"Neo-Conservative"??? Perish the thought!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
I'm also for freedom of travel. Neo-cons are absolutely opposed to this principle. Just ask them.
"Open Borders? Unrestricted Immigration?"
Watch the Neo-con go balistic.
Bob-
"...at the expense of the poor who deserve..."
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There is a dictionary definition of someone whos labor and property are entitled to others, as your post says "the poor" are entitled to the property of "the rich".
SLAVE
Are you ready to actually stand up for your beliefs and enslave people openly, rather than by advocating someone else (government) to it for you?
You misunderstand me. I don't care what people put in their packets. Content is little or nothing to me, I deal with traffic flow.
VPN's don't solve problems, and as such they are often misused and over-used. They add complexity, increase troubleshooting overhead and training needed. They are a sales and marketing buzz-word in search of an application, just like QoS.
Your suggestion seems to me to be one of "tunneling", which is again merely content and none of my concern. I have put together many IPSec and IPv6 tunneling systems, and I certainly do not want anyone believing that the encrypted/encapsulated packets thus sent are any of their business unless they are the ones I am sending it to.
In order to be free, you must respect the freedom of others.
Bob-
Re:I'm not uncomfortable with speaking my mind
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
You might like a book I picked up recently, "The Volunteer City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society", David T. Beito &etc, editors.
And in many cases, it's only through government regulation that new players can enter those markets unhindered. See Sprint/MCI vs. Ma Bell, for instance.
Oh, yes, let's, since it directly proves my point.
AT&T held, just like Major League Baseball(TM, reg us pat off) does now, Government Protected Legal Monopoly Status. MCI, Sprint &etc, were not allowed to enter the retail telephone market until they sued in court to do so. Judge Green, rather than simply nullify the legal protection that AT&T enjoyed, decided that the long-distance portion of AT&T would be divested into several separate companies, yet they would each maintain their legal monopoly over local and regional service.
As any credible economist will tell you, monopoly cannot exist without government restriction as to who can and cannot enter the business.
See: Adam Smith, "The Wealth Of Nations", 1775
Bob-
I'm not uncomfortable with speaking my mind
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Not because people agree with me, which I can find 9 of 10, and maybe even 10 of 10 who would disagree, even greatly, on something.
I'm not uncomfortable, because I am confident in my opinions. As a Network Engineer, I will gladly discuss why I do not like VPNs and QoS. As an economist, I will gladly discuss why the Federal Reserve is an abomination and must be abolished instantly. As a citizen, I will gladly discuss why welfare must be abolished instantly, both for the poor and for the rich.
As a mortal being, I will gladly say that I believe humanity is on track to repair its damages already done, and to improve its condition in the future, so long as this absurdity called "government" is restrained from causing yet more harm.
As a male, I'll gladly say that Japanese women are the most beautiful in general.
It is also instructive to note that the Railroads exist as a sad remnant of their former glory, due to being regulated in their innovation by government, and competition with a government run monopoly: roads.
A network is a network is a network. They have the same issues no matter how different their method or payload. They are all subject to the same failings as well, and bureaucratic regulation will kill all of them.
Innovation is what keeps networks alive, the ability for new players to enter the market without hinderance is what allows the greatest innovation.
The 'Net only exploded when the NSF loosened its death-grip on the interchange protocols and allowed anyone to connect to anyone. The cruch coincided with the Digital Milenium Copyright Act. The former is direct cause and effect. The latter is only partly coincidence....IMNSHO.
What has failed is the excessive boasts made about such things.
ATM is not the answer. VPN is not the answer. There is no "The" answer. Each protocol has its place and use.
Just because I don't like VPNs and QoS doesn't mean they're wrong, it means that I believe they're overused in situations where they don't solve anything. In this way I agree with the author.
dmiller, you do have a very important point, to wit:
It is too easy to focus on things that failed and ignore the things the silently work.
Exactly. Silently work. What people really want is for things to "just work". Buzz-words just confuse the issue. If a new wunderthing doesn't materially improve the situation, don't use it, no matter how pretty it looks in the stockholders report.
Of course they haven't. They still haven't forgiven Franklin Delano Roosevelt for being so uncouth as to die in office.
NYT writers are well known for making things up, so I'm sure that any word about software that would indeed make things better would be considered obviously false and get the writer fired. One must not be quite so obvious about the fraud, so as to get awards rather than fired.
I've seen better flight simulators, in fact it would be hard not to be better. The ship traveled just in 2 dimentions and had only two weapons. However, it had some of the best game play of any game at any price I've played even though it used CGA graphics in 16 colours.
I kid you not:
Hundreds of stars, thousands of planets, several different space faring races to interact, trade and fight with.
If you visited a planet and picked something up, it wasn't there the next time you went there.
If you disrespected a race, they remembered. Ditto if you were decent to them.
If you didn't do the copyright protection correctly, the cops came after you within the context of the game and blew your ship up.
All this on one 360K floppy, on a 4MHz machine. I kid you not.
I believe that Origin published the game, and was bought by EA later on. There was a Star Flight 2, which was better in many ways, but took a lot more disk space. EA owns the rights and seems to be holding on to them with cold, dead hands.
StarFlight deserves to be released to the public domain, or at least GPL'd. The excellent programming techniques which allowed such a game to exist in so little space should be lauded and emulated, techniques that have been lost while disk space has become unlimited and CPU cycles can be wasted without anyone noticing.
This spammer is actually the kind of person who would find themselves on the Assassination Politics lists quite quickly.
Just do a Google search if you're intersted in what Assassination Politics is about. While I have no interest in promoting murder, how many people can one person infuriate before it becomes justifiable homicide? People kill misquitoes every day, but no one misquito is much of an annoyance...right?
Government, taking 50%+ of income in taxes, taking 75%+ of production in indirect taxation and regulation, and preventing innovation with regulation, is why there is any problem at all.
It is Tony Blair's power trip which is unsustainable, for exactly the same reason the Soviet Union collapsed of its own bureaucratic weight.
You should check out the two books by Vin Sprynowicz, "Send In The Waco Killers" and "The Ballad Of Carl Drega".
The simple fact is that government officials cannot abide their own laws. The very structure of government requires them to be above the law, like how the IRS never gives anyone a jury trial because they know that no one would ever be convicted if they did.
Doubters should take note that there is no secret that every law passed by the US Congress exempts that very congress from having to abide the law.
Gun owners take note: Everywhere that you are prohibitted from defending yourself is a place where a bureaucrat can, and will, have their own arms or armed guards.
Where are the owners, to supervise and discipline the managers they hired?
In those situations where the motivations of ownership, such as long term view, sustainable use of resources and return on investment, keep check on the motivations of management which tend to be maximal use of resources, imediate return on investment and short-term gain, there is prosperity.
When the task of management is all that is owned, such as with the "CEO for a day", the individual will focus on their own success regardless of its effect on the company. They are not an owner of the company, they have no ownership motivation toward the company.
Owners don't have to be good managers, they have to be good owners.
I suggest Ludwig von Mises "Human Action", which is online at http://www.mises.org/ as an excellent primer on how and why the division of labor works so well.
It is instructive to never forget that the consumer always bears all costs, since consumers are the only source of wealth.
Bob-
Re:Laws! Laws! We need no more laws!
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 2
Very well said. Anything and everything that harms another person is already illegal, passing more laws only dilutes and confuses "right and wrong", making prosecution for actual harm harder and harder.
Look at the murderers and rapists out on the street, and then the grandmothers and home owners who are impoverished or imprisoned for violations of some paper statute they never even knew they were breaking.
Half the people murdered in the US are CONVICTED MURDERERS, 75% of the convicted murderers HAVE ALREADY BEEN CONVICTED OF MURDER AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE.
More laws don't prevent crimes. Even the 10 commandments covered everything, and had space left over for simply "honoring" ones parents.
Spam is trespassing, and already against the law. Prosecute it as such.
Yes, there are people who attempt to profit by copying DVD's. This law does nothing to prevent that, because anything that can be viewed can be copied.
Rather than punish those who cause harm, the "prohibitionist" tries to make the ability to do harm illegal.
The problem is that the most dangerous tool is the human mind and imagination. The prohibitionist cannot prohibit someone from having thoughts, so all that is left is to prohibit objects.
"Drugs" are a perfect example. The tighter the prohibitions, the greater the violence and reclessness of those who violate the prohibitions. As relatively peaceful people who inadvertantly violate the prohibition are "removed", those who remain are the ones who are not peaceful.
This is the same for all prohibitions, which is why they don't work.
By making it impossible to peacefully and easily view DVD's one has legally bought, it becomes more attractive to purchase illegal "cracked" copies which will be viewable. This will enrich the less ethical criminals at the cost of the legal producers, and do vastly greater damager to "society" than the relatively innocent peaceful "sharing" that would have happened otherwise.
The TCP stack, zlib, now this.
It makes me wonder just how much of other peoples code Microsoft utilizes, and then locks down with their "Thou Shalt Not Even THINK About Reading This Code" end user license agreement...
Bob-
http://www.LinuxToday.com
http://linuxdailynews.net/
But unfortunately, nothing compares to the marvelous all-in-one that LWN had. Once I discovered it, it was my apointment on Friday afternoon.
Bob-
"Gold" is only the usual standard people think of when the term "hard currency" is used, it is not the only standard.
People have utilized many different things for money, the only requirement is that people agree to use it and use it widely. Gold gained the widest exceptance in the "west", but silver has been used just as well.
If "gold" were to suddenly lose its scarcity, it might itself be used in some form of fiat currency, or (I believe more likely) people would simply shift to silver, or paladium, or platinum, or even iron.
It doesn't matter what the medium of exchange is, it is only important that no one or no small group control its supply. With that control comes abuse, as is seen with fiat currencies everywhere and everywhen.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also for freedom of travel. Neo-cons are absolutely opposed to this principle. Just ask them.
"Open Borders? Unrestricted Immigration?"
Watch the Neo-con go balistic.
Bob-
There is a dictionary definition of someone whos labor and property are entitled to others, as your post says "the poor" are entitled to the property of "the rich".
SLAVE
Are you ready to actually stand up for your beliefs and enslave people openly, rather than by advocating someone else (government) to it for you?
Bob-
You misunderstand me. I don't care what people put in their packets. Content is little or nothing to me, I deal with traffic flow.
VPN's don't solve problems, and as such they are often misused and over-used. They add complexity, increase troubleshooting overhead and training needed. They are a sales and marketing buzz-word in search of an application, just like QoS.
Your suggestion seems to me to be one of "tunneling", which is again merely content and none of my concern. I have put together many IPSec and IPv6 tunneling systems, and I certainly do not want anyone believing that the encrypted/encapsulated packets thus sent are any of their business unless they are the ones I am sending it to.
In order to be free, you must respect the freedom of others.
Bob-
You might like a book I picked up recently, "The Volunteer City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society", David T. Beito &etc, editors.
Bob-
And in many cases, it's only through government regulation that new players can enter those markets unhindered. See Sprint/MCI vs. Ma Bell, for instance.
Oh, yes, let's, since it directly proves my point.
AT&T held, just like Major League Baseball(TM, reg us pat off) does now, Government Protected Legal Monopoly Status. MCI, Sprint &etc, were not allowed to enter the retail telephone market until they sued in court to do so. Judge Green, rather than simply nullify the legal protection that AT&T enjoyed, decided that the long-distance portion of AT&T would be divested into several separate companies, yet they would each maintain their legal monopoly over local and regional service.
As any credible economist will tell you, monopoly cannot exist without government restriction as to who can and cannot enter the business.
See: Adam Smith, "The Wealth Of Nations", 1775
Bob-
Not because people agree with me, which I can find 9 of 10, and maybe even 10 of 10 who would disagree, even greatly, on something.
I'm not uncomfortable, because I am confident in my opinions. As a Network Engineer, I will gladly discuss why I do not like VPNs and QoS. As an economist, I will gladly discuss why the Federal Reserve is an abomination and must be abolished instantly. As a citizen, I will gladly discuss why welfare must be abolished instantly, both for the poor and for the rich.
As a mortal being, I will gladly say that I believe humanity is on track to repair its damages already done, and to improve its condition in the future, so long as this absurdity called "government" is restrained from causing yet more harm.
As a male, I'll gladly say that Japanese women are the most beautiful in general.
Confidence, not agreement.
Bob-
It is also instructive to note that the Railroads exist as a sad remnant of their former glory, due to being regulated in their innovation by government, and competition with a government run monopoly: roads.
...IMNSHO.
A network is a network is a network. They have the same issues no matter how different their method or payload. They are all subject to the same failings as well, and bureaucratic regulation will kill all of them.
Innovation is what keeps networks alive, the ability for new players to enter the market without hinderance is what allows the greatest innovation.
The 'Net only exploded when the NSF loosened its death-grip on the interchange protocols and allowed anyone to connect to anyone. The cruch coincided with the Digital Milenium Copyright Act. The former is direct cause and effect. The latter is only partly coincidence.
Bob-
What has failed is the excessive boasts made about such things.
ATM is not the answer. VPN is not the answer. There is no "The" answer. Each protocol has its place and use.
Just because I don't like VPNs and QoS doesn't mean they're wrong, it means that I believe they're overused in situations where they don't solve anything. In this way I agree with the author.
dmiller, you do have a very important point, to wit:
It is too easy to focus on things that failed and ignore the things the silently work.
Exactly. Silently work. What people really want is for things to "just work". Buzz-words just confuse the issue. If a new wunderthing doesn't materially improve the situation, don't use it, no matter how pretty it looks in the stockholders report.
Bob-
Of course they haven't. They still haven't forgiven Franklin Delano Roosevelt for being so uncouth as to die in office.
NYT writers are well known for making things up, so I'm sure that any word about software that would indeed make things better would be considered obviously false and get the writer fired. One must not be quite so obvious about the fraud, so as to get awards rather than fired.
Bob-
Gotta mention that again here. Fascinating essay.
Google it
Bob-
I've seen better flight simulators, in fact it would be hard not to be better. The ship traveled just in 2 dimentions and had only two weapons. However, it had some of the best game play of any game at any price I've played even though it used CGA graphics in 16 colours.
I kid you not:
Hundreds of stars, thousands of planets, several different space faring races to interact, trade and fight with.
If you visited a planet and picked something up, it wasn't there the next time you went there.
If you disrespected a race, they remembered. Ditto if you were decent to them.
If you didn't do the copyright protection correctly, the cops came after you within the context of the game and blew your ship up.
All this on one 360K floppy, on a 4MHz machine. I kid you not.
I believe that Origin published the game, and was bought by EA later on. There was a Star Flight 2, which was better in many ways, but took a lot more disk space. EA owns the rights and seems to be holding on to them with cold, dead hands.
StarFlight deserves to be released to the public domain, or at least GPL'd. The excellent programming techniques which allowed such a game to exist in so little space should be lauded and emulated, techniques that have been lost while disk space has become unlimited and CPU cycles can be wasted without anyone noticing.
Bob-
Just do a Google search if you're intersted in what Assassination Politics is about. While I have no interest in promoting murder, how many people can one person infuriate before it becomes justifiable homicide? People kill misquitoes every day, but no one misquito is much of an annoyance...right?
Bob-
Could-a, should-a, would-a, didn't.
Bob-
It is Tony Blair's power trip which is unsustainable, for exactly the same reason the Soviet Union collapsed of its own bureaucratic weight.
Get out of the way.
Bob-
The simple fact is that government officials cannot abide their own laws. The very structure of government requires them to be above the law, like how the IRS never gives anyone a jury trial because they know that no one would ever be convicted if they did.
Doubters should take note that there is no secret that every law passed by the US Congress exempts that very congress from having to abide the law.
Gun owners take note: Everywhere that you are prohibitted from defending yourself is a place where a bureaucrat can, and will, have their own arms or armed guards.
Etcetera.
Peace, may your aim never waver,
Bob-
Where are the owners, to supervise and discipline the managers they hired?
In those situations where the motivations of ownership, such as long term view, sustainable use of resources and return on investment, keep check on the motivations of management which tend to be maximal use of resources, imediate return on investment and short-term gain, there is prosperity.
When the task of management is all that is owned, such as with the "CEO for a day", the individual will focus on their own success regardless of its effect on the company. They are not an owner of the company, they have no ownership motivation toward the company.
Owners don't have to be good managers, they have to be good owners.
I suggest Ludwig von Mises "Human Action", which is online at http://www.mises.org/ as an excellent primer on how and why the division of labor works so well.
Bob-
My appologies.
Bob-
Interventionism by George Reisman (Pepperdine University).
It is instructive to never forget that the consumer always bears all costs, since consumers are the only source of wealth.
Bob-
Look at the murderers and rapists out on the street, and then the grandmothers and home owners who are impoverished or imprisoned for violations of some paper statute they never even knew they were breaking.
Half the people murdered in the US are CONVICTED MURDERERS, 75% of the convicted murderers HAVE ALREADY BEEN CONVICTED OF MURDER AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE.
More laws don't prevent crimes. Even the 10 commandments covered everything, and had space left over for simply "honoring" ones parents.
Spam is trespassing, and already against the law. Prosecute it as such.
Bob-
Rather than punish those who cause harm, the "prohibitionist" tries to make the ability to do harm illegal.
The problem is that the most dangerous tool is the human mind and imagination. The prohibitionist cannot prohibit someone from having thoughts, so all that is left is to prohibit objects.
"Drugs" are a perfect example. The tighter the prohibitions, the greater the violence and reclessness of those who violate the prohibitions. As relatively peaceful people who inadvertantly violate the prohibition are "removed", those who remain are the ones who are not peaceful.
This is the same for all prohibitions, which is why they don't work.
By making it impossible to peacefully and easily view DVD's one has legally bought, it becomes more attractive to purchase illegal "cracked" copies which will be viewable. This will enrich the less ethical criminals at the cost of the legal producers, and do vastly greater damager to "society" than the relatively innocent peaceful "sharing" that would have happened otherwise.
Bob-
The TCP stack, zlib, now this.
It makes me wonder just how much of other peoples code Microsoft utilizes, and then locks down with their "Thou Shalt Not Even THINK About Reading This Code" end user license agreement...
Bob-
http://www.LinuxToday.com
http://linuxdailynews.net/
But unfortunately, nothing compares to the marvelous all-in-one that LWN had. Once I discovered it, it was my apointment on Friday afternoon.
Bob-
Fair Use and all that. And it will tick them off. I like that.
Bob-
REGARDLESS of whether or not the individual did, knowingly or not, break the law.
http://www.fija.org/
Bob-
People have utilized many different things for money, the only requirement is that people agree to use it and use it widely. Gold gained the widest exceptance in the "west", but silver has been used just as well.
If "gold" were to suddenly lose its scarcity, it might itself be used in some form of fiat currency, or (I believe more likely) people would simply shift to silver, or paladium, or platinum, or even iron.
It doesn't matter what the medium of exchange is, it is only important that no one or no small group control its supply. With that control comes abuse, as is seen with fiat currencies everywhere and everywhen.
Bob-