The major problem is that ranges are allowed to be in code point order rather than collation order. This breaks the expected behaviour, learned by many of us and relied upon by scripts since time immemorial, of such utilities as grep, sed, awk, tr &c. [a-z] no longer indicates abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, but some non-useful collection of characters. This has caused me no end of trouble on RedHat 9, which sets LANG to en_US.UTF-8
Yes, character classes are The Right Thing for much of this sort of thing anyway--but this behaviour is The Wrong Thing regardless. It's not what one would intuitively expect, and it's not particularly useful. It breaks a lot of things, and doesn't really enable anything that I can see. I could be wrong; it could be brilliant, and I'm missing some vital datum. Don't think so, though.
Ah, yes, the infamous Convention on the Rights of the Child. That document which mandates registration of children (Article 7). That document which gives unto children a full 'right' of expression without the accompanying responsibility (Article 12). That document which guarantees children the 'right' to view whatever they will, subject only to anti-libel, anti-slander and morality laws (Article 13); thus, parents cannot control their children, but the State can. That document which guarantees day care facilities (Article 18). That document which guarantees a 'right' to health care (Article 24). That document which guarantees a 'right' to social security (Article 26). That document which guarantees a 'right' to welfare (Article 27). That document which makes education compulsory and socialised (Article 28). That document which forbids life imprisonment or death for a 17 year old murderer (Article 37). Gosh, seems totally unobjectionable to me--or would, anyway, were I a simpering idiot.
Article 38 does forbid the use in the military of those less than fifteen years of age. Considering that more than a few war heroes have been younger than that (look in any history book), and given the known proclivities of boys, that seems a silly restriction. While on the one hand I don't like the idea of 13 year old soldiers in this day and age, OTOH at least one fifteen-year-old cadet from the Virginia Military Institute fought in the Battle of New Market. And of course boys used to become midshipmen at quite an early age (12 or 13, I believe); Admiral Farragut received his commission at 10 and his first command at 12. When it comes to defending one's house and home, it seems to me that any boy large enough to carry a weapon can count himself a man.
Besides, Amnesty International have long since lost their credibility. Instead of campaigning against real human rights violations like political prisoners, they've spent far too much effort opposing the quite reasonable practise of slaying those whose deeds are sufficiently foul. Loathsome lot.
Do you really think that if say Warren Buffet is the first man to set foot on Mars, and he "claims" it, the rest of the world is just going to throw up their hands and say "Damn! Well, I guess there's nothing we can do. He CALLED it."?
Well, they kind of have to. When no-one owns land, one simply claims and holds it. Buffet couldn't hold all of Mars, maybe, but he could certainly claim it--and he could probably hold quite a large settlement.
Hey, Sandra Bullock is better than Carrie-Anne Moss anyhow.
Just about anything is better than Moss. She's not at all attractive; her face is far too masculine. As far as I can tell, the fixation with her seems to be based solely on her Matrix character's habit of running about in tight plastic clothing. Pretty sad, really.
Show me a Linux replacement for Adobe FrameMaker (or better yet, a port), and I'm there.
LaTeX. It's a different way of working, but it's well worth it.
If you want to go beyond FrameMaker, you're talking even more money - Documentum-class document management systems, single sourcing from a big pile of XML into PDF, hardcopy, or HTML - but Linux ain't even in contention here.
Sounds to me like a job for jade or similar tools. We already do the single-sourcing from XML to PDF, HTML or printed versions: it's called make & friends. Or there's texinfo, if you prefer that.
Unix started out as a documentation tool; it'd be really surprising were it unable to hold its own now. Heck, for a lot of purposes even roff is still useful (not that I'd recommend it).
Society decides what law enforcement focuses on, through our elected legislatures. If you don't like the laws... change them; you're stuck with them until that happens. If society doesn't agree with you, then start your own society... or break the laws at your own peril.
That society believes something is so doesn't mean that it is (I recognise that the fact that I believe something doesn't make it so, either...). Currently certain forms of murder are legal in every single state and federal possession: legal but not right. I do what I can to change the way people view things, but I am but one man. And FWIW I don't break that many laws. I do speed when it is safe to do so (it's not a crime anyway, but a traffic infraction, IIRC), but I scrupulously obey all other traffic laws. I don't take illegal drugs. I am well over the age necessary to legally purchase alcohol. I generally obey the weapons laws of my state, even where I feel they are truly unjust. Doesn't mean I have to like it, and doesn't mean I approve.
You believe there is a need for law enforcement and "the original poster, methinks, would agree?" Please... "F*ck the police" expresses a desire for law enforcement?
A mere rhetorical flourish, understandable given his experiences. I doubt that he would deny that we do need some laws (in fact, his ire at having equipment stolen points clearly to the contrary), and that we need someone to enforce them. I take his meaning to have been anger directed at the bad experiences he has had and little more. Even I, who have studied the subject and am aware of just how recent an invention public enforcers are, would agree that some form of police force is a necessity.
It's unfortunate that you view the system as so corrupt that you refuse to to help change it.
Not my fault. So long as the police force is actively and on a daily basis involved in what amounts to mere thuggery (enforcing liquor and drug laws, for example), I cannot and will not associate myself with it.
Also, your statement that you "refuse to subsidise" them is wishful thinking; you pay taxes, so you're already subsidising them... don't you want to make sure you're getting your money's worth?
I pay my taxes because I don't wish to be shot; I certainly don't wish to pay any more into a corrupt system. By which I don't mean solely the police force: I mean our entire republic. While it is certainly the absolute best state in the world, it is just as certainly far from good. It's the least evil of a rotten bunch. Politics is simply the exercise of power for anyone who votes for either of the two major parties, or for most of the minor parties. Dislike a behaviour? Legislate against it. Want some money? Steal it from one group and give it to yourself. The police force is merely one cog in a great machine which daily usurps our liberties.
If your beef is with society, then focus your anger appropriately, ie. not at the individual cop who's just trying to do his job.
The problem is that his job is wrong. A man who arrests another for smoking, selling or growing dope is a thug, a pawn of tyranny. A man who conducts a sting operation against a liquor store owner for selling alcohol to adults is no better. A man who writes a ticket for driving a speed which while safe is not permitted is no better than a Mafia enforcer trying out a protection racket. A man who breaks up a consensual poker game is a wet blanket, and a thug. A man who tickets another for smoking, or for carrying a spray paint can, or for sitting on a milkbox, is not doing a good thing: he is, in a very real sense, an extortionist. A man who restricts his fellow citizens' rights to associate, bear weapons, speak freely and/or believe as they will is not `just doing his job,' any more than a hitman is `just doing his job.' If that's his job, he should quit.
I have no complaint against investigating, pursuing and arresting
It's constantly amazing to me too how many of the Gnu-Uber-Alles folks don't really understand that they are giving their work away for free and can not reasonably expect anything in return.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. What do you get in return? You get bugfixes, you get further development, you get a clean conscience. The LDP guy didn't come up with Linux or just about any of the rest of the software he packaged together: others did. Their hard work gave him something, and his hard work gave others something, and those others submitted bug reports, bug fixes and feature enhancements back to him. Which, apparently, he then ignored, leading to the *steain LDP, to LEAF &c.
What has rms gotten from the GPL? A lot of folks have added code to emacs. What has Linus Torvalds gotten from the GPL? A lot of folks have added code to Linux.
I love the idiot `support the boys in blue' knee-jerk trolls which inhabit just about every place: submissive folly which refuses to recognise the very real problems in the system.
Not a bit of your post addresses the original issues: ineffective law enforcement. The OP never said that there should not be police, IIRC: rather, he gave instances where they didn't serve a useful function, either by commission or omission.
Certainly, law enforcement is by its nature an unpleasant profession. Certainly, there is a need for law enforcement. The original poster, methinks, would agree. If the cops stopped wasting their time on foolishness (e.g. drug, alcohol, weapons and traffic enforcement) and instead focused on real problems (e.g. rape, murder, theft and fraud), I don't believe people would particularly hate them. It's when the police are the willing enforcer-thugs of an authoritarian state that we lose our respect for them--and quite rightly so.
As for your suggestion to volunteer: I refuse to supply my labour in order to free up time for a cop to issue a single other drug or speeding citation. I refuse to supply my labour in order to free up time for a liquor-law sting operation. I refuse to subsidise injustice.
These are companies which take the DVD you own, then edit out the parts you don't wish to see (yes, really they make a copy, then destroy the original). They are providing the service of editing out the `bad' parts. It's now different from hiring someone to fast forward for one. Now, I happen to think that folks who wish to edit out all the good parts of films are pretty dumb, but it's their right as owners of a copy to edit them, or commission someone to edit for them.
There's no deception going on: folks who participate in the process want the edits.
You have no right to go through life being unoffended.
You have no right to demand that your audience sit through your entire work.
Seems that, even with opensource, what the users wants is not met.
Of course not. If you're not willing to do the work, why should anyone else necessarily be? Perhaps the problem is highly difficult--an utterly undocumented and obfuscated protocol, maybe. Free software is about empowering user-developers, not about empowering leeches.
The free market doesn't give everyone what he wants either: I still do not have my 20,000 sq. foot house, an army of servants and a dozen Jaguars. It does the best job possible of meeting what everyone wants and deserves. So too free software.
As for Bush v Gore, it is generally acknowledged from every legal debate I've ever heard, that the 5 justices in favor of Bush were disresptected for it.
The same can be said for the four who supported Gore. The decision was purely on political grounds. Fortunately, however, the majority in that case happened to be correct--the Florida Supreme Court's decision was grossly incorrect.
Re:My father's Minivan already has this
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42-Volt Autos
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Only problem is, there is no 'remote negative terminal', essentially making it impossible to use his van to boost another car.
There is a negative terminal--the entire car frame. The body is used as a universal handy ground (in fact, I believe some batteries I've seen just have a good thick wire connected to the side of the car). Just clamp onto some cosmetically unimportant part and have fun.
We should cut spending such that the national debt is paid off--this isn't rocket science. Taxation cripples an economy, and excessive taxation is unjust.
Incidentally, we spend about $400 billion on defence, according to the Center for Defense Information, who appear at a cursory glance to be leftists of some sort (and thus biased in your favour). Assuming 260 million people in the US (that's low, I believe--we may be as high as 300 million now), that works out to less than $1,600 per person--quite affordable, and well within tax revenues.
I cannot find a record of the amount spent on Medicare and Social Security, but note that neither of these is in any way an appropriate use of tax dollars. The sooner they are thrown on the ash-heap of history the better for us all.
But see, we display what the item is worth, then charge based on that. It's because we don't like taxation very much:-)
What I'd like is to get rid of income tax with-holding. If everyone had to sign over $10,000-$50,000 every year in April, there'd be a lot more folks willing to string up every legislator with an idea for more taxes...
Ummm, that's a very common way of writing a seven to distinguish it from the one, which is written in many countries with a tail. I tried to post examples, but the thrice-accursed lameness filter (whose author should be beaten, dragged into the street and left for dogs) will not allow it through. How I loathe it and its fould creator.
I myself saw ceramic tiles with a long-tailed numeral one, looking much like an inverted v, many times while in Mexico--very strange looking. Many Europeans use a somewhat shorter-tailed numeral (it has the advantage of looking much like a typeset numeral one, which is cool), and so do I. Part of it is sheer joy at being different, just as I use a Greek e often in my handwriting (it cannot be slid into, but it can start a fragment). I keep on trying to start using a Greek d as well...
There's no longer any advantage to writing - it's going the way of the buggy whip, and good riddance, in my humble opinion.
There's a great advantage to writing: actually producing text. When in college, I used to do as everyone else does: slather nonsense into a word processor, knock it into shape & print it up. I was always distressed by how poor my style, and the style of everyone I knew or read, really was. After some thought, I realised that the great authors wrote manuscripts (literally, handwriting), and resolved to do the same. It occurred to me that the very slowness of writing by hand might lend itself to more cogitation, and that its permanence might force one to structure one's output.
So my senior year I would go down to the local pub, get a table, spread out my books and notes, and write my papers longhand, starting with a longhand outline and then filling it in, writing and rewriting and rewriting again. I'd sit there, surrounded by books, pens and paper, drinking beer, smoking my pipe and eating Cellarman's excellent chips & salsa for hours upon hours. Then I'd go home and type the thing up and run it through LaTeX. And my papers went from truly mediocre to great--I was so proud of some that I even showed them to my parents.
When one writes longhand, the thought flows out through one's hand, through the pen and onto the paper as ink. It takes such time to form each letter that one thinks about what one is saying, what one will be saying and what one wishes to say.
On the other hand, computer writing is stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
Does this mean that we should require all left-handed people to start writing with their right hands? (I'm assuming that you will think this is as absurd as I do, otherwise you're going to have to tell me why it makes sense).
I don't believe that it's at all absurd. If one starts young enough, one can be made to be ambidextrous. My mother burned her left arm at the age of three, and has been right-handed since (left-handedness runs in her family). Many of my parents' generation were forced to be right-handed. This is most important for left-handers, who are otherwise hampered in a right-handed world (corkscrews, books, righting, doorknobs &c. all assume right-handedness), but is also important for right-handers: after all, one never knows when one may lose the use of one arm for a time or for good.
I really wish that my teachers had forced me to be ambidextrous Way Back When. I suppose that it's still doable--I have heard that one need only spend a month using the off-hand for it to become useful. Maybe I'll take a month off someday, when I have that much vac time...
BTW, one doesn't put parenthetical comments in their own sentences--it renders a semantically null sentence, which is odd.
They can legally find ways to make a product at a cheaper cost, but then expect us to pay top dollar for it.
That's what competition is for. If there are several companies selling a product for x% markup, Joe can sell more for (x-y)% markup. Then Steve can sell more units yet for (x-y-z)% markup. This continues until everyone is living on very thin margins indeed. The same occurs with wages, where there we all sell our labour to our employers. Markets are cut-throat, but they are fair.
If these large businesses only realized the global benifits of paying your employees more, and lowering the price of there products, this would do some great things, even for their business.
Let me recast this: if people only realised the global benefits of paying more for food, and lowering their own incomes, this would do some great things, even for their own lives. I don't necessarily disagree (in fact, morally I agree), but that's not the way the world works.
You have to disallow more than fraud. You have to stop companies from buying laws that prop up their business model or otherwise aid them.
That's a form of fraud.
And while "the greed of all" may lead to the lowest prices in a perfect market, this may not be "the betterment of all".
It leads to the material betterment of all. Certainly, it is not necessarily to the spiritual betterment of all--but I believe that it is not the State's business what the spiritual state of its members is.
Hey, you have no right to a living. Why should anyone pay you more to work less? It's insane, like buying lettuce for $50/head. That's what competition is about. It's rough, but that's Real Life.
I agree with this in the abstract. But as a U.S. software developer, I'm worried about my Real Life.
Then you're no different than a corporation wishing to prop up its own profits at the expense of everyone else. When you are employed, you are selling your labour to another. Just as when you shop, you look for the best price, so too do employers look for the best return on their dollars. And just as you rightfully get annoyed when an industry convinces the State to force you to pay more than is fair, so too do employers get rightfully annoyed when employees convince the State to force them to pay more than is fair. The market inevitably leads to the fair outcome given the circumstances: it does not guarantee that anyone will like it.
Or, to put it another way, there just aren't as many grooms, coachmen or buggy whip manufacturers as there used to be.
That doesn't matter--what Smith was describing were the fundamental rules of the universe.
There is (pardon the pun) a world of difference between immutable physical laws and an artificial social construct that can be changed at any time (witness gift economies in native american tribes).
Even in those societies there were still markets--markets for social status. There is always a market; it may not be good, it may not be wise, it may not be free, but it always exists. Men ever act to maximise income and minimise expense. What income and expense are measured in may vary, but that principle is the same.
First, I don't give a fig for democracy--I care about liberty.
The rest of the world pretty clearly disagrees, otherwise we'd be using anarchy.
Anarchy does not preserve liberty, but then neither do democracy, oligarchy or monarchy. Liberty is what matters most: the freedom to do as one believes right, so long as that does not impinge on another's freedom to do as he believes right.
This is far too vague to be worth arguing over - if these "inherant rights" apply to men, why not apes? How do you define what is a right, and what is merely "nice to have"?
We have rights because we are men; apes do not because they are not. We think, we love, we build, we believe; they do not. No ape ever built a civilisation. I'm a Christian, so I would add that we were made in the image and likeness of God, but that's not an argument proper to a legal discussion.
As for what a right is, it is simple: a right costs others nothing. Thus one has rights to speech, to belief, to develop one's own property, to be armed, to ingest drugs, to eat food &c. One does not have a right to a job (that costs someone else money), does not have a right to steal, does not have a right to murder &c.
one has a right to bear arms
Not where I live thank god. You americans can have a pretty warped view of what "rights" are sometime. I can't believe you think people have a right to a random piece of physical machinery but not a living. Which is more important to the majority?
No--one has a right to it regardless of where one lives: it's a fundamental human right. It's not recognised by the State where you live, but that doesn't mean you don't have it. Saudi Arabia doesn't recognise the right to believe as one wishes, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
As for a right to a job, I answered that above. One have a right to try for a job, but one has no more right to make others pay for that job than a store-owner has a right to force customers to buy his goods. `Having a job' really means selling one's labour--and if one is not willing to sell at fair prices, no-one will buy.
Stealing is usually (simplistically) defined as taking something that is not yours. What can be private property is decided upon by society - air is not private property, but land is. It would seem reasonable that a certain amount of money could be defined as group property.
One's property is one's property. The money earned by the sweat of one's brow belongs to no-one but oneself. Now, some taxation is necessary to pay for the maintenance of the State, to provide for the military and police forces and to otherwise ensure that no-one's rights are violated. It's a necessary evil. The theft of additional monies is an unnecessary evil.
You can't have it both ways - if not helping those in need is wrong, then we should ensure that people do right.
The State does not exist to judge matters of right and wrong, but of rights. I believe that it's wrong to believe other than as I do; no doubt you believe the same. The State does not exist to
If evil is not allowed to exist, then we would have no free will. If we had no free will, then we could not think, could not believe, could not love and in fact would not exist as we know it. We have to be able to choose in order to be able to choose good. Once we've all chosen good, there will be no evil: an outcome devoutly to be desired.
And the `young boys' killed by bears were young men taunting the prophet. Hardly over-reaction.
Objectivists are against private charity: they see it as rewarding those who have not been rewarded by anyone else. That is, why should one give a beggar money for nothing, if no-one is willing to give him money for something? Indeed, they see charity as fundamentally immoral.
Now, many libertarians are all for charity, and many libertarians are Objectivists, and many demi-Objectivists are for charity. But Objectivism proper view charity is inefficient and immoral. But that's a side effect of soulless atheism: one should give to the poor purely because they need it.
Does the education necessarily matter? If it isn't useful to the job at hand, then having to pay for the better-educated employee is foolish. One doesn't hire doctors of English to dig ditches. Most call-centre stuff is simple read-from-a-card triage; if it's really a problem, then the caller is transferred to an actual support tech. Who is rather more likely to actually need to education.
There are a lot of unskilled jobs out there. That poorer countries do not have the high school and college fetish that we do means that their populations are better suited to fill those jobs. Amusingly, this means that they wille eventually acquire the same fetish:-)
That doesn't sound like Tolkien. For one thing, that world-view is dualistic, not Christian. Tolkien was, you'll remember, a devout Catholic. Although some Christians are dualists (in that sense, not the idealist/dualist/materialist sense), I believe that Tolkien was too intelligent for that. His good friend Lewis certainly was.
After all, good and bad can't exist without the other to compare against.
Not so. Good exists; in fact, God is (cf. Moses & the burning bush...). Evil is simply the rejection of existence, of reality (hence calling Satan the Father of Lies). Good is; evil is not. If good and evil are simply opposing forces, then one is not better than the other, there is no fundamental moral difference--one can freely choose between them. If one is better than the other, then there is an external yardstick, which is itself the actual good.
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Yes, character classes are The Right Thing for much of this sort of thing anyway--but this behaviour is The Wrong Thing regardless. It's not what one would intuitively expect, and it's not particularly useful. It breaks a lot of things, and doesn't really enable anything that I can see. I could be wrong; it could be brilliant, and I'm missing some vital datum. Don't think so, though.
Article 38 does forbid the use in the military of those less than fifteen years of age. Considering that more than a few war heroes have been younger than that (look in any history book), and given the known proclivities of boys, that seems a silly restriction. While on the one hand I don't like the idea of 13 year old soldiers in this day and age, OTOH at least one fifteen-year-old cadet from the Virginia Military Institute fought in the Battle of New Market. And of course boys used to become midshipmen at quite an early age (12 or 13, I believe); Admiral Farragut received his commission at 10 and his first command at 12. When it comes to defending one's house and home, it seems to me that any boy large enough to carry a weapon can count himself a man.
Besides, Amnesty International have long since lost their credibility. Instead of campaigning against real human rights violations like political prisoners, they've spent far too much effort opposing the quite reasonable practise of slaying those whose deeds are sufficiently foul. Loathsome lot.
BTW, what's wrong with libtool & autoconf? I always thought they helped make software more free...
Well, they kind of have to. When no-one owns land, one simply claims and holds it. Buffet couldn't hold all of Mars, maybe, but he could certainly claim it--and he could probably hold quite a large settlement.
Just about anything is better than Moss. She's not at all attractive; her face is far too masculine. As far as I can tell, the fixation with her seems to be based solely on her Matrix character's habit of running about in tight plastic clothing. Pretty sad, really.
LaTeX. It's a different way of working, but it's well worth it.
If you want to go beyond FrameMaker, you're talking even more money - Documentum-class document management systems, single sourcing from a big pile of XML into PDF, hardcopy, or HTML - but Linux ain't even in contention here.
Sounds to me like a job for jade or similar tools. We already do the single-sourcing from XML to PDF, HTML or printed versions: it's called make & friends. Or there's texinfo, if you prefer that.
Unix started out as a documentation tool; it'd be really surprising were it unable to hold its own now. Heck, for a lot of purposes even roff is still useful (not that I'd recommend it).
That society believes something is so doesn't mean that it is (I recognise that the fact that I believe something doesn't make it so, either...). Currently certain forms of murder are legal in every single state and federal possession: legal but not right. I do what I can to change the way people view things, but I am but one man. And FWIW I don't break that many laws. I do speed when it is safe to do so (it's not a crime anyway, but a traffic infraction, IIRC), but I scrupulously obey all other traffic laws. I don't take illegal drugs. I am well over the age necessary to legally purchase alcohol. I generally obey the weapons laws of my state, even where I feel they are truly unjust. Doesn't mean I have to like it, and doesn't mean I approve.
You believe there is a need for law enforcement and "the original poster, methinks, would agree?" Please... "F*ck the police" expresses a desire for law enforcement?
A mere rhetorical flourish, understandable given his experiences. I doubt that he would deny that we do need some laws (in fact, his ire at having equipment stolen points clearly to the contrary), and that we need someone to enforce them. I take his meaning to have been anger directed at the bad experiences he has had and little more. Even I, who have studied the subject and am aware of just how recent an invention public enforcers are, would agree that some form of police force is a necessity.
It's unfortunate that you view the system as so corrupt that you refuse to to help change it.
Not my fault. So long as the police force is actively and on a daily basis involved in what amounts to mere thuggery (enforcing liquor and drug laws, for example), I cannot and will not associate myself with it.
Also, your statement that you "refuse to subsidise" them is wishful thinking; you pay taxes, so you're already subsidising them... don't you want to make sure you're getting your money's worth?
I pay my taxes because I don't wish to be shot; I certainly don't wish to pay any more into a corrupt system. By which I don't mean solely the police force: I mean our entire republic. While it is certainly the absolute best state in the world, it is just as certainly far from good. It's the least evil of a rotten bunch. Politics is simply the exercise of power for anyone who votes for either of the two major parties, or for most of the minor parties. Dislike a behaviour? Legislate against it. Want some money? Steal it from one group and give it to yourself. The police force is merely one cog in a great machine which daily usurps our liberties.
If your beef is with society, then focus your anger appropriately, ie. not at the individual cop who's just trying to do his job.
The problem is that his job is wrong. A man who arrests another for smoking, selling or growing dope is a thug, a pawn of tyranny. A man who conducts a sting operation against a liquor store owner for selling alcohol to adults is no better. A man who writes a ticket for driving a speed which while safe is not permitted is no better than a Mafia enforcer trying out a protection racket. A man who breaks up a consensual poker game is a wet blanket, and a thug. A man who tickets another for smoking, or for carrying a spray paint can, or for sitting on a milkbox, is not doing a good thing: he is, in a very real sense, an extortionist. A man who restricts his fellow citizens' rights to associate, bear weapons, speak freely and/or believe as they will is not `just doing his job,' any more than a hitman is `just doing his job.' If that's his job, he should quit.
I have no complaint against investigating, pursuing and arresting
Wrong, wrong, wrong. What do you get in return? You get bugfixes, you get further development, you get a clean conscience. The LDP guy didn't come up with Linux or just about any of the rest of the software he packaged together: others did. Their hard work gave him something, and his hard work gave others something, and those others submitted bug reports, bug fixes and feature enhancements back to him. Which, apparently, he then ignored, leading to the *steain LDP, to LEAF &c.
What has rms gotten from the GPL? A lot of folks have added code to emacs. What has Linus Torvalds gotten from the GPL? A lot of folks have added code to Linux.
Not a bit of your post addresses the original issues: ineffective law enforcement. The OP never said that there should not be police, IIRC: rather, he gave instances where they didn't serve a useful function, either by commission or omission.
Certainly, law enforcement is by its nature an unpleasant profession. Certainly, there is a need for law enforcement. The original poster, methinks, would agree. If the cops stopped wasting their time on foolishness (e.g. drug, alcohol, weapons and traffic enforcement) and instead focused on real problems (e.g. rape, murder, theft and fraud), I don't believe people would particularly hate them. It's when the police are the willing enforcer-thugs of an authoritarian state that we lose our respect for them--and quite rightly so.
As for your suggestion to volunteer: I refuse to supply my labour in order to free up time for a cop to issue a single other drug or speeding citation. I refuse to supply my labour in order to free up time for a liquor-law sting operation. I refuse to subsidise injustice.
There's no deception going on: folks who participate in the process want the edits.
You have no right to go through life being unoffended.
You have no right to demand that your audience sit through your entire work.
Of course not. If you're not willing to do the work, why should anyone else necessarily be? Perhaps the problem is highly difficult--an utterly undocumented and obfuscated protocol, maybe. Free software is about empowering user-developers, not about empowering leeches.
The free market doesn't give everyone what he wants either: I still do not have my 20,000 sq. foot house, an army of servants and a dozen Jaguars. It does the best job possible of meeting what everyone wants and deserves. So too free software.
If you want a feature, code it.
The same can be said for the four who supported Gore. The decision was purely on political grounds. Fortunately, however, the majority in that case happened to be correct--the Florida Supreme Court's decision was grossly incorrect.
There is a negative terminal--the entire car frame. The body is used as a universal handy ground (in fact, I believe some batteries I've seen just have a good thick wire connected to the side of the car). Just clamp onto some cosmetically unimportant part and have fun.
Incidentally, we spend about $400 billion on defence, according to the Center for Defense Information, who appear at a cursory glance to be leftists of some sort (and thus biased in your favour). Assuming 260 million people in the US (that's low, I believe--we may be as high as 300 million now), that works out to less than $1,600 per person--quite affordable, and well within tax revenues.
I cannot find a record of the amount spent on Medicare and Social Security, but note that neither of these is in any way an appropriate use of tax dollars. The sooner they are thrown on the ash-heap of history the better for us all.
What I'd like is to get rid of income tax with-holding. If everyone had to sign over $10,000-$50,000 every year in April, there'd be a lot more folks willing to string up every legislator with an idea for more taxes...
I myself saw ceramic tiles with a long-tailed numeral one, looking much like an inverted v, many times while in Mexico--very strange looking. Many Europeans use a somewhat shorter-tailed numeral (it has the advantage of looking much like a typeset numeral one, which is cool), and so do I. Part of it is sheer joy at being different, just as I use a Greek e often in my handwriting (it cannot be slid into, but it can start a fragment). I keep on trying to start using a Greek d as well...
There's a great advantage to writing: actually producing text. When in college, I used to do as everyone else does: slather nonsense into a word processor, knock it into shape & print it up. I was always distressed by how poor my style, and the style of everyone I knew or read, really was. After some thought, I realised that the great authors wrote manuscripts (literally, handwriting), and resolved to do the same. It occurred to me that the very slowness of writing by hand might lend itself to more cogitation, and that its permanence might force one to structure one's output.
So my senior year I would go down to the local pub, get a table, spread out my books and notes, and write my papers longhand, starting with a longhand outline and then filling it in, writing and rewriting and rewriting again. I'd sit there, surrounded by books, pens and paper, drinking beer, smoking my pipe and eating Cellarman's excellent chips & salsa for hours upon hours. Then I'd go home and type the thing up and run it through LaTeX. And my papers went from truly mediocre to great--I was so proud of some that I even showed them to my parents.
When one writes longhand, the thought flows out through one's hand, through the pen and onto the paper as ink. It takes such time to form each letter that one thinks about what one is saying, what one will be saying and what one wishes to say.
On the other hand, computer writing is stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
I don't believe that it's at all absurd. If one starts young enough, one can be made to be ambidextrous. My mother burned her left arm at the age of three, and has been right-handed since (left-handedness runs in her family). Many of my parents' generation were forced to be right-handed. This is most important for left-handers, who are otherwise hampered in a right-handed world (corkscrews, books, righting, doorknobs &c. all assume right-handedness), but is also important for right-handers: after all, one never knows when one may lose the use of one arm for a time or for good.
I really wish that my teachers had forced me to be ambidextrous Way Back When. I suppose that it's still doable--I have heard that one need only spend a month using the off-hand for it to become useful. Maybe I'll take a month off someday, when I have that much vac time...
BTW, one doesn't put parenthetical comments in their own sentences--it renders a semantically null sentence, which is odd.
That's what competition is for. If there are several companies selling a product for x% markup, Joe can sell more for (x-y)% markup. Then Steve can sell more units yet for (x-y-z)% markup. This continues until everyone is living on very thin margins indeed. The same occurs with wages, where there we all sell our labour to our employers. Markets are cut-throat, but they are fair.
Let me recast this: if people only realised the global benefits of paying more for food, and lowering their own incomes, this would do some great things, even for their own lives. I don't necessarily disagree (in fact, morally I agree), but that's not the way the world works.Then you're no different than a corporation wishing to prop up its own profits at the expense of everyone else. When you are employed, you are selling your labour to another. Just as when you shop, you look for the best price, so too do employers look for the best return on their dollars. And just as you rightfully get annoyed when an industry convinces the State to force you to pay more than is fair, so too do employers get rightfully annoyed when employees convince the State to force them to pay more than is fair. The market inevitably leads to the fair outcome given the circumstances: it does not guarantee that anyone will like it.
Or, to put it another way, there just aren't as many grooms, coachmen or buggy whip manufacturers as there used to be.
Even in those societies there were still markets--markets for social status. There is always a market; it may not be good, it may not be wise, it may not be free, but it always exists. Men ever act to maximise income and minimise expense. What income and expense are measured in may vary, but that principle is the same.
Anarchy does not preserve liberty, but then neither do democracy, oligarchy or monarchy. Liberty is what matters most: the freedom to do as one believes right, so long as that does not impinge on another's freedom to do as he believes right.
We have rights because we are men; apes do not because they are not. We think, we love, we build, we believe; they do not. No ape ever built a civilisation. I'm a Christian, so I would add that we were made in the image and likeness of God, but that's not an argument proper to a legal discussion.
As for what a right is, it is simple: a right costs others nothing. Thus one has rights to speech, to belief, to develop one's own property, to be armed, to ingest drugs, to eat food &c. One does not have a right to a job (that costs someone else money), does not have a right to steal, does not have a right to murder &c.
No--one has a right to it regardless of where one lives: it's a fundamental human right. It's not recognised by the State where you live, but that doesn't mean you don't have it. Saudi Arabia doesn't recognise the right to believe as one wishes, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
As for a right to a job, I answered that above. One have a right to try for a job, but one has no more right to make others pay for that job than a store-owner has a right to force customers to buy his goods. `Having a job' really means selling one's labour--and if one is not willing to sell at fair prices, no-one will buy.
One's property is one's property. The money earned by the sweat of one's brow belongs to no-one but oneself. Now, some taxation is necessary to pay for the maintenance of the State, to provide for the military and police forces and to otherwise ensure that no-one's rights are violated. It's a necessary evil. The theft of additional monies is an unnecessary evil.
The State does not exist to judge matters of right and wrong, but of rights. I believe that it's wrong to believe other than as I do; no doubt you believe the same. The State does not exist to
And the `young boys' killed by bears were young men taunting the prophet. Hardly over-reaction.
Now, many libertarians are all for charity, and many libertarians are Objectivists, and many demi-Objectivists are for charity. But Objectivism proper view charity is inefficient and immoral. But that's a side effect of soulless atheism: one should give to the poor purely because they need it.
There are a lot of unskilled jobs out there. That poorer countries do not have the high school and college fetish that we do means that their populations are better suited to fill those jobs. Amusingly, this means that they wille eventually acquire the same fetish:-)
After all, good and bad can't exist without the other to compare against.
Not so. Good exists; in fact, God is (cf. Moses & the burning bush...). Evil is simply the rejection of existence, of reality (hence calling Satan the Father of Lies). Good is; evil is not. If good and evil are simply opposing forces, then one is not better than the other, there is no fundamental moral difference--one can freely choose between them. If one is better than the other, then there is an external yardstick, which is itself the actual good.