We use Squid proxy with squidGuard. We use the squidGuard blacklists from squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us (which is a combination of two upstream sources).
Additionally, we use Google's safety tools for general searching and YouTube. For a browser, we use Firefox with Adblock Plus (as I've been too lazy to ween them off that in favor of Chrome with similar extensions).
As we use Macs, I have the kids' own mac mini as the proxy server. It's an old mac mini (circa 2007?), but works just fine for the kids' browsing habits. I've had to view the proxy logs as we suspected my 5 year-old hit a questionable site (he didn't), so having the proxy logs is useful.
Also, since they have a dearth of in-the-wild spyware exploits and viruses as compared to Windows, using Macs helps.
While the length of time it took to get 5.6 and 6.0 out the door was a little troubling, CentOS still fills a very important and specific need for large enterprises such as for which I'm responsible. I agree with Digimer that CentOS is the closest thing to RHEL, and that is extremely important in an enterprise. Having 100% ABI/API compatibility in-between releases is what truly defines an enterprise distribution and that, along with 100% compatibility with RHEL, is what CentOS has not failed to deliver for our organization. Scientific Linux, while polished, may not be able to do this (we're still looking at it with a critical eye).
Ensuring our developers that their code will work between CentOS and RHEL saves a lot of man power (read: MONEY). Not that it doesn't mean we don't perform due-diligence, but it means that due-diligence is not unnecessarily weighed down by FUD.
My only concern at this point is getting security errata out of CentOS in a timely fashion. It hasn't been a show stopper yet, but it is something I've been watching.
I tried hard to discern her accent. I'm curious if the North Jersey or NY accent has changed in 122 years. It sounded like the "ar" in star is drawn out like a New England accent. Of course, it's all made the more difficult by her trying to make a baby voice.
I believe the Lost Cosmonaut folklore to have some truth to it as someone I know and trust who grow up in the Soviet Union has related to me how he vividly recalls an episode where a classmate lost his Cosmonaut dad to a failed space shot, and that this event was covered up and kept quiet.
In my experience, for stability with market data, VOS on Stratus seems to hold the edge over the open systems and Windows.
http://www.stratus.com
For those unfamiliar with Stratus (which is probably just about everybody) they, with now defunct (?) Tandem, have long competed for a share of the financial markets requiring fault tolerant solutions. There are a number of bourses and equity houses that still rely on Stratus. However, I know of a couple of places that are trying to replace their Stratus platforms with Linux, with mixed results.
Like mainframes, they're rock solid, but the talent pool to support these technologies is dwindling, forcing companies to make some real tough choices in their platform strategies.
Since we don't have a full story yet with what happened at LSE, I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about what failed them. Admittedly, I as Unix guy am wishing it turns out to be a Windows failure.
Overall, we like our SNAP server. However, we have issues getting it to NFS serve a Solaris client. So much so, we gave up after an hour or so of trying. Buyer Beware.
"Consumers will drive more investment in broadband because they want video on demand on their handheld devices? So far, that's not the case."
Actually, I disagree. Considerable amount of money is being spent in all areas of technology to make this vision come real (so "so far", investments are being made). Blaming the inability to call your kids today from your video wrist watch on the mysterious "Entertainment Industry" syndicate clouds the truth: technological innovations take time to spawn products for the consumer (read: cheap technology takes time).
It only takes longer and costs more when the REAL RACKETS take place, like "selling" bandwidth to exclusive licensees under the auspices of policing a medium that doesn't need policing and raising money for "under-privlaged" children to use the Internet. Even enforcing a utility monopoly contributes to the slow grind of innovation (ever wonder why the government has to FORCE a telco to open their CO's to competitors? would it have anything to do with utility companies being granted monopolies with their "telephone" poles?).
We'll get there, though, in spite of "last-century business models." Just be patient and vote out your local incumbant.
Rather than assuming that I was some kind of omnipotent being and knew exactly how to best spend our nation's money for projects in space, I would work to allow for the commercialization of space and privatize portions of the space agency.
I believe the market place would be a better forum for discovering more useful projects in space. I know many disagree and would rather coerce the tax-paying American to fund projects that don't have any immediate or certain value beyond the "quest for knowledge".
As NASA's director in today's America, I wouldn't totally discourage such quests, but I would gently nudge the government to accepting private commercial entities into the space club.
Ahh, social contract theory, one of my favorite subjects.
That page makes for a good read. Thanks for the link. I shall better my arguments through its study. I found way too much familiarity with the positions it seeks to debunk.
As far as traveling outside the country, as the page you link states: "You don't have to catch a disease to be able to understand it, fight it, or vaccinate against it. " So whether or not I've been outside the country is irrelevant.
For the record, I've been accross the pond, to the Great White North, and down to the caribbean, but that's it.
Actually, I didn't equate authoritarianism and socialism in my statement (simply because I agree they are two separate things).
You can certainly have an authoritarian regime with capitalism, though I would think it would be very difficult to have a system that is pure in both.
I despise both socialism and authoritarianism as both supress the unprivleged. Tenants you speak of (a slave is a slave is a slave) extends to being a slave to the mob you call democracy. If I have to give up the "means of production" to someone under threat of DEATH, after having worked real hard to create that "means of production", I call that slavery (the condition of being subject to a specified influence).
I disagree that we have an authoritarian-capitalistic system in America. I believe it is more socialist than anyone gives it credit for.
I do aggree that economic freedom does not mean real freedom. It is merely a component. The "BOSSES" must not be able to assert their influence in the form of force over the citizenry (as so often happened in our past; witness Bowen Coal) by owning politicians, police and judiciary.
And for the record, McCarthy was a jerk looking to crawl out of the bottom of his gin bottle by stamping upon the right of people to peacably assemble. That doesn't, however, validate Communism in the way that Stalin being a monster doesn't validate Capitalism.
You're right, I didn't even bother to read to the the article fully (apparently it hurt too much) and didn't make the connection between the editorial remark and the true nature of the story. I just ripped right through, seething with venom.
However, with that sarcasm, \. is even worse than I thought, then.
Shame on me for jerking my knee, so I do apologize for calling the editors hypocritical.
"We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that... the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation. "
Why is it that when it comes to anything that has to do with society, the \. editors (yes, the slash leans left on purpose) push forward an authoritarian and often socialist view of government regulation and initiative, but when it comes to technology, the goverment must stay out of the equation? (I take "excess regulation" to mean anything that encroaches upon the freedoms of the producers and consumers to operate without fraud).
Why is it so hard to draw the same conclusion that the government that governs least, governs best when it comes to other issues besides Microsoft?
Reasonable people usually want the same things, but often it is difficult to shed the shackles of years of misguidence from politicos to discover that the methodolgy to allow for the discovery of the solutions to the ills of our world is usually brilliantly simple: don't force anyone at the point of a gun to do anything unless that action infringes upon the inherint freedoms of someone else, and society as a whole will generally stumble upon a cheap (in terms of ALL costs, not just dollars or deutchmarks) solution.
In the case of Microsoft, I often differ from my fellow libertarians. Microsoft has engaged in fraud for over 15 years and continues to do so. This is not to be tolerated and is deserving of punishment as fraud is indeed a way of infringing upon the rights of others. In a free society, Microsoft wouldn't enjoy the tacit protection of government allowing it to continue its march towards market domination. I submit that free (as in speech) innovation and its truthful promotion in consumer computer technology would lead to cheaper, stabler and more useful solutions than the quagmire we suffer from today. Unfortunately, we the people depend upon the StAGs and the Justice Department to do our policing for us. Their inefficiencies have allowed Microsoft to defraud the consumers, its partners, and its competition, and as the Wheels of Justice grind ever so slowly, Microsoft has a free hand to continue its nefarious deeds.
So, yes, I agree with the \. editors statement but I wish that they would realize that it follows true on their other topics as well.
NASA's monopoly on America's interests in space is killing the industry. While the cost to fly commercial airlines has declined 40% from the 1970's since deregulation (putting air travel within reach of the working man), and the cost to ship oil has similarly declined from $7 a barrel to $1 (I don't know of a time when it was ever regulated), the cost per pound to put stuff in space has gone from somewhere around $3,800 during the 60's to around $6,000 with NASA's numbers or $35,000 with what some people think are the REAL numbers (inflation adjusted of course) (sources: David Gump "Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA", Alex Roland of Duke).
NASA has rejected several attempts in the past to privatize portions of the industry (American Rocket in the 70's and Space Industries in the 80's). In Reagen's Commerce Department, a call went out to the private sector to look at the feasability of making a moon base. The answer came back that yes it could be done with the budget given, but not with NASA! Special Interests put an end to that plan.
NASA is a blight on the space industry and a hinderence to American comercial dominance above the atomosphere. I'm sure the Europeans and Chinese love the thought of NASA crippling itself with cost overruns...
It's time to cut NASA loose, and let private industry do to commercial space enterprises what they did to computing, shipping, airline travel, etc.
I set my prompt to something simple under X windows, but set the window title to the hostname and current working directory. If I'm not on an xterm, then I set the prompt to hostname and current working directory. Note that the "ESC]" is really an escape-] and the ^G is really a control-G. I generally scp my cshrc file everywhere as I have yet to figure out how to do these keys right under vi...
I use this all the time under Solaris and OpenBSD, so I assume it will work for that other popular Unix-like OS.
Thanks to Jim Martin and Walt Drummond as I stole this from them back in `92.
Using tcsh:
set cwd=`pwd`
if ( $?LEVEL ) then
@ level = $LEVEL + 1
else
set level = 1
endif
setenv LEVEL $level
set eop = "+"
if ( `whoami` == "root" ) then
set eop = "#"
endif
set mopc = ':'
set mop = ''
repeat $LEVEL set mop = `echo $mop$mopc`
if ($?DISPLAY) then
alias printtab 'echo -n "ESC]2;$HOST:$cwd^G"'
set prompt = "$HOST $eop>> "
alias cd 'cd \!*; printtab'
else
alias getprompt 'set prompt = $HOST$mop$cwd$eop'
getprompt
alias cd 'cd \!*; getprompt'
endif
unset mopc
I have worked on the staff of a research institute associated with two NJ universities. I was involved in many different grant funded research projects and some of those were funded by private corporations (most of the research centered around computational modeling or GIS related work). I didn't do any of the research; I just assisted those that did.
I can say, unequivocally, I was never a witness to any skewing of results of research to fit the agenda of a private entity that funded research.
No PI would want to be stained as such, as this would destroy their reputation in the eyes of their peers! Who would hire a researcher that fudged their results? How could a PhD expect to earn a living if noone will work with or hire them? Most of these people don't make a whole lot of money to begin with! Their reputation is their number one marketable skill!
I will say, that I am vaguely aware that when results were found contrary to the agenda of certain GOVERNMENT entities, that PI's would regret having to present their findings knowing it might have an impact on future grants (though still I don't know of anyone ever forging their work to change results).
Of course there are researchers who purposely produce false results, and these researchers are paid with both private and tax dollars; there are jerks like this in every walk of life. But I highly doubt that research done for for profit entities is of any less value than research done for government dollars. My experience tells me so.
Why is it that \. often posts anti-corporate pieces? How often do you see a \. story heralding free enterprise and for profit work? I know that most of the \. readers are young, so could it be that government schools are teaching our kids to distrust private business? Or are those attracted to \. are just generally leftists? I don't know but I refuse to let stories like these go by without a balanced opinion.
This was NOT the usual line-up that voted for this. According to CNN:
"Justices Clarence Thomas, David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer
joined the majority.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a
dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Sandra
Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy."
This was a constitutional issue of great merit that cut through "idealogical" boundries and appealed to the sensibilities of at least 5 of the justices. It disturbes me that the dissenting 4 could even argue against this opinion. Using anything to peep into the private lives of citizens without a warrent is anathemic to the principles of liberty. Shame on Renquist, O'Conner, Stevens, and Kennedy!
This document is typical, short-sighted, anti-capitalist droning. It is clearly the work of those ignorant, unemployed by choice, know-nothings who have nothing better to do than trash and loot business to "protest" global free trade.
"Global liberalization", known to the rest of us as free trade, is a good thing. Freer markets, as proven time and time again, increase the standard of living on both sides of a free trade agreement by fostering production and consumption without the capital drag of duties and hidden taxes (usually in the form of trade concessions). Short-term job loss in specific areas are SWIFTLY offset by job growth in others, when true free trade is implemented. It amazes me that people ignore the obvious at their own peril. When trade barriers fall, standards of living rise.
Try to consider what it would be like if there were high taxes imposed on goods flowing from Long Island to Harlem or from Orange County to East LA. Do you think for a moment this wouldn't have a negative impact on those poor communities? Then why don't these people think this is the case between, say, Latin America and the US (and no, the argument of macro over micro here doesn't hold any weight).
Low taxes on corporations is a good thing. Yes, you read that right, A GOOD THING. Don't be fooled: NO corporation pays taxes, only CONSUMERS. The cost of corporate taxes are passed on to the consumers. All consumers, all the time. This HURTS the lower income families MUCH more than higher income families. Essential goods are taxed when the company that makes those goods are taxed, even when they are exempt from sales tax. Corporate taxes hurt low-income people, the poor, and it makes me sick to know that some college kids "pretend to defend" the poor by advocating high corporate taxes either in the form of direct taxes or trade barriers, when often they are just blindly following a group of jerks with their own hidden agenda.
The NY post is just as reputable as any of the other heavy circulation papers in the city. This "bad reputation" comes from its right leaning op-eds and often quoted gossip pages. I have yet to see an "Aliens kidnap hamster"-like story grace its layout.
I find it to be a solid NY-centric news source without the PC and liberal bullcrap that makes the NY Daily News (its main rival) not worthy to line a bird cage. Check it out and make your own judgement:
I'd rather take my business to those companies and doctors that cherish my privacy rather than trust the government to put a gun to the head of those doctors and entities that don't cherish my privacy. When the government does that, it makes those entities hesitant to release my information when it is prudent for fear of being fined or jailed.
Next up: Federal Medical ID's. We're on our way to socialized medicine...
Agreed. Lynch did a better job with the limited time he had available. I'd like to imagine how much better Lynch's version would have been, had he had about 6 hours and today's effects available to him.
Though it has been about 15 or 16 years since I read Dune, I came away from the mini-series thinking that they didn't utilize their time to explain some of the aspects of the Dune Universe. I'm sure many were left scratching their heads wondering about some of the terms.
I can say, though, that the mini-series did portray the politics of the novel very well and it is the politics of Dune that make it a 20th century masterpiece. Dune's palatial intrigue would give dynastic China a run for its money any day.
This doesn't mean it transfers power from the State to the Federal. In fact, by setting aside the decision, it puts the onus on the state to correct their own mistake, rather than having a judgement from the federal court imposed upon the state.
There are many reasons why the US Supreme Court has an interest in looking at this case. The most important of which are Equal Protection and Due Process. These two CONSTITUTIONAL guarentees is what helps keeps our flavor of democracy from becoming "mob rules." Think Germany, 1938.
I'm still long tired of the Slash Leaning Left.
As a libertarian, I'm enjoying the fact that our government will be fumbling for the next two years, incapable of reaching its greedy hands out accross more of our liberties.
Yet more proof that \. generally leans left. If you combine the Nader vote and the Gore vote (you can definately say that voters for both Gore and Nader are leaning left), it slams Bush and Browne (as of this post, that is; and please don't construe that I mean that Browne leans right; he, ahh, stands straight I guess).
I blame this on left leaning principals in public education. I have a feeling that the mean age of the \. reader is probably floating around 20 (wild guess here, if I am wrong I apologize and will shut up), meaning that the average reader has yet to truly develop an opinion without the strong influence from public education, not to mention leftover feelings that it's ok for someone (ie. teachers, parents, etc.) to stick their noses in your business.
To paraphrase the truly great Churchill, if you're young and conservative you don't have a heart, but if you're old and liberal, you have no brain. (All right, he was no libertarian, but you get the point)
Sometimes it is good that younger voters are inclined to be more apathetic come election time than the older voters, otherwise my whole paycheck would go to pay for stupid government programs and expanded government authority.
Young voters should wake up and discover that their freedom is being pulled away from them by blue-haired pensioneers and enviromental zealots. If you truly believed in a cause or causes (for me, it's general charity, volunteerism and environmental conservationism), you'd want to see that your money supports those causes in the most efficient way possible. Government programs don't serve causes! They serve a select few individuals (who line their pockets without truly earning it) under the auspices of supporting a cause. Electing an official to support a pet cause of yours will only ultimately hurt that cause. Elected officials of this sort will take money from people (taxes) and give it to bureaucrats and lawyers and whatever is leftover goes to people who might not serve the cause in the best way anyhow. Why shouldn't you take your own money and put it towards a private foundation that you know will get the most bang for your buck. If they misuse your donation, take it to another foundation! With taxation, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE where it goes!
The people that will vote for Nader feel that corporations wield too much power in America today. If you really want to keep corporations from influencing government and pushing you around, eliminate the protections corporations receive beyond normal citizens! Browne would do this! Let the corporations scramble for your consumer dollar without tax rebates from your tax dollars! Let them get sued under civil law without caps and other protections! Browne would work towards that end!
I've been an avid (read: multiple times a day) reader of \. since nearly the begining. I must say that I am considering boycotting because I can barely stand the leftist tilt to this publication.
Why can't \. just stay out of politics and stick to what is "technically speaking" important to the online community? Granted, you can filter out these political diatribes WHEN THEY ARE MARKED AS SUCH, but this left leaning influence often permeates other articles.
I don't care to hear how electing Republicans is the same as taking away some "God" given right that people seem to think they have. I don't care to hear that conservative views are destroying our "right to net." I want geek news! Not tilted rants! Even when you filter out the politics with \.'s filtering, this leftist dribble just influence's the culture on the website among the readers to rant from the left on those posts where politics don't belong.
Enough already!
We should all be voting for Harry Browne anyway...
Slashdot Mirror
We use Squid proxy with squidGuard. We use the squidGuard blacklists from squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us (which is a combination of two upstream sources).
Additionally, we use Google's safety tools for general searching and YouTube. For a browser, we use Firefox with Adblock Plus (as I've been too lazy to ween them off that in favor of Chrome with similar extensions).
As we use Macs, I have the kids' own mac mini as the proxy server. It's an old mac mini (circa 2007?), but works just fine for the kids' browsing habits. I've had to view the proxy logs as we suspected my 5 year-old hit a questionable site (he didn't), so having the proxy logs is useful.
Also, since they have a dearth of in-the-wild spyware exploits and viruses as compared to Windows, using Macs helps.
While the length of time it took to get 5.6 and 6.0 out the door was a little troubling, CentOS still fills a very important and specific need for large enterprises such as for which I'm responsible. I agree with Digimer that CentOS is the closest thing to RHEL, and that is extremely important in an enterprise. Having 100% ABI/API compatibility in-between releases is what truly defines an enterprise distribution and that, along with 100% compatibility with RHEL, is what CentOS has not failed to deliver for our organization. Scientific Linux, while polished, may not be able to do this (we're still looking at it with a critical eye).
Ensuring our developers that their code will work between CentOS and RHEL saves a lot of man power (read: MONEY). Not that it doesn't mean we don't perform due-diligence, but it means that due-diligence is not unnecessarily weighed down by FUD.
My only concern at this point is getting security errata out of CentOS in a timely fashion. It hasn't been a show stopper yet, but it is something I've been watching.
I tried hard to discern her accent. I'm curious if the North Jersey or NY accent has changed in 122 years. It sounded like the "ar" in star is drawn out like a New England accent. Of course, it's all made the more difficult by her trying to make a baby voice.
I believe the Lost Cosmonaut folklore to have some truth to it as someone I know and trust who grow up in the Soviet Union has related to me how he vividly recalls an episode where a classmate lost his Cosmonaut dad to a failed space shot, and that this event was covered up and kept quiet.
In my experience, for stability with market data, VOS on Stratus seems to hold the edge over the open systems and Windows.
http://www.stratus.com
For those unfamiliar with Stratus (which is probably just about everybody) they, with now defunct (?) Tandem, have long competed for a share of the financial markets requiring fault tolerant solutions. There are a number of bourses and equity houses that still rely on Stratus. However, I know of a couple of places that are trying to replace their Stratus platforms with Linux, with mixed results.
Like mainframes, they're rock solid, but the talent pool to support these technologies is dwindling, forcing companies to make some real tough choices in their platform strategies.
Since we don't have a full story yet with what happened at LSE, I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about what failed them. Admittedly, I as Unix guy am wishing it turns out to be a Windows failure.
The article mentions that veritcal farming would allow some farmland to becomre forests (again?).
I'm from New Jersey, where NYC gets some of its food. I can tell you the newly fallow farmland here would not become forests.
They would become farmland for a different kind of produce: McMansions!
Overall, we like our SNAP server. However, we have issues getting it to NFS serve a Solaris client. So much so, we gave up after an hour or so of trying. Buyer Beware.
Or more specifically:http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa109.ht ml
Or something short like: http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-00.html
Or this has both sides of the issue laid out a bit http://www.ncpa.org:80/bothside/crime.html
"Consumers will drive more investment in broadband because they want video on demand on their handheld devices? So far, that's not the case."
Actually, I disagree. Considerable amount of money is being spent in all areas of technology to make this vision come real (so "so far", investments are being made). Blaming the inability to call your kids today from your video wrist watch on the mysterious "Entertainment Industry" syndicate clouds the truth: technological innovations take time to spawn products for the consumer (read: cheap technology takes time).
It only takes longer and costs more when the REAL RACKETS take place, like "selling" bandwidth to exclusive licensees under the auspices of policing a medium that doesn't need policing and raising money for "under-privlaged" children to use the Internet. Even enforcing a utility monopoly contributes to the slow grind of innovation (ever wonder why the government has to FORCE a telco to open their CO's to competitors? would it have anything to do with utility companies being granted monopolies with their "telephone" poles?).
We'll get there, though, in spite of "last-century business models." Just be patient and vote out your local incumbant.
Rather than assuming that I was some kind of omnipotent being and knew exactly how to best spend our nation's money for projects in space, I would work to allow for the commercialization of space and privatize portions of the space agency.
I believe the market place would be a better forum for discovering more useful projects in space. I know many disagree and would rather coerce the tax-paying American to fund projects that don't have any immediate or certain value beyond the "quest for knowledge".
As NASA's director in today's America, I wouldn't totally discourage such quests, but I would gently nudge the government to accepting private commercial entities into the space club.
Ahh, social contract theory, one of my favorite subjects.
That page makes for a good read. Thanks for the link. I shall better my arguments through its study. I found way too much familiarity with the positions it seeks to debunk.
As far as traveling outside the country, as the page you link states: "You don't have to catch a disease to be able to understand it, fight it, or vaccinate against it. " So whether or not I've been outside the country is irrelevant.
For the record, I've been accross the pond, to the Great White North, and down to the caribbean, but that's it.
Actually, I didn't equate authoritarianism and socialism in my statement (simply because I agree they are two separate things).
You can certainly have an authoritarian regime with capitalism, though I would think it would be very difficult to have a system that is pure in both.
I despise both socialism and authoritarianism as both supress the unprivleged. Tenants you speak of (a slave is a slave is a slave) extends to being a slave to the mob you call democracy. If I have to give up the "means of production" to someone under threat of DEATH, after having worked real hard to create that "means of production", I call that slavery (the condition of being subject to a specified influence).
I disagree that we have an authoritarian-capitalistic system in America. I believe it is more socialist than anyone gives it credit for.
I do aggree that economic freedom does not mean real freedom. It is merely a component. The "BOSSES" must not be able to assert their influence in the form of force over the citizenry (as so often happened in our past; witness Bowen Coal) by owning politicians, police and judiciary.
And for the record, McCarthy was a jerk looking to crawl out of the bottom of his gin bottle by stamping upon the right of people to peacably assemble. That doesn't, however, validate Communism in the way that Stalin being a monster doesn't validate Capitalism.
You're right, I didn't even bother to read to the the article fully (apparently it hurt too much) and didn't make the connection between the editorial remark and the true nature of the story. I just ripped right through, seething with venom.
However, with that sarcasm, \. is even worse than I thought, then.
Shame on me for jerking my knee, so I do apologize for calling the editors hypocritical.
"We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that ... the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation. "
Why is it that when it comes to anything that has to do with society, the \. editors (yes, the slash leans left on purpose) push forward an authoritarian and often socialist view of government regulation and initiative, but when it comes to technology, the goverment must stay out of the equation? (I take "excess regulation" to mean anything that encroaches upon the freedoms of the producers and consumers to operate without fraud).
Why is it so hard to draw the same conclusion that the government that governs least, governs best when it comes to other issues besides Microsoft?
Reasonable people usually want the same things, but often it is difficult to shed the shackles of years of misguidence from politicos to discover that the methodolgy to allow for the discovery of the solutions to the ills of our world is usually brilliantly simple: don't force anyone at the point of a gun to do anything unless that action infringes upon the inherint freedoms of someone else, and society as a whole will generally stumble upon a cheap (in terms of ALL costs, not just dollars or deutchmarks) solution.
In the case of Microsoft, I often differ from my fellow libertarians. Microsoft has engaged in fraud for over 15 years and continues to do so. This is not to be tolerated and is deserving of punishment as fraud is indeed a way of infringing upon the rights of others. In a free society, Microsoft wouldn't enjoy the tacit protection of government allowing it to continue its march towards market domination. I submit that free (as in speech) innovation and its truthful promotion in consumer computer technology would lead to cheaper, stabler and more useful solutions than the quagmire we suffer from today. Unfortunately, we the people depend upon the StAGs and the Justice Department to do our policing for us. Their inefficiencies have allowed Microsoft to defraud the consumers, its partners, and its competition, and as the Wheels of Justice grind ever so slowly, Microsoft has a free hand to continue its nefarious deeds.
So, yes, I agree with the \. editors statement but I wish that they would realize that it follows true on their other topics as well.
NASA's monopoly on America's interests in space is killing the industry. While the cost to fly commercial airlines has declined 40% from the 1970's since deregulation (putting air travel within reach of the working man), and the cost to ship oil has similarly declined from $7 a barrel to $1 (I don't know of a time when it was ever regulated), the cost per pound to put stuff in space has gone from somewhere around $3,800 during the 60's to around $6,000 with NASA's numbers or $35,000 with what some people think are the REAL numbers (inflation adjusted of course) (sources: David Gump "Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA", Alex Roland of Duke).
NASA has rejected several attempts in the past to privatize portions of the industry (American Rocket in the 70's and Space Industries in the 80's). In Reagen's Commerce Department, a call went out to the private sector to look at the feasability of making a moon base. The answer came back that yes it could be done with the budget given, but not with NASA! Special Interests put an end to that plan.
NASA is a blight on the space industry and a hinderence to American comercial dominance above the atomosphere. I'm sure the Europeans and Chinese love the thought of NASA crippling itself with cost overruns...
It's time to cut NASA loose, and let private industry do to commercial space enterprises what they did to computing, shipping, airline travel, etc.
I set my prompt to something simple under X windows, but set the window title to the hostname and current working directory. If I'm not on an xterm, then I set the prompt to hostname and current working directory. Note that the "ESC]" is really an escape-] and the ^G is really a control-G. I generally scp my cshrc file everywhere as I have yet to figure out how to do these keys right under vi...
:$cwd^G"'
I use this all the time under Solaris and OpenBSD, so I assume it will work for that other popular Unix-like OS.
Thanks to Jim Martin and Walt Drummond as I stole this from them back in `92.
Using tcsh:
set cwd=`pwd`
if ( $?LEVEL ) then
@ level = $LEVEL + 1
else
set level = 1
endif
setenv LEVEL $level
set eop = "+"
if ( `whoami` == "root" ) then
set eop = "#"
endif
set mopc = ':'
set mop = ''
repeat $LEVEL set mop = `echo $mop$mopc`
if ($?DISPLAY) then
alias printtab 'echo -n "ESC]2;$HOST
set prompt = "$HOST $eop>> "
alias cd 'cd \!*; printtab'
else
alias getprompt 'set prompt = $HOST$mop$cwd$eop'
getprompt
alias cd 'cd \!*; getprompt'
endif
unset mopc
I have worked on the staff of a research institute associated with two NJ universities. I was involved in many different grant funded research projects and some of those were funded by private corporations (most of the research centered around computational modeling or GIS related work). I didn't do any of the research; I just assisted those that did.
I can say, unequivocally, I was never a witness to any skewing of results of research to fit the agenda of a private entity that funded research.
No PI would want to be stained as such, as this would destroy their reputation in the eyes of their peers! Who would hire a researcher that fudged their results? How could a PhD expect to earn a living if noone will work with or hire them? Most of these people don't make a whole lot of money to begin with! Their reputation is their number one marketable skill!
I will say, that I am vaguely aware that when results were found contrary to the agenda of certain GOVERNMENT entities, that PI's would regret having to present their findings knowing it might have an impact on future grants (though still I don't know of anyone ever forging their work to change results).
Of course there are researchers who purposely produce false results, and these researchers are paid with both private and tax dollars; there are jerks like this in every walk of life. But I highly doubt that research done for for profit entities is of any less value than research done for government dollars. My experience tells me so.
Why is it that \. often posts anti-corporate pieces? How often do you see a \. story heralding free enterprise and for profit work? I know that most of the \. readers are young, so could it be that government schools are teaching our kids to distrust private business? Or are those attracted to \. are just generally leftists? I don't know but I refuse to let stories like these go by without a balanced opinion.
This was NOT the usual line-up that voted for this. According to CNN:
"Justices Clarence Thomas, David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer
joined the majority.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a
dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Sandra
Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy."
This was a constitutional issue of great merit that cut through "idealogical" boundries and appealed to the sensibilities of at least 5 of the justices. It disturbes me that the dissenting 4 could even argue against this opinion. Using anything to peep into the private lives of citizens without a warrent is anathemic to the principles of liberty. Shame on Renquist, O'Conner, Stevens, and Kennedy!
"Global liberalization", known to the rest of us as free trade, is a good thing. Freer markets, as proven time and time again, increase the standard of living on both sides of a free trade agreement by fostering production and consumption without the capital drag of duties and hidden taxes (usually in the form of trade concessions). Short-term job loss in specific areas are SWIFTLY offset by job growth in others, when true free trade is implemented. It amazes me that people ignore the obvious at their own peril. When trade barriers fall, standards of living rise.
Try to consider what it would be like if there were high taxes imposed on goods flowing from Long Island to Harlem or from Orange County to East LA. Do you think for a moment this wouldn't have a negative impact on those poor communities? Then why don't these people think this is the case between, say, Latin America and the US (and no, the argument of macro over micro here doesn't hold any weight).
Low taxes on corporations is a good thing. Yes, you read that right, A GOOD THING. Don't be fooled: NO corporation pays taxes, only CONSUMERS. The cost of corporate taxes are passed on to the consumers. All consumers, all the time. This HURTS the lower income families MUCH more than higher income families. Essential goods are taxed when the company that makes those goods are taxed, even when they are exempt from sales tax. Corporate taxes hurt low-income people, the poor, and it makes me sick to know that some college kids "pretend to defend" the poor by advocating high corporate taxes either in the form of direct taxes or trade barriers, when often they are just blindly following a group of jerks with their own hidden agenda.
Get the truth: www.cato.org
I find it to be a solid NY-centric news source without the PC and liberal bullcrap that makes the NY Daily News (its main rival) not worthy to line a bird cage. Check it out and make your own judgement:
http://www.nypost.com
Next up: Federal Medical ID's. We're on our way to socialized medicine...
Though it has been about 15 or 16 years since I read Dune, I came away from the mini-series thinking that they didn't utilize their time to explain some of the aspects of the Dune Universe. I'm sure many were left scratching their heads wondering about some of the terms.
I can say, though, that the mini-series did portray the politics of the novel very well and it is the politics of Dune that make it a 20th century masterpiece. Dune's palatial intrigue would give dynastic China a run for its money any day.
There are many reasons why the US Supreme Court has an interest in looking at this case. The most important of which are Equal Protection and Due Process. These two CONSTITUTIONAL guarentees is what helps keeps our flavor of democracy from becoming "mob rules." Think Germany, 1938.
I'm still long tired of the Slash Leaning Left.
As a libertarian, I'm enjoying the fact that our government will be fumbling for the next two years, incapable of reaching its greedy hands out accross more of our liberties.
I blame this on left leaning principals in public education. I have a feeling that the mean age of the \. reader is probably floating around 20 (wild guess here, if I am wrong I apologize and will shut up), meaning that the average reader has yet to truly develop an opinion without the strong influence from public education, not to mention leftover feelings that it's ok for someone (ie. teachers, parents, etc.) to stick their noses in your business.
To paraphrase the truly great Churchill, if you're young and conservative you don't have a heart, but if you're old and liberal, you have no brain. (All right, he was no libertarian, but you get the point)
Sometimes it is good that younger voters are inclined to be more apathetic come election time than the older voters, otherwise my whole paycheck would go to pay for stupid government programs and expanded government authority.
Young voters should wake up and discover that their freedom is being pulled away from them by blue-haired pensioneers and enviromental zealots. If you truly believed in a cause or causes (for me, it's general charity, volunteerism and environmental conservationism), you'd want to see that your money supports those causes in the most efficient way possible. Government programs don't serve causes! They serve a select few individuals (who line their pockets without truly earning it) under the auspices of supporting a cause. Electing an official to support a pet cause of yours will only ultimately hurt that cause. Elected officials of this sort will take money from people (taxes) and give it to bureaucrats and lawyers and whatever is leftover goes to people who might not serve the cause in the best way anyhow. Why shouldn't you take your own money and put it towards a private foundation that you know will get the most bang for your buck. If they misuse your donation, take it to another foundation! With taxation, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE where it goes!
The people that will vote for Nader feel that corporations wield too much power in America today. If you really want to keep corporations from influencing government and pushing you around, eliminate the protections corporations receive beyond normal citizens! Browne would do this! Let the corporations scramble for your consumer dollar without tax rebates from your tax dollars! Let them get sued under civil law without caps and other protections! Browne would work towards that end!
Support Your Cause, Vote Harry Browne
Why can't \. just stay out of politics and stick to what is "technically speaking" important to the online community? Granted, you can filter out these political diatribes WHEN THEY ARE MARKED AS SUCH, but this left leaning influence often permeates other articles.
I don't care to hear how electing Republicans is the same as taking away some "God" given right that people seem to think they have. I don't care to hear that conservative views are destroying our "right to net." I want geek news! Not tilted rants! Even when you filter out the politics with \.'s filtering, this leftist dribble just influence's the culture on the website among the readers to rant from the left on those posts where politics don't belong.
Enough already!
We should all be voting for Harry Browne anyway...