Re:you have a shallow understanding of the issues
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
I agree the differences are only in the promises.
but
1) the old promise was changed while lots of people held dollars. The fact that it happened slowly over a period time starting 70 years ago doesn't change the magnitude of the theft. So, no I don't trust the US to back either the old or new dollar. And If I buy gold I get taxed on the 'profit' that I make for simply holding it while more money is printed out of thin air.
2) The new promise isn't that the dollar is 'worth something'. The new promise is that you need it to pay taxes, so I promise, you better figure out how to get some, or we are going to send guys with guns out to take all your stuff. I guess that is worth something, but I'd sure rather have a currency based on voluntary behavior than one based on extortion.
not invented by government. co opted by government, and as t ---> infinity, P(hyperinflation due to fiat currency) = 1. Oh ya, don't forget about the stealth wealth-confiscation through 'regular' inflation.
>The transportation infrastructure.
I might agree with this. We are all so used to roads being built through property confiscation that we just deal with it. That might be the only way it can be done, in which case we do need armed goons to get the job done.
>Public education.
laughable. poor quality. high propaganda content. rich and powerful end up manipulating system to get better of the deal any ways.
>The rule of law.
how can you bring up the rule of law in this discussion? I have private property. I make a web site. Government send in guys with guns because I don't tailor my website to victim-group of the moment. Of course, I can avoid any real trouble if I bow and scrape before the magistrates.... they'd really rather not prosecute me.... as long as they can command me like some serf and keep getting votes from all of their little victim-categories that they can put people into. When everyone, everywhere is always breaking some law, and enforcement is a matter of which political groups feathers you have ruffled, thats not the rule of law. Its the exact opposite.
>Labor benefits that turn a huge sector of the population into consumers, who otherwise might only be living on a near-subsistence level.
Labor laws came _after_ rise from subsistence farming due to free and voluntary interaction of thinking humans trying to make better lives for themselves.Labor laws don't cause increases in the standard of living, they retard it. [And I don't consider a 'right-to-strike' as a labor benefit. thats just being a free person in a free society.]
Does that mean the intent of the law was wrong? Not at all.
is this law a ridiculous intrustion private property? Absolutely.
Is it completeley beyond the enumerated powers of congress? Yes.
Is it so broad so that many decent, moral people can never be sure they aren't a 'criminal'? Yes.
Will it be selectively and creatively enforced? You bet.
Does it take decision making power out of the realm of voluntary interaction, and place it into the real of itigious jerk's who get backed up by guys with guns? Sure Does.
Acutally I think the net is convincing many people that the left right classification system is a false dichotomy.
Its now control vs freedom, but both sides are still confused about who is on their side.
E.g. 'black shirt'-anti-globalization anarchists and net-libertarian anarchists haven't figured out how to join up yet too well. And Pat Robertson and NOW really have to hold their nose when they join up to try to deny people their porn.
if the judge can ignore the jury, then thats not a jury trial.
if you have a vote then that means you get to decide how to use it. all this other stuff is just a big ol jedi mind trick. Dont be one of the weak minded.
Well, since equal protection clause means whatever any judge wants it to mean to push thru their idea of whats good public policy, that sham won't be real hard to maintain.
If the equal protection clause really carried any weight except as a wrapping to make things sound fair, then the progressive income tax would be obviously unconstitutional.
dont forget query mangling. Thats where MS decided that if you have the gall to actually write SQL because you know what you want and don't want to waste time clicking thru their idiot GUI API, you should be punished by having your query reformatted into an unreadable state if you ever want to look at it again.
Re:Is this front page material?
on
GCC 3.2 Released
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· Score: 1
if you don't think a new version of gcc is worthy of front page news go read salon.com.
It took me about 2 hours to figure out how to turn that crap off too.
I kept looking for the "disable menu randomization" check box. It never dawned on me that the menu's doing things I didn't want or ask them to do was actually "personalization".
Thank you. I'm a right wing anarchist doofus from hell. But common sense tells you that the first derivative of revenue with respect to tax rate is not a constant, and in fact, depends on the actual tax rate. If the tax rate were 100%, then decreasing it surely would increase revenue, given this existence of at least one person like me. At a 0% tax rate, no new revenues will be generated by giving everybody a 1% bonus on all income earned.
Seeing the existence of the laffer curve is trivial. Knowing much beyond the basic bounding shape about it is pretty damn hard. Asserting that its a straight line (regardless of slope) is just plain stupid.
Being an economics grad student doesn't allow you to make up duties for the federal government and/or deny reality. Even if the constitution granted them the power to insure that these companies provided "greater benfit" than the "sum of the public resources" they consumed, they would be incapable of doing so in any meaningful way, since all these measurements have to made in purely subjective units, and all participants are already free to sit out if they don't like the price, hence all consumers must already consider any transactions made to be a net gain.
Of course I'll admit that, in reality, the constitution grants no powers whatsoever. Its guys with guns who buy the type of authoritarian propaganda you are spouting that grant power.
I'm unemployed. I've got no idea how I'm going to pay the mortgage. I chose to work at a highly risky dotcon and got exactly what I deserved. If my fuckin taxes hadn't been so hi I'd have _much_ more saved right now. Take your communist bullshit and shove it.
and while we are at it, "well-regulated" monopolies are nothing more than "well-entrenched" monopolies, you fuckin dumbass dupe.
Re:The problem with Napster and the RIAA
on
Napster Going Legit
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· Score: 1
When something is stolen from you, you no longer have it.
When your copyright is infringed upon, you don't lose anything you already had. Some one else has just done something that the government said only you can do.
And yes, your comment becomes more valid when you don't incorrectly use the word "steal".
Slashdot Mirror
I agree the differences are only in the promises.
but
1) the old promise was changed while lots of people held dollars. The fact that it happened slowly over a period time starting 70 years ago doesn't change the magnitude of the theft. So, no I don't trust the US to back either the old or new dollar. And If I buy gold I get taxed on the 'profit' that I make for simply holding it while more money is printed out of thin air.
2) The new promise isn't that the dollar is 'worth something'. The new promise is that you need it to pay taxes, so I promise, you better figure out how to get some, or we are going to send guys with guns out to take all your stuff. I guess that is worth something, but I'd sure rather have a currency based on voluntary behavior than one based on extortion.
All governments have the death penalty. Some merely decide not to use it once you make it to a trial.
>Currency.
.... they'd really rather not prosecute me .... as long as they can command me like some serf and keep getting votes from all of their little victim-categories that they can put people into. When everyone, everywhere is always breaking some law, and enforcement is a matter of which political groups feathers you have ruffled, thats not the rule of law. Its the exact opposite.
not invented by government. co opted by government, and as t ---> infinity, P(hyperinflation due to fiat currency) = 1. Oh ya, don't forget about the stealth wealth-confiscation through 'regular' inflation.
>The transportation infrastructure.
I might agree with this. We are all so used to roads being built through property confiscation that we just deal with it. That might be the only way it can be done, in which case we do need armed goons to get the job done.
>Public education.
laughable. poor quality. high propaganda content.
rich and powerful end up manipulating system to get better of the deal any ways.
>The rule of law.
how can you bring up the rule of law in this discussion? I have private property. I make a web site. Government send in guys with guns because I don't tailor my website to victim-group of the moment. Of course, I can avoid any real trouble if I bow and scrape before the magistrates
>Labor benefits that turn a huge sector of the population into consumers, who otherwise might only be living on a near-subsistence level.
Labor laws came _after_ rise from subsistence farming due to free and voluntary interaction of thinking humans trying to make better lives for themselves.Labor laws don't cause increases in the standard of living, they retard it. [And I don't consider a 'right-to-strike' as a labor benefit. thats just being a free person in a free society.]
Does that mean the intent of the law was wrong? Not at all.
is this law a ridiculous intrustion private property? Absolutely.
Is it completeley beyond the enumerated powers of congress? Yes.
Is it so broad so that many decent, moral people can never be sure they aren't a 'criminal'? Yes.
Will it be selectively and creatively enforced? You bet.
Does it take decision making power out of the realm of voluntary interaction, and place it into the real of itigious jerk's who get backed up by guys with guns? Sure Does.
Sounds like a bad law to me.
Acutally I think the net is convincing many people that the left right classification system is a false dichotomy.
Its now control vs freedom, but both sides are still confused about who is on their side.
E.g. 'black shirt'-anti-globalization anarchists and net-libertarian anarchists haven't figured out how to join up yet too well. And Pat Robertson and NOW really have to hold their nose when they join up to try to deny people their porn.
if the judge can ignore the jury, then thats
not a jury trial.
if you have a vote then that means you get to decide how to use it. all this other stuff is just a big ol jedi mind trick. Dont be one of the weak minded.
Well, since equal protection clause means whatever any judge wants it to mean to push thru their idea of whats good public policy, that sham won't be real hard to maintain.
If the equal protection clause really carried any weight except as a wrapping to make things sound fair, then the progressive income tax would be obviously unconstitutional.
man. don't go to my zipcode/street.
will keep an eye on them.
hopefully they won't have all that crap
about not being able to put up a web page.
>Why is that hard?
because vi is modal. and I never know what
freakin mode I'm in until it does the wrong
thing.
>if someone is repeatedly running running emacs, editing a single file, then quitting, they're using emacs incorrectly
that statement is freakin ridiculous.
Sure sometimes I keep an emacs instance up for weeks and end up having 30-40 buffers open.
but emacs is my editor. emacs filename is never
wrong, and is often easier than C-x C-f complete_ path/filename.
dont forget query mangling. Thats where MS decided that if you have the gall to actually write SQL because you know what you want and don't want to waste time clicking thru their idiot GUI API, you should be punished by having your query reformatted into an unreadable state if you ever want to look at it again.
if you don't think a new version of gcc is worthy
of front page news go read salon.com.
Or maybe E! has a good chat room for ya.
Are you forgetting to include the money that
pays the armed goons that protect the USPS monopoly?
Thats actually a pretty important part of their
business plan.
Yall can secede whenever you want.
We won't invade and start burning.
I agree.
I think what would make CVS better would
be agnostic API's for plugins/modules that
would make CVS a lot more tightly integrated
with:
configuration managment
build management ("custom" and automated)
test case management/execution
At the same time, I think it would be wrong
to try to make CVS into a tool that loses focus
on what its supposed to do.
What these API's would looke like I really
don't know. And probably lots more ways to
do it wrong than right.
ok you got me, troll.
> I want to cvs ci this & all sub-directories, damnit!
cvs commit
>I want to cvs update just this directory, damnit!
cvs update `find -maxdepth 1`
er somethin like that
why don't you get at least the skillz of trained monkey before you bash good programs
like CVS
Amen Brother!
It took me about 2 hours to figure out how
to turn that crap off too.
I kept looking for the "disable menu randomization" check box. It never dawned
on me that the menu's doing things I didn't
want or ask them to do was actually "personalization".
so they should have no problem getting off
the government teat and ceasing to accept
extorted money then, right?
>If there's a CS program anywhere that does things >like that, I'd like to know about it.
.. coulda just got lucky).
:) (8 tenths kidding 2 tenths serious).
MIT (know from experience)
Cornell (guessing based on quality of
graduates I've met
let me know if you need somebody to do remote contract work
Thank you. I'm a right wing anarchist doofus from hell. But common sense tells you that the first derivative of revenue with respect to tax rate is not a constant, and in fact, depends on the actual tax rate. If the tax rate were 100%, then decreasing it surely would increase revenue, given this existence of at least one person like me. At a 0% tax rate, no new revenues will be generated by giving everybody a 1% bonus on all income earned.
Seeing the existence of the laffer curve is trivial. Knowing much beyond the basic bounding shape about it is pretty damn hard. Asserting that its a straight line (regardless of slope) is just plain stupid.
Being an economics grad student doesn't allow you to make up duties for the federal government and/or deny reality. Even if the constitution granted them the power to insure that these companies provided "greater benfit" than the "sum of the public resources" they consumed, they would be incapable of doing so in any meaningful way, since all these measurements have to made in purely subjective units, and all participants are already free to sit out if they don't like the price, hence all consumers must already consider any transactions made to be a net gain.
Of course I'll admit that, in reality, the constitution grants no powers whatsoever. Its guys with guns who buy the type of authoritarian propaganda you are spouting that grant power.
Hell. we got Louisianna already. We could handle some northern seccecionist on our side. Just agree to go your separate way after the crack up.
whatever man.
I'm unemployed. I've got no idea how I'm going to pay the mortgage. I chose to work at a highly risky dotcon and got exactly what I deserved. If my fuckin taxes hadn't been so hi I'd have _much_ more saved right now. Take your communist bullshit and shove it.
and while we are at it, "well-regulated" monopolies are nothing more than
"well-entrenched" monopolies, you fuckin
dumbass dupe.
When something is stolen from you, you no longer have it.
When your copyright is infringed upon, you don't lose anything you already had. Some one else has just done something that the government said only you can do.
And yes, your comment becomes more valid when you don't incorrectly use the word "steal".
thats not a different language then