I'd argue exactly the opposite, actually... tapes are too unreliable and fragile, plus they're expensive and slow. Throw a 320GB Maxtor into an external Firewire box, put it in a freakin' padded bag in case you're too clumsy to be trusted, and you don't really have to worry about shock or connector failure.
There's all variety of software out there for backing up exactly how you like. I realize Firewire hard drives seem pretty ghetto compared to the leet higher-end tape drives, and tape still has its place, but the massive Firewire hard drive is really not a bad solution for a whole lot of situations.
Exactly. Comedian Doug Stanhope has a great routine about this. He got a friend who owns a porn shop to give him a bag chock full of the most appalling adult novelties known to man - DVDs, dildos, vibrators, butt plugs (with a little chocolate smearing for good measure), life-sized human fist, you name it - and he used that as his carry-on bag. Ideally, some nimrod security agent would pull it all out on the table and there'd be a little object lesson in privacy vs. security for all the old people, children and families travelling with Doug.
Of course, when he finally did get searched, the security guard took one look inside his bag and immediately snapped it closed and sent Doug on his way. Oh, yeah, these security checks are making us more safe. Note to terrorists: hide your plastic knives in a bag mixed with adult novelties, and skate on through security, who'd rather spend their time digging through old ladies' purses for nail files and sewing needles.
Anyway, Stanhope's a mad genius, and you should see his site. Check out the prank letters with his gorgeous neighbor Leann, and the story where he has her truck painted purple - funny, funny stuff.
Yes, once you GET it to work it is more stable than windows, but it doesn't JUST WORK(TM).
Never seen Knoppix (or any of the similar projects), have you? If a handful of German geeks can, I presume in their spare time, produce a Linux distro that JUST WORKS to the point where all you have to do is push the power button, insert a CD, and you have a complete, functional, and reliable OS and desktop... well, it's pretty impressive. And it makes me not buy the old argument against porting to x86 because then Apple wouldn't be able to quality control all that hardware out there. If small groups of volunteers can make hardware work reliably with a huge variety of *nix flavors, what's Apple's problem? And if Mach and BSD are so close together, and the BSD community already supports an assload of hardware, this should not be such a showstopper.
No, Apple could port OS X to standard PC hardware and make it work just fine, if they wanted to. But they won't port it because they don't want to and don't need to. They've got a comfortable niche, and as long as they keep producing innovative (or at least distinctive) hardware, they'll only build on the Apple mystique that would surely be harmed by porting. Besides, they're control freaks.
If OS X were ported and I could buy it for $50, I'd switch my whole office tomorrow. I think it's a damn shame Apple won't do it. But they've got their reasons, and I think it's useful to recognize them instead of hauling out this bogus hardware instability issue all the time.
"National peril" my ass. The only national peril I see is a steady grind towards failure and corruption of everything this country used to stand for, led by the sleaziest administration this country has ever not elected.
So who uses fax machines anymore? What I'm more concerned about is the spam from cash4school.com that I received on my cell phone the other day. Apparently, anyone can email my phone and it shows up as a text message... but the thing is, it costs me 10 cents every time I send or receive a text message. Once I was able to explain to the friendly Cingular customer service person what I was talking about, they credited me $5, but it still makes me nervous. Even if it were free, I'm going to throw my phone into a dumpster if I start getting spam on it all the time.
Anyone a geek at Cingular? Or know one? I'd sure like to talk to one about this...
I've made the road trip between Washington and back east several times over the years, using varying routes, and I can assure you that you really can't go wrong any way you go. Stay off the highways as much as reasonably possible, talk to people, eat at interesting places, the usual advice... but one thing you absolutely must not miss no matter which way you go is the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. Just... go. Really.
Say, numbuscus, I'm interested in the work you're doing... if you'd be willing to answer a few questions about the pros and cons of your work, please drop me a line - goose at olywa dot net.
Oh, sure, a Kennedy always his hands in a good scandal somewhere, but you don't really see them in power very much these days. As much as the opposing team tries, the sad truth is that the Democrats haven't fielded a contender worthy of scandal since LBJ.
Although, even those examples aren't really all that impressive. Trying to overthrow Castro by any means was a long-standing hobby for the US government regardless of political affiliation, and wiretapping MLK was Hoover's bag. And almost everything from that era is so fraught with shadowy conspiracy and players from all sorts of angles, it's hard to pin anything on any one affiliation.
Not like Dick Nixon, a classic and tragic villain for the ages. Now that's a beautiful scandal. Iran-contra and Inslaw are almost as impressive, but so far in my lifetime, the Democrats have been totally slacking. It's really a shame.
The funny part is, alternative news outlets on all sides of the political spectrum have widely disseminated (relatively, anyway) news about Waco and the coverup. If the mainstream media doesn't report on it because they're "liberal", why would an alternative news outlet that really is specifically liberal (such as Democracy Now) report on it? Your simplistic hypothesis doesn't hold up.
Reputable news organizations of all stripes don't seem to be interested in touching the Vince and RON Brown stories anymore because, outside of the rabid Clinton-hating crowd, they're almost universally accepted to be crackpot.
How these compare in your mind to relatively well-documented and understood cases like Watergate, Iran-Contra and Inslaw is beyond me, but I'm sure you've got a rationalization for it. Whatever.
Even if your hypothesis is true - and "more attention" is very debatable, especially when you consider the scandal-packed years of the Reagan administration that are all but forgotten, while the various lame-ass -gates of the Clinton years just keep circling around the drain of the right-wing press - the fact is, Democrats can't even do scandals very well. The Republicans have them beat hands-down in that department, so if it seems like there's more attention paid to them, that's probably why.
Of course, the media is also unfair to your shallow personal pet belief system because of a sinister conspiracy. There's always that.
Because travelgate, filegate, Vince Foster, etc. are all stupid, and no one this side of Rush Limbaugh cares. At least the Republicans have the common courtesy to have decent scandals... Watergate, Iran-Contra and Inslaw are all monuments of scandal, and deserving of ongoing recognition.
Also, you may want to brush up on your politics, because some people from Watergate are still in positions of power. Even more Iran-Contra veterans are in the Bush administration.
Right on! My group sometimes busts out the old-school DMG for a few rounds of what we call Dogma. You roll 3d6 6 times, those are your stats. Decide on class. Roll for hit points. Roll for money. Buy some gear. Bang, you're in the game. No backstory, no bullshit, just pop, there you are.
The GM uses the random encounters and dungeons in the back of the DMG. If you make it to third level, you get an alignment and a name (you even get to pick your own name!). If you die, you just immediately roll 3d6 6 times, etc, until you pop back into the game again.
The DM's role is to abide by the decisions of the almighty Gygaxian algorithms, and to discourage players from actual role-playing until they've 'earned it' at third level. In practice, Dogma is fast-paced and not entirely unlike a game of fantasy Quake. In the right hands, it can be very, very funny... well, funny if you're a dork, anyway!
These are not the environmentalist ideas we're looking for.
I don't know what environmentalist ideas you're looking for, but for my money, no environmentalist makes more sense than McDonough.
And no mention was made at all about how comfortable those eco-chairs were.
It hardly seems like making biodegradable fabric comfortable is a major design challenge.
Name industries where ecological improvements resulted in better revenues, or other tangible benefits.
Here's one obvious example. The living roof will cost them $15m as opposed to $50m for a standard roof, as well as saving on water treatment. There are plenty of examples in a variety of industries if you care to look.
And this demonstrates that... more tax dollars come from rich people than poor people. Which is not only not as good a story, it's not really a story at all. "In other news: when it rains, things get wet...."
More interesting to me are the respective tax rates: 38.6 percent compared to 15. Personally, the discrepancy doesn't bother me very much... you could raise the tax on the poor, but why bother - they're POOR. And it only seems fair to cut them a little slack... rich people don't have to worry about making rent or buying groceries or keeping the heat on, and pretty much by definition, for the poor, every penny counts. The rich have a lot more slack to work with... let's face it, once your basic human necessities are covered, everything else is gravy. If you're fortunate enough to have a lot of extra gravy, it seems in poor taste to complain about not having even more gravy.
That said, however, it does seem like 38.6 percent is too high for anyone to pay, particularly in light of what we get in return. I think what the US really needs is a complete audit and top-down reassessment of what we need, how our taxes are used, and how they should be collected. I bet the scope of waste, abuse and outright fraud is very much larger than even the average joe would suspect...
That book sounds like it has potential, but I have still never seen the Friedman column that didn't leave me appalled. I can't believe the guy actually gets paid money for writing that swill, and that people actually read him. He's a shitty writer and a half-assed conservative hack, and by all rights deserves to be writing columns for some backwoods Iowa newspaper, not the NYT. If the guy's ever strung together an insightful sentence in his life, I haven't seen it yet...
OK, I'm enough of a pathetic geek to admit that I've read all of Clowes' stuff and damn near all of Dorkin's, and I disagree. The Conan O'Brien episodes were way better than, say, Hectic Planet or Velvet Glove.
And lighten up a bit - the Simpsons is a different product for a different market than Dork! or Eightball. It's chalk and cheese (and a real comics geek would remember which comic that phrase played prominently in, neener neener). You couldn't convince me that the target demographic for Dork! or Eightball is inherently superior in some way than the Simpsons' demographic. I hang out in a comics shop quite a bit more than is probably healthy, and even though it's a good comics shop with some amazing people around it, the pseudo-hipster cultural elitism shtick is tired. It'd be great if Dork! and Eightball were exposed to a wider audience, but sniffing down your nose at the Simpsons isn't the way to build that audience.
On one hand, I'm very excited about this GeekPAC business - this is incredibly cool, and god bless 'em, and I'm absolutely in favor of it, and all that.
But on the other, giving congressmonkeys monetary tips for doing what we want... that is just... icky. WTF, the system done got broke somewhere if this is the only way we can get our elected representatives to represent us. What a drag.
I am asserting a negative right, that others may not interfere with me (so long as I don't try to interfere with them), whereas you are asserting a positive right
Debate the philosophical semantics of negative and positive and force all you want - any way you look at it, we are enforcing our will on others. The "I just want to be left alone" bit doesn't jive -- if I can't set up a government agency to regulate alcohol so that I can just walk into a store and feel confident that anything I buy there is safe, and instead I have to fuck around and figure out which company sells the most accurate list of safe booze for my area at the best price every time I want a bottle of hootch just because you have a philosophy wedged in your craw, then you have directly impacted me by wasting my time. Time being equivalent to money, YOU have just forcefully taken money out of MY pocket. I'm willing to bet that aside from being astronomically more convenient for me, it's cheaper, more effective, and less prone to corruption and sleaziness for everyone to just kick down a little change and let a government agency regulate the booze. It's a perfectly reasonable setup that works just fine, as far as my use of it is concerned. You may not believe it's reasonable, and hey, I might very well be wrong - I'm willing to look at evidence on a case-by-case basis. But the only way to know for sure is, again, to give it a try. Which entails dismantling the system I currently use and enjoy, so it's not like you can just operate in this little hypothetical vacuum of "do what you want but leave me alone." It's a perfectly fine principle, but we live in a real, finite, interconnected meatspace world.
Although, I have to say, I'm sympathetic to not being forced. If I were in charge, I'd be perfectly willing to let you not pay taxes as long as you were not permitted to utilize any infrastructure or system based on tax dollars. Or if you wanted to just chip in for defense or whatever bit you wanted, maybe we could work out a deal of some kind. If enough people who thought like you could get together and buy enough property and build your own private infrastructure, you might even be able to pull it off. I'd be impressed.
This suggests that there are situations that call for forced exchanges that are free and fair.
And/or maybe it suggests that sometimes things aren't perfectly free and fair, but they work better than the alternatives, so suck it up. Or maybe it suggests that we have differing standards of fairness. Or maybe standards of fairness aren't even always applicable. Or maybe a half dozen other things.
how hard would a google search for "libertarian government regulation utility" be? You'd find arguments for both sides there, some with hard data. For example, regarding electricity [zolatimes.com].
No, it's not hard at all to find a bunch of meaningless pap on this subject. For example, show me the arguments for both sides OR the hard data on that page. I might happen to agree with some or even a lot of it, and I'm enthusiastic about co-op power, home generation, alternative energy and killing off dinosaur utilities, but all this page is is empty rhetoric, like most of the libertarian material I see. I can say one thing offhand - I don't hear the home power enthusiasts I know and read about complaining very often about tax and regulatory nightmares. If anything, it's the opposite, with people touting the tax breaks and regulations that allow them to sell power back to the grid. So if this is a problem listed under this person's libertarian "deep analysis," I'd have to question how deep his analysis actually went. Not that we'd be able to tell, of course, because there aren't any references.
First you support intervention and then you decry it?
I support whatever makes sense. I'm not locked into one strict belief system - pragmatism trumps dogma in my book. If you've got evidence for or against something, I'll try to consider it as objectively as I can, hence, I'd consider that statement a basis for discussion. In this case, I believe intervention is probably necessary, and the best course may be for them to back off what they've already done and let things go more along the lines of what you propose. Or maybe not.
It would be an improvement in that the opportunity for corruption would be far lower.
Oh? I hadn't realized there was so much opportunity for corruption in the booze regulation business already. Is this another philosophical assumption, or is this a real problem? If it is a real problem, how does your system inherently prevent the same, or similar, problems? Is the impact of this corruption greater for me than the inconvenience and risk of the system you propose?
Because their value would depend on trust (lest, like Arthur Anderson, they go down in Enron flames), the incentive for corruption is almost nonexistent.
I don't think I'd agree with the "almost nonexistent" part there. The example you cite is just one high-profile failure of this principle. The theoretical incentive for corruption may be low, but we need to attempt to quantify, as best we can (risk assessment is always a bit of voodoo), the actual impact of corruption and figure it into the overall cost/benefit equation, instead of relying on this philosophy and rhetoric that presumes nearly-perfect enlightened self-interest.
At least, hold the schools accountable to standards. I know this latter measure is supposedly being done, but far too laxly, and supports the belief that the government does not want a well-educated (which does not imply expensively-educated, as home-schoolers can attest) citizenry.
Mmmm-hmmmm... so, let me see if I've got this straight. You're afraid of mob rule because people are ignorant and will make stupid choices that will be enforced upon you against your will. The system you propose "requires members to be responsible for their choices, both those that affect others, and those that affect themselves" - something that the ignorant mob is patently unable to do to your satisfaction. So both the current mob rule and the libertarian method are unacceptable as long as the education system sucks and people remain ignorant.
So successfully applying your philosophy (or escaping the mob) relies on a provable formula for producing non-ignorant people en masse. I've never seen evidence that this is even possible in any sense, let alone that such a formula exists now. Right off the bat you're stuck with the thorny question of who gets to decide and enforce what "non-ignorant" means. And you're going to use standardized testing to measure results? I figured standardized testing for a sick joke way back in 3rd grade... you're going to need some incontrovertible evidence for its effectiveness in producing and measuring "non-ignorant" people to convince me of that one. Once you solve those fundamentals, you then get into the dicey mechanics of it. Good luck.
Finally, I've heard plenty of talk before about this conspiracy of government to keep people ignorant. I may be plenty cynical myself, but I have a hard time believing that anyone in government, particularly in education, purposely wants kids to grow up ignorant. Educators and politicians may themselves be ignorant, or they may be apathetic, but I think the conspiracy angle takes cynicism to the edge of pathology. Again, I'm willing to consider evidence to the contrary, but absent that I believe this belief reflects more about its holder than it does about reality.
Perhaps there's a misunderstanding here. I meant "supposed to get cheaper" in the sense that that's what we (or at least I) have been led to believe would happen, not that that's what should technically happen because I'm an economics and telecom genius, or live with some political dogma that dictates that it should by fiat.
So why do I (or did I) believe bandwidth would get cheaper? How many thousands of miles of dark fiber are there supposed to be laying around? I thought that the old supply and demand thing would dictate that where there is an overabundance of supply relative to demand, that price would drop.
Besides the dark wire, it seems like new technologies are popping up every 8-12 months for multiplying the capabilities of existing infrastructure. Switches and routers get faster and better all the time. Last mile problems were supposed to be getting resolved by this time.
There's always competition -- even besides phone co, cable co, and satellite, wireless and powerline were supposedly coming down the pike any day now. And it's not like there isn't a precedent -- witness the apparently inevitable spiral of long distance into flat-rate (which I've been expecting for a very long time).
And maybe you've got the economy of scale working on the side of Joe Consumer, as business, government and education demand more and more bandwidth, the demand by little old Joe who checks his mail and reads CNN every day would practically be too cheap to meter (if that phrase rings a bell, good for you). There are, or were, plenty of reasons for an uneducated sap like me to suppose that bandwidth would eventually be ludicrously cheap.
I still suspect that within 5-10 years Joe Consumer'll be paying $10/month flat, and no one will care about us average joes running servers or hoovering down the bits. Business, edu and gov will still pay more, but based more on QoS than a bit count. And spammers will be hunted by hounds and men on horses with bugles, and their bodies left to dangle from lampposts as a warning to others. I'm particularly crossing my fingers for that one. I may not be feeling so confident about that future anymore, but I'll still be disappointed if it goes like you predict.
Metered access or micropayments are the only sensible schemes from a commercial POV...
You may be right. I hope not. What's happening with GSM and i-mode?
I can't speak for the other morons, but sure I've read some Rand. Certainly not all of it, but enough to know I think she's an idiot. I actually like quite a bit of what she says and think objectivism can be a useful tool... but overall, as a be-all, end-all philosophy, I think it sucks. But even given that, it is a shame that the legions of undead crack-smoking Randroids that freely roam the net, as you more or less point out, just help give Rand a bad name.
you're chosing for all who disagree with you, to boot
As you are proposing, as well. Your desire to impose a system of freewheeling corporate fiefdoms (and it IS an imposition, like it or not) does not trump my desire to place some common controls on systems, or initiate certain public works. I can't include myself a public highway system any more than you can exclude yourself from it. And if you think one system inherently limits choice more than the other, you're too bogged down in theory and not looking enough at the reality. Money is force just as surely as guns and jails are. Money is not a more ethical means of force simply because you like it.
...things I can not do, like send my child to a better school, contribute more to worthwhile charities and organizations like the EFF, etc., because of my tax burden
Oh, yeah, the bad man's taking all your money. It's just like you objectivists to blame everyone else for your troubles. You want more money? Then make more money! The money's out there just waiting for you to take it. Are you going to take it? Are you man enough to take it? You got no one to blame if you can't bootstrap yourself into an income bracket where you can do what you want. And by the way, the wealthier you get, the more ways you'll learn to dodge that bad tax man. It's a win-win-win-win situation for you! Hop to it! What's the problem?
And by the way, the coffee is for closers.
...the few checks against outright mob rule are codified on flimsy sheets of paper in the form of a constitution.
At least that paper's a little more concrete than corporate rule being obviated by some theoretical invisible hand. And you know, the guys who cooked up those flimsy scraps gave more than a passing thought to that mob rule problem, and their ideas may not be perfect or perfectly suited to your personal code of ethics, but it makes sense that you'd think it surprising that they've worked as well as they have. Their ideas have so far worked way better than I'd guess your way would work, but until your way gets applied somewhere I guess there's no way to know for sure. Maybe you can convince a bunch of people of your philosophy and get it going.
A forced exchange is neither fair nor free.
Well, nice to see we agree on something. I can absolutely get with this philosophy as a tool. As a be-all, end-all philosophy, however, it's as lame as any other One True Way, rigidly applied.
...you take such a vocal, ardent, and venomous stance against my libertarian beliefs. This suggests that you very much do care that I oppose your intrusion into my life and indirectly into my wallet.
Oh, yes, 'you wound me, sir.' Your "opposition" is fundamentally irrelevant to me, because A) you've got your opinion, I've got mine, and so what, and B) I think it's essentially as fruity and inconsequential as Marxism, anarchism, and any other number of -isms you can pull out of history's dustbin. Where I get ardent and venemous is when I ask for some reality checks, some backup for your statements, and you "won't do my homework" and sneer down at "my ilk" as "biggots, racists, petty thieves, religious zealots." You think you're on a moral high ground here, fine, act that way, but I think it's a highly dubious position to stake out at this point. I wouldn't claim it, either, BTW.
If the government wants to certify distilleries as "safe", then let it, sell me a list of the safe ones. Or, offer a certification program, with fancy little seals and certificates (though that is so ripe for corruption)
Well, as I believe you correctly point out, the fancy little seals system is not really a viable alternative. But I'm curious about the safe list system - this would be an improvement over the current one in precisely what ways?
Perhaps it isn't improving because of the government-sanctioned monopolies that remove any incentive to improve.
Cool. Now this is a basis for discussion.
Perhaps most people are too stupid to realize how bad things are.
This ain't, though. Now how are you ever going to get the support of the mob, talking like that?
But, to spend other peoples' money in an attempt to fix things is plain wrong. It is even wronger to give this money to the organization that likely fucked things up in the first place with their policies.
I'm perfectly willing to go along with this, if indeed this is the most sensible way to improve the situation. I haven't seen anything so far but bland sophistry to back this up, though. So realistically, how might your proposal work? First you disband the FCC and FTC and a bunch of other acronyms, and then...?
How presumptuous on your part... I'm not choosing anything for you, I'm choosing for me. I couldn't care less what you want - far as I know, you're free to do as you like, as well. Hell, you can even move to places that are totally free of that pesky government regulation, if you believe in this philosophy so thoroughly... yes, those charming places where nothing is taken from others by force and everyone lives in blissful harmony. Sealand, maybe? I hear Liberia is nice this time of year. Enjoy! Me, I'll hang here with my Nazi pals, downing government-regulated Jagermeister (pretty much a zero percent chance of permanent blindness, thank goodness) and enjoying our at least semi-functional infrastructure.
In my book, your philosophy is a laughably unrealistic pipe dream, a Randroid power fantasy built on a foundation of pure conjecture, with no more empiricism behind it than any of the other fantasies you disdain. And I don't believe for a second you could "do my homework for me," because I don't think you really know anything... all you've got is bluster and hot air.
A tip of the hat, though, for the hyperbole. Nice touch.
How do you define a poor record? Do you have references? Hard data comparisons between private buildout of infrastructure vs. public?
So tell me, if you had your way, would we all be driving on State Farm toll roads, pissing in Enron sewer systems, and riding in airplanes controlled by the Microsoft ATC network? Gee, it smells just like utopia...
Where did you get this idea? The price of bandwidth is determined by what the market will bear. Not by wishful thinking.
Wait, don't tell me, you've been reading The Fountainhead. Please, do go on.
How is that possible when outbound traffic is what "costs real money"? How is this hypothetical "one person" going to get the data to the "practically unlimited audience"?
Yeah... that's a good point there. You got me on that one. It's like, there I was complaining about the cost of bandwidth, and then I missed one spot to make absolutely, perfectly clear that I think the high cost of bandwidth is a bad thing and it would be better if it weren't that way, and you were right there to... um... point out that, yeah, it's not such a good thing. Or something. Thanks. Or not. Whatever.
Good grief! Imagine paying for service!
Yeah! Ha ha! You'd be a fool and a communist to think otherwise, now, wouldn't you? Ha ha!
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I'd argue exactly the opposite, actually... tapes are too unreliable and fragile, plus they're expensive and slow. Throw a 320GB Maxtor into an external Firewire box, put it in a freakin' padded bag in case you're too clumsy to be trusted, and you don't really have to worry about shock or connector failure.
There's all variety of software out there for backing up exactly how you like. I realize Firewire hard drives seem pretty ghetto compared to the leet higher-end tape drives, and tape still has its place, but the massive Firewire hard drive is really not a bad solution for a whole lot of situations.
Exactly. Comedian Doug Stanhope has a great routine about this. He got a friend who owns a porn shop to give him a bag chock full of the most appalling adult novelties known to man - DVDs, dildos, vibrators, butt plugs (with a little chocolate smearing for good measure), life-sized human fist, you name it - and he used that as his carry-on bag. Ideally, some nimrod security agent would pull it all out on the table and there'd be a little object lesson in privacy vs. security for all the old people, children and families travelling with Doug.
Of course, when he finally did get searched, the security guard took one look inside his bag and immediately snapped it closed and sent Doug on his way. Oh, yeah, these security checks are making us more safe. Note to terrorists: hide your plastic knives in a bag mixed with adult novelties, and skate on through security, who'd rather spend their time digging through old ladies' purses for nail files and sewing needles.
Anyway, Stanhope's a mad genius, and you should see his site. Check out the prank letters with his gorgeous neighbor Leann, and the story where he has her truck painted purple - funny, funny stuff.
Yes, once you GET it to work it is more stable than windows, but it doesn't JUST WORK(TM).
Never seen Knoppix (or any of the similar projects), have you? If a handful of German geeks can, I presume in their spare time, produce a Linux distro that JUST WORKS to the point where all you have to do is push the power button, insert a CD, and you have a complete, functional, and reliable OS and desktop... well, it's pretty impressive. And it makes me not buy the old argument against porting to x86 because then Apple wouldn't be able to quality control all that hardware out there. If small groups of volunteers can make hardware work reliably with a huge variety of *nix flavors, what's Apple's problem? And if Mach and BSD are so close together, and the BSD community already supports an assload of hardware, this should not be such a showstopper.
No, Apple could port OS X to standard PC hardware and make it work just fine, if they wanted to. But they won't port it because they don't want to and don't need to. They've got a comfortable niche, and as long as they keep producing innovative (or at least distinctive) hardware, they'll only build on the Apple mystique that would surely be harmed by porting. Besides, they're control freaks.
If OS X were ported and I could buy it for $50, I'd switch my whole office tomorrow. I think it's a damn shame Apple won't do it. But they've got their reasons, and I think it's useful to recognize them instead of hauling out this bogus hardware instability issue all the time.
But these are times of national peril.
"National peril" my ass. The only national peril I see is a steady grind towards failure and corruption of everything this country used to stand for, led by the sleaziest administration this country has ever not elected.
So who uses fax machines anymore? What I'm more concerned about is the spam from cash4school.com that I received on my cell phone the other day. Apparently, anyone can email my phone and it shows up as a text message... but the thing is, it costs me 10 cents every time I send or receive a text message. Once I was able to explain to the friendly Cingular customer service person what I was talking about, they credited me $5, but it still makes me nervous. Even if it were free, I'm going to throw my phone into a dumpster if I start getting spam on it all the time.
Anyone a geek at Cingular? Or know one? I'd sure like to talk to one about this...
I've made the road trip between Washington and back east several times over the years, using varying routes, and I can assure you that you really can't go wrong any way you go. Stay off the highways as much as reasonably possible, talk to people, eat at interesting places, the usual advice... but one thing you absolutely must not miss no matter which way you go is the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. Just... go. Really.
Say, numbuscus, I'm interested in the work you're doing... if you'd be willing to answer a few questions about the pros and cons of your work, please drop me a line - goose at olywa dot net.
Oh, sure, a Kennedy always his hands in a good scandal somewhere, but you don't really see them in power very much these days. As much as the opposing team tries, the sad truth is that the Democrats haven't fielded a contender worthy of scandal since LBJ.
Although, even those examples aren't really all that impressive. Trying to overthrow Castro by any means was a long-standing hobby for the US government regardless of political affiliation, and wiretapping MLK was Hoover's bag. And almost everything from that era is so fraught with shadowy conspiracy and players from all sorts of angles, it's hard to pin anything on any one affiliation.
Not like Dick Nixon, a classic and tragic villain for the ages. Now that's a beautiful scandal. Iran-contra and Inslaw are almost as impressive, but so far in my lifetime, the Democrats have been totally slacking. It's really a shame.
The funny part is, alternative news outlets on all sides of the political spectrum have widely disseminated (relatively, anyway) news about Waco and the coverup. If the mainstream media doesn't report on it because they're "liberal", why would an alternative news outlet that really is specifically liberal (such as Democracy Now) report on it? Your simplistic hypothesis doesn't hold up.
Reputable news organizations of all stripes don't seem to be interested in touching the Vince and RON Brown stories anymore because, outside of the rabid Clinton-hating crowd, they're almost universally accepted to be crackpot.
How these compare in your mind to relatively well-documented and understood cases like Watergate, Iran-Contra and Inslaw is beyond me, but I'm sure you've got a rationalization for it. Whatever.
Even if your hypothesis is true - and "more attention" is very debatable, especially when you consider the scandal-packed years of the Reagan administration that are all but forgotten, while the various lame-ass -gates of the Clinton years just keep circling around the drain of the right-wing press - the fact is, Democrats can't even do scandals very well. The Republicans have them beat hands-down in that department, so if it seems like there's more attention paid to them, that's probably why.
Of course, the media is also unfair to your shallow personal pet belief system because of a sinister conspiracy. There's always that.
Because travelgate, filegate, Vince Foster, etc. are all stupid, and no one this side of Rush Limbaugh cares. At least the Republicans have the common courtesy to have decent scandals... Watergate, Iran-Contra and Inslaw are all monuments of scandal, and deserving of ongoing recognition.
Also, you may want to brush up on your politics, because some people from Watergate are still in positions of power. Even more Iran-Contra veterans are in the Bush administration.
Because the phrase "extraordinary proof" is stupid. What the fuck IS "extraordinary" proof? Since when is proof not enough to prove something?
Right on! My group sometimes busts out the old-school DMG for a few rounds of what we call Dogma. You roll 3d6 6 times, those are your stats. Decide on class. Roll for hit points. Roll for money. Buy some gear. Bang, you're in the game. No backstory, no bullshit, just pop, there you are.
The GM uses the random encounters and dungeons in the back of the DMG. If you make it to third level, you get an alignment and a name (you even get to pick your own name!). If you die, you just immediately roll 3d6 6 times, etc, until you pop back into the game again.
The DM's role is to abide by the decisions of the almighty Gygaxian algorithms, and to discourage players from actual role-playing until they've 'earned it' at third level. In practice, Dogma is fast-paced and not entirely unlike a game of fantasy Quake. In the right hands, it can be very, very funny... well, funny if you're a dork, anyway!
These are not the environmentalist ideas we're looking for.
I don't know what environmentalist ideas you're looking for, but for my money, no environmentalist makes more sense than McDonough.
And no mention was made at all about how comfortable those eco-chairs were.
It hardly seems like making biodegradable fabric comfortable is a major design challenge.
Name industries where ecological improvements resulted in better revenues, or other tangible benefits.
Here's one obvious example. The living roof will cost them $15m as opposed to $50m for a standard roof, as well as saving on water treatment. There are plenty of examples in a variety of industries if you care to look.
And this demonstrates that... more tax dollars come from rich people than poor people. Which is not only not as good a story, it's not really a story at all. "In other news: when it rains, things get wet...."
More interesting to me are the respective tax rates: 38.6 percent compared to 15. Personally, the discrepancy doesn't bother me very much... you could raise the tax on the poor, but why bother - they're POOR. And it only seems fair to cut them a little slack... rich people don't have to worry about making rent or buying groceries or keeping the heat on, and pretty much by definition, for the poor, every penny counts. The rich have a lot more slack to work with... let's face it, once your basic human necessities are covered, everything else is gravy. If you're fortunate enough to have a lot of extra gravy, it seems in poor taste to complain about not having even more gravy.
That said, however, it does seem like 38.6 percent is too high for anyone to pay, particularly in light of what we get in return. I think what the US really needs is a complete audit and top-down reassessment of what we need, how our taxes are used, and how they should be collected. I bet the scope of waste, abuse and outright fraud is very much larger than even the average joe would suspect...
That book sounds like it has potential, but I have still never seen the Friedman column that didn't leave me appalled. I can't believe the guy actually gets paid money for writing that swill, and that people actually read him. He's a shitty writer and a half-assed conservative hack, and by all rights deserves to be writing columns for some backwoods Iowa newspaper, not the NYT. If the guy's ever strung together an insightful sentence in his life, I haven't seen it yet...
OK, I'm enough of a pathetic geek to admit that I've read all of Clowes' stuff and damn near all of Dorkin's, and I disagree. The Conan O'Brien episodes were way better than, say, Hectic Planet or Velvet Glove.
And lighten up a bit - the Simpsons is a different product for a different market than Dork! or Eightball. It's chalk and cheese (and a real comics geek would remember which comic that phrase played prominently in, neener neener). You couldn't convince me that the target demographic for Dork! or Eightball is inherently superior in some way than the Simpsons' demographic. I hang out in a comics shop quite a bit more than is probably healthy, and even though it's a good comics shop with some amazing people around it, the pseudo-hipster cultural elitism shtick is tired. It'd be great if Dork! and Eightball were exposed to a wider audience, but sniffing down your nose at the Simpsons isn't the way to build that audience.
On one hand, I'm very excited about this GeekPAC business - this is incredibly cool, and god bless 'em, and I'm absolutely in favor of it, and all that.
But on the other, giving congressmonkeys monetary tips for doing what we want... that is just... icky. WTF, the system done got broke somewhere if this is the only way we can get our elected representatives to represent us. What a drag.
I am asserting a negative right, that others may not interfere with me (so long as I don't try to interfere with them), whereas you are asserting a positive right
Debate the philosophical semantics of negative and positive and force all you want - any way you look at it, we are enforcing our will on others. The "I just want to be left alone" bit doesn't jive -- if I can't set up a government agency to regulate alcohol so that I can just walk into a store and feel confident that anything I buy there is safe, and instead I have to fuck around and figure out which company sells the most accurate list of safe booze for my area at the best price every time I want a bottle of hootch just because you have a philosophy wedged in your craw, then you have directly impacted me by wasting my time. Time being equivalent to money, YOU have just forcefully taken money out of MY pocket. I'm willing to bet that aside from being astronomically more convenient for me, it's cheaper, more effective, and less prone to corruption and sleaziness for everyone to just kick down a little change and let a government agency regulate the booze. It's a perfectly reasonable setup that works just fine, as far as my use of it is concerned. You may not believe it's reasonable, and hey, I might very well be wrong - I'm willing to look at evidence on a case-by-case basis. But the only way to know for sure is, again, to give it a try. Which entails dismantling the system I currently use and enjoy, so it's not like you can just operate in this little hypothetical vacuum of "do what you want but leave me alone." It's a perfectly fine principle, but we live in a real, finite, interconnected meatspace world.
Although, I have to say, I'm sympathetic to not being forced. If I were in charge, I'd be perfectly willing to let you not pay taxes as long as you were not permitted to utilize any infrastructure or system based on tax dollars. Or if you wanted to just chip in for defense or whatever bit you wanted, maybe we could work out a deal of some kind. If enough people who thought like you could get together and buy enough property and build your own private infrastructure, you might even be able to pull it off. I'd be impressed.
This suggests that there are situations that call for forced exchanges that are free and fair.
And/or maybe it suggests that sometimes things aren't perfectly free and fair, but they work better than the alternatives, so suck it up. Or maybe it suggests that we have differing standards of fairness. Or maybe standards of fairness aren't even always applicable. Or maybe a half dozen other things.
how hard would a google search for "libertarian government regulation utility" be? You'd find arguments for both sides there, some with hard data. For example, regarding electricity [zolatimes.com].
No, it's not hard at all to find a bunch of meaningless pap on this subject. For example, show me the arguments for both sides OR the hard data on that page. I might happen to agree with some or even a lot of it, and I'm enthusiastic about co-op power, home generation, alternative energy and killing off dinosaur utilities, but all this page is is empty rhetoric, like most of the libertarian material I see. I can say one thing offhand - I don't hear the home power enthusiasts I know and read about complaining very often about tax and regulatory nightmares. If anything, it's the opposite, with people touting the tax breaks and regulations that allow them to sell power back to the grid. So if this is a problem listed under this person's libertarian "deep analysis," I'd have to question how deep his analysis actually went. Not that we'd be able to tell, of course, because there aren't any references.
First you support intervention and then you decry it?
I support whatever makes sense. I'm not locked into one strict belief system - pragmatism trumps dogma in my book. If you've got evidence for or against something, I'll try to consider it as objectively as I can, hence, I'd consider that statement a basis for discussion. In this case, I believe intervention is probably necessary, and the best course may be for them to back off what they've already done and let things go more along the lines of what you propose. Or maybe not.
It would be an improvement in that the opportunity for corruption would be far lower.
Oh? I hadn't realized there was so much opportunity for corruption in the booze regulation business already. Is this another philosophical assumption, or is this a real problem? If it is a real problem, how does your system inherently prevent the same, or similar, problems? Is the impact of this corruption greater for me than the inconvenience and risk of the system you propose?
Because their value would depend on trust (lest, like Arthur Anderson, they go down in Enron flames), the incentive for corruption is almost nonexistent.
I don't think I'd agree with the "almost nonexistent" part there. The example you cite is just one high-profile failure of this principle. The theoretical incentive for corruption may be low, but we need to attempt to quantify, as best we can (risk assessment is always a bit of voodoo), the actual impact of corruption and figure it into the overall cost/benefit equation, instead of relying on this philosophy and rhetoric that presumes nearly-perfect enlightened self-interest.
At least, hold the schools accountable to standards. I know this latter measure is supposedly being done, but far too laxly, and supports the belief that the government does not want a well-educated (which does not imply expensively-educated, as home-schoolers can attest) citizenry.
Mmmm-hmmmm... so, let me see if I've got this straight. You're afraid of mob rule because people are ignorant and will make stupid choices that will be enforced upon you against your will. The system you propose "requires members to be responsible for their choices, both those that affect others, and those that affect themselves" - something that the ignorant mob is patently unable to do to your satisfaction. So both the current mob rule and the libertarian method are unacceptable as long as the education system sucks and people remain ignorant.
So successfully applying your philosophy (or escaping the mob) relies on a provable formula for producing non-ignorant people en masse. I've never seen evidence that this is even possible in any sense, let alone that such a formula exists now. Right off the bat you're stuck with the thorny question of who gets to decide and enforce what "non-ignorant" means. And you're going to use standardized testing to measure results? I figured standardized testing for a sick joke way back in 3rd grade... you're going to need some incontrovertible evidence for its effectiveness in producing and measuring "non-ignorant" people to convince me of that one. Once you solve those fundamentals, you then get into the dicey mechanics of it. Good luck.
Finally, I've heard plenty of talk before about this conspiracy of government to keep people ignorant. I may be plenty cynical myself, but I have a hard time believing that anyone in government, particularly in education, purposely wants kids to grow up ignorant. Educators and politicians may themselves be ignorant, or they may be apathetic, but I think the conspiracy angle takes cynicism to the edge of pathology. Again, I'm willing to consider evidence to the contrary, but absent that I believe this belief reflects more about its holder than it does about reality.
Why should bandwidth be getting cheaper?
Perhaps there's a misunderstanding here. I meant "supposed to get cheaper" in the sense that that's what we (or at least I) have been led to believe would happen, not that that's what should technically happen because I'm an economics and telecom genius, or live with some political dogma that dictates that it should by fiat.
So why do I (or did I) believe bandwidth would get cheaper? How many thousands of miles of dark fiber are there supposed to be laying around? I thought that the old supply and demand thing would dictate that where there is an overabundance of supply relative to demand, that price would drop.
Besides the dark wire, it seems like new technologies are popping up every 8-12 months for multiplying the capabilities of existing infrastructure. Switches and routers get faster and better all the time. Last mile problems were supposed to be getting resolved by this time.
There's always competition -- even besides phone co, cable co, and satellite, wireless and powerline were supposedly coming down the pike any day now. And it's not like there isn't a precedent -- witness the apparently inevitable spiral of long distance into flat-rate (which I've been expecting for a very long time).
And maybe you've got the economy of scale working on the side of Joe Consumer, as business, government and education demand more and more bandwidth, the demand by little old Joe who checks his mail and reads CNN every day would practically be too cheap to meter (if that phrase rings a bell, good for you). There are, or were, plenty of reasons for an uneducated sap like me to suppose that bandwidth would eventually be ludicrously cheap.
I still suspect that within 5-10 years Joe Consumer'll be paying $10/month flat, and no one will care about us average joes running servers or hoovering down the bits. Business, edu and gov will still pay more, but based more on QoS than a bit count. And spammers will be hunted by hounds and men on horses with bugles, and their bodies left to dangle from lampposts as a warning to others. I'm particularly crossing my fingers for that one. I may not be feeling so confident about that future anymore, but I'll still be disappointed if it goes like you predict.
Metered access or micropayments are the only sensible schemes from a commercial POV...
You may be right. I hope not. What's happening with GSM and i-mode?
I can't speak for the other morons, but sure I've read some Rand. Certainly not all of it, but enough to know I think she's an idiot. I actually like quite a bit of what she says and think objectivism can be a useful tool... but overall, as a be-all, end-all philosophy, I think it sucks. But even given that, it is a shame that the legions of undead crack-smoking Randroids that freely roam the net, as you more or less point out, just help give Rand a bad name.
you're chosing for all who disagree with you, to boot
...things I can not do, like send my child to a better school, contribute more to worthwhile charities and organizations like the EFF, etc., because of my tax burden
...the few checks against outright mob rule are codified on flimsy sheets of paper in the form of a constitution.
...you take such a vocal, ardent, and venomous stance against my libertarian beliefs. This suggests that you very much do care that I oppose your intrusion into my life and indirectly into my wallet.
As you are proposing, as well. Your desire to impose a system of freewheeling corporate fiefdoms (and it IS an imposition, like it or not) does not trump my desire to place some common controls on systems, or initiate certain public works. I can't include myself a public highway system any more than you can exclude yourself from it. And if you think one system inherently limits choice more than the other, you're too bogged down in theory and not looking enough at the reality. Money is force just as surely as guns and jails are. Money is not a more ethical means of force simply because you like it.
Oh, yeah, the bad man's taking all your money. It's just like you objectivists to blame everyone else for your troubles. You want more money? Then make more money! The money's out there just waiting for you to take it. Are you going to take it? Are you man enough to take it? You got no one to blame if you can't bootstrap yourself into an income bracket where you can do what you want. And by the way, the wealthier you get, the more ways you'll learn to dodge that bad tax man. It's a win-win-win-win situation for you! Hop to it! What's the problem?
And by the way, the coffee is for closers.
At least that paper's a little more concrete than corporate rule being obviated by some theoretical invisible hand. And you know, the guys who cooked up those flimsy scraps gave more than a passing thought to that mob rule problem, and their ideas may not be perfect or perfectly suited to your personal code of ethics, but it makes sense that you'd think it surprising that they've worked as well as they have. Their ideas have so far worked way better than I'd guess your way would work, but until your way gets applied somewhere I guess there's no way to know for sure. Maybe you can convince a bunch of people of your philosophy and get it going.
A forced exchange is neither fair nor free.
Well, nice to see we agree on something. I can absolutely get with this philosophy as a tool. As a be-all, end-all philosophy, however, it's as lame as any other One True Way, rigidly applied.
Oh, yes, 'you wound me, sir.' Your "opposition" is fundamentally irrelevant to me, because A) you've got your opinion, I've got mine, and so what, and B) I think it's essentially as fruity and inconsequential as Marxism, anarchism, and any other number of -isms you can pull out of history's dustbin. Where I get ardent and venemous is when I ask for some reality checks, some backup for your statements, and you "won't do my homework" and sneer down at "my ilk" as "biggots, racists, petty thieves, religious zealots." You think you're on a moral high ground here, fine, act that way, but I think it's a highly dubious position to stake out at this point. I wouldn't claim it, either, BTW.
If the government wants to certify distilleries as "safe", then let it, sell me a list of the safe ones. Or, offer a certification program, with fancy little seals and certificates (though that is so ripe for corruption)
Well, as I believe you correctly point out, the fancy little seals system is not really a viable alternative. But I'm curious about the safe list system - this would be an improvement over the current one in precisely what ways?
Perhaps it isn't improving because of the government-sanctioned monopolies that remove any incentive to improve.
Cool. Now this is a basis for discussion.
Perhaps most people are too stupid to realize how bad things are.
This ain't, though. Now how are you ever going to get the support of the mob, talking like that?
But, to spend other peoples' money in an attempt to fix things is plain wrong. It is even wronger to give this money to the organization that likely fucked things up in the first place with their policies.
I'm perfectly willing to go along with this, if indeed this is the most sensible way to improve the situation. I haven't seen anything so far but bland sophistry to back this up, though. So realistically, how might your proposal work? First you disband the FCC and FTC and a bunch of other acronyms, and then...?
How presumptuous on your part... I'm not choosing anything for you, I'm choosing for me. I couldn't care less what you want - far as I know, you're free to do as you like, as well. Hell, you can even move to places that are totally free of that pesky government regulation, if you believe in this philosophy so thoroughly... yes, those charming places where nothing is taken from others by force and everyone lives in blissful harmony. Sealand, maybe? I hear Liberia is nice this time of year. Enjoy! Me, I'll hang here with my Nazi pals, downing government-regulated Jagermeister (pretty much a zero percent chance of permanent blindness, thank goodness) and enjoying our at least semi-functional infrastructure.
In my book, your philosophy is a laughably unrealistic pipe dream, a Randroid power fantasy built on a foundation of pure conjecture, with no more empiricism behind it than any of the other fantasies you disdain. And I don't believe for a second you could "do my homework for me," because I don't think you really know anything... all you've got is bluster and hot air.
A tip of the hat, though, for the hyperbole. Nice touch.
How do you define a poor record? Do you have references? Hard data comparisons between private buildout of infrastructure vs. public?
So tell me, if you had your way, would we all be driving on State Farm toll roads, pissing in Enron sewer systems, and riding in airplanes controlled by the Microsoft ATC network? Gee, it smells just like utopia...
Where did you get this idea? The price of bandwidth is determined by what the market will bear. Not by wishful thinking.
Wait, don't tell me, you've been reading The Fountainhead. Please, do go on.
How is that possible when outbound traffic is what "costs real money"? How is this hypothetical "one person" going to get the data to the "practically unlimited audience"?
Yeah... that's a good point there. You got me on that one. It's like, there I was complaining about the cost of bandwidth, and then I missed one spot to make absolutely, perfectly clear that I think the high cost of bandwidth is a bad thing and it would be better if it weren't that way, and you were right there to... um... point out that, yeah, it's not such a good thing. Or something. Thanks. Or not. Whatever.
Good grief! Imagine paying for service!
Yeah! Ha ha! You'd be a fool and a communist to think otherwise, now, wouldn't you? Ha ha!