Specifically in the military case, if you question your orders, people die before they are cleared up for you. (Why should I fire artillery there? I'm not sure those are the bad guys...)
The term for this isn't "following orders", it's "dipshit stupidity". Most of the time when soldiers have problems following orders or reinterpreting commands it's for a damn good reason. People aren't goddamn mindless zombies. As shocking as it sounds, people ARE capable of thinking and acting as a group.
When the soldier follows the order to fire the artillery he isn't BLINDLY following orders, he knows from experience and training that he can rely on his spotters and commanders to accurately direct his fire. If they start fucking up, you better believe that he's going to start complaining within the limits of his ability to do so. This isn't about loyalty or safety, it's about fucking up.
The notion that soldiers, or really anyone, are mindless lazy fools that need to be told to follow orders absolutely is based on classic military thinking, which is based on classic notions of "superior breeding", "divine right", and other nonsense. I think better of American citizen soldiers, who, at least in theory, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. All American soldiers, not just officers, should be directed to follow their own best judgement and concience. Stunningly, you'll find that most American soldiers believe in what they're doing and don't blindly follow orders, but do so out of loyalty and integrity, often personal loyalty towards their comrades.
In other words, if you don't trust your chain of command enough that you think they very well MIGHT be directing your fire at innocent targets than you certainly should be shelling them. Duh.
The vietnam war failed because by the end of the war we had dropped more tonnage of bombs than both world wars combined, and still had to raze entire villages because we couldn't identify who was the enemy. We went in to conquer an army and met little girls carrying grenades to their death, and our soldiers were not trained to deal with this. If the protests had not taken place, how many more years do you think our army would have been there before they learned who exactly they were supposed to be shooting at?
The answer is: Never, since the longer the Americans were there a larger and larger percentage of the population openly supported the Communists. The Americans didn't give a fuck about the Vietnamese except as a Cold War bargaining chip and it showed (demolishing the fucking country rather than negoiatiating with the North, for example). At least the Vietcong offered domestic rather than foreign rule.
These excuses are just covering up the failure of the military to adapt to the situation.
There was nothing to "adapt" to. "Winning" in Vietnam meant annhilating the native population. And assuming we did that, what would be accomplished? The goal was obstensibly to "free" the Vietnamese people, can't exercise very much freedom if you're dead.
Bit01 nailed it on the head. Whether or not you're an open source zealot, the availability of source naturally creates more transparency. It's still vulnerable to hardware attacks (as you mention), but these are FAR more unlikey because of the specificity. Example: Intel writing secrret microcode into the Dual Corce CPUs to tamper with (say) the Diebold voting system is possible, but extremely tricky. The Intel people would have to know the details of the Diebold system, hope they will use Dual Cores in their hardware, and (most importantly) hope that Diebold doesn't change their software to invalidate their tampering. Not to mention this would cost literally BILLIONS of dollars to implement.
To put it another way, this might be an issue if voting machines used highly-specialized hardware. They don't. They use commodity computer and networking parts to save money.
It's also worth noting that many of the people here are implying "non commercial" to go along with "open source". The idea to being to remove the provit motive that may create corruption in voting machine technology.
The Hi-Fi is a piece of shit because just shaking the thing will BREAK the flimsy connector at the top that holds the iPod if you have a iPod connected. The little "snaps" keep it from falling out, rather than "dropping" the iPod when under stress, the connector just snaps off. I just did this at Fry's.
Virtually every other boom box I've seen for MP3 players or sattelite radio recievers has had the device fitted into a cradle, usually at the front of the box. This makes them more proprietary, but ACTUALLY PROTECTS THE PLAYER. Just imagine WALKING AROUND with the iPod HiFi, it's basically impossible, unlike most other boom boxes I've seen. Now I HAVE seen a few boom boxes (mostly for iPods) that had a connector at the top, but this was a BAD DESIGN and it's incredibly foolish that Apple emulated it.
And I don't care how it sounds. The audio quality is useless if you can't play music on it, and you won't be playing much music with a broken docking connector. And all of these boom boxes sound pretty lousy for any number of reasons (crappy amps is a big one). Given that, all that really matters for these things is price, durability, and to a much lesser extent, ease-of-use. And the HiFi fails those measures in spades.
It also doesn't have a one-handed handle, and it costs more than other iPod boom boxes, most of which work better.
15 seconds on the web found the Altec-Lansing InMotion IM7http://www.altec-lansing.com/product_details.as p?pID=IM7 which costs $100 less and doesn't seem to have these flaws. Sure, it probably sounds pretty lousy, but they ALL sound lousy.
What the hell are you taking about? Do you even understand what AOL is proposing? They are proposing to PROVIDE SPAMMERS WITH A SERVICE, that service is ALLOWING them to bypass their spam filters and spam their customers if they pay a fee. They are effectively selling another form of advertising to inflict on their customers.
Of course, it won't work because spammers won't pay AOL a dime. Why should they? If they wanted to PAY for advertising they'd use conventional web ads, they're using spam because it's CHEAP. They can steal bandwith from troyjans or gullible foreign ISPs. Ever notice how shady many spam products are? That's because the people doing this are criminals. They'll just continue doing what they're doing. Perhaps a few more "legitimate" advertisers might use the service, but customer complaints are likely to be high.
It's also a way to fuck with people who use online bill pay or other email financial services. ISPs like AOL think they should get a cut of these transactions and are using this as a way to get it. And if AOL's spam filters start keeping people from getting their important financial email, people will probably stop using AOL.
The way to stop spam is very simple: Make it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in US Federal Prison to ADVERTISE a product through spam. To stop foreign companies, also make it a felony to provide financial services to companies that advertise products through spam (if they can't collect any money, there's no point to sending spam). Enforce the laws.
What evidence? Read a book on the subject, or even a few good articles. Nobody disagrees that the CIA and other intelligence agencies exaggerated the threat of the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1950s-1960s. The only question is whether or not this was deliberate. You insist of reffering to the narrow issue of Kennedy's "missle gap" but I'm talking about the more GENERAL military buildup that we've seen since the 1950s, and there's little doubt that was/is based on exaggerated threats and that
You fail to consider that the US simply stating, "no, don't worry, we have more and better weapons," with only a wink and a nod would, probably, not be taken seriously by anyone, least of all in a political campaign. Stating we know something begs the question of how we know it. You obviously haven't thought this out.
Yes, nobody would have taken Eisenhower's word for it. That's a bunch of crap. President Eisenhower had lots of credibility with the American people. You seem to think far too lightly of Preisdential authority. Take the WMD issue: Most Americans took President Bush's word for it that Iraq had WMD, despite heavy criticism from the UN and others. And this was AFTER Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal. I seriously doubt Kennedy would have publically called Eisenhower a liar, he would simply have hound other issues in the campaign.
But let's say your're somehow right and there was no way to inform the public without destroying sources. the issue is more philosophical: Isn't the point of intelligence ultimately to INFORM policy decisions? If refusing to reveal intelligence information corrupts or distorts the decisionmaking process, doesn't that defeat the very purpose of the intelligence agencies?
You're arguing that you should protect "sources" at all cost, but if you can't use those sources to make policy decisions what good are they? Eisenhower knew for an absolute fact that there was no "missle gap" but he choose not to tell the American people, or Congress apparently, which led to bad decisions by the American people and Congress. Is this how it's supposed to work?
In Ubuntu, KDE is just an "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" (or install kde) away
I did exactly this in a recent version of Ubuntu (Hedgehog?) and the KDE desktop it created was partially broken and all of the "standard" shortcuts were missing or broken. I installed the Kubuntu version from scratch and it SHIPS with a broken desktop. Ubuntu only works correctly with Gnome, at least in the default configuration. And no, I didn't rewrite all the config files. I shouldn't have to do that. (which would bring up my bitch about Linux installers scattering files everywhere and then having no way to properly organize executables. Maybe I don't WANT everything tossed in my user directory.)
OpenSuse (or however they're capitalising it this week) give you the option to install gnome, kde or both.
Only KDE works right, the Gnome desktop is broken. At least that is the case with SUSE 9. See Ubuntu.
Sure, it has something to do with it, but you're ignoring the obvious other issues:
* Different intelligence agencies make different estimates for different reasons.
* Military defense agencies, like all military branches, apply "worst-case scenario" logic. Given their mission, this is only logical - the military always has and always should plan for the worst.
* CIA analysts generally provide more accurate and reserved estimates (note: generally, they've certainly been wrong)
Except this isn't what happened. There were no "competing cases". I challenge you to present a case based on contemporary evidence that the Russians had significant capability. All the arial surveillance, sigint, defectors, etc. pointed to limited capability. Read the declassified reports, most of them portray the Soviet Union's military as being in a shambles throughout the 1950s. There was wide consensous among European intelligence agencies on this. There was simply no way one could make an HONEST apprasial of ANY of the evidence and reach the conclusions that the Soviets had any significant military advantage over the West, and especially the United states, from 1950-1960 at least. Russia was pulverized by WWII and never really recovered.
Now, moving on, why would stating we know how many missiles and bombers the Russians had caued a problem? It reveals both sources and methods for overhead observation - in this case, the U2, a still classified program...
Nonsense. How does merely making the statement "the United States has much more capability than the Soviet Union" reveal how many bombers either the US or the Soviets has? It doesn't. Nor does it reveal how this information was gained. It COULD have been a spy plane. It could also have been sigint, or human intelligence, theft, or even psychic powers. It is an obscene stretch to say that the Soviets could divine the existence of advanced aircraft, let alone it's capabilities, from a single line of text.
There is nobody that has experience with American inteligence that doesn't believe that they greatly over-classify information and that they use it as a way to CYA. There is also nobody familiar with the Pentagon procurment system that doesn't believe it's totally corrupt (except maybe the corrupt officials involved). Put these things together any you can easily see how they can massage or ignore intelligence simply to spend money.
So complaining and comparing the many Linux distros to these 8 Windows versions is fucking retarded. I can choose any of the top 8 Linux distros and be able to do anything in the Linux world easily.
Which are the top 8 at the moment? Ubuntu is big but it's only been around a little while (2 years?). And what about Gnome vs. KDE? I don't know ANY distributions that have fully-fucntional versions of both Gnome and KDE so if you've forced to switch between them you're screwed (except Gentoo, and that doesn't count). Maybe it's just me, but I have a problem with something being broken on just about EVERY distribution out there. I've had major problems with dependencies, for example.
The "limitations" imposed on the versions of Vista mainly are about various bundled applications. XP has CPU limits but I'm not sure how that will work in Vista (licensing is likely to be "per machine"). There is nothing that keeps you from running Apache or even IIS (for example) on Vista, at least that's true of the betas. Certain MS apps might not work on non-server versions, for example I think Exchange only works on servers. Of course, you could use one of the hundreds of other mail servers NOT made by MS to do the same task.
The only realy scam in the double-licensing bullshit in corporate enviroments. Right now, in a corporate environment you have to pay for the server, an access license for each system, AND you have to pay for the more expensice version of the OS (XP Pro). MS seems poised to repeat this lucrative scheme for Vista. Of course, Novell, IBM, Sun, Apple, and other Unix vendors do pretty much the same thing with their software.
And frankly, if Evil Corporation Microsoft wants to cheat other Evil Corporations on volume licensing, I really couldn't give a crap. MS doesn't care about Jonny Snot-nose pirating their software, they care about "small" outfits like General Motors and the entire nation of China pirating their software. Most consumers get their license with their new computer, they couldn't pirate the software even if they wanted to. And these companies can always vote with their dollars, if MS' licensing costs are too egregious they can switch to Linux or MacOS.
Juse so people are aware, it's entirely possible that many of these versions won't ship or won't see wide distribution. It's likely that Starter will be (pun alert) a non-starter just like the XP version and will see very limited distribution, like the "N" versions (Versions bundled without Windows Media Player). And there won't be seperate Business and Corporate versions. Ultimate is a definite though. I think the "practical" list will look something like this:
Windows Vista Home Premium Windows Vista Business Windows Vista Ultimate
I suspect the price delta will be very small between Home Basic and Home Premium (for complex reasons that I can get into if readers wish), which will be even smaller for OEMs so they are unlikely to sell many systems with Home Basic. Ditto for Business (volume licensing is rumored to be identical in price). Which leaves Ultimate, which is essentially a NEW product, a "hot-rod" OS for system enthusiasts. It is likey to be the ONLY version that sees any promotion at retail. I think it's possible that you might not even be ABLE to buy other versions boxed at retail.
Remember the current situation is:
Windows XP Home Windows XP Professional WIndows XP Media Center Edition Windows XP Professional x64
Not counting the different MCE versions. This new scheme really isn't that different from what exists now.
You've cited two incredibly weak cases, as are most of the pathetic defenses of the US obsession with information security we're seen.
In the late 1970's, an FBI author of a book on the Rosenburg incident, for example, was angered by what he believed to be censorship regarding important information on the case. After going through the motions to allow him to print that part what he wanted, he found the reason - the information he wanted to print came from a source who, after more than 30 years, was still reporting from the USSR. Putting it in his book would have, without doubt, led to his death.
If the information was available to a random FBI agent, then it can't be that secure, can it? Threatening authors should not be the cornerstone of your security. If they wish to make the case to the FBI agent directly to leave the information out of the book, fine, but arbitrary censorship shouldn't be permitted regardless of "oversight". It's counter-productive and just encourages sloppiness. What they SHOULD have done instead of going after the FBI agent was to track down the leak. In fact, they probably tried but failed to do so. Sloppy.
The "missile gap" of the late 50's - early 60's is another example - it existed only in public perception, and this had been confirmed by secret intelligence programs. But, rather than divulge this information and risk intelligence-gathering the programs, Kennedy was allowed to use it as a political plank.
How hard would this have been: "Intelligence sources confirm that there is no significant missle gap between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in fact, the United States has much more capability than the Soviet Union." What "programs" are risked by this statement? None. You're just blaming this on the Kennedy campaign when it's pretty obvious than the intelligence community conspired to sell the "story" of the missle gap so that weapons manufacturers could make shitloads of money. Dissenters were threatened. Read the public statements of military officials (who definitely knew better) at the time.
It's common knowledge that actual CIA officers are rarely involved in any "dirty tricks" or illegal shenanigans. That's been true since at least the 1950s. All of that is outsourced to "front" companies or private contractors. The real trick is following the money, and THAT'S what the CIA, NSA, etc. try to keep secret. There are "black-hole" budgets in all of these agencies. Where does the money go? Nobody knows. There is no official accounting. But the always need more money, that's why you have things like American intelligence sponsoring drug trafficking. Congress and the American people have simply allowed this nonsense to go on for decades.
And with all due respect to those to say they "know" people. You know bureaucratic functionaries who analyze sigint or scrutinize photographs, all the nasty stuff is outsourced to people on the ground.
Microsoft could get into real trouble if Apple invested in Open Office,
Um, no. Apple uses don't seem to "get it". What drives PC sales, ultimately? Business. And what to most reasonably large businesses have. Servers. Small to large, it's business servers that are important. So the question REALLY is:
What Apple product is going to replace Windows Server + Exchange?
'Cause it sure as hell ain't OS X Server (mainly due to a raft of performance problems).
Not everyone needs the same reasons to like or dislike something.
No, this guy is simply wrong. Having access to source isn't a panacea for debugging software and Linux is not free of showstopping bugs. Nor, though I didn't point this out before, is it true that Microsoft doesn't fix bugs in Windows. Maybe they didn't fix HIS bug, but they do fix thousands of other bugs. And yes, you CAN contact Microsoft support and even engineers to address specific problems or bugs, you just have to pay big bucks to do it. Last I checked major Linux vendors also charged big bucks for support.
Uh cause you have a snowball's chance in hell of doing that with the people currently in power or maybe even at all.
Which is a bizarro bass-ackwards argument I've heard from libertarians before: "Well, the Republicans really aren't on "our" side but if we obstensibly back them they might reduce the general tax burden and thereby cause less damage to our wallets." Which is a nice though, but it's nonsense. They are out to fuck you. The "small government" rhetoric is just that and always has been, what it really means is "government that favors big business and fucks the little guy". Environmental regulations? Helps the little guy, hurts big business. "Free" trade? Helps big business, fucks the little guy. Health and safety regulations? etc. Of course they're all for 24/7 intrusive state surveillance (no matter how much THAT costs). If you aren't doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about, right?
You can get a machine for half the price that runs OS X?
A lot less than that. The developer version of OSX x86 will run on almost anything with 512MB of memory (you can hack it to no require SSE2). I've been running it on an old Athlon.
That's pretty much why I like Linux. Linux, and other open source, may have faults and snags, but there's always a surefire way to get to the bottom of every problem, with the source.
Which is great if you're a C developer who just happens to be intimately familiar with Unix system internals. IOW, an employee of a major Unix vendor. This is just about the dumbest shit I've ever heard. The vast majority of users aren't in any position to usefully debug parts of Linux by examining the source, and that includes you. Oh sure, you might know some of the source of a few of the apps you use regularly and for simpler apps, you might be in a position to make small changes, BUT THAT'S IT. This is why documentation is actually needed.
Every program has bugs. What can make a bug a showstopper is when the power to fix it is not in your hands (within reason).
And the exact same thing is true of Linux and all Unixes, simply because you haven't run into any showstopping bugs yet doesn't mean they don't exist. My personal favorite is a Redhat install (2.4 kernel) spontaneously forgetting RAID arrays. That was awesome!
That's right, it makes it impossible for linux to be used at that level of security - the level at which you want a machine only to run binaries from a trusted source.
I can see many scenarios where that would be useful in combination with strong cryptography, and many ways in which commercial linux providers would want to offer that option to their clients.
I think there is a difference between "administrative settings" and complete lockout. For example, in the Windows XP driver system (WHQL) security is implemented through signed drivers which when run display a dialog informing the user if they are signed or unsigned, and allowing the driver to accept if unsigned, the same is true for ActiveX controls. However Windows also provides sophisticated security administration tools which allows the system administrator to change the function on the system so that a user can only install signed drivers and ActiveX controls. This provides exactly the functionality you describe WITHOUT completely locking out the user.
The solutions will be entirely hassle free. Since Microsoft controls the PC market and the MPAA/RIAA cartels control almost all popular media they will make if very simple indeed.
Um, no. Where is the evidence that in the last few years hardware/software vendors have mad a QUANTUM LEAP (which is what you describe) in the reliability and convienience of DRM'ed hardware and software. I worked on some of these solutions and ALL of the ones I've worked with are a hassle. iTunes is a hassle. If you have the slightest problem, Secure Windows Media is actually much better (IMO) because there are plenty of tools widely available to strip off the DRM, without that it would be a major hassle. Which should tell you something: The stronger and more effective you make your DRM protection, the greater the hassle it will be for your customers. This is a "Golden Rule" in DRM and it's absolutely true.
The Sony rootkit fiasco we saw earlier wasn't a exception to the rollouts of strong DRM products, but THE RULE. The spectacular failure that was DIVX should have taught the industry something. If DRM makes hardware nigh unto useless, people will not buy that hardware (I'm looking at you Apple). Asian hardware vendors know better that to shoot themselves in the foot and which push comes to shove, I suspect they're fully prepared to simply ignore US law. I don't doubt for one moment that "no-name" Asian vendors (who are really secret divisions of the large companies you know at love, like Panasonic and Toshiba) will release Blue-ray players that bypass DRM restrictions just like you can buy DVD players that bypass Macrovision. The only company not in this position is schitzophrenic Sony, and they may be forced to largely abandon the consumer electronics market because of it.
Sorry dude you are wrong. Most of the program is a forced retirement program, it is the government saying I'm going to make you save your money for your retirement. What you get out is based on what you pay in as far as the retirement program. The disability part of the program is insurance as you describe. Unfortunately a large percentage of the people who get it are engaging in fraud. You get yourself declared disabled and its a free ride for life.
No, that's really the meat and potatoes of it. Where do you think the money for those disabled people comes from? YOUR social security taxes. This is one of the reasons SS is such a "bad investment". It's not an "investment" at all. It's a tax to help poor people. It has been, BY FAR, the most effective program at reducing poverty in the history of the United States which is why it is so popular. Fraud enforcement is vigorous and not nearly as common as you seem to think. And Disability is hardly a "free ride" it's "barely enough to survive", but it keeps people off the streets.
I am pretty libertarian when it comes to personal responsibility
Read: philosophically opposed to the concept of charity
Now, you're going to piss and moan that "I believe in charity! I just want to CHOOSE how I give my charity!" Or choose not to. Do you, or does anyone, seriously believe that a non-mandatory charity program could handle the poverty in the United States as well as the current system? That corporations would willingly donate large percentages to charity? I don't think so, and I don't think anyone can make a credible case to support this. Therefore "eliminating Social Security" translates to "I like seeing poor and disabled people in the streets".
I suppose you could replace the current system with a different Federal system or perhaps a more State-driven system but you would still have to spend the same (or more) money.
I'm sure all of the pro-life women out there agree.
All 3 of 'em, yeah. I've met Jewish Nazis too.
anyone who thinks heroin should be illegal is just harboring some deeply-held prejudice against hypodermic needles
No, people who think heroin should be illegal (or more precisely, support the current narcotics laws) are confused and don't understand the issues, like some pro-lifers.
It is just that in my experience, many people who are unable to defend their position on abortion without obsessively fixating on gender equality issues are just trying to cover for the fact that their logical gas tank on the subject is about a teaspoon short of bone dry.
One need not "obsessively fixate" on gender equality issues in the abortion debate because the pro-life crowd has made it clear that their position is COMPLETELY religious and that no other concern is in any way relavent to their religious objections. Abortion is ultimately evil because it is the callous, deliberately cruel annhilation of a perfectly innocent and pure soul and more importantly, it's a violation of God's commandments to "be fruitful". This position is not based on reason nor is it subject to reasonable debate. If you've got a different one, I'd love to hear it.
And Constitutional arguments about the right to "life, liberty, etc." don't count, because it amounts to giving a fetus full US legal status which isn't supported by any legal tradion and makes no sense at all. Does a fetus have a right to a jury trial? It's sophistry.
One would hope that Bush's statements on scientific advances prove that he is not anti-science, no more than pro-lifers are anti-women.
Except that he *IS* anti-science, he opposes numerous scientific advances on religious and economic grounds.
BTW, Pro-lifers ARE anti-women.
The "abortion debate" is not about whether or not abortions are "good". EVERYONE agrees that abortions are generally bad. And EVERYONE also agrees that reducing the number of abortions is a good thing. The issue is about tactics.
People who call themselves pro-lifers generally also oppose sex education and birth control (and would like to see them outlawed), even though they know for a fact that birth control is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and thereby abortion. So given that their policies actually INCREASE the number of abortions, one has to seriously question the motivations of pro-lifers.
Pro-lifers simply reflect a small group of conservative religious nuts that want to inflict their odd notions onto the rest of America. The situation would be analogous to Amish protesting outside of car dealerships.
Social Security as conceived by Roosevelt was kind of scam since very few people lived long enough to collect it and the tax rates could as a result be very low. Unfortunately most people live long past retirement age now
Okay, let me correct your biggest misconception. You seem to think that Social Security was INTENDED as a retirement program for many elderly Americans. This is false. It was false when it was written, it is false today.
The purpose of Social Security is to serve as a social INSURANCE policy to rescue needy people from extreme poverty or destitution. It's intended to keep widows, children, the disabled, and yes, the elderly off the streets. That's it. Getting rid of Social Security LITERALLY means throwing blind children into the streets. We are not getting rid of Social Security.
Right-wing blowhards who are philosophically opposed to the concept of charity continually moan about how the program is going "bankrupt" (in approximately 50 years) and that the Federal government will collapse, and that cloned Commie supermen will conquer the Earth. The reality is that in the distant future, assuming that there are not steep decreases in revenue, Social Security may have to start dipping into the general fund to cover it's liablities. God forbid we spend money to help people in wheelchairs rather than spend it on weapons. Or the SS tax might have to be raised marginally, assuming the military can't live without the newest Lockheed-Martin Death Ray(tm).
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Please mod AC up. I was going to respond to this, but he pretty much said it all. Properly implementing what SkepticalOptomist is talking about is a LOT more complicated than he thinks it is.
Clearly you've taken an introductory economics course. Congradulations. You've described free market THEORY perfectly.
Now multiply this by the billions and billions of transactions made every day in the US, not just between people and each other, but corporations, organizations, and the government. Every one of these transactions, if not coerced or done on misinformation, will lead to the creation of tiny bits of wealth that add up to a tremendous economic force.Emphasis added
And here's the rub. The market in the US is NOT "free". It is filled with coercion and fraud, mostly perpetrated by the government and large business. Small businesses do what they can get away with (THEY actually have a small chance of going to jail or paying a significant fine).
It's simple: If you CAN coerce or manipulate people, AND it increases your profitability, AND there is no interfering regulation, people are going to do it.
It works like this:
Either through honest or dishonest means a company or individual makes a lot of money in X industry.
That company or individual realizes he could make even more money if he changed the regulations to benefit HIM and hurt his competitors (or consumers, doesn't matter) so he bribes the reglators to change them in his favor.
How do you solve this problem? (BTW, It is in no way related to democracy.)
The key problem with corporations is also their main strength, that they are extremely good at "generating" wealth (as you describe). The downside is that naturally they also CONCENTRATE wealth, and therefore POWER. If corporate executives were all sweetness and light and only cared about helping the little guy, this wouldn't be a problem. But that's not the case.
Basically, the fairness of "free market" capitalism as pushed by many anarcho-capitalists hinges enitirely on the good will of corporate executives, requiring them to disregard personal interest and profit. Corporations and their executives don't strike me as a selfless lot.
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Specifically in the military case, if you question your orders, people die before they are cleared up for you. (Why should I fire artillery there? I'm not sure those are the bad guys...)
The term for this isn't "following orders", it's "dipshit stupidity". Most of the time when soldiers have problems following orders or reinterpreting commands it's for a damn good reason. People aren't goddamn mindless zombies. As shocking as it sounds, people ARE capable of thinking and acting as a group.
When the soldier follows the order to fire the artillery he isn't BLINDLY following orders, he knows from experience and training that he can rely on his spotters and commanders to accurately direct his fire. If they start fucking up, you better believe that he's going to start complaining within the limits of his ability to do so. This isn't about loyalty or safety, it's about fucking up.
The notion that soldiers, or really anyone, are mindless lazy fools that need to be told to follow orders absolutely is based on classic military thinking, which is based on classic notions of "superior breeding", "divine right", and other nonsense. I think better of American citizen soldiers, who, at least in theory, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. All American soldiers, not just officers, should be directed to follow their own best judgement and concience. Stunningly, you'll find that most American soldiers believe in what they're doing and don't blindly follow orders, but do so out of loyalty and integrity, often personal loyalty towards their comrades.
In other words, if you don't trust your chain of command enough that you think they very well MIGHT be directing your fire at innocent targets than you certainly should be shelling them. Duh.
The vietnam war failed because by the end of the war we had dropped more tonnage of bombs than both world wars combined, and still had to raze entire villages because we couldn't identify who was the enemy. We went in to conquer an army and met little girls carrying grenades to their death, and our soldiers were not trained to deal with this. If the protests had not taken place, how many more years do you think our army would have been there before they learned who exactly they were supposed to be shooting at?
The answer is: Never, since the longer the Americans were there a larger and larger percentage of the population openly supported the Communists. The Americans didn't give a fuck about the Vietnamese except as a Cold War bargaining chip and it showed (demolishing the fucking country rather than negoiatiating with the North, for example). At least the Vietcong offered domestic rather than foreign rule.
These excuses are just covering up the failure of the military to adapt to the situation.
There was nothing to "adapt" to. "Winning" in Vietnam meant annhilating the native population. And assuming we did that, what would be accomplished? The goal was obstensibly to "free" the Vietnamese people, can't exercise very much freedom if you're dead.
Bit01 nailed it on the head. Whether or not you're an open source zealot, the availability of source naturally creates more transparency. It's still vulnerable to hardware attacks (as you mention), but these are FAR more unlikey because of the specificity. Example: Intel writing secrret microcode into the Dual Corce CPUs to tamper with (say) the Diebold voting system is possible, but extremely tricky. The Intel people would have to know the details of the Diebold system, hope they will use Dual Cores in their hardware, and (most importantly) hope that Diebold doesn't change their software to invalidate their tampering. Not to mention this would cost literally BILLIONS of dollars to implement.
To put it another way, this might be an issue if voting machines used highly-specialized hardware. They don't. They use commodity computer and networking parts to save money.
It's also worth noting that many of the people here are implying "non commercial" to go along with "open source". The idea to being to remove the provit motive that may create corruption in voting machine technology.
The Hi-Fi is a piece of shit because just shaking the thing will BREAK the flimsy connector at the top that holds the iPod if you have a iPod connected. The little "snaps" keep it from falling out, rather than "dropping" the iPod when under stress, the connector just snaps off. I just did this at Fry's.
s p?pID=IM7 which costs $100 less and doesn't seem to have these flaws. Sure, it probably sounds pretty lousy, but they ALL sound lousy.
Virtually every other boom box I've seen for MP3 players or sattelite radio recievers has had the device fitted into a cradle, usually at the front of the box. This makes them more proprietary, but ACTUALLY PROTECTS THE PLAYER. Just imagine WALKING AROUND with the iPod HiFi, it's basically impossible, unlike most other boom boxes I've seen. Now I HAVE seen a few boom boxes (mostly for iPods) that had a connector at the top, but this was a BAD DESIGN and it's incredibly foolish that Apple emulated it.
And I don't care how it sounds. The audio quality is useless if you can't play music on it, and you won't be playing much music with a broken docking connector. And all of these boom boxes sound pretty lousy for any number of reasons (crappy amps is a big one). Given that, all that really matters for these things is price, durability, and to a much lesser extent, ease-of-use. And the HiFi fails those measures in spades.
It also doesn't have a one-handed handle, and it costs more than other iPod boom boxes, most of which work better.
15 seconds on the web found the Altec-Lansing InMotion IM7http://www.altec-lansing.com/product_details.a
What the hell are you taking about? Do you even understand what AOL is proposing? They are proposing to PROVIDE SPAMMERS WITH A SERVICE, that service is ALLOWING them to bypass their spam filters and spam their customers if they pay a fee. They are effectively selling another form of advertising to inflict on their customers.
Of course, it won't work because spammers won't pay AOL a dime. Why should they? If they wanted to PAY for advertising they'd use conventional web ads, they're using spam because it's CHEAP. They can steal bandwith from troyjans or gullible foreign ISPs. Ever notice how shady many spam products are? That's because the people doing this are criminals. They'll just continue doing what they're doing. Perhaps a few more "legitimate" advertisers might use the service, but customer complaints are likely to be high.
It's also a way to fuck with people who use online bill pay or other email financial services. ISPs like AOL think they should get a cut of these transactions and are using this as a way to get it. And if AOL's spam filters start keeping people from getting their important financial email, people will probably stop using AOL.
The way to stop spam is very simple: Make it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in US Federal Prison to ADVERTISE a product through spam. To stop foreign companies, also make it a felony to provide financial services to companies that advertise products through spam (if they can't collect any money, there's no point to sending spam). Enforce the laws.
Problem solved.
What evidence? Read a book on the subject, or even a few good articles. Nobody disagrees that the CIA and other intelligence agencies exaggerated the threat of the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1950s-1960s. The only question is whether or not this was deliberate. You insist of reffering to the narrow issue of Kennedy's "missle gap" but I'm talking about the more GENERAL military buildup that we've seen since the 1950s, and there's little doubt that was/is based on exaggerated threats and that
You fail to consider that the US simply stating, "no, don't worry, we have more and better weapons," with only a wink and a nod would, probably, not be taken seriously by anyone, least of all in a political campaign. Stating we know something begs the question of how we know it. You obviously haven't thought this out.
Yes, nobody would have taken Eisenhower's word for it. That's a bunch of crap. President Eisenhower had lots of credibility with the American people. You seem to think far too lightly of Preisdential authority. Take the WMD issue: Most Americans took President Bush's word for it that Iraq had WMD, despite heavy criticism from the UN and others. And this was AFTER Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal. I seriously doubt Kennedy would have publically called Eisenhower a liar, he would simply have hound other issues in the campaign.
But let's say your're somehow right and there was no way to inform the public without destroying sources. the issue is more philosophical: Isn't the point of intelligence ultimately to INFORM policy decisions? If refusing to reveal intelligence information corrupts or distorts the decisionmaking process, doesn't that defeat the very purpose of the intelligence agencies?
You're arguing that you should protect "sources" at all cost, but if you can't use those sources to make policy decisions what good are they? Eisenhower knew for an absolute fact that there was no "missle gap" but he choose not to tell the American people, or Congress apparently, which led to bad decisions by the American people and Congress. Is this how it's supposed to work?
In Ubuntu, KDE is just an "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" (or install kde) away
I did exactly this in a recent version of Ubuntu (Hedgehog?) and the KDE desktop it created was partially broken and all of the "standard" shortcuts were missing or broken. I installed the Kubuntu version from scratch and it SHIPS with a broken desktop. Ubuntu only works correctly with Gnome, at least in the default configuration. And no, I didn't rewrite all the config files. I shouldn't have to do that. (which would bring up my bitch about Linux installers scattering files everywhere and then having no way to properly organize executables. Maybe I don't WANT everything tossed in my user directory.)
OpenSuse (or however they're capitalising it this week) give you the option to install gnome, kde or both.
Only KDE works right, the Gnome desktop is broken. At least that is the case with SUSE 9. See Ubuntu.
Sure, it has something to do with it, but you're ignoring the obvious other issues:
* Different intelligence agencies make different estimates for different reasons.
* Military defense agencies, like all military branches, apply "worst-case scenario" logic. Given their mission, this is only logical - the military always has and always should plan for the worst.
* CIA analysts generally provide more accurate and reserved estimates (note: generally, they've certainly been wrong)
Except this isn't what happened. There were no "competing cases". I challenge you to present a case based on contemporary evidence that the Russians had significant capability. All the arial surveillance, sigint, defectors, etc. pointed to limited capability. Read the declassified reports, most of them portray the Soviet Union's military as being in a shambles throughout the 1950s. There was wide consensous among European intelligence agencies on this. There was simply no way one could make an HONEST apprasial of ANY of the evidence and reach the conclusions that the Soviets had any significant military advantage over the West, and especially the United states, from 1950-1960 at least. Russia was pulverized by WWII and never really recovered.
Now, moving on, why would stating we know how many missiles and bombers the Russians had caued a problem? It reveals both sources and methods for overhead observation - in this case, the U2, a still classified program...
Nonsense. How does merely making the statement "the United States has much more capability than the Soviet Union" reveal how many bombers either the US or the Soviets has? It doesn't. Nor does it reveal how this information was gained. It COULD have been a spy plane. It could also have been sigint, or human intelligence, theft, or even psychic powers. It is an obscene stretch to say that the Soviets could divine the existence of advanced aircraft, let alone it's capabilities, from a single line of text.
There is nobody that has experience with American inteligence that doesn't believe that they greatly over-classify information and that they use it as a way to CYA. There is also nobody familiar with the Pentagon procurment system that doesn't believe it's totally corrupt (except maybe the corrupt officials involved). Put these things together any you can easily see how they can massage or ignore intelligence simply to spend money.
So complaining and comparing the many Linux distros to these 8 Windows versions is fucking retarded. I can choose any of the top 8 Linux distros and be able to do anything in the Linux world easily.
Which are the top 8 at the moment? Ubuntu is big but it's only been around a little while (2 years?). And what about Gnome vs. KDE? I don't know ANY distributions that have fully-fucntional versions of both Gnome and KDE so if you've forced to switch between them you're screwed (except Gentoo, and that doesn't count). Maybe it's just me, but I have a problem with something being broken on just about EVERY distribution out there. I've had major problems with dependencies, for example.
The "limitations" imposed on the versions of Vista mainly are about various bundled applications. XP has CPU limits but I'm not sure how that will work in Vista (licensing is likely to be "per machine"). There is nothing that keeps you from running Apache or even IIS (for example) on Vista, at least that's true of the betas. Certain MS apps might not work on non-server versions, for example I think Exchange only works on servers. Of course, you could use one of the hundreds of other mail servers NOT made by MS to do the same task.
The only realy scam in the double-licensing bullshit in corporate enviroments. Right now, in a corporate environment you have to pay for the server, an access license for each system, AND you have to pay for the more expensice version of the OS (XP Pro). MS seems poised to repeat this lucrative scheme for Vista. Of course, Novell, IBM, Sun, Apple, and other Unix vendors do pretty much the same thing with their software.
And frankly, if Evil Corporation Microsoft wants to cheat other Evil Corporations on volume licensing, I really couldn't give a crap. MS doesn't care about Jonny Snot-nose pirating their software, they care about "small" outfits like General Motors and the entire nation of China pirating their software. Most consumers get their license with their new computer, they couldn't pirate the software even if they wanted to. And these companies can always vote with their dollars, if MS' licensing costs are too egregious they can switch to Linux or MacOS.
Juse so people are aware, it's entirely possible that many of these versions won't ship or won't see wide distribution. It's likely that Starter will be (pun alert) a non-starter just like the XP version and will see very limited distribution, like the "N" versions (Versions bundled without Windows Media Player). And there won't be seperate Business and Corporate versions. Ultimate is a definite though. I think the "practical" list will look something like this:
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Ultimate
I suspect the price delta will be very small between Home Basic and Home Premium (for complex reasons that I can get into if readers wish), which will be even smaller for OEMs so they are unlikely to sell many systems with Home Basic. Ditto for Business (volume licensing is rumored to be identical in price). Which leaves Ultimate, which is essentially a NEW product, a "hot-rod" OS for system enthusiasts. It is likey to be the ONLY version that sees any promotion at retail. I think it's possible that you might not even be ABLE to buy other versions boxed at retail.
Remember the current situation is:
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional
WIndows XP Media Center Edition
Windows XP Professional x64
Not counting the different MCE versions. This new scheme really isn't that different from what exists now.
You've cited two incredibly weak cases, as are most of the pathetic defenses of the US obsession with information security we're seen.
In the late 1970's, an FBI author of a book on the Rosenburg incident, for example, was angered by what he believed to be censorship regarding important information on the case. After going through the motions to allow him to print that part what he wanted, he found the reason - the information he wanted to print came from a source who, after more than 30 years, was still reporting from the USSR. Putting it in his book would have, without doubt, led to his death.
If the information was available to a random FBI agent, then it can't be that secure, can it? Threatening authors should not be the cornerstone of your security. If they wish to make the case to the FBI agent directly to leave the information out of the book, fine, but arbitrary censorship shouldn't be permitted regardless of "oversight". It's counter-productive and just encourages sloppiness. What they SHOULD have done instead of going after the FBI agent was to track down the leak. In fact, they probably tried but failed to do so. Sloppy.
The "missile gap" of the late 50's - early 60's is another example - it existed only in public perception, and this had been confirmed by secret intelligence programs. But, rather than divulge this information and risk intelligence-gathering the programs, Kennedy was allowed to use it as a political plank.
How hard would this have been: "Intelligence sources confirm that there is no significant missle gap between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in fact, the United States has much more capability than the Soviet Union." What "programs" are risked by this statement? None. You're just blaming this on the Kennedy campaign when it's pretty obvious than the intelligence community conspired to sell the "story" of the missle gap so that weapons manufacturers could make shitloads of money. Dissenters were threatened. Read the public statements of military officials (who definitely knew better) at the time.
It's common knowledge that actual CIA officers are rarely involved in any "dirty tricks" or illegal shenanigans. That's been true since at least the 1950s. All of that is outsourced to "front" companies or private contractors. The real trick is following the money, and THAT'S what the CIA, NSA, etc. try to keep secret. There are "black-hole" budgets in all of these agencies. Where does the money go? Nobody knows. There is no official accounting. But the always need more money, that's why you have things like American intelligence sponsoring drug trafficking. Congress and the American people have simply allowed this nonsense to go on for decades.
And with all due respect to those to say they "know" people. You know bureaucratic functionaries who analyze sigint or scrutinize photographs, all the nasty stuff is outsourced to people on the ground.
Microsoft could get into real trouble if Apple invested in Open Office,
Um, no. Apple uses don't seem to "get it". What drives PC sales, ultimately? Business. And what to most reasonably large businesses have. Servers. Small to large, it's business servers that are important. So the question REALLY is:
What Apple product is going to replace Windows Server + Exchange?
'Cause it sure as hell ain't OS X Server (mainly due to a raft of performance problems).
Not everyone needs the same reasons to like or dislike something.
No, this guy is simply wrong. Having access to source isn't a panacea for debugging software and Linux is not free of showstopping bugs. Nor, though I didn't point this out before, is it true that Microsoft doesn't fix bugs in Windows. Maybe they didn't fix HIS bug, but they do fix thousands of other bugs. And yes, you CAN contact Microsoft support and even engineers to address specific problems or bugs, you just have to pay big bucks to do it. Last I checked major Linux vendors also charged big bucks for support.
Uh cause you have a snowball's chance in hell of doing that with the people currently in power or maybe even at all.
Which is a bizarro bass-ackwards argument I've heard from libertarians before: "Well, the Republicans really aren't on "our" side but if we obstensibly back them they might reduce the general tax burden and thereby cause less damage to our wallets." Which is a nice though, but it's nonsense. They are out to fuck you. The "small government" rhetoric is just that and always has been, what it really means is "government that favors big business and fucks the little guy". Environmental regulations? Helps the little guy, hurts big business. "Free" trade? Helps big business, fucks the little guy. Health and safety regulations? etc. Of course they're all for 24/7 intrusive state surveillance (no matter how much THAT costs). If you aren't doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about, right?
You can get a machine for half the price that runs OS X?
A lot less than that. The developer version of OSX x86 will run on almost anything with 512MB of memory (you can hack it to no require SSE2). I've been running it on an old Athlon.
That's pretty much why I like Linux. Linux, and other open source, may have faults and snags, but there's always a surefire way to get to the bottom of every problem, with the source.
Which is great if you're a C developer who just happens to be intimately familiar with Unix system internals. IOW, an employee of a major Unix vendor. This is just about the dumbest shit I've ever heard. The vast majority of users aren't in any position to usefully debug parts of Linux by examining the source, and that includes you. Oh sure, you might know some of the source of a few of the apps you use regularly and for simpler apps, you might be in a position to make small changes, BUT THAT'S IT. This is why documentation is actually needed.
Every program has bugs. What can make a bug a showstopper is when the power to fix it is not in your hands (within reason).
And the exact same thing is true of Linux and all Unixes, simply because you haven't run into any showstopping bugs yet doesn't mean they don't exist. My personal favorite is a Redhat install (2.4 kernel) spontaneously forgetting RAID arrays. That was awesome!
That's right, it makes it impossible for linux to be used at that level of security - the level at which you want a machine only to run binaries from a trusted source.
I can see many scenarios where that would be useful in combination with strong cryptography, and many ways in which commercial linux providers would want to offer that option to their clients.
I think there is a difference between "administrative settings" and complete lockout. For example, in the Windows XP driver system (WHQL) security is implemented through signed drivers which when run display a dialog informing the user if they are signed or unsigned, and allowing the driver to accept if unsigned, the same is true for ActiveX controls. However Windows also provides sophisticated security administration tools which allows the system administrator to change the function on the system so that a user can only install signed drivers and ActiveX controls. This provides exactly the functionality you describe WITHOUT completely locking out the user.
The solutions will be entirely hassle free.
Since Microsoft controls the PC market and the MPAA/RIAA cartels control almost all popular media they will make if very simple indeed.
Um, no. Where is the evidence that in the last few years hardware/software vendors have mad a QUANTUM LEAP (which is what you describe) in the reliability and convienience of DRM'ed hardware and software. I worked on some of these solutions and ALL of the ones I've worked with are a hassle. iTunes is a hassle. If you have the slightest problem, Secure Windows Media is actually much better (IMO) because there are plenty of tools widely available to strip off the DRM, without that it would be a major hassle. Which should tell you something: The stronger and more effective you make your DRM protection, the greater the hassle it will be for your customers. This is a "Golden Rule" in DRM and it's absolutely true.
The Sony rootkit fiasco we saw earlier wasn't a exception to the rollouts of strong DRM products, but THE RULE. The spectacular failure that was DIVX should have taught the industry something. If DRM makes hardware nigh unto useless, people will not buy that hardware (I'm looking at you Apple). Asian hardware vendors know better that to shoot themselves in the foot and which push comes to shove, I suspect they're fully prepared to simply ignore US law. I don't doubt for one moment that "no-name" Asian vendors (who are really secret divisions of the large companies you know at love, like Panasonic and Toshiba) will release Blue-ray players that bypass DRM restrictions just like you can buy DVD players that bypass Macrovision. The only company not in this position is schitzophrenic Sony, and they may be forced to largely abandon the consumer electronics market because of it.
Sorry dude you are wrong. Most of the program is a forced retirement program, it is the government saying I'm going to make you save your money for your retirement. What you get out is based on what you pay in as far as the retirement program. The disability part of the program is insurance as you describe. Unfortunately a large percentage of the people who get it are engaging in fraud. You get yourself declared disabled and its a free ride for life.
No, that's really the meat and potatoes of it. Where do you think the money for those disabled people comes from? YOUR social security taxes. This is one of the reasons SS is such a "bad investment". It's not an "investment" at all. It's a tax to help poor people. It has been, BY FAR, the most effective program at reducing poverty in the history of the United States which is why it is so popular. Fraud enforcement is vigorous and not nearly as common as you seem to think. And Disability is hardly a "free ride" it's "barely enough to survive", but it keeps people off the streets.
I am pretty libertarian when it comes to personal responsibility
Read: philosophically opposed to the concept of charity
Now, you're going to piss and moan that "I believe in charity! I just want to CHOOSE how I give my charity!" Or choose not to. Do you, or does anyone, seriously believe that a non-mandatory charity program could handle the poverty in the United States as well as the current system? That corporations would willingly donate large percentages to charity? I don't think so, and I don't think anyone can make a credible case to support this. Therefore "eliminating Social Security" translates to "I like seeing poor and disabled people in the streets".
I suppose you could replace the current system with a different Federal system or perhaps a more State-driven system but you would still have to spend the same (or more) money.
I'm sure all of the pro-life women out there agree.
All 3 of 'em, yeah. I've met Jewish Nazis too.
anyone who thinks heroin should be illegal is just harboring some deeply-held prejudice against hypodermic needles
No, people who think heroin should be illegal (or more precisely, support the current narcotics laws) are confused and don't understand the issues, like some pro-lifers.
It is just that in my experience, many people who are unable to defend their position on abortion without obsessively fixating on gender equality issues are just trying to cover for the fact that their logical gas tank on the subject is about a teaspoon short of bone dry.
One need not "obsessively fixate" on gender equality issues in the abortion debate because the pro-life crowd has made it clear that their position is COMPLETELY religious and that no other concern is in any way relavent to their religious objections. Abortion is ultimately evil because it is the callous, deliberately cruel annhilation of a perfectly innocent and pure soul and more importantly, it's a violation of God's commandments to "be fruitful". This position is not based on reason nor is it subject to reasonable debate. If you've got a different one, I'd love to hear it.
And Constitutional arguments about the right to "life, liberty, etc." don't count, because it amounts to giving a fetus full US legal status which isn't supported by any legal tradion and makes no sense at all. Does a fetus have a right to a jury trial? It's sophistry.
One would hope that Bush's statements on scientific advances prove that he is not anti-science, no more than pro-lifers are anti-women.
Except that he *IS* anti-science, he opposes numerous scientific advances on religious and economic grounds.
BTW, Pro-lifers ARE anti-women.
The "abortion debate" is not about whether or not abortions are "good". EVERYONE agrees that abortions are generally bad. And EVERYONE also agrees that reducing the number of abortions is a good thing. The issue is about tactics.
People who call themselves pro-lifers generally also oppose sex education and birth control (and would like to see them outlawed), even though they know for a fact that birth control is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and thereby abortion. So given that their policies actually INCREASE the number of abortions, one has to seriously question the motivations of pro-lifers.
Pro-lifers simply reflect a small group of conservative religious nuts that want to inflict their odd notions onto the rest of America. The situation would be analogous to Amish protesting outside of car dealerships.
Social Security as conceived by Roosevelt was kind of scam since very few people lived long enough to collect it and the tax rates could as a result be very low. Unfortunately most people live long past retirement age now
Okay, let me correct your biggest misconception. You seem to think that Social Security was INTENDED as a retirement program for many elderly Americans. This is false. It was false when it was written, it is false today.
The purpose of Social Security is to serve as a social INSURANCE policy to rescue needy people from extreme poverty or destitution. It's intended to keep widows, children, the disabled, and yes, the elderly off the streets. That's it. Getting rid of Social Security LITERALLY means throwing blind children into the streets. We are not getting rid of Social Security.
Right-wing blowhards who are philosophically opposed to the concept of charity continually moan about how the program is going "bankrupt" (in approximately 50 years) and that the Federal government will collapse, and that cloned Commie supermen will conquer the Earth. The reality is that in the distant future, assuming that there are not steep decreases in revenue, Social Security may have to start dipping into the general fund to cover it's liablities. God forbid we spend money to help people in wheelchairs rather than spend it on weapons. Or the SS tax might have to be raised marginally, assuming the military can't live without the newest Lockheed-Martin Death Ray(tm).
Please mod AC up. I was going to respond to this, but he pretty much said it all. Properly implementing what SkepticalOptomist is talking about is a LOT more complicated than he thinks it is.
Clearly you've taken an introductory economics course. Congradulations. You've described free market THEORY perfectly.
Now multiply this by the billions and billions of transactions made every day in the US, not just between people and each other, but corporations, organizations, and the government. Every one of these transactions, if not coerced or done on misinformation, will lead to the creation of tiny bits of wealth that add up to a tremendous economic force.Emphasis added
And here's the rub. The market in the US is NOT "free". It is filled with coercion and fraud, mostly perpetrated by the government and large business. Small businesses do what they can get away with (THEY actually have a small chance of going to jail or paying a significant fine).
It's simple: If you CAN coerce or manipulate people, AND it increases your profitability, AND there is no interfering regulation, people are going to do it.
It works like this:
Either through honest or dishonest means a company or individual makes a lot of money in X industry.
That company or individual realizes he could make even more money if he changed the regulations to benefit HIM and hurt his competitors (or consumers, doesn't matter) so he bribes the reglators to change them in his favor.
How do you solve this problem? (BTW, It is in no way related to democracy.)
The key problem with corporations is also their main strength, that they are extremely good at "generating" wealth (as you describe). The downside is that naturally they also CONCENTRATE wealth, and therefore POWER. If corporate executives were all sweetness and light and only cared about helping the little guy, this wouldn't be a problem. But that's not the case.
Basically, the fairness of "free market" capitalism as pushed by many anarcho-capitalists hinges enitirely on the good will of corporate executives, requiring them to disregard personal interest and profit. Corporations and their executives don't strike me as a selfless lot.