I do, for one. It is necessary to appropriately punish crime. Certain crimes demand the death penalty for nearly all who commit them. I don't like it. I wish that the criminals could be let go and receive their reward in the next life. But that's now how it works.
Or maybe aren't you aware of the
flaws of the application of death penalty?
IMHO the only flaw in the application of the death penalty is that it is so rare. Nearly every murderer shoudl be executed, as should rapists and many kidnappers and spies.
The second biggest problem is that
capital punishment is widely unfair: it is the poor and the Black that are executed.
This is related to the fact that so many violent criminals are poor and black. Actually, race has nothing to do with it; so many violent criminals are poor (coincidentally, many poor people are black, and many blacks poor, but I believe that is changing, and it is irrelevant anyway). But the solution is not to execute fewer of the criminal poor, but more of the criminal rich.
lus US, is one of the very few countries in the
World to execute minors.
What's wrong with executing a 16 yr. old? They're adults in almost every way. Stupid, yes, but so are most adults. I cannot get excited about some vicious animal of a man being executed, whatever his age. It's saddening and unfortunate, but I wouldn't stop it.
Because death penalty is specially used as a more severe
sentence than life sentence.
Again, I do not see it that way. I see execution as the kindest of all alternatives, for the guilty and the innocent. It is the appropriate and reasonable punishment for certain crimes. It is punishment, but it isn't the horror of the jail cell. Give me liberty or give me death:-)
Note the number of people who risk death to escape prison. Note the number who kill themselves, evne when they are not in for life. Imagine what it must be like to never have another free moment, to only see the sun & feel the wind for an hour a day, to never walk in a park again. Where's that revolver;-P
You bring up Amnesty International's supposed 1 in 7 figure for percentage of innocents executed. First of all, I highly doubt that--IMHO AI is an untrustworthy organisation which plays fast-and-loose with the facts. It has gone from fighting for human rights and civil liberties to fighting against an unfortunate necessity. Consider the last several criminals to have been executed in this country. How many of them claimed innocence? The only one I can recall who claimed it was proven guilty not only by the evidence in court but also by DNA evidence? Most of these fellows have ceased to claim their innocence, and instead claim various technicalities. There last words almost never claim any lack of responsibility.
Innocents will die, but I believe that we do a pretty good job keeping that number down. I have to ask myself, though, which is kinder: to hold an innocent for 20-60 years, or to kill him. I know that I would rather die. Jail is a horrible place. Death, OTOH, is a nice escape into a better world (or, even to an atheist, an escape from this world's miseries).
When I refer to an individual I use `he'. When I am using the plural I use `they'. I am a student of English, Old (Saxon), Middle and Modern. The word `man' is from the Old English meaning any human being; `woman' comes from `wifman,' or `wife-man,' cog. to `weaving-man'; the OE for `male man' was `were,' found now only in `werewolf' AFAIK. Women get there own word, whereas we must share our term with all mankind. Bummer for us.
I try to follow the historic pattern of English, in which the masculine is used for the plural and the unknown. Some languages use the feminine, I am told. I understand that Arabic has no genders; it is truly neutral, yet we see how egalitarian a society that has been. I do not let the currents of grim uneducated linguistic revisionism alter my course.
But, since I'm a libertarian, if you wish to abuse the language I promise not to stop you:-)
Actually, it is quite possible to be Christian and support the death penalty. The thing that we need to bear in mind is that all killing is murder--there is no distinction. If I kill a man in my office, or on the battlefield, or on the gallows, or in a doctor's office at the request of hsi mother, I have still murdered. But sometimes this murder is the best of the possibilities. God says `Thou shalt not kill,' but He then prescribes death as the punishment for various crimes. It is better to punish a man than to let him go free. It is prob. more humane to kill him than to deprive him of liberty for 60 years.
It is better for me to kill the opponent of my nation than to let him kill me. Thus I have no problem with serving in the military. It is the lesser of evils for a woman to kill her child when its birth would kill them both.
The world is a nasty muddled place. We cannot be perfect; we will be forced to do that which is wrong, in order to avoid the greater wrong. That is part of the tragedy of life.
I agree with everything you've written, except this one bit. It's not within the Constitution for the federal gov't to do anything about abortion. Or murder, or rape or kidnapping (which is, unconstitutionally, a federal offense). The Supreme court, on the shoddiest of legal reasoning, discovered a `right' to abortion which does not and never has existed.
It is to the states and localities to outlaw abortion. Of course, it is already outlawed; I know of nowhere in this country where extralegal murder is legal. We just need to enforce those laws...
If my view prevails, I want you to comply
peacefully; if yours does, I'll do the same.
And when the majority decide to enslave a class of people, will you peacefully comply? There's an animal whose entire existence is peaceful compliance: the sheep. Libertarians speak out for, of all things, liberty.
I hate to break it to you, but when people's acts do harm others, there are a multitude of ways to remedy that before needing to call in government. But when it is necessary, government can be useful. Libertarians do not deny this. But we do demand that government justify its every move. Any time you deprive someone of his rights and liberty, you had better have a damned good explanation.
I mean, I think the most taxed income bracket is around 35-40%, (including federal and local taxes), so
everyone is able to keep "most of" their money.
It is remarkable the amount of conditioning we have, in that one can write that with no sense of irony. What gives the government the right to confiscate 40% of one's income? We fought the Revolutionary War over a tax rate of 1/2-6%; that was worth killing and dying for, yet the current ridiculous rate is accepted. Money is power--it buys things, it controls things, it influences the disposition of resources &c. The governments of this country (federal, state & local) confiscate yearly more than half the resources produced in this nation, then redistribute them (this counts all taxes, not just income--Tax Independence Day 1999 was 5 July). This is an incredible amount of power. Can we seriously argue that it is all to the good?
Because, my friend, you do not live in a vacuum. I am not talking about personal sovereignty, I am talking about personal responsibility.
True. Libertarians support responsibility; it's the only way a libertarian system can work. But I fear you do not understand what responsibility is. As an example, you might say that it is irresponsible to hold a baby over a cliff. This is not true. It is completely responsible if and only if the one who does it takes responsibility for the results. The word itself rings of `respond' and `response.' Authoritarians like to redefine the word. It is `irresponsible' to allow individuals to own guns, because they might misuse them. Wrong. It is irresponsible for individuals to use those guns and not take the consequences. Were I, in a fit of anger to kill a man, I would like to think I would plead guilty and accept the noose
The rights, privileges and opportunities you have were not randomly
granted by God on you.
Actually, that's exactly what a right is. Man has a fundamental right to free speech, to bear arms, to be secure in his property from unwarranted invasions and seizures, to believe in his god &c. The fact that no government recognises those rights does not mean they do not exist. Privileges are another matter entirely. Privileges are not fundamental to man's existence.
I
believe it is too arrogant to think one is entirely an island with no duty to country or countryman.
I agree. I do have a duty to my country and to my fellow-man. BUt who are you to force me to do it? If we ever have a war--a real war--I will fight in it if they'll have me (I've bad eyes). But I will not fight an unjust war. And I cannot support conscription. Slave-soldiers cannot defend freedom.
Actually, it is my opinion that the Next Big Thing in libertarian thought will be the demonstration that there is no fundamental difference between a government and a corporation. But have members and owners who attempt to do one thing or another. Generally corporations have competitors, but when they are monopolies they enforce their monopolies as well as governments (with their borders and immigration laws) do. The old argument against kings and aristocrats was that they stripped us of our rights. The current argument against democracies is that they strip minorities of their rights. The argument against corporations is that they strip customers and employees of their rights.
Seriously, if we call libertarianism the belief in freedom from external control, then self-interested libertarians will exploit common
property (air, water, etc.), free from controlling interests of others.
Your argument is true if and only if that premise is granted. Unfortunately, I cannot grant that. Anarchy is freedom from external control--liberty taken to its logical end. Libertarianism, OTOH, is a believe in and approval of liberty which recognises the need for some form of control. Anarchism is utopian, believeing that it will all work without control; libertarianism is realistic, knowing that man is a fallen creature and will tend to get the better of his fellows. Interesting, authoritarianism is also utopian; it believes that some group--minority or majority--is wise enough to exercise paternal power over another group.
A libertarian realises that we live in an imperfect world. Here is a precis of libertarian beliefs as I see them:
Liberty is a good thing
Every law strips us of liberty
Without law & punishment, liberty can be misused
By (3), we need laws
By (1) and (2), laws are bad
By (4) and (5), we're screwed
Thus the problem becomes one of where to draw the line. Intelligent people differ on these points. My own taste is for laws that punish but do not prevent. Thus I support the right to keep and bear arms, drug legalisation and oppose speed limits, but support the death penalty and a tough-on-crime attitude. I believe that this outlook is quintessentially libertarian because anyone is allowed to do whatever he wishes until he causes harm, in which instance he is nailed to the wall.
The tragedy of the commons is related to natural monopolies such as water and power systems. This is, again, one of the few areas that government comes in handy. Others are foreign affairs, military affairs, policing and the judicial system.
Government is bad. Lack of government is worse. Too much government is even worse. That's the humour of the world we live in.
To say that `Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy' is libertarian misses the point of libertarianism entirely, as does considering it a selfish philosophy. The whole point of libertarianism is not that I should be selfish but that I should not forceyou to be unselfish. It's concerned with liberty, of all things, and considers forcing someone to do what is against his will to be depriving him of his liberty. Pretty dashed hard to argue with that.
Libertarians support charities and charity in general. It's one of the things which supports their point that people need not be forced to be kind. Libertarianism is not `P*ss off and die'; rather, it is `Don't steal from me; ask nicely.'
There really are no compelling arguments against libertarianism that I''ve seen. Every argument against it boils down to paternalism and authoritarianism. It's damned difficult to say that sort of thing with a straight face--what right do I have to determine how other people live? I may disagree vehemently with them, but I am no greater than they. That's the humility of libertarianism which the authoritarians--right and left--will never have. They want to control; the libertarian wants to live.
Well, the CDC numbers are suspect (unfortunately) due to its political leanings. It has declared such things as alcohol `diseases' as well as guns. As one AC stated, 19 yr. old gang members killed due to the risks of that particular vocation are listed as `killed by friend or family member' in the CDC statistics. The CDC has done a lot of good work, but it can get out of hand.
As an example, it produced numbers showing that gonorrhea cases went down when liquor taxes went up, and up when taxes went down. It has thus decided to push for higher liquor taxes, enver mind the fact that a) people should be free to hurt themselves however they choose and b) statistical correlation is not proof of causation. Twits, IMHO. Just another example of their antics, not that it necessarily discredits this particular set of statistics. But one always tries to consider the source...
When I graduated I received several graduation cards in opened envelopes. The enclosures had been, as one might put it, looted. Not much one can do, eh? And I never did get a receipt from the Disabled Veterans What-have-you for the $20 cash I sent them--I wonder if they ever saw it.
For all that, the USPS is actually an excellent carrier. For one of the lowest rates in the world, we can send a physical document anywhere in the country and be pretty certain that it will arrive. They charge the same rate no matter where it goes and how difficult it is to get there. They are not, AFAIK, funded by taxes anymore. They do a pretty good job.
One of my few complaints is that they own all postboxes. No matter how much one paid for it--even if one made it oneself--it is the property of the Postal Service.
Interesting fact: legally, it is the postmaster of a town who determines the name. Or that is, at least, the rumour which is popular. I always sort of liked the idea myself.
Agreed that it's very tragic. OTOH, we're free to kill ourselves, so I cannot get very excited about suicides due to guns. At least they can be fairly painless. Of course, a lot of people end up botching the job--fellow I went to college with had a high school classmate shoot his lower jaw off and bleed to death rather slowly.
I don't know about that 17,500 figure being solely homicides. Gun-control advocates have a habit of playing fast and loose with facts--the recent 'child killed every day' statistic counted everyone from 0 to 19(!) as a child. Turns out that when 15-19 are dropped from that, the number is nearly nil.
What I would really like is to know what proportion of those killed are `innocent.' Obviously guns are a favourite tool of criminals, and obviously they spend a lot of time killing each other. It's hard for me to get excited over one mafioso killing another or a drug deal going sour; I get very disturbed when some kid gets his head blown out for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I know that I'd gladly take the 2x speed hit on my security-critical apps (mail daemon, web server, ssh, etc.) to know that they cannot have this kind of bug in them, because they were written in a language like ML, Eiffel, Haskell, or even Java.
You might be willing to take that hit, at least in theory, but it is rather doubtful that most people would. If I said to a manager that simply by switching languages we could double the speed of our product, at the expense of needing to code more carefully, he would leap at the chance. And I would back him up. I recall a chart in a course at school which plotted four areas. I don't recall what they all were, but I do remember that we are currently at the point where speed in all its incarnations is what matters: time-to-market, execution speed, response time . When the market begins to tighten, then things will necessarily change. There may even come a time where computers are so fast that they can do all the silly stuff like bounds checking properly with no noticeable slowdown. I rather doubt it; as processing power increases, so too will demand for that power.
What we need are better-trained programmers. It's not very hard to ensure that arrays are the appropriate size, to check the length of input strings and to make sure that subscripts are within range. This can all be done quite easily in C, and still be much faster than one of the 'lame' languages (I use the term lame to mean a language without the ability to do low-level twiddling, not as a term of derision).
I know that I'm always grep(1)ing through my bookcase, trying to locate(1L) my car keys and cat(1)ing my mail together, then redirecting the solicitations from election candidates to/dev/null...
But since Oz banned most firearms the murder rate has gone up. The point is that in the same cultural area gun ownership translates to reduced crime. But different cultural areas have different amounts of crime, which is why Japan--with almost no legal guns--has a very low crime rate, but England--with almost no legal guns--has a highish crime rate, while the US--with many legal guns--has a high crime rate but Switzerland--with many legal guns--has a low crime rate.
It has been shown in the US that cities which implement gun control see rising crime rates, while those that relax gun restrictions see falling crime rates. Concealed carry laws drop crime quite spectacularly, while gun bans tend to raise it just as spectacularly.
I know of no instance where gun bans have resulted in a drop in crime, although I will not deny the possibility outright.
Bear in mind that something like 40-60% of US gun deaths are suicides, not assaults. Also bear in mind that studies have shown that resisting an attacker with a gun is more effective at reducing or eliminating injury than complying with the attacker's demands, but resisting in any other fashion is less effective than complying.
That, and the right to bear weapons has been historically (in Europe, at least) one of the primary distinctions between the slave and the freeman. Not that gun control advocates want to enslave people. I think that most of them are genuinely concerned about crime and that sort of thing; they are simply mistaken about the means to address these problems. But the fact remains that a man who cannot defend himself has no freedom; he is in the position of the child who must rely on his parents for protection. I think most of us outgrew that phase of our lives a long time ago.
The interconnexion might actually be pretty cool. Just imagine your ISP's routers connected to 12 dial-ups to other of these `islands.' Slow as hell, granted, but neat as hell as well. Actually, you only need 21 56Kbps connexions to match one T1 (1.1Mps, right?), so if it were set up correctly and luck held it might actually be doable.
Agreed. If we can set up a system using SSL and strong authentication, we could then work on distributing songs for a pittance which would garner the artists more money. Imagine a system in which you can download a song for, say, 25 or 50d. That's cheap, but is prob. much more than the artist gets from a CD sale. We can create such a protocol; hell, a few mods to the Napster protocol would prob be all that is necessary.
It will always be possible to trade files for free. Ignore that. Most people would be willing to pay a quarter or a half dollar for a high-quality legitimate MP3. And if the interface is sufficiently intelligent, then it will succeed.
I foresee a tool much like Napster. A central server stores a database of the checksums of all known MP3s along with the IDs of the artists to pay, the unique ID of the work and how much said MP3 costs. A large DB, but not impossible to assemble. Also, I imagine that there would be fewer copies of an individual song under this system, as fewer people would be ripping their own. If a user has an unregistered MP3, then it cannot be traded. He can, however, fill out a form specifying which artist and which song it is. The artist can then approve its sale and set a price, and then it is checked (to make sure than an artist does not claim another's work as his own) by an empoyee of the central org.
Whenever a user begins to download a filehe does not currently own, he initiates the transaction by paying for that MP3. And entry is made in a database under his UID stating that he now has download rights to this MP3, and all other MP3s of equal or lesser bitrate or download time (in the future, price may be based on either of these). The central server signs the user's request and sends the signature back to the user, who can then use this signature to download directly from any client hosting the song. This signature can be stored on the user's personal computer; it's a receipt. Perhaps there is no central record of purchases; more private, but if one's HD fails that's that.
Of course there would need to be some work to make sure that clients do not connect to find out who has what, then use another method (say FTP) to dl what they're looking for. Perhaps foreign IPs are unknown to the clients. The client would request a file from the server, sending along his receipt. The server would verify the receipt's validity and then return a foreign machine's IP address so a direct connection could be made. It'd almost be like CPAN. There's little which would prevent a dishonest client from then attempting to FTP to the remote machine, but this is a start at least.
The bottom line is that this is doable. There will always be piracy, but if we make it easy and cheap enough to be honest, most people will be so. I'd easily pay fifty cents for Stranglehold; I'll never pay $16 for it.
Re:My $0.02 from my talks with pals who work at MS
on
The Myth Of The Borg
·
· Score: 2
Of course, the freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose. The government's case has been that Microsoft has harmed other companies, consumers and the economy due to its monopoly status. Remember that it is not illegal to have a monopoly; it is illegal to use that monopoly in a manner which genertes results in other than what a competitive free market would have generated.
What some need to realise is that corporations can be just as bad as government. Monopolies can be just as bad as government; after all, what is a government but a monopoly on the use of force? The free market cannot exist in conditions of a monopoly. A free market requires many competing companies; if this is not the case, then a market economy will become inefficient. Since a market economy is the most efficient possible, it is thus our responsibility to preserve it. Thus, we break up monopoolies when they misbehave (not before).
The government's case has been that Microsoft has misbehaved. Opinions may differ, of course. But a court of law has so found, and is backed up by the opinion of the vast majority of the industry, and by those pundits who demonstrate an understanding of the subject, and by such jurists as Judge Robert Bork. I know where I'm placing my bets...
One, using Gecko to render a UI makes it platform-independent, the exact opposite of making it "X Window-centric" as you say.
Ah, the great divide between us programmers and normal people turns up once again... It makes the code platform-independent. Unfortunately, a side effect of their method is to make the user experience one which only someone familiar with the X Window System could enjoy--hence the phrase used by the original poster that the experience is `X Windows-centric.'
Do not belittle the importance of widget consistency. A huge portion of taste is consistentcy and style. Few people would buy a black car with a purple interior--instead, they choose an interior which complements the exterior. Few people buy stereo components some of which are tech in brushed steel and matte black, some of which are finely polished mahogany and others of which neon orange plastic.
In re. Unix consistency, how can you say with a straight face the gtk looks like Qt looks like Motif looks like Xaw? They share many of the basic concepts, but they are about as consistent with each other as the components of my fanciful stereo system.
We've trained ourselves to deal with our inconsistent interface. We're the sort of people who are willing to put up with that sort of aesthetic suffering in order to use a more elegant OS. The hoi polloi are willing to use an ugly OS in return for an elegant UI (MacOS) or an ugly OS in return for a semi-decent UI (Windows).
We need to provide a first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing user experience on top of our first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing OS.
AOL did the same pretty well, at the cost of absolutely no compatibility with anything not-M$...
You do realise that AOL started out Mac-only and remains compatible with Macs, thus supporting something non-MS? There's prob. no real reason that the AOL software could not be ported over to Linux--after all, they run it on two platforms now; if it's been written properly a third should be relatively easy (famous last words...).
I think user interfaces will get dumber and dumber from now on--most mac/windows users can spend a lot of their time without a single keypress.
Non sequitur. I believe that it's considered a benefit that things can be done with the mouse, as long as it is faster than it would be with some other input method. The problem is when, due the extreme complexity of certain programmes (M$ Office, do you hear my cry?) it can take much longer to do something--using any input method--than in a well-designed programme.
As a Mac and Linux user for years, I fail to see how the Mac interface is dumbed-down. It's no more dumb than any other appliance; I don't have to adjust DIP switches on my toaster or resolve attachment conflicts on my mixer. Nor do I have to type anything on my stereo--I just push the purty buttons and it works. For some reason this is desired in some appliance and decried in others such as computers.
The goal of a good interface is to have layers of complexity. The top-level interface should be very simple, but it can be peeled away and a more complex interface revealed, which can be further rolled back for even more expressive power in return for a hefty learning curve. Something like what Apple is doing with Mac OS X could be the right track--a nice consumer GUI over top of a Unix shell, over top of a nifty kernel.
Nothing's wrong with the public demanding anything; that is their right. But when they demand something for the wrong reasons, it makes one wish to apply a corrective. I am free to ask for anything; you are free to tell me that I am wrong in what I ask for. Freesdom for us both.
The public is, for the most part, an unruly mob with ill-formed opinions. I, OTOH, am an unruly individual with ill-formed opinions. Oh, never mind...
You ever look at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States? Virginia, named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen; the Carolinas, named after King Charles; Georgia, named after King George; Pennsylvania, named after William Penn; Maryland, named after Mary by the Calverts, a Catholic family. Naming things after sponsors has been going on for a long time. The only difference is that they did a better job of it then--which sounds better: Georgia or King George's Land(tm)(r)(c)(spqr)?
Slashdot Mirror
Who said it's an unfortunate necessity?
I do, for one. It is necessary to appropriately punish crime. Certain crimes demand the death penalty for nearly all who commit them. I don't like it. I wish that the criminals could be let go and receive their reward in the next life. But that's now how it works.
Or maybe aren't you aware of the flaws of the application of death penalty?
IMHO the only flaw in the application of the death penalty is that it is so rare. Nearly every murderer shoudl be executed, as should rapists and many kidnappers and spies.
The second biggest problem is that capital punishment is widely unfair: it is the poor and the Black that are executed. This is related to the fact that so many violent criminals are poor and black. Actually, race has nothing to do with it; so many violent criminals are poor (coincidentally, many poor people are black, and many blacks poor, but I believe that is changing, and it is irrelevant anyway). But the solution is not to execute fewer of the criminal poor, but more of the criminal rich.
lus US, is one of the very few countries in the World to execute minors.
What's wrong with executing a 16 yr. old? They're adults in almost every way. Stupid, yes, but so are most adults. I cannot get excited about some vicious animal of a man being executed, whatever his age. It's saddening and unfortunate, but I wouldn't stop it.
Because death penalty is specially used as a more severe sentence than life sentence.
Again, I do not see it that way. I see execution as the kindest of all alternatives, for the guilty and the innocent. It is the appropriate and reasonable punishment for certain crimes. It is punishment, but it isn't the horror of the jail cell. Give me liberty or give me death:-)
Note the number of people who risk death to escape prison. Note the number who kill themselves, evne when they are not in for life. Imagine what it must be like to never have another free moment, to only see the sun & feel the wind for an hour a day, to never walk in a park again. Where's that revolver;-P
Innocents will die, but I believe that we do a pretty good job keeping that number down. I have to ask myself, though, which is kinder: to hold an innocent for 20-60 years, or to kill him. I know that I would rather die. Jail is a horrible place. Death, OTOH, is a nice escape into a better world (or, even to an atheist, an escape from this world's miseries).
I try to follow the historic pattern of English, in which the masculine is used for the plural and the unknown. Some languages use the feminine, I am told. I understand that Arabic has no genders; it is truly neutral, yet we see how egalitarian a society that has been. I do not let the currents of grim uneducated linguistic revisionism alter my course.
But, since I'm a libertarian, if you wish to abuse the language I promise not to stop you:-)
It is better for me to kill the opponent of my nation than to let him kill me. Thus I have no problem with serving in the military. It is the lesser of evils for a woman to kill her child when its birth would kill them both.
The world is a nasty muddled place. We cannot be perfect; we will be forced to do that which is wrong, in order to avoid the greater wrong. That is part of the tragedy of life.
It is to the states and localities to outlaw abortion. Of course, it is already outlawed; I know of nowhere in this country where extralegal murder is legal. We just need to enforce those laws...
If my view prevails, I want you to comply peacefully; if yours does, I'll do the same.
And when the majority decide to enslave a class of people, will you peacefully comply? There's an animal whose entire existence is peaceful compliance: the sheep. Libertarians speak out for, of all things, liberty.
I hate to break it to you, but when people's acts do harm others, there are a multitude of ways to remedy that before needing to call in government. But when it is necessary, government can be useful. Libertarians do not deny this. But we do demand that government justify its every move. Any time you deprive someone of his rights and liberty, you had better have a damned good explanation.
I mean, I think the most taxed income bracket is around 35-40%, (including federal and local taxes), so everyone is able to keep "most of" their money.
It is remarkable the amount of conditioning we have, in that one can write that with no sense of irony. What gives the government the right to confiscate 40% of one's income? We fought the Revolutionary War over a tax rate of 1/2-6%; that was worth killing and dying for, yet the current ridiculous rate is accepted. Money is power--it buys things, it controls things, it influences the disposition of resources &c. The governments of this country (federal, state & local) confiscate yearly more than half the resources produced in this nation, then redistribute them (this counts all taxes, not just income--Tax Independence Day 1999 was 5 July). This is an incredible amount of power. Can we seriously argue that it is all to the good?
Because, my friend, you do not live in a vacuum. I am not talking about personal sovereignty, I am talking about personal responsibility.
True. Libertarians support responsibility; it's the only way a libertarian system can work. But I fear you do not understand what responsibility is. As an example, you might say that it is irresponsible to hold a baby over a cliff. This is not true. It is completely responsible if and only if the one who does it takes responsibility for the results. The word itself rings of `respond' and `response.' Authoritarians like to redefine the word. It is `irresponsible' to allow individuals to own guns, because they might misuse them. Wrong. It is irresponsible for individuals to use those guns and not take the consequences. Were I, in a fit of anger to kill a man, I would like to think I would plead guilty and accept the noose
The rights, privileges and opportunities you have were not randomly granted by God on you.
Actually, that's exactly what a right is. Man has a fundamental right to free speech, to bear arms, to be secure in his property from unwarranted invasions and seizures, to believe in his god &c. The fact that no government recognises those rights does not mean they do not exist. Privileges are another matter entirely. Privileges are not fundamental to man's existence.
I believe it is too arrogant to think one is entirely an island with no duty to country or countryman.
I agree. I do have a duty to my country and to my fellow-man. BUt who are you to force me to do it? If we ever have a war--a real war--I will fight in it if they'll have me (I've bad eyes). But I will not fight an unjust war. And I cannot support conscription. Slave-soldiers cannot defend freedom.
Actually, it is my opinion that the Next Big Thing in libertarian thought will be the demonstration that there is no fundamental difference between a government and a corporation. But have members and owners who attempt to do one thing or another. Generally corporations have competitors, but when they are monopolies they enforce their monopolies as well as governments (with their borders and immigration laws) do. The old argument against kings and aristocrats was that they stripped us of our rights. The current argument against democracies is that they strip minorities of their rights. The argument against corporations is that they strip customers and employees of their rights.
Seriously, if we call libertarianism the belief in freedom from external control, then self-interested libertarians will exploit common property (air, water, etc.), free from controlling interests of others.
Your argument is true if and only if that premise is granted. Unfortunately, I cannot grant that. Anarchy is freedom from external control--liberty taken to its logical end. Libertarianism, OTOH, is a believe in and approval of liberty which recognises the need for some form of control. Anarchism is utopian, believeing that it will all work without control; libertarianism is realistic, knowing that man is a fallen creature and will tend to get the better of his fellows. Interesting, authoritarianism is also utopian; it believes that some group--minority or majority--is wise enough to exercise paternal power over another group.
A libertarian realises that we live in an imperfect world. Here is a precis of libertarian beliefs as I see them:
Thus the problem becomes one of where to draw the line. Intelligent people differ on these points. My own taste is for laws that punish but do not prevent. Thus I support the right to keep and bear arms, drug legalisation and oppose speed limits, but support the death penalty and a tough-on-crime attitude. I believe that this outlook is quintessentially libertarian because anyone is allowed to do whatever he wishes until he causes harm, in which instance he is nailed to the wall.
The tragedy of the commons is related to natural monopolies such as water and power systems. This is, again, one of the few areas that government comes in handy. Others are foreign affairs, military affairs, policing and the judicial system.
Government is bad. Lack of government is worse. Too much government is even worse. That's the humour of the world we live in.
Libertarians support charities and charity in general. It's one of the things which supports their point that people need not be forced to be kind. Libertarianism is not `P*ss off and die'; rather, it is `Don't steal from me; ask nicely.'
There really are no compelling arguments against libertarianism that I''ve seen. Every argument against it boils down to paternalism and authoritarianism. It's damned difficult to say that sort of thing with a straight face--what right do I have to determine how other people live? I may disagree vehemently with them, but I am no greater than they. That's the humility of libertarianism which the authoritarians--right and left--will never have. They want to control; the libertarian wants to live.
As an example, it produced numbers showing that gonorrhea cases went down when liquor taxes went up, and up when taxes went down. It has thus decided to push for higher liquor taxes, enver mind the fact that a) people should be free to hurt themselves however they choose and b) statistical correlation is not proof of causation. Twits, IMHO. Just another example of their antics, not that it necessarily discredits this particular set of statistics. But one always tries to consider the source...
For all that, the USPS is actually an excellent carrier. For one of the lowest rates in the world, we can send a physical document anywhere in the country and be pretty certain that it will arrive. They charge the same rate no matter where it goes and how difficult it is to get there. They are not, AFAIK, funded by taxes anymore. They do a pretty good job.
One of my few complaints is that they own all postboxes. No matter how much one paid for it--even if one made it oneself--it is the property of the Postal Service.
Interesting fact: legally, it is the postmaster of a town who determines the name. Or that is, at least, the rumour which is popular. I always sort of liked the idea myself.
I don't know about that 17,500 figure being solely homicides. Gun-control advocates have a habit of playing fast and loose with facts--the recent 'child killed every day' statistic counted everyone from 0 to 19(!) as a child. Turns out that when 15-19 are dropped from that, the number is nearly nil.
What I would really like is to know what proportion of those killed are `innocent.' Obviously guns are a favourite tool of criminals, and obviously they spend a lot of time killing each other. It's hard for me to get excited over one mafioso killing another or a drug deal going sour; I get very disturbed when some kid gets his head blown out for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You might be willing to take that hit, at least in theory, but it is rather doubtful that most people would. If I said to a manager that simply by switching languages we could double the speed of our product, at the expense of needing to code more carefully, he would leap at the chance. And I would back him up. I recall a chart in a course at school which plotted four areas. I don't recall what they all were, but I do remember that we are currently at the point where speed in all its incarnations is what matters: time-to-market, execution speed, response time . When the market begins to tighten, then things will necessarily change. There may even come a time where computers are so fast that they can do all the silly stuff like bounds checking properly with no noticeable slowdown. I rather doubt it; as processing power increases, so too will demand for that power.
What we need are better-trained programmers. It's not very hard to ensure that arrays are the appropriate size, to check the length of input strings and to make sure that subscripts are within range. This can all be done quite easily in C, and still be much faster than one of the 'lame' languages (I use the term lame to mean a language without the ability to do low-level twiddling, not as a term of derision).
I know that I'm always grep(1)ing through my bookcase, trying to locate(1L) my car keys and cat(1)ing my mail together, then redirecting the solicitations from election candidates to /dev/null...
It has been shown in the US that cities which implement gun control see rising crime rates, while those that relax gun restrictions see falling crime rates. Concealed carry laws drop crime quite spectacularly, while gun bans tend to raise it just as spectacularly.
I know of no instance where gun bans have resulted in a drop in crime, although I will not deny the possibility outright.
Bear in mind that something like 40-60% of US gun deaths are suicides, not assaults. Also bear in mind that studies have shown that resisting an attacker with a gun is more effective at reducing or eliminating injury than complying with the attacker's demands, but resisting in any other fashion is less effective than complying.
That, and the right to bear weapons has been historically (in Europe, at least) one of the primary distinctions between the slave and the freeman. Not that gun control advocates want to enslave people. I think that most of them are genuinely concerned about crime and that sort of thing; they are simply mistaken about the means to address these problems. But the fact remains that a man who cannot defend himself has no freedom; he is in the position of the child who must rely on his parents for protection. I think most of us outgrew that phase of our lives a long time ago.
The interconnexion might actually be pretty cool. Just imagine your ISP's routers connected to 12 dial-ups to other of these `islands.' Slow as hell, granted, but neat as hell as well. Actually, you only need 21 56Kbps connexions to match one T1 (1.1Mps, right?), so if it were set up correctly and luck held it might actually be doable.
It will always be possible to trade files for free. Ignore that. Most people would be willing to pay a quarter or a half dollar for a high-quality legitimate MP3. And if the interface is sufficiently intelligent, then it will succeed.
I foresee a tool much like Napster. A central server stores a database of the checksums of all known MP3s along with the IDs of the artists to pay, the unique ID of the work and how much said MP3 costs. A large DB, but not impossible to assemble. Also, I imagine that there would be fewer copies of an individual song under this system, as fewer people would be ripping their own. If a user has an unregistered MP3, then it cannot be traded. He can, however, fill out a form specifying which artist and which song it is. The artist can then approve its sale and set a price, and then it is checked (to make sure than an artist does not claim another's work as his own) by an empoyee of the central org.
Whenever a user begins to download a filehe does not currently own, he initiates the transaction by paying for that MP3. And entry is made in a database under his UID stating that he now has download rights to this MP3, and all other MP3s of equal or lesser bitrate or download time (in the future, price may be based on either of these). The central server signs the user's request and sends the signature back to the user, who can then use this signature to download directly from any client hosting the song. This signature can be stored on the user's personal computer; it's a receipt. Perhaps there is no central record of purchases; more private, but if one's HD fails that's that.
Of course there would need to be some work to make sure that clients do not connect to find out who has what, then use another method (say FTP) to dl what they're looking for. Perhaps foreign IPs are unknown to the clients. The client would request a file from the server, sending along his receipt. The server would verify the receipt's validity and then return a foreign machine's IP address so a direct connection could be made. It'd almost be like CPAN. There's little which would prevent a dishonest client from then attempting to FTP to the remote machine, but this is a start at least.
The bottom line is that this is doable. There will always be piracy, but if we make it easy and cheap enough to be honest, most people will be so. I'd easily pay fifty cents for Stranglehold; I'll never pay $16 for it.
What some need to realise is that corporations can be just as bad as government. Monopolies can be just as bad as government; after all, what is a government but a monopoly on the use of force? The free market cannot exist in conditions of a monopoly. A free market requires many competing companies; if this is not the case, then a market economy will become inefficient. Since a market economy is the most efficient possible, it is thus our responsibility to preserve it. Thus, we break up monopoolies when they misbehave (not before).
The government's case has been that Microsoft has misbehaved. Opinions may differ, of course. But a court of law has so found, and is backed up by the opinion of the vast majority of the industry, and by those pundits who demonstrate an understanding of the subject, and by such jurists as Judge Robert Bork. I know where I'm placing my bets...
One, using Gecko to render a UI makes it platform-independent, the exact opposite of making it "X Window-centric" as you say.
Ah, the great divide between us programmers and normal people turns up once again... It makes the code platform-independent. Unfortunately, a side effect of their method is to make the user experience one which only someone familiar with the X Window System could enjoy--hence the phrase used by the original poster that the experience is `X Windows-centric.'
Do not belittle the importance of widget consistency. A huge portion of taste is consistentcy and style. Few people would buy a black car with a purple interior--instead, they choose an interior which complements the exterior. Few people buy stereo components some of which are tech in brushed steel and matte black, some of which are finely polished mahogany and others of which neon orange plastic.
In re. Unix consistency, how can you say with a straight face the gtk looks like Qt looks like Motif looks like Xaw? They share many of the basic concepts, but they are about as consistent with each other as the components of my fanciful stereo system.
We've trained ourselves to deal with our inconsistent interface. We're the sort of people who are willing to put up with that sort of aesthetic suffering in order to use a more elegant OS. The hoi polloi are willing to use an ugly OS in return for an elegant UI (MacOS) or an ugly OS in return for a semi-decent UI (Windows).
We need to provide a first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing user experience on top of our first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing OS.
Brilliant! These ideas really need to be tried out. Now where did I leave the source for gmc...
AOL did the same pretty well, at the cost of absolutely no compatibility with anything not-M$...
You do realise that AOL started out Mac-only and remains compatible with Macs, thus supporting something non-MS? There's prob. no real reason that the AOL software could not be ported over to Linux--after all, they run it on two platforms now; if it's been written properly a third should be relatively easy (famous last words...).
I think user interfaces will get dumber and dumber from now on--most mac/windows users can spend a lot of their time without a single keypress.
Non sequitur. I believe that it's considered a benefit that things can be done with the mouse, as long as it is faster than it would be with some other input method. The problem is when, due the extreme complexity of certain programmes (M$ Office, do you hear my cry?) it can take much longer to do something--using any input method--than in a well-designed programme.
As a Mac and Linux user for years, I fail to see how the Mac interface is dumbed-down. It's no more dumb than any other appliance; I don't have to adjust DIP switches on my toaster or resolve attachment conflicts on my mixer. Nor do I have to type anything on my stereo--I just push the purty buttons and it works. For some reason this is desired in some appliance and decried in others such as computers.
The goal of a good interface is to have layers of complexity. The top-level interface should be very simple, but it can be peeled away and a more complex interface revealed, which can be further rolled back for even more expressive power in return for a hefty learning curve. Something like what Apple is doing with Mac OS X could be the right track--a nice consumer GUI over top of a Unix shell, over top of a nifty kernel.
Nothing's wrong with the public demanding anything; that is their right. But when they demand something for the wrong reasons, it makes one wish to apply a corrective. I am free to ask for anything; you are free to tell me that I am wrong in what I ask for. Freesdom for us both.
The public is, for the most part, an unruly mob with ill-formed opinions. I, OTOH, am an unruly individual with ill-formed opinions. Oh, never mind...
:-)
You ever look at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States? Virginia, named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen; the Carolinas, named after King Charles; Georgia, named after King George; Pennsylvania, named after William Penn; Maryland, named after Mary by the Calverts, a Catholic family. Naming things after sponsors has been going on for a long time. The only difference is that they did a better job of it then--which sounds better: Georgia or King George's Land(tm)(r)(c)(spqr)?