value can start as an int/double/float your choice.
in the end newValue does not alwasy equal value.. even though it should.. i understand floating point errors but i first saw this cause a problem with value being a double 8.12
What language can you stand, then?
% perl print int(8.12*100.0)/100.0; 8.11
% python Python 2.4.4 (#2, Apr 5 2007, 20:11:18) [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> float(int(8.12*100.0))/100.0 8.1099999999999994
% php5 <?= floor(8.12*100.0)/100.0; ?> 8.11
% cat > test.c #include <stdio.h> int main() {
double val; int upper; double newval;
Who is this "we" you're speaking of? I don't trust them with any of those things. I have my own retirement accounts, my own healh insurance, and I pay for my own food and housing with my own salary.
I think I've already admitted the whole concept of pure libertarianism is not practical. Most people don't want to run their own lives - they just want their bread and circus.
People would rather buy a big screen TV than donate money to help the homeless or out of luck. They'd rather watch that TV than read and negotiate contracts. They'll spend money monthly on 500 channels of satellite than more insurance. If they screw up they'll just demand the all powerful government swoop in and make it all better.
Also you seem to think that my primary motivation for wanting a libertarian society is to save money. It really isn't. You give one hypothetical situation after another where a government-run solution is cheaper. Maybe it is or isn't. Your cost comparisons have kind of distracted me from the real point. I don't even care if it costs more. The point is freedom and less government restriction in our individual lives.
In an ideal (read: non-existent for reasons above) libertarian society the guy who works for the insurance company and ran out of luck gets his insurance payout from an effective and non-corrupt justice system. The general "poor" are supported by charitable donations. As for the drug addicts who can do nothing but crime to support their habbits, we simply deal with them the same way we deal with criminals in any other society.
What happens if a huge corporation attempts to screw people with unfair contract terms, prices, service or anything else? The people inform their fellow citizens of the injustice being done. Boycotts and strikes happen. Corporation either improves or ceases to exist. Of course back here in the Real World boycotts almost never work anymore because too many people are too happy with their cheap shiny toys to care about anything.
Really, the world you want and the world I want are not quite that different. However in my world, people make the world a better place and cooperate voluntarily. In yours, the government forces them to do what needs to be done. Sadly, most people just aren't that thoughtful and so the later world is the only pratical one.
The referer header is user provided data. And the first rule of web development is that you *never* trust user provided data. It's just too easy to fake things.
Yet you rely on the user to execute the javascript as you want him to, display the ads, etc?
I thought the problem is other webmasters sending their users directly to your files. A referrer will thrawt that just as well (or poorly) as anything else. You have no choice but to trust the user.
We're going to have a really screwed up economy if people are required to carry "insurance insurance" or risk death by starvation.
Not necessarily. Taxes would be far reduced.
The really careful may need "insurance insurance insurance" given the reputation of insurance companies for scurrying away when it comes time to make good on their end of a contract. Who in their right mind would bet their life that a private insuror won't try to skip out?
This and the above is all really a matter of having sufficient law enforcement in place to end their tendancy to have that reputation. When companies scurry we should see executives jailed and assets forfeited. We should NOT be seeing a scapegoat spend a month in white-collar jail and everyone released with their golden parachutes.
Not only that but there is such a thing as "insurance insurace" already - a gap policy. Perhaps that's something more people might consider purchasing with those taxes they wouldn't be paying.
And furthermore, you don't really think government can't become equally corrupt, do you? Wasn't there a whole bunch of bickering after Katrina happened about governments failing to do their jobs properly? I vaguely recall some Bush appointee taking the fall and resigning.
An interesting thought here. Considering the way medical bills can be, perhaps it would be cheaper for society collectively to pay your medical bills than to pay the bills for half a dozen people (collectively through private insurance) you might injure in your rationally decided mugging spree.
Cheaper to pay my medical bills AND jail people for years and years for possession of any kind of government-deemed illicit drug and maintain the police infrastructure to find such people? If the government is going to take responsibility for the consequences of my drug use then clearly they'll try to prevent me from ever using them in the first place.
And who gets to decide if they made ignorant decisions that put them in that place? Do you believe you're fit to decide who lives and who dies?
I certainly don't. I want it to be up to them. That's the whole point.
Now unemployed rational actor decides to go home and get ready for a job search in the morning (and get new insurance). Unfortunatly, he is the victim of a hit and run and lands in the hospital.
So the rational actor acquired medical insurance which had terms that could end immediately at any time with no notice? Sounds risky... but a risk that was up to him.
He may decide he just can't handle jail or that a record would leave him perminantly under-employed if he ever does recover. In that case he should mug a few people and hope he's not caught.
I'd probably do the same thing in his shoes. I also wouldn't be too surprised if someone shot me in the process of doing that.
there will always be people who's most rational course of action is crime. Would you also condemn someone who takes the most rational course of action open to them?
Since this is all stemming from the fact that he took a risk earlier and did not properly insure his health, yes, I will condem him for that robbery or assault.
If you reflect long enough, you'll probably find several times in your life where but for good fortune you would be one of the people whose death you advocate.
I do acknowledge that there are some things that it just isn't practical to do privately. I already acknowledged roads as an example of that in another powe. Taking a bunch of time to determine a patient's eligibility negates the effect of emergency services.
That doesn't quite take us back to where we are now. Tax-funded rehab programs and anything up to the point of the minimum needed to stabilize the person could be removed from tax funding.
Just a quick question out of curiosity: do Libertarians want the responsabilities of protecting themselves from being killed for themselves?
Depends on who I'm protecting myself from. A burglar I might be able to defend myself against. A foreign army? Probably not.
and if they don't, who decides where the line stands between "killing somebody" and "letting somebody else die"?
Well technically speaking we all do. I'm not advocating dictatorship. But personally, that question is much too broad for me to give a specific answer.
Please wear an alert bracelet specifying your preference. That way, if I find you by the roadside, I'll know I should offer to call 911 for the low-low price of $10,000. If you don't answer, I'll assume you don't want my valuable service and leave.
My preference is that someone would call 911 regardless. I would call 911 for free if I were in your shoes but I won't mandate that you do it.
By reading this message you've agreed to a reading fee. Two strips of latinum please...
That isn't a legal contract, nor do I want it to be.
Interestingly, your particular Libertarian dream denies the rest of us the freedom to choose not to become mercinary businessmen.
Not at all. I don't want to deny you anything. That's the whole point. I want you to have maximum freedom to allocate YOUR resources however YOU see fit, not how I see fit. If you want to want to wander the streets looking for people dangling by a thread and helping them for free then have at it. If you want to do that but charge $10,000 per instance then go right ahead.
Did you know there are left-libertarians out there? What you're referring to is right-libertarians who have co-opted the generic term.
Of course I did. There are all kinds of libertarians. Like I said, I speak only for myself. However, no libertarians advocate having no responsibility at all for themselves like the GP said.
I understand what you're trying to say now but it is moot really. Of course libertarians don't think they HAVE the specific rights we're talking about. It sounded like you were talking about some abstract moral rights that transcend government or something. I currently do NOT have the right to grow marijuana on my land because the government will put me in jail if I do. There is no "I think" about it. I'm not denying that.
We can however, gain these rights through democracy. That's the whole point of political activism. Being a libertarian does not imply that you are currently a criminal.
To put it in context of your awkward private party contract analogy, the contract has a clause that allows me to change any aspect of the contract as soon as the other party fails to show up at a ballot box some tuesday. And like the "feeding the cat" clause you described, this clause goes all the way back to the original owners of the land (or at least back to the guys who took it by force and dictated said terms).
Of course practically speaking, this won't happen any time soon because I'm surrounded by people who think homosexuality and marijuana should be outlawed.
So you are saying that you acknowledge that society provides things for you, and you therefore have a responsibility to society?
You'd have to get more specific than that for me to acknowledge anything. I acknowledge that certain individuals in that society provide things to me and therefore I have responsibilities to them. For example, some members of society maintain the roads I drive my car on. I acknowlege my debt to them. There are of course countless other examples. I also acknowledge that when I drive my car it puts some pollution into the air which affects everyone, therefore I should fund some public facilities to control or clean the pollution I created.
You don't get to go just anywhere and do what you want. This country is occupied already, and every square mile of land in this country has had thousands of man-hours of labor mixed in, through surveying if nothing else. You think you should be able to just take other people's land to do your own thing on?
No, not at all. I think I should be able to acquire other people's land at a price that is negotiable to both of us individually and then do my own thing on my own land provided I'm not harming other people or property.
Now, you could go live in a cave somewhere in the US and do whatever drugs or whatever else you want without being bothered.
No you legally cannot. Not in a cave on private property that I bought from someone nor in the middle of time square. Sure, you might get away with it by chance but that isn't really the point.
I know people who've done just that. Alaska's a big place. But what you seem to want is the benefit of living in society without having to play by society's rules.
I know what a libertarian is. You've demonstrated the inherent hypocrisy of the philosophy admirably right here. You think you should get to do whatever you like, including taking other people's land and changing the rules unilaterally.
What on earth are you talking about? Stealing land? Price-fixed unicorn sales? Writing laws like a dictator? I really have no idea why you think any of that is libertarian at all. Everything in your writing from this point on is a flat out fabrication. I never ever said I wanted to take other people's land, or changing laws unilaterally, or be able to buy unicorns for a dollar. I never said anything along those lines.
What a libertarian would want is to be able to buy unicorns or land or whatever at a price negotiable to the current owner of the unicorn without some unrelated third party stepping in and saying "you can't buy unicorns" or "you can buy a unicorn but only if you fix a blue saddle to it".
They aren't 'more or less' saying that people should be left to die on their own: they are flat out stating that barring any contract to the contrary, you are on your own., not none of them.
Not quite. They're saying the decision of wether or not someone should be left to die on their own is up to the individuals who can help him. In a libertarian society you CAN help drug addicts in failing health by donating your money/time to a charity that helps them if you want to.
They think their only moral responsibility is to themselves.
Not quite. As a libertarian I feel responsibilities to help my daughter and my parents if they were in need, regardless of need, for instance. A random drug addict... not so much. You obviously feel differently but I'm all about letting you help who you want to help.
But they are curiously blind to the ways we all help them everyday, and even when this is pointed out, they claim they never asked for it, so they feel no reciprocal responsibility.
I can't speak for "they", but this is not the case for myself.
The thing is, they aren't being forced. They could drop out of society.
We aren't? There is a place in our country we can go where we can put whatever substances in our bodies that we chose and live with the consequences of that?
But they want the benefits of living in a society with none of the responsibilities.
You don't seem to know what a libertarian is. The whole freedom accompanies responsibility concept is libertarianism 101. Any real libertarian wants ALL of the responsibilities for himself, not none of them.
Part of the reason it is a bitch is because the government makes it a bitch. A lot of the time the utility companies have negotiated exclusive rights of way. You couldn't lay your own network even if you wanted to. You can't get rights of way from the government.
Why should the speech be restricted if it is offensive to a billion people? Simply being offensive isn't a good enough reason. There are things you could say to me that I'd find offensive, but I'd never advocate making your speech illegal.
Making a backup copy of some data I legitimately paid for access to is stealing? That sounds pretty ridiculous. Since you're a big fan of exact legal definitions, I'm curious, does the law specifically equate making a backup copy with stealing?
Seriously, do you really want to connect to some readily-available WAN that's still set to the factory defaults? What's protecting your machine? Luck?
Luck? No. Updated software, tcp wrappers, a host firewall, not trusting the network, not running services I don't want to offer... You know, at least an attempt at competence?
That's a completely stupid analogy. You'd have to actually trespass on private property to access that outlet. The outlet is not on your own property as other people's wireless signals often are (as well as being broadcast on frequencies specifically allocated to public use).
Definitely*. Try producing a DVD player in the US without paying a lot of money to the DVD copy control association and agreeing to implement their DRM. It won't take you long to hear from their lawyers. It only a few days for ME to hear from them back when I hosted some open source DVD stuff on my web server.
* I'm assuming you're talking about commercial, consumer video DVD stuff here since that's what the whole thread is about.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, truncating was the point of the whole post. That's what the poster was doing.
What language can you stand, then?
Says who? The people selling them?
Who is this "we" you're speaking of? I don't trust them with any of those things. I have my own retirement accounts, my own healh insurance, and I pay for my own food and housing with my own salary.
I think I've already admitted the whole concept of pure libertarianism is not practical. Most people don't want to run their own lives - they just want their bread and circus.
People would rather buy a big screen TV than donate money to help the homeless or out of luck. They'd rather watch that TV than read and negotiate contracts. They'll spend money monthly on 500 channels of satellite than more insurance. If they screw up they'll just demand the all powerful government swoop in and make it all better.
Also you seem to think that my primary motivation for wanting a libertarian society is to save money. It really isn't. You give one hypothetical situation after another where a government-run solution is cheaper. Maybe it is or isn't. Your cost comparisons have kind of distracted me from the real point. I don't even care if it costs more. The point is freedom and less government restriction in our individual lives.
In an ideal (read: non-existent for reasons above) libertarian society the guy who works for the insurance company and ran out of luck gets his insurance payout from an effective and non-corrupt justice system. The general "poor" are supported by charitable donations. As for the drug addicts who can do nothing but crime to support their habbits, we simply deal with them the same way we deal with criminals in any other society.
What happens if a huge corporation attempts to screw people with unfair contract terms, prices, service or anything else? The people inform their fellow citizens of the injustice being done. Boycotts and strikes happen. Corporation either improves or ceases to exist. Of course back here in the Real World boycotts almost never work anymore because too many people are too happy with their cheap shiny toys to care about anything.
Really, the world you want and the world I want are not quite that different. However in my world, people make the world a better place and cooperate voluntarily. In yours, the government forces them to do what needs to be done. Sadly, most people just aren't that thoughtful and so the later world is the only pratical one.
Yet you rely on the user to execute the javascript as you want him to, display the ads, etc?
I thought the problem is other webmasters sending their users directly to your files. A referrer will thrawt that just as well (or poorly) as anything else. You have no choice but to trust the user.
That's a pretty stupid way to accomplish that. Just check the referrer header.
Not necessarily. Taxes would be far reduced.
This and the above is all really a matter of having sufficient law enforcement in place to end their tendancy to have that reputation. When companies scurry we should see executives jailed and assets forfeited. We should NOT be seeing a scapegoat spend a month in white-collar jail and everyone released with their golden parachutes.
Not only that but there is such a thing as "insurance insurace" already - a gap policy. Perhaps that's something more people might consider purchasing with those taxes they wouldn't be paying.
And furthermore, you don't really think government can't become equally corrupt, do you? Wasn't there a whole bunch of bickering after Katrina happened about governments failing to do their jobs properly? I vaguely recall some Bush appointee taking the fall and resigning.
Cheaper to pay my medical bills AND jail people for years and years for possession of any kind of government-deemed illicit drug and maintain the police infrastructure to find such people? If the government is going to take responsibility for the consequences of my drug use then clearly they'll try to prevent me from ever using them in the first place.
You said the company the guy worked for folded, not the health insurer.
I certainly don't. I want it to be up to them. That's the whole point.
So the rational actor acquired medical insurance which had terms that could end immediately at any time with no notice? Sounds risky... but a risk that was up to him.
I'd probably do the same thing in his shoes. I also wouldn't be too surprised if someone shot me in the process of doing that.
Since this is all stemming from the fact that he took a risk earlier and did not properly insure his health, yes, I will condem him for that robbery or assault.
Yes, I very well might have been.
If they wound up in those situations as a result of their own ignorant decisions I have no problem letting them die.
I do acknowledge that there are some things that it just isn't practical to do privately. I already acknowledged roads as an example of that in another powe. Taking a bunch of time to determine a patient's eligibility negates the effect of emergency services.
That doesn't quite take us back to where we are now. Tax-funded rehab programs and anything up to the point of the minimum needed to stabilize the person could be removed from tax funding.
Depends on who I'm protecting myself from. A burglar I might be able to defend myself against. A foreign army? Probably not.
Well technically speaking we all do. I'm not advocating dictatorship. But personally, that question is much too broad for me to give a specific answer.
My preference is that someone would call 911 regardless. I would call 911 for free if I were in your shoes but I won't mandate that you do it.
That isn't a legal contract, nor do I want it to be.
Not at all. I don't want to deny you anything. That's the whole point. I want you to have maximum freedom to allocate YOUR resources however YOU see fit, not how I see fit. If you want to want to wander the streets looking for people dangling by a thread and helping them for free then have at it. If you want to do that but charge $10,000 per instance then go right ahead.
Of course I did. There are all kinds of libertarians. Like I said, I speak only for myself. However, no libertarians advocate having no responsibility at all for themselves like the GP said.
I understand what you're trying to say now but it is moot really. Of course libertarians don't think they HAVE the specific rights we're talking about. It sounded like you were talking about some abstract moral rights that transcend government or something. I currently do NOT have the right to grow marijuana on my land because the government will put me in jail if I do. There is no "I think" about it. I'm not denying that.
We can however, gain these rights through democracy. That's the whole point of political activism. Being a libertarian does not imply that you are currently a criminal.
To put it in context of your awkward private party contract analogy, the contract has a clause that allows me to change any aspect of the contract as soon as the other party fails to show up at a ballot box some tuesday. And like the "feeding the cat" clause you described, this clause goes all the way back to the original owners of the land (or at least back to the guys who took it by force and dictated said terms).
Of course practically speaking, this won't happen any time soon because I'm surrounded by people who think homosexuality and marijuana should be outlawed.
You'd have to get more specific than that for me to acknowledge anything. I acknowledge that certain individuals in that society provide things to me and therefore I have responsibilities to them. For example, some members of society maintain the roads I drive my car on. I acknowlege my debt to them. There are of course countless other examples. I also acknowledge that when I drive my car it puts some pollution into the air which affects everyone, therefore I should fund some public facilities to control or clean the pollution I created.
No, not at all. I think I should be able to acquire other people's land at a price that is negotiable to both of us individually and then do my own thing on my own land provided I'm not harming other people or property.
No you legally cannot. Not in a cave on private property that I bought from someone nor in the middle of time square. Sure, you might get away with it by chance but that isn't really the point.
What on earth are you talking about? Stealing land? Price-fixed unicorn sales? Writing laws like a dictator? I really have no idea why you think any of that is libertarian at all. Everything in your writing from this point on is a flat out fabrication. I never ever said I wanted to take other people's land, or changing laws unilaterally, or be able to buy unicorns for a dollar. I never said anything along those lines.
What a libertarian would want is to be able to buy unicorns or land or whatever at a price negotiable to the current owner of the unicorn without some unrelated third party stepping in and saying "you can't buy unicorns" or "you can buy a unicorn but only if you fix a blue saddle to it".
Not quite. They're saying the decision of wether or not someone should be left to die on their own is up to the individuals who can help him. In a libertarian society you CAN help drug addicts in failing health by donating your money/time to a charity that helps them if you want to.
Not quite. As a libertarian I feel responsibilities to help my daughter and my parents if they were in need, regardless of need, for instance. A random drug addict... not so much. You obviously feel differently but I'm all about letting you help who you want to help.
I can't speak for "they", but this is not the case for myself.
We aren't? There is a place in our country we can go where we can put whatever substances in our bodies that we chose and live with the consequences of that?
You don't seem to know what a libertarian is. The whole freedom accompanies responsibility concept is libertarianism 101. Any real libertarian wants ALL of the responsibilities for himself, not none of them.
Part of the reason it is a bitch is because the government makes it a bitch. A lot of the time the utility companies have negotiated exclusive rights of way. You couldn't lay your own network even if you wanted to. You can't get rights of way from the government.
Why should the speech be restricted if it is offensive to a billion people? Simply being offensive isn't a good enough reason. There are things you could say to me that I'd find offensive, but I'd never advocate making your speech illegal.
And the photographs and their frame rate is... data.
data: information in numerical form that can be digitally transmitted or processed
Making a backup copy of some data I legitimately paid for access to is stealing? That sounds pretty ridiculous. Since you're a big fan of exact legal definitions, I'm curious, does the law specifically equate making a backup copy with stealing?
Luck? No. Updated software, tcp wrappers, a host firewall, not trusting the network, not running services I don't want to offer... You know, at least an attempt at competence?
That's a completely stupid analogy. You'd have to actually trespass on private property to access that outlet. The outlet is not on your own property as other people's wireless signals often are (as well as being broadcast on frequencies specifically allocated to public use).
Definitely*. Try producing a DVD player in the US without paying a lot of money to the DVD copy control association and agreeing to implement their DRM. It won't take you long to hear from their lawyers. It only a few days for ME to hear from them back when I hosted some open source DVD stuff on my web server.
* I'm assuming you're talking about commercial, consumer video DVD stuff here since that's what the whole thread is about.