Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule. The resulting mayhem has nothing to do with libertarian or anarchist principles, particularly the Non-Aggression Principle. Indeed, warlords are still governmental; they forcibly appropriate other people's resources under threat of violence.
In areas of civilization where governmental organizations have not been terribly imposing, Somalia has shown massive improvement even compared to the surrounding countries that have relatively stable governmental organizations; the collapse of an unworkable, savage organization like the "government" of Somalia was probably the best thing ever to happen to Somalians despite the statist culture that has persisted through the calamity.
That which actually gives you a functional civilization is a large number of individuals trading voluntarily amongst themselves to better their own situations; profit is not merely the transfer of wealth, but rather the creation of wealth.
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
Yes, people willingly hand over their money in exchange for the goods and services that they value.
Education, transportation, sanitation, power generation, water management, contract enforcement (or "justice") are all just industries; there is nothing magical about them—specificially, there is nothing magical that government brings to them, unless you consider the forcible appropriation of resources to be "magical".
Maybe society would have more money for those things if resources weren't instead forcibly appropriated for mass surveillance of people's private lives, drone-bombing "citizens" without due process, and ripping millions of families apart because people were caught carrying the "wrong" plants in their pockets—just to name a few of the "services" for which you're being forced to pay.
In short, you are confused; you are confusing the desire for valuable goods/services with a desire for forcible appropriation of resources. Taking people's resources by threat of violence is not a suitable foundation for civilized society.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either government employees are magically more noble than the rest of humanity, or they are just as imperfect.
There is nothing magical about government.
Indeed, the only characteristic that sets a governmental organization apart from a non-governmental organization is that the governmental organization appropriates other people's resources against their will under threat of violence for noncompliance.
That is, yes, as you say, "such things seem to inevitably become some form of government", but that's because they start taking people's resources rather than convincing them to hand over those resources willingly; in short, you're saying that at worst, we could end up with government.
Indeed, free software projects aren't even run as democratic organizations; rather, they are emergent hierarchies formed via the spontaneous participation of individuals.
Each person involved in free software chooses how to appropriate his own resources—that is, how to appropriate his own capital, including time, intellect, money, etc. Democracy, on the other hand, is about choosing how to appropriate someone else's resources, especially against that someone else's will, especially by threat of violence as punishment for noncompliance.
Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software.
As an aside, you should have already abstracted away the details of that type-specifier via at least a typedef. In other words, your argument is a straw man.
auto... the compiler knows the type of MemVec.cbegin() so why should I need to repeat it?
You're not repeating it; rather, you're specifying it.
Specifying the type is establishing a contract for the following code. This can be very worthwhile.
Note how the scope of cit is now limited to its area of use.
Of course, you could have achieved the same by declaring the variable inside the for-loop; keep things looking simple via a local typedef outside the for-loop: typedef std::vector::const_iterator CIT; for (CIT cit = MemVec.cbegin(); cit != v.end(); ++cit) {
if (LookForPatterm(*cit))
return true; } return false;
Bruce, there's a reason why the gun is called The Great Equalizer.
Indeed, in the grand scheme, you are suggesting that we take guns out of the hands of the individual, and put them solely in the hands of the State; that sounds like a transfer of power from the Weak to the Strong...
If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly, somehow created? How did that happen?
In many cultures, the customary answer is that a "god" or "gods" created the universe out of nothing. But, if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: Where did God come from?
If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, then why not save a step, and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed? There's no need for a creation—it was always here.
These are not easy questions; cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, with the questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
What does ‘inanimate’ mean? The problem is that people are always making this bizarre differentiation between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, when really there is just matter interacting with matter; some sets of interactions are more complex and organized (or, shall we say, repetitive and sustained) than other sets of interactions. Indeed, sometimes that complexity and organization is so great that we call it ‘life’ and even ‘intelligent life’, but it’s all one and the same:
Matter interacting with matter.
When you eat some metal such as calcium, that calcium may become incorporated in your bones. Is that calcium all of a sudden ‘animated’ and ‘living’? Is the water that you drink somehow ‘animated’ because it flows through your brain cells?
A child is a continuation of that complex interaction between matter that we call the parent.
The variation may be random (whatever that really means). The selection is not random.
The whole process, evolution by variation and selection (yes, "abiogenesis" is as specious as the notion of "nonliving" matter), is decidedly not random.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've got a valid business plan, then get investors like any other business.
Compared to what Arch used to be, it is indeed worthy of the epithet "automagic".
Then again, I've always had the impression that Arch maintainers tend to confuse "Keep it Simple" with "Keep it Simplistic".
Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule. The resulting mayhem has nothing to do with libertarian or anarchist principles, particularly the Non-Aggression Principle. Indeed, warlords are still governmental; they forcibly appropriate other people's resources under threat of violence.
In areas of civilization where governmental organizations have not been terribly imposing, Somalia has shown massive improvement even compared to the surrounding countries that have relatively stable governmental organizations; the collapse of an unworkable, savage organization like the "government" of Somalia was probably the best thing ever to happen to Somalians despite the statist culture that has persisted through the calamity.
That which actually gives you a functional civilization is a large number of individuals trading voluntarily amongst themselves to better their own situations; profit is not merely the transfer of wealth, but rather the creation of wealth.
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
Yes, people willingly hand over their money in exchange for the goods and services that they value.
Education, transportation, sanitation, power generation, water management, contract enforcement (or "justice") are all just industries; there is nothing magical about them—specificially, there is nothing magical that government brings to them, unless you consider the forcible appropriation of resources to be "magical".
Maybe society would have more money for those things if resources weren't instead forcibly appropriated for mass surveillance of people's private lives, drone-bombing "citizens" without due process, and ripping millions of families apart because people were caught carrying the "wrong" plants in their pockets—just to name a few of the "services" for which you're being forced to pay.
In short, you are confused; you are confusing the desire for valuable goods/services with a desire for forcible appropriation of resources. Taking people's resources by threat of violence is not a suitable foundation for civilized society.
A company has to convince people to hand over their resources.
A government just decrees its income under threat of violence.
Allocating capital profitably is extremely beneficial to humanity.
The thing is, your words make no sense. They are specious.
I think you dont understand what I wrote.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either government employees are magically more noble than the rest of humanity, or they are just as imperfect.
There is nothing magical about government.
Indeed, the only characteristic that sets a governmental organization apart from a non-governmental organization is that the governmental organization appropriates other people's resources against their will under threat of violence for noncompliance.
That is, yes, as you say, "such things seem to inevitably become some form of government", but that's because they start taking people's resources rather than convincing them to hand over those resources willingly; in short, you're saying that at worst, we could end up with government.
Murder and driving too fast are the forcible appropriation of someone else's capital.
The consent of the majority is still tyranny to the minority.
Rape, murder, and coercion are the forcible appropriation of someone else's capital.
Protection and enforcement of capital rights are not inherently governmental.
Justice certainly isn't inherently governmental; in fact, many would argue that governmental organization is inherently unjust.
Indeed, free software projects aren't even run as democratic organizations; rather, they are emergent hierarchies formed via the spontaneous participation of individuals.
Each person involved in free software chooses how to appropriate his own resources—that is, how to appropriate his own capital, including time, intellect, money, etc. Democracy, on the other hand, is about choosing how to appropriate someone else's resources, especially against that someone else's will, especially by threat of violence as punishment for noncompliance.
Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software.
I've already covered this.
As an aside, you should have already abstracted away the details of that type-specifier via at least a typedef. In other words, your argument is a straw man.
See here.
returning anything other than an iterator from cbegin() is a gigantic misdesign
That's precisely the point, now isn't it...
You are begging the question; you are assuming the contract; you are programming by [implicit] convention—that which plagues dynamic typing.
That is to say, such informal programming tends to be practical in these cases, but don't confuse that practicality with correctness.
That's begging the question; that's assuming the contract; that's the "programming by [implicit] convention" that plagues dynamic typing.
That is to say, such informal programming tends to be practical in these cases, but don't confuse that practicality with correctness.
There's no "again" about it.
Which part of that is difficult to grasp?
auto... the compiler knows the type of MemVec.cbegin() so why should I need to repeat it?
You're not repeating it; rather, you're specifying it.
Specifying the type is establishing a contract for the following code. This can be very worthwhile.
Note how the scope of cit is now limited to its area of use.
Of course, you could have achieved the same by declaring the variable inside the for-loop; keep things looking simple via a local typedef outside the for-loop:
typedef std::vector::const_iterator CIT;
for (CIT cit = MemVec.cbegin(); cit != v.end(); ++cit) {
if (LookForPatterm(*cit))
return true;
}
return false;
Adam Smith called such an intelligence the "Invisible Hand".
From the article:
Misra came up with a formula
Bruce, there's a reason why the gun is called The Great Equalizer.
Indeed, in the grand scheme, you are suggesting that we take guns out of the hands of the individual, and put them solely in the hands of the State; that sounds like a transfer of power from the Weak to the Strong...
Carl Sagan, in Cosmos:
If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly, somehow created? How did that happen?
In many cultures, the customary answer is that a "god" or "gods" created the universe out of nothing. But, if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: Where did God come from?
If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, then why not save a step, and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed? There's no need for a creation—it was always here.
These are not easy questions; cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, with the questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
inanimate matter
What does ‘inanimate’ mean? The problem is that people are always making this bizarre differentiation between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, when really there is just matter interacting with matter; some sets of interactions are more complex and organized (or, shall we say, repetitive and sustained) than other sets of interactions. Indeed, sometimes that complexity and organization is so great that we call it ‘life’ and even ‘intelligent life’, but it’s all one and the same:
Matter interacting with matter.
When you eat some metal such as calcium, that calcium may become incorporated in your bones. Is that calcium all of a sudden ‘animated’ and ‘living’? Is the water that you drink somehow ‘animated’ because it flows through your brain cells?
A child is a continuation of that complex interaction between matter that we call the parent.
Random processes
The variation may be random (whatever that really means). The selection is not random.
The whole process, evolution by variation and selection (yes, "abiogenesis" is as specious as the notion of "nonliving" matter), is decidedly not random.
I reject your notion that evolution is unrelated.
Both variation and selection are still at work, even on "inanimate" objects.