You're ignoring the possibility that some *irrational* number exists between 0.9999... and 1. In general any number of irrational numbers exist between any two rational numbers,...
Yes, but in this case we're not talking about two rational numbers, but rather a single rational number (9/9 = 1) written two different ways. Even irrational numbers must differ from each other (and other real numbers) by a non-zero amount, and the difference between 0.999... and 1 is exactly zero.
Consider this: 0.999... is greater than any other number less than one which you could possibly choose. Any two distinct real numbers must have infinitely many other real numbers in between, but there can be no number, rational or irrational, which is both greater than 0.999... and less than one. That means they must not be distinct, i.e. they must be the same number.
The argument from long division works also, but you have to think of it as a continuing calculation, the part you've already calculated plus the unreduced remainder:
9 divides 1 zero times, leaving 1: 0. + (1/9)/10 9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.1 + (1/9)/100 9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.11 + (1/9)/1000 9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.111 + (1/9)/10000 ...
The long division algorithm gives an exact result—if you compute a/b = q remainder r, then q * b + r is exactly equal to a. It only becomes an approximation if you throw away a non-zero remainder.
It's just an artifact of the decimal system. Other bases have different infinite fractions; for example, 1/5 (0.1 decimal) is 0.0011(0011)... in binary. On the other hand, 1/3 is just 0.1 in base 3. Any fraction whose denominator contains just the prime factors of the base (2 and 5 in decimal) will terminate; any other fraction will be infinite. So 1/2, 1/4, 1/5, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16, 1/20 all terminate (in decimal), but 1/3, 1/6, 1/7, 1/9, 1/11, 1/13, 1/15, 1/17, 1/18, and 1/19 are all infinite. Similarly, in binary only powers of two will terminate (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.).
In terms of long division, non-terminating numbers (like 1/7) never end up with a remainder equal to zero no matter how many digits you compute, so there are always non-zero digits left in the result. Numbers which terminate (1/4) eventually reach a zero remainder.
So far as I know there are no real-world implications.
I'm fairly sure you've only rephrased the problem. People who believe that 0.333... is only approximately equal to 1/3 will most likely have equal or greater difficulty believing that the sum of an infinite geometric series is exactly (initial term)/(1-(common ratio)), as opposed to a mere approximation. I don't think the equivalence between 0.333... and 3/10+3/100+3/1000+..., basic place-value representation, is really the source of the block—the problem is the idea that any infinite series can have an exact, finite sum.
Incidentally, this also affects the alternate proof given in the summary, since the same people would say that 10*0.999... (9.99...) is only approximately equal to 9.999..., since, after all, the latter form has one more "9" at the end. If "infinity" were just a very large number—which is how most people think of it—then they would be right, but that isn't the case. Infinity isn't a number at all.
I know people like to rant about the above (forced buying of insurance), but honestly, it is the *only* option if you force insurance companies to accept people with existing conditions.
So fix the problem—forcing insurance companies to act like charities. Forcing people to buy insurance merely papers over the symptom, and not very well at that.
If you have insurance for a condition at the time it's discovered, that particular insurer should be responsible for covering the entire lifetime cost, even if you later drop your policy or switch to another insurance provider. If you start a new insurance policy expecting them to pay for a known pre-existing condition then your actuarial risk for that condition is obviously 100%, and your premiums should be set accordingly (i.e. the full cost of treatment plus management overhead).
As for genetic defects and the like which exist from birth, the only way to actually insure against such conditions is for the parents to take out a policy on the child before birth. The risk calculations (and premiums) would then be based on their own predisposition to passing such defects on to their offspring. Anything else is a matter of charity, which should never be forced.
The GP just used the wrong term. Coercion is simply the use of force, which (as you point out) is sometimes necessary, e.g. in self-defense. However, the GP was referring to "an initiation of physical force" (emphasis added), which is aggression, not just coercion. Aggression—coercion directed at a non-aggressor, or out of proportion to the original aggression—is always wrong. More the the point, acts of aggression, right or wrong, offer a perfect justification for the target to reciprocate. Defensive force, on the other hand, can only justify a matching defense, never a counter-attack.
Compare that with the problems of PKI:... certificates are only really useful if you've done some form of vetting to confirm that I am who I said I am....
Knowledge of a password likewise says nothing about who you actually are. For the purpose of replacing passwords, all you need is proof that you have the certificate associated with the account. There is no need to prove your real-world identity.
If myOpenID can painlessly use browser-generated personal authentication certificates in place of passwords, so can other sites.
No, the Pope was also talking about the way modern media reports the news. This is in addition to new technology related to virtual/augmented reality. Two separate issues. The technology aspect applies to more than just the news.
It's not that it's impossible for government to do the right thing - it's that when you give that much money and power to a bunch of politicians they make decisions based on politics rather than objective technical criteria.
Not just that—the more centralized the economy becomes, the more difficult it is to even determine what the "right thing" is in the first place. This isn't as much of a problem in a mixed economy, but as one approaches the point where everything is centrally managed it becomes impossible for people to express their actual preferences in any objective sense. What people say that they want is one thing, but what they are actually willing to pay for it is something else entirely, and in a centralized economy no one is ever directly confronted with the cost of a good or service up front. As a result, economic calculation becomes increasingly difficult.
The problem is powering the wheels directly from the engine significantly complicates the drivetrain. Before, you just had an electric motor driving the wheels, which means there was no need for a mechanical transmission. Moreover, the ICE was able to run at optimal RPMs because it only needs to power a generator, not supply power to the wheels at a wide range of speeds. This change mandates an automatic transmission (electric mode & multiple gears for ICE) plus variable-RPM support in the ICE.
In short, they just removed the one feature which IMHO was actually interesting about the Volt, which was the modularity and simplicity of the drivetrain. I was interested before, but now that it's going to be at least as complex (read: failure-prone, high-maintenance) as every other parallel-hybrid on the market I don't see any reason to bother with it.
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the market...; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism>
Nothing in there about granting special privileges to "a few individuals". Anyone can accumulate resources, but only by claiming unowned resources—by using them oneself—or by receiving pre-owned resources through voluntary trade. If someone (or some group) wants those resources later they can either obtain them by force, which really would be dictating, or they can trade, in which case both sides get to "dictate" what they'll accept, but neither side can dictate what the other must give up.
Our whole capitalistic society is founded on the notion that people with assets are the ones most qualified to make decisions for the rest of us.
Wrong. Capitalism is founded on the notion that people with assets are the ones most qualified to make decisions regarding themselves and their own assets. Not other people or their assets. That's the meaning of "private ownership".
I did say that it would be a tiny fraction. The GP's definition of "opaque" was as follows:
In order to be truly opaque, two criteria must be met - every photon has to intersect a particle and for every such intersection, the particle has to be able to absorb the photon.
To me, that means that no photons can ever get through. Tunneling is a matter of probabilities, so one might get through, even if the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
How exactly would national defense, local enforcement of laws against violence, protection from fires on your neighbors' property, and a road between your neighbors that passes by your house be made opt-in?
First, none of this absolutely has to be managed at the level of the U.S. federal government. We have individual states larger than many countries, and these other countries manage national defense and the like well enough. So we're really talking about how to defend and administrate areas the size of states, counties, or even municipalities in an opt-in manner, not entire the entire U.S. This particularly affects the scope of "national defense" (see below).
protection from fires on your neighbors' property
You must've missed the recent story about the firefighting incident along the Kentucky/Tennessee border. The main subject of the story deliberately refused to pay and suffered for it, but the neighbors with paid-up firefighting premiums did just fine.
local enforcement of laws against violence
Private defense is no different from private firefighting. You pay a premium (insurance) in exchange for protection, investigation, arbitration and enforcement when a crime occurs, or purchase these services directly as needed.
Note that you can already purchase these services privately, although some legitimate forms of investigation and enforcement are prohibited to private citizens, while others which are not legitimate (e.g. compelled testimony) are practiced by governments.
a road between your neighbors that passes by your house
I'm not exactly sure where you see a problem with this. If the road would be on your property then they would need your permission, obviously. If the road is only near your property then no opt-in is required.
national defense
Taking this to mean defense against large-scale conquest or invasion, the winning strategy has historically been to have a well-armed, resourceful populace dedicated to local autonomy and consequently not amicable to being conquered by outsiders. Apart from that, one government is very much like another to most of the population, so adopting a government for the purpose of repelling invaders is tantamount to surrendering without a fight. It also makes things easier for the conquerors, since they only have to take over the existing government apparatus rather than building one from scratch.
Note, also, that invasions are carried out by national armies created and controlled by governments. Legitimizing government thus makes invasion more of a risk, not less.
And those who donated their social welfare insurance contributions to an organization that happened to go under due to massive economic turmoil might end up having to turn to crime to survive.
I don't think we're on the same page here. I was talking about deliberate wealth-transfer "charity" programs, like Medicare or some forms of Social Security, not any kind of insurance. The replacement for such programs is, obviously, voluntary charity. One donates to a charity to help others, not because one expects to claim the charity's help later.
Thanks to quantum tunneling nothing is ever completely opaque. A particle's path from A to B doesn't necessarily have to pass through all the points in between. Some tiny fraction of the photons will always act as though the object isn't even there.
Yeah, great idea. That way the FD can pay the full costs of fighting their fires out-of-pocket, plus full restitution for any property damage, while also losing any reasonable claim to legal protection from arson directed at their own property. If they get caught, of course—which will happen if they set enough fires to make a difference.
Expecting only to take, but not to give, is just being a parasite.
Exactly. Also, note that the same applies to tax-funded fire departments: supporters take tax money from non-supporters for their own use without giving anything of equal or greater value to the non-supporters in return.
Agreeing to a contract... under duress or coercion is a surefire way of having the contract rendered void.
That's only if the other party is contributing to the coercion—which doesn't describe a fire anyway, unless you're claiming arson. Contracting with someone to protect against an unrelated third-party's coercion is a voluntary act.
You can't coerce someone into a contract, but you can contract with someone who is being coerced.
People want really low taxes, but this is the result: really poor services.
This has nothing to do with quality-of-service. The service was available; this homeowner simply chose not to contract for it. The neighbors, who did purchase fire-protection, seemed to do all right. Complaining about not getting firefighting services one doesn't pay for is rather like a non-subscriber complaining about the quality of Netflix's service because they don't get any free DVDs.
Obviously one don't get what one doesn't pay for, but taxes are hardly the only (or best) way of paying for services, even ones deemed "essential".
That sounds nice, but in practice you probably wouldn't be able to connect at all. At least one side must have a public IP address for P2P to work (with TCP), or at least be able to open incoming ports with something like UPnP. What do you think the odds are of ISPs letting customers reserve incoming ports? UDP-based NAT traversal may be possible with help from a public server.
Either way, the AAs would still be able to identify individual users via a combination of port and public IP address.
I don't think my DSL router/modem supports IPv6. It's not a problem. I just run it in bridge mode, and leave the PPPoE support to my PC. (I did this even before enabling 6to4, because the router has ridiculously small NAT tables.) Every existing DSL router should be capable of acting as a simple PPPoA-to-PPPoE bridge.
This may not work for cable router/modems; I've never had the chance to configure one.
Nonsense. sockaddr_in is 16 bytes, plenty of room to fit a uint64_t address for IPv4.5...
My apologies; I thought you meant "socket address" in the generic sense, not the sockaddr_in structure specifically. This does mean applications have to allocate a larger structure to support IPv6, which could be considered a (very minor) drawback. It's a trivial change, and any obsolete proprietary applications which can't be changed can connect through a proxy (e.g. SOCKS). This would be necessary anyway for applications which were statically linked, since extending struct in_addr requires (incompatible and potentially unsafe) changes to the C library (e.g. inet_pton()).
That's a straw?
Yes, a irrational fetish for dotted decimal bytes is a "straw" when presented as a justification for opposing the ongoing adoption of the only IPv4 successor protocol to actually be implemented in the real world. "2002:4ba7:d1f5::1/64" is not any harder to work with than "75.167.209.245/32". Certainly not enough so as to block adoption of IPv6.
Everybody who runs the internet and all the IT departments, that's a pretty big who.
If either group's work depends on memorizing IP addresses then they're doing it wrong. That's a job for computers, not humans, regardless of whether we're talking about IPv4 or IPv6.
IPv6 is the future of the Internet. You lost this debate ages ago. IPv6 works, and is already being adopted by major servers and ISPs for general use alongside IPv4. No one is going to ditch imperfect-but-functional IPv6 in favor of your nonexistent IPv4.5. Deal with it.
IPsec is only useful for securing communications between two specific nodes for a specific communication channel. It does nothing for securing a network.
On the contrary, IPsec defines a protocol for securing connections between a security gateway and a host (network-to-host mode), in addition to the host-to-host and network-to-network modes. Using this protocol on a router you could securely authenticate client devices and limit routing to authenticated incoming packets.
Only works for valid addresses on the network; and then you must get every little detail right for that specific network.
Which is not any kind of realistic obstacle. Even on a switched network you have all kinds of broadcast packets being sent, any one of which will give you the address of the sender. From there it's trivial to determine enough to the other parameters to communicate with that host, clone it, or scan for others.
... separate software then monitors the network for MACs and addresses not on the official list, alerting appropriately.
Exactly—separate software, not DHCP. It's not much of a security feature if your DHCP server just accepts requests from any device which happens to ask, and if you have a way of actually authenticating clients you might as well use that by itself and skip the DHCP.
Also truly secure networks only use static addressing and monitor for any unauthorized addresses, etc. on the network. This doesn't work for IPv6 since IPv6 by default assigns an address even without a DHCP server - something that is not desirable in all situations.
IPv4 will also assign addresses without a DHCP server, in the link-local 169.254.0.0/16 block. IPv6 only assigns global addresses automatically if you enable router advertisement; they can also be assigned statically, directly on the client or with DHCPv6 (which is supported natively for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 clients, not to mention Linux; free third-party software is also available for clients, servers, and relays).
An IPv6 address is much more difficult to read.... Not only did they (needlessly) do away with the . separator, making it intrinsically incompatible (and more difficult to read), they made decimal representation of an address difficult.
Seriously? IPv6 addresses are no more "intrinsically incompatible" with IPv4 address than any address with more than 32 bits must be. Strings of hex digits separated by colons are no more difficult to read than strings of decimal digits separated by periods. There is absolutely no need to represent addresses in decimal, which is harder to work with for bit-oriented protocols anyway.
Nevermind netmasks and broadcast.
Netmasks in IPv6 are identical to netmasks in IPv4: "192.168.0.0/16" vs. "aaaa:bbbb:cccc::/48". There are more bits involved, but the format is the same. There are no subnet-specific IPv6 broadcast addresses; a reserved multicast address is used instead (ff02::1, similar to 224.0.0.1 in IPv4).
Quick: which subnet is 3ffe:0501:9999:ffff:: in?
The subnet is 3ffe:0501:9999:ffff::/64, of course. IPv6 subnets are always 64 bits, with the remaining 64 bits reserved for autoconfiguration.
Quick: which subnet is 10.133.180.131 in? 10.0.0.0/8? 10.133.180.0/21? 10.133.180.128/30?
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You're ignoring the possibility that some *irrational* number exists between 0.9999... and 1. In general any number of irrational numbers exist between any two rational numbers,...
Yes, but in this case we're not talking about two rational numbers, but rather a single rational number (9/9 = 1) written two different ways. Even irrational numbers must differ from each other (and other real numbers) by a non-zero amount, and the difference between 0.999... and 1 is exactly zero.
Consider this: 0.999... is greater than any other number less than one which you could possibly choose. Any two distinct real numbers must have infinitely many other real numbers in between, but there can be no number, rational or irrational, which is both greater than 0.999... and less than one. That means they must not be distinct, i.e. they must be the same number.
In base 8, .11111111 = 1/8 + 1/80 + 1/800 ....
Wrong.
0.111... (base 8) = 1/10 + 1/100 + 1/1000 + ... (base 8) = 1/8 + 1/64 + 1/512 + ... (base 10) = 1/7
0.777... (base 8) = 7/10 + 7/100 + 7/1000 + ... (base 8) = 7/8 + 7/64 + 7/512 + ... (base 10) = 1
The argument from long division works also, but you have to think of it as a continuing calculation, the part you've already calculated plus the unreduced remainder:
9 divides 1 zero times, leaving 1: 0. + (1/9)/10
9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.1 + (1/9)/100
9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.11 + (1/9)/1000
9 divides 10 one time, leaving 1: 0.111 + (1/9)/10000
...
1/9 = 0.1 + (1/9)/10 = 0.11 + (1/9)/100 = 0.111 + (1/9)/1000 = 0.111...
The long division algorithm gives an exact result—if you compute a/b = q remainder r, then q * b + r is exactly equal to a. It only becomes an approximation if you throw away a non-zero remainder.
It's just an artifact of the decimal system. Other bases have different infinite fractions; for example, 1/5 (0.1 decimal) is 0.0011(0011)... in binary. On the other hand, 1/3 is just 0.1 in base 3. Any fraction whose denominator contains just the prime factors of the base (2 and 5 in decimal) will terminate; any other fraction will be infinite. So 1/2, 1/4, 1/5, 1/8, 1/10, 1/16, 1/20 all terminate (in decimal), but 1/3, 1/6, 1/7, 1/9, 1/11, 1/13, 1/15, 1/17, 1/18, and 1/19 are all infinite. Similarly, in binary only powers of two will terminate (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.).
In terms of long division, non-terminating numbers (like 1/7) never end up with a remainder equal to zero no matter how many digits you compute, so there are always non-zero digits left in the result. Numbers which terminate (1/4) eventually reach a zero remainder.
So far as I know there are no real-world implications.
I'm fairly sure you've only rephrased the problem. People who believe that 0.333... is only approximately equal to 1/3 will most likely have equal or greater difficulty believing that the sum of an infinite geometric series is exactly (initial term)/(1-(common ratio)), as opposed to a mere approximation. I don't think the equivalence between 0.333... and 3/10+3/100+3/1000+..., basic place-value representation, is really the source of the block—the problem is the idea that any infinite series can have an exact, finite sum.
Incidentally, this also affects the alternate proof given in the summary, since the same people would say that 10*0.999... (9.99...) is only approximately equal to 9.999..., since, after all, the latter form has one more "9" at the end. If "infinity" were just a very large number—which is how most people think of it—then they would be right, but that isn't the case. Infinity isn't a number at all.
I know people like to rant about the above (forced buying of insurance), but honestly, it is the *only* option if you force insurance companies to accept people with existing conditions.
So fix the problem—forcing insurance companies to act like charities. Forcing people to buy insurance merely papers over the symptom, and not very well at that.
If you have insurance for a condition at the time it's discovered, that particular insurer should be responsible for covering the entire lifetime cost, even if you later drop your policy or switch to another insurance provider. If you start a new insurance policy expecting them to pay for a known pre-existing condition then your actuarial risk for that condition is obviously 100%, and your premiums should be set accordingly (i.e. the full cost of treatment plus management overhead).
As for genetic defects and the like which exist from birth, the only way to actually insure against such conditions is for the parents to take out a policy on the child before birth. The risk calculations (and premiums) would then be based on their own predisposition to passing such defects on to their offspring. Anything else is a matter of charity, which should never be forced.
The GP just used the wrong term. Coercion is simply the use of force, which (as you point out) is sometimes necessary, e.g. in self-defense. However, the GP was referring to "an initiation of physical force" (emphasis added), which is aggression, not just coercion. Aggression—coercion directed at a non-aggressor, or out of proportion to the original aggression—is always wrong. More the the point, acts of aggression, right or wrong, offer a perfect justification for the target to reciprocate. Defensive force, on the other hand, can only justify a matching defense, never a counter-attack.
Compare that with the problems of PKI: ... certificates are only really useful if you've done some form of vetting to confirm that I am who I said I am....
Knowledge of a password likewise says nothing about who you actually are. For the purpose of replacing passwords, all you need is proof that you have the certificate associated with the account. There is no need to prove your real-world identity.
If myOpenID can painlessly use browser-generated personal authentication certificates in place of passwords, so can other sites.
No, the Pope was also talking about the way modern media reports the news. This is in addition to new technology related to virtual/augmented reality. Two separate issues. The technology aspect applies to more than just the news.
It's not that it's impossible for government to do the right thing - it's that when you give that much money and power to a bunch of politicians they make decisions based on politics rather than objective technical criteria.
Not just that—the more centralized the economy becomes, the more difficult it is to even determine what the "right thing" is in the first place. This isn't as much of a problem in a mixed economy, but as one approaches the point where everything is centrally managed it becomes impossible for people to express their actual preferences in any objective sense. What people say that they want is one thing, but what they are actually willing to pay for it is something else entirely, and in a centralized economy no one is ever directly confronted with the cost of a good or service up front. As a result, economic calculation becomes increasingly difficult.
The problem is powering the wheels directly from the engine significantly complicates the drivetrain. Before, you just had an electric motor driving the wheels, which means there was no need for a mechanical transmission. Moreover, the ICE was able to run at optimal RPMs because it only needs to power a generator, not supply power to the wheels at a wide range of speeds. This change mandates an automatic transmission (electric mode & multiple gears for ICE) plus variable-RPM support in the ICE.
In short, they just removed the one feature which IMHO was actually interesting about the Volt, which was the modularity and simplicity of the drivetrain. I was interested before, but now that it's going to be at least as complex (read: failure-prone, high-maintenance) as every other parallel-hybrid on the market I don't see any reason to bother with it.
Define "capitalism":
an economic system based on private ownership of capital <http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=capitalism>
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the market...; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism>
Nothing in there about granting special privileges to "a few individuals". Anyone can accumulate resources, but only by claiming unowned resources—by using them oneself—or by receiving pre-owned resources through voluntary trade. If someone (or some group) wants those resources later they can either obtain them by force, which really would be dictating, or they can trade, in which case both sides get to "dictate" what they'll accept, but neither side can dictate what the other must give up.
Our whole capitalistic society is founded on the notion that people with assets are the ones most qualified to make decisions for the rest of us.
Wrong. Capitalism is founded on the notion that people with assets are the ones most qualified to make decisions regarding themselves and their own assets. Not other people or their assets. That's the meaning of "private ownership".
I did say that it would be a tiny fraction. The GP's definition of "opaque" was as follows:
In order to be truly opaque, two criteria must be met - every photon has to intersect a particle and for every such intersection, the particle has to be able to absorb the photon.
To me, that means that no photons can ever get through. Tunneling is a matter of probabilities, so one might get through, even if the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
How exactly would national defense, local enforcement of laws against violence, protection from fires on your neighbors' property, and a road between your neighbors that passes by your house be made opt-in?
First, none of this absolutely has to be managed at the level of the U.S. federal government. We have individual states larger than many countries, and these other countries manage national defense and the like well enough. So we're really talking about how to defend and administrate areas the size of states, counties, or even municipalities in an opt-in manner, not entire the entire U.S. This particularly affects the scope of "national defense" (see below).
protection from fires on your neighbors' property
You must've missed the recent story about the firefighting incident along the Kentucky/Tennessee border. The main subject of the story deliberately refused to pay and suffered for it, but the neighbors with paid-up firefighting premiums did just fine.
local enforcement of laws against violence
Private defense is no different from private firefighting. You pay a premium (insurance) in exchange for protection, investigation, arbitration and enforcement when a crime occurs, or purchase these services directly as needed.
Note that you can already purchase these services privately, although some legitimate forms of investigation and enforcement are prohibited to private citizens, while others which are not legitimate (e.g. compelled testimony) are practiced by governments.
a road between your neighbors that passes by your house
I'm not exactly sure where you see a problem with this. If the road would be on your property then they would need your permission, obviously. If the road is only near your property then no opt-in is required.
national defense
Taking this to mean defense against large-scale conquest or invasion, the winning strategy has historically been to have a well-armed, resourceful populace dedicated to local autonomy and consequently not amicable to being conquered by outsiders. Apart from that, one government is very much like another to most of the population, so adopting a government for the purpose of repelling invaders is tantamount to surrendering without a fight. It also makes things easier for the conquerors, since they only have to take over the existing government apparatus rather than building one from scratch.
Note, also, that invasions are carried out by national armies created and controlled by governments. Legitimizing government thus makes invasion more of a risk, not less.
And those who donated their social welfare insurance contributions to an organization that happened to go under due to massive economic turmoil might end up having to turn to crime to survive.
I don't think we're on the same page here. I was talking about deliberate wealth-transfer "charity" programs, like Medicare or some forms of Social Security, not any kind of insurance. The replacement for such programs is, obviously, voluntary charity. One donates to a charity to help others, not because one expects to claim the charity's help later.
Thanks to quantum tunneling nothing is ever completely opaque. A particle's path from A to B doesn't necessarily have to pass through all the points in between. Some tiny fraction of the photons will always act as though the object isn't even there.
Does the FD not have matches?
Yeah, great idea. That way the FD can pay the full costs of fighting their fires out-of-pocket, plus full restitution for any property damage, while also losing any reasonable claim to legal protection from arson directed at their own property. If they get caught, of course—which will happen if they set enough fires to make a difference.
Expecting only to take, but not to give, is just being a parasite.
Exactly. Also, note that the same applies to tax-funded fire departments: supporters take tax money from non-supporters for their own use without giving anything of equal or greater value to the non-supporters in return.
Agreeing to a contract ... under duress or coercion is a surefire way of having the contract rendered void.
That's only if the other party is contributing to the coercion—which doesn't describe a fire anyway, unless you're claiming arson. Contracting with someone to protect against an unrelated third-party's coercion is a voluntary act.
You can't coerce someone into a contract, but you can contract with someone who is being coerced.
People want really low taxes, but this is the result: really poor services.
This has nothing to do with quality-of-service. The service was available; this homeowner simply chose not to contract for it. The neighbors, who did purchase fire-protection, seemed to do all right. Complaining about not getting firefighting services one doesn't pay for is rather like a non-subscriber complaining about the quality of Netflix's service because they don't get any free DVDs.
Obviously one don't get what one doesn't pay for, but taxes are hardly the only (or best) way of paying for services, even ones deemed "essential".
My understanding is that hole-punching only works for connectionless protocols like UDP. I could be mistaken, however.
That sounds nice, but in practice you probably wouldn't be able to connect at all. At least one side must have a public IP address for P2P to work (with TCP), or at least be able to open incoming ports with something like UPnP. What do you think the odds are of ISPs letting customers reserve incoming ports? UDP-based NAT traversal may be possible with help from a public server.
Either way, the AAs would still be able to identify individual users via a combination of port and public IP address.
I don't think my DSL router/modem supports IPv6. It's not a problem. I just run it in bridge mode, and leave the PPPoE support to my PC. (I did this even before enabling 6to4, because the router has ridiculously small NAT tables.) Every existing DSL router should be capable of acting as a simple PPPoA-to-PPPoE bridge.
This may not work for cable router/modems; I've never had the chance to configure one.
Nonsense. sockaddr_in is 16 bytes, plenty of room to fit a uint64_t address for IPv4.5...
My apologies; I thought you meant "socket address" in the generic sense, not the sockaddr_in structure specifically. This does mean applications have to allocate a larger structure to support IPv6, which could be considered a (very minor) drawback. It's a trivial change, and any obsolete proprietary applications which can't be changed can connect through a proxy (e.g. SOCKS). This would be necessary anyway for applications which were statically linked, since extending struct in_addr requires (incompatible and potentially unsafe) changes to the C library (e.g. inet_pton()).
That's a straw?
Yes, a irrational fetish for dotted decimal bytes is a "straw" when presented as a justification for opposing the ongoing adoption of the only IPv4 successor protocol to actually be implemented in the real world. "2002:4ba7:d1f5::1/64" is not any harder to work with than "75.167.209.245/32". Certainly not enough so as to block adoption of IPv6.
Everybody who runs the internet and all the IT departments, that's a pretty big who.
If either group's work depends on memorizing IP addresses then they're doing it wrong. That's a job for computers, not humans, regardless of whether we're talking about IPv4 or IPv6.
IPv6 is the future of the Internet. You lost this debate ages ago. IPv6 works, and is already being adopted by major servers and ISPs for general use alongside IPv4. No one is going to ditch imperfect-but-functional IPv6 in favor of your nonexistent IPv4.5. Deal with it.
IPsec is only useful for securing communications between two specific nodes for a specific communication channel. It does nothing for securing a network.
On the contrary, IPsec defines a protocol for securing connections between a security gateway and a host (network-to-host mode), in addition to the host-to-host and network-to-network modes. Using this protocol on a router you could securely authenticate client devices and limit routing to authenticated incoming packets.
Only works for valid addresses on the network; and then you must get every little detail right for that specific network.
Which is not any kind of realistic obstacle. Even on a switched network you have all kinds of broadcast packets being sent, any one of which will give you the address of the sender. From there it's trivial to determine enough to the other parameters to communicate with that host, clone it, or scan for others.
... separate software then monitors the network for MACs and addresses not on the official list, alerting appropriately.
Exactly—separate software, not DHCP. It's not much of a security feature if your DHCP server just accepts requests from any device which happens to ask, and if you have a way of actually authenticating clients you might as well use that by itself and skip the DHCP.
Also truly secure networks only use static addressing and monitor for any unauthorized addresses, etc. on the network. This doesn't work for IPv6 since IPv6 by default assigns an address even without a DHCP server - something that is not desirable in all situations.
IPv4 will also assign addresses without a DHCP server, in the link-local 169.254.0.0/16 block. IPv6 only assigns global addresses automatically if you enable router advertisement; they can also be assigned statically, directly on the client or with DHCPv6 (which is supported natively for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 clients, not to mention Linux; free third-party software is also available for clients, servers, and relays).
An IPv6 address is much more difficult to read.... Not only did they (needlessly) do away with the . separator, making it intrinsically incompatible (and more difficult to read), they made decimal representation of an address difficult.
Seriously? IPv6 addresses are no more "intrinsically incompatible" with IPv4 address than any address with more than 32 bits must be. Strings of hex digits separated by colons are no more difficult to read than strings of decimal digits separated by periods. There is absolutely no need to represent addresses in decimal, which is harder to work with for bit-oriented protocols anyway.
Nevermind netmasks and broadcast.
Netmasks in IPv6 are identical to netmasks in IPv4: "192.168.0.0/16" vs. "aaaa:bbbb:cccc::/48". There are more bits involved, but the format is the same. There are no subnet-specific IPv6 broadcast addresses; a reserved multicast address is used instead (ff02::1, similar to 224.0.0.1 in IPv4).
Quick: which subnet is 3ffe:0501:9999:ffff:: in?
The subnet is 3ffe:0501:9999:ffff::/64, of course. IPv6 subnets are always 64 bits, with the remaining 64 bits reserved for autoconfiguration.
Quick: which subnet is 10.133.180.131 in? 10.0.0.0/8? 10.133.180.0/21? 10.133.180.128/30?