvantage non-commercial uses of the network, which are typically less able to pay for priority, and for which the Internet is a uniquely important platform.233 Fourth, broadband providers that sought to offer pay-for-priority services would have an incentive to limit the quality of service provided to non-prioritized traffic.234 In light of each of these concerns, as a general matter, it is unlikely that pay for priority would satisfy the "no unreasonable discrimination" standard."
That looks like a pretty well-reasoned defense of packet neutrality. Certainly they at least understand the principles involved, which is far more than I can say for anything I have heard from AT&T, Comcast, or their kin.
[The FCC wants] to eventually regulate the content of those packets.
I do not doubt you are correct. Certainly many people in government want to regulate speech on the Internet. When they try, we should stop them. By any means necessary, starting with the least harmful means.
the freedom of online assembly -- via texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Twitter, humble email -- is more important even than access to information via an uncensored Internet
Which is more important to sustain human life; oxygen, food, or water?
One cannot have democracy without free expression. That implicitly requires the pragmatic ability to think freely, to speak freely, to read freely, and to challenge or amplify existing expressions. Challenge and amplification, in turn, implicitly require free association. Claiming that any one of these things is more important than the others is to imply that the others are less important. They are all required. To posit that any component can be lost without losing the whole is -- at best -- the beginning of a philosophical exploration.
Supposing that any one is more or less important is perhaps a fine beginning to a thesis which uses modus tollens (denying the consequent) to show that all components are required, but surely it is no rational conclusion in itself.
Wish I had some cream and onions to go with that tasty red herring.
The fact that one can envision scenarios in which FCC regulation would be bad is no more convincing than scenarios in which the monopoly and n-opoly service providers hamper innovation -- except to the extent that we have evidence of one or the other actually happening. As it happens, we do have such evidence with the service providers. Evidence that they will engage in anti-competitive content restriction which inhibits new business models. The broad and rich exploration of new business models is absolutely critical to being a dominant economy during the advent of sea-change new technology.
If the FCC were inhibiting new approaches to communication by the citizens, consumers, and entrepreneurs (as suggested by the fantasy editorial), we would be well advised to spank them. They are not. If the n-opolies are inhibiting such new concepts, we are equally well advised to prevent that behavior. Government exists, in the business world, to ensure that we as a nation can compete and ideally dominate. In new technology fields, that ability is fundamentally premised on exploring unproven business models. Leaving the governance of the Internet exclusively in the hands of existing profit-maximizing corporations is a perfect formula for optimizing existing business models.
Established corporations are very proficient at analyzing what already exists, and making such things more efficient. That is an important component of our economy. New technology demands the more experimental path trod by entrepreneurs in an unrestricted market exploration space. The FCC's role in this new realm of economic opportunity is to ensure that the market remains unrestricted to those entrepreneurs.
Ardolf faces a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the distribution of child pornography charge, ten years on the possession of child pornography charge, five years on both the unauthorized access to a computer and the threats to the Vice President charges, and a mandatory two-year minimum prison sentence on each count of aggravated identity theft.
Ardolf, they told police, had picked up their 4-year-old son and kissed him.
So let me see if I get this straight. The max penalty for child porn possession is 10 years, and picking up a 4 year old and kissing him (presumably without the parent's consent) isn't even in the charges? Given that child porn has been extended to include images of adults who are portrayed as children and that he had inappropriate contact with a real child, that seems out of whack to me. Distribution of child porn is easier for me to understand being in the same ball park as inappropriate contact, but possession? And not even including inappropriate contact in the charges?
Maybe there is a good reason in this specific case that the articles don't cover, but this seems like a solid red flag to analyze the laws and make sure they are coded properly. This sounds like a pretty serious bug to me.
I don't know if you've watched the full video, or just Assange's edit of it. If you watched the full one you know that at several points they asked for clearance to fire, and spent some time trying to figure the situation out.
I (not the GP) watched the version I pulled from WikiLeaks. It appeared uncut, including the requests for clearance to fire and delays while waiting for deliberation from fire control. To me it looked like the normal, nasty, business of war. Uncertainty of who is the enemy and the need to act quickly or risk the lives of yourself and others. Normal, nasty, business that is very important for the public to know about. Normal, nasty, business which does not mean we should quit this war, but which is important for us to consider when deciding whether to authorize our government to prosecute war for a given cause. Important for us to consider when deciding whether to put soldiers in the unenviable position of killing people, in highly uncertain and fluid conditions.
It seems like you're saying WikiLeaks is a propaganda machine. I haven't seen the edited version you reference, though I do think that the "collateral murder" tagline was inappropriate (such is the cost of human-based journalism). However, that does not change the fact that the unedited video is exactly the sort of thing that should be leaked -- or better yet presented to the public by the appropriate government officials. It is critical that We The People can, in some small way, understand the true burden of war and make an informed decision about whether to engage in it.
I want my ISP to have a profit motive for rolling out fatter pipes. This bullshit "all you can eat unless you eat too much" pricing is not the only problem, but it is a significant contributor. The profit motive for the ISPs right now is to strong-arm Netflix and make me feel guilty about using bandwidth (and soon, effectively, to charge for killing competition). I would much rather have them getting paid more by me, a heavy user, and encouraging people to use high bandwidth applications.
The free market really does serve the customer when the customers' interests are aligned with those of the vendor.
Seems other posts have covered the moralizing bit pretty well. What about the cause/effect?
What is this path that lead to Anonymous DDoSing these sites?
I posit that it is a familiar quad (which I am observing, not advocating): "Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box."
That phrase is not just a prescription; it is also a prediction. It is the natural path of any society which believes in the first three, finds them stimied, and has access to the fourth. In this case, the "Ammo Box" is cyberwarfare (or perhaps a new step between three and four).
When the secrecy started ratcheting up after 9/11, lots of people got on the soap box. They elected a President who claimed he was going to open government. They filed lawsuits and FOIA requests to get the openness they believed themselves due. Those are the first three steps, all found severely lacking.
Then, some people went back to Soap Box (WikiLeaks), the US Gov't started rattling sabers at WikiLeaks, and some people have gone to the ammo box (cyberwarfare, which may be a distinct step before the traditional ammo box).
Also worth deeper consideration of the Pentagon Papers. From Johnson/Bush secret war, to Nixon/Obama torn between damaging the other party and advancing authoritarianism, to civil unrest; the similarities go far beyond Ellsberg/Manning / NYT/WikiLeaks.
Which all is, as noted, not to take a postion on who is right and who is wrong. But to point out that this is exactly what we should all be expecting, and the path ahead should be quite clear. And scary. Unless we find some way to reach detante.
in the real world businesses do what is in their own best interests.
PayPal's free market best interest is to continue to process the transactions and take their cut. If PayPal is refusing a profitable business opportunity, it is not the free market at work. If processing these otherwise gainful transactions is not profitable, then there must be non-free-market influence at work. You say it may not be governmental. Perhaps. It could be social pressure, or pressure from other business partners, or non-free-market moralizing by PayPal's executives. Regardless, this is not about a business doing what is in its best interest in the free market sense. It is about some systemic bias causing a failure of the market to operate freely.
"We should totally invent that someday" "Lets patent it just in case someone really does it!"
No kidding.
angularly-responsive reflective surface function; determining the left and right eye locations of at least one observer in proximity with the projection screen; projecting left and right sub-images of a three-dimensional image toward the projection screen; and angularly and intensity modulating the left and right sub-images respectively in coordination with the predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function
Seriously? The patent is for thinking of that? If you bounce the right photons at a person's eye, it will appear 3D. No shit. The hard part is the angularly responsive reflective surface coordinated with the left and right eye locations of at least one observer, not the realization of what that would do. Realizing that such a thing would make 3D easy is not inventive. It's barely interesting. And it is certainly not non-obvious. If some real genius comes up with the surface (something like a DLP chip on steroids), he's going to get screwed and Steve Jobs will get to buy another liver.
The only thing that makes this less of a problem is the fact that such a surface probably won't exist before the patent expires and Apple will have wasted twenty grand. But it only takes one twenty million dollar settlement (or one tenth of a Disney film's profit) to pay for a thousand larks like this.
Patenting this kind of a flyer could only make sense to a company with a big war chest and a legal department with nothing better to do, or with a big stake in Disney and a desire to establish barriers to entry for competitors in the "getting children to beg their parents" market. Progress of science and the useful arts indeed. Preposterous.
well then I'd say that is a reasonable indication that yes, they DO have an anti-US agenda.
Speaking first as a patriotic American, frankly, my first priority is to fix corruption here in the US. If WikiLeaks was publishing stuff from all nations, I would be primarily interested in the stuff about the US. Because I am a patriot. Because corruption reduces GDP. Because I want America to excel in GDP growth. (regarding the GDP-focus; my hobby-to-the-brink-of-religion is economic research)
Speaking as a pragmatic globalist, consider the correlation to monopolies. Small monopolies that have little power are not very hazardous. Large monopolies with lots of power are more hazardous. Anti-trust law focuses on the large monopolies because they have the greatest negative impact. That is rational. Similarly, the US has the most power on the global stage. I think that's a fine thing, being an American -- politically incorrect though it may be, it's good to be the king. However, being in that position means that any corruption or foul play on our part is subject to greater scrutiny. Just like big monopolies, that is a rational thing. Corruption in the US has a much bigger effect on the world than, for example, corruption in France. It only makes sense to focus on the most potent hazard, which is a combination of amount of corruption and ability to influence events. Our ability to influence is so massively outsized that it takes less corruption to make us a greater hazard.
Take your pick: Patriotic American me is happy with all the US-oriented WikiLeaks stuff because it is my house and I have a duty to help keep it clean. Pragmatic Globalist me understands that my country has a greater obligation to end corruption because we have more influence on world events.
Is WikiLeaks biased against the US? I don't care, as long as they keep publishing the US stuff -- that is the stuff that is most important to me. Frankly, Americans who feel otherwise strike me as unpatriotic.
The protest was a success well before yesterday. The goal of such civic participation in government is to raise public awareness. The head of the TSA had to think about this, and talk about it in the national media. This enlivened the public debate. That is the exact definition of victory.
If one wants to muse about more concrete short-term victories, consider the lines at the airports yesterday. I have flown on the day before Thanksgiving -- it is not pretty. According to reports, yesterday went significantly more smoothly than in the past. Think about the cause/effect. I suspect the TSA decided they had to stage a good show of efficiency yesterday to defuse the opt-out protest. They put on extra staff and gave rousing pep talks -- and; the airports sucked a little bit less yesterday than they would have otherwise. That is a nice outcome. The protest changed the behavior of our government for a day.
Did this one effort to organize civic participation go exactly as designed and solve the whole problem in one shot? Of course not. Decentralized civic displays -- almost by definition -- cannot work like that.
Civic management of government is a process, and this was a fine step. Much like our debates here in these forums are part of the process. It is the road to a better society. An endless and engaging road winding through an increasingly healthy societal system.
Or more viscerally: It is like using a spray bottle of water to train a puppy; we're going to have to do it more than once before the government learns not to poop on the carpet.
Walled gardens are a perfectly acceptable consequence of a FREE web; net neutrality infringement is the opposite.
It depends on which issue you are referring to.
If "the issue" is "things the government should regulate", you are correct that these are not (or at least may not be) the same issue.
If, however, "the issue" is "things which threaten the web because of inefficient distribution of power", then these are the same issue. Whether it is government power or oligarch power -- in the context of "threats from inefficient power distribution" -- is irrelevant.
Walled gardens are not a problem when there is significant competition and limited barriers to entry. That is not the case with many major information service providers. There is a great deal of inefficiency in the distribution of power in the marketplace. This may be a temporary phenomenon, as posited in this recent Wall Street Journal article, or it may be longer lived. It may be the sort of thing in which the government can/should be involved, or it may be best solved in the free market. Time will tell. None of those things change the core fact: low competition markets which have self-reinforcing inefficient distribution of power tend to result in lower long-run GDP growth than high competition markets without such barriers. That is not some left-wing boobery, it is straight out of Adam Smith.
So while I completely agree that it is a valid perspective to say these two things are different under the characteristic "require government participation/interference", these things are the same under the characteristic "inefficient distribution of power threatens long-run prosperity". Not because they are harmful right now, nor necessarily because they are unregulated, but because the free market operates most efficiently when there are no barriers to entry and perfect competition. We do not have those things right now, in part because of the way these markets function, and that is a danger we should be cognizant of as lovers of the free market.
Students cheat to appear more proficient than they are. The authority of the system says, "You were very bad, but we'll give you another chance if you pretend to be contrite." Students pounce on it.
Following this, the university was flooded with calls from law firms, congressional offices, and investment banks, all seeking contact information and resumes. "These kids have shown real initiative in both presenting a patina of proficiency, and recognizing a wristslap. In today's image-driven business and political environment, it is absolutely critical that we nurture these young charlatans to help them reach their full potential."
I love Wikipedia. It is one of my favorite websites. I have a tab open there right now (doing some research on the oil embargo in the 1970s).
All that said, Verizon not only shouldn't be required to respond, they should be enjoined from responding barring due process under the law. Anonymous speech is one of the most important principles of true democracy. That does not mean that Wikipedia has to allow this abusive asshole's behavior, but they have no place asking Verizon to identify or chastize him.
If this was some sleazy politician asking Verizon to cut off a user who was posting incriminating evidence on the politician's web forum, we wouldn't bat an eyelash before condemning the politician and demanding that Verizon refuse.
Principles are the things you abide by even when the outcome is exceedingly distasteful. Anonymous speech is so vital to the practice of free speech that we must not stand for, let alone condone, infringement of it. Not even to stop this asshat from vandalizing one of the true wonders of the information age.
I think they should skip all the in-between steps and do a proper analysis.
Muslim extremists are willing to give their lives because of the 72 virgins thing. They wear extra pairs of trousers / underpants to protect their genitals. So, the only sure solution is to require all male passengers to be eunuchs. Knowing you have no equipment is the only way the TSA can be sure you aren't going to kill yourself to get laid.
Unfortunately, this would cause a problem for the "feeling resistance" alternative to backscatter.
Slashdot Mirror
Could it be the deficit?
Yes
Obamacare?
Yes
impending social security crisis?
Yes
Pointing out that I agree with those things so you won't think I'm just a leftist. FWIW, I think Obama's health care plan is a monstrosity.
The taxity tax taxes? ... spreading it around.
Some food for thought: The strongest period of GDP growth (8 year real GDP per capita growth, to be precise) in US history was from 1955 to 1965. That was also our period of highest taxation and tax progressivity. The current level of taxation and progressivity is the lowest it has been since 1929. During the past 30 years of lowering of taxes and minimal progressivity, the 8 year GDP growth rate has been miserable. Only one year from 1980 to 2000(*) -- 1983 -- saw a growth rate which exceeded the average from 1955 to 1965. The average 8 year real GDP per capita growth rate from 1955 to 1965 (25.19%) was 41% higher than the average from 1980 to 2000 (17.82%). During the past 30 years we also saw the three worst crashes since 1929 (the last time taxes were this low and this flat).
The best reason in the world for extremely high incomes is because high income encourages the best and brightest to strive to achieve. Incentive compensation is an extremely powerful tool for maximizing GDP by encouraging productivity.
The truth of that productivity encouragement applies to the entire income range.
Over the past 30 years, we have systematically depressed incentive income for 99.5% of the population relative to the top 1/2 of 1%. The depressed segment from 99% to 99.5% is the entrepreneurial class in the $365k - $600k range.
Big reduction in incentive income for almost the entire population relative to the top 0.5%, happened concurrently with reduction in tax progressivity, hit the entrepreneurial class as well as the dishwashers. Simultaneously, there was a significant reduction in GDP growth rate. If incentive income is important -- as the most rational reason for extremely high incomes goes -- then certainly there must be some GDP upside in applying that incentive income to, for example, the entrepreneurial class which has been suffering at the hands of reduced tax progressivity.
As for the tax level; we seem to agree that the deficit is a big problem. The United States is awesome, and expensive -- we're have to pay for it. I don't like what we're doing with our money, but we still have to pay our bills. Maybe if taxes were sufficient to cover our expenses, people would get a bit more serious about cutting our expenses.
Just some data worth noodling on, when contemplating GDP maximization and the threat of the debt.
* note that the 8 year GDP growth rate can only be calculated up to 2000, because the GDP stats for 2009 have not yet been published, and the 8 year growth rate requires 8 subsequent years of data
There are some simple questions that can make it easy to choose between competing standards.
1. Are they sufficiently similar quantitatively in doing the job?
2. Are they sufficiently similar qualitatively in doing the job?
3. Is anyone allowed to use them without inhibition?
It's not hard. If one of the potential standards satisfies all three of those requirements and the other does not, that is the better standard. Why? Because we strive to be a free market economy. We do that because it is a better answer -- mathematically speaking -- than being a biased-market economy. Free market means satisfying the customers needs (item 1), their wants (item 2), and their freedom to choose (item 3). Competition is one of the pillars of free market efficiency. Encumbered standards create inhibition to competition.
Economically speaking, this is Dick & Jane stuff. The only people who could fail to get it are the ignorant and charlatans.
'One-Way Public Relationships' in social networks and other online properties, lawyer-speak for what's more commonly known as being a 'fan' of something online.
This is also lawyer-speak for what is more technically known as a directed graph.
I thought the patent system was broken for allowing any half-wit to staple "... on the Internet!" onto an existing idea and be granted a patent. Now they're giving patents for "A directed graph... with humans!" The user interface, storage, and processing of directed graphs are a significant part of computer science history, and trace their heritage to before the Unix epoch. There is no technical invention here, nor by Facebook in 2007. You should as easily be allowed to patent "1 + 1 = 2... with humans!" and go sue anyone who is married for infringement.
Very well formed and supported post. Thank you!
A run-of-the-mill malware-laced e-mail that spoofed seasons greetings from The White House siphoned gigabytes of sensitive documents ... espionage attacks.
Looking for the upside here: It is nice to have a solid case of espionage as an example against which to compare and contrast WikiLeaks.
Hypothesis: When a person or organization uses deception or other coercion to manipulate a person with clearance into exposing sensitive information, that is espionage. Whether WikiLeaks engaged in espionage is a question of whether WikiLeaks engaged in such deception or other coercion.
Is that a valid principle?
Is Slashdot so far toward the anarchist fringe that this is being spun... as some sort of The People vs. Big Brother thing?
Yes.
Are you so far toward the authoritarian fringe that you cannot see the balance that must be considered between increasing the rate of conviction of criminals (a good thing) and the chilling effect on studying unsavory topics? One of the very real downsides of practicing liberty is that citizens need the practical ability to consider and discuss all aspects -- even the ugly ones -- of our society. When such discourse is inhibited by fear of consequences, there is a cost to liberty. That cost may be outweighed by the benefit to the conviction rate (certainly it was in this specific case), but as patriotic citizens it is our duty to avoid shallow advocacy of either side of such issues. To seek to enhance due diligence in contemplating issues which have objective benefits on both sides. To enhance the rationality, and reduce the hostility of the discourse.
And who can we expect to begin carrying that flag with more conviction than a forum of information scientists? We are the exact people who must learn to show the world that rational consideration of the full weight of such topics is the answer -- not counter-knee-jerkism. Step one in that process is for each of us, as individuals, to constantly attempt to be that example of rationalism within this village. (which is not to say I always get it right, as you can readily see by reading my back posts, haha)
Which is why I think URL shortening should be banned. ... So as long as we have shortening of URLs and allow the cops to use browser cache as "evidence" then trolls are gonna be a hell of a lot worse threat than ever before.
I think you may be shooting the wrong messenger, or something like that. The problem is not URL shorteners, it is that courts are allowed to use what you have been reading as evidence against you. This causes a chilling effect on research. While I think "what he read" in this case is outstanding evidence of his guilt, we must consider the greater societal cost of creating an inhibition to studying unsavory topics.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are sullied when the right to hear and read such free expressions is harmed. To take a more prosaic case; suppose a person were fired from his job, asserted that it was without cause, and in the eventual court proceedings to follow the corporation used the person's cached searches for "WikiLeaks" to support an assertion that they believed the person posed a threat to the corporation's information security. Or simply got a subpoena for the person's browser history to go fishing for cause. Suddenly any unsavory search puts you at risk of being terminated without cause (which may not be a big deal for all people, but there are many jobs where with-cause versus without-cause is a substantive issue).
Chilling effects are not limited to speech and press. They can inhibit the practical value of free speech and free press by inhibiting the consumption of such free expression. Ultimately we must choose whether it is more important to make it easier to convict criminals, or to have the ability to study and discuss our society -- even the ugly bits -- without fear of reprisal. That may not be an easy question to answer, but it is the rational context in which the full weight of the dichotomy must be considered.
Disclaimer: As far as I know, Mugabe is a very bad man. This post is not meant to contradict that.
The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe.
Hmmm, how could the cable possibly make that portrayal possible?
The topic of the meeting was the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by a collection of western countries, including the U.S. and E.U. Tsvangirai told the western officials that, while there had been some progress in the last year, Mugabe and his supporters were dragging their feet on delivering political reforms. To overcome this, he said that the sanctions on Zimbabwe "must be kept in place" to induce Mugabe into giving up some political power. The prime minister openly admitted the incongruity between his private support for the sanctions and his public statements in opposition. If his political adversaries knew Tsvangirai secretly supported the sanctions, deeply unpopular with Zimbabweans, they would have a powerful weapon to attack and discredit the democratic reformer.
Ahhh, I see. The cable makes it possible to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe because he is an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. What a dastardly cable so shamelessly enabling Mugabe (a bad man, as far as I know) to make an accurate portrayal of his currently-believed-to-be-less-evil rival.
We can just point to existing FCC regulations in other industries for all the examples of "bad" that we need.
We can also point to existing FCC regulations in other industries for examples of "good" that we need. You mention common carrier as the ideal solution to this problem. I agree. Common carrier is an FCC regulation. Clearly the FCC is capable of doing both good and bad, just as corporations with sufficient power to bias the market are capable of doing good and bad. Perhaps it is unfortunate that this leaves us without the ability to hang the boogeyman tag on one or the other in all cases. It requires us as citizen defenders of liberty and the free market to consider the actual evidence of which potential abuser is a greater threat in context. To maintain our constant vigilance to defend our nation from its government and those who would be oligarchs. That is a hard task that requires deeper analysis than facile painting of one side as the eternal bad guy.
Do you honestly believe that the FCC gives a fuck about Net Neutrality?
Rather than discussing our amorphous beliefs, let's see if the FCC grasps the concept by considering the order itself:
"For a number of reasons, including those discussed above in Part II.B, a commercial arrangement between a broadband provider and a third party to directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic in the broadband Internet access service connection to a subscriber of the broadband provider (i.e., "pay for priority") would raise significant cause for concern.229 First, pay for priority would represent a significant departure from historical and current practice. Since the beginning of the Internet, Internet access providers have typically not charged particular content or application providers fees to reach the providers' retail service end users or struck pay-for-priority deals, and the record does not contain evidence that U.S. broadband providers currently engage in such arrangements. Second this departure from longstanding norms could cause great harm to innovation and investment in and on the Internet. As discussed above, pay-for-priority arrangements could raise barriers to entry on the Internet by requiring fees from edge providers, as well as transaction costs arising from the need to reach agreements with one or more broadband providers to access a critical mass of potential end users.230 Fees imposed on edge providers may be excessive because few edge providers have the ability to bargain for lesser fees, and because no broadband provider internalizes the full costs of reduced innovation and the exit of edge providers from the market.231 Third, pay-for-priority arrangements may particularly harm non-commercial end users, including individual bloggers, libraries, schools, advocacy organizations, and other speakers,232 especially those who communicate through video or other content sensitive to network congestion. Even open Internet skeptics acknowledge that pay for priority may disadvantage non-commercial uses of the network, which are typically less able to pay for priority, and for which the Internet is a uniquely important platform.233 Fourth, broadband providers that sought to offer pay-for-priority services would have an incentive to limit the quality of service provided to non-prioritized traffic.234 In light of each of these concerns, as a general matter, it is unlikely that pay for priority would satisfy the "no unreasonable discrimination" standard."
That looks like a pretty well-reasoned defense of packet neutrality. Certainly they at least understand the principles involved, which is far more than I can say for anything I have heard from AT&T, Comcast, or their kin.
[The FCC wants] to eventually regulate the content of those packets.
I do not doubt you are correct. Certainly many people in government want to regulate speech on the Internet. When they try, we should stop them. By any means necessary, starting with the least harmful means.
Also of note: The ISPs are
the freedom of online assembly -- via texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Twitter, humble email -- is more important even than access to information via an uncensored Internet
Which is more important to sustain human life; oxygen, food, or water?
One cannot have democracy without free expression. That implicitly requires the pragmatic ability to think freely, to speak freely, to read freely, and to challenge or amplify existing expressions. Challenge and amplification, in turn, implicitly require free association. Claiming that any one of these things is more important than the others is to imply that the others are less important. They are all required. To posit that any component can be lost without losing the whole is -- at best -- the beginning of a philosophical exploration.
Supposing that any one is more or less important is perhaps a fine beginning to a thesis which uses modus tollens (denying the consequent) to show that all components are required, but surely it is no rational conclusion in itself.
Wish I had some cream and onions to go with that tasty red herring.
The fact that one can envision scenarios in which FCC regulation would be bad is no more convincing than scenarios in which the monopoly and n-opoly service providers hamper innovation -- except to the extent that we have evidence of one or the other actually happening. As it happens, we do have such evidence with the service providers. Evidence that they will engage in anti-competitive content restriction which inhibits new business models. The broad and rich exploration of new business models is absolutely critical to being a dominant economy during the advent of sea-change new technology.
If the FCC were inhibiting new approaches to communication by the citizens, consumers, and entrepreneurs (as suggested by the fantasy editorial), we would be well advised to spank them. They are not. If the n-opolies are inhibiting such new concepts, we are equally well advised to prevent that behavior. Government exists, in the business world, to ensure that we as a nation can compete and ideally dominate. In new technology fields, that ability is fundamentally premised on exploring unproven business models. Leaving the governance of the Internet exclusively in the hands of existing profit-maximizing corporations is a perfect formula for optimizing existing business models.
Established corporations are very proficient at analyzing what already exists, and making such things more efficient. That is an important component of our economy. New technology demands the more experimental path trod by entrepreneurs in an unrestricted market exploration space. The FCC's role in this new realm of economic opportunity is to ensure that the market remains unrestricted to those entrepreneurs.
Ardolf faces a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the distribution of child pornography charge, ten years on the possession of child pornography charge, five years on both the unauthorized access to a computer and the threats to the Vice President charges, and a mandatory two-year minimum prison sentence on each count of aggravated identity theft.
Ardolf, they told police, had picked up their 4-year-old son and kissed him.
So let me see if I get this straight. The max penalty for child porn possession is 10 years, and picking up a 4 year old and kissing him (presumably without the parent's consent) isn't even in the charges? Given that child porn has been extended to include images of adults who are portrayed as children and that he had inappropriate contact with a real child, that seems out of whack to me. Distribution of child porn is easier for me to understand being in the same ball park as inappropriate contact, but possession? And not even including inappropriate contact in the charges?
Maybe there is a good reason in this specific case that the articles don't cover, but this seems like a solid red flag to analyze the laws and make sure they are coded properly. This sounds like a pretty serious bug to me.
I don't know if you've watched the full video, or just Assange's edit of it. If you watched the full one you know that at several points they asked for clearance to fire, and spent some time trying to figure the situation out.
I (not the GP) watched the version I pulled from WikiLeaks. It appeared uncut, including the requests for clearance to fire and delays while waiting for deliberation from fire control. To me it looked like the normal, nasty, business of war. Uncertainty of who is the enemy and the need to act quickly or risk the lives of yourself and others. Normal, nasty, business that is very important for the public to know about. Normal, nasty, business which does not mean we should quit this war, but which is important for us to consider when deciding whether to authorize our government to prosecute war for a given cause. Important for us to consider when deciding whether to put soldiers in the unenviable position of killing people, in highly uncertain and fluid conditions.
It seems like you're saying WikiLeaks is a propaganda machine. I haven't seen the edited version you reference, though I do think that the "collateral murder" tagline was inappropriate (such is the cost of human-based journalism). However, that does not change the fact that the unedited video is exactly the sort of thing that should be leaked -- or better yet presented to the public by the appropriate government officials. It is critical that We The People can, in some small way, understand the true burden of war and make an informed decision about whether to engage in it.
I want my ISP to have a profit motive for rolling out fatter pipes. This bullshit "all you can eat unless you eat too much" pricing is not the only problem, but it is a significant contributor. The profit motive for the ISPs right now is to strong-arm Netflix and make me feel guilty about using bandwidth (and soon, effectively, to charge for killing competition). I would much rather have them getting paid more by me, a heavy user, and encouraging people to use high bandwidth applications.
The free market really does serve the customer when the customers' interests are aligned with those of the vendor.
Seems other posts have covered the moralizing bit pretty well. What about the cause/effect?
What is this path that lead to Anonymous DDoSing these sites?
I posit that it is a familiar quad (which I am observing, not advocating): "Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box."
That phrase is not just a prescription; it is also a prediction. It is the natural path of any society which believes in the first three, finds them stimied, and has access to the fourth. In this case, the "Ammo Box" is cyberwarfare (or perhaps a new step between three and four).
When the secrecy started ratcheting up after 9/11, lots of people got on the soap box. They elected a President who claimed he was going to open government. They filed lawsuits and FOIA requests to get the openness they believed themselves due. Those are the first three steps, all found severely lacking.
Then, some people went back to Soap Box (WikiLeaks), the US Gov't started rattling sabers at WikiLeaks, and some people have gone to the ammo box (cyberwarfare, which may be a distinct step before the traditional ammo box).
Also worth deeper consideration of the Pentagon Papers. From Johnson/Bush secret war, to Nixon/Obama torn between damaging the other party and advancing authoritarianism, to civil unrest; the similarities go far beyond Ellsberg/Manning / NYT/WikiLeaks.
Which all is, as noted, not to take a postion on who is right and who is wrong. But to point out that this is exactly what we should all be expecting, and the path ahead should be quite clear. And scary. Unless we find some way to reach detante.
in the real world businesses do what is in their own best interests.
PayPal's free market best interest is to continue to process the transactions and take their cut. If PayPal is refusing a profitable business opportunity, it is not the free market at work. If processing these otherwise gainful transactions is not profitable, then there must be non-free-market influence at work. You say it may not be governmental. Perhaps. It could be social pressure, or pressure from other business partners, or non-free-market moralizing by PayPal's executives. Regardless, this is not about a business doing what is in its best interest in the free market sense. It is about some systemic bias causing a failure of the market to operate freely.
where they reveal Bush tied to a chair, take a good grip on his nose, and pull off the human mask to reveal a reptilian overlord beneath.
Don't they have to rip the Obama mask off first to reveal Bush underneath?
"We should totally invent that someday"
"Lets patent it just in case someone really does it!"
No kidding.
angularly-responsive reflective surface function; determining the left and right eye locations of at least one observer in proximity with the projection screen; projecting left and right sub-images of a three-dimensional image toward the projection screen; and angularly and intensity modulating the left and right sub-images respectively in coordination with the predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function
Seriously? The patent is for thinking of that? If you bounce the right photons at a person's eye, it will appear 3D. No shit. The hard part is the angularly responsive reflective surface coordinated with the left and right eye locations of at least one observer, not the realization of what that would do. Realizing that such a thing would make 3D easy is not inventive. It's barely interesting. And it is certainly not non-obvious. If some real genius comes up with the surface (something like a DLP chip on steroids), he's going to get screwed and Steve Jobs will get to buy another liver.
The only thing that makes this less of a problem is the fact that such a surface probably won't exist before the patent expires and Apple will have wasted twenty grand. But it only takes one twenty million dollar settlement (or one tenth of a Disney film's profit) to pay for a thousand larks like this.
Patenting this kind of a flyer could only make sense to a company with a big war chest and a legal department with nothing better to do, or with a big stake in Disney and a desire to establish barriers to entry for competitors in the "getting children to beg their parents" market. Progress of science and the useful arts indeed. Preposterous.
well then I'd say that is a reasonable indication that yes, they DO have an anti-US agenda.
Speaking first as a patriotic American, frankly, my first priority is to fix corruption here in the US. If WikiLeaks was publishing stuff from all nations, I would be primarily interested in the stuff about the US. Because I am a patriot. Because corruption reduces GDP. Because I want America to excel in GDP growth. (regarding the GDP-focus; my hobby-to-the-brink-of-religion is economic research)
Speaking as a pragmatic globalist, consider the correlation to monopolies. Small monopolies that have little power are not very hazardous. Large monopolies with lots of power are more hazardous. Anti-trust law focuses on the large monopolies because they have the greatest negative impact. That is rational. Similarly, the US has the most power on the global stage. I think that's a fine thing, being an American -- politically incorrect though it may be, it's good to be the king. However, being in that position means that any corruption or foul play on our part is subject to greater scrutiny. Just like big monopolies, that is a rational thing. Corruption in the US has a much bigger effect on the world than, for example, corruption in France. It only makes sense to focus on the most potent hazard, which is a combination of amount of corruption and ability to influence events. Our ability to influence is so massively outsized that it takes less corruption to make us a greater hazard.
Take your pick: Patriotic American me is happy with all the US-oriented WikiLeaks stuff because it is my house and I have a duty to help keep it clean. Pragmatic Globalist me understands that my country has a greater obligation to end corruption because we have more influence on world events.
Is WikiLeaks biased against the US? I don't care, as long as they keep publishing the US stuff -- that is the stuff that is most important to me. Frankly, Americans who feel otherwise strike me as unpatriotic.
The protest was a success well before yesterday. The goal of such civic participation in government is to raise public awareness. The head of the TSA had to think about this, and talk about it in the national media. This enlivened the public debate. That is the exact definition of victory.
If one wants to muse about more concrete short-term victories, consider the lines at the airports yesterday. I have flown on the day before Thanksgiving -- it is not pretty. According to reports, yesterday went significantly more smoothly than in the past. Think about the cause/effect. I suspect the TSA decided they had to stage a good show of efficiency yesterday to defuse the opt-out protest. They put on extra staff and gave rousing pep talks -- and; the airports sucked a little bit less yesterday than they would have otherwise. That is a nice outcome. The protest changed the behavior of our government for a day.
Did this one effort to organize civic participation go exactly as designed and solve the whole problem in one shot? Of course not. Decentralized civic displays -- almost by definition -- cannot work like that.
Civic management of government is a process, and this was a fine step. Much like our debates here in these forums are part of the process. It is the road to a better society. An endless and engaging road winding through an increasingly healthy societal system.
Or more viscerally: It is like using a spray bottle of water to train a puppy; we're going to have to do it more than once before the government learns not to poop on the carpet.
Well written, and an engaging vision of a future that could be. Whether I think it probable or not, I like the image. Thanks!
not the same issue
Walled gardens are a perfectly acceptable consequence of a FREE web; net neutrality infringement is the opposite.
It depends on which issue you are referring to.
If "the issue" is "things the government should regulate", you are correct that these are not (or at least may not be) the same issue.
If, however, "the issue" is "things which threaten the web because of inefficient distribution of power", then these are the same issue. Whether it is government power or oligarch power -- in the context of "threats from inefficient power distribution" -- is irrelevant.
Walled gardens are not a problem when there is significant competition and limited barriers to entry. That is not the case with many major information service providers. There is a great deal of inefficiency in the distribution of power in the marketplace. This may be a temporary phenomenon, as posited in this recent Wall Street Journal article, or it may be longer lived. It may be the sort of thing in which the government can/should be involved, or it may be best solved in the free market. Time will tell. None of those things change the core fact: low competition markets which have self-reinforcing inefficient distribution of power tend to result in lower long-run GDP growth than high competition markets without such barriers. That is not some left-wing boobery, it is straight out of Adam Smith.
So while I completely agree that it is a valid perspective to say these two things are different under the characteristic "require government participation/interference", these things are the same under the characteristic "inefficient distribution of power threatens long-run prosperity". Not because they are harmful right now, nor necessarily because they are unregulated, but because the free market operates most efficiently when there are no barriers to entry and perfect competition. We do not have those things right now, in part because of the way these markets function, and that is a danger we should be cognizant of as lovers of the free market.
Students cheat to appear more proficient than they are. The authority of the system says, "You were very bad, but we'll give you another chance if you pretend to be contrite." Students pounce on it.
Following this, the university was flooded with calls from law firms, congressional offices, and investment banks, all seeking contact information and resumes. "These kids have shown real initiative in both presenting a patina of proficiency, and recognizing a wristslap. In today's image-driven business and political environment, it is absolutely critical that we nurture these young charlatans to help them reach their full potential."
I love Wikipedia. It is one of my favorite websites. I have a tab open there right now (doing some research on the oil embargo in the 1970s).
All that said, Verizon not only shouldn't be required to respond, they should be enjoined from responding barring due process under the law. Anonymous speech is one of the most important principles of true democracy. That does not mean that Wikipedia has to allow this abusive asshole's behavior, but they have no place asking Verizon to identify or chastize him.
If this was some sleazy politician asking Verizon to cut off a user who was posting incriminating evidence on the politician's web forum, we wouldn't bat an eyelash before condemning the politician and demanding that Verizon refuse.
Principles are the things you abide by even when the outcome is exceedingly distasteful. Anonymous speech is so vital to the practice of free speech that we must not stand for, let alone condone, infringement of it. Not even to stop this asshat from vandalizing one of the true wonders of the information age.
I think they should skip all the in-between steps and do a proper analysis.
Muslim extremists are willing to give their lives because of the 72 virgins thing. They wear extra pairs of trousers / underpants to protect their genitals. So, the only sure solution is to require all male passengers to be eunuchs. Knowing you have no equipment is the only way the TSA can be sure you aren't going to kill yourself to get laid.
Unfortunately, this would cause a problem for the "feeling resistance" alternative to backscatter.