Why doesn't anyone recongnize that if you took every penny from the top 1% we'd still be completely screwed because we spend way too much.
Because that's not actually true. The richest Americans have about $1 trillion in cash reserves and American corporations have about $1.5 trillion in cash reserves
Let's be generous and call it $3 trillion.
~$15 trillion (the "ballpark" amount of US national debt) minus $3 trillion leaves ~$12 trillion in debt and a collapsed economy because of no capital on which to run the economy.
The motivation behind this is not to protect oblivious smartphone users, but for people with visual impairments who have traditionally relied on engine noise to identify approaching vehicles at low speed. The smartphone users will still be in danger, because they're invariably wearing headphones too.
Then by the same logic, why haven't all road-legal vehicles been required to have rotating warning lights, strobes, or a similar visual warning system?
Why does the government hate deaf people? Is it because they can't hear the political speeches and must read them, therefor fixing more firmly in their minds the memory of the promises a politician makes and then breaks?
I probably shouldn't go giving the politicians any ideas, or parents will need $1,500 worth of required and certified safety strobes, flashers, and running lights for their kid's Big Wheel. The only licensed/certified maker, of course, would be owned by a recent departee from whatever administration is in power.
It never stops to amaze me that so many Americans equate Socialism with Communism. They really are vastly different. Most countries in Western Europe have had large "socialist" influence over the past decades and they have not been worse off for it.
Well then, it's a good thing I didn't equate Communism with Socialism.
Most Western European countries haven't been worse off with "socialist" influence?? Wow. I guess that whole chain of near-collapses of various EU countries' economies, and the multiple bailouts and street riots, etc that have followed, are just a fluke then, and completely unrelated to their socialist-style economic policies heavy on entitlement spending, taxes, and government regulation & control of business?
But, on the other hand, the best average standard and happiness comes through balancing capitalism with socialism in a democracy.
This is incorrect. Socialism is antithetical to capitalism & democracy. Trying to shoehorn socialism into a democratic, capitalist society results in collapse. It's a large part of the causes of the problems that are now occurring.
No, capitalism works to funnel money into ever fewer hands. Capitalism wants real freedom for the richest. Damn the consequences for anyone else.
What you describe is what we have now with Progressive corrupt socialist policies distorting capitalism into "crony capitalism".
Even if capitalism could be said to have been the shit for a period in history, it's not doing us much more good now. The US is in a sorry state, humanity-wise and freedom-wise.
That's because we don't really have capitalism and haven't for a long while. We have had your vaunted Progressive "democratic socialism" in gradually-increasing degrees for the better part of a century as Progressives have gradually gained more & more power, and this is the result.
Thank you capitalism for all the burgers and denim and rock 'n' roll, but onwards from here democratic socialism is the way to go.
Democratic socialism is an oxymoron, like chilly supernova or honest politician. Any "democracy" in a society based around socialist tenants is purely an ineffectual farce that exists only to keep the ignorant pacified.
It's called "enlightened self interest" and it's how capitalism should always work. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Thank goodness we've had government in there neck-deep attempting to "social engineer" the economy and society since the 1930s with taxes, legislation, and regulation into a Progressive Utopia.
Worked out well, hasn't it?
But don't complain when it does, as society as a whole benefits.
Yes, society does benefit greatly when enlightened self-interest, through capitalism, works. It's what has created the highest living standards and levels of individual freedom humans have ever known, and for more people over a longer time, than anything else ever tried.
These days and under this government, complaint at it's rare occurrence isn't my reaction. It's surprise and amazement that it's allowed to happen at all any more. After all, in the eyes of those that desire power it's much harder to control a generally wealthy, well-fed, non-dependent, well informed and armed population than it is to control a starving, destitute, unarmed, homeless, desperate, and frightened populace that's ready to follow anyone or anything that offers hope.
Capitalism in a free but well-regulated market is an enemy of Tyranny, as history has shown repeatedly that capitalism empowers a population to resist and defeat it. This is why capitalism is attacked. Government interferes and corrupts the market, then mobilizes the armies of useful idiots to rail against capitalism, when it's government corruption and politician's ambition to gain power that is the cause of the problems.
I am pretty sure most things we do (short of actually building a bomb to blow ourselves up along with the planet) will not bother the planet at all. It has been here for over 4 billion years. It has seen dinosaurs come and go. I am sure we will be long gone before the planet becomes sick or dead in some way.
I tend toward the belief that wherever planetary carbon-based life occurs, it shares a common characteristic with most other things in the universe...it changes in cycles. Planetary carbon-based life probably occurs fairly frequently across the universe. Most such occurrences probably die off at some point by failing to adapt to changes in the environment or super-disaster long before sentient intelligence emerges, and/or spreads off-planet soon enough to avoid depletion of resources or other disaster after sentient intelligence and civilization emerges.
What has to happen for humans to survive is to thread a needle between many factors including things like concern for the environment balanced against the need to advance technology, industry, & civilization in a short enough time to spread sustainably to other planets and eventually star systems, before either mega-disaster or resource depletion dooms life on this planet.
If you completely ignore environmental concerns, you poison your own planet before there's a chance for humans to spread elsewhere. If you exercise too much caution and hinder technological/industrial development/advancement too much, either resources will be depleted or some mega-disaster will occur before humans can spread out from Earth, dooming our species and possibly all Earth life.
In all three cases of doom, eventual environmental contamination/collapse, resource depletion, and eventual planet-wide mega-disaster, the solution is the same. Get humanity space-faring and colonize.
It won't happen if we poison ourselves and destroy the ecosystem with no regard, nor will it happen if we sit naked in unlit/unheated caves drinking grass smoothies for fear of "harming the planet" with civilization and industry.
All life on this planet, and the planet itself, is doomed for destruction. Nobody knows when, but it *will* happen. I'd hate to think humans would be penny-wise but pound-foolish when it comes to environmental/climate-change/conservation issues and end up extinct for all their trouble and suffering.
Actually I thought he was just another Republican crackpot but I find myself actually agreeing with a lot of his positions...
You know, I'm not certain from the linked article what *exactly* is meant by "ending the Federal student loan program".
Keep in mind that, just relatively-recently, the current administration took over student loans completely from private banks and declared that all loans were to come directly from a Federal agency (dept.?).
Up until recently, the actual loans came out of a normal bank with Federal guarantees on the private loan, along with the government also handing out Federal grants, etc.
So, does he mean end the current direct Federal education loans and simply let things return to how they were for decades, or does he mean end everything...direct, indirect, loan guarantees, everything?
I would be OK with things simply returning to the former default position where students had been getting loans for decades, and some pressure was felt by colleges & universities to keep tuition costs down to compete.
Not that getting the government out of education isn't a worthwhile goal, but if he really means to end *all* Federal government involvement including the previous system of Federal student loan guarantees on loans banks make to students, it's going to take years to set up the totally-private-sector system & economic infrastructure well ahead of time to ensure there's as little interference as possible with a worthy student's ability to gain a degree.
What, did some teacher run over your dog on the way to a union meeting when you were five?
People like you are the reason we have unions in the first place. Unneeded in the public sector? Because postal workers should roll over and accept 100,000+ in job cuts to cover a fiscal hole created by Congress, when they mandated that the Post Office fully fund pensions for the next 75 years - meaning people who haven't even been born yet? PATCO - one of their main goals of the strike was to get a shorter work week to maintain the intense levels of concentration needed to keep planes from flying into eachother.
Instead, Reagan fired all the traffic controllers, and now you have them dozing off on their shifts because they might only have a couple hours off between shifts.
All that typing, and yet you still failed to refute a single fact or statement in my post.
Instead, all you did was point out how incompetent and corrupt government is, which is an argument against having government negotiate with a third party to spend other people's money.
In 2011, in multiple states in the US, the Republican Party... abolished unions.
Wrong.
Unions for government workers had many of their bargaining rights restricted or eliminated. Not private sector Unions.
Public sector (government employee) Unions are an abomination. Their purpose is not to share in profits, as government makes no profits. It's to grab all the tax money they can and influence lawmakers to pass laws to increase their power.
The government employee Unions "negotiate" for higher wages & benefits, paid for by taxpayers, not the profits of a private business, with one political Party (who don't themselves feel the pain of a bad deal for the taxpayers), and then the Union takes money from Union members as Union dues and contributes a large portion right back to the election campaigns and PACs of that same Party.
It's an incestuous and corrupt system that robs taxpayers blind and funnels money into one political Party's coffers, while ensuring lawmakers pass laws favorable to increasing the Union's power and wealth.
Even FDR said public sector unions were bad. The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don't generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this "unthinkable and intolerable."
Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead, their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic...a fact that unions once recognized.
I would have thought it would be obvious that the computer the robot is typing on is "trusted". Yes, my computer has a TPM. It's disabled by default, can only be initialized from the BIOS and can be cleared and reinitialized at any time.
Why would a robot typing have any effect on what that computer is allowed or not allowed to do with T.C. enabled? If, for example, T.C. receives a blacklist that forbids the use of the word "democracy", it will not be transmitted or received whether the typist is human or robotic.
What are you going to use to transfer the data with? Existing internet infrastructure?
As long as there's something you can use to send and receive data, you can tunnel. In the absolute extreme, you can build a physical robot that types packets into twitter messages on a keyboard.
Controlling what can be used to send and receive data, *AND* what data can be sent and received (T.C. also has the ability to remotely & retroactively add, remove, or edit any data), are the central purposes of "Trusted Computing" and part of what it is designed to do.
Once your ISP's network routers refuse to connect any computer to the internet that doesn't incorporate "Trusted Computing", that dog won't hunt. It's worrisome that many network routers in use by ISP's right now are already equipped with "Trusted Computing"...they just need a command to switch it on. Your PC likely already has "Trusted Computing" incorporated into the motherboard.
It sounds like you are indeed predicting the 'society goes into totalitarian lockdown' scenario. If that did come to pass, the side issue of ending up with an absolutely controlled and censored internet (enabled to technologies such as TPM) would no longer be worth worrying about.
What I am saying is that eliminating the ability of people to freely and anonymously communicate is one of the necessary first steps toward governments enacting a non-free society.
Once that goal of eliminating the freedom to anonymously communicate is accomplished, the other steps towards a totalitarian society will become like dominoes falling at an ever-increasing rate, with the death of free & anonymous communications as the first domino.
This is more of a warning and a reminder of the lessons of history, as there may still be time stop this loss of a critical freedom to a modern free society and thus prevent, or at least cripple, the current progression towards totalitarianism and the loss of individual freedom, opportunity, & choice.
Do men have the ability to rule themselves?*This* is the core question. I and most Americans believe they can, and it is the core premise upon which the Republic was founded.
Most of the world does not think men can rule themselves, as well as many in America that want to hand over more and more of their freedom and the responsibilities & ownership of the results of their choices that are part of that freedom, to government in exchange for a false sense of security and "free government stuff" these days.
Why stop at the CPU? If it comes to that, eventually there will be enough sufficiently pissed off and motivated individuals to make their own internet. It might take a long time if the 'old' internet becomes locked down and unusable for such subversive uses, but it too will happen eventually. The only way this could be stopped is if society itself goes into totalitarian lockdown and you can't even freely associate with people face to face. Not saying the above is impossible, but that's a few steps beyond only having absolute control over our toys.
Governments won't allow a "dark internet" to exist in any significant size, manner, or form. What are you going to use to transfer the data with? Existing internet infrastructure? A key part of the whole "Trusted Computing" plan is to eventually deny the ability to connect *anything* to the existing 'net unless it has TPM running.
Wireless mesh networks of some kind? The FCC and their equivalents in other countries will quash that right away. The key point of "Trusted Computing" is to deny access to alternatives, and the only way it can be truly effective. Anyone attempting to route around the TP-enslaved network will be labeled by governments as terrorists/kiddy-diddlers/criminals and thrown in prison or killed by a drone strike as a "threat to national security".
No, once governments have decided that Trusted Computing is what will be, the only way out is to make major changes to those governments. The problem here is that revolutions throughout history have quite (most?) often ended with governments much worse than what they started with, with only a few exceptions.
Frankly, I'm glad I'm older and may not live to experience what the next 20-30 years will bring. It's not going to be pretty. Keep in mind that through most all of human history, totalitarian and brutal rule has been the norm, and the recent experiments with governments respecting and enshrining individual freedom and the idea that men can rule themselves is quite a recent new phenomenon. One that a large proportion of the world doesn't believe in and is actively working to see that it goes the way of the dinosaurs.
I'm not at all certain that a UK citizen in the UK would be safe from prosecution just because they either made an anonymous post on an offshore website, Libel is a civil matter, you can't be "prosecuted" for it by teh evil government.
-- To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I (and apparently the UK government) am not talking only about potentially "libelous" posts, simply "anonymous" posts by a UK citizen, and/or websites/hosting administered/owned by a UK citizen that allow/contain anonymous posts by a UK citizen.
Say for example some UK official or bureaucrat is angry at some UK citizen because he cheated on that bureaucrat's/official's daughter, finds that citizen made an unrelated, non-libelous, Anonymous Coward post on Slashdot, and has him prosecuted. Or that same government official/bureaucrat decides to attack a potential political rival.
"Libel" is simply the given reason for enacting the law, not a requirement for prosecution AFAICT.
No, the UK can't force anything on a site hosted outside the UK. They can block the traffic inside the UK, with varying degrees of effectiveness (see China, Egypt).
If they can tie either an anonymous post by a UK citizen, or website/hosting ownership of the offshore website where an anonymous post by a UK citizen is made to a UK citizen, couldn't they prosecute them?
I'm not at all certain that a UK citizen in the UK would be safe from prosecution just because they either made an anonymous post on an offshore website, or if they administered or paid for hosting an offshore website where a UK citizen made an anonymous post.
Governments and corporate entities worldwide share a common interest in desiring the end of internet anonymity for individuals. Don't expect such efforts to halt the ability of individuals to communicate anonymously to end with the UK
As proof, just look to the recent/. story about the Italian EU MEP, Tiziano Mott,i advocating "black boxes" for logging be required by law to be connected to every personal internet communications device.
That is not fair. Presumably, you have to do something to get a bowling award.
I'm sorry if my comparison to an award for actual achievement inferred or implied in any way that the Nobel Peace Prize required doing or accomplishing anything.:)
Why not nominate the Nobel Peace Prize to the Science Editorial Board. They are correct in that "political maps that seek to advance disputed territorial claims have no place in scientific papers".
Since the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee has turned the Peace Prize itself into a political and ideological advocacy/popularity contest (e.g. Obama's award for, as it turns out, not much at all), good luck with that. Thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee, the Prize now ranks right up there with a bowling trophy in prestige and gravitas.
In the real world, a journalist is whomever the large, aggressive, not-so-bright, sometimes corrupt, uniformed men with shiny bits of metal on their chests that have lots and lots of guns, armored vehicles, helicopters, combat armor, tasers, pepper spray, snipers, and PMITA prisons to throw you in says they are...or are not.
The upside is that you might be able to dispute their decision later in a court of law...*if* you survive.
but when we lefties do things to try to acknowledge and do something about the cronyism (see the OWS demonstrations), we're accused of class warfare.
Because the people at the OWS protests are mostly ignorant, clueless "useful idiots" being used by those like Soros, Obama, Van Jones, "big labor", and other Leftists who desire the collapse of the US so they can take over. It's those on the Progressive/Left in BOTH parties that are responsible almost entirely for the cronyism. The protestors have been stirred up by class-warfare rhetoric and demagoguery, and have no real clue for what or who they are working. If they were informed and intellectually honest they'd be marching on the White House.
They advocate for Socialism and Communism while being totally ignorant of their long history of horrors, or even worse and more foolishly, think that it's just that Socialism and Communism haven't been "truly" tried yet in "no true Scotsman" fashion. Human nature dictates that Socialism and Communism *always* ends horribly with untold suffering in the meantime.
Slashdot Mirror
Daffodils are fucking hardcore.
Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday in "Tombstone":
"You're a daisy if ya do!"
Strat
Let's be generous and call it $3 trillion.
~$15 trillion (the "ballpark" amount of US national debt) minus $3 trillion leaves ~$12 trillion in debt and a collapsed economy because of no capital on which to run the economy.
Oops.
Strat
The motivation behind this is not to protect oblivious smartphone users, but for people with visual impairments who have traditionally relied on engine noise to identify approaching vehicles at low speed. The smartphone users will still be in danger, because they're invariably wearing headphones too.
Then by the same logic, why haven't all road-legal vehicles been required to have rotating warning lights, strobes, or a similar visual warning system?
Why does the government hate deaf people? Is it because they can't hear the political speeches and must read them, therefor fixing more firmly in their minds the memory of the promises a politician makes and then breaks?
I probably shouldn't go giving the politicians any ideas, or parents will need $1,500 worth of required and certified safety strobes, flashers, and running lights for their kid's Big Wheel. The only licensed/certified maker, of course, would be owned by a recent departee from whatever administration is in power.
Strat
Socialism is great.
Until you run out of other people's wealth to confiscate to keep it functioning.
Capitalism is also the worst economic/social system.
Except for every other system that's ever been tried.
Strat
It never stops to amaze me that so many Americans equate Socialism with Communism. They really are vastly different. Most countries in Western Europe have had large "socialist" influence over the past decades and they have not been worse off for it.
Well then, it's a good thing I didn't equate Communism with Socialism.
Most Western European countries haven't been worse off with "socialist" influence?? Wow. I guess that whole chain of near-collapses of various EU countries' economies, and the multiple bailouts and street riots, etc that have followed, are just a fluke then, and completely unrelated to their socialist-style economic policies heavy on entitlement spending, taxes, and government regulation & control of business?
What color is the sky on your planet?
Strat
But, on the other hand, the best average standard and happiness comes through balancing capitalism with socialism in a democracy.
This is incorrect. Socialism is antithetical to capitalism & democracy. Trying to shoehorn socialism into a democratic, capitalist society results in collapse. It's a large part of the causes of the problems that are now occurring.
No, capitalism works to funnel money into ever fewer hands. Capitalism wants real freedom for the richest. Damn the consequences for anyone else.
What you describe is what we have now with Progressive corrupt socialist policies distorting capitalism into "crony capitalism".
Even if capitalism could be said to have been the shit for a period in history, it's not doing us much more good now. The US is in a sorry state, humanity-wise and freedom-wise.
That's because we don't really have capitalism and haven't for a long while. We have had your vaunted Progressive "democratic socialism" in gradually-increasing degrees for the better part of a century as Progressives have gradually gained more & more power, and this is the result.
Thank you capitalism for all the burgers and denim and rock 'n' roll, but onwards from here democratic socialism is the way to go.
Democratic socialism is an oxymoron, like chilly supernova or honest politician. Any "democracy" in a society based around socialist tenants is purely an ineffectual farce that exists only to keep the ignorant pacified.
Strat
It's called "enlightened self interest" and it's how capitalism should always work. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Thank goodness we've had government in there neck-deep attempting to "social engineer" the economy and society since the 1930s with taxes, legislation, and regulation into a Progressive Utopia.
Worked out well, hasn't it?
But don't complain when it does, as society as a whole benefits.
Yes, society does benefit greatly when enlightened self-interest, through capitalism, works. It's what has created the highest living standards and levels of individual freedom humans have ever known, and for more people over a longer time, than anything else ever tried.
These days and under this government, complaint at it's rare occurrence isn't my reaction. It's surprise and amazement that it's allowed to happen at all any more. After all, in the eyes of those that desire power it's much harder to control a generally wealthy, well-fed, non-dependent, well informed and armed population than it is to control a starving, destitute, unarmed, homeless, desperate, and frightened populace that's ready to follow anyone or anything that offers hope.
Capitalism in a free but well-regulated market is an enemy of Tyranny, as history has shown repeatedly that capitalism empowers a population to resist and defeat it. This is why capitalism is attacked. Government interferes and corrupts the market, then mobilizes the armies of useful idiots to rail against capitalism, when it's government corruption and politician's ambition to gain power that is the cause of the problems.
Strat
I am pretty sure most things we do (short of actually building a bomb to blow ourselves up along with the planet) will not bother the planet at all. It has been here for over 4 billion years. It has seen dinosaurs come and go. I am sure we will be long gone before the planet becomes sick or dead in some way.
I tend toward the belief that wherever planetary carbon-based life occurs, it shares a common characteristic with most other things in the universe...it changes in cycles. Planetary carbon-based life probably occurs fairly frequently across the universe. Most such occurrences probably die off at some point by failing to adapt to changes in the environment or super-disaster long before sentient intelligence emerges, and/or spreads off-planet soon enough to avoid depletion of resources or other disaster after sentient intelligence and civilization emerges.
What has to happen for humans to survive is to thread a needle between many factors including things like concern for the environment balanced against the need to advance technology, industry, & civilization in a short enough time to spread sustainably to other planets and eventually star systems, before either mega-disaster or resource depletion dooms life on this planet.
If you completely ignore environmental concerns, you poison your own planet before there's a chance for humans to spread elsewhere. If you exercise too much caution and hinder technological/industrial development/advancement too much, either resources will be depleted or some mega-disaster will occur before humans can spread out from Earth, dooming our species and possibly all Earth life.
In all three cases of doom, eventual environmental contamination/collapse, resource depletion, and eventual planet-wide mega-disaster, the solution is the same. Get humanity space-faring and colonize.
It won't happen if we poison ourselves and destroy the ecosystem with no regard, nor will it happen if we sit naked in unlit/unheated caves drinking grass smoothies for fear of "harming the planet" with civilization and industry.
All life on this planet, and the planet itself, is doomed for destruction. Nobody knows when, but it *will* happen. I'd hate to think humans would be penny-wise but pound-foolish when it comes to environmental/climate-change/conservation issues and end up extinct for all their trouble and suffering.
Strat
Oops, "O'Donnell" not "McDonald".
That'll teach me not to preview.
Well, maybe it will. :P
Strat
you're just trying to bagel the question.
And you're just trying to keep it all under lox & cream-cheese!
It's a conspiracy.
A delicious, tasty conspiracy!
The worst, most insidious kind!
Fiends!!
Sincerely,
Rosie McDonald
Actually I thought he was just another Republican crackpot but I find myself actually agreeing with a lot of his positions...
You know, I'm not certain from the linked article what *exactly* is meant by "ending the Federal student loan program".
Keep in mind that, just relatively-recently, the current administration took over student loans completely from private banks and declared that all loans were to come directly from a Federal agency (dept.?).
Up until recently, the actual loans came out of a normal bank with Federal guarantees on the private loan, along with the government also handing out Federal grants, etc.
So, does he mean end the current direct Federal education loans and simply let things return to how they were for decades, or does he mean end everything...direct, indirect, loan guarantees, everything?
I would be OK with things simply returning to the former default position where students had been getting loans for decades, and some pressure was felt by colleges & universities to keep tuition costs down to compete.
Not that getting the government out of education isn't a worthwhile goal, but if he really means to end *all* Federal government involvement including the previous system of Federal student loan guarantees on loans banks make to students, it's going to take years to set up the totally-private-sector system & economic infrastructure well ahead of time to ensure there's as little interference as possible with a worthy student's ability to gain a degree.
Strat
What, did some teacher run over your dog on the way to a union meeting when you were five?
People like you are the reason we have unions in the first place. Unneeded in the public sector? Because postal workers should roll over and accept 100,000+ in job cuts to cover a fiscal hole created by Congress, when they mandated that the Post Office fully fund pensions for the next 75 years - meaning people who haven't even been born yet? PATCO - one of their main goals of the strike was to get a shorter work week to maintain the intense levels of concentration needed to keep planes from flying into eachother.
Instead, Reagan fired all the traffic controllers, and now you have them dozing off on their shifts because they might only have a couple hours off between shifts.
All that typing, and yet you still failed to refute a single fact or statement in my post.
Instead, all you did was point out how incompetent and corrupt government is, which is an argument against having government negotiate with a third party to spend other people's money.
Thanks for helping to make my points!
Strat
In 2011, in multiple states in the US, the Republican Party... abolished unions.
Wrong.
Unions for government workers had many of their bargaining rights restricted or eliminated. Not private sector Unions.
Public sector (government employee) Unions are an abomination. Their purpose is not to share in profits, as government makes no profits. It's to grab all the tax money they can and influence lawmakers to pass laws to increase their power.
The government employee Unions "negotiate" for higher wages & benefits, paid for by taxpayers, not the profits of a private business, with one political Party (who don't themselves feel the pain of a bad deal for the taxpayers), and then the Union takes money from Union members as Union dues and contributes a large portion right back to the election campaigns and PACs of that same Party.
It's an incestuous and corrupt system that robs taxpayers blind and funnels money into one political Party's coffers, while ensuring lawmakers pass laws favorable to increasing the Union's power and wealth.
Even FDR said public sector unions were bad. The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don't generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this "unthinkable and intolerable."
Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead, their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic...a fact that unions once recognized.
Strat
I would have thought it would be obvious that the computer the robot is typing on is "trusted". Yes, my computer has a TPM. It's disabled by default, can only be initialized from the BIOS and can be cleared and reinitialized at any time.
Why would a robot typing have any effect on what that computer is allowed or not allowed to do with T.C. enabled? If, for example, T.C. receives a blacklist that forbids the use of the word "democracy", it will not be transmitted or received whether the typist is human or robotic.
I think you may have some basic misconceptions about "Trusted Computing". Try reading this: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
HTH
Strat
Controlling what can be used to send and receive data, *AND* what data can be sent and received (T.C. also has the ability to remotely & retroactively add, remove, or edit any data), are the central purposes of "Trusted Computing" and part of what it is designed to do.
Once your ISP's network routers refuse to connect any computer to the internet that doesn't incorporate "Trusted Computing", that dog won't hunt. It's worrisome that many network routers in use by ISP's right now are already equipped with "Trusted Computing"...they just need a command to switch it on. Your PC likely already has "Trusted Computing" incorporated into the motherboard.
Strat
It sounds like you are indeed predicting the 'society goes into totalitarian lockdown' scenario. If that did come to pass, the side issue of ending up with an absolutely controlled and censored internet (enabled to technologies such as TPM) would no longer be worth worrying about.
What I am saying is that eliminating the ability of people to freely and anonymously communicate is one of the necessary first steps toward governments enacting a non-free society.
Once that goal of eliminating the freedom to anonymously communicate is accomplished, the other steps towards a totalitarian society will become like dominoes falling at an ever-increasing rate, with the death of free & anonymous communications as the first domino.
This is more of a warning and a reminder of the lessons of history, as there may still be time stop this loss of a critical freedom to a modern free society and thus prevent, or at least cripple, the current progression towards totalitarianism and the loss of individual freedom, opportunity, & choice.
Do men have the ability to rule themselves? *This* is the core question. I and most Americans believe they can, and it is the core premise upon which the Republic was founded.
Most of the world does not think men can rule themselves, as well as many in America that want to hand over more and more of their freedom and the responsibilities & ownership of the results of their choices that are part of that freedom, to government in exchange for a false sense of security and "free government stuff" these days.
Strat
Why stop at the CPU? If it comes to that, eventually there will be enough sufficiently pissed off and motivated individuals to make their own internet. It might take a long time if the 'old' internet becomes locked down and unusable for such subversive uses, but it too will happen eventually. The only way this could be stopped is if society itself goes into totalitarian lockdown and you can't even freely associate with people face to face. Not saying the above is impossible, but that's a few steps beyond only having absolute control over our toys.
Governments won't allow a "dark internet" to exist in any significant size, manner, or form. What are you going to use to transfer the data with? Existing internet infrastructure? A key part of the whole "Trusted Computing" plan is to eventually deny the ability to connect *anything* to the existing 'net unless it has TPM running.
Wireless mesh networks of some kind? The FCC and their equivalents in other countries will quash that right away. The key point of "Trusted Computing" is to deny access to alternatives, and the only way it can be truly effective. Anyone attempting to route around the TP-enslaved network will be labeled by governments as terrorists/kiddy-diddlers/criminals and thrown in prison or killed by a drone strike as a "threat to national security".
No, once governments have decided that Trusted Computing is what will be, the only way out is to make major changes to those governments. The problem here is that revolutions throughout history have quite (most?) often ended with governments much worse than what they started with, with only a few exceptions.
Frankly, I'm glad I'm older and may not live to experience what the next 20-30 years will bring. It's not going to be pretty. Keep in mind that through most all of human history, totalitarian and brutal rule has been the norm, and the recent experiments with governments respecting and enshrining individual freedom and the idea that men can rule themselves is quite a recent new phenomenon. One that a large proportion of the world doesn't believe in and is actively working to see that it goes the way of the dinosaurs.
"Interesting times" indeed.
Strat
I (and apparently the UK government) am not talking only about potentially "libelous" posts, simply "anonymous" posts by a UK citizen, and/or websites/hosting administered/owned by a UK citizen that allow/contain anonymous posts by a UK citizen.
Say for example some UK official or bureaucrat is angry at some UK citizen because he cheated on that bureaucrat's/official's daughter, finds that citizen made an unrelated, non-libelous, Anonymous Coward post on Slashdot, and has him prosecuted. Or that same government official/bureaucrat decides to attack a potential political rival.
"Libel" is simply the given reason for enacting the law, not a requirement for prosecution AFAICT.
Strat
No, the UK can't force anything on a site hosted outside the UK. They can block the traffic inside the UK, with varying degrees of effectiveness (see China, Egypt).
If they can tie either an anonymous post by a UK citizen, or website/hosting ownership of the offshore website where an anonymous post by a UK citizen is made to a UK citizen, couldn't they prosecute them?
I'm not at all certain that a UK citizen in the UK would be safe from prosecution just because they either made an anonymous post on an offshore website, or if they administered or paid for hosting an offshore website where a UK citizen made an anonymous post.
Governments and corporate entities worldwide share a common interest in desiring the end of internet anonymity for individuals. Don't expect such efforts to halt the ability of individuals to communicate anonymously to end with the UK
As proof, just look to the recent /. story about the Italian EU MEP, Tiziano Mott,i advocating "black boxes" for logging be required by law to be connected to every personal internet communications device.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/20/0311234/eu-debates-installing-a-black-box-on-your-computer
Strat
That is not fair. Presumably, you have to do something to get a bowling award.
I'm sorry if my comparison to an award for actual achievement inferred or implied in any way that the Nobel Peace Prize required doing or accomplishing anything. :)
Strat
Why not nominate the Nobel Peace Prize to the Science Editorial Board. They are correct in that "political maps that seek to advance disputed territorial claims have no place in scientific papers".
Since the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee has turned the Peace Prize itself into a political and ideological advocacy/popularity contest (e.g. Obama's award for, as it turns out, not much at all), good luck with that. Thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee, the Prize now ranks right up there with a bowling trophy in prestige and gravitas.
Strat
It's actually very good idea. You may send a package to your wife in automatic car instead of driving there.
I'm sure there's probably some law against sending explosive devices in automatic vehicles. :)
On the other hand, I'm sure terrorists would love the idea...well, except for missing out on the 72 virgins.
Strat
...you were out, they pull you back in.
Strat
what is a journalist? who gets to define it?
In the real world, a journalist is whomever the large, aggressive, not-so-bright, sometimes corrupt, uniformed men with shiny bits of metal on their chests that have lots and lots of guns, armored vehicles, helicopters, combat armor, tasers, pepper spray, snipers, and PMITA prisons to throw you in says they are...or are not.
The upside is that you might be able to dispute their decision later in a court of law...*if* you survive.
Strat
but when we lefties do things to try to acknowledge and do something about the cronyism (see the OWS demonstrations), we're accused of class warfare.
Because the people at the OWS protests are mostly ignorant, clueless "useful idiots" being used by those like Soros, Obama, Van Jones, "big labor", and other Leftists who desire the collapse of the US so they can take over. It's those on the Progressive/Left in BOTH parties that are responsible almost entirely for the cronyism. The protestors have been stirred up by class-warfare rhetoric and demagoguery, and have no real clue for what or who they are working. If they were informed and intellectually honest they'd be marching on the White House.
They advocate for Socialism and Communism while being totally ignorant of their long history of horrors, or even worse and more foolishly, think that it's just that Socialism and Communism haven't been "truly" tried yet in "no true Scotsman" fashion. Human nature dictates that Socialism and Communism *always* ends horribly with untold suffering in the meantime.
Strat