For the last 20 years I've been waiting for a language that will allow me to redefine keywords. If that too much to ask? What if I don't happen to like "for", or "while", or "return"?
More importantly, these redefinitions should be context-sensitive. For example, it should be possible to define an "if" block that follows a "while" block to increment a variable before it's executed, or perhaps before the "true" block is executed. Similarly, it should be possible to have a function or any functions call another function the first thing it does if it is/they are executed from a "while" loop but not otherwise, without having to code it to every function separately.
Second thing on my must-have list is a pre-pre-processor. I'm tired of writing all these header files all the time. I want a way to generate them programmatically, at compile time. A small embedded scripting language would do fine, just make sure it has templates and operator overloading and multiple inheritance, so I can stretch my legs and get comfy with it.
But what happens when you want to generate these scripts automatically? No, let's do it right: The pre-processor processes its input, and if the resulting output differs from input, it re-evokes itself as its output as input to the new run, continuing until a stable state is reached.
I'm not sure that the pre-compiler should be separate from the compiler itself, thought. What happens if I want my include files to have hand-coded assembly routines for generating the files for the next generation of compilation? For that matter, the compiler should have a virtual file system for temporary mid-compile files, threading support, a built-in SQL database engine with option of using third-party backends, OpenGL support with built-in widgets for making attractive progress screens and virtual reality configuration utilities, and network support for use with distributed or cloud compile farms.
And while we're at it, let's add sound and joystick support so I can have my include files represent me with Doom with the source code acting as input to a level generator. That's visual debugging done the right way, and gives a whole new meaning to fighting bugs!
In Java, you can cast a List<Double> to a List<Integer>, and the cast will succeed at run-time.
In Java, casting from one generic type to another is meaningless, since they are the same class in runtime, so I'd imagine that the cast would be eliminated by the compiler, since it's just casting List to List. That is, IMHO, the biggest problem with Java generics, and shows them to be somewhat of a hack job.
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.
Are you promoting amending the Constitution or disempowering the people here?
Yes, fuck the investors over. You know - those fat cat investors... It's not like my retirement fund is at stake. Oh - wait. Shit. I guess it is.
I guess you shouldn't had invested it all in a single company. In fact, if you can't afford to lose it, you shouldn't had invested it at all, but stashed it in a bank account or something. Because, you know, there's always the risk of losing your investment.
(I just LOVE poorly thought out "shoot from the hip" solutions.)
And I "love" people who are happy to take the benefits of cut-throat - literally in this case - capitalism but cry "BAWWWW" when it's their own throat that gets cut.
Look, I'm all for socialism: have the state provide healthcare, retirement, etc. for everyone. However, if we absolutely must have capitalism, then at the very least we must have it for everyone, and not have investors reap the profits but not eat the losses of a dangerous and highly unethical bet. You invest in a company, the company makes a profit, you get your cut; the profit turns out to be made by murdering people, the executives (should) go to jail and the company is dissolved or at least damaged badly enough to turn the original bet a bad one.
The alternative - letting the investors benefit from this kind of incidents on average - gives them incentive to have the executives do them. We simply can't afford having this kind of behaviour be profitable. Unfortunately, I suspect that that's exactly what it'll be, when all is said and done.
I'm not convinced that shareholders shouldn't in principle have more accountability, though. Why not let them be a bit more accountable for what the "machines" that they own and unleash into the world are up to.
Because then investing becomes even more risky to Joe Average who has to work for a living and thus doesn't have time to investigate the actions of any potential target of investment in any detail as Joe Bigbucks does. The world is degenerating back to an aristocratic class structure fast enough as is, let's not hasten it on its way to that Hell.
The ones doing the decisions on companies are its executives and the board of directors. Sure, they may be faced with the unfortunate choice of behaving unethically - even psychopathically, as in this case - or being fired, but hey: they are supposedly paid so much because the job is so hard, so they can bloody well grow a spine and take it. I mean, I wouldn't be excused for murder just because I'd lost my job if I hadn't done it, and I don't get paid that much.
If you cannot condemn American actions when they are obviously done for selfish reasons (operation Ajax?) then you can't condemn Russian actions when they are done for what you consider to be selfish reasons.
Sure you can. If you can't, it becomes impossible to condemn any action, no matter how heinous, because whoever you're condemning can always point to some other action and demand you condemn that first, and whoever did that action can point you further still, and so on. It's impossible to be an expert on whole human history, so either you end up condemning things you know nothing about, or accepting everything because someone else has done worse things.
That said, you should obviously be consistent in your judgement, not excusing one and condemning the other for similar actions; but the requirement to know both before you can judge either is impossible to fulfil.
Don't anyone inform AC that there is no patent on his arse, or his reproductive organs.
AFAIK there are many patents on human genome, and thus his arse and reproductive organs would, in fact, be patented as derivative works. Furthermore, said reproductive organs would also qualify as a patent violation facilitation device (unless he has a license from patent holders), and thus possession of said organs would imply that he intends to break patent law - and of course his mere existence proves that his parents already did.
Disgusting criminal scum, his like drags the quality of this site down.
Re:Yet another "modern" FS without undelete...
on
A Short History of Btrfs
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· Score: 2, Insightful
We all know that the data is not zeroed on deletion, so why can't we have a File System that (preferably after fs umount) can scan the blocks and retrieve any file whose data blocks have not been overwritten yet, even if it takes a lengthy whole disk surface scan.
Why would you use such shenigans? Simply make the filesystem mark deleted files as "hide from directory listing, and really delete only if you need the space". Then add a couple of syscalls to examine these "recyclable" files and restore them to normal status.
Now, there are a number of corner cases that need to be thought out - such as what happens if you delete a file/directory and then create a new one with the same name - but the principle is simple enough: don't really delete files, merely mark them as deletable/recyclable/harvestable/condemned/dying.
But, that leads to the problem of a human-centric view of intelligence. We have such a hard time defining human intelligence, defining non-human intelligence will be almost impossible.
That, in turn, rises two questions:
Why would we want to develop artificial intelligence that's so different than human intelligence that we'd had trouble recognizing it as such? Remember, the whole point of AI is to build autonomous systems that can do work without human supervision; a system which can work without supervision must be able to solve problems that might pop up, and I don't think that anyone would have problems recognizing that as intelligence. And the other possible use - company - would benefit from the likeness of a human even more.
What, exactly speaking, would a "non-human" intelligence even mean? If it solves problems (of any variety, from mathemathics to psychoanalyzing people), it is judged as intelligent by any human; if it doesn't solve problems, then just what is intelligent about it?
Basically, I really think that this whole "problem" only rises from taking the "we arent't special" principle too far: the Universe doesn't revolve around the Earth, but we humans really are the smartest species we know of, and the only one that's defined by its mental, rather than physical, capabilities.
Most SANE people would call the police and pass on the contact info. I suspect that in "reality", so would you.
Therefore gaining a vengeful enemy, a reputation as a nutcase in your neighbourhood, and quite possibly marked as a troublemaking moron by the police, thus making any future dealings with them more difficult. Oh, and no benefit whatsoever.
The sane response would be to tell the other guy to not touch your door again.
It's surprising this guy didn't wake up in Guantanamo Bay one morning, considering there is a lot more evidence against him than some of the inmates there.
Not at all, given that the whole point of Guantanamo Bay is to hold people against whom there is no evidence. He's actually guilty of something, so he can be sentenced in a court. Now, if he was innocent, but someone disliked him and wanted to get rid of him, then he would be sent to GB.
Not that that GB would be that different than the one he's currently in, mind you...
They can't be trusted on many things (eg. Spyglass getting $0 in royalties for IE) but we can read the code and it's under a licence that prevents it being any sort of wooden horse.
Perhaps - or perhaps there's some interaction with patent or other law that we're overlooking. Microsoft has very good lawyers, by the virtue of having deep pockets, so it's entirely possible that they have managed to hide the trap well enough that we're not noticing it.
I think we can take it on face value as just being the improvement that MS wanted to make their virtualisation software run more effectively.
No, we can't, and that's precisely the problem: Microsoft has defected so many times that the default position a reasonable person would take is to assume that they're up to no good. As a result, no contribution from them should be accepted unless there's airtight evidence that it's not a trap, and even then only if the benefits justify the risk that you're wrong - which, by the looks of it, isn't the case here.
Hatred might well be a disease, but caution is wisdom, and in this case outright paranoia is warranted.
Kadyrov is not an idiot. He's a shrewd politician and won't do anything without clear advantage for him.
As I clearly stated, the advantage is in spreading fear. Of course, that doesn't prove that it was him; but he certainly had a motive.
And there are lot of people opposing Kadyrov now. He hasn't got absolute power and if you think he can just come and shoot everyone he doesn't like then you're stupid.
Yes, that would indeed be stupid. That's why I said that dictators murder random opponents, to scare the rest into not openly opposing them. If they could rule through raw force alone, they wouldn't need to spread fear.
I don't think he ordered to kill her. Why should he? Cynically, nothing Natalia Estemirova could have done would be able to harm Kadyrov. He's got backing right in Kremlin. Probably, he'd be able to get away even if he was caught eating babies.
Anyone who opposes a dictator harms him simply by breathing. A dictator stays in power through fear; if someone defies him and stays alive, she shows that it's possible to oppose him and stay alive, thus encouraging others to do the same. A dictator can't afford opposition to form. It's an either-or position: you either wield absolute uncontested power or you don't.
That's why dictatorships always descend into seemingly insane levels of savagery and evil. A dictator simply can't stay in power if he loses the grip of terror on his subjects. All who dare oppose him must die, not because they alone could do anyone, but because they are someone others might look up to and take an example from. And that death must happen in a manner that makes it clear that it was a murder, yet gives the people a chance to lie to themselves about who did it.
"The statecraft of the Seven Empires is a mazy, monstrous thing," said Brule. "There the true men know that among them glide the spies of the Serpent, and the men who are the Serpent's allies - such as Kaanuub, baron of Blaal - yet no man dares seek to unmask a suspect lest vengeance befall him. No man trusts his fellow and the true statesmen dare not speak to each other what is in the minds of all. Could they be sure, could a snake-man or plot be unmasked before them all, then would the power of the Serpent be more than half broken; for all would then ally and make common cause, sifting out the traitors." - Robert E. Howard, The Kingdom of Shadow. Isn't it fun when life imitates art?
So... purists are pessimists and pragmatists are optimists?
Nah. Purists put the long-term benefits over short-term ones, while the pragmatists put short-term benefits over long-term ones. If purists dominate, you get Hurd - an ambitious project that's never going to be useful - while if pragmatists get their way, nothing is ever even started, because whatever already exists is "good enough".
And something that statists don't understand, or try to hoodwink people about, is that governments have caused more harm than any individuals or businesses. Hitler killed more than 600,000, Stalin more than 20 million, and Mao some 50 million.
Seeing how Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all individuals, you seem to be contradicting yourself here. In fact, you seem to be giving a fine example of why we should prevent anyone from getting too much power into their hands. Which, if you read my post again, was pretty much my point.
And calling people "statists" because they don't subscribe to free-market fundamentalism only serves to demonstrate the irrationality of those who do.
The most deadly business accident I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster which killed an estimated 25,000.
I'm not talking about accidents, I'm talking about purposeful manipulation. How many people are dying of starvation in the world right now because of the structure of its economy?
After General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile in 1973 thousands of people disappeared.
You seem to be saying that you prefer the rule of democratically elected government to whoever can amass enough personal power to overthrow them. So do I.
Governments have caused far more deaths and human rights violations than any business.
Actually, all your examples were of individuals who had gotten enough power to compel anyone to do anything. You demonstrated why regulation is necessary (to prevent dictators from rising), not the opposite.
Certain types of activities have more expensive infrastructure costs. That's just the way it is. That doesn't make it any less of a "free market". The notion of a "free market" has to do with being able to freely exchange goods without government intervention not that anyone and everyone can necessarily start a business in any field they want.
But surely government intervention is simply another barrier of entry? All you have to do to work around it is to hire a mercenary force larger than the army of the nation in question. Sure, it'll cost a lot, but "Certain types of activities have more expensive infrastructure costs."
If barriers of entry to a market are high enough, then that market is not free, for any reasonable definition of free.
I think your question speaks (to me at least) of a more basic question. Do all actions have to be to benefit 'others' in your opinion? I think most actions most people take, are soley to benefit themselves....especially where money/wealth is involved. I don't see anything wrong with that...but, it almost sounds like you do?
There's a difference of scale between the everyday actions of average people and massive manipulation of stock market by rich traders. The actions I take, for example, will significally affect only me and a few other people, who are - and this is the important part - are capable of defending themselves from possible harmful effects, being of roughly equal power than me, or at least in the same order of magnitude.
On the other hand, as the ongoing recession shows, fucking around with huge economic assets to make a few dollars more can have a massive negative effect on lots of people who have absolutely no way whatsoever to defend themselves from the fallout. And even if they won't lose their job as companies collapse left and right, they still get to pay the bill of trying to keep what's left of the economy from collapsing further, and in time putting it back together - all the while knowing that the next bunch of businessmen is already getting ready to try their "clever" new methods.
Great power brings great responsibility. People who wield such power but refuse to consider anything except their personal profits are a menace to everyone else, and need to be stripped of enough of that power to no longer be a threat; otherwise you get Enrons. The common way of doing this is through regulating the ways in which power can be used. This is something libertarians, neoliberals and adherents of related ideologues have trouble understanding, presumably due to their failure to comprehend any form of compulsion besides outright violence as an exercise of power over anther.
The stock market is at worst a lottery or pyramid scheme, but it doesn't bankrupt poor hard working joes if they're working for honest and truthful companies. Or companies that are too small to survive on the publc trade floor.
Except that those small companies operate in an environment dominated by large corporations, which most certainly will engage in all imaginable shenigans to increase their market value so the management gets to cash their stock options. When shit hits the fan, and these corrupt giants crash, the cascade effect will harm every company, and thus their employees.
Someone want to calculate the minimum safe stopping distance of a wide-load truck laden with a 50-meter section of tower traveling at, let's say 45MPH without jackknifing or breaking the load restraints?
If you can't stop safely in time when you see a warning or other sign, you are going too fast. Either wear glasses so you can read the sign in time, or lower your speed.
Then again, from what I've seen of truck drivers, they could just as easily been too busy reading the newspaper to watch the road - it fits nicely over the wheel, apparently.
Darknet - layer on top of internet that uses encryption, multiple hop routing and other techniques to disguise nodes activity from each other
No. A darknet is a P2P network where individual nodes are trying to hide their existence. This means that, in order to connect to a node, you need an invitation from the owner of the node, and nodes don't advertize their existence. Some such networks might try to hide their traffic with steganography.
A darknet is targeted for environments where the very act of participating in an anonymizing network (which was what you described) is grounds for suspicion or outright illegal. Their problem is that they tend to grow very slowly, since in order to join, you must know at least one person who's already in the network; they also tend to have severe problems with network structure, since you need to have connections to at least three nodes in order to have a network (as opposed to a string with two, or a dead-end with one connection).
Freenet 0.7 is a good example of this: it was supposed to be a darknet, but the developers finally gave in before reality and allowed the open ("promiscuous") mode where the node advertizes its existence and accepts incoming connections, as well as tries to form new connections to other such nodes.
The system of money is an ancient and outdated system that needs replaced with a resource based economy anyway, and P2P is a good step in the right direction.
The whole point of money is to assign a single number to measure the amount of available resources. It's a logistical aid.
A relatively small rocket could put an object in orbit with sufficient fuel.
Except that it couldn't, because it would need to carry the fuel with it, and a small rocket couldn't lift much fuel from the ground, for some values of small and much.
That's why rockets are the size of skyscrapers, and why chemical ones will never be economical.
I mean, hey -- if I can corner 90% of the market by setting up my distribution platform to, say, seven businesses, why should I make that same effort fifty or a hundred times more just to get that extra 10%?
In reality, after you have set up your distribution platform, the cost of adding a new business is almost nothing; if you've done things The Right Way, it's just a matter of adding a database entry with the address to post the check to.
And yes, it's all electronic. That doesn't make it zero-cost; There's administrative costs to everything and those costs don't go up in a linear fashion as you add more members.
True. They usually go up logarithmically, where the cost per title becomes less and less as the amount of titles increases. This is because the initial investment in the distribution channel, billing mechanisms, accounting and so on have already been paid, so it's simply a matter of hiring more people as needed - the phenomenom known as "the economy of scale".
All of this should be pretty obvious, since services like Live couldn't exist otherwise; if adding nth customer (player) costed as much or more as the 1st, no online store could possibly make a profit.
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More importantly, these redefinitions should be context-sensitive. For example, it should be possible to define an "if" block that follows a "while" block to increment a variable before it's executed, or perhaps before the "true" block is executed. Similarly, it should be possible to have a function or any functions call another function the first thing it does if it is/they are executed from a "while" loop but not otherwise, without having to code it to every function separately.
But what happens when you want to generate these scripts automatically? No, let's do it right: The pre-processor processes its input, and if the resulting output differs from input, it re-evokes itself as its output as input to the new run, continuing until a stable state is reached.
I'm not sure that the pre-compiler should be separate from the compiler itself, thought. What happens if I want my include files to have hand-coded assembly routines for generating the files for the next generation of compilation? For that matter, the compiler should have a virtual file system for temporary mid-compile files, threading support, a built-in SQL database engine with option of using third-party backends, OpenGL support with built-in widgets for making attractive progress screens and virtual reality configuration utilities, and network support for use with distributed or cloud compile farms.
And while we're at it, let's add sound and joystick support so I can have my include files represent me with Doom with the source code acting as input to a level generator. That's visual debugging done the right way, and gives a whole new meaning to fighting bugs!
In Java, casting from one generic type to another is meaningless, since they are the same class in runtime, so I'd imagine that the cast would be eliminated by the compiler, since it's just casting List to List. That is, IMHO, the biggest problem with Java generics, and shows them to be somewhat of a hack job.
Are you promoting amending the Constitution or disempowering the people here?
I guess you shouldn't had invested it all in a single company. In fact, if you can't afford to lose it, you shouldn't had invested it at all, but stashed it in a bank account or something. Because, you know, there's always the risk of losing your investment.
And I "love" people who are happy to take the benefits of cut-throat - literally in this case - capitalism but cry "BAWWWW" when it's their own throat that gets cut.
Look, I'm all for socialism: have the state provide healthcare, retirement, etc. for everyone. However, if we absolutely must have capitalism, then at the very least we must have it for everyone, and not have investors reap the profits but not eat the losses of a dangerous and highly unethical bet. You invest in a company, the company makes a profit, you get your cut; the profit turns out to be made by murdering people, the executives (should) go to jail and the company is dissolved or at least damaged badly enough to turn the original bet a bad one.
The alternative - letting the investors benefit from this kind of incidents on average - gives them incentive to have the executives do them. We simply can't afford having this kind of behaviour be profitable. Unfortunately, I suspect that that's exactly what it'll be, when all is said and done.
Because then investing becomes even more risky to Joe Average who has to work for a living and thus doesn't have time to investigate the actions of any potential target of investment in any detail as Joe Bigbucks does. The world is degenerating back to an aristocratic class structure fast enough as is, let's not hasten it on its way to that Hell.
The ones doing the decisions on companies are its executives and the board of directors. Sure, they may be faced with the unfortunate choice of behaving unethically - even psychopathically, as in this case - or being fired, but hey: they are supposedly paid so much because the job is so hard, so they can bloody well grow a spine and take it. I mean, I wouldn't be excused for murder just because I'd lost my job if I hadn't done it, and I don't get paid that much.
Sure you can. If you can't, it becomes impossible to condemn any action, no matter how heinous, because whoever you're condemning can always point to some other action and demand you condemn that first, and whoever did that action can point you further still, and so on. It's impossible to be an expert on whole human history, so either you end up condemning things you know nothing about, or accepting everything because someone else has done worse things.
That said, you should obviously be consistent in your judgement, not excusing one and condemning the other for similar actions; but the requirement to know both before you can judge either is impossible to fulfil.
AFAIK there are many patents on human genome, and thus his arse and reproductive organs would, in fact, be patented as derivative works. Furthermore, said reproductive organs would also qualify as a patent violation facilitation device (unless he has a license from patent holders), and thus possession of said organs would imply that he intends to break patent law - and of course his mere existence proves that his parents already did.
Disgusting criminal scum, his like drags the quality of this site down.
Why would you use such shenigans? Simply make the filesystem mark deleted files as "hide from directory listing, and really delete only if you need the space". Then add a couple of syscalls to examine these "recyclable" files and restore them to normal status.
Now, there are a number of corner cases that need to be thought out - such as what happens if you delete a file/directory and then create a new one with the same name - but the principle is simple enough: don't really delete files, merely mark them as deletable/recyclable/harvestable/condemned/dying.
That, in turn, rises two questions:
Basically, I really think that this whole "problem" only rises from taking the "we arent't special" principle too far: the Universe doesn't revolve around the Earth, but we humans really are the smartest species we know of, and the only one that's defined by its mental, rather than physical, capabilities.
Therefore gaining a vengeful enemy, a reputation as a nutcase in your neighbourhood, and quite possibly marked as a troublemaking moron by the police, thus making any future dealings with them more difficult. Oh, and no benefit whatsoever.
The sane response would be to tell the other guy to not touch your door again.
Not at all, given that the whole point of Guantanamo Bay is to hold people against whom there is no evidence. He's actually guilty of something, so he can be sentenced in a court. Now, if he was innocent, but someone disliked him and wanted to get rid of him, then he would be sent to GB.
Not that that GB would be that different than the one he's currently in, mind you...
Perhaps - or perhaps there's some interaction with patent or other law that we're overlooking. Microsoft has very good lawyers, by the virtue of having deep pockets, so it's entirely possible that they have managed to hide the trap well enough that we're not noticing it.
No, we can't, and that's precisely the problem: Microsoft has defected so many times that the default position a reasonable person would take is to assume that they're up to no good. As a result, no contribution from them should be accepted unless there's airtight evidence that it's not a trap, and even then only if the benefits justify the risk that you're wrong - which, by the looks of it, isn't the case here.
Hatred might well be a disease, but caution is wisdom, and in this case outright paranoia is warranted.
As I clearly stated, the advantage is in spreading fear. Of course, that doesn't prove that it was him; but he certainly had a motive.
Yes, that would indeed be stupid. That's why I said that dictators murder random opponents, to scare the rest into not openly opposing them. If they could rule through raw force alone, they wouldn't need to spread fear.
Anyone who opposes a dictator harms him simply by breathing. A dictator stays in power through fear; if someone defies him and stays alive, she shows that it's possible to oppose him and stay alive, thus encouraging others to do the same. A dictator can't afford opposition to form. It's an either-or position: you either wield absolute uncontested power or you don't.
That's why dictatorships always descend into seemingly insane levels of savagery and evil. A dictator simply can't stay in power if he loses the grip of terror on his subjects. All who dare oppose him must die, not because they alone could do anyone, but because they are someone others might look up to and take an example from. And that death must happen in a manner that makes it clear that it was a murder, yet gives the people a chance to lie to themselves about who did it.
"The statecraft of the Seven Empires is a mazy, monstrous thing," said Brule. "There the true men know that among them glide the spies of the Serpent, and the men who are the Serpent's allies - such as Kaanuub, baron of Blaal - yet no man dares seek to unmask a suspect lest vengeance befall him. No man trusts his fellow and the true statesmen dare not speak to each other what is in the minds of all. Could they be sure, could a snake-man or plot be unmasked before them all, then would the power of the Serpent be more than half broken; for all would then ally and make common cause, sifting out the traitors." - Robert E. Howard, The Kingdom of Shadow. Isn't it fun when life imitates art?
Nah. Purists put the long-term benefits over short-term ones, while the pragmatists put short-term benefits over long-term ones. If purists dominate, you get Hurd - an ambitious project that's never going to be useful - while if pragmatists get their way, nothing is ever even started, because whatever already exists is "good enough".
Seeing how Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all individuals, you seem to be contradicting yourself here. In fact, you seem to be giving a fine example of why we should prevent anyone from getting too much power into their hands. Which, if you read my post again, was pretty much my point.
And calling people "statists" because they don't subscribe to free-market fundamentalism only serves to demonstrate the irrationality of those who do.
I'm not talking about accidents, I'm talking about purposeful manipulation. How many people are dying of starvation in the world right now because of the structure of its economy?
You seem to be saying that you prefer the rule of democratically elected government to whoever can amass enough personal power to overthrow them. So do I.
Actually, all your examples were of individuals who had gotten enough power to compel anyone to do anything. You demonstrated why regulation is necessary (to prevent dictators from rising), not the opposite.
But surely government intervention is simply another barrier of entry? All you have to do to work around it is to hire a mercenary force larger than the army of the nation in question. Sure, it'll cost a lot, but "Certain types of activities have more expensive infrastructure costs."
If barriers of entry to a market are high enough, then that market is not free, for any reasonable definition of free.
There's a difference of scale between the everyday actions of average people and massive manipulation of stock market by rich traders. The actions I take, for example, will significally affect only me and a few other people, who are - and this is the important part - are capable of defending themselves from possible harmful effects, being of roughly equal power than me, or at least in the same order of magnitude.
On the other hand, as the ongoing recession shows, fucking around with huge economic assets to make a few dollars more can have a massive negative effect on lots of people who have absolutely no way whatsoever to defend themselves from the fallout. And even if they won't lose their job as companies collapse left and right, they still get to pay the bill of trying to keep what's left of the economy from collapsing further, and in time putting it back together - all the while knowing that the next bunch of businessmen is already getting ready to try their "clever" new methods.
Great power brings great responsibility. People who wield such power but refuse to consider anything except their personal profits are a menace to everyone else, and need to be stripped of enough of that power to no longer be a threat; otherwise you get Enrons. The common way of doing this is through regulating the ways in which power can be used. This is something libertarians, neoliberals and adherents of related ideologues have trouble understanding, presumably due to their failure to comprehend any form of compulsion besides outright violence as an exercise of power over anther.
Fixed that for you.
Except that those small companies operate in an environment dominated by large corporations, which most certainly will engage in all imaginable shenigans to increase their market value so the management gets to cash their stock options. When shit hits the fan, and these corrupt giants crash, the cascade effect will harm every company, and thus their employees.
If you can't stop safely in time when you see a warning or other sign, you are going too fast. Either wear glasses so you can read the sign in time, or lower your speed.
Then again, from what I've seen of truck drivers, they could just as easily been too busy reading the newspaper to watch the road - it fits nicely over the wheel, apparently.
No. A darknet is a P2P network where individual nodes are trying to hide their existence. This means that, in order to connect to a node, you need an invitation from the owner of the node, and nodes don't advertize their existence. Some such networks might try to hide their traffic with steganography.
A darknet is targeted for environments where the very act of participating in an anonymizing network (which was what you described) is grounds for suspicion or outright illegal. Their problem is that they tend to grow very slowly, since in order to join, you must know at least one person who's already in the network; they also tend to have severe problems with network structure, since you need to have connections to at least three nodes in order to have a network (as opposed to a string with two, or a dead-end with one connection).
Freenet 0.7 is a good example of this: it was supposed to be a darknet, but the developers finally gave in before reality and allowed the open ("promiscuous") mode where the node advertizes its existence and accepts incoming connections, as well as tries to form new connections to other such nodes.
The whole point of money is to assign a single number to measure the amount of available resources. It's a logistical aid.
Other than that, I'm with you, bro.
Except that it couldn't, because it would need to carry the fuel with it, and a small rocket couldn't lift much fuel from the ground, for some values of small and much.
That's why rockets are the size of skyscrapers, and why chemical ones will never be economical.
In reality, after you have set up your distribution platform, the cost of adding a new business is almost nothing; if you've done things The Right Way, it's just a matter of adding a database entry with the address to post the check to.
True. They usually go up logarithmically, where the cost per title becomes less and less as the amount of titles increases. This is because the initial investment in the distribution channel, billing mechanisms, accounting and so on have already been paid, so it's simply a matter of hiring more people as needed - the phenomenom known as "the economy of scale".
All of this should be pretty obvious, since services like Live couldn't exist otherwise; if adding nth customer (player) costed as much or more as the 1st, no online store could possibly make a profit.
And you know this, how? Citation needed.