You misunderstand. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox
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This is not a news site. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox. The reason slashdot is interesting is that most of the time, most of what he considers interesting, *I* consider interesting. That doesn't mean that he has to publish everything that I might consider interesting, or even publish everything that he has an interest in. -russ
Sheesh! Don't you know how to write a conspiracy theory?? The Jewish bankers are *purposely* depressing the stock price so the Christians will sell off. Monday they start buying again, and the stupid Christians say "OHMYGOD, why did I sell".
Now *that's* a proper conspiracy theory. Oh, no, wait, you have to throw something in about CmdrTaco's hidden Jewish/Armenian ancestry, and how he hates the Turks. Oh, and he has a mole in the center of his back, which is a mark of his genetic manipulation. All of HIS people have the same mole. Irrelevent details improve the plausibility -- nobody would make these things up, y'see. -russ
So? Insert "prominent vendor of proprietary software." If you like Microsoft, insert Adobe, or Apple. Microsoft is an easy target because they're so big.
But if you limit yourself to not saying why the current regime sucks, you have a hard time explaining why you don't suck. -russ
No, because his point remains true: that if you cannot audit the source, the executables are less trustworthy. Perhaps the incident that prompted his observation is a non-incident. So what? His point is valid, and worth making, again and again (that's how you sell ideas, by the way, by repeating them). -russ
Tell me: if someone had made the same claim (hidden backdoor) about Apache, would you have been as quick to believe it? The fundamental answer (which is the point Eric was making) is "No." -russ
First of all, corn-based gasoline is only cheaper because corn is subsidized. Second of all, where do you think the fertilizer for all that corn comes from? Um-hum, fossil fuels.
Third, well, as a secondary effect, you *do* endorse and support Bill Gates. You are not required to go to college, and you can refuse to do your assignments in MS Access and Visual Basic. You could use gnumeric and Python. Obviously this would be difficult. Nobody ever said that freedom was free. -russ
The solution is to allow parents to select the best educational system for their children. Nobody knows better than the parent how the child learns best.
This is completely independent of who pays for it. Personally, I think that school will be more valued if the family is seen to give up something. Of course, they're giving up something now -- school taxes, but there is no choice. People behave differently when they choose something, even if the choice they make is the same thing they would be forced to do under a different system.
But even if you want to force people to pay for education, the parent should still be able to choose. Freedom makes all the difference in the source code, and it makes all the difference in the education. -russ
No, it uses the Ericsson Mobitex design. Slow as molasses (9600 bps), and you pay by the packet, but it's got decent coverage in the US, thanks to the billions sunk into the network by RAM Mobile Data. Other nations have similar networks, e.g. Canada, and I presume Sweden. By the way, Sweden is spelled Sweden, not Sweeden. Not that you mis-spelled it, but sheesh. -russ p.s. Clarkson's hockey team tanked this season. Worst I've ever seen. Somebody stole the team and replaced them with space aliens from a universe where ice doesn't freeze.
The intellectual model being public schooling is broken. It's presumption is that you can take ALL the children born within one year of each other in a given geographic region, and teach them the same subject at the same time at the same rate.
Won't work. Can't work. Why bother tweaking it with computers? No amount of patching can remove the bugs from badly designed code. No amount of tweaking (or school reform) can fix our system of public education. Our nation's children would be better off if we closed the schools tomorrow. -russ
If the market demands something, someone will try to supply it. Doesn't matter if the thing is legal or not. All you can hope to accomplish by making something illegal is to take the profit out of it. This requires some price sensitivity on the part of the buyer.
Given that what Pinkerton is selling isn't illegal, you have to figure out some other way to stop them. Because, as they point out, if you succeed in stopping Pinkerton's, someone else will try to meet the market demand. No way is Pinkerton's going to walk away from that market demand. -russ p.s. You, too, need to learn some economics. I can recommend some good books if you want.
You presume that the purpose of the government is to protect the powerless from the predations of the powerful. How does this happen? What mechanism is there to create political power from nothing?
What you need to acknowledge is that the powerless are powerless in BOTH the market and the government. All that the government can do is make the situation worse by using force. -russ p.s. he means David D. Friedman.
Problem: the government caused the great depression by deflating the currency. Oops. So much for the idea of a strong central government. go read the anti-federalist papers. Their predictions have come true.
Problem: the conditions that led to the labor movement were basically a vulnerability of capital to extortion. The power of labor has declined in recent years as capital has become more mobile. -russ
Notice that Pinkerton's is creating WAVE because they accepted a contract from a socialist organization: the North Carolina public school system.
Yes, corporations have a lot of power. However, that power is delegated by individuals, who are free to take BACK that power. Just stop buying from that corporation. Try taking back your vote. Voted for Clinton? Oops. Try not paying your school taxes. Oops.
Yes, you're right, it puts materials and money above humans. That is the primary effect. However, the secondary effect is that in order to get these materials and money, capitalists must give people something they want *even more* than the materials and money.
The only way a capitalist can avoid creating more than they destroy is to use force. The only legitimate use of force in America is the government. Get my drift? If you want protection from capitalist abuse, keep them the hell away from government, and vice-versa. -russ
No, I'm sure they didn't laugh at him. How could you laugh at such misdirected sincerity? I'm sure they just shook their heads sadly at him. But really, they would have done much better *for* Jon to say "Yer talkin' ta da wrong people, fella. Don't blame us -- we're only sellin' what people wanna buy." -russ
So abuse it, silly. The more people who abuse WAVE, the less it can be used against anyone. Report everyone. Remember the lesson of the Danish Jews? Everyone wore the Star of David, even the King of Denmark. -russ
You should have been talking to the customers of WAVE, to persuade them not to buy. As Pinkerton rightly pointed out, if you persuaded them not to do it, someone else would. It's the same reason why the war on drugs can't work: because jailing a drug dealer just creates a job opening. -russ p.s. too bad about wasting your time. You should study economics.
No, you've built yourself a reputation as a karma whore. It's not that "gender/age/social biases present in society" have carried over. It's that one's reputation precedes one.
In any case, spam is not a consequence of global capitalism. It's a consequence of smtp being a non-authenticated protocol. It's a consequence of having no mechanism for asking payment for email from people you don't know. If I wasn't in business, I'd have a very effective spam filter. I choose not to use this filter because I don't want to put any barrier between me and my customers.
But if you're *really* tired of spam, and you don't mind a solution which has a cost, talk to me. -russ
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a news site. This is CmdrTaco's sandbox. The reason slashdot is interesting is that most of the time, most of what he considers interesting, *I* consider interesting. That doesn't mean that he has to publish everything that I might consider interesting, or even publish everything that he has an interest in.
-russ
Sheesh! Don't you know how to write a conspiracy theory?? The Jewish bankers are *purposely* depressing the stock price so the Christians will sell off. Monday they start buying again, and the stupid Christians say "OHMYGOD, why did I sell".
Now *that's* a proper conspiracy theory. Oh, no, wait, you have to throw something in about CmdrTaco's hidden Jewish/Armenian ancestry, and how he hates the Turks. Oh, and he has a mole in the center of his back, which is a mark of his genetic manipulation. All of HIS people have the same mole. Irrelevent details improve the plausibility -- nobody would make these things up, y'see.
-russ
So? Insert "prominent vendor of proprietary software." If you like Microsoft, insert Adobe, or Apple. Microsoft is an easy target because they're so big.
But if you limit yourself to not saying why the current regime sucks, you have a hard time explaining why you don't suck.
-russ
No, because his point remains true: that if you cannot audit the source, the executables are less trustworthy. Perhaps the incident that prompted his observation is a non-incident. So what? His point is valid, and worth making, again and again (that's how you sell ideas, by the way, by repeating them).
-russ
Tell me: if someone had made the same claim (hidden backdoor) about Apache, would you have been as quick to believe it? The fundamental answer (which is the point Eric was making) is "No."
-russ
First of all, corn-based gasoline is only cheaper because corn is subsidized. Second of all, where do you think the fertilizer for all that corn comes from? Um-hum, fossil fuels.
Third, well, as a secondary effect, you *do* endorse and support Bill Gates. You are not required to go to college, and you can refuse to do your assignments in MS Access and Visual Basic. You could use gnumeric and Python. Obviously this would be difficult. Nobody ever said that freedom was free.
-russ
The solution is to allow parents to select the best educational system for their children. Nobody knows better than the parent how the child learns best.
This is completely independent of who pays for it. Personally, I think that school will be more valued if the family is seen to give up something. Of course, they're giving up something now -- school taxes, but there is no choice. People behave differently when they choose something, even if the choice they make is the same thing they would be forced to do under a different system.
But even if you want to force people to pay for education, the parent should still be able to choose. Freedom makes all the difference in the source code, and it makes all the difference in the education.
-russ
No, it uses the Ericsson Mobitex design. Slow as molasses (9600 bps), and you pay by the packet, but it's got decent coverage in the US, thanks to the billions sunk into the network by RAM Mobile Data. Other nations have similar networks, e.g. Canada, and I presume Sweden. By the way, Sweden is spelled Sweden, not Sweeden. Not that you mis-spelled it, but sheesh.
-russ
p.s. Clarkson's hockey team tanked this season. Worst I've ever seen. Somebody stole the team and replaced them with space aliens from a universe where ice doesn't freeze.
Thanks! I'm glad *you* got the joke. Honest to goodness, some people need a humor IV drip.
-russ
The intellectual model being public schooling is broken. It's presumption is that you can take ALL the children born within one year of each other in a given geographic region, and teach them the same subject at the same time at the same rate.
Won't work. Can't work. Why bother tweaking it with computers? No amount of patching can remove the bugs from badly designed code. No amount of tweaking (or school reform) can fix our system of public education. Our nation's children would be better off if we closed the schools tomorrow.
-russ
Yopy. For sale in a little over two months.
-russ
What do you think the empeg.com box is?
-russ
I only watch Jennicam for the stories.
-russ
If the market demands something, someone will try to supply it. Doesn't matter if the thing is legal or not. All you can hope to accomplish by making something illegal is to take the profit out of it. This requires some price sensitivity on the part of the buyer.
Given that what Pinkerton is selling isn't illegal, you have to figure out some other way to stop them. Because, as they point out, if you succeed in stopping Pinkerton's, someone else will try to meet the market demand. No way is Pinkerton's going to walk away from that market demand.
-russ
p.s. You, too, need to learn some economics. I can recommend some good books if you want.
You presume that the purpose of the government is to protect the powerless from the predations of the powerful. How does this happen? What mechanism is there to create political power from nothing?
What you need to acknowledge is that the powerless are powerless in BOTH the market and the government. All that the government can do is make the situation worse by using force.
-russ
p.s. he means David D. Friedman.
Problem: the government caused the great depression by deflating the currency. Oops. So much for the idea of a strong central government. go read the anti-federalist papers. Their predictions have come true.
Problem: the conditions that led to the labor movement were basically a vulnerability of capital to extortion. The power of labor has declined in recent years as capital has become more mobile.
-russ
Notice that Pinkerton's is creating WAVE because they accepted a contract from a socialist organization: the North Carolina public school system.
Yes, corporations have a lot of power. However, that power is delegated by individuals, who are free to take BACK that power. Just stop buying from that corporation. Try taking back your vote. Voted for Clinton? Oops. Try not paying your school taxes. Oops.
Government is still the enemy.
-russ
Yes, you're right, it puts materials and money above humans. That is the primary effect. However, the secondary effect is that in order to get these materials and money, capitalists must give people something they want *even more* than the materials and money.
The only way a capitalist can avoid creating more than they destroy is to use force. The only legitimate use of force in America is the government. Get my drift? If you want protection from capitalist abuse, keep them the hell away from government, and vice-versa.
-russ
And you read this in which history book??
-russ
Well, that was Franklin, but you've got the right idea.
-russ
No, I'm sure they didn't laugh at him. How could you laugh at such misdirected sincerity? I'm sure they just shook their heads sadly at him. But really, they would have done much better *for* Jon to say "Yer talkin' ta da wrong people, fella. Don't blame us -- we're only sellin' what people wanna buy."
-russ
So abuse it, silly. The more people who abuse WAVE, the less it can be used against anyone. Report everyone. Remember the lesson of the Danish Jews? Everyone wore the Star of David, even the King of Denmark.
-russ
You should have been talking to the customers of WAVE, to persuade them not to buy. As Pinkerton rightly pointed out, if you persuaded them not to do it, someone else would. It's the same reason why the war on drugs can't work: because jailing a drug dealer just creates a job opening.
-russ
p.s. too bad about wasting your time. You should study economics.
It's obviously time for someone to file a patent on suing someone for patent violation. They'd clean up!
-russ
No, you've built yourself a reputation as a karma whore. It's not that "gender/age/social biases present in society" have carried over. It's that one's reputation precedes one.
In any case, spam is not a consequence of global capitalism. It's a consequence of smtp being a non-authenticated protocol. It's a consequence of having no mechanism for asking payment for email from people you don't know. If I wasn't in business, I'd have a very effective spam filter. I choose not to use this filter because I don't want to put any barrier between me and my customers.
But if you're *really* tired of spam, and you don't mind a solution which has a cost, talk to me.
-russ