Yes, the wheels of the Lorenz machine were simulated by some logical circuits made of vacuum tubes. But the book I read on the subject claimed, that the circuits were quite generic (some registers and logical operations), so if wired differently, one could make the computer to perform other combinations of operations. Of course breaking Enigma is quite a complicated matter, so it is entirely possible that Colossus was not flexible enough to be wired to do that.
While Colossus may have been capable of breaking Enigma (though it is not sure, as it was a highly specialized computer), it was actually used for breaking another, more sophisticated cipher produced by a Lorenz-made machine connected to a telex machine. When encoding, the telex machine emitted a 5-bit code, which was encrypted using the Lorenz machine. For decoding the process was reversed. This type of traffic was called Fish or Tunny in Bletchley Park.
While the immediate problem is the computer problem, the real problem is that government interferes with such (or any kind of) shipments. First, they setup a new computer system in typical goverment fashion, i.e. the result does not work, and then they send away important shipments because otherwise they would not be able to collect the loot because of their own mistake.
Of course, no one is forbidden to protect their data as well as they can. Because the data is protected, it does not become intellectual property, it is simply information that is not shared.
The main problem is that copyrights and patents are forced on everyone, because there are certain institutions enforcing these "rights" and everyone has to finance these institutions through taxation. Effective protection may be difficult from a technological point of view, but that is still not a reason for establishing and operating such insitutions.
If a company wants to protect their data, they should have to finance it themselves entirely and take the responsibility and the consequences for their actions. For example, they could use some DRM technology. DRM is generally considered dangerous, but it is dangerous only if backed or even mandated by laws.
It can be added, that the whole concept of Intellectual property is bogus. Something can be property, can be owned only if it is scarce, i.e. if it is owned by somebody it cannot be owned by anybody else. IP is information or knowledge, which is not scarce. If you tell somone something that you know or know about, you will still continue to know it (to possess that information). Yet, the other person will have that information too. So IP is not and cannot be property.
Ideas about some kind of central control are problematic, because they often disregard the unseen effects.
If job exportation is restricted somehow, goods will be produced with more expensive labour than they could be without the restriction. This will result in higher prices, i.e. people will spend more on the goods, wasting some wealth. On the other hand, if the goods in questions were cheaper, the remaining wealth would be transferred into other uses, possibly into research and new inventions.
Instead of thinking on regulations, I think it should be asked, why companies look for opportunities to invest abroad. Isn't it possible that taxes are too high in the US which results in production being much more costly than it could be? Or that regulations add a great overhead to production? Maybe taxes and regulations should be lowered and eventually eliminated altogether to make US economy competitive.
For a much better treatment of this topic see e.g. the following article: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1248
Just as government isn't the answer for everything because it doesn't have to care about efficiency, business isn't the answer to everything be cause its first and last priority is making money.
This is the very reason business cares much more about safety than a government. If a government spacecraft blows up, it is "national tragedy", rather than incompetence and/or irresponsibility. And it has the nice side effect of turning people's attention away from more important problems for a few weeks at least. Of course there is an "investigation" following the incident, but by the time the scapegoat is found, no one really cares about the issue. And if any restitution is paid, it is paid from the loot (I mean taxes).
However, if a private spacecraft blows up with say 50 passengers on board, it could mean immediate bankruptcy for the firm (especially if restitution must be paid, which any responsible space passenger should insist on before venturing to travel), but at least a loss of good reputation forever.
The amount of the effort needed to achieve a certain level of safety always depends on the level of the technology. Once upon a time travelling by car or flying an airplane was very unsafe by today's standards. However, the industry realized that in order to convince people to buy cars or airplane tickets, they have to make them as safe as possible.
Of course both industries are heavily regulated nowadays. But I think it has more to do with the mania of government meddling with everything than with actual neccessity. And unfortunately most people now assume that government ensures their safety, so they would be incautious when deciding about travelling into the space. And this could indeed result in a relatively high number of incidents. But in my opinion the best solution would be if people took responsibility for themselves instead of delegating this task to the government.
I think the best for everyone would be, if Bush announced that all barriers currently hindering private firms in their attempts to launch their vehicles into space (mainly licensing and other bureaucratic nonsense) would be immediately abolished.
Of course, he won't do that. Any government's worst nightmare is about people flying around the space freely, out of their control. After all, the colonization of North America occured due to high taxes (and their consequences) in Europe. Nowadays, the taxes are much higher than then, so there is even more incentive to flee from them. Travelling in space may be dangerous, but at the current level of technology, it is probably not more dangerous, than going from Europe to America on a ship was in the 17th century.
I support the concept of world government, but before the UN can assume that role, a few things need to happen.
The concept of a world government is as flawed as the concept of any government other than self-government. On the other hand, if we had a world government, it would probably collapse sooner than the current national governments will, so it could turn out to be a good thing after all Provided, that people realize that the problem was government and not something else.
I agree, that we don't know if we have a problem or not or what the problem is. But forcing everyone to do something to do something about it can hurt, because valuable economic resources might get misdirected, wasted and not be available when we find out what the real problem is (if there is a problem).
Let's say, that it turns out in 10 years, that the current increase in temperatures is a natural process, so it is "normal". However, this natural increase might still be a problem from an agricultural point of view. Or if not the increase but the decrease that follows afterwards. Solving that problem may require a lot of resources, much of which could be wasted in trying to reduce pollution in vain.
So I think we should be careful about how we handle such uncertain problems, and not get carried away when some theory looks plausible, even though we have no usable proof of it.
Taxation is just a fancy name for legalized theft. I would not call a system based on thievery "civilised".
We can talk about civilization only when people can get along peacefully, each pursuing their own "selfish" interests, while fully respecting the right of others to do the same. Not when a central authority decides what is good and what is wrong (regardless of whether that authority is a dictatorship or elected by people) and actively force people to follow its mandates. Such a system is exactly a model of selfish individualism, when a select few can impose its will on the rest without the rest being able to resist and keep the select few within limits. I would say this is more like animals.
Government regulation is evil, because the government lives on money extorted from people. While it can have effects that look good in the short run and in specific area (and the GSM standard does look better than competing standards in the USA), the other effects, which can be observed later and/or in other areas can be much more negative.
As I see it, though I have no personal experience, the USA is becoming one of the countries with the most powerful governments. A completely free market does not exist, and even if the telecom industry were complete unregulated (which it is not), the effects of the regulation in other areas would certainly affect the telecom industry as well.
I think, a completely free market does come up with the most efficient solution, but it must not be forgotten, that a solution is not only "consumed", but it is also "produced". And most efficiency is achieved when the interests of both sides (the producer and the consumer) are balanced. In a completely free market we may have several competing standards or only a single one initially, but in the long run it should tend towards what is the best compromise for both service providers and consumers.
I wonder when and how we will be protected against the greatest counterfeiter of all: the government.
The value of a bill is nowadays a purely imaginary value, without any backing of real value, thus easily manipulated by changing the rate of printing new notes at the whim of monetary authorities. I guess it would require a lot of counterfeiters to cause as many problems as government printing of fiat money does.
Community owning transmissiong might be public utility, that it is quite limited territorially. Slums may get worse, but why are they slums in the first place? Minimal wages causing unemployment? Public schools turning out people who are waiting for someone else to feed or care of them?
The owner of the highway does have monopoly, but it has monopoly over the highway, just like you have monopoly over your property or yourself (at least in theory).
An optimal light build suits both the consumer and the producer. Are you forced to by a light bulb? No. Can you make a better light bulb? Do it.
Yes, state does "extort" money from you (well, maybe you don't consider it extortion, but I do). If I would not pay taxes, I would end up in prison (or shot). I guess it is extortion. If you want to own a company, buy it or a part of it. But it does not authorize you to take my money (even if you allow me to own that company too in return).
I just love how socialists always blame free market for everything:)
You are right that probably there would not be too many companies. But this does not justify the state to meddle with the electricity market. State intervention usually makes things worse, usually by raising entry barries via licensing or other questinable methods. It was not the state that provided us with electricity, it were private enterpreneurs who often took considerable risk in trying to establish the early electrical networks.
On the other hand, who said that the only means of producing electricity is as it is done now? If the state would not have intervened, and this centralized method would have proved to be inadequate, we would very likely have much better methods. But the state has intervened, and now we face a serious problem...
For example, smaller towns or house blocks in larger cities could own their own transmission lines within the town or block, or street or whatever. People connected to the same transmission lines would agree what utility company they let to connect to their endpoint. So you would not have to dig up the road.
But even if this may not be the best (or even a good) solution, since I don't work in the electric utility industry, I am quite sure that free market would provide the optiomal solution even in this case, as it usually tends to. But to make it possible it must be really free without no other regulation or control, than the one exercised by consumers.
In case of roads, yes, each road should be owned by someone. A street where people live could be owned by the residents in that street (there are some working examples of it), while owners of bigger roads or highways would extract tolls from those wanting to use that road. You have to pay tolls on may "public" or "state-owned" roads even today (though the notion of "state-owned" is somewhat amusing, since the mere existence of the "state" depends on the tax it extorts from you, so who is the owner then?)
One could also say, that free market tries to make money out of the infrastructure which means high quality service at low prices.
Provided that there is competition, which does not seem to exist now. So the problem is rather (over)regulation raising the entry barrier, than free markets.
The Real Energy Blackout Culprit: http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe235-20030824-06.h tml
I agree that government should have nothing to do with money, but I also believe that money should have certain properties (relative scarcity, divisibility, portability, durability) to serve its purpose well. It could be gold, or other metals, or anything else that has these properties.
See Murray N. Rothbard's "The Mystery of Banking" (downloadable at http://www.mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofban king.pdf) for a very good treatment of this issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments in the Development of the Bell System Monopoly,
Yes, the wheels of the Lorenz machine were simulated by some logical circuits made of vacuum tubes. But the book I read on the subject claimed, that the circuits were quite generic (some registers and logical operations), so if wired differently, one could make the computer to perform other combinations of operations. Of course breaking Enigma is quite a complicated matter, so it is entirely possible that Colossus was not flexible enough to be wired to do that.
While Colossus may have been capable of breaking Enigma (though it is not sure, as it was a highly specialized computer), it was actually used for breaking another, more sophisticated cipher produced by a Lorenz-made machine connected to a telex machine. When encoding, the telex machine emitted a 5-bit code, which was encrypted using the Lorenz machine. For decoding the process was reversed. This type of traffic was called Fish or Tunny in Bletchley Park.
While the immediate problem is the computer problem, the real problem is that government interferes with such (or any kind of) shipments. First, they setup a new computer system in typical goverment fashion, i.e. the result does not work, and then they send away important shipments because otherwise they would not be able to collect the loot because of their own mistake.
Of course, no one is forbidden to protect their data as well as they can. Because the data is protected, it does not become intellectual property, it is simply information that is not shared.
The main problem is that copyrights and patents are forced on everyone, because there are certain institutions enforcing these "rights" and everyone has to finance these institutions through taxation. Effective protection may be difficult from a technological point of view, but that is still not a reason for establishing and operating such insitutions.
If a company wants to protect their data, they should have to finance it themselves entirely and take the responsibility and the consequences for their actions. For example, they could use some DRM technology. DRM is generally considered dangerous, but it is dangerous only if backed or even mandated by laws.
You probably meant "Mental Slavery" :)
It can be added, that the whole concept of Intellectual property is bogus. Something can be property, can be owned only if it is scarce, i.e. if it is owned by somebody it cannot be owned by anybody else. IP is information or knowledge, which is not scarce. If you tell somone something that you know or know about, you will still continue to know it (to possess that information). Yet, the other person will have that information too. So IP is not and cannot be property.
Ideas about some kind of central control are problematic, because they often disregard the unseen effects.
If job exportation is restricted somehow, goods will be produced with more expensive labour than they could be without the restriction. This will result in higher prices, i.e. people will spend more on the goods, wasting some wealth. On the other hand, if the goods in questions were cheaper, the remaining wealth would be transferred into other uses, possibly into research and new inventions.
Instead of thinking on regulations, I think it should be asked, why companies look for opportunities to invest abroad. Isn't it possible that taxes are too high in the US which results in production being much more costly than it could be? Or that regulations add a great overhead to production? Maybe taxes and regulations should be lowered and eventually eliminated altogether to make US economy competitive.
For a much better treatment of this topic see e.g. the following article: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1248
Just as government isn't the answer for everything because it doesn't have to care about efficiency, business isn't the answer to everything be cause its first and last priority is making money.
This is the very reason business cares much more about safety than a government. If a government spacecraft blows up, it is "national tragedy", rather than incompetence and/or irresponsibility. And it has the nice side effect of turning people's attention away from more important problems for a few weeks at least. Of course there is an "investigation" following the incident, but by the time the scapegoat is found, no one really cares about the issue. And if any restitution is paid, it is paid from the loot (I mean taxes).
However, if a private spacecraft blows up with say 50 passengers on board, it could mean immediate bankruptcy for the firm (especially if restitution must be paid, which any responsible space passenger should insist on before venturing to travel), but at least a loss of good reputation forever.
The amount of the effort needed to achieve a certain level of safety always depends on the level of the technology. Once upon a time travelling by car or flying an airplane was very unsafe by today's standards. However, the industry realized that in order to convince people to buy cars or airplane tickets, they have to make them as safe as possible.
Of course both industries are heavily regulated nowadays. But I think it has more to do with the mania of government meddling with everything than with actual neccessity. And unfortunately most people now assume that government ensures their safety, so they would be incautious when deciding about travelling into the space. And this could indeed result in a relatively high number of incidents. But in my opinion the best solution would be if people took responsibility for themselves instead of delegating this task to the government.
I think the best for everyone would be, if Bush announced that all barriers currently hindering private firms in their attempts to launch their vehicles into space (mainly licensing and other bureaucratic nonsense) would be immediately abolished.
Of course, he won't do that. Any government's worst nightmare is about people flying around the space freely, out of their control. After all, the colonization of North America occured due to high taxes (and their consequences) in Europe. Nowadays, the taxes are much higher than then, so there is even more incentive to flee from them. Travelling in space may be dangerous, but at the current level of technology, it is probably not more dangerous, than going from Europe to America on a ship was in the 17th century.
I support the concept of world government, but before the UN can assume that role, a few things need to happen.
The concept of a world government is as flawed as the concept of any government other than self-government. On the other hand, if we had a world government, it would probably collapse sooner than the current national governments will, so it could turn out to be a good thing after all Provided, that people realize that the problem was government and not something else.
I agree, that we don't know if we have a problem or not or what the problem is. But forcing everyone to do something to do something about it can hurt, because valuable economic resources might get misdirected, wasted and not be available when we find out what the real problem is (if there is a problem).
Let's say, that it turns out in 10 years, that the current increase in temperatures is a natural process, so it is "normal". However, this natural increase might still be a problem from an agricultural point of view. Or if not the increase but the decrease that follows afterwards. Solving that problem may require a lot of resources, much of which could be wasted in trying to reduce pollution in vain.
So I think we should be careful about how we handle such uncertain problems, and not get carried away when some theory looks plausible, even though we have no usable proof of it.
Taxation is just a fancy name for legalized theft. I would not call a system based on thievery "civilised".
We can talk about civilization only when people can get along peacefully, each pursuing their own "selfish" interests, while fully respecting the right of others to do the same. Not when a central authority decides what is good and what is wrong (regardless of whether that authority is a dictatorship or elected by people) and actively force people to follow its mandates. Such a system is exactly a model of selfish individualism, when a select few can impose its will on the rest without the rest being able to resist and keep the select few within limits. I would say this is more like animals.
Government regulation is evil, because the government lives on money extorted from people. While it can have effects that look good in the short run and in specific area (and the GSM standard does look better than competing standards in the USA), the other effects, which can be observed later and/or in other areas can be much more negative.
As I see it, though I have no personal experience, the USA is becoming one of the countries with the most powerful governments. A completely free market does not exist, and even if the telecom industry were complete unregulated (which it is not), the effects of the regulation in other areas would certainly affect the telecom industry as well.
I think, a completely free market does come up with the most efficient solution, but it must not be forgotten, that a solution is not only "consumed", but it is also "produced". And most efficiency is achieved when the interests of both sides (the producer and the consumer) are balanced. In a completely free market we may have several competing standards or only a single one initially, but in the long run it should tend towards what is the best compromise for both service providers and consumers.
I wonder when and how we will be protected against the greatest counterfeiter of all: the government.
The value of a bill is nowadays a purely imaginary value, without any backing of real value, thus easily manipulated by changing the rate of printing new notes at the whim of monetary authorities. I guess it would require a lot of counterfeiters to cause as many problems as government printing of fiat money does.
Community owning transmissiong might be public utility, that it is quite limited territorially.
Slums may get worse, but why are they slums in the first place? Minimal wages causing unemployment? Public schools turning out people who are waiting for someone else to feed or care of them?
The owner of the highway does have monopoly, but it has monopoly over the highway, just like you have monopoly over your property or yourself (at least in theory).
An optimal light build suits both the consumer and the producer. Are you forced to by a light bulb? No. Can you make a better light bulb? Do it.
Yes, state does "extort" money from you (well, maybe you don't consider it extortion, but I do). If I would not pay taxes, I would end up in prison (or shot). I guess it is extortion. If you want to own a company, buy it or a part of it. But it does not authorize you to take my money (even if you allow me to own that company too in return).
I just love how socialists always blame free market for everything :)
You are right that probably there would not be too many companies. But this does not justify the state to meddle with the electricity market. State intervention usually makes things worse, usually by raising entry barries via licensing or other questinable methods. It was not the state that provided us with electricity, it were private enterpreneurs who often took considerable risk in trying to establish the early electrical networks.
On the other hand, who said that the only means of producing electricity is as it is done now? If the state would not have intervened, and this centralized method would have proved to be inadequate, we would very likely have much better methods. But the state has intervened, and now we face a serious problem...
For example, smaller towns or house blocks in larger cities could own their own transmission lines within the town or block, or street or whatever. People connected to the same transmission lines would agree what utility company they let to connect to their endpoint. So you would not have to dig up the road.
But even if this may not be the best (or even a good) solution, since I don't work in the electric utility industry, I am quite sure that free market would provide the optiomal solution even in this case, as it usually tends to. But to make it possible it must be really free without no other regulation or control, than the one exercised by consumers.
In case of roads, yes, each road should be owned by someone. A street where people live could be owned by the residents in that street (there are some working examples of it), while owners of bigger roads or highways would extract tolls from those wanting to use that road. You have to pay tolls on may "public" or "state-owned" roads even today (though the notion of "state-owned" is somewhat amusing, since the mere existence of the "state" depends on the tax it extorts from you, so who is the owner then?)
One could also say, that free market tries to make money out of the infrastructure which means high quality service at low prices.
h tml
Provided that there is competition, which does not seem to exist now. So the problem is rather (over)regulation raising the entry barrier, than free markets.
The Real Energy Blackout Culprit: http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe235-20030824-06.
I agree that government should have nothing to do with money, but I also believe that money should have certain properties (relative scarcity, divisibility, portability, durability) to serve its purpose well. It could be gold, or other metals, or anything else that has these properties.
n king.pdf)
See Murray N. Rothbard's "The Mystery of Banking" (downloadable at http://www.mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofba
for a very good treatment of this issue.