I think we've crossed from what a Libertarian would say to what an Anarchist would say:)
Libertarians are OK with the civil courts. Everyone should be able to sue everyone else for any reason... which is almost what we have if not for corporations.
I don't consider myself a Libertarian, so I'm not a fan of abolishing corporations. But I do think we need to re-examine limited liability for anyone active in the business. I think passive stockholders should retain limited liability.
LOL, yeah PHP is a nightmare. We do have tools written in it, though. I still prefer it to VBA, but that's more a statement of how much I hate VBA. PHP is fine if you keep the scope small. Python is my favorite, but no one around here will have any of it... they prefer $5000/head MATLAB licenses. I don't mind M-Code too much until the project gets big. And MATLAB GUIs are just shame heaped upon shame. The good news is you have full access to Java, not that I'm very good with Java - but it does come to the rescue occasionally.
It's easy, each G is faster than the prior G. The only question is, are H's even faster than G's? Do you work for the phone company? Can I have a job there?
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the regexs in this puzzle used lookaheads or behinds. There's nothing even remotely esoteric about the ones in the puzzle.
Your math doesn't work out: (2-1)/1 = 100% (3-2)/2 = 50% (4-3)/3 = 33% (5-4)/4 = 25%
What they need to do is start over with an "H" instead of a "G". Sure, they'll initially take a speed hit as they go from 5 back to 1 - but then the increases will get back to a really big level: (H1-G5)/G5 = -80% (H2-H1)/H1 = 100%
Just come out with H1 and H2 at the same time. See, hire me!
How is this "crowd sourcing"? They aren't asking the public to decode the radar, they are recognizing the waste in bandwidth to pour a constant signal into the sky when there are already dozens or even hundreds of transmitters doing this.
The returns become marginal as you go up, though. When we went from 1G to 2G, it was like HOLY SHIT THIS IS TWICE AS FAST. Then 2G to 3G came along and it was still a must, I mean, that's a 50% improvement. 3G to 4G was still an impressive 33% improvement... but 4G to 5G? Now you are only improving things by 25%.
WHY CAN'T THE PHONE SCIENCE PEOPLE GET US BACK TO BIG IMPROVEMENTS??? They should start from 1H again and then do a 2H and get us another 100%. This should buy us a few years. Shit, hire me phone company.
Oh, God, yes it is a security nightmare. It's fine for some local tools, but there is a good reason MS started giving macro worksheets their own special file extension!
Anyway, if you are a MS house, it's impossible to avoid VBA, so better to know your enemy. Sadly, our Solaris stuff is being left to wither on the vine, though we have convinced them to run some virtual Linux instances so we can do some work in a real language.. you know, PHP:)
Yeah, it is. But most of that is because of CPAN. VBA partially makes up for this by having the ability to call any DLL installed on the system. VBA has dictionaries instead of hash tables... they are gimped but you can fix that with a little wrapper code. VBA has no regex, which is a mixed-blessing; regex is the main culprit in making PERL so unreadable IMHO. You can add all this stuff to VBA, but unless you do it through a DLL it is very slow. Even inter-process communication is murder since you are using the COM interface.
If I go on, it will turn into an Anti-VBA diatribe.
Are your still in your 20s or something? You'll forget anything you don't use in a while. When I did web scraping I got quite good at regex. Now, I have to look some things up, especially when dealing with look aheads and look behinds and other slightly more esoteric features. I am working through the puzzle, though.
PS: Thanks for remaining civil throughout disagreeing with me on this - I don't think you're right, but I do appreciate it that this hasn't degenerated into name calling like many/. threads seem to do these days.
LOL, thanks right back. I don't usually bother with AC's, but you are a good one.
I've already listed different ways in which you don't have to use ICANN.
I agree that you don't "have" to use them, as in there are technical ways to reach someone without DNS - the simplest being straight IP addresses. That said, there is no practical way for someone to have a successful web presence without ICANN. I've never seen a high-traffic web site without a domain name.
But you don't have a right not to be at a competitive disadvantage in libertopia
I'm definitely not claiming that he has a right to be profitable, or even that he has a right to monopoly-free internet hosting. It's just that you want a successful web presence, there is only one way to do that without breaking the ICANN monopoly. I disagree that he is bound by his libertarian ideals to fight every possible free market fight. Like all of us, he can pick his battles, or even have none at all.
He could use ronpaul.org, ronpaul.biz, or whatever he likes
That is true, but it leaves him with two problems: First, those others are the internet ghetto compared to.COM. Nothing screams "crappy site" like a.BIZ or even a.ORG when you aren't an organization. The second problem is that he'd have these people camped out on RonPaul.com, which could confuse his target audience.
The going rate is the rate at which the domain owner is willing to sell, in the case of sex.com and ronpaul.com.
Welllllll, yes and no. The contract with the registrar is not so simple. There is a fairly good-sized section on how to resolve domain disputes. Here's the one for one of my registrars. It's possible that they violate 4.i.B:
"by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location. "
or maybe C:
"you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue. "
or maybe none of those:) Point is, the whole dispute resolution system is built in to the ICANN contract. Ron Paul isn't subverting anything, he's activating a clause in a contract. As part of the dispute resolution, you have to choose from this List of Approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers. All Ron Paul seems to have done is read the standard ICANN contract and contact the appropriate service provider, which happens to be UN-affiliated.
The whole thing is simple hypocrisy - if you espouse libertarian ideals you should be willing to pay the asking rate for property owned by others or let them have it.
Had he used his influence to contact the UN (or some other organization) to pull strings outside of the normal process, I would 100% agree that he was being a hypocrite. However, he's just doing everything by the book (AFAIK).
We wouldn't even have ICANN without the government. Even if you ignore their government roots, all corporate charters are issued by governments (and "establishments" if there are Brits reading).
No, we're using the same definition of monopoly. I don't know how you come away with ICANN not being one. Who is their competition? There is no way to produce a viable web site without ICANN. If you have a counter example, I'd love to see it.
a) He could set up his own system, but he would put himself at a competitive disadvantage. Actually, his site wouldn't even be viable. b) He could go with another DNS provider. I am unaware of one, and there certainly isn't one that he could use to set up a viable site. c) The going rate for a domain name is under $10. If you mean pay the current domain owner's asking price, then he may very well have to do that if they prevail in ICANN's dispute resolution system. Certainly the contract for a domain name contains dispute resolution provisions.
ICANN would still be a monopoly. It would also be a corporation, which gets its charter from a government somewhere. A corporation cannot exist sans government.
You are trying to elevate an IP dispute to a moral dispute. Slavery is quite obviously a moral problem, whom get's to use a domain name is a simple civil disagreement with an established resolution mechanism.
If everyone chose to eat a one restaurant because it was the best, it wouldn't have a monopoly.
Yes, it would. How could another restaurant stay open if everyone was in the "best" restaurant?
No-one says that "as a practical matter" it's a monopoly
But they do say "de facto monopoly", "natural monopoly", and no other than John Mill used the term "practical monopoly".
The correct libertarian response to this is to start your own DNS (with blackjack and hookers, if you like) and let the free market decide that yours is better.
Not quite. A libertarian would argue that this would naturally happen if the market were truly free. They would point to the fact that this hasn't happened as evidence that there is not a free market. There is no moral obligation to create competition where there is none. It is perfectly acceptable for a libertarian to be a passive consumer.
At present you request this information from a DNS, but you don't have to.
Just like you don't HAVE to buy electricity from the electric company. You could buy a generator and use that. You'd be economically disadvantaged, but you could do it. Ron Paul has no way to subvert ICANN without putting himself at a disadvantage. He has no duty to put himself at a disadvantage.
Monopoly of ICANN is based largely on market's choice.
How can you say that when it was originally a creation of the US government? It is very difficult for a market to organically migrate away from a monopoly.
Which of Ron Pauls should they give preference to? Who decides which site users want? This one has a nice user following, it seems. So, why should he get that name if he's in minority?
Well, that's what the whole dispute process is all about. Nissan Computers won their battle. I don't have any skin in this particular game.
Start your own DNS system, ICANNv2. There is no government restrictions on running your own DNS servers or on users subscribing to get DNS records from you.
I agree someone could try this, given enough will and money. I don't agree that someone is a hypocrite because they don't take on that kind of fight.
What would he do then, other than claiming his Imaginary Property right to own combination of letters "Ron Paul"?
A libertarian would say that the policies of the registrars would have to reflect the will of the market. If consumers expected to type "Ron Paul" and get the famous Ron Paul, then that is what the registrars would have to support. Otherwise, he'd be SOL.
Again, domain name is not IP. Trademarks are IP. He's using IP regulations to force his right to own the name "Ron Paul" into two parties contract, between registrar and owners of RonPaul.com.
IP or not, it is still not a free market. He's being forced to deal with a corporation (government creation that interferes with the free market) and a monopoly (this one installed by the government, but they also might happen "naturally"). He cannot go to a competing registrar and buy their ronpaul.com. Hell, even the value of ".com" is a legacy of government regulation... the whole damn internet is!
Don't get me wrong, I do not call myself a Libertarian. I happen to think that government regulation is often called for. Hell, I even think ICANN is doing a decent job - except for spammers. But I'm not under the delusion that one could operate a website outside of their services.
I don't think that Ron Paul can singlehandedly break the ICANN monopoly. I would give him kudos for trying, but I wouldn't call him a hypocrite for not taking on that battle. Personally, I think ICANN does a pretty good job - but I also don't call myself a libertarian.
No, as a practical matter you cannot. If you know of a major website who has pulled this off, I'd love to know about it. The fact is that ICANN has a monopoly.
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I think we've crossed from what a Libertarian would say to what an Anarchist would say :)
Libertarians are OK with the civil courts. Everyone should be able to sue everyone else for any reason... which is almost what we have if not for corporations.
I don't consider myself a Libertarian, so I'm not a fan of abolishing corporations. But I do think we need to re-examine limited liability for anyone active in the business. I think passive stockholders should retain limited liability.
LOL, yeah PHP is a nightmare. We do have tools written in it, though. I still prefer it to VBA, but that's more a statement of how much I hate VBA. PHP is fine if you keep the scope small. Python is my favorite, but no one around here will have any of it... they prefer $5000/head MATLAB licenses. I don't mind M-Code too much until the project gets big. And MATLAB GUIs are just shame heaped upon shame. The good news is you have full access to Java, not that I'm very good with Java - but it does come to the rescue occasionally.
It's easy, each G is faster than the prior G. The only question is, are H's even faster than G's? Do you work for the phone company? Can I have a job there?
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the regexs in this puzzle used lookaheads or behinds. There's nothing even remotely esoteric about the ones in the puzzle.
Your math doesn't work out:
(2-1)/1 = 100%
(3-2)/2 = 50%
(4-3)/3 = 33%
(5-4)/4 = 25%
What they need to do is start over with an "H" instead of a "G". Sure, they'll initially take a speed hit as they go from 5 back to 1 - but then the increases will get back to a really big level:
(H1-G5)/G5 = -80%
(H2-H1)/H1 = 100%
Just come out with H1 and H2 at the same time. See, hire me!
How is this "crowd sourcing"? They aren't asking the public to decode the radar, they are recognizing the waste in bandwidth to pour a constant signal into the sky when there are already dozens or even hundreds of transmitters doing this.
The returns become marginal as you go up, though. When we went from 1G to 2G, it was like HOLY SHIT THIS IS TWICE AS FAST. Then 2G to 3G came along and it was still a must, I mean, that's a 50% improvement. 3G to 4G was still an impressive 33% improvement... but 4G to 5G? Now you are only improving things by 25%.
WHY CAN'T THE PHONE SCIENCE PEOPLE GET US BACK TO BIG IMPROVEMENTS??? They should start from 1H again and then do a 2H and get us another 100%. This should buy us a few years. Shit, hire me phone company.
Oh, God, yes it is a security nightmare. It's fine for some local tools, but there is a good reason MS started giving macro worksheets their own special file extension!
Anyway, if you are a MS house, it's impossible to avoid VBA, so better to know your enemy. Sadly, our Solaris stuff is being left to wither on the vine, though we have convinced them to run some virtual Linux instances so we can do some work in a real language.. you know, PHP :)
Yeah, it is. But most of that is because of CPAN. VBA partially makes up for this by having the ability to call any DLL installed on the system. VBA has dictionaries instead of hash tables... they are gimped but you can fix that with a little wrapper code. VBA has no regex, which is a mixed-blessing; regex is the main culprit in making PERL so unreadable IMHO. You can add all this stuff to VBA, but unless you do it through a DLL it is very slow. Even inter-process communication is murder since you are using the COM interface.
If I go on, it will turn into an Anti-VBA diatribe.
Well, except for the biggie: limited liability.
Are your still in your 20s or something? You'll forget anything you don't use in a while. When I did web scraping I got quite good at regex. Now, I have to look some things up, especially when dealing with look aheads and look behinds and other slightly more esoteric features. I am working through the puzzle, though.
PS: Thanks for remaining civil throughout disagreeing with me on this - I don't think you're right, but I do appreciate it that this hasn't degenerated into name calling like many /. threads seem to do these days.
LOL, thanks right back. I don't usually bother with AC's, but you are a good one.
I've already listed different ways in which you don't have to use ICANN.
I agree that you don't "have" to use them, as in there are technical ways to reach someone without DNS - the simplest being straight IP addresses. That said, there is no practical way for someone to have a successful web presence without ICANN. I've never seen a high-traffic web site without a domain name.
But you don't have a right not to be at a competitive disadvantage in libertopia
I'm definitely not claiming that he has a right to be profitable, or even that he has a right to monopoly-free internet hosting. It's just that you want a successful web presence, there is only one way to do that without breaking the ICANN monopoly. I disagree that he is bound by his libertarian ideals to fight every possible free market fight. Like all of us, he can pick his battles, or even have none at all.
He could use ronpaul.org, ronpaul.biz, or whatever he likes
That is true, but it leaves him with two problems: First, those others are the internet ghetto compared to .COM. Nothing screams "crappy site" like a .BIZ or even a .ORG when you aren't an organization. The second problem is that he'd have these people camped out on RonPaul.com, which could confuse his target audience.
The going rate is the rate at which the domain owner is willing to sell, in the case of sex.com and ronpaul.com.
Welllllll, yes and no. The contract with the registrar is not so simple. There is a fairly good-sized section on how to resolve domain disputes. Here's the one for one of my registrars. It's possible that they violate 4.i.B:
or maybe C:
or maybe none of those :) Point is, the whole dispute resolution system is built in to the ICANN contract. Ron Paul isn't subverting anything, he's activating a clause in a contract. As part of the dispute resolution, you have to choose from this List of Approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers. All Ron Paul seems to have done is read the standard ICANN contract and contact the appropriate service provider, which happens to be UN-affiliated.
The whole thing is simple hypocrisy - if you espouse libertarian ideals you should be willing to pay the asking rate for property owned by others or let them have it.
Had he used his influence to contact the UN (or some other organization) to pull strings outside of the normal process, I would 100% agree that he was being a hypocrite. However, he's just doing everything by the book (AFAIK).
Puh-leeeeze... this whole site is written in Perl!
Are you serious? Was this published in a peer reviewed journal? Citation needed.
I'd switch, but the horrid VBA in Excel is still far better-documented and easier to develop for than any of the OO.org macro solutions.
but you still would have domain names,
We wouldn't even have ICANN without the government. Even if you ignore their government roots, all corporate charters are issued by governments (and "establishments" if there are Brits reading).
No, we're using the same definition of monopoly. I don't know how you come away with ICANN not being one. Who is their competition? There is no way to produce a viable web site without ICANN. If you have a counter example, I'd love to see it.
a) He could set up his own system, but he would put himself at a competitive disadvantage. Actually, his site wouldn't even be viable.
b) He could go with another DNS provider. I am unaware of one, and there certainly isn't one that he could use to set up a viable site.
c) The going rate for a domain name is under $10. If you mean pay the current domain owner's asking price, then he may very well have to do that if they prevail in ICANN's dispute resolution system. Certainly the contract for a domain name contains dispute resolution provisions.
Of course he's using those resources - their authority is forced upon him.
An analogy would be using a local toll road despite being against tolls.
ICANN would still be a monopoly. It would also be a corporation, which gets its charter from a government somewhere. A corporation cannot exist sans government.
You are trying to elevate an IP dispute to a moral dispute. Slavery is quite obviously a moral problem, whom get's to use a domain name is a simple civil disagreement with an established resolution mechanism.
If everyone chose to eat a one restaurant because it was the best, it wouldn't have a monopoly.
Yes, it would. How could another restaurant stay open if everyone was in the "best" restaurant?
No-one says that "as a practical matter" it's a monopoly
But they do say "de facto monopoly", "natural monopoly", and no other than John Mill used the term "practical monopoly".
The correct libertarian response to this is to start your own DNS (with blackjack and hookers, if you like) and let the free market decide that yours is better.
Not quite. A libertarian would argue that this would naturally happen if the market were truly free. They would point to the fact that this hasn't happened as evidence that there is not a free market. There is no moral obligation to create competition where there is none. It is perfectly acceptable for a libertarian to be a passive consumer.
At present you request this information from a DNS, but you don't have to.
Just like you don't HAVE to buy electricity from the electric company. You could buy a generator and use that. You'd be economically disadvantaged, but you could do it. Ron Paul has no way to subvert ICANN without putting himself at a disadvantage. He has no duty to put himself at a disadvantage.
Monopoly of ICANN is based largely on market's choice.
How can you say that when it was originally a creation of the US government? It is very difficult for a market to organically migrate away from a monopoly.
Which of Ron Pauls should they give preference to? Who decides which site users want? This one has a nice user following, it seems. So, why should he get that name if he's in minority?
Well, that's what the whole dispute process is all about. Nissan Computers won their battle. I don't have any skin in this particular game.
Start your own DNS system, ICANNv2. There is no government restrictions on running your own DNS servers or on users subscribing to get DNS records from you.
I agree someone could try this, given enough will and money. I don't agree that someone is a hypocrite because they don't take on that kind of fight.
What would he do then, other than claiming his Imaginary Property right to own combination of letters "Ron Paul"?
A libertarian would say that the policies of the registrars would have to reflect the will of the market. If consumers expected to type "Ron Paul" and get the famous Ron Paul, then that is what the registrars would have to support. Otherwise, he'd be SOL.
Again, domain name is not IP. Trademarks are IP. He's using IP regulations to force his right to own the name "Ron Paul" into two parties contract, between registrar and owners of RonPaul.com.
IP or not, it is still not a free market. He's being forced to deal with a corporation (government creation that interferes with the free market) and a monopoly (this one installed by the government, but they also might happen "naturally"). He cannot go to a competing registrar and buy their ronpaul.com. Hell, even the value of ".com" is a legacy of government regulation... the whole damn internet is!
Don't get me wrong, I do not call myself a Libertarian. I happen to think that government regulation is often called for. Hell, I even think ICANN is doing a decent job - except for spammers. But I'm not under the delusion that one could operate a website outside of their services.
I don't think that Ron Paul can singlehandedly break the ICANN monopoly. I would give him kudos for trying, but I wouldn't call him a hypocrite for not taking on that battle. Personally, I think ICANN does a pretty good job - but I also don't call myself a libertarian.
No, as a practical matter you cannot. If you know of a major website who has pulled this off, I'd love to know about it. The fact is that ICANN has a monopoly.