> It's not as cut and dried as that unfortunately. Sometimes certain rights - like the right > to liberty - need to be denied suspects until their innocence is proven, due to the risk of > their committing further offences, or of fleeing justice.
That all depends on where your society places its priorities. Is it more important to take every possible opportunity to capture lawbreakers, even if it means casting an overly wide net? Or is protecting the rights of the innocent the most fundamental priority?
Myself, I agree with Ben Franklin "that it is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". The accused MUST be treated as though they are innocent until their guilt is proven. If that means that some means of collecting evidence are unavailable, then that's the wages of living in a free society.
Ubuntu IS Debian, for all intents and purposes. They take the excellent work that Debian publishes, do some additional (and IMO also excellent) work to refine it, and republish that as Ubuntu.
I'm completely outside of the Debian and Ubuntu communities, but I suspect strongly that Debian re-imports some of the Ubuntu refinements into their own project, as well.
I'll make you a deal. Invent a cure for asthma, and I'll get the fuck over it. Hell, if you'll pay my medical expenses for my two or three annual emergency room visits caused by smokers, I'll consider getting the fuck over it. Until then, GTFO.
No they won't. For that crowd, bribery, collusion and cartelism are all part of the free-market experience, and they like it just fine! Just so long as the gummint doesn't butt in on all the fun.
My first gaming experience is also my second earliest memory; my dad holding me up to reach the controls of a Moon Patrol arcade cabinet. He would work the speed up / slow down controls and I would shoot. =)
> Sure, there's DRM and such in Steam, but it's not obtrusive and doesn't get > in my way. So, why not? Hopefully other game publishers will learn from this.
What happens when Steam is down, or when Valve decides to shut it down?
> You could even call it anti-geek since we're all into...oh you know, technology and stuff
You want the geek spin on vinyl, here's my best shot: when you store an audio waveform on vinyl, you're actually cutting a physical, scaled down replica of the original waveform into your storage medium. You're _never_ going to get a more precise representation of the original analog waveform than a freshly-cut record.
If the spectrum were unregulated there would be no need for a fairness doctrine, an anyone would be free to put up an antenna and get his or her message out. But, as long as our agents in the government are doling out regional monopolies to particular slices of spectrum, we are well within our rights to require that the beneficiaries of those monopolies hold to certain regulations. They are always free not to enter into the voluntary agreement in the first place.
IANARadio engineer, so I have no clue if this particular range of frequencies would be useful if left wide-open for public use or not.
> Taking the WalMart example, employement contracts, like every other agreement in a free market, are a form of voluntary exchange.
In theory, sure, that's true. In practice, your much-vaunted choices often amount to "Do what your employer says do" or "Fuck off and go starve somewhere". Your repeated use of the word "bargain" is disingenuous in light of the fact that, as an individual, ones bargaining posture lies somewhere between piss-weak and nonexistant. Bargaining might actually have some meaning if it was _collective_ bargaining, which is precisely why the entrenched power structure wants (with your enthusiastic assistance, it seems) to make sure that that option is permanently closed off.
But lets stipulate for a moment that WalMart's union-busting is perfectly acceptable. Where, if anywhere, do you draw the line? Around the turn of the last century it was common for large companies to pay their employees not with cash but with credit at the company store. These credits were obviously no good on the free market, so the employee was permanently shackled to the company for their basic needs. Housing was provided as well, so quitting your job meant you lost your home and your source of food, and in all liklihood still owed some debt to the company after you departed.
But, you might say, you could just take your services elsewhere, to an employer that makes a more acceptable offer in exchange for your services! It's the way of the Free Market!
Again, that's great in theory, but when _all_ employers in a region are using the same tactics then what the hell do you do? And suppose a virtuous company springs up that wants to offer a decent day's wage for a hard day's work. How are they going to compete head-to-head with someone in the same business sector that has de-facto slave labor at their disposal?
Now, I grant you WalMart's tactics are not as extreme as this truck labor system. But do you know _why_ they're not? Because your much-hated government intervened, putting legislative support behind (say it with me now) collective bargaining unions, and ultimately creating a real middle class for the first time in this country. Do you really think for a second that the companies making massive profits off the de-facto slave system would ever have been convinced to give it up as a result of individual "bargaining"? Really?
So I guess the question I have for you is, again, where do you draw the line? Would you stop short of removing the regulatory impediments which prevent a return to the truck labor system? What about formally re-instituting slavery? Or, are you really willing to submit yourself and your family to the ravages of an unregulated free-market system?
> Extreme pro-freedom, both market and social, doesn't correlate well with the standard left/right divide.
I would dispute that libertarians are pro-freedom, but then you have to start mincing over definitions. To bring it back into the nerdy scope that this site specializes in, I would submit that it's analogous to the difference between the GPL and BSD-style licenses. Which is more free? You'll hear lots of heated arguments on both sides, and it boils down to one philosophical difference:
If your system allows an individual the freedom to subjugate the freedoms of another individual, is your system more free or less free?
Libertarianism/objectivism allows just that; an individual or group with enough political or economic power is free to use their power to impugn upon the freedom of others. For instance, WalMart is free to use their economic force to de-facto forbid their employees from bargaining collectively as a union. You, as a libertarian might find that WalMart's freedom to hire and fire as they see fit without limitation is what is required for a free society; others would argue that the right of the workers to freely associate and to bargain collectively is of greater value, i.e. leads to greater overall freedom.
> Here's 3 leftist ideals that they're hardly close to. I'm really not sure what people have in mind when they make this "far left" claim.
Actually, those are all centrist ideas. There really isn't any visible political left in the United States. The Democrats are the center-right, and the Republicans and Libertarians are the extreme right. The Greens range from left to center-left. An example of a truly leftist movement would be the Communist Part of the USA, although I would argue they aren't as hard-left as the modern Republican party is hard-right.
Part of that enforcement means the police need to have the ability to arrest people, and to force the issue if people resist.
That's perfectly fine, but we're talking about the situations when officers cross the line beyond necessary force to subdue. You can arm a law enforcement officer with a non-lethal weapon to use to subdue suspects, without condoning or allowing the same weapon to be used as an implement of torture.
> It's also not much different than what you'd experience at a private hospital in the U.S.
Right. It's 90 days later when you've sold your home and your cars, pulled your kids out of college to go to work and are trying to file for bankruptcy and can't because the bankruptcy law changed, that the difference would really hit you.
> The problem a lot of people have is paying high taxes and watching it get spent on stuff like > 1 million dollars for the Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy.
-nod- I fully agree. Wanting to cut out waste and pork spans both ends of the political spectrum, and its presence can be blamed on both.
> Also police and fire protection are generally paid for by state and local taxes
-nod- You and many of your sibling posters apparently took my using the phrase "my nation" to mean I was only talking about federal taxes. I have the same view of state and local taxes as federal; I'm willing to pay for what I use and benefit from, whether directly by using government maintained roads, bridges, schools, etc or indirectly by living in a community with (relatively) clean air and water, safe working conditions, decent labor standards, and living under the umbrella of protection from our armed forces and local police and fire departments.
Slashdot Mirror
> PS - Most of my money I spent on loose women, liquor, cars, and computers. The rest I just wasted.
With your permission, you just became my new sig. =)
> It's not as cut and dried as that unfortunately. Sometimes certain rights - like the right
> to liberty - need to be denied suspects until their innocence is proven, due to the risk of
> their committing further offences, or of fleeing justice.
That all depends on where your society places its priorities. Is it more important to take
every possible opportunity to capture lawbreakers, even if it means casting an overly wide net?
Or is protecting the rights of the innocent the most fundamental priority?
Myself, I agree with Ben Franklin "that it is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape
than that one innocent Person should suffer". The accused MUST be treated as though they are
innocent until their guilt is proven. If that means that some means of collecting evidence are
unavailable, then that's the wages of living in a free society.
> Ubuntu is 10x better than Debian
Ubuntu IS Debian, for all intents and purposes. They take the excellent work that Debian publishes, do some additional (and IMO also excellent) work to refine it, and republish that as Ubuntu.
I'm completely outside of the Debian and Ubuntu communities, but I suspect strongly that Debian re-imports some of the Ubuntu refinements into their own project, as well.
Ain't FOSS grand?
> They surpassed Nixon in that regard years ago.
-nod- Nixon only illegally wiretapped one hotel, not the entire nation.
> Get the fuck over it.
I'll make you a deal. Invent a cure for asthma, and I'll get the fuck over it. Hell, if you'll pay my medical expenses for my two or three annual emergency room visits caused by smokers, I'll consider getting the fuck over it. Until then, GTFO.
> These 'customers' only 'find' this out if they start making money by doing this illegal activity.
Tell it to customers of 321 Studios.
> So two people voluntarily made a transaction and you don't like it because it goes against your morals and what you think is "correct"?.
Corporations are not people.
No they won't. For that crowd, bribery, collusion and cartelism are all part of the free-market experience, and they like it just fine! Just so long as the gummint doesn't butt in on all the fun.
I use Comcast, and my outbound tcp/25 is blocked entirely. I can _only_ go to their SMTP relay.
> Hasta la Vista, Baby .....
How long have you been waiting to use that? =)
My first gaming experience is also my second earliest memory; my dad holding me up to reach the controls of a Moon Patrol arcade cabinet. He would work the speed up / slow down controls and I would shoot. =)
> Sure, there's DRM and such in Steam, but it's not obtrusive and doesn't get
> in my way. So, why not? Hopefully other game publishers will learn from this.
What happens when Steam is down, or when Valve decides to shut it down?
Okay... can we agree that an analog record made of 100% chemically pure Unobtainium would be the awesomest thing ever?
> You could even call it anti-geek since we're all into...oh you know, technology and stuff
You want the geek spin on vinyl, here's my best shot: when you store an audio waveform on vinyl, you're actually cutting a physical, scaled down replica of the original waveform into your storage medium. You're _never_ going to get a more precise representation of the original analog waveform than a freshly-cut record.
> if you set the metal detector off they tazer you and throw you into a wood chipper.
;)
My colleague who has a bolt holding his knee together would be strongly opposed to this plan, methinks.
Then again, I suppose he _could_ be a Terminator.
-nod- It's also worth paying attention if she threatens to stab you.
If the spectrum were unregulated there would be no need for a fairness doctrine, an anyone would be free to put up an antenna and get his or her message out. But, as long as our agents in the government are doling out regional monopolies to particular slices of spectrum, we are well within our rights to require that the beneficiaries of those monopolies hold to certain regulations. They are always free not to enter into the voluntary agreement in the first place.
IANARadio engineer, so I have no clue if this particular range of frequencies would be useful if left wide-open for public use or not.
> Taking the WalMart example, employement contracts, like every other agreement in a free market, are a form of voluntary exchange.
In theory, sure, that's true. In practice, your much-vaunted choices often amount to "Do what your employer says do" or "Fuck off and go starve somewhere". Your repeated use of the word "bargain" is disingenuous in light of the fact that, as an individual, ones bargaining posture lies somewhere between piss-weak and nonexistant. Bargaining might actually have some meaning if it was _collective_ bargaining, which is precisely why the entrenched power structure wants (with your enthusiastic assistance, it seems) to make sure that that option is permanently closed off.
But lets stipulate for a moment that WalMart's union-busting is perfectly acceptable. Where, if anywhere, do you draw the line? Around the turn of the last century it was common for large companies to pay their employees not with cash but with credit at the company store. These credits were obviously no good on the free market, so the employee was permanently shackled to the company for their basic needs. Housing was provided as well, so quitting your job meant you lost your home and your source of food, and in all liklihood still owed some debt to the company after you departed.
But, you might say, you could just take your services elsewhere, to an employer that makes a more acceptable offer in exchange for your services! It's the way of the Free Market!
Again, that's great in theory, but when _all_ employers in a region are using the same tactics then what the hell do you do? And suppose a virtuous company springs up that wants to offer a decent day's wage for a hard day's work. How are they going to compete head-to-head with someone in the same business sector that has de-facto slave labor at their disposal?
Now, I grant you WalMart's tactics are not as extreme as this truck labor system. But do you know _why_ they're not? Because your much-hated government intervened, putting legislative support behind (say it with me now) collective bargaining unions, and ultimately creating a real middle class for the first time in this country. Do you really think for a second that the companies making massive profits off the de-facto slave system would ever have been convinced to give it up as a result of individual "bargaining"? Really?
So I guess the question I have for you is, again, where do you draw the line? Would you stop short of removing the regulatory impediments which prevent a return to the truck labor system? What about formally re-instituting slavery? Or, are you really willing to submit yourself and your family to the ravages of an unregulated free-market system?
> If the Republicans are "extreme right," where the hell does someone like Ahmadinejad fit in?
Violent psychopathy is not a political ideology, modern Republicans notwithstanding.
> Extreme pro-freedom, both market and social, doesn't correlate well with the standard left/right divide.
I would dispute that libertarians are pro-freedom, but then you have to start mincing over definitions. To bring it back into the nerdy scope that this site specializes in, I would submit that it's analogous to the difference between the GPL and BSD-style licenses. Which is more free? You'll hear lots of heated arguments on both sides, and it boils down to one philosophical difference:
If your system allows an individual the freedom to subjugate the freedoms of another individual, is your system more free or less free?
Libertarianism/objectivism allows just that; an individual or group with enough political or economic power is free to use their power to impugn upon the freedom of others. For instance, WalMart is free to use their economic force to de-facto forbid their employees from bargaining collectively as a union. You, as a libertarian might find that WalMart's freedom to hire and fire as they see fit without limitation is what is required for a free society; others would argue that the right of the workers to freely associate and to bargain collectively is of greater value, i.e. leads to greater overall freedom.
> Here's 3 leftist ideals that they're hardly close to. I'm really not sure what people have in mind when they make this "far left" claim.
Actually, those are all centrist ideas. There really isn't any visible political left in the United States. The Democrats are the center-right, and the Republicans and Libertarians are the extreme right. The Greens range from left to center-left. An example of a truly leftist movement would be the Communist Part of the USA, although I would argue they aren't as hard-left as the modern Republican party is hard-right.
Part of that enforcement means the police need to have the ability to arrest people, and to force the issue if people resist.
That's perfectly fine, but we're talking about the situations when officers cross the line beyond necessary force to subdue. You can arm a law enforcement officer with a non-lethal weapon to use to subdue suspects, without condoning or allowing the same weapon to be used as an implement of torture.
Maybe with a Gilettte Mach-512 I will finally be able to get a clean, close shave without nicks and cuts!
> It's also not much different than what you'd experience at a private hospital in the U.S.
Right. It's 90 days later when you've sold your home and your cars, pulled your kids out of college to go to work and are trying to file for bankruptcy and can't because the bankruptcy law changed, that the difference would really hit you.
> The problem a lot of people have is paying high taxes and watching it get spent on stuff like
> 1 million dollars for the Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy.
-nod- I fully agree. Wanting to cut out waste and pork spans both ends of the political spectrum,
and its presence can be blamed on both.
> Also police and fire protection are generally paid for by state and local taxes
-nod- You and many of your sibling posters apparently took my using the phrase "my nation" to mean
I was only talking about federal taxes. I have the same view of state and local taxes as federal;
I'm willing to pay for what I use and benefit from, whether directly by using government maintained
roads, bridges, schools, etc or indirectly by living in a community with (relatively) clean air and
water, safe working conditions, decent labor standards, and living under the umbrella of protection
from our armed forces and local police and fire departments.