This is just more "feel good" swindling of taxpayers money and effort on nothing.
Having a computer does not teach math. It does not teach reading (pretty pictures), it does not teach writing. All it does is teach how to use that computer.
Test scores are dropping. Highschool graduates cannot parse a sentense. They cannot do arithmatic, they cannot write or spell. They cannot read latin, or do 90% of what a highschool graduate did a hundred years ago.
Nothing about having a computer educates, it just distracts.
Millionaires will rescue victims of government schools by Vin Suprynowicz is just one of his excellent diatribes on the complete failure of the American federal and state government educational disaster, what might be the largest single welfare industry on the planet.
Vin's Las Vegas Review-Journal archive has this years output, which will be updated in the next week or two to include another education expose' well worth the wait.
To put it bluntly, this purchase is not a mistake. It is a deliberate action to spend as much money on "education" as possible, and get the least effective return, guranteeing more money next year for more administrative and support staff to "do something" about the failing students.
Ah, Japan standard is 100VAC, not ~120VAC like in the states.
If you look at the chargers, most will say "100-240VAC input" because China uses 240VAC, and it's easier just to build a good rectifier that simply deals with it.
But your American things like tooth brushes, shavers, and others that use cheap hard-wired transformers will work, they just take much longer to do the charging because of the loss of ~20VAC.
Hopefully Trend Micro http://www.antivirus.com/ won't also fall prey to the "war fever" patriotism in the US.
Their Housecall product, at least, is used all over the world, I'm sure that people will not trust something with a known built in weakness.
My employer just changed to Trend Micro from Semantic/Norton. Good riddence.
It's easy enough to just reverse engineer these things, if you know what you're looking for. And certainly the people who do fear the FBI's being able to scan them will pay some hungry cracker for such information, and to release a hostile virus under the umbrella of the FBI's requested/required "weakness".
Having to develope/deploy a new trojan every week to cover the fact that the last one was hacked and released is going to make the FBI efforts completely useless and wasteful.
There is no limit to the restrictions I can place on the product of my labor, in this instance "software". To put it any other way is to enslave me to your idea of what you want my production to be, to enslave me to work for YOU.
The GNU licence allows me to place a very tight restriction on my labor, my property, by restricting how it may be used forever!
There is the ultimate freedom, the one that governments don't like you to think about but which is very tightly linked with the GNU license: You have the choice not to use my software.
While the ones wielding the monopoly on force can crush competition easily, if anyone else uses force to arbitrate their disputes the "monopoly" holder gets irate. In effect, you cannot take your business elsewhere.
With software, I can take my business elsewhere. I can write it if I don't want to use anyone elses, I can license it any way I please. The limits are that it may not work, and I may not be able to sell it. So what? As long as I do not use force or fraud, it's not your decision.
People who say things like But there are limits for what kind of restrictions you can impose on the software you write are just power freaks who want to be able to enslave their neighbors to their idea of write and wrong.
The FSF Mission Statement, written by Stallman I must assume (since his name's on it), says the same sorts of things.
Which makes me wonder, is his GNOME board application a restatement, or the other way around?
But seriously, I find his promotion of "choice", but not the choice to sell your labor if it happens to be in something called "software", to be hypocritical.
You cannot with one side of your face promote "choice", and with the other side tell people what they may and may not do.
[sarcasm]Shall all sex be free, and it be illegal to deny sexual intercourse, merely because human life depends on it? Golly, sign me up![/sarcasm]
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the GNU license. I use it myself every day, and gladly promote its use. However, I abhore force and will not use force to make someone use that license any more than I would force someone not to use it.
I was disgusted with trying to get Chinese working under Windows.
The Microsoft input function worked fine, into Microsoft products. Unfortunately, a hard drive reformat eliminated some software for which there was no backup disk, and I installed StarOffice to take up the slack.
Japanese character input continued to work, but Microsloth's IME simply didn't include Chinese when trying to put text into StarOffice applications. It was as if it had never been installed.
People complain about ease of use in Linux, but when "My Computer" does stuff like this it makes configuring locals and xcin seem like a really fun project.
By Cromm, I loath the infantile "My Computer" paradigm. F*ucking moron Bob interface.
Democracy: The God That Failed
by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
from http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html
At the request of LRC, Professor Hoppe discusses his extremely important
new
book, Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction Publishers, Rutgers,
NJ:
2001).
Theory and History
On the most abstract level, I want to show how theory is indispensible
in
correctly interpreting history. History - the sequence of events
unfolding
in time - is "blind." It reveals nothing about causes and effects. We
may
agree, for instance, that feudal Europe was poor, that monarchical
Europe
was wealthier, and that democratic Europe is wealthier still, or that
nineteenth-century America with its low taxes and few regulations was
poor,
while contemporary America with its high taxes and many regulations is
rich.
Yet was Europe poor because of feudalism, and did it grow richer because
of
monarchy and democracy? Or did Europe grow richer in spite of monarchy
and
democracy? Or are these phenomena unrelated?
Likewise, is contemporary America wealthier because of higher taxes and
more
regulations or in spite of them? That is, would America be even more
prosperous if taxes and regulations had remained at their
nineteenth-century
levels? Historians qua historians cannot answer such questions, and no
amount of statistical data manipulation can change this fact. Every
sequence
of empirical events is compatible with any of a number of rival,
mutually
incompatible interpretations.
To make a decision regarding such incompatible interpretations, we need
a
theory. By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on
further experience but can be established a priori. This is not to say
that
one can do without experience altogether in establishing a theoretical
proposition. However, it is to say that even if experience is necessary,
theoretical insights extend and transcend logically beyond a particular
historical experience. Theoretical propositions are about necessary
facts
and relations and, by implication, about impossibilities. Experience may
thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither
establish a
theorem nor refute it.
The Austrian School
Economic and political theory, especially of the Austrian variety, is a
treasure trove of such propositions. For instance, a larger quantity of
a
good is preferred to a smaller amount of the same good; production must
precede consumption; what is consumed now cannot be consumed again in
the
future; prices fixed below market-clearing prices will lead to lasting
shortages; without private property in production factors there can be
no
factor prices, and without factor prices cost-accounting is impossible;
an
increase in the supply of paper money cannot increase total social
wealth
but can only redistribute existing wealth; monopoly (the absence of free
entry) leads to higher prices and lower product quality than
competition; no
thing or part of a thing can be owned exclusively by more than one party
at
a time; democracy (majority rule) and private property are incompatible.
Theory is no substitute for history, of course, yet without a firm grasp
of
theory serious errors in the interpretation of historical data are
unavoidable. For instance, the outstanding historian Carroll Quigley
claims
that the invention of fractional reserve banking has been a major cause
of
the unprecedented expansion of wealth associated with the Industrial
Revolution, and countless historians have associated the economic plight
of
Soviet-style socialism with the absence of democracy.
>From a theoretical viewpoint, such interpretations must be rejected
categorically. An increase in the paper money supply cannot lead to
greater
prosperity but only to wealth redistribution. The explosion of wealth
during
the Industrial Revolution took place despite fractional reserve banking.
Similarly, the economic plight of socialism cannot be due to the absence
of
democracy. Instead, it is caused by the absence of private property in
factors of production. "Received history" is full of such
misinterpretations. Theory allows us to rule out certain historical
reports
as impossible and incompatible with the nature of things. By the same
token,
it allows us to uphold certain other things as historical possibilities,
even if they have not yet been tried.
Revisionist History
More interestingly, armed with elementary economic and political theory,
I
present in my book a revisionist reconstruction of modern Western
history:
of the rise of absolute monarchical states out of state-less feudal
orders,
and the transformation, beginning with the French Revolution and
essentially
completed with the end of World War I, of the Western world from
monarchical
to democratic States, and the rise of the US to the rank of "universal
empire." Neo-conservative writers such as Francis Fukuyama have
interpreted
this development as civilizational progress, and they proclaim the "End
of
History" to have arrived with the triumph of Western - US - democracy
and
its globalization (making the world safe for democracy).
Myth One
My theoretical interpretation is entirely different. It involves the
shattering of three historical myths. The first and most fundamental is
the
myth that the emergence of states out of a prior, non-statist order has
caused subsequent economic and civilizational progress. In fact, theory
dictates that any progress must have occurred in spite - not because -
of
the institution of a state.
A state is defined conventionally as an agency that exercises a
compulsory
territorial monopoly of ultimate decison-making (jurisdiction) and of
taxation. By definition then, every state, regardless of its particular
constitution, is economically and ethically deficient. Every monopolist
is
"bad" from the viewpoint of consumers. Monopoly is hereby understood as
the
absence of free entry into a particular line of production: only one
agency,
A, may produce X.
Any monopoly is "bad" for consumers because, shielded from potential new
entrants into its line of production, the price for its product will be
high
er and the quality lower than with free entry. And a monopolist with
ultimate decison-making powers is particularly bad. While other
monopolists
produce inferior goods, a monopolist judge, besides producing inferior
goods, will produce bads, because he who is the ultimate judge in every
case
of conflict also has the last word in each conflict involving himself.
Consequently, instead of preventing and resolving conflict, a monopolist
of
ultimate decision-making will cause and provoke conflict in order to
settle
it to his own advantage.
Not only would no one accept such a monopoly judge provision, but no one
would ever agree to a provision that allowed this judge to determine the
price to be paid for his "service" unilaterally. Predictably, such a
monopolist would use up ever more resources (tax revenue) to produce
fewer
goods and perpetrate more bads. This is not a prescription for
protection
but for oppression and exploitation. The result of a state, then, is not
peaceful cooperation and social order, but conflict, provocation,
aggression, oppression, and impoverishment, i.e., de-civilization. This,
above all, is what the history of states illustrates. It is first and
foremost the history of countless millions of innocent state victims.
Myth Two
The second myth concerns the historic transition from absolute
monarchies to
democratic states. Not only do neoconservatives interpret this
development
as progress; there is near-universal agreement that democracy represents
an
advance over monarchy and is the cause of economic and moral progress.
This
interpretation is curious in light of the fact that democracy has been
the
fountainhead of every form of socialism: of (European) democratic
socialism
and (American) liberalism and neo-conservatism as well as of
international
(Soviet) socialism, (Italian) fascism, and national (Nazi) socialism.
More
importantly, however, theory contradicts this interpretation; whereas
both
monarchies and democracies are deficient as states, democracy is worse
than
monarchy.
Theoretically speaking, the transition from monarchy to democracy
involves
no more or less than a hereditary monopoly "owner" - the prince or king
-
being replaced by temporary and interchangeable - monopoly "caretakers"
-
presidents, prime ministers, and members of parliament. Both kings and
presidents will produce bads, yet a king, because he "owns" the monopoly
and
may sell or bequeath it, will care about the repercussions of his
actions on
capital values. As the owner of the capital stock on "his" territory,
the
king will be comparatively future-oriented. In order to preserve or
enhance
the value of his property, he will exploit only moderately and
calculatingly. In contrast, a temporary and interchangeable democratic
caretaker does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is
permitted to use it to his advantage. He owns its current use but not
its
capital stock. This does not eliminate exploitation. Instead, it makes
exploitation shortsighted (present-oriented) and uncalculated, i.e.,
carried
out without regard for the value of the capital stock.
Nor is it an advantage of democracy that free entry into every state
position exists (whereas under monarchy entry is restricted by the
king's
discretion). To the contrary, only competition in the production of
goods is
a good thing. Competition in the production of bads is not good; in
fact, it
is sheer evil. Kings, coming into their position by virtue of birth,
might
be harmless dilettantes or decent men (and if they are "madmen," they
will
be quickly restrained or if need be, killed, by close relatives
concerned
with the possessions of the dynasty). In sharp contrast, the selection
of
government rulers by means of popular elections makes it essentially
impossible for a harmless or decent person to ever rise to the top.
Presidents and prime ministers come into their position as a result of
their
efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually
assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of government.
In particular, democracy is seen as promoting an increase in the social
rate
of time preference (present-orientation) or the "infantilization" of
society. It results in continually increased taxes, paper money and
paper
money inflation, an unending flood of legislation, and a steadily
growing
"public" debt. By the same token, democracy leads to lower savings,
increased legal uncertainty, moral relativism, lawlessness, and crime.
Further, democracy is a tool for wealth and income confiscation and
redistribution. It involves the legislative "taking" of the property of
some - the haves of something - and the "giving" of it to others - the
have-nots of things. And since it is presumably something valuable that
is
being redistributed - of which the haves have too much and the have-nots
too
little - any such redistribution implies that the incentive to be of
value
or produce something valuable is systematically reduced. In other words,
the
proportion of not-so-good people and not-so-good personal traits,
habits,
and forms of conduct and appearance will increase, and life in society
will
become increasingly unpleasant.
Last but not least, democracy is described as resulting in a radical
change
in the conduct of war. Because they can externalize the costs of their
own
aggression onto others (via taxes), both kings and presidents will be
more
than 'normally' aggressive and warlike. However, a king's motive for war
is
typically an ownership-inheritance dispute. The objective of his war is
tangible and territorial: to gain control over some piece of real estate
and
its inhabitants. And to reach this objective it is in his interest to
distinguish between combatants (his enemies and targets of attack) and
non-combatants and their property (to be left out of the war and
undamaged).
Democracy has transformed the limited wars of kings into total wars. The
motive for war has become ideological - democracy, liberty,
civilization,
humanity. The objectives are intangible and elusive: the ideological
"conversion" of the losers preceded by their "unconditional" surrender
(which, because one can never be certain about the sincerity of
conversion,
may require such means as the mass murder of civilians). And the
distinction
between combatants and non-combatants becomes fuzzy and ultimately
disappears under democracy, and mass war involvement - the draft and
popular
war rallies - as well as "collateral damage" become part of war
strategy.
Myth Three
Finally, the third myth shattered is the belief that there is no
alternative
to Western welfare-democracies a la US. Again, theory demonstrates
otherwise. First, this belief is false because the modern welfare-state
is
not a "stable" economic system. It is bound to collapse under its own
parasitic weight, much like Russian-style socialism imploded a decade
ago.
More importantly, however, an economically stable alternative to
democracy
exists. The term I propose for this alternative is "natural order."
In a natural order every scarce resource, including all land, is owned
privately, every enterprise is funded by voluntarily paying customers or
private donors, and entry into every line of production, including that
of
property protection, conflict arbitration, and peacemaking, is free. A
large
part of my book concerns the explanation of the workings - the logic -
of a
natural order and the requirements for the transformation from democracy
to
a natural order.
Whereas states disarm their citizens so as to be able to rob them more
surely (thereby rendering them more vulnerable also to criminal and
terrorist attack), a natural order is characterized by an armed
citizenry.
This feature is furthered by insurance companies, which play a prominent
role as providers of security and protection in a natural order.
Insurers
will encourage gun ownership by offering lower premiums to armed (and
weapons-trained) clients. By their nature insurers are defensive
agencies.
Only "accidental" - not: self-inflicted, caused or provoked - damage is
"insurable." Aggressors and provocateurs will be denied insurance
coverage
and are thus weak. And because insurers must indemnify their clients in
case
of victimization, they must be concerned constantly about the prevention
of
criminal aggression, the recovery of misappropriated property, and the
apprehension of those liable for the damage in question.
Furthermore, the relationship between insurer and client is contractual.
The
rules of the game are mutually accepted and fixed. An insurer cannot
"legislate," or unilaterally change the terms of the contract. In
particular, if an insurer wants to attract a voluntarily paying
clientele,
it must provide for the foreseeable contingency of conflict in its
contracts, not only between its own clients but especially with clients
of
other insurers. The only provision satisfactorily covering the latter
contingency is for an insurer to bind itself contractually to
independent
third-party arbitration. However, not just any arbitration will do. The
conflicting insurers must agree on the arbitrator or arbitration agency,
and
in order to be agreeable to insurers, an arbitrator must produce a
product
(of legal procedure and substantive judgment) that embodies the widest
possible moral consensus among insurers and clients alike. Thus,
contrary to
statist conditions, a natural order is characterized by stable and
predictable law and increased legal harmony.
Moreover, insurance companies promote the development of another
"security
feature." States have not just disarmed their citizens by taking away
their
weapons, democratic states in particular have also done so in stripping
their citizens of the right to exclusion and by promoting instead -
through
various non-discrimination, affirmative action, and multiculturalist
policies - forced integration. In a natural order, the right to
exclusion
inherent in the very idea of private property is restored to private
property owners.
Accordingly, to lower the production cost of security and improve its
quality, a natural order is characterized by increased discrimination,
segregation, spatial separation, uniculturalism (cultural homogeneity),
exclusivity, and exclusion. In addition, whereas states have undermined
intermediating social institutions (family households, churches,
covenants,
communities, and clubs) and the associated ranks and layers of authority
so
as to increase their own power vis-a-vis equal and isolated individuals,
a
natural order is distinctly un-egalitarian: "elitist," "hierarchical,"
"proprietarian," "patriarchical," and "authoritorian," and its stability
depends essentially on the existence of a self-conscious natural -
voluntarily acknowledged - aristocracy.
Strategy
Finally, I discuss strategic matters and questions. How can a natural
order
arise out of democracy? I explain the role of ideas, intellectuals,
elites,
and public opinion in the legitimation and de-legitimation of state
power.
In particular, I discuss the role of secession - and the proliferation
of
independent political entities - as an important step toward the goal of
natural order, and I explain how to properly privatize "socialized" and
"public" property.
The book grew out of speeches I presented at various Mises Institute and
CLS
conferences during the 1990s. These conferences, organized by Lew
Rockwell,
Burt Blumert, and, until his death in 1995, Murray Rothbard, had the
purpose
of advancing libertarianism by locating and anchoring abstract
libertarian
theory historically, sociologically, and culturally and thereby creating
what has become known in the meantime as paleo-libertarianism (in
contrast
to left-countercultural-libertarianism and cold-and-hot-war "new" and
"neo"-conservatism). The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, the precusor to LRC,
was
the first and most immediate expression and reflection of this
intellectual
movement. Others included The Costs of War, Reassessing the Presidency,
and
The Irrepressible Rothbard. Democracy the God That Failed is my attempt
to
define and give expression to the paleo-libertarian movement.
When the thugs (polite: Law Enforcement) have a warrant, they are covered by the government "limited liability". Any damage must be proven to have been "excessive" to the government's satisfaction in the government court. Also, so long as what the thugs do is "policy", their actions are not prosecutable as individuals.
That is why the Rodney King 5 were found "not guilty" in their (criminal) trial: They successfully argued that they were, in fact, following police department policy. They were not acting as "individuals", and were therefore not guilty of any crime.
As long as the thugs are held to standards in the government courts to have been advancing the interests of that same government, they will be adjudicated as having done nothing "illegal".
And if violation of the DMCA is upheld even once, the law will be quickly revised on the basis of "National Security."
Remember to say "Hail Furer" when presenting your photo-ID's.
"You think I'm overreacting? What do you think the motivation was for those laws?"
You're getting emotional, but I don't consider that the same as "over-reacting". Your second to last paragraph, however, is patently false unless you apply your theory to the government itself.
The anti-monopolistic laws are based in hypocrisy. The laws were written to punish people that the real monopoly doesn't like. The laws are written in such a way that anyone can be prosecuted under them. Sun makes both proprietary(sp?) hardware and software. Apple OS doesn't run on anyone elses hardware. The list of prosecutable actions is deliberately endless because it serves the real monopolies interests to have it so.
Name one person forced to use Microsoft software. Or one person forced to pay for Microsoft software. They don't exist. Microsoft's crime was not contributing enough to politicians election funds. They have changed their policy in that regard, and the dogs at the JustUs department are called off.
However, you are not allowed, by law, to send first class mail by any means other than the U.S. Post Office. Just one example of the power of the real monopoly.
*If* Microsoft had been "prosecuted" when they released Win95, I might have given the slightest creedence to the charges. But that didn't happen, and the alternatives and reality were well established long before any prosecution took place.
Simple consumer choice had made Microsoft's "monopoly" moot. I'm sorry that the Fed.Gov didn't ignore them and let Microsoft's programs speak for themselves.
As with any business, so long as force and fraud are not used there is no crime.
If I weren't a pragmatist, I'd be in jail. Just like you. That is the real power of a monopoly.
That's absurd. Republicans love big government as much as anyone. Just look at how big the budgets get when Republicans control both houses of government.
Simple math. Another would be a ratio of "new laws" to "laws repealed".
It is you who committed an act of hate-speach by labeling Republicans as "anti-government".
Personally, I can't stand either side of the party of government control, "D" or "R".
Go ahead and download (and burn) CD #1 of Potato(e) or Woody, that's all you need. The CD's are bootable (bootible?), if your hardware supports that, and it acts not only as install but also as rescue disk for the system later.
What I meant was, it's much more common for someone to have a disk drive than a CD-writer.
Also, a pure Net install, such as the 24M iso image talked about earlier being a loop-back file system and kernel image, a-la Dragon Linux would be fantastic.
That depends, of course, on your system having enough RAM to have networking, disk partition/formatting and whatever else off the disk while you were doing the initialization.
One former co-worker said exactly the same thing. His BSD install started from one floppy, which had just enough smarts to get at IP address and start the FTP to get the rest of the smarts. Auto-detect of hardware, and voom! He's off and running.
Because the BSD assumed a network connection, it could have on its distribution disk only enough smarts to begin, no need for everything to be available on disk.
I admire simplicity. If I were anything of a programmer, I'd help Debian fix their install.
The problem is the advance of hardware in-chip clocks is reaching "speed of light" limits.
As the article mentions, the wavelength of the clock signal through the chip material, propagation of data through the logic gates, are reaching unity. Vast advances in "clock speed" have not shown equal advances in "chip throughput" because it takes more and more "clock cycles" to do the same logical function.
The "magic" of the asynchronous chip is to separate the speed of logic from the speed of the clock. If all logic functions took 1 clock cycle, a 500MHz chip would beat the living crap out of the fastest Pentium.
The new bottlenecks: memory access, cache access, bus speeds, IO of all kinds. If the CPU clock is down in rational speed, the other computer functions can be optimized to make a complete device that is far more efficient in its functioning than the present screaming CPU and crawling RAM has given us.
What good is a CPU at 10GHz if it has to wait 20 clock cycles to add two numbers?
Ah, good for you. I see you grasp the concept completely.
Or, if you actually disagree, your sarcasm was a bit too thin. Bringing up Standard Oil as another example of government abuse merely illustrates that the violations of Private Property started long before the idiocy of prosecuting Microsoft for trying to negotiate contracts in their favor.
Hmm... Standard Oil deciding which pipeline to purchase... Another case of prosecution for trying to negotiate contracts in your favor?
I wouldn't give a plug nickle for a Picasso if it weren't for the people who would pay vast money for it. Certainly I'd never keep it as "art".
In the same way, "art" is whatever someone says it is, for themselves at least.
"Fine" art is just several people agreeing that, "Yeah, that's art." Fine.
Some of the most beautiful art ever created, in my opinion, is embodied in many Japanese swords. Some music is art, but no one thinks that all "music" is even music, much less art.
Are video games art? Some are, I'm sure, just because several people will agree they are.
If the museum wants to "get real", they aught to use their time to show folks examples of what they believe is "art" *within* video games.
Bandwidth is like megahertz, it's an arbitrary number that may or may not be useful.
The broad-band providers maximized their customer experience by caching at their head-ends. The "massive bandwidth" of broadband was therefore useful, without the lag times that must be considered.
Even in a perfect network, the latency for data travel matters. How often are the LED's on your 56K modem pegged on by a datastream where your link is the limiting factor?
A 747 full of DAT's has truly awsome bandwidth, but the latency is deadly.
The beauty of this massive engorgement in fibers is that once layed, a fiber optic cable's capacity is limited only by the hardware at the end points. Any improvement in technology, such as WDM, multiplies the available bits-per-second without having to lay more fiber.
As places like NewYork and London and Tokyo reach a fiber glut, the rest of the world will follow. Just like telephones and electric power, "poor" places will simply get their access at a slower pace. But there are always alternatives, such as satellite, to get the information. It might not be in flashy graphics, or up-to-the-second, but "poor" areas have no demand for that to cover the costs anyway. That's why they're called "poor".
If you think that an area is under-served, then stand up and join or organize a group to lay the freaking fiber. Complaining all day won't put cables in the water/ground.
But when you do, think also of what it is you're connecting *to*, or you may end up connected to nothing anyone wants.
The problem of people trained for years by Microsoft into bad habits hitting the "reset" button is very easy to solve.
Disconnect the reset button.
It's the same answer for seat-belt buzzers, airbags, trunk lights.
Why to techs like Linux so much? Because they can Turn Things Off! And why is Microsoft software hated, really, at the root? Because you cannot turn things off.
Slashdot Mirror
Bob-
Having a computer does not teach math. It does not teach reading (pretty pictures), it does not teach writing. All it does is teach how to use that computer.
Test scores are dropping. Highschool graduates cannot parse a sentense. They cannot do arithmatic, they cannot write or spell. They cannot read latin, or do 90% of what a highschool graduate did a hundred years ago.
Nothing about having a computer educates, it just distracts.
Millionaires will rescue victims of government schools by Vin Suprynowicz is just one of his excellent diatribes on the complete failure of the American federal and state government educational disaster, what might be the largest single welfare industry on the planet.
Vin's Las Vegas Review-Journal archive has this years output, which will be updated in the next week or two to include another education expose' well worth the wait.
To put it bluntly, this purchase is not a mistake. It is a deliberate action to spend as much money on "education" as possible, and get the least effective return, guranteeing more money next year for more administrative and support staff to "do something" about the failing students.
The Alliance for the Separation of School and State has a lot more on the massive abuse of students and wealth that is going on, and only grows greater every day.
Bob-
What about the Linux users who cannot stop their money from being needlessly spent on "software"?
Another example that good ideas would get funding from those who believe in them, that taxation is just theft.
Bob-
If you look at the chargers, most will say "100-240VAC input" because China uses 240VAC, and it's easier just to build a good rectifier that simply deals with it.
But your American things like tooth brushes, shavers, and others that use cheap hard-wired transformers will work, they just take much longer to do the charging because of the loss of ~20VAC.
The rest I agree with.
Bob-
Their Housecall product, at least, is used all over the world, I'm sure that people will not trust something with a known built in weakness.
My employer just changed to Trend Micro from Semantic/Norton. Good riddence.
It's easy enough to just reverse engineer these things, if you know what you're looking for. And certainly the people who do fear the FBI's being able to scan them will pay some hungry cracker for such information, and to release a hostile virus under the umbrella of the FBI's requested/required "weakness".
Having to develope/deploy a new trojan every week to cover the fact that the last one was hacked and released is going to make the FBI efforts completely useless and wasteful.
Bob-
The GNU licence allows me to place a very tight restriction on my labor, my property, by restricting how it may be used forever!
There is the ultimate freedom, the one that governments don't like you to think about but which is very tightly linked with the GNU license: You have the choice not to use my software.
While the ones wielding the monopoly on force can crush competition easily, if anyone else uses force to arbitrate their disputes the "monopoly" holder gets irate. In effect, you cannot take your business elsewhere.
With software, I can take my business elsewhere. I can write it if I don't want to use anyone elses, I can license it any way I please. The limits are that it may not work, and I may not be able to sell it. So what? As long as I do not use force or fraud, it's not your decision.
People who say things like But there are limits for what kind of restrictions you can impose on the software you write are just power freaks who want to be able to enslave their neighbors to their idea of write and wrong.
Bob-
Which makes me wonder, is his GNOME board application a restatement, or the other way around?
But seriously, I find his promotion of "choice", but not the choice to sell your labor if it happens to be in something called "software", to be hypocritical.
You cannot with one side of your face promote "choice", and with the other side tell people what they may and may not do.
[sarcasm]Shall all sex be free, and it be illegal to deny sexual intercourse, merely because human life depends on it? Golly, sign me up![/sarcasm]
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the GNU license. I use it myself every day, and gladly promote its use. However, I abhore force and will not use force to make someone use that license any more than I would force someone not to use it.
Bob-
http://www.execpc.com/~teba/main.html
Harnes the "problems" of fluid viscosity!
Bob-
The Microsoft input function worked fine, into Microsoft products. Unfortunately, a hard drive reformat eliminated some software for which there was no backup disk, and I installed StarOffice to take up the slack.
Japanese character input continued to work, but Microsloth's IME simply didn't include Chinese when trying to put text into StarOffice applications. It was as if it had never been installed.
People complain about ease of use in Linux, but when "My Computer" does stuff like this it makes configuring locals and xcin seem like a really fun project.
By Cromm, I loath the infantile "My Computer" paradigm. F*ucking moron Bob interface.
Bob-
Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
from http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html
At the request of LRC, Professor Hoppe discusses his extremely important new book, Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction Publishers, Rutgers, NJ: 2001).
Theory and History
On the most abstract level, I want to show how theory is indispensible in correctly interpreting history. History - the sequence of events unfolding in time - is "blind." It reveals nothing about causes and effects. We may agree, for instance, that feudal Europe was poor, that monarchical Europe was wealthier, and that democratic Europe is wealthier still, or that nineteenth-century America with its low taxes and few regulations was poor, while contemporary America with its high taxes and many regulations is rich. Yet was Europe poor because of feudalism, and did it grow richer because of monarchy and democracy? Or did Europe grow richer in spite of monarchy and democracy? Or are these phenomena unrelated?
Likewise, is contemporary America wealthier because of higher taxes and more regulations or in spite of them? That is, would America be even more prosperous if taxes and regulations had remained at their nineteenth-century levels? Historians qua historians cannot answer such questions, and no amount of statistical data manipulation can change this fact. Every sequence of empirical events is compatible with any of a number of rival, mutually incompatible interpretations.
To make a decision regarding such incompatible interpretations, we need a theory. By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori. This is not to say that one can do without experience altogether in establishing a theoretical proposition. However, it is to say that even if experience is necessary, theoretical insights extend and transcend logically beyond a particular historical experience. Theoretical propositions are about necessary facts and relations and, by implication, about impossibilities. Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it.
The Austrian School
Economic and political theory, especially of the Austrian variety, is a treasure trove of such propositions. For instance, a larger quantity of a good is preferred to a smaller amount of the same good; production must precede consumption; what is consumed now cannot be consumed again in the future; prices fixed below market-clearing prices will lead to lasting shortages; without private property in production factors there can be no factor prices, and without factor prices cost-accounting is impossible; an increase in the supply of paper money cannot increase total social wealth but can only redistribute existing wealth; monopoly (the absence of free entry) leads to higher prices and lower product quality than competition; no thing or part of a thing can be owned exclusively by more than one party at a time; democracy (majority rule) and private property are incompatible.
Theory is no substitute for history, of course, yet without a firm grasp of theory serious errors in the interpretation of historical data are unavoidable. For instance, the outstanding historian Carroll Quigley claims that the invention of fractional reserve banking has been a major cause of the unprecedented expansion of wealth associated with the Industrial Revolution, and countless historians have associated the economic plight of Soviet-style socialism with the absence of democracy.
>From a theoretical viewpoint, such interpretations must be rejected categorically. An increase in the paper money supply cannot lead to greater prosperity but only to wealth redistribution. The explosion of wealth during the Industrial Revolution took place despite fractional reserve banking. Similarly, the economic plight of socialism cannot be due to the absence of democracy. Instead, it is caused by the absence of private property in factors of production. "Received history" is full of such misinterpretations. Theory allows us to rule out certain historical reports as impossible and incompatible with the nature of things. By the same token, it allows us to uphold certain other things as historical possibilities, even if they have not yet been tried.
Revisionist History
More interestingly, armed with elementary economic and political theory, I present in my book a revisionist reconstruction of modern Western history: of the rise of absolute monarchical states out of state-less feudal orders, and the transformation, beginning with the French Revolution and essentially completed with the end of World War I, of the Western world from monarchical to democratic States, and the rise of the US to the rank of "universal empire." Neo-conservative writers such as Francis Fukuyama have interpreted this development as civilizational progress, and they proclaim the "End of History" to have arrived with the triumph of Western - US - democracy and its globalization (making the world safe for democracy).
Myth One
My theoretical interpretation is entirely different. It involves the shattering of three historical myths. The first and most fundamental is the myth that the emergence of states out of a prior, non-statist order has caused subsequent economic and civilizational progress. In fact, theory dictates that any progress must have occurred in spite - not because - of the institution of a state.
A state is defined conventionally as an agency that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of ultimate decison-making (jurisdiction) and of taxation. By definition then, every state, regardless of its particular constitution, is economically and ethically deficient. Every monopolist is "bad" from the viewpoint of consumers. Monopoly is hereby understood as the absence of free entry into a particular line of production: only one agency, A, may produce X.
Any monopoly is "bad" for consumers because, shielded from potential new entrants into its line of production, the price for its product will be high er and the quality lower than with free entry. And a monopolist with ultimate decison-making powers is particularly bad. While other monopolists produce inferior goods, a monopolist judge, besides producing inferior goods, will produce bads, because he who is the ultimate judge in every case of conflict also has the last word in each conflict involving himself. Consequently, instead of preventing and resolving conflict, a monopolist of ultimate decision-making will cause and provoke conflict in order to settle it to his own advantage.
Not only would no one accept such a monopoly judge provision, but no one would ever agree to a provision that allowed this judge to determine the price to be paid for his "service" unilaterally. Predictably, such a monopolist would use up ever more resources (tax revenue) to produce fewer goods and perpetrate more bads. This is not a prescription for protection but for oppression and exploitation. The result of a state, then, is not peaceful cooperation and social order, but conflict, provocation, aggression, oppression, and impoverishment, i.e., de-civilization. This, above all, is what the history of states illustrates. It is first and foremost the history of countless millions of innocent state victims.
Myth Two
The second myth concerns the historic transition from absolute monarchies to democratic states. Not only do neoconservatives interpret this development as progress; there is near-universal agreement that democracy represents an advance over monarchy and is the cause of economic and moral progress. This interpretation is curious in light of the fact that democracy has been the fountainhead of every form of socialism: of (European) democratic socialism and (American) liberalism and neo-conservatism as well as of international (Soviet) socialism, (Italian) fascism, and national (Nazi) socialism. More importantly, however, theory contradicts this interpretation; whereas both monarchies and democracies are deficient as states, democracy is worse than monarchy.
Theoretically speaking, the transition from monarchy to democracy involves no more or less than a hereditary monopoly "owner" - the prince or king - being replaced by temporary and interchangeable - monopoly "caretakers" - presidents, prime ministers, and members of parliament. Both kings and presidents will produce bads, yet a king, because he "owns" the monopoly and may sell or bequeath it, will care about the repercussions of his actions on capital values. As the owner of the capital stock on "his" territory, the king will be comparatively future-oriented. In order to preserve or enhance the value of his property, he will exploit only moderately and calculatingly. In contrast, a temporary and interchangeable democratic caretaker does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is permitted to use it to his advantage. He owns its current use but not its capital stock. This does not eliminate exploitation. Instead, it makes exploitation shortsighted (present-oriented) and uncalculated, i.e., carried out without regard for the value of the capital stock.
Nor is it an advantage of democracy that free entry into every state position exists (whereas under monarchy entry is restricted by the king's discretion). To the contrary, only competition in the production of goods is a good thing. Competition in the production of bads is not good; in fact, it is sheer evil. Kings, coming into their position by virtue of birth, might be harmless dilettantes or decent men (and if they are "madmen," they will be quickly restrained or if need be, killed, by close relatives concerned with the possessions of the dynasty). In sharp contrast, the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it essentially impossible for a harmless or decent person to ever rise to the top. Presidents and prime ministers come into their position as a result of their efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of government.
In particular, democracy is seen as promoting an increase in the social rate of time preference (present-orientation) or the "infantilization" of society. It results in continually increased taxes, paper money and paper money inflation, an unending flood of legislation, and a steadily growing "public" debt. By the same token, democracy leads to lower savings, increased legal uncertainty, moral relativism, lawlessness, and crime. Further, democracy is a tool for wealth and income confiscation and redistribution. It involves the legislative "taking" of the property of some - the haves of something - and the "giving" of it to others - the have-nots of things. And since it is presumably something valuable that is being redistributed - of which the haves have too much and the have-nots too little - any such redistribution implies that the incentive to be of value or produce something valuable is systematically reduced. In other words, the proportion of not-so-good people and not-so-good personal traits, habits, and forms of conduct and appearance will increase, and life in society will become increasingly unpleasant.
Last but not least, democracy is described as resulting in a radical change in the conduct of war. Because they can externalize the costs of their own aggression onto others (via taxes), both kings and presidents will be more than 'normally' aggressive and warlike. However, a king's motive for war is typically an ownership-inheritance dispute. The objective of his war is tangible and territorial: to gain control over some piece of real estate and its inhabitants. And to reach this objective it is in his interest to distinguish between combatants (his enemies and targets of attack) and non-combatants and their property (to be left out of the war and undamaged). Democracy has transformed the limited wars of kings into total wars. The motive for war has become ideological - democracy, liberty, civilization, humanity. The objectives are intangible and elusive: the ideological "conversion" of the losers preceded by their "unconditional" surrender (which, because one can never be certain about the sincerity of conversion, may require such means as the mass murder of civilians). And the distinction between combatants and non-combatants becomes fuzzy and ultimately disappears under democracy, and mass war involvement - the draft and popular war rallies - as well as "collateral damage" become part of war strategy.
Myth Three
Finally, the third myth shattered is the belief that there is no alternative to Western welfare-democracies a la US. Again, theory demonstrates otherwise. First, this belief is false because the modern welfare-state is not a "stable" economic system. It is bound to collapse under its own parasitic weight, much like Russian-style socialism imploded a decade ago. More importantly, however, an economically stable alternative to democracy exists. The term I propose for this alternative is "natural order."
In a natural order every scarce resource, including all land, is owned privately, every enterprise is funded by voluntarily paying customers or private donors, and entry into every line of production, including that of property protection, conflict arbitration, and peacemaking, is free. A large part of my book concerns the explanation of the workings - the logic - of a natural order and the requirements for the transformation from democracy to a natural order.
Whereas states disarm their citizens so as to be able to rob them more surely (thereby rendering them more vulnerable also to criminal and terrorist attack), a natural order is characterized by an armed citizenry. This feature is furthered by insurance companies, which play a prominent role as providers of security and protection in a natural order. Insurers will encourage gun ownership by offering lower premiums to armed (and weapons-trained) clients. By their nature insurers are defensive agencies. Only "accidental" - not: self-inflicted, caused or provoked - damage is "insurable." Aggressors and provocateurs will be denied insurance coverage and are thus weak. And because insurers must indemnify their clients in case of victimization, they must be concerned constantly about the prevention of criminal aggression, the recovery of misappropriated property, and the apprehension of those liable for the damage in question.
Furthermore, the relationship between insurer and client is contractual. The rules of the game are mutually accepted and fixed. An insurer cannot "legislate," or unilaterally change the terms of the contract. In particular, if an insurer wants to attract a voluntarily paying clientele, it must provide for the foreseeable contingency of conflict in its contracts, not only between its own clients but especially with clients of other insurers. The only provision satisfactorily covering the latter contingency is for an insurer to bind itself contractually to independent third-party arbitration. However, not just any arbitration will do. The conflicting insurers must agree on the arbitrator or arbitration agency, and in order to be agreeable to insurers, an arbitrator must produce a product (of legal procedure and substantive judgment) that embodies the widest possible moral consensus among insurers and clients alike. Thus, contrary to statist conditions, a natural order is characterized by stable and predictable law and increased legal harmony.
Moreover, insurance companies promote the development of another "security feature." States have not just disarmed their citizens by taking away their weapons, democratic states in particular have also done so in stripping their citizens of the right to exclusion and by promoting instead - through various non-discrimination, affirmative action, and multiculturalist policies - forced integration. In a natural order, the right to exclusion inherent in the very idea of private property is restored to private property owners.
Accordingly, to lower the production cost of security and improve its quality, a natural order is characterized by increased discrimination, segregation, spatial separation, uniculturalism (cultural homogeneity), exclusivity, and exclusion. In addition, whereas states have undermined intermediating social institutions (family households, churches, covenants, communities, and clubs) and the associated ranks and layers of authority so as to increase their own power vis-a-vis equal and isolated individuals, a natural order is distinctly un-egalitarian: "elitist," "hierarchical," "proprietarian," "patriarchical," and "authoritorian," and its stability depends essentially on the existence of a self-conscious natural - voluntarily acknowledged - aristocracy.
Strategy
Finally, I discuss strategic matters and questions. How can a natural order arise out of democracy? I explain the role of ideas, intellectuals, elites, and public opinion in the legitimation and de-legitimation of state power. In particular, I discuss the role of secession - and the proliferation of independent political entities - as an important step toward the goal of natural order, and I explain how to properly privatize "socialized" and "public" property.
The book grew out of speeches I presented at various Mises Institute and CLS conferences during the 1990s. These conferences, organized by Lew Rockwell, Burt Blumert, and, until his death in 1995, Murray Rothbard, had the purpose of advancing libertarianism by locating and anchoring abstract libertarian theory historically, sociologically, and culturally and thereby creating what has become known in the meantime as paleo-libertarianism (in contrast to left-countercultural-libertarianism and cold-and-hot-war "new" and "neo"-conservatism). The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, the precusor to LRC, was the first and most immediate expression and reflection of this intellectual movement. Others included The Costs of War, Reassessing the Presidency, and The Irrepressible Rothbard. Democracy the God That Failed is my attempt to define and give expression to the paleo-libertarian movement.
However, I'm running 2.4.12 in Debian Testing, and have not yet seen this problem.
I will, however, be forcing fsck on every boot as soon as I can find out how to set that option.
Bob-
That is why the Rodney King 5 were found "not guilty" in their (criminal) trial: They successfully argued that they were, in fact, following police department policy. They were not acting as "individuals", and were therefore not guilty of any crime.
As long as the thugs are held to standards in the government courts to have been advancing the interests of that same government, they will be adjudicated as having done nothing "illegal".
And if violation of the DMCA is upheld even once, the law will be quickly revised on the basis of "National Security."
Remember to say "Hail Furer" when presenting your photo-ID's.
Bob-
All this subtrifuge and secrecy is annoying! Where is Jackboot Janet when you really need her?
Bob-
You're getting emotional, but I don't consider that the same as "over-reacting". Your second to last paragraph, however, is patently false unless you apply your theory to the government itself.
The anti-monopolistic laws are based in hypocrisy. The laws were written to punish people that the real monopoly doesn't like. The laws are written in such a way that anyone can be prosecuted under them. Sun makes both proprietary(sp?) hardware and software. Apple OS doesn't run on anyone elses hardware. The list of prosecutable actions is deliberately endless because it serves the real monopolies interests to have it so.
Name one person forced to use Microsoft software. Or one person forced to pay for Microsoft software. They don't exist. Microsoft's crime was not contributing enough to politicians election funds. They have changed their policy in that regard, and the dogs at the JustUs department are called off.
However, you are not allowed, by law, to send first class mail by any means other than the U.S. Post Office. Just one example of the power of the real monopoly.
*If* Microsoft had been "prosecuted" when they released Win95, I might have given the slightest creedence to the charges. But that didn't happen, and the alternatives and reality were well established long before any prosecution took place.
Simple consumer choice had made Microsoft's "monopoly" moot. I'm sorry that the Fed.Gov didn't ignore them and let Microsoft's programs speak for themselves.
As with any business, so long as force and fraud are not used there is no crime.
If I weren't a pragmatist, I'd be in jail. Just like you. That is the real power of a monopoly.
Bob-
It's simple, really.
That's absurd. Republicans love big government as much as anyone. Just look at how big the budgets get when Republicans control both houses of government.
Simple math. Another would be a ratio of "new laws" to "laws repealed".
It is you who committed an act of hate-speach by labeling Republicans as "anti-government".
Personally, I can't stand either side of the party of government control, "D" or "R".
Bob-
Yep, that's right, some of us work at companies where we can't even do a PING, and even https goes through the company proxy/filter.
Bob-
What I meant was, it's much more common for someone to have a disk drive than a CD-writer.
Also, a pure Net install, such as the 24M iso image talked about earlier being a loop-back file system and kernel image, a-la Dragon Linux would be fantastic.
That depends, of course, on your system having enough RAM to have networking, disk partition/formatting and whatever else off the disk while you were doing the initialization.
But enough sillyness.
Bob-
Because the BSD assumed a network connection, it could have on its distribution disk only enough smarts to begin, no need for everything to be available on disk.
I admire simplicity. If I were anything of a programmer, I'd help Debian fix their install.
Bob-
As the article mentions, the wavelength of the clock signal through the chip material, propagation of data through the logic gates, are reaching unity. Vast advances in "clock speed" have not shown equal advances in "chip throughput" because it takes more and more "clock cycles" to do the same logical function.
The "magic" of the asynchronous chip is to separate the speed of logic from the speed of the clock. If all logic functions took 1 clock cycle, a 500MHz chip would beat the living crap out of the fastest Pentium.
The new bottlenecks: memory access, cache access, bus speeds, IO of all kinds. If the CPU clock is down in rational speed, the other computer functions can be optimized to make a complete device that is far more efficient in its functioning than the present screaming CPU and crawling RAM has given us.
What good is a CPU at 10GHz if it has to wait 20 clock cycles to add two numbers?
Bob-
Ah, good for you. I see you grasp the concept completely.
Or, if you actually disagree, your sarcasm was a bit too thin. Bringing up Standard Oil as another example of government abuse merely illustrates that the violations of Private Property started long before the idiocy of prosecuting Microsoft for trying to negotiate contracts in their favor.
Hmm... Standard Oil deciding which pipeline to purchase... Another case of prosecution for trying to negotiate contracts in your favor?
Bob-
To tell Microsoft what they can and cannot write into their software, barring intellectual property theft of course, is sick.
Why stop there? Since Linux uses ideas that were originated in Unix, prohibit Linux.
Every argument for violating Microsofts ability to choose what they write as their own software reduces private property rights for everyone else too.
Private Property, the basis of wealth, investment, prosperity, labor and freedom itself, is what is being attacked.
Just because "we" don't like Microsoft it's ok to enslave them to the arbitrary power of the state?
Beware the DoJ and this power you so approve of as it is used upon your foe, for you WILL find that power used against you next.
Bob-
I wouldn't give a plug nickle for a Picasso if it weren't for the people who would pay vast money for it. Certainly I'd never keep it as "art".
In the same way, "art" is whatever someone says it is, for themselves at least.
"Fine" art is just several people agreeing that, "Yeah, that's art." Fine.
Some of the most beautiful art ever created, in my opinion, is embodied in many Japanese swords. Some music is art, but no one thinks that all "music" is even music, much less art.
Are video games art? Some are, I'm sure, just because several people will agree they are.
If the museum wants to "get real", they aught to use their time to show folks examples of what they believe is "art" *within* video games.
How's that for a shift in paradigm?
Bob-
Bandwidth is like megahertz, it's an arbitrary number that may or may not be useful.
The broad-band providers maximized their customer experience by caching at their head-ends. The "massive bandwidth" of broadband was therefore useful, without the lag times that must be considered.
Even in a perfect network, the latency for data travel matters. How often are the LED's on your 56K modem pegged on by a datastream where your link is the limiting factor?
A 747 full of DAT's has truly awsome bandwidth, but the latency is deadly.
The beauty of this massive engorgement in fibers is that once layed, a fiber optic cable's capacity is limited only by the hardware at the end points. Any improvement in technology, such as WDM, multiplies the available bits-per-second without having to lay more fiber.
As places like NewYork and London and Tokyo reach a fiber glut, the rest of the world will follow. Just like telephones and electric power, "poor" places will simply get their access at a slower pace. But there are always alternatives, such as satellite, to get the information. It might not be in flashy graphics, or up-to-the-second, but "poor" areas have no demand for that to cover the costs anyway. That's why they're called "poor".
If you think that an area is under-served, then stand up and join or organize a group to lay the freaking fiber. Complaining all day won't put cables in the water/ground.
But when you do, think also of what it is you're connecting *to*, or you may end up connected to nothing anyone wants.
Bob-
Disconnect the reset button.
It's the same answer for seat-belt buzzers, airbags, trunk lights.
Why to techs like Linux so much? Because they can Turn Things Off! And why is Microsoft software hated, really, at the root? Because you cannot turn things off.
Bob-