Had the increased address space (and simplification of the header) been all that IPv6 did, I would embrace it whole heartedly. Oh well, second system syndrome and all that.
I'm using IPv6 right now, happily connecting to v4 and v6 sites. It's a simple matter of intelligent use of private v4 space and "try v6 first" DNS.
Go to http://tunnelbroker.net/ and get yourself one too. Oh, BTW, the tunnel doesn't work through NAT.
As far as "need", my agreement is restricted. Had the entirety of the specification for IPv6 been the simplification of the header, including those massive address fields, I would be ecstatic. Everything else just adds complexity to the one layer which benefits the most from simplicity. Didn't ATM teach us anything?
I agree, my ISP refused to even talk about it. All they said was, "Maybe you should look into a business account." Luckly, http://tunnelbroker.net/ from Hurricane Electric is available for you to turn up IPv6 yourself today.
The last time I was working on peerings at the MAEs, IPv6 was not being handled natively, has that changed?
So, convince me: why is IPv6 the right answer to the problem?
That depends on the problem. Were the "address space" the problem being considered, then going to 128 bits for address and nothing else would solve that problem.
But NoooOOOooo! No matter how beautiful simplifying the header (even with the long addresses) such as has been done with v6 is, this committee couldn't stop there. They had to go and screw it up by layering on protocols and functions on top of protocols and functions. A router that has to pay attention to payload isn't a router, it's a gateway.
It is a matter of opinion whether or not DHCP "should" be a network or server function. Right now, it's served by routers if you want it to be, by servers if you want it to be. Creating limitations by bundling the dynamic network address allocation into network hardware is a decrease in functionality that only a committee could have dreamed up.
The only reason v6 is still debated is because of this second-system syndrome.
Markets themselves are abstract. Is there a "market" for IPv6? Certainly, I've installed it myself, as have several other people I know (both business and private). Since Linux does v6 just fine, I didn't have to buy any new hardware but I did have to retire an old v4 router.
However, when I contacted my ISP to ask about an IPv6 tunnel (since I do not expect their last-mile hardware is IPv6 capable, and I was right) I was told that I should look into a business account.
They didn't say anything about a tunnel yea or nay, only that my interest obviously meant to them that I wasn't no plain honky home user.
There are lots of things about V6 I don't like, and lots that I do like. Same for many other people. Choice. The fact that it is still an individual choice simply means it's still a free market.
Hey, Profane, ever get to read any of the "free market" articles on Mises.org? I'd write one for them on IPv6 if I were closer to the core routing hubs like Mae-East and -West. I don't even know if they've specified v6 as valid natively. I think I'll go check.
It would be fun to exercise dictatorial power, wouldn't it? Ah, but I neither have such power nor would I remain uncorrupted by it if I did.
I don't believe there is any requirement for what is now called "corporations". The grant of limited liability from responsibility for their own choices may seem like a good idea to corporate officers and stock holders, but the only practical difference of having no such limitation would be either explicit contractual limitations in their dealings, or a greater variety in insurance coverages.
Right now, I have no such grant of "limited liability", so I have a million-dollar liability insurance policy.
You really think there's a big difference between the two?
Indeed yes. Government is the only entity with the power to unilaterally change contracts and then hold me liable for those changes. For instance, if my credit card company changes their rules, I am in no way required to continue doing business with them. Not so the IRS.
Now the fact that the same people have been able to wield that government power for the enrichment of themselves and their friends, that also are officers in "corporations", is semantics. It's all a result of the power of interventionist government to....well...."intervene".
If railroads, for instance, had had to compete instead of tieing themselves up with the government in "partnerships" and such, then the Great Northern wouldn't be the only railroad that took no government money and, strangely, is also the only railroad to never go bankrupt.
That's a pretty radical change. Do the Mises folk actually advocate that?
Please read a few articles and see. I in no way represent the "Mises folk", I'm just a satisfied reader.
Personally, I'm an anarchist in that I have yet to be presented a viable argument that there is any program which can only be conducted by coercive force, or conducted better than by interested individuals working together voluntarily. If I may suggest, do a search in the media section for "anarchy" and listen to a few of the lectures on that subject. If you believe "anarchy" has to mean chaos, you may be pleasantly surprised.
I have no worship of "corporation", a fictional entity created by a grant of limited liability by government. Massive executive bonuses ? Is that envy I see?
I noticed that your list of abuses in your latter sentence are all related to abuse of government power.
So don't go so overboard with your hatred of abuse of power that you don't assign responsibility directly to that entity which is the source of the abuse: interventionist government.
Remove the power to enact such limited liability, and businessmen won't go looking to buy it to make themselves more competitive. Or do you think a product won't find a customer just because you don't like the product?
Now, go read http://www.mises.org/ for some of their excellent daily articles about government abuse of power and the poverty and deprivation that brings on everyone but their select few with "massive executive bonuses".
Technically, the difference is between entrepreneurial and bureaucratic management. The motivations and measures of success are opposite because the customers are different.
Successful entrepreneurial management is measured by things easily understood from our day to day lives. Happier customers, reduced costs, efficiency. This is because of the availability of a measuring stick that applies to everything: Profit and Loss. Do a better job of serving the customers wants, with a better product or less cost of production, and you have "success".
A bureaucratic "success" is measured solely by larger budgets and bigger staff. There is no "profit and loss" measurement available by which to judge decisions, because the customer isn't buying the product. The customers of a bureaucracy are the higher level bureaucrats. It doesn't matter what services are provided, satisfaction levels, or if anything is actually done at all. The only thing that matters is if the higher level bureaucrats are pleased.
But the measure of success for the higher level bureaucrats are exactly the same as the lower level ones. This reinforces redundancy and waste as successful management from the lowest to the highest levels of bureaucracy. The larger the bureaucracy, the worse it gets..
This is why large companies often "reorganize" into smaller subsidiaries with more focused goals. There is increased opportunity to provide what was a "bureaucratic" function in a larger company as an "entrepreneurial" function to external customers. The motivations are thereby changed, and efficiencies rewarded rather than punished.
Of course the biggest difference is even more elemental: Force. Governments get away with it because they don't have to satisfy anyone in order to get the money to sustain their bureaucracies. They get the money first, by force, then spend it buying votes with which to perpetuate itself. I greatly recommend the books _Crisis and Leviathan_, which speaks directly to this issue, and _How Capitalism Saved America_, easily available from the Mises.org web site.
Bob-
ps: I also worked in a government job for 6 years. The more I learned the more disgusted I became. I have refused 6-figure salaries to return there, because I refuse to give them anything voluntarily. If the governments of the world vanished tomorrow, the world would be a much better place in every imaginable way.
Sorry, that money will still be taken by government from the poor and mid-class people who would otherwise use it to improve their and other peoples lives.
Software upgrades are already figured into the budgets, and a government agency will spend their money on anything, not matter how silly, before they will let their budgets be cut by even a penny.
Near the end of every fiscal period, any money left over in the budget is very quickly spent, because if there is anything left over at the end the auditors assume that the department obviously didn't need the money and the next years budget will be reduced by that amount. This punishes efficient management and rewards sloth, abuse and waste. But this is government, and thereby I merely repeat myself.
"It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them."
and
"Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits."
I can also whole heartedly recommend Hanse Hermann Hoppe's _Democracy: The God That Failed_. Or even just the quote from Mel Gibson in _The Patriot_, "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away, for 3000 tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as any king."
It's a good idea to secure ones wireless access point. It's also a good idea to use an infant car seat. I object not that these are bad ideas, but they are imposed at gun point by force of law.
the money may go to areas and programs that are underfunded.
Non-sequiter. There is no such thing as an "underfunded" government program. Since all money is taken at gun point from taxpayers, there are only degrees of extortion.
To argue that something is "underfunded" would require an entitlement to the labor of others. Being entitled to the labor of someone else has a very specific dictionary definition: slavery.
The early audio recording of the two hour meeting between the CIO's office and various members of the vendor population including the idiot... I mean, the representative of Microsoft, is really amazing. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you do a little digging and find it.
The CIO did make one very interesting statement about money. $50M in order to get Office-12, because of license fees, OS and hardware upgrades, for something that cannot even be tested at this time.
In comparison, to roll out OpenOffice to every state employee, including training (which never seems to be in the pro-Microsoft column), $5M. Mostly because there is no hardware or OS upgrade requirement since OpenOffice runs on everything. Today. Now. Including using the document specification they really want, which Microsoft says they have no plans on supporting.
Fascinating. Foot, rifle, Microsoft pulls trigger.
Many thanks. I had not heard thought to search for the phrase "tunnel broker", that worked. I have a tunnel from Hurricane Electric, I think, although I'm having difficulty enabling it through NAT at this moment.
I recently asked my cable ISP what their IPv6 gateway was. They said, "We don't provide that service. Maybe you should upgrade to a business account."
They only offer multiple client services on business accounts, so technically I'm already in violation of their rules because of using a router and NAT even though I run no "server", just a couple of PCs.
Yes, Cisco has a vested interest in replacing all those legacy IPv4-only cigar-box routers like mine. Yes, my IP provider would love a reason to raise rates or otherwise push me into a "business" account (and thereby charge me more).
Fact is, I won't be buying a new router, I'll just recycle one PC into place as a gateway and continue to hide behind NAT because I don't care to pay business rates for home PC use.
No matter how much I dislike IPv6 because of its "second system" bloat, I have yet to find a free IPv6 tunnel provider. Yes, it's my fault, people tell me they're out there I just cannot find them.
Sorry, I won't be in Tokyo during November. If I were, I'd be glad to.
My only suggestion: Go around back too, see the stores that don't have profit margins to afford main-street exposure. Lots of wonderful stuff, but very little Linux.
What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money[?]
In a demand economy, such as a capitalist one, you are paid by those to whom you trade your labor/skills/time.
As a programmer, I think you will find most paid programming is done not to build general applications that are then shrink-wrapped, what companies pay for is something that directly benefits themselves. Tools, software customization, the generic "Database Analist" and "Systems Administrator".
So if you want to be paid to write F/OSS, find an organization which will pay you for your time doing what they need, and help them to realize that putting the resultant code under GPL, for example, helps everyone, including them.
In other words, don't sell air. You cannot make money selling air where it is freely available, so don't complain about that.
Find where "air" is scarce, sell it there. Find what people do with "air" and help them do it, that's selling services.
With that in mind, it is baffling to me that free market advocates don't embrace OSS as a non-regulatory means of avoiding anti-competitive monopoly situations.
Many of us do indeed. I use F/OSS software as a present day example of the trend to rapidly commoditize products in a "free" market. Because there is low barrier-to-entry for programmers and programs, unlike licensed and regulated fields like electricians, innovation is exceptionally rapid. While certainly there are a lot of failures that might not have happened if programmers had to take a test and be certified before they could work in the field, the chaff rapidly falls and the gems, like Linux, KDE, Apache, Alan Cox, Marcelo Tosatti, are visible to all.
It is only the closed minds who cannot grasp the benefits of competition, or vested interests who do not want competition, who do not see the difference that a free market makes in every field and try to create or increase barriers and regulations.
One of the most potent examples of the quality of F/OSS products, in my experience, was when the blog at http://www.mises.org/ was rebuilt on Linux instead of Windows. Access times when from several seconds down to near instantaneous, reliability has been 100% since.
On the other hand, their use of.wmv video and Microsoft streaming formats baffles me. I think they believe "We started this way, let's stay consistant" or something like that. I guess they already bought the licenses...
Nothing that mplayer and xine cannot handle, though.
Most of the time, you pay people considerably less than what their work is worth to you (*) because competition is driving down the price of labour.
Ah! From that, and your last paragraph about unions, it's clear that you believe the person who does the hiring has complete control over the process. Were that true, you would be correct with the rest of your position.
However, it's not. The fact is that employers have to attract and retain good employees. That means competition increases pay rates, benefits, working conditions.
That is not to say that all employers are at the mercy of their employees, or your contention that all employees are at the mercy of employers. Where competition is allowed, good workers make good money, and bad workers made bad.
it's incredibly difficult to work out how much someone's labour is worth to you
Not at all. I know what the task is worth to me, and you know what your time is worth to you. If you don't want the money, that's fine. If no one wants to work for what I believe the job is worth, then the job won't get done.
If someone is unemployed because no one has offered enough money for them to go to work, that is choice. If someone cannot get work because the jobs they offer to do are not worth the cost of minimum wage, that's coercion.
If I make 50 widgets for you on Wednesday, why will another 50 widgets on Thursday be worth more to you?
To change your example to what I said, with the SKILL you build by creating those 50 widgets, you now make 51. Your labor is now skilled where it was not before, your time is now more valuable to me than it was and you can demand more remuneration. This is why college graduates tend to make more money than non-graduates, but only if their degree is in a field in demand.
It's the wage which unions force employers to pay in order to avoid strikes.
As an employer, why do I have to hire union members? As an employee, why do I have to join a union? What you describe is not "a truly free society" at all. It is the political machine, the merchantilist alliance of Big Labor and Government that has allowed unions to avoid prosecution for racketeering and otherwise illegal monopoly practices. Just like Major League Baseball (tm).
"3. Not every individual is able to perform any kind of labor. There are innate as well as acquired diversities in the abilities to perform certain types of work. The innate faculties required for certain types of work cannot be acquired by any training and schooling."
I think you aught to take a look at _Human Action_.
You're assuming that wages are based on the value of the labour performed by the worker, but they aren't.
Perception, my dear brpr. If I believe that this individual will not produce more value than the money I pay them, I will simply keep the money.
Securing your server is an excellent example. What's it worth to you? Even if I am the only one in the world who can do it, if I try to charge more than securing the server is worth to you, you won't pay it.
it's an empirical question whether any given minimum wage will be high enough to cause a significant degree...
Which is simply double-talk. Nowhere do you deny that a minimum wage will price some workers out of the market, or some work from being done at all. It's is irrelevant if it is only one person that is unemployed because of minimum wage laws, that is still one too many.
What are you arguing against, anyway? You don't actually contradict me, except in the effort to promote/denigrate the "labor theory of value", when I was actually talking about the "value of labor".
Oh, and "simplistic" doesn't mean wrong. It just means simple enough that people can understand it. If your theory cannot be explained simply, there is little value to your theory except to you.
I think you mean libertarians don't believe in rule. Meaning even 100 cannot tell one what to do.
If some voluntary organization wants to run itself by majority vote, go ahead. Anyone who doesn't like it can just not participate in that organization.
Government, that is "rulers", don't give a choice for, "I'm not paying the tax this year, I don't like what you're doing so I don't volunteer."
The more money you have, the more assets you have to leverage in getting you more money. No amount of salaried or waged labor will earn you a billion dollars.
So false. Ask Donald Trump some time. I saw an interview with him, he said he spends every waking moment "at work" in one way or another. His normal attire is a business suit, he doesn't vacation. Fact is, wealthy people get wealthy by working harder and smarter than other people.
Yes, capital can be leveraged to make more capital. However, while it's being invested you don't have it to buy anything else with. So you have to put some of your desires aside in order to have the capital to invest in the first place. That choice is available to anyone at any time.
Most people want their big screen TV, their new car, their computer, and they are willing to go into debt to get it! No one made them stay poor, they make choices that cost them money by how they wish to live, and there are people who have other priorities and who will gladly lend them that money today for interest. Where do you think all that debt comes from? Where do you think all that interest goes?
Inequality exists because people are not made alike by machine. Trying to erase inequality only make the problems worse, because it creates a bureaucracy with the power of life and death. That bureaucracy becomes the 'upper' class itself, and the whole equality thing is out the window at the outset. Do go back and study the French Revolution, and discover why people were happy to have a dictator in Napoleon just to stop the chaos!
Without the power of rulership, there are no plutocrats even if there are wealthy and poor. There will always be wealthy and poor, because there will always be people with different priorities.
Except that government (as you say) is not defined by coersion, but by force.
Even though this is a reply to an AC, I think it important enough to comment.
Coercion and force are the same thing. Someone compels you to do/pay something you would not do otherwise. Taxes, fees, in fact every single action of government down to helmet laws and street signs are backed by the power of the state to kill you.
Read the "rules of the road" some time. These are evolved rules of conduct, such as making U-turns only where safe to do so, turning on your headlights within 1/2 hour of sunset, signaling to change lanes, first person to a 4-way stop goes first, etc, that came about because people interacting peacefully on the road get to their destinations better by cooperating than by competing.
Just stop working if you're not getting paid enough? That does't work if you're poor.
If they're not getting paid enough already, what's the point of continuing to do the work? Much better to find something more valuable to do with your time.
Here's how it works, compressed version: You produce labor worth $x to me. If you do not want $x, don't work for me.
If you will take $x now, in order to get experience and produce tomorrow what is worth $x+1 to me, then you can come back tomorrow and negotiate $x+1 and it will be worthwhile for me or my competition to pay it because we would be getting more value along with paying more money.
If, however, you demand $x+1 and the labor is only worth $x to me, I won't pay it because to do so will put me out of business.
If the work performed is worth $x to me, and the government says I may not hire anyone for less than $x+1, the work won't get done and you will get $0 even if you would have worked for $x. Scenario 1 never happens. That's how minimum wage laws create a permanent class of unemployed.
Slashdot Mirror
Had the increased address space (and simplification of the header) been all that IPv6 did, I would embrace it whole heartedly. Oh well, second system syndrome and all that.
I'm using IPv6 right now, happily connecting to v4 and v6 sites. It's a simple matter of intelligent use of private v4 space and "try v6 first" DNS.
Go to http://tunnelbroker.net/ and get yourself one too. Oh, BTW, the tunnel doesn't work through NAT.
As far as "need", my agreement is restricted. Had the entirety of the specification for IPv6 been the simplification of the header, including those massive address fields, I would be ecstatic. Everything else just adds complexity to the one layer which benefits the most from simplicity. Didn't ATM teach us anything?
I agree, my ISP refused to even talk about it. All they said was, "Maybe you should look into a business account." Luckly, http://tunnelbroker.net/ from Hurricane Electric is available for you to turn up IPv6 yourself today.
The last time I was working on peerings at the MAEs, IPv6 was not being handled natively, has that changed?
So, convince me: why is IPv6 the right answer to the problem?
That depends on the problem. Were the "address space" the problem being considered, then going to 128 bits for address and nothing else would solve that problem.
But NoooOOOooo! No matter how beautiful simplifying the header (even with the long addresses) such as has been done with v6 is, this committee couldn't stop there. They had to go and screw it up by layering on protocols and functions on top of protocols and functions. A router that has to pay attention to payload isn't a router, it's a gateway.
It is a matter of opinion whether or not DHCP "should" be a network or server function. Right now, it's served by routers if you want it to be, by servers if you want it to be. Creating limitations by bundling the dynamic network address allocation into network hardware is a decrease in functionality that only a committee could have dreamed up.
The only reason v6 is still debated is because of this second-system syndrome.
Bob-
Markets themselves are abstract. Is there a "market" for IPv6? Certainly, I've installed it myself, as have several other people I know (both business and private). Since Linux does v6 just fine, I didn't have to buy any new hardware but I did have to retire an old v4 router.
However, when I contacted my ISP to ask about an IPv6 tunnel (since I do not expect their last-mile hardware is IPv6 capable, and I was right) I was told that I should look into a business account.
They didn't say anything about a tunnel yea or nay, only that my interest obviously meant to them that I wasn't no plain honky home user.
There are lots of things about V6 I don't like, and lots that I do like. Same for many other people. Choice. The fact that it is still an individual choice simply means it's still a free market.
Hey, Profane, ever get to read any of the "free market" articles on Mises.org? I'd write one for them on IPv6 if I were closer to the core routing hubs like Mae-East and -West. I don't even know if they've specified v6 as valid natively. I think I'll go check.
Bob-
So you would destroy corporations completely?
It would be fun to exercise dictatorial power, wouldn't it? Ah, but I neither have such power nor would I remain uncorrupted by it if I did.
I don't believe there is any requirement for what is now called "corporations". The grant of limited liability from responsibility for their own choices may seem like a good idea to corporate officers and stock holders, but the only practical difference of having no such limitation would be either explicit contractual limitations in their dealings, or a greater variety in insurance coverages.
Right now, I have no such grant of "limited liability", so I have a million-dollar liability insurance policy.
You really think there's a big difference between the two?
Indeed yes. Government is the only entity with the power to unilaterally change contracts and then hold me liable for those changes. For instance, if my credit card company changes their rules, I am in no way required to continue doing business with them. Not so the IRS.
Now the fact that the same people have been able to wield that government power for the enrichment of themselves and their friends, that also are officers in "corporations", is semantics. It's all a result of the power of interventionist government to....well...."intervene".
If railroads, for instance, had had to compete instead of tieing themselves up with the government in "partnerships" and such, then the Great Northern wouldn't be the only railroad that took no government money and, strangely, is also the only railroad to never go bankrupt.
That's a pretty radical change. Do the Mises folk actually advocate that?
Please read a few articles and see. I in no way represent the "Mises folk", I'm just a satisfied reader.
Personally, I'm an anarchist in that I have yet to be presented a viable argument that there is any program which can only be conducted by coercive force, or conducted better than by interested individuals working together voluntarily. If I may suggest, do a search in the media section for "anarchy" and listen to a few of the lectures on that subject. If you believe "anarchy" has to mean chaos, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Bob-
I have no worship of "corporation", a fictional entity created by a grant of limited liability by government. Massive executive bonuses ? Is that envy I see?
I noticed that your list of abuses in your latter sentence are all related to abuse of government power.
So don't go so overboard with your hatred of abuse of power that you don't assign responsibility directly to that entity which is the source of the abuse: interventionist government.
Remove the power to enact such limited liability, and businessmen won't go looking to buy it to make themselves more competitive. Or do you think a product won't find a customer just because you don't like the product?
Now, go read http://www.mises.org/ for some of their excellent daily articles about government abuse of power and the poverty and deprivation that brings on everyone but their select few with "massive executive bonuses".
Technically, the difference is between entrepreneurial and bureaucratic management. The motivations and measures of success are opposite because the customers are different.
Successful entrepreneurial management is measured by things easily understood from our day to day lives. Happier customers, reduced costs, efficiency. This is because of the availability of a measuring stick that applies to everything: Profit and Loss. Do a better job of serving the customers wants, with a better product or less cost of production, and you have "success".
A bureaucratic "success" is measured solely by larger budgets and bigger staff. There is no "profit and loss" measurement available by which to judge decisions, because the customer isn't buying the product. The customers of a bureaucracy are the higher level bureaucrats. It doesn't matter what services are provided, satisfaction levels, or if anything is actually done at all. The only thing that matters is if the higher level bureaucrats are pleased.
But the measure of success for the higher level bureaucrats are exactly the same as the lower level ones. This reinforces redundancy and waste as successful management from the lowest to the highest levels of bureaucracy. The larger the bureaucracy, the worse it gets..
This is why large companies often "reorganize" into smaller subsidiaries with more focused goals. There is increased opportunity to provide what was a "bureaucratic" function in a larger company as an "entrepreneurial" function to external customers. The motivations are thereby changed, and efficiencies rewarded rather than punished.
Of course the biggest difference is even more elemental: Force. Governments get away with it because they don't have to satisfy anyone in order to get the money to sustain their bureaucracies. They get the money first, by force, then spend it buying votes with which to perpetuate itself. I greatly recommend the books _Crisis and Leviathan_, which speaks directly to this issue, and _How Capitalism Saved America_, easily available from the Mises.org web site.
Bob-
ps: I also worked in a government job for 6 years. The more I learned the more disgusted I became. I have refused 6-figure salaries to return there, because I refuse to give them anything voluntarily. If the governments of the world vanished tomorrow, the world would be a much better place in every imaginable way.
Sorry, that money will still be taken by government from the poor and mid-class people who would otherwise use it to improve their and other peoples lives.
Software upgrades are already figured into the budgets, and a government agency will spend their money on anything, not matter how silly, before they will let their budgets be cut by even a penny.
Near the end of every fiscal period, any money left over in the budget is very quickly spent, because if there is anything left over at the end the auditors assume that the department obviously didn't need the money and the next years budget will be reduced by that amount. This punishes efficient management and rewards sloth, abuse and waste. But this is government, and thereby I merely repeat myself.
Bob-
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm
"It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them."
and
"Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits."
I can also whole heartedly recommend Hanse Hermann Hoppe's _Democracy: The God That Failed_. Or even just the quote from Mel Gibson in _The Patriot_, "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away, for 3000 tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as any king."
It's a good idea to secure ones wireless access point. It's also a good idea to use an infant car seat. I object not that these are bad ideas, but they are imposed at gun point by force of law.
Bob-
Make sure to uncheck "Use Java Runtime Environment" under Tools; Java
Load times are substantially improved. As far as lost functionality, I haven't found any myself.
Bob-
the money may go to areas and programs that are underfunded.
Non-sequiter. There is no such thing as an "underfunded" government program. Since all money is taken at gun point from taxpayers, there are only degrees of extortion.
To argue that something is "underfunded" would require an entitlement to the labor of others. Being entitled to the labor of someone else has a very specific dictionary definition: slavery.
The early audio recording of the two hour meeting between the CIO's office and various members of the vendor population including the idiot... I mean, the representative of Microsoft, is really amazing. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you do a little digging and find it.
The CIO did make one very interesting statement about money. $50M in order to get Office-12, because of license fees, OS and hardware upgrades, for something that cannot even be tested at this time.
In comparison, to roll out OpenOffice to every state employee, including training (which never seems to be in the pro-Microsoft column), $5M. Mostly because there is no hardware or OS upgrade requirement since OpenOffice runs on everything. Today. Now. Including using the document specification they really want, which Microsoft says they have no plans on supporting.
Fascinating. Foot, rifle, Microsoft pulls trigger.
Bob-
Many thanks. I had not heard thought to search for the phrase "tunnel broker", that worked. I have a tunnel from Hurricane Electric, I think, although I'm having difficulty enabling it through NAT at this moment.
They do have great tools, though, I recommend them. http://tunnelbroker.net/
I recently asked my cable ISP what their IPv6 gateway was. They said, "We don't provide that service. Maybe you should upgrade to a business account."
They only offer multiple client services on business accounts, so technically I'm already in violation of their rules because of using a router and NAT even though I run no "server", just a couple of PCs.
Yes, Cisco has a vested interest in replacing all those legacy IPv4-only cigar-box routers like mine. Yes, my IP provider would love a reason to raise rates or otherwise push me into a "business" account (and thereby charge me more).
Fact is, I won't be buying a new router, I'll just recycle one PC into place as a gateway and continue to hide behind NAT because I don't care to pay business rates for home PC use.
No matter how much I dislike IPv6 because of its "second system" bloat, I have yet to find a free IPv6 tunnel provider. Yes, it's my fault, people tell me they're out there I just cannot find them.
Bob-
Sorry, I won't be in Tokyo during November. If I were, I'd be glad to.
My only suggestion: Go around back too, see the stores that don't have profit margins to afford main-street exposure. Lots of wonderful stuff, but very little Linux.
Have fun.
What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money[?]
In a demand economy, such as a capitalist one, you are paid by those to whom you trade your labor/skills/time.
As a programmer, I think you will find most paid programming is done not to build general applications that are then shrink-wrapped, what companies pay for is something that directly benefits themselves. Tools, software customization, the generic "Database Analist" and "Systems Administrator".
So if you want to be paid to write F/OSS, find an organization which will pay you for your time doing what they need, and help them to realize that putting the resultant code under GPL, for example, helps everyone, including them.
In other words, don't sell air. You cannot make money selling air where it is freely available, so don't complain about that.
Find where "air" is scarce, sell it there. Find what people do with "air" and help them do it, that's selling services.
Bob-
With that in mind, it is baffling to me that free market advocates don't embrace OSS as a non-regulatory means of avoiding anti-competitive monopoly situations.
.wmv video and Microsoft streaming formats baffles me. I think they believe "We started this way, let's stay consistant" or something like that. I guess they already bought the licenses...
Many of us do indeed. I use F/OSS software as a present day example of the trend to rapidly commoditize products in a "free" market. Because there is low barrier-to-entry for programmers and programs, unlike licensed and regulated fields like electricians, innovation is exceptionally rapid. While certainly there are a lot of failures that might not have happened if programmers had to take a test and be certified before they could work in the field, the chaff rapidly falls and the gems, like Linux, KDE, Apache, Alan Cox, Marcelo Tosatti, are visible to all.
It is only the closed minds who cannot grasp the benefits of competition, or vested interests who do not want competition, who do not see the difference that a free market makes in every field and try to create or increase barriers and regulations.
One of the most potent examples of the quality of F/OSS products, in my experience, was when the blog at http://www.mises.org/ was rebuilt on Linux instead of Windows. Access times when from several seconds down to near instantaneous, reliability has been 100% since.
On the other hand, their use of
Nothing that mplayer and xine cannot handle, though.
Bob-
Most of the time, you pay people considerably less than what their work is worth to you (*) because competition is driving down the price of labour.
Ah! From that, and your last paragraph about unions, it's clear that you believe the person who does the hiring has complete control over the process. Were that true, you would be correct with the rest of your position.
However, it's not. The fact is that employers have to attract and retain good employees. That means competition increases pay rates, benefits, working conditions.
That is not to say that all employers are at the mercy of their employees, or your contention that all employees are at the mercy of employers. Where competition is allowed, good workers make good money, and bad workers made bad.
it's incredibly difficult to work out how much someone's labour is worth to you
Not at all. I know what the task is worth to me, and you know what your time is worth to you. If you don't want the money, that's fine. If no one wants to work for what I believe the job is worth, then the job won't get done.
If someone is unemployed because no one has offered enough money for them to go to work, that is choice. If someone cannot get work because the jobs they offer to do are not worth the cost of minimum wage, that's coercion.
If I make 50 widgets for you on Wednesday, why will another 50 widgets on Thursday be worth more to you?
To change your example to what I said, with the SKILL you build by creating those 50 widgets, you now make 51. Your labor is now skilled where it was not before, your time is now more valuable to me than it was and you can demand more remuneration. This is why college graduates tend to make more money than non-graduates, but only if their degree is in a field in demand.
It's the wage which unions force employers to pay in order to avoid strikes.
As an employer, why do I have to hire union members? As an employee, why do I have to join a union? What you describe is not "a truly free society" at all. It is the political machine, the merchantilist alliance of Big Labor and Government that has allowed unions to avoid prosecution for racketeering and otherwise illegal monopoly practices. Just like Major League Baseball (tm).
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap21sec7.asp
"3. Not every individual is able to perform any kind of labor. There are innate as well as acquired diversities in the abilities to perform certain types of work. The innate faculties required for certain types of work cannot be acquired by any training and schooling."
I think you aught to take a look at _Human Action_.
Bob-
You're assuming that wages are based on the value of the labour performed by the worker, but they aren't.
Perception, my dear brpr. If I believe that this individual will not produce more value than the money I pay them, I will simply keep the money.
Securing your server is an excellent example. What's it worth to you? Even if I am the only one in the world who can do it, if I try to charge more than securing the server is worth to you, you won't pay it.
it's an empirical question whether any given minimum wage will be high enough to cause a significant degree...
Which is simply double-talk. Nowhere do you deny that a minimum wage will price some workers out of the market, or some work from being done at all. It's is irrelevant if it is only one person that is unemployed because of minimum wage laws, that is still one too many.
What are you arguing against, anyway? You don't actually contradict me, except in the effort to promote/denigrate the "labor theory of value", when I was actually talking about the "value of labor".
Oh, and "simplistic" doesn't mean wrong. It just means simple enough that people can understand it. If your theory cannot be explained simply, there is little value to your theory except to you.
Bob-
Very well said. Thank you.
I think you mean libertarians don't believe in rule. Meaning even 100 cannot tell one what to do.
If some voluntary organization wants to run itself by majority vote, go ahead. Anyone who doesn't like it can just not participate in that organization.
Government, that is "rulers", don't give a choice for, "I'm not paying the tax this year, I don't like what you're doing so I don't volunteer."
Bob-
The more money you have, the more assets you have to leverage in getting you more money. No amount of salaried or waged labor will earn you a billion dollars.
So false. Ask Donald Trump some time. I saw an interview with him, he said he spends every waking moment "at work" in one way or another. His normal attire is a business suit, he doesn't vacation. Fact is, wealthy people get wealthy by working harder and smarter than other people.
Yes, capital can be leveraged to make more capital. However, while it's being invested you don't have it to buy anything else with. So you have to put some of your desires aside in order to have the capital to invest in the first place. That choice is available to anyone at any time.
Most people want their big screen TV, their new car, their computer, and they are willing to go into debt to get it! No one made them stay poor, they make choices that cost them money by how they wish to live, and there are people who have other priorities and who will gladly lend them that money today for interest. Where do you think all that debt comes from? Where do you think all that interest goes?
Inequality exists because people are not made alike by machine. Trying to erase inequality only make the problems worse, because it creates a bureaucracy with the power of life and death. That bureaucracy becomes the 'upper' class itself, and the whole equality thing is out the window at the outset. Do go back and study the French Revolution, and discover why people were happy to have a dictator in Napoleon just to stop the chaos!
Without the power of rulership, there are no plutocrats even if there are wealthy and poor. There will always be wealthy and poor, because there will always be people with different priorities.
Bob-
Except that government (as you say) is not defined by coersion, but by force.
Even though this is a reply to an AC, I think it important enough to comment.
Coercion and force are the same thing. Someone compels you to do/pay something you would not do otherwise. Taxes, fees, in fact every single action of government down to helmet laws and street signs are backed by the power of the state to kill you.
Read the "rules of the road" some time. These are evolved rules of conduct, such as making U-turns only where safe to do so, turning on your headlights within 1/2 hour of sunset, signaling to change lanes, first person to a 4-way stop goes first, etc, that came about because people interacting peacefully on the road get to their destinations better by cooperating than by competing.
Bob-
Just stop working if you're not getting paid enough? That does't work if you're poor.
If they're not getting paid enough already, what's the point of continuing to do the work? Much better to find something more valuable to do with your time.
Here's how it works, compressed version: You produce labor worth $x to me. If you do not want $x, don't work for me.
If you will take $x now, in order to get experience and produce tomorrow what is worth $x+1 to me, then you can come back tomorrow and negotiate $x+1 and it will be worthwhile for me or my competition to pay it because we would be getting more value along with paying more money.
If, however, you demand $x+1 and the labor is only worth $x to me, I won't pay it because to do so will put me out of business.
If the work performed is worth $x to me, and the government says I may not hire anyone for less than $x+1, the work won't get done and you will get $0 even if you would have worked for $x. Scenario 1 never happens. That's how minimum wage laws create a permanent class of unemployed.
Bob-