Except that exchange of labor involves ownership of resources...I own my skills and I sell them to the employer that gives me my best return.
If you own your skills (and I don't think that "own" is the best word for it, your body and mind are not property, they are much more intimate than that) you do not own them in that same way that someone "owns" a piece of land. It is this second sort of ownership that capitalism requires.
Nobility of the past and owners today have about zero in common.
Nonsense. Nobles of feudal times did no useful work but made their living off the peasants who worked lived on "their" land (as granted by the king). Modern owners of capital profit from the workers who use "their" resources - that is, who work for "their" corporation (as chartered by the state), or mine "their" metals/drill for "their" oil/cut down "their" trees (as deeded by the state), or pick crops grown on "their" land (as deeded by the state)....
Nobles got, and owners get, special treatment from the goverment, because the government exists to serve them; nobles could injure commoners without being punished, corporate criminals can and do maim, injure, and kill and laugh all the way to the bank.
We are all owners now.
A beloved American fallacy. You're not an owner until you make a living by owning rather than doing.
Marx's writings only make sense within a classed society. The US is without a class system(please do not respond with any arbritrary cuts like middle class v upper class),
It's not an arbitrary middle vs. upper class distinction, but rather the very simple and concrete division between those who work and those who "own" the resources.
Can you tell me how a socialist-centrally controlled-libertarian system would work?
Since centrally planned economies tend to suck, I think it would work rather poorly. B->
The state would decide what work needs to be done - how much food the nation will produce, how many acres of corn to plant, how many pairs of blue jeans, et cetera. That's the central planning part. (And it generally wouldn't work too well in the long term.)
It would try to find people to do it, either going directly to individual workers or to groups of workers in voluntary organizations. That's the socialist part. (As opposed to a capitalist system, where the government would go to the owners of corporations or their proxies - CEO and board of directors).
Workers would be free to go it on their own or to band together in voluntary groups, sort of like employee-owned corporations. And other then directing ecomonic production, the state would pretty much leave you alone unless you were violating or credibly threatening to violate other people's rights. That's the libertarian part.
There have been an enourmous number of government sites hacked, and they want to stop it from continuing.
Then they should:
not put sensitive data on machines directly connected to the Internet
hire competent admins
run stable and secure OSes and servers
use B-level trusted OSes and implement serious physical security for machines with sensitive data
configure servers properly
apply all security patches
That would be a hell of a lot more effective than snooping everyone's communication, wouldn't it? I mean, if the objective were really to stop website vandalism and the compromise of sensitive information.
Calling something socialist doesn't make it so, just like calling something a "republic" doesn't make it a representative form of government. The members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were neither socialist nor republics.
In its most basic form, socialism simply means an economic system based on the exchange of labor, as opposed to the capitalist system which is based on ownership of resources. Socialism may or may not be statist - the exchange of labor may be either voluntary or directed by the state. (Capitalism, OTOH, relies on a strong state to enforce property claims. "Anarcho-capitalism" is a contracition in terms.)
"Leftist" orginally meant favoring the interests of the "common folk", as opposed to the "nobles." (Supposedly nobles sat to the king's right, commoners to his left, but that may be a UL derivation.) These days, the equivalent to the nobles would be the capitalist owners, while the commoners are the workers. ("Work" must be understood to include intellectual labor - failing to do so is a common error amoung socialists.)
This "socialist-capitalist" dimension is independent of the "free market-central control" and "(small l) libertarian-authoritarian" axes.
When 'they' go after the first of any of these groups (or any other non-criminal groups) it will be time to speak up.
Ah, but the government doen't go after non-criminal groups. First, they declare the group criminal (or better yet, a "conspiracy" or a "threat to national security"), then they go after them. The government defines crime, ergo those they oppsose are always criminals.
Who are they after these days? They're after the pot smokers, the porn watchers, the gun owners, the religions outside the mainstream, the animal rights advocates, the environmentalists, the cypherpunks; basically, anyone who doesn't shut up and do what their corporate masters demand.
With the banner ads, you get x cents for every load - so, if someone doesn't load the ad, the money isn't there.>/blockquote> Depends on the site and the advertizer. Some ads pay per "impression", some per clickthru.
Although I agree with most of your post, I think that all laws should be enforced 100% of the time, otherwise you get what we have now, selective enforcement and a decay of individual liberty. If the laws are questionable, they should be removed from the books, period. If they are only appropriate some of the time, then they weren't written correctly to begin with and should be redone.
Yes, they should be removed or re-written, but what do you do in the meantime? If you were a cop in the 1860's, would you enforce the fugitive slave laws? Would you enforce today's laws against certain consenual sex acts in some states?
We have a separation of powers to help protect us against bad laws - the legislative branch can and must refuse to make them, the executive branch can and must refuse to enfore them, and the judiciary (including a fully informed jury) can and must refuse to convict under them.
No. We certainly wouldn't want some 13-year-old to miss out on the three wonders that are sensless violence, addictive, mind-altering drugs and random sex.
Well, we might actually try talking to kids about violence, sex, and drugs, and teaching them about the appropriate and healthy use of each. We might try teaching kids how to defend themselves without being senselessly violent, how to change their consciousness without drug addiction, and how to have healthy sexual relationships. We might take movies, TV shows, books, and other works that portray sex, drugs, and violence as jumping-off points for conversations about these issues.
Or we might stick our heads in the sand, then wonder why kids grow up to peform senseless violence, have unsafe sex, and get addicted to drugs. Gee, must be the movies.
Yeah I agree, I think liquor age and cigarette age laws are oppressive too
While you apparently intend sarcasm, you accidently speak the truth. They are oppressive, or at least very stupid. Is it reasonable that an 18 year old can get married, vote, join (or be forced to join) the armed forces, but can't legally buy a beer?
Age restrictions lead to abuse. They create a "forbidden fruit" status for alcohol, tobacco, dirty movies, whatever; and they make it much more likely that a young person's initial experiences with these things will be influenced towards abuse by peer pressure. A kid who picks up a pack of coffin nails at the 7-11 and smokes one on his own, is much more likely to decide that inhaling smoke that makes him feel ill is stupid, than is a kid with all his friends around daring him to suck on a cigarette they stole from somebody's father.
(I started drinking whiskey when I was twelve - it was forbidden, therefore interesting. I didn't drink coffee at all until I was in my 20's - not forbidden, not interesting to me. (Until I started hanging out in coffeehouses.))
That already happened. It was when the Articles of Confederation were tossed out in favor of the Constitution. And people howled...
Uh, no. The Constitution strictly limits the powers of the federal government. Article I, Section 8 ennumerates the powers of the federal government:
to collect taxes and borrow money to fund its activities
to regulate interstate and international commerce (which is a biggie)
to establish laws on naturalization and bankruptcies
to coin money, regulate its value, and fix the standard weights and measures
to make laws against counterfeiting
to create a postal system
to make copyright and patent laws
to create lower courts
to make laws against piracy
to declare war
to create and regulate the army and navy
to call out the militia to "execute the laws..., suppress insurrection, and repel invasions", and to provide for organizing and arming it
to control a capitol district and other federal lands
Amendments gave the feds the power to ban slavery; to make the states provide equal protection, due process, recognition of civil rights to all citizens, and voting rights to blacks, women, and 18 year olds; to collect income taxes; and to prohibit poll taxes.
That's it. For good or ill, as far as the law is concerned, that's all that the feds have jurisdiction over. Anything else and they're out of line.
Amendment X states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
That already happened. It was when the Articles of Confederation were tossed out in favor of the Constitution. And people howled...
Uh, no. The Constitution strictly limits the powers of the federal government. Article I, Section 8 ennumerates the powers of the federal government:
to collect taxes and borrow money to fund its activities
to regulate interstate and international commerce (which is a biggie)
to establish laws on naturalization and bankruptcies
to coin money, regulate its value, and fix the standard weights and measures
to make laws against counterfeiting
to create a postal system
to make copyright and patent laws
to create lower courts
to make laws against piracy
to declare war
to create and regulate the army and navy
to call out the militia to "execute the laws..., suppress insurrection, and repel invasions", and to provide for organizing and arming it
to control a capitol district and other federal lands
Amendments gave the feds the power to ban slavery; to make the states provide equal protection, due process, recognition of civil rights to all citizens, and voting rights to blacks, women, and 18 year olds; to collect income taxes; and to prohibit poll taxes.
That's it. For good or ill, as far as the law is concerned, that's all that the feds have jurisdiction over. Anything else and they're out of line.
Amendment X states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The first step in erasing freedom lies in restricting a basic right in such a way that no one will complain. No one needs field artillery or heavy machine guns. Later, this becomes 'cop killer' bullets and assault rifles; note that neither of these terms existed before they became illegal.
I think "assault rifle" was and is a legitimate term refering to rifles of intermediate caliber that can be set for either semi-automatic or automatic operation, such as the famous Kalashnikov rifles (the real military versions, not the "civilian" replica models) or the M-16. (I am not a firearms expert, so anyone who is feel free to correct the details here.) "Assault weapon", on the other hand, is a tool of politcal FUD, with no clear definition.
I'm waiting to see the news reports about "assault crypto" or "assault computers"...
The FCC was started under the erroneous principle that radio stations would drown each other out in the absence of regulation, even though that wasn't happening and showed no signs of happening.
Very odd claim, that, since I distinctly recall such things as: one strong FM station drowning out others on nearby frequncies; FM interference on broadcast TV; and interference from two-way radios on AM stations. I still have trouble sometimes with the most excellent but weak-signaled station WRNR (103.1 FM out of Annapolis, MD) getting stepped on by another station at 103.1 FM, this in Frederick, MD.
Yes, FCC content regulation suck bigtime, and are grounded in no rightful authority. But that doesn't mean that technical issues are non-existent. Same with broadband data access; there are issues of physical network structure (namely, where the hell do the cables run) that are best dealt with by one central agency.
If I want to lay down a cable from one end of my yard to the other, what business is that of anyone else?
Uh, sure. Feel free. Don't know what you plan to do with that isolated segement of coax - put your VCR on one side of the yard and your TV on the other? - but if you'd rather plant cable than begonias, hey, knock yourself out. (So long as you do no permanent harm to the land.)
Now, would you like that segement of cable to be hooked up to anything? Might be a problem if your neighbors prefer planting carrots over coax in their yards...unless, of course, we have legal mechanisms such as easements and right-of-ways.
Yes, Howard County is defintely getting sprawled. I live just over the line in Baltimore County (Catonsville) but I used to work in Glenwood, and I teach karate at the Howard County YMCA. There's a hell of a lot of residental growth there, pop-up houses and strip malls and shopping centers all over the place. In the western part, there are zoning regs that require 3 acres per house - so you're starting to get these large, clear-cut housing developments dotted with ugly houses. Ugh.
What's odd is that even though the population is largely professional people, I don't see a lot of business growth there. (I'd love to see more high tech jobs in Columbia.) Maybe it's turning into bedroom communities for Northern Virginia and the Rockville/Germantown corridor? More of a commute than I'd care for, but some folks don't seem to mind spending three hours a day driving to and from work. (Some folks are stupid, IMHO.)
This is becoming a problem for some men. There are fellows out there with serious body image problems, who obsessively work out because they never feel pumped enough.
BTW, take a look at the bulked up action-figures that boys play with today, and compare them to the normal human forms of the G.I. Joe or Six Million Dollar Man of twenty years ago. Not a healthy trend.
I think they show Max Headroom reruns on Bravo on Saturday afternoons - I've seen it a few times recently. If anything, the series is even more relevant now than when it was made.
We...spend our time building these great portals...only to have people like you say things like "yeah, it's nice, but I wish you hadn't done X or Y" and we just say "well, don't look at X or Y if you don't like them"
Go away.
Let's see here. You spend time and effort building an e-commerce site. You presumably want as many people as possible to view and use your site. Someone offers a suggestion about how to improve your site (and thus increase the amount of time that person might spend viewing and using you site), or a criticism of something that they find annoying (and that therefore keeps them from viewing and using your site).
Your response? "Go away."
Maybe, just maybe, if you listened to customers and potential customers, you might get more of them.
Brand loyalty is a very simple and very powerful marketing concept. Amazon is diluting its mindshare and losing brand loyalty. I'm just a geek, not an MBA, but this don't seem like smart business to me.
The patent, which the company applied for in 1995, covers any type of digital audio player used to store and play back downloaded content, regardless of the electronic format in which the content is saved, said David Politis, a spokesman for the company.
Any type of digital audio player? Including a desktop computer system? Folks were playing downloaded audio clips long before 1995.
When I was 6 years old the only computers in the school were in the office.
Wow, you had computer in your school when you were six? The highest tech we had in my elementry school was a VTR. (Video Tape Recorder, that's back before the VCR for you kiddies. This was late 1970's - I was born roughly one million seconds after the Unix epoch.) But I understood how to work it better than any of the teachers.
At home I had this nifty 150-in-1 (or something like that) electronics kit from Radio Shack. It was a piece of cardboard with all these components mounted on it, connected to springs for terminals and numbered. You could hook up different projects from the book that came with it, just by making the numbered connections (connect terminal 1 to 55, 23 to 62, and so on), and it would explain a little about how it worked. A great toy for the young hacker, wonder if they still make 'em?
When I was a wee lad, sometimes my dad would take me into work with him, show me the big machines with the blinking lights in their specially air-conditioned room, and let me play with the card punch machine. I had an old TI programmable calculator (with red LED display) when I was nine or ten; didn't see BASIC until I was eleven - and that was on a PDP-11, hardly a PC.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobles got, and owners get, special treatment from the goverment, because the government exists to serve them; nobles could injure commoners without being punished, corporate criminals can and do maim, injure, and kill and laugh all the way to the bank.
A beloved American fallacy. You're not an owner until you make a living by owning rather than doing. It's not an arbitrary middle vs. upper class distinction, but rather the very simple and concrete division between those who work and those who "own" the resources. Since centrally planned economies tend to suck, I think it would work rather poorly. B->The state would decide what work needs to be done - how much food the nation will produce, how many acres of corn to plant, how many pairs of blue jeans, et cetera. That's the central planning part. (And it generally wouldn't work too well in the long term.)
It would try to find people to do it, either going directly to individual workers or to groups of workers in voluntary organizations. That's the socialist part. (As opposed to a capitalist system, where the government would go to the owners of corporations or their proxies - CEO and board of directors).
Workers would be free to go it on their own or to band together in voluntary groups, sort of like employee-owned corporations. And other then directing ecomonic production, the state would pretty much leave you alone unless you were violating or credibly threatening to violate other people's rights. That's the libertarian part.
Do you do it on the front lawn, or do you prefer a bit of privacy?
People prefer privacy for things they want to be private about. That's all; no value judgement or assumption of shame can or should be implied.
- not put sensitive data on machines directly connected to the Internet
- hire competent admins
- run stable and secure OSes and servers
- use B-level trusted OSes and implement serious physical security for machines with sensitive data
- configure servers properly
- apply all security patches
That would be a hell of a lot more effective than snooping everyone's communication, wouldn't it? I mean, if the objective were really to stop website vandalism and the compromise of sensitive information.In its most basic form, socialism simply means an economic system based on the exchange of labor, as opposed to the capitalist system which is based on ownership of resources. Socialism may or may not be statist - the exchange of labor may be either voluntary or directed by the state. (Capitalism, OTOH, relies on a strong state to enforce property claims. "Anarcho-capitalism" is a contracition in terms.)
"Leftist" orginally meant favoring the interests of the "common folk", as opposed to the "nobles." (Supposedly nobles sat to the king's right, commoners to his left, but that may be a UL derivation.) These days, the equivalent to the nobles would be the capitalist owners, while the commoners are the workers. ("Work" must be understood to include intellectual labor - failing to do so is a common error amoung socialists.)
This "socialist-capitalist" dimension is independent of the "free market-central control" and "(small l) libertarian-authoritarian" axes.
Who are they after these days? They're after the pot smokers, the porn watchers, the gun owners, the religions outside the mainstream, the animal rights advocates, the environmentalists, the cypherpunks; basically, anyone who doesn't shut up and do what their corporate masters demand.
We have a separation of powers to help protect us against bad laws - the legislative branch can and must refuse to make them, the executive branch can and must refuse to enfore them, and the judiciary (including a fully informed jury) can and must refuse to convict under them.
Or we might stick our heads in the sand, then wonder why kids grow up to peform senseless violence, have unsafe sex, and get addicted to drugs. Gee, must be the movies.
Age restrictions lead to abuse. They create a "forbidden fruit" status for alcohol, tobacco, dirty movies, whatever; and they make it much more likely that a young person's initial experiences with these things will be influenced towards abuse by peer pressure. A kid who picks up a pack of coffin nails at the 7-11 and smokes one on his own, is much more likely to decide that inhaling smoke that makes him feel ill is stupid, than is a kid with all his friends around daring him to suck on a cigarette they stole from somebody's father.
(I started drinking whiskey when I was twelve - it was forbidden, therefore interesting. I didn't drink coffee at all until I was in my 20's - not forbidden, not interesting to me. (Until I started hanging out in coffeehouses.))
- to collect taxes and borrow money to fund its activities
- to regulate interstate and international commerce (which is a biggie)
- to establish laws on naturalization and bankruptcies
- to coin money, regulate its value, and fix the standard weights and measures
- to make laws against counterfeiting
- to create a postal system
- to make copyright and patent laws
- to create lower courts
- to make laws against piracy
- to declare war
- to create and regulate the army and navy
- to call out the militia to "execute the laws..., suppress insurrection, and repel invasions", and to provide for organizing and arming it
- to control a capitol district and other federal lands
Amendments gave the feds the power to ban slavery; to make the states provide equal protection, due process, recognition of civil rights to all citizens, and voting rights to blacks, women, and 18 year olds; to collect income taxes; and to prohibit poll taxes.That's it. For good or ill, as far as the law is concerned, that's all that the feds have jurisdiction over. Anything else and they're out of line.
Amendment X states:
Read the damn thing - meaningless as it may be today - yourself: http://www.infamous.net/document s/constitution.txt.
- to collect taxes and borrow money to fund its activities
- to regulate interstate and international commerce (which is a biggie)
- to establish laws on naturalization and bankruptcies
- to coin money, regulate its value, and fix the standard weights and measures
- to make laws against counterfeiting
- to create a postal system
- to make copyright and patent laws
- to create lower courts
- to make laws against piracy
- to declare war
- to create and regulate the army and navy
- to call out the militia to "execute the laws..., suppress insurrection, and repel invasions", and to provide for organizing and arming it
- to control a capitol district and other federal lands
Amendments gave the feds the power to ban slavery; to make the states provide equal protection, due process, recognition of civil rights to all citizens, and voting rights to blacks, women, and 18 year olds; to collect income taxes; and to prohibit poll taxes.That's it. For good or ill, as far as the law is concerned, that's all that the feds have jurisdiction over. Anything else and they're out of line.
Amendment X states:
Read the damn thing - meaningless as it may be today - yourself: http://www.infamous.net/document s/constitution.txt.
I'm waiting to see the news reports about "assault crypto" or "assault computers"...
Smarthome's catalog is full of neat stuff like this. I've never actually bought any of it, but it makes for nifty browsing.
Note that state law may vary. I believe it is illegal in Maryland to tape a convesation without both party's knowledge. (Remember Linda Tripp?)
Yes, FCC content regulation suck bigtime, and are grounded in no rightful authority. But that doesn't mean that technical issues are non-existent. Same with broadband data access; there are issues of physical network structure (namely, where the hell do the cables run) that are best dealt with by one central agency.
Now, would you like that segement of cable to be hooked up to anything? Might be a problem if your neighbors prefer planting carrots over coax in their yards...unless, of course, we have legal mechanisms such as easements and right-of-ways.
What's odd is that even though the population is largely professional people, I don't see a lot of business growth there. (I'd love to see more high tech jobs in Columbia.) Maybe it's turning into bedroom communities for Northern Virginia and the Rockville/Germantown corridor? More of a commute than I'd care for, but some folks don't seem to mind spending three hours a day driving to and from work. (Some folks are stupid, IMHO.)
BTW, take a look at the bulked up action-figures that boys play with today, and compare them to the normal human forms of the G.I. Joe or Six Million Dollar Man of twenty years ago. Not a healthy trend.
I think they show Max Headroom reruns on Bravo on Saturday afternoons - I've seen it a few times recently. If anything, the series is even more relevant now than when it was made.
Your response? "Go away."
Maybe, just maybe, if you listened to customers and potential customers, you might get more of them.
Brand loyalty is a very simple and very powerful marketing concept. Amazon is diluting its mindshare and losing brand loyalty. I'm just a geek, not an MBA, but this don't seem like smart business to me.
This ought to be invalidated by prior art.
Give or take 3600 seconds - I should probably check my birth certificate a more exact time. Or is figuring your birthday as a time_t just too geeky?
At home I had this nifty 150-in-1 (or something like that) electronics kit from Radio Shack. It was a piece of cardboard with all these components mounted on it, connected to springs for terminals and numbered. You could hook up different projects from the book that came with it, just by making the numbered connections (connect terminal 1 to 55, 23 to 62, and so on), and it would explain a little about how it worked. A great toy for the young hacker, wonder if they still make 'em?
When I was a wee lad, sometimes my dad would take me into work with him, show me the big machines with the blinking lights in their specially air-conditioned room, and let me play with the card punch machine. I had an old TI programmable calculator (with red LED display) when I was nine or ten; didn't see BASIC until I was eleven - and that was on a PDP-11, hardly a PC.