I voted for Jeff Flake. He was one of the few anti-SOPA candidates, in addition to being one of few people who actually support an anti-earmark bill (in fact, he is the one who introduced it into the house.)
A lot of people who receive this money in the states that do so don't really want it to begin with. This mostly comes in the form of welfare payments to e.g. single mothers, which sort of clashes with the "jesus" perspective.
The trailer parks might not do so well, but most of the residents are farmers, which are producers and are also self sustaining. Even aside from that though, many states have their own self sustaining agriculture. Take Arizona for example, who has an ample supply of water, food, and electricity. In fact, Arizona provides large quantities of both to California, in fact 25% of California's energy supply comes from Arizona, who has the largest nuclear power facility in the US, as well as a number of other "green" power facilities. Long story short, without Arizona, California could not survive.
If you recall from 04, this same thing was going on, only in the opposite direction. Slashdot even linked a map proposing separating the "united states of canada" being the blue states joined with canada, and the rest being "jesusland"
This isn't the same map, but closely resembles it.
Well, some toys are marketed specifically for adults. Not only that, but they have proven dangerous to the adults that use them as well, and in fact, can cause the same kind of damage that buckyballs do. Yet, they don't have government agencies trying to ban them. Case in point:
I don't use iLife. I don't own a mac. I've never bought any apple products.
Apple has always been anti-standards, unless their proprietary system fails miserably. Take appletalk for example. Apple refused to use Internet Protocol until appletalk was just totally dead in the water.
You know what I think is funny, is that before Apple was as big as it is now (pre-2004'ish?) slashdot had a mostly pro-Apple slant, especially given the *nix at the heart of OS X. I always maintained my position that if Apple had the same leverage that Microsoft has, they would be much worse.
It would be quite hypocritical for anybody to look down upon anybody else for wanting to avoid as much taxation as they possibly can. However that being said, the rise of the internet and along with it the reduction of trade barriers means that we are operating on a global economy rather than one that just sticks to our own borders. If you make American companies pay more taxes, there isn't anything that will force their foreign competitors to do the same thing. American goods then become more expensive, therefore the foreign goods sell more.
Simple, you might think, just levy tariffs on foreign goods. The problem with tariffs is two fold: It doesn't do anything to increase demand of our goods in foreign countries, and it more often than not increases the cost of complementary goods, which lowers exports even further.
In fact, anybody who studies economics will tell you that domestic production and imports rise and fall with one another, and don't do anything to benefit the domestic economy, rather they only serve to harm it instead. Ever wonder why the US is the only country that consumes high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar?
I understand the upsides of ARM servers, namely lower cost hardware and much better energy efficiency. However, what are the downsides? I've heard mixed stories about whether or not we can achieve the same performance from ARM as we can from x64, but nothing concrete.
If there are no significant shortcomings, I'd wager that Intel's days are numbered. A lot of AMD's revenues come from server deployments, and they've already jumped on board with ARM, but Intel shows no interest in doing so. You'd figure that *maybe* intel would license its architecture similar to how ARM does, rather than keeping everybody else out except for AMD through cross patent agreements, in order to keep x86 alive, but they don't show interest in doing that either.
Sure there's always the desktop market, but that segment is seeing very limited growth at the moment, and there aren't any indications that this will improve any time soon, especially with Microsoft and its apparent plans to push everybody over to architecture agnostic applications (although, whether or not that will succeed depends on who you ask.)
I don't get it then. Why was RIM required to hand over its encryption keys to the Indian government? And why was there a slashdot article recently saying that using higher than 40-bit encryption was banned in India a few weeks ago?
Also, the latest versions of Android feature hardware based 128-bit full disk encryption on Nexus devices, in addition to the secure element which hides payment data. That could be a problem, and I am a bit dubious that Google would want to make multiple different versions of Nexus devices for different regions. Samsung on the other hand probably wouldn't mind.
A lot of that has to do with legal liabilities that need to be sorted out. For example, what are the consequences of providing secure content delivery? In some countries, encryption is illegal, so they may have to make massive re-designs, and do other R&D, which may cost a lot. Along with that, they'll have to figure out if they'll even get a return on investment. Also they may face a public relations backlash for conforming to what the west considers to be oppressive laws.
I imagine that in many cases, they'll simply eat a loss, which is why they'll never market it there. I don't know about India in particular, but I imagine that if there was money to be made there, they would do so.
IANA is very much relevant, they just delegated their responsibility to ICANN, so it doesn't appear that they do much. They can revoke it if they'd like, but there isn't really any reason to.
Have you ever tried searching google from a tor node? Most of the time it is ok, but every now and then you end up with google asking you to enter captchas just to do a search. Worse is some websites outright ban any activity coming from tor exit nodes. Some sites just give you a 403 forbidden, other sites will forbid you from posting, and if you log in from an account you've established previously, you can get that account banned for being associated with spamming.
That's fine for tor, but I'd rather not have my everyday use internet connection blocked off from much of the web due to abuse.
How about France try to invent the next Google or Google-like successful internet company, and then they can tax the living hell out of that all to their hearts delight, eh?
They tried that actually. Many in the French government are shockingly (or not?) anti-American, and an effort spearheaded by Chirac to "restore French pride" by creating a French (or at least, European) alternative to Google was started, and they called it Quaero. Many euros later (I think in the range of a hundred million from taxpayers,) never really went anywhere.
"The French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné has mocked the project's funding as paltry in comparison with Microsoft or Google. Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, a Cambridge-based search software firm, wrote to the Financial Times calling the plan "a blatant case of misguided and unnecessary nationalism" and warning that by the time Quaero is developed the market will have moved on.
Mr Chirac said he wanted to raise the global profile of French industry and avoid a future in which France was known only as a "museum country"."
Without a central numbering authority like IANA, there is no internet. Without that, you just end up with a bunch of disjointed networks that can't necessarily talk to one another.
The Internet relies heavily upon IANA to function as one cohesive unit. IANA answers to the US department of commerce.
More critical than DNS and SSL (SSL is easy to replace by creating another PKI, by the way) are IP addresses. IANA decides who gets what public addresses (they currently delegate those decisions, and DNS decisions, to ICANN.)
How about the downward spiral of the UN? Used to be that the thought of pushing anti blaspheme rules would never have occurred. Yet, look at where they are now.
The main argument for leaving the US in control of IANA (which is what we're ultimately talking about here, nobody controls the Internet beyond that) is that here, freedom of speech is nearly absolute, which cannot be said about any other nation. Pretty much the only limit to free speech in the US is the clear and present danger test. Other western countries also throw in very poorly defined blanket rules, such as banning "hate speech".
Since the internet is almost pure speech, I think it is prudent to leave to those with the highest regard for that freedom.
I'm having a hard time believing that the cops are the instigators. I've heard what goes on in San Jose for example, when a local sports team wins a game. Bonfires in the middle of the street and destruction of private property aren't uncommon.
I can't think of any sane reason that the general populace would be this way, except maybe one. I keep hearing this fear mongering about people owning assault rifles and politicians wanting to ban them, yet statistics have always shown that the more you restrict the ownership of firearms, the higher the rate of weapons violations. DC saw a 25% decrease in firearms offenses after SCOTUS ruled their restrictions were unconstitutional. Chicago has some of the tightest firearms laws in the US, yet their crime rate per capita is more than double that of Phoenix, which has some of the most lax weapons laws in the US (anybody can conceal carry - no permit required, although they are available if desired.)
California has a ton of firearm restrictions (though not quite as bad as Chicago.) Are we seeing a pattern yet? Harvard Law does:
Also note that everywhere in the world where firearm ownership is reduced, murder rates AND suicides go up. US vs Europe is an anomaly, because its murder rates were very high, high even before Europe started restricting the ownership of firearms, as noted by Harvard. When people say guns are the reason America has more murders, that isn't accurate at all. Look at Canada for example, whose laws are very similar to ours, yet their murder rates are similar to Europe. Also note that in England, police don't investigate burglary and minor assaults unless they catch the perp in the act, and even then they often let them go with a warning and no prosecution. So you get crime rates reported lower than they actually are.
Slow down there, cowboy. You make it sound like I want to send in the cavalry.
I wouldn't force Switzerland to abandon its "privacy" laws. (I think the inverted commas are warranted, don't you? I mean, what are they really protecting?)
Why not have laws that prevent random searches of your house? What are you really protecting?
I would simply like to see local jurisdictions refuse to trade with Switzerland unless they provided reciprocal financial information on their citizens.
That is an economic sanction.
(Many countries have already requested such information -- even writing very stern letters! -- and have received nothing in response.) Switzerland can decide whether or not to comply. Virtually all countries share this information*, and it serves a very important purpose. If I get sued here in Australia, a court can easily determine my financial value (house, bank accounts, shares, vehicles, etc). However if I've stashed millions in Switzerland, my victims are SOL. (And I retain my wealth.)
As for Wikileaks... I'm not sure how you can throw that at me when I'm clearly in favour of more transparency from our governments, not less.
* Just because many countries do something doesn't make it right. But in this situation -- financial records -- I believe it is.
What you're effectively saying is that you're guilty until proven otherwise. In other words, if you don't want prying eyes to know how much money you have, you clearly must be hiding something. Much like if you don't want prying eyes coming into your house without your permission, clearly you must be hiding something.
I don't really get this either. The guy gets shot while he is in the act of brandishing a weapon against a police officer. Weapon turns out to be loaded and ready to fire. The guy doesn't even suffer any shots that would be otherwise lethal. Yet a riot forms and they spray paint killers on the walls of the police station?
Weird city. I wonder if they'd prefer having no cops at all. I remember there was some group around Berkley demanding that the city get rid of its police officers, maybe these are them?
Slashdot Mirror
I voted for Jeff Flake. He was one of the few anti-SOPA candidates, in addition to being one of few people who actually support an anti-earmark bill (in fact, he is the one who introduced it into the house.)
A lot of people who receive this money in the states that do so don't really want it to begin with. This mostly comes in the form of welfare payments to e.g. single mothers, which sort of clashes with the "jesus" perspective.
The trailer parks might not do so well, but most of the residents are farmers, which are producers and are also self sustaining. Even aside from that though, many states have their own self sustaining agriculture. Take Arizona for example, who has an ample supply of water, food, and electricity. In fact, Arizona provides large quantities of both to California, in fact 25% of California's energy supply comes from Arizona, who has the largest nuclear power facility in the US, as well as a number of other "green" power facilities. Long story short, without Arizona, California could not survive.
If you recall from 04, this same thing was going on, only in the opposite direction. Slashdot even linked a map proposing separating the "united states of canada" being the blue states joined with canada, and the rest being "jesusland"
This isn't the same map, but closely resembles it.
http://reason.com/assets/mc/_external/2012_11/jesusland-vs-united-states-of.gif
Well, some toys are marketed specifically for adults. Not only that, but they have proven dangerous to the adults that use them as well, and in fact, can cause the same kind of damage that buckyballs do. Yet, they don't have government agencies trying to ban them. Case in point:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/dildo-mans-intestines-doctors_n_1981242.html
I don't use iLife. I don't own a mac. I've never bought any apple products.
Apple has always been anti-standards, unless their proprietary system fails miserably. Take appletalk for example. Apple refused to use Internet Protocol until appletalk was just totally dead in the water.
I voted Flake. The guy opposed SOPA and is very anti-earmark.
And let the rest of the ballot empty. For those who don't know, Jeff Flake vehemently opposed SOPA, and is the biggest opposition to earmarks.
You think voter fraud doesn't occur both ways? How about these:
Black Panthers patrolling polling centers, and election monitors being forbidden from scrutinizing:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/6/problems-black-panthers-surface-pa-polling-places/
Voters picking Romney, but the machine gives their vote to Obama:
http://www2.wbtw.com/news/2012/nov/05/more-nc-voters-report-selecting-romney-machine-cho-ar-4900469/
Poll worker pushing voters to vote Democrat:
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/poll-worker-tells-people-to-vote-democrat.html
Polling center has a pro-Obama mural in violation of election laws:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20121106_GOP_goes_to_court_to_remove_Obama_mural_at_polling_site.html
You know what I think is funny, is that before Apple was as big as it is now (pre-2004'ish?) slashdot had a mostly pro-Apple slant, especially given the *nix at the heart of OS X. I always maintained my position that if Apple had the same leverage that Microsoft has, they would be much worse.
It would be quite hypocritical for anybody to look down upon anybody else for wanting to avoid as much taxation as they possibly can. However that being said, the rise of the internet and along with it the reduction of trade barriers means that we are operating on a global economy rather than one that just sticks to our own borders. If you make American companies pay more taxes, there isn't anything that will force their foreign competitors to do the same thing. American goods then become more expensive, therefore the foreign goods sell more.
Simple, you might think, just levy tariffs on foreign goods. The problem with tariffs is two fold: It doesn't do anything to increase demand of our goods in foreign countries, and it more often than not increases the cost of complementary goods, which lowers exports even further.
In fact, anybody who studies economics will tell you that domestic production and imports rise and fall with one another, and don't do anything to benefit the domestic economy, rather they only serve to harm it instead. Ever wonder why the US is the only country that consumes high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar?
I understand the upsides of ARM servers, namely lower cost hardware and much better energy efficiency. However, what are the downsides? I've heard mixed stories about whether or not we can achieve the same performance from ARM as we can from x64, but nothing concrete.
If there are no significant shortcomings, I'd wager that Intel's days are numbered. A lot of AMD's revenues come from server deployments, and they've already jumped on board with ARM, but Intel shows no interest in doing so. You'd figure that *maybe* intel would license its architecture similar to how ARM does, rather than keeping everybody else out except for AMD through cross patent agreements, in order to keep x86 alive, but they don't show interest in doing that either.
Sure there's always the desktop market, but that segment is seeing very limited growth at the moment, and there aren't any indications that this will improve any time soon, especially with Microsoft and its apparent plans to push everybody over to architecture agnostic applications (although, whether or not that will succeed depends on who you ask.)
I don't get it then. Why was RIM required to hand over its encryption keys to the Indian government? And why was there a slashdot article recently saying that using higher than 40-bit encryption was banned in India a few weeks ago?
Also, the latest versions of Android feature hardware based 128-bit full disk encryption on Nexus devices, in addition to the secure element which hides payment data. That could be a problem, and I am a bit dubious that Google would want to make multiple different versions of Nexus devices for different regions. Samsung on the other hand probably wouldn't mind.
A lot of that has to do with legal liabilities that need to be sorted out. For example, what are the consequences of providing secure content delivery? In some countries, encryption is illegal, so they may have to make massive re-designs, and do other R&D, which may cost a lot. Along with that, they'll have to figure out if they'll even get a return on investment. Also they may face a public relations backlash for conforming to what the west considers to be oppressive laws.
I imagine that in many cases, they'll simply eat a loss, which is why they'll never market it there. I don't know about India in particular, but I imagine that if there was money to be made there, they would do so.
IANA is very much relevant, they just delegated their responsibility to ICANN, so it doesn't appear that they do much. They can revoke it if they'd like, but there isn't really any reason to.
Have you ever tried searching google from a tor node? Most of the time it is ok, but every now and then you end up with google asking you to enter captchas just to do a search. Worse is some websites outright ban any activity coming from tor exit nodes. Some sites just give you a 403 forbidden, other sites will forbid you from posting, and if you log in from an account you've established previously, you can get that account banned for being associated with spamming.
That's fine for tor, but I'd rather not have my everyday use internet connection blocked off from much of the web due to abuse.
How about France try to invent the next Google or Google-like successful internet company, and then they can tax the living hell out of that all to their hearts delight, eh?
They tried that actually. Many in the French government are shockingly (or not?) anti-American, and an effort spearheaded by Chirac to "restore French pride" by creating a French (or at least, European) alternative to Google was started, and they called it Quaero. Many euros later (I think in the range of a hundred million from taxpayers,) never really went anywhere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/apr/26/news.france
"The French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné has mocked the project's funding as paltry in comparison with Microsoft or Google. Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, a Cambridge-based search software firm, wrote to the Financial Times calling the plan "a blatant case of misguided and unnecessary nationalism" and warning that by the time Quaero is developed the market will have moved on.
Mr Chirac said he wanted to raise the global profile of French industry and avoid a future in which France was known only as a "museum country"."
Without a central numbering authority like IANA, there is no internet. Without that, you just end up with a bunch of disjointed networks that can't necessarily talk to one another.
The Internet relies heavily upon IANA to function as one cohesive unit. IANA answers to the US department of commerce.
More critical than DNS and SSL (SSL is easy to replace by creating another PKI, by the way) are IP addresses. IANA decides who gets what public addresses (they currently delegate those decisions, and DNS decisions, to ICANN.)
How about the downward spiral of the UN? Used to be that the thought of pushing anti blaspheme rules would never have occurred. Yet, look at where they are now.
Actually, the Berne convention was formed largely at the behest of France.
The main argument for leaving the US in control of IANA (which is what we're ultimately talking about here, nobody controls the Internet beyond that) is that here, freedom of speech is nearly absolute, which cannot be said about any other nation. Pretty much the only limit to free speech in the US is the clear and present danger test. Other western countries also throw in very poorly defined blanket rules, such as banning "hate speech".
Since the internet is almost pure speech, I think it is prudent to leave to those with the highest regard for that freedom.
I'm having a hard time believing that the cops are the instigators. I've heard what goes on in San Jose for example, when a local sports team wins a game. Bonfires in the middle of the street and destruction of private property aren't uncommon.
I can't think of any sane reason that the general populace would be this way, except maybe one. I keep hearing this fear mongering about people owning assault rifles and politicians wanting to ban them, yet statistics have always shown that the more you restrict the ownership of firearms, the higher the rate of weapons violations. DC saw a 25% decrease in firearms offenses after SCOTUS ruled their restrictions were unconstitutional. Chicago has some of the tightest firearms laws in the US, yet their crime rate per capita is more than double that of Phoenix, which has some of the most lax weapons laws in the US (anybody can conceal carry - no permit required, although they are available if desired.)
California has a ton of firearm restrictions (though not quite as bad as Chicago.) Are we seeing a pattern yet? Harvard Law does:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Also note that everywhere in the world where firearm ownership is reduced, murder rates AND suicides go up. US vs Europe is an anomaly, because its murder rates were very high, high even before Europe started restricting the ownership of firearms, as noted by Harvard. When people say guns are the reason America has more murders, that isn't accurate at all. Look at Canada for example, whose laws are very similar to ours, yet their murder rates are similar to Europe. Also note that in England, police don't investigate burglary and minor assaults unless they catch the perp in the act, and even then they often let them go with a warning and no prosecution. So you get crime rates reported lower than they actually are.
Slow down there, cowboy. You make it sound like I want to send in the cavalry.
I wouldn't force Switzerland to abandon its "privacy" laws.
(I think the inverted commas are warranted, don't you? I mean, what are they really protecting?)
Why not have laws that prevent random searches of your house? What are you really protecting?
I would simply like to see local jurisdictions refuse to trade with Switzerland unless they provided reciprocal financial information on their citizens.
That is an economic sanction.
(Many countries have already requested such information -- even writing very stern letters! -- and have received nothing in response.) Switzerland can decide whether or not to comply. Virtually all countries share this information*, and it serves a very important purpose. If I get sued here in Australia, a court can easily determine my financial value (house, bank accounts, shares, vehicles, etc). However if I've stashed millions in Switzerland, my victims are SOL. (And I retain my wealth.)
As for Wikileaks ... I'm not sure how you can throw that at me when I'm clearly in favour of more transparency from our governments, not less.
* Just because many countries do something doesn't make it right. But in this situation -- financial records -- I believe it is.
What you're effectively saying is that you're guilty until proven otherwise. In other words, if you don't want prying eyes to know how much money you have, you clearly must be hiding something. Much like if you don't want prying eyes coming into your house without your permission, clearly you must be hiding something.
So in your ideal world, we would force Switzerland to abandon its privacy laws under penalty of economic ruin?
Tell me, are you simultaneously of the opinion that banning financial trades from the likes of wikileaks is bad? Just curious.
I don't really get this either. The guy gets shot while he is in the act of brandishing a weapon against a police officer. Weapon turns out to be loaded and ready to fire. The guy doesn't even suffer any shots that would be otherwise lethal. Yet a riot forms and they spray paint killers on the walls of the police station?
Weird city. I wonder if they'd prefer having no cops at all. I remember there was some group around Berkley demanding that the city get rid of its police officers, maybe these are them?