Which is a good thing. You want to take your dad to the hospital for heart surgery and find out that the surgeon and lead nurse have two year degrees from the local tech school? Medical malpractice lawsuits would actually be the nightmare the GOP pretends it is. And without FDA mandated testing, we'd have a Vioxx every day of the week. Government regulation makes health care safer and cheaper for both patients and the industry. A "free medical market" might save you money in the short run, but the high cost of poor care would more than wipe out any "savings" you had.
Are you sure that there would be no certicifaction of doctors and health care if there were no government involvement? I'm pretty sure health care customers would demand a private agency that does the same functions as the AMA and the FDA. Doctors can still be licensed by the AMA and other accreditation agencies, just like schools (both public and private) are accreditted by private non-profit organizations. Medical products can be screened by a private equivalent of the FDA, just like movie ratings are dealt with by the MPAA rather than the FCC or some other government agency. Patients can risk going to non-accreditted doctors and using non-screened medicine, but most patients would look for accreditted doctors and screened medicine. (If the doctors/medicine are falsely accreditted/labeled, then they can be charged by the government for fraud).
There wouldn't be chaos in a free market health care system. There will still be regulations and standards, just imposed by the marketplace instead of by the government.
This is without a doubt the dumbest thing I have ever seen written on Slashdot, and that's saying something. For one thing, it's objectively false. The reasons for high health costs are covered pretty well here (what they don't address is the spiraling costs of administration resulting from insurance paper shuffling). The bottom line is that medical care isn't very well provided via the market - customers don't have the information they need to compare providers, and as the linked article points out, no one is particularly interested in going for the lowest bidder when they need heart surgery done. "Cartelization" and "excessive government regulations" are nothing more than strawmen for the radical right to tilt at.
emphasis mine
The link you gave me tells part of the story of why health care is expensive, and all of the points you gave me in that link were valid. But it doesn't tell the entire story. The article didn't suggest socialization of health care, which unfortunately you have deduced from the article. The article didn't use attacks such as "the dumbest thing that I ever seen written" and calling excessive regulations "strawmen for the radical right."
Your argument is illogical. "The bottom line is that medical care isn't very well provided via the market." Prove it. In the United States, the market served medical care well before the government intervened in the 1950s and 60s. Since then, the cost of medical care have skyrocketed. You are suggesting complete government involvement in health care. Plus, we don't have free market health care. Get that in your head. You can't attack free market health care based on the current American health care system because it isn't free market at all.
We don't need any more socialist "solutions," and health care is one of them. Food is very important for living; do you suggest that we have socialized food and socialized beverages straight from the federal government? Socialist economics doesn't work; period. Read the history of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Western Europe, and other socialist/communist places before you spew out anti-market crap. I don't understand why so many people want the government's hand involved in so many things. They wouldn't trust the government to look at phone records, or to provide food for its citizens, but they want government involvement in health care. The last thing that this country needs is the overhead, bureaucracy, and taxation of socialist medicine. I wouldn't trust the government to watch my things for a few minutes; I definately don't trust the government with my life.
Then again, I see that you made me a foe, so I did the exact same to you. It's one thing to disagree, but it is another thing to call the entire post "absolute complete idiocy" and make me a foe. Very well; I did the same to you.
If there were no taxes and only what you wished to contribute, do you think there would be welfare, healthcare, low cost housing, police, etc?
In a free-market government, there would be no welfare, socialized medicine, or housing subsidies (see welfare). I am a minarchist (or, a bit more accurately, classical liberal), which is somebody who prefers a small government that is based on federalism. Welfare and other social programs are incompatable to classical liberalism because they go against the free market. Police is an entirely different matter. Police services are local services offered by the city or county, and they should be paid with by local taxes. The purpose for police funding is to help protect the liberties of the citizens. Police funding is one of the important difference that divides small-government libertarians and anarchocapitalists (an anarchocapitalist is a libertarian who doesn't support any government at all). Without essential police services, people who infringe on other's rights to liberty would be allowed to roam freely. This is a very legitimate role for government. Same with basic fire services, military (but on a federal level), and a judicial system.
Now, as far as social contracts go, let's just assume that a social contract exists. The problem is, your definition of the social contract and my definition of the social contract are very different when it comes to economics. Your social contract seems to recognize a lot of positive rights; rights that must be fulfilled with the involvement of many third parties. For example, in order to implement a social safety net, it depends on all of the people in that society to build it. However, how are you going to build that safety net? Many positive righters want to force people to build the net at gunpoint. That is wrong in my book; it isn't right to coerce people and is a violation of the non-aggression principle. My social contract only recognizes negative rights; rights that do not require involvement from other people. The purpose of government is to uphold negative rights. Negative rights are the core of classical liberalism and libertarianism.
I'm getting a bit abstract here, but my opposition to socialism in general is based on the fact that socialism is entirely based on fulfilling positive rights; positive rights that require coercion in order to be feasibly fulfilled. Individuals don't live to serve the state; the state is just a product of a group of individuals, after all. European-style socialism is what you get in the best case; everything looks good on the surface, but dig deeper, and you find that all of those social services aren't as great as they appear. At the worst case, you end up with atrocities such as the Soviet Union and Maoist China that best belong in history books.
Wait a minute. You're trying to bring social economics (externalities) into this. Sorry, but I don't believe in socialism at all. Socialized medicine only works when everybody is on the socialized system (and when you are paying extremely hefty taxes in order to support the health care system, whose costs increases as more government regulations are imposed and enforced). Socialized medicine may work, but it isn't the cheapest or most efficient solution, not to mention that it is incompatable with the basic ideas of freedom (why should I be forced at gunpoint to provide health care for some stranger? I'm not selfish (don't even try to come back with that argument), but I compassion comes from the heart and from one's volition, not from force).
And what's the point of a "free" operating system if nobody could use it because the good drivers are all closed-source, and the license of the free software doesn't allow the use of those drivers? Sometimes you need to use proprietary, closed-source software while a FOSS version at works just as well is in the works.
I use a free operating system, too. I like FOSS; I can download it for free, study the code, make contributions to it, and not have to worry about breaking EULAs and laws in order to use it (for example, I can install Linux and BSD on any computer that has a version of that OS. On the contrary, I am forced to buy a Mac if I want legal, native OS X; I will be charged for piracy and/or breaking the DMCA if I installed OS X on my PC). If I was given the choice between a FOSS version of software that works almost as good (or better) as a proprietary version, I'd always choose the FOSS version (e.g., gaim vs. Trillian, Firefox vs. IE, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, etc.). But my free operating system allows me to bundle proprietary binary drivers, which I would gladly use if I had no viable FOSS alternatives. The only restrictions of the free operating system that I use is that you must keep the copyright notice on all derivatives of the software. That, to me, is freedom.
Face it; the GNU folks are never going to convince all software developers/companies and all hardware manufacturers to freely open their code and have it distributed freely under the GPL (or some other FOSS license). Part of freedom involves the freedom to not open your source, or the freedom to not give up your modifications. The OS that I use follows this philosophy, and has been beneficial to both the OS and many other companies.
The GNU philosophy is interesting, and I benefit from it everyday when I use this Firefox or Konqueror browser, or listen to music with mplayer, or compile my C applications with gcc, but do not realistically expect everybody to drop their "evil" proprietary ways and join the Church of Ignucius. Overtly restrictive policies, like the licensing issue with bundling closed-source drivers, hurt GNU software adoption and make people think of it more as a kooky philosophy instead of a philosophy with reason. Sometimes you need to use proprietary software to collaborate with the outside world (I have a Windows partition), sometimes to do homework (my computer science classes use Java, and the FOSS implementations aren't good enough, so I use Sun's JDK), and sometimes you need it for the sake of convenience (I plan on getting a Mac soon; it suits my needs better).
I wonder which is worse; Linux taking over the world with a reliance on proprietary drivers and software, or Windows continuing to reign with Trusted Computing and DRM just because Linux (the most viable FOSS alternative at this point) is too hard to install because it can't bundle the drivers. I would like to see FOSS improve and succeed; the moment FOSS software matches the ease of use and features of OS X will be the moment that I switch permanently to whatever FOSS distribution is easiest to use. But sabotaging improvements just because of ideological reasons doesn't work. The GNU movement needs to be incremental, not radical.
Sure beats letting the market determine who recieves care. Here, the rich get vanity surgery and specialists for everything, while the poor are treated only in the emergency room. From a humanitarian standpoint, our system is a failure.
We don't have free-market health care in the United States. Heck, we are literally a stone throw away at implementing socialized medicine in the United States. The high cost of health care is due to the cartelization and licensing of doctors and medicine, as well as government regulations. In fact, the US government spends more per capita on health care than even Cuba (communism's current trademark) does. Read here to see what the AMA has done to health care, as well as this article, which describes how the United States's health care is anything but free-market.
I agree that our health care situation is bad, but the last thing that we need is socialized medicine. We need to move away from socialism. Socialism is a mistake of the 20th century, and it is best that we finally use free-market ideas.
But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows?
Currently, I have a PC dual-booting between Windows XP and FreeBSD. FreeBSD is for much of my regular day-to-day work (word processing, coding, etc.), while Windows is for compatability (MS Office and other softare that are Windows/OS X only) and for certain software/files that don't have a FreeBSD program (my iTunes music, for example). The solution works, but I'm in the market for a new computer currently.
With OS X, I don't have to dual-boot between Windows and FreeBSD. OS X supports all of the proprietary software that I need (such as MS Office and iTunes, for example), while it also has a built-in Unix environment. I can kill two birds with one stone.
My only wish to Apple is that they release hardware that is more cost-competitive to other PC offerings, since the only difference between a Mac and a Dell/HP/Gateway/Lenovo/Toshiba/etc. is the operating system and Macs usually come loaded with extras (like Bluetooth and Firewire). You can't get OS X (legally) without a Mac, and I'm not a software pirate or DRM hacker, so you must buy Apple hardware. Macs are very cost-competitive when you compare feature-to-feature, but Apple doesn't do low-end, whereas the rest do. For example, from Gateway, one of my friends got a 17" Gateway laptop with comparable specs to the 15" MacBook Pro (minus Bluetooth, Firewire, and OS X) for about $1800. You can't buy a $1800 17" MacBook Pro from Apple (even though the 17" MacBook Pros have an excellent value for their cost). My point is that Apple does cost more than a regular PC, but only because Apple sends out their machines fully loaded.
I personally wish that Apple would release OS X so that way I can get a very cheap, expandable PC with OS X. I like OS X better than I like the hardware (which is nice, but I see great offerings from other manufacturers). However, since that isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm in the market for a MacBook Pro (although I'm waiting until Apple releases their iBook replacement before I make up my mind).
Just spend your summer coding your dream girl in your basement. Sure, you're going to have to make a lot of advances in AI research, robotics, and biology, and spend some time collecting Turing and Nobel awards for your advancements, but it will be worth it in the end when you see the finished results.
You sound more like a Minarchist than a Libertarian.
I've always considered myself a minarchist (somebody who believes in minimal government); perhaps I should go by that label. I'm not a full-fledged libertarian or anarchocapitalist (although I am admittedly sympathetic to both). I do read articles from the Mises Institute often (which has speakers ranging from classical liberals to libertarians to anarchocapitalists), as well as Reason magazine, articles from the Cato Institute, and from Milton Friedman. My views on economics are a mixture of Austrian and Chicago economics, with some anti-trust regulation (I believe that anti-trust regulation keeps the markets free).
Now, I know the difference between anarchism and libertarianism. In fact, if I understand correctly, anarchists don't like anarchocapitalists because most anarchists want to get rid of capitalism along with the government. Now, about anarchosyndicalism, I think Noam Chomsky subscribes to this ideology, as he is just as fearful (if not, much more fearful) of big business and big government. However, I don't know if anarchosyndicalism is workable, mostly for the same reason that I don't know if any form of anarchism (including anarchocapitalism) is workable. I haven't studied it in depth, but how is anarchism different from libertarianism in regards to government? Explain.
"Libertarianism Makes You Look Stupid" is actually a funny read and I actually agree with much of their points, although I staunchly disagree that libertarianism is pro-business (in the sense that business priorities are automatically prioritized over other goals) and it did make me feel bad at first. Libertarians don't worship businesses (don't get me started on the MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, software patents, copyrights, and a lot of other pro-business situations that are currently going on), they just believe in free markets.
Now, I am a different brand of libertarian. I have no problem with anti-trust regulation, for example. I have no problem with the theory of environmental regulation, but I have a problem with its implementation, which should be more free-market based (kind of like the Thoreau Institute). I don't believe in dismantling civil rights legislation until our society has fully evolved from racism and sexism (and before that happens, I believe in creating a constitutional amendment that prevents federal, state, and local governments from creating Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory laws). I don't believe that taxation is theft (although too much taxation than necessary is theft). I have no problem with government funding of education (even though it needs to improve and ever since the Feds got involved with K-12 education, things have gotten much worse). And I don't believe in bending over to businesses' demands for pro-business legislation that hurt citizens. In fact, big businesses running amok is almost as bad as big government (just minus the guns and the force, although the big businesses can control the government, making it just as bad). I believe that small government is better than big government, since smaller government don't try to micromanage the lives of individual citizens, as well as be more effective against corruption.
In fact, I lean closer to classical liberalism than to libertarianism. Classical liberalism and libertarianism are very similar, but they do differ (classical liberalism doesn't have the same fallacies of libertarianism covered in the aforementioned article). However, I understand that classical liberalism is dead; there is no such thing as a classical liberal anymore; hence, I call myself a libertarian.
All of that looks like anti-libertarian propaganda that is mostly illogical.
Here is a better suggestion; read some descriptions of libertarianism (neither from libertarian evangelists nor libertarian haters), and think for yourself.
Exactly how does this qualify as 'limited Government' again?
Dude, get with the times. Limited government was killed in 1933 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Every president since FDR has expanded federal power (even Reagan, although he stemmed much of the tide). The only presidents that I can think of in the 20th century who did believe in limited government were Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
There is no such thing as limited government anymore, sadly.
Wow, you've got all that below your belt... you must be a real hit with the ladies.
With all of that programming knowledge, once he learns some AI and some robotics (and advance both fields substantially; create some field called "biorobotics" or something), he can program a lady. Problem solved for him and all geeks like myself worldwide.
But what if you want to be this person or this person or this person? These people did very wonderful things, but those wonderful things require that they have the education to do them.
My advice to smart people; don't drop out. It is possible to do wonderful things without a degree, but a degree will open much more doors, which makes doing those wonderful things much easier than without a degree.
Reread the parent's post. HTML is not a programming language; it is a markup language. However, you still have to markup your document, kind of like how you would code a program (just without the variable setting, looping, etc.).
As a personal sidenote, I learned HTML back when I was in 3rd grade. I was always very interested in computers, and my family just got an Internet connection. (This is in the mid-90s; keep this in mind). I got interested in creating web pages, so I scoured the Internet to learn how to do so. I ended up learning HTML and made *.gif images using Paint and typing the.gif extension (I didn't know about proper file formats at the time, so I just changed the file extentions. It worked, using Windows 95 and IE 3.0). (I wish I could show you the site [it was some comic book mide with some of the ideas of myself and my then-preschool-age brother], but it is on a long-disappeared AOL member site which hasn't been archived, even though I have some WordPad documents on a disk somewhere back at home).
Later that year, I ended up learning QBASIC. I even convinced my parents the following year to buy Visual Basic, and stuck with that for a few years. After outgrowing that, I learned C, C++, and Java (by both independent study and by community college courses taken at the last year). Now I am a freshman computer science major.
So, yes, getting back to the main point, HTML is a vaild stepping stone for many kids. You can't do much with the Internet without it; in fact, I use HTML every day to type these Slashdot comments, and most message boards have some HTML-lookalike for formatting comments. After learning HTML, they might learn something more challenging, like Python (which seems to be the new intro language these days).
National ID cards are a bad idea in the United States, for a few reasons. First, this country is supposed to be a confederation of states (hence, we are the United States of America; not "America" like many people say); the federal government should be strictly bound to the Constitution. (This is different from most European nations; they are nation-states, not confederacies. Federalism doesn't exist in those nations, whereas federalism is what makes the United States different). National ID cards trample over the states' sovereignity. Ideally, I should report to the state of California, not to the feds. According to the Constitution, what function does the National ID card would have? I'm pretty sure the Consitution doesn't allow for this. However, the Constitution and the concept of federalism has been spat at and vilified since 1933 (with how the Supreme Court has acted since FDR, you would have sworn that the 10th Amendment was repealed along with the 18th in 1933), so they'll probably use the "commerce clause" or some other excuse to implement it.
National ID cards aren't the cause of totalitarian regimes, but if the United States were taken over by totalitarians, access to data would be much easier with a centralized database somewhere in Washington, DC vs. individual state records. Besides, terrorists, phishers, con artists, and other crooks would have an easier time stealing somebody's "American Freedom ID Card" and have access to all of their personal information, than if they just stole a California ID card, for example.
My objection to a national ID card in the United States is based on four reasons; it defies federalism, may give the federal government too much information (which may be very bad if our government gets worse), could make identity theft much easier and centralized, and civil liberties issues (why should I have to carry my papers around to walk down the street?). The United States needs to return to its Constitutional roots based on federalism, instead of implementing some big government program to fix all of the problems that it allegedly has.
Another semi-random thought on CS education. If you want to be a good programmer doing interesting programming--get an engineering degree. You will have a more rigorous background, and you will probably get better problem solving skills training. Alternatively, look for a school like Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (I am not a grad). that focusses on what makes an employable programmer, and subsequently get great support from industry.
I'm a freshman CS student from Cal Poly. Finally my school is mentioned on Slashdot!
Anyways, I agree. Cal Poly has a pretty good computer science department and has pretty small classes (only 25-35 students in a class, and 99% of classes are taught by PhDs). The curriculum has a nice mixture of practical and theory courses. Almost every computer science class has a laboratory component as well. Cal Poly also offers a computer engineering degree (basically an electronics engineering degree) and a software engineering degree. I am also a mathematics minor as well; my goal is actually to become a computer science researcher or professor.
Anyways, to get back on topic, I think the decline in computer science majors is due to the fact that the gold diggers (people who entered CS because it paid $$$ and not because they liked the subject) have ran away and shifted to business and law (the hot majors today). You need to be very passionate about computer science in order to do it. At my school, some people are "weeded out" after their first or second computer science classes due to the demands of the program. Some people aren't truly passionate about computer science and end up switching to another major.
So, I believe the number of CS majors are declining mostly because the gold diggers are gone, leaving only two types of students: those who think CS == creating Counterstrike (and end up weeded out), and those who are passionate about computer science.
Plan 9 offers a completely usable, modern desktop.
Plan 9 is a research operating system. I like Plan 9's architecture, file system, and many other ideas. Plan 9's goal is to further extend the notion of Unix's "everything is a file" idea. Everything, even the windowing system (rio), is a file. Plan 9 also vastly simplifies systems programming (compared to Unix). Plan 9 is a wonderful research operating system that I would love to tinker with and explore.
However, it isn't a desktop replacement for Windows/OS X users or even for Linux or BSD users. There is no office suites (or even a word processor unless you love text editors and TeX or troff), no browser on the scale of Firefox or Konqueror, no music/video players, nothing that 99% of the world uses with a computer. Besides, I'm pretty sure that users are more comfortable using this desktop, these desktops, or especially this desktop before they use this desktop. For even the most ardent *nix hackers or computer scientists, Plan 9 would be something they played with on the side (kind of like Minix or an operating system that they're working on), and Linux/BSD is their main OS.
I like Plan 9, but it isn't a desktop OS; it's a research OS. However, Plan 9 is a very innovative operating system; I wish that the major OS sellers (I'm talking to you, Apple and Microsoft) would be a bit more cutting-edge in the architecture of their OSes rather than just appearances (even though Apple has done very well since the bought NeXT; they have a hybrid kernel, for one). Plan 9, L4, the MIT exokernel project, and other projects look very interesting, and I would like to see them in use.
Somehow, all of a sudden, the most important thing about choosing a society is what people are able to do with money. Property is more important than people. And anything that maximizes the 'freedom of the market' (whatever that means, given the tendency of a market-based economy to create economic slavery) is, ipso facto, good. It's a religion, because nobody even does a very good job of saying why a free market capitalist who puts people to death on a daily basis is somehow better than a socialist leader who doesn't. But they just are, because a free market is more important than people.
I didn't say that money was more important. However, I was comparing an authoritarian capitalist leader (Pinochet) to authoritarian socialist leaders (Mao and Castro); I am not comparing Pinochet to socialists who didn't kill. In my comparison, my answer is that some freedom is better than no freedom. Under Pinochet's rule, you had free markets, but no freedom elsewhere. Under Mao's China and Cuba, there is no freedom.
An authoritarian capitalist government desparately lacks in many essential freedoms, but it is still better than having an authoritarian socialist government, simply because the economy isn't socialist. However, things get interesting when you compare a government that has free markets but completely non-free in civil liberties, to a government that has all of the civil liberties you can dream of, but has a completely non-free market (i.e., socialism or communism). Civil liberties and free markets are the yin and the yang to me; I am not pleased until I have both. Pinochet has the yang but not the yin; a socialist that fully respects civil liberties has the yin but not the yang. Just like you can't have a free country without civil liberties, you can't have a free country without free markets. Both countries in this case are equally unfree.
I don't think markets are more important than people. However, I firmly believe that people need the free market in order to be more free. Socialism and communism never allows people to be free. Even if they had all of the civil liberties in the world, what good is it if the state is telling them what to do with their money at every turn? That isn't freedom.
Freedom and individualism, to me, is the most important goals in society. Without these goals, humans are little more than slaves to somebody else or to the state. Freedom and individualism doesn't solve everything, but at least people are much more freer.
However, the freer the market, the less opportunity the people with no money have to ever gain money, and the more they come to resemble slaves.
What? In a truly free market, people will always be able to work or form businesses to earn money. If they had no money, they could borrow from somebody else and pay it back later, depending on the terms. What are you talking about?
(In a truly free market, without copyrights and patents, any invention made by someone without the money to market and defend it himself instantly is coopted by the organization to take advantage of it.)
I won't tackle the copyright issue, mostly because I haven't developed a true stance on it. I believe that copyright durations are much too long, and they need to be reduced. However, I don't know if I want to eliminate copyright or not. I've heard anarchocapitalist arguments for elimination of copyright, as well as some market-based arguments for supporting copyrights.
So now you have a choice: slavery to collectivism, or slavery to capital. The latter is often preferred by the people with capital (who tend to be Republicans and libertarians, in this country). The former isn't really preferred by anyone, which is why it's never really been tried. (The USSR, Cuba, etc are all authoritarian/aristocratic states, that are only capitalist in the lower rungs of society.) It would seem to be
And therein lies the crux. The US, "spreading democracy to the world" was more than happy to depose a popularly and democratically elected leader for a despot because "OMG! NOES! MAYBE A COMMIE!"
Maybe a commie? He is as communistic as communism could get. He is a Marxist, for crying out loud. Marxism is the most original form of communism you can get.
However, your point still stands. I am a staunch opponent of the US "spreading democracy around the world"; countries shouldn't intervene in other countries' politics, unless it is a dire threat (for example, the other country declares war on this country).
This would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. You shrug off murdering of opposition, censorship, all these democratic principles for what, precisely? The concept that Communism is one rung lower than Satanism on the totem pole?
I didn't shrug it off. Pinochet's handling of socialists and communists fit my definition of evil. I personally despise socialism and communism, but killing their believers is uncalled for in a free society; people should be free to believe what they want to believe, even if their ideas are radical. I am a libertarian; I don't want the government shutting me up because my viewpoints don't match the current government's views.
However, I would have rather lived in Pinochet's Chile than Castro's Cuba, Mao's China, or the USSR. In a free-market economy, people are free to voluntarily trade. People are free to make their own economic decisions without the state or "the community" dictating what they should do with their money. Taxes are generally kept low (or even non-existant in pure capitalism) as a result. Free markets mean freedom of the economy. Free-market economics doesn't solve all of the world's problems and it doesn't give other freedoms (Pinochet is proof of that), but it is the most free option that we have.
Leftist ideologies such as socialism and communism, on the other hand, can give a rat's behind about freedom. They would rather see the individual killed with a sickle and a hammer before he is economically free. Everything is about "the state" or "the community" (depending on the exact ideology), and the individual is just a small pawn in the chess board of society; in other words, individuals don't matter. You aren't free to trade with whom you want. You aren't free to opt out of paying for social programs. You aren't free to set up businesses without mounds of regulations and taxes (and in some ideologies, businesses don't exist). You aren't even free to grow your own crops at times (I'm referring to the USSR during the first few years of Stalin's rule). Basically, you aren't free. Everything must be for the benefit of "the community" (which turns out to be the state, in most cases). When the state grows more powerful, other freedoms are taken away. Now, I'm pretty sure that when Karl Marx sat down and wrote The Communist Manifesto, he didn't plan on restricting people's right to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, and other freedoms (other than economic ones). However, as the communist states are formed, the states grow in power. As the state grows in power, they find other freedoms to take away from you. In Cuba, for example, you better not speak out against leftism or Castro, or you'll find yourself heavily fined, at best. At the worst extremes, you get communist leaders like Mao. Mao's killing record makes Pinochet look like an angel, and I can run down the list of other communist leaders who also participated in the killing of people just because they were right-wing or anti-communistic in another way.
Put it like this: I do not support Pinochet's policies with dealing with socialists and communists (even though I am a huge supporter of his free-market economics). It is important for all of us to keep our ideologies and actions in check. We can become so passionate about not liking a certai
USA through their puppet governments are crushing down hard on any popular movement for social improvement, democracy or worker rights. Socialists, union activist, academics or generally any on the left side are hunted down and prosecuted.
And what makes you think that the leftist movements were good? (Before you continue reading, I define leftist as socialist or communist). What makes you think that they would have made social improvements? As far as I know, most major leftist countries (USSR and Cuba, for example) have been total economic failures. The only ones that I can think of that have some level of success are some Western European countries, but they are social democratic, not outright socialist. (As far as I know, the US never tried to topple any social democratic countries like Austria or France, but give me a link if I'm incorrect). I still don't think it is right for the US to intervene in other countries' politics, but don't think that the rulers that the US displaced were angels. In Chile, for example, Salvador Allende basically placed Chile on the fast track to becoming another Cuba. He nationalized everything that he could see in sight, implemented socialistic/communistic policies everywhere, and basically destroyed the economy within 3 years of being in office, which made the people even poorer. Pinochet is no angel either (he is an authoritarian and basically killed off any leftists, censored the press, and did a lot of very bad things), but he did save Chile from becoming another communist nation and implemented many free-market policies that led Chile to become an economic success story. (I wish that the United States would take a more free-market direction). Even though Chile is once again run by socialists, they are socialists in name only; they haven't touched Pinochet's free-market policies, simply because they work. Read more about Chile's recent policies here
I still agree with you with the premise that the United States shouldn't meddle in other countries' business. That's how we got into this Iraq situation in the first place.
The title of the article is incorrect; the US government didn't develop the iPod. It just helped fund the development of certain technologies at various research labs and universities that private corporations picked up and further developed on.
In other news early this morning, the US government helped develop Linux. More details come later.
So to sum up: some computer geeks thought it would be convenient for them to redefine the metric system to work using powers of two rather than powers of ten. This was fine as long as they were only interacting with other computer geeks. When computers spilled over into the world at large, however, this little shortcut conflicted with the way the terms were/are used by everyone else. Since the traditional (powers of ten) definition has both seniority and wider usage, it is now winning out, and rightly so.
I understand now. But do the metric boards really expect us to naturally use words like kibibyte and gibibyte? I can barely pronounce the words; the new prefixes seem like a foreign language and are a concoction of terms instead of something naturally flowing. Heck, the terms "binary kilobyte" and "binary gigabyte" makes more sense; people won't be confused, and computer scientists/electrical engineers won't have to use those awful-sounding new prefixes. Heck; I don't have a problem with the abbreviations KiB and GiB.
Personally, I understand the need for some clarity with the terms. But I wish that the standards boards picked suffixes much better than "kibi-," "gibi-," and other nasty-sounding names. This is like taking candy from a baby, and replacing it with brussels sprouts. I like the new abbreviations, but the new prefixes need to be replaced with something a bit more pronouncable.
No, gigabyte in computer science and electrical engineering circles has always meant 2^30 (just like kilobyte = 2^10 and megabyte = 2^20), even if it doesn't fit with the SI definition of "giga-." Standards are determined by usage, not what some group decides in 1999. (I never heard the word kibibyte and gibibyte until I read another discussion about this topic on Slashdot a few months ago). I put blame on the marketroids for using the powers of 10 versions of the prefixes in order to deceive customers. There is a huge difference between 2^30 bytes and 10^9 bytes, for example. Unfortunately, the marketroids won, and and the computer scientists/electrical engineers had to regroup. We now have to bend over backwards to people who don't know their computing terms.
Now, we are forced to use "kibibytes" and "gibibytes" and "tebibytes" instead of "kilobytes," "gigabytes," and "terabytes," respectively. It is hard to even pronounce these new terms; the words sound like a foreign language (and I know a few languages). Gibibyte just sounds ugly and unnatural; I prefer my gigabytes, thank you. I prefer "binary kilobyte," "binary gigabyte," and "binary terabyte" to these new terms; they are much easier to pronounce, and they also keep the distinction clear.
Language (or at least the English language) is defined by the people who use it, not a committee.
Maybe I am a bit overly bitter, but I just don't like these terms at all.
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Are you sure that there would be no certicifaction of doctors and health care if there were no government involvement? I'm pretty sure health care customers would demand a private agency that does the same functions as the AMA and the FDA. Doctors can still be licensed by the AMA and other accreditation agencies, just like schools (both public and private) are accreditted by private non-profit organizations. Medical products can be screened by a private equivalent of the FDA, just like movie ratings are dealt with by the MPAA rather than the FCC or some other government agency. Patients can risk going to non-accreditted doctors and using non-screened medicine, but most patients would look for accreditted doctors and screened medicine. (If the doctors/medicine are falsely accreditted/labeled, then they can be charged by the government for fraud).
There wouldn't be chaos in a free market health care system. There will still be regulations and standards, just imposed by the marketplace instead of by the government.
emphasis mine
The link you gave me tells part of the story of why health care is expensive, and all of the points you gave me in that link were valid. But it doesn't tell the entire story. The article didn't suggest socialization of health care, which unfortunately you have deduced from the article. The article didn't use attacks such as "the dumbest thing that I ever seen written" and calling excessive regulations "strawmen for the radical right."
Your argument is illogical. "The bottom line is that medical care isn't very well provided via the market." Prove it. In the United States, the market served medical care well before the government intervened in the 1950s and 60s. Since then, the cost of medical care have skyrocketed. You are suggesting complete government involvement in health care. Plus, we don't have free market health care. Get that in your head. You can't attack free market health care based on the current American health care system because it isn't free market at all.
We don't need any more socialist "solutions," and health care is one of them. Food is very important for living; do you suggest that we have socialized food and socialized beverages straight from the federal government? Socialist economics doesn't work; period. Read the history of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Western Europe, and other socialist/communist places before you spew out anti-market crap. I don't understand why so many people want the government's hand involved in so many things. They wouldn't trust the government to look at phone records, or to provide food for its citizens, but they want government involvement in health care. The last thing that this country needs is the overhead, bureaucracy, and taxation of socialist medicine. I wouldn't trust the government to watch my things for a few minutes; I definately don't trust the government with my life.
Then again, I see that you made me a foe, so I did the exact same to you. It's one thing to disagree, but it is another thing to call the entire post "absolute complete idiocy" and make me a foe. Very well; I did the same to you.
In a free-market government, there would be no welfare, socialized medicine, or housing subsidies (see welfare). I am a minarchist (or, a bit more accurately, classical liberal), which is somebody who prefers a small government that is based on federalism. Welfare and other social programs are incompatable to classical liberalism because they go against the free market. Police is an entirely different matter. Police services are local services offered by the city or county, and they should be paid with by local taxes. The purpose for police funding is to help protect the liberties of the citizens. Police funding is one of the important difference that divides small-government libertarians and anarchocapitalists (an anarchocapitalist is a libertarian who doesn't support any government at all). Without essential police services, people who infringe on other's rights to liberty would be allowed to roam freely. This is a very legitimate role for government. Same with basic fire services, military (but on a federal level), and a judicial system.
Now, as far as social contracts go, let's just assume that a social contract exists. The problem is, your definition of the social contract and my definition of the social contract are very different when it comes to economics. Your social contract seems to recognize a lot of positive rights; rights that must be fulfilled with the involvement of many third parties. For example, in order to implement a social safety net, it depends on all of the people in that society to build it. However, how are you going to build that safety net? Many positive righters want to force people to build the net at gunpoint. That is wrong in my book; it isn't right to coerce people and is a violation of the non-aggression principle. My social contract only recognizes negative rights; rights that do not require involvement from other people. The purpose of government is to uphold negative rights. Negative rights are the core of classical liberalism and libertarianism.
I'm getting a bit abstract here, but my opposition to socialism in general is based on the fact that socialism is entirely based on fulfilling positive rights; positive rights that require coercion in order to be feasibly fulfilled. Individuals don't live to serve the state; the state is just a product of a group of individuals, after all. European-style socialism is what you get in the best case; everything looks good on the surface, but dig deeper, and you find that all of those social services aren't as great as they appear. At the worst case, you end up with atrocities such as the Soviet Union and Maoist China that best belong in history books.
Wait a minute. You're trying to bring social economics (externalities) into this. Sorry, but I don't believe in socialism at all. Socialized medicine only works when everybody is on the socialized system (and when you are paying extremely hefty taxes in order to support the health care system, whose costs increases as more government regulations are imposed and enforced). Socialized medicine may work, but it isn't the cheapest or most efficient solution, not to mention that it is incompatable with the basic ideas of freedom (why should I be forced at gunpoint to provide health care for some stranger? I'm not selfish (don't even try to come back with that argument), but I compassion comes from the heart and from one's volition, not from force).
And what's the point of a "free" operating system if nobody could use it because the good drivers are all closed-source, and the license of the free software doesn't allow the use of those drivers? Sometimes you need to use proprietary, closed-source software while a FOSS version at works just as well is in the works.
I use a free operating system, too. I like FOSS; I can download it for free, study the code, make contributions to it, and not have to worry about breaking EULAs and laws in order to use it (for example, I can install Linux and BSD on any computer that has a version of that OS. On the contrary, I am forced to buy a Mac if I want legal, native OS X; I will be charged for piracy and/or breaking the DMCA if I installed OS X on my PC). If I was given the choice between a FOSS version of software that works almost as good (or better) as a proprietary version, I'd always choose the FOSS version (e.g., gaim vs. Trillian, Firefox vs. IE, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, etc.). But my free operating system allows me to bundle proprietary binary drivers, which I would gladly use if I had no viable FOSS alternatives. The only restrictions of the free operating system that I use is that you must keep the copyright notice on all derivatives of the software. That, to me, is freedom.
Face it; the GNU folks are never going to convince all software developers/companies and all hardware manufacturers to freely open their code and have it distributed freely under the GPL (or some other FOSS license). Part of freedom involves the freedom to not open your source, or the freedom to not give up your modifications. The OS that I use follows this philosophy, and has been beneficial to both the OS and many other companies.
The GNU philosophy is interesting, and I benefit from it everyday when I use this Firefox or Konqueror browser, or listen to music with mplayer, or compile my C applications with gcc, but do not realistically expect everybody to drop their "evil" proprietary ways and join the Church of Ignucius. Overtly restrictive policies, like the licensing issue with bundling closed-source drivers, hurt GNU software adoption and make people think of it more as a kooky philosophy instead of a philosophy with reason. Sometimes you need to use proprietary software to collaborate with the outside world (I have a Windows partition), sometimes to do homework (my computer science classes use Java, and the FOSS implementations aren't good enough, so I use Sun's JDK), and sometimes you need it for the sake of convenience (I plan on getting a Mac soon; it suits my needs better).
I wonder which is worse; Linux taking over the world with a reliance on proprietary drivers and software, or Windows continuing to reign with Trusted Computing and DRM just because Linux (the most viable FOSS alternative at this point) is too hard to install because it can't bundle the drivers. I would like to see FOSS improve and succeed; the moment FOSS software matches the ease of use and features of OS X will be the moment that I switch permanently to whatever FOSS distribution is easiest to use. But sabotaging improvements just because of ideological reasons doesn't work. The GNU movement needs to be incremental, not radical.
We don't have free-market health care in the United States. Heck, we are literally a stone throw away at implementing socialized medicine in the United States. The high cost of health care is due to the cartelization and licensing of doctors and medicine, as well as government regulations. In fact, the US government spends more per capita on health care than even Cuba (communism's current trademark) does. Read here to see what the AMA has done to health care, as well as this article, which describes how the United States's health care is anything but free-market.
I agree that our health care situation is bad, but the last thing that we need is socialized medicine. We need to move away from socialism. Socialism is a mistake of the 20th century, and it is best that we finally use free-market ideas.
The Mac Mini starts at $600 now, not at $500. The entry price increased when they switched from PowerPC to Intel.
Currently, I have a PC dual-booting between Windows XP and FreeBSD. FreeBSD is for much of my regular day-to-day work (word processing, coding, etc.), while Windows is for compatability (MS Office and other softare that are Windows/OS X only) and for certain software/files that don't have a FreeBSD program (my iTunes music, for example). The solution works, but I'm in the market for a new computer currently.
With OS X, I don't have to dual-boot between Windows and FreeBSD. OS X supports all of the proprietary software that I need (such as MS Office and iTunes, for example), while it also has a built-in Unix environment. I can kill two birds with one stone.
My only wish to Apple is that they release hardware that is more cost-competitive to other PC offerings, since the only difference between a Mac and a Dell/HP/Gateway/Lenovo/Toshiba/etc. is the operating system and Macs usually come loaded with extras (like Bluetooth and Firewire). You can't get OS X (legally) without a Mac, and I'm not a software pirate or DRM hacker, so you must buy Apple hardware. Macs are very cost-competitive when you compare feature-to-feature, but Apple doesn't do low-end, whereas the rest do. For example, from Gateway, one of my friends got a 17" Gateway laptop with comparable specs to the 15" MacBook Pro (minus Bluetooth, Firewire, and OS X) for about $1800. You can't buy a $1800 17" MacBook Pro from Apple (even though the 17" MacBook Pros have an excellent value for their cost). My point is that Apple does cost more than a regular PC, but only because Apple sends out their machines fully loaded.
I personally wish that Apple would release OS X so that way I can get a very cheap, expandable PC with OS X. I like OS X better than I like the hardware (which is nice, but I see great offerings from other manufacturers). However, since that isn't going to happen anytime soon, I'm in the market for a MacBook Pro (although I'm waiting until Apple releases their iBook replacement before I make up my mind).
Just spend your summer coding your dream girl in your basement. Sure, you're going to have to make a lot of advances in AI research, robotics, and biology, and spend some time collecting Turing and Nobel awards for your advancements, but it will be worth it in the end when you see the finished results.
Or, you can do what I do, and just wait.
I've always considered myself a minarchist (somebody who believes in minimal government); perhaps I should go by that label. I'm not a full-fledged libertarian or anarchocapitalist (although I am admittedly sympathetic to both). I do read articles from the Mises Institute often (which has speakers ranging from classical liberals to libertarians to anarchocapitalists), as well as Reason magazine, articles from the Cato Institute, and from Milton Friedman. My views on economics are a mixture of Austrian and Chicago economics, with some anti-trust regulation (I believe that anti-trust regulation keeps the markets free).
Now, I know the difference between anarchism and libertarianism. In fact, if I understand correctly, anarchists don't like anarchocapitalists because most anarchists want to get rid of capitalism along with the government. Now, about anarchosyndicalism, I think Noam Chomsky subscribes to this ideology, as he is just as fearful (if not, much more fearful) of big business and big government. However, I don't know if anarchosyndicalism is workable, mostly for the same reason that I don't know if any form of anarchism (including anarchocapitalism) is workable. I haven't studied it in depth, but how is anarchism different from libertarianism in regards to government? Explain.
Okay, you got me. I'll read it. ;)
"Libertarianism Makes You Look Stupid" is actually a funny read and I actually agree with much of their points, although I staunchly disagree that libertarianism is pro-business (in the sense that business priorities are automatically prioritized over other goals) and it did make me feel bad at first. Libertarians don't worship businesses (don't get me started on the MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, software patents, copyrights, and a lot of other pro-business situations that are currently going on), they just believe in free markets.
Now, I am a different brand of libertarian. I have no problem with anti-trust regulation, for example. I have no problem with the theory of environmental regulation, but I have a problem with its implementation, which should be more free-market based (kind of like the Thoreau Institute). I don't believe in dismantling civil rights legislation until our society has fully evolved from racism and sexism (and before that happens, I believe in creating a constitutional amendment that prevents federal, state, and local governments from creating Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory laws). I don't believe that taxation is theft (although too much taxation than necessary is theft). I have no problem with government funding of education (even though it needs to improve and ever since the Feds got involved with K-12 education, things have gotten much worse). And I don't believe in bending over to businesses' demands for pro-business legislation that hurt citizens. In fact, big businesses running amok is almost as bad as big government (just minus the guns and the force, although the big businesses can control the government, making it just as bad). I believe that small government is better than big government, since smaller government don't try to micromanage the lives of individual citizens, as well as be more effective against corruption.
In fact, I lean closer to classical liberalism than to libertarianism. Classical liberalism and libertarianism are very similar, but they do differ (classical liberalism doesn't have the same fallacies of libertarianism covered in the aforementioned article). However, I understand that classical liberalism is dead; there is no such thing as a classical liberal anymore; hence, I call myself a libertarian.
All of that looks like anti-libertarian propaganda that is mostly illogical.
Here is a better suggestion; read some descriptions of libertarianism (neither from libertarian evangelists nor libertarian haters), and think for yourself.
Dude, get with the times. Limited government was killed in 1933 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Every president since FDR has expanded federal power (even Reagan, although he stemmed much of the tide). The only presidents that I can think of in the 20th century who did believe in limited government were Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
There is no such thing as limited government anymore, sadly.
With all of that programming knowledge, once he learns some AI and some robotics (and advance both fields substantially; create some field called "biorobotics" or something), he can program a lady. Problem solved for him and all geeks like myself worldwide.
But what if you want to be this person or this person or this person? These people did very wonderful things, but those wonderful things require that they have the education to do them.
My advice to smart people; don't drop out. It is possible to do wonderful things without a degree, but a degree will open much more doors, which makes doing those wonderful things much easier than without a degree.
Reread the parent's post. HTML is not a programming language; it is a markup language. However, you still have to markup your document, kind of like how you would code a program (just without the variable setting, looping, etc.).
As a personal sidenote, I learned HTML back when I was in 3rd grade. I was always very interested in computers, and my family just got an Internet connection. (This is in the mid-90s; keep this in mind). I got interested in creating web pages, so I scoured the Internet to learn how to do so. I ended up learning HTML and made *.gif images using Paint and typing the .gif extension (I didn't know about proper file formats at the time, so I just changed the file extentions. It worked, using Windows 95 and IE 3.0). (I wish I could show you the site [it was some comic book mide with some of the ideas of myself and my then-preschool-age brother], but it is on a long-disappeared AOL member site which hasn't been archived, even though I have some WordPad documents on a disk somewhere back at home).
Later that year, I ended up learning QBASIC. I even convinced my parents the following year to buy Visual Basic, and stuck with that for a few years. After outgrowing that, I learned C, C++, and Java (by both independent study and by community college courses taken at the last year). Now I am a freshman computer science major.
So, yes, getting back to the main point, HTML is a vaild stepping stone for many kids. You can't do much with the Internet without it; in fact, I use HTML every day to type these Slashdot comments, and most message boards have some HTML-lookalike for formatting comments. After learning HTML, they might learn something more challenging, like Python (which seems to be the new intro language these days).
National ID cards are a bad idea in the United States, for a few reasons. First, this country is supposed to be a confederation of states (hence, we are the United States of America; not "America" like many people say); the federal government should be strictly bound to the Constitution. (This is different from most European nations; they are nation-states, not confederacies. Federalism doesn't exist in those nations, whereas federalism is what makes the United States different). National ID cards trample over the states' sovereignity. Ideally, I should report to the state of California, not to the feds. According to the Constitution, what function does the National ID card would have? I'm pretty sure the Consitution doesn't allow for this. However, the Constitution and the concept of federalism has been spat at and vilified since 1933 (with how the Supreme Court has acted since FDR, you would have sworn that the 10th Amendment was repealed along with the 18th in 1933), so they'll probably use the "commerce clause" or some other excuse to implement it.
National ID cards aren't the cause of totalitarian regimes, but if the United States were taken over by totalitarians, access to data would be much easier with a centralized database somewhere in Washington, DC vs. individual state records. Besides, terrorists, phishers, con artists, and other crooks would have an easier time stealing somebody's "American Freedom ID Card" and have access to all of their personal information, than if they just stole a California ID card, for example.
My objection to a national ID card in the United States is based on four reasons; it defies federalism, may give the federal government too much information (which may be very bad if our government gets worse), could make identity theft much easier and centralized, and civil liberties issues (why should I have to carry my papers around to walk down the street?). The United States needs to return to its Constitutional roots based on federalism, instead of implementing some big government program to fix all of the problems that it allegedly has.
I'm a freshman CS student from Cal Poly. Finally my school is mentioned on Slashdot!
Anyways, I agree. Cal Poly has a pretty good computer science department and has pretty small classes (only 25-35 students in a class, and 99% of classes are taught by PhDs). The curriculum has a nice mixture of practical and theory courses. Almost every computer science class has a laboratory component as well. Cal Poly also offers a computer engineering degree (basically an electronics engineering degree) and a software engineering degree. I am also a mathematics minor as well; my goal is actually to become a computer science researcher or professor.
Anyways, to get back on topic, I think the decline in computer science majors is due to the fact that the gold diggers (people who entered CS because it paid $$$ and not because they liked the subject) have ran away and shifted to business and law (the hot majors today). You need to be very passionate about computer science in order to do it. At my school, some people are "weeded out" after their first or second computer science classes due to the demands of the program. Some people aren't truly passionate about computer science and end up switching to another major.
So, I believe the number of CS majors are declining mostly because the gold diggers are gone, leaving only two types of students: those who think CS == creating Counterstrike (and end up weeded out), and those who are passionate about computer science.
Plan 9 is a research operating system. I like Plan 9's architecture, file system, and many other ideas. Plan 9's goal is to further extend the notion of Unix's "everything is a file" idea. Everything, even the windowing system (rio), is a file. Plan 9 also vastly simplifies systems programming (compared to Unix). Plan 9 is a wonderful research operating system that I would love to tinker with and explore.
However, it isn't a desktop replacement for Windows/OS X users or even for Linux or BSD users. There is no office suites (or even a word processor unless you love text editors and TeX or troff), no browser on the scale of Firefox or Konqueror, no music/video players, nothing that 99% of the world uses with a computer. Besides, I'm pretty sure that users are more comfortable using this desktop, these desktops, or especially this desktop before they use this desktop. For even the most ardent *nix hackers or computer scientists, Plan 9 would be something they played with on the side (kind of like Minix or an operating system that they're working on), and Linux/BSD is their main OS.
I like Plan 9, but it isn't a desktop OS; it's a research OS. However, Plan 9 is a very innovative operating system; I wish that the major OS sellers (I'm talking to you, Apple and Microsoft) would be a bit more cutting-edge in the architecture of their OSes rather than just appearances (even though Apple has done very well since the bought NeXT; they have a hybrid kernel, for one). Plan 9, L4, the MIT exokernel project, and other projects look very interesting, and I would like to see them in use.
I didn't say that money was more important. However, I was comparing an authoritarian capitalist leader (Pinochet) to authoritarian socialist leaders (Mao and Castro); I am not comparing Pinochet to socialists who didn't kill. In my comparison, my answer is that some freedom is better than no freedom. Under Pinochet's rule, you had free markets, but no freedom elsewhere. Under Mao's China and Cuba, there is no freedom.
An authoritarian capitalist government desparately lacks in many essential freedoms, but it is still better than having an authoritarian socialist government, simply because the economy isn't socialist. However, things get interesting when you compare a government that has free markets but completely non-free in civil liberties, to a government that has all of the civil liberties you can dream of, but has a completely non-free market (i.e., socialism or communism). Civil liberties and free markets are the yin and the yang to me; I am not pleased until I have both. Pinochet has the yang but not the yin; a socialist that fully respects civil liberties has the yin but not the yang. Just like you can't have a free country without civil liberties, you can't have a free country without free markets. Both countries in this case are equally unfree.
I don't think markets are more important than people. However, I firmly believe that people need the free market in order to be more free. Socialism and communism never allows people to be free. Even if they had all of the civil liberties in the world, what good is it if the state is telling them what to do with their money at every turn? That isn't freedom.
Freedom and individualism, to me, is the most important goals in society. Without these goals, humans are little more than slaves to somebody else or to the state. Freedom and individualism doesn't solve everything, but at least people are much more freer.
What? In a truly free market, people will always be able to work or form businesses to earn money. If they had no money, they could borrow from somebody else and pay it back later, depending on the terms. What are you talking about?
I won't tackle the copyright issue, mostly because I haven't developed a true stance on it. I believe that copyright durations are much too long, and they need to be reduced. However, I don't know if I want to eliminate copyright or not. I've heard anarchocapitalist arguments for elimination of copyright, as well as some market-based arguments for supporting copyrights.
Maybe a commie? He is as communistic as communism could get. He is a Marxist, for crying out loud. Marxism is the most original form of communism you can get.
However, your point still stands. I am a staunch opponent of the US "spreading democracy around the world"; countries shouldn't intervene in other countries' politics, unless it is a dire threat (for example, the other country declares war on this country).
I didn't shrug it off. Pinochet's handling of socialists and communists fit my definition of evil. I personally despise socialism and communism, but killing their believers is uncalled for in a free society; people should be free to believe what they want to believe, even if their ideas are radical. I am a libertarian; I don't want the government shutting me up because my viewpoints don't match the current government's views.
However, I would have rather lived in Pinochet's Chile than Castro's Cuba, Mao's China, or the USSR. In a free-market economy, people are free to voluntarily trade. People are free to make their own economic decisions without the state or "the community" dictating what they should do with their money. Taxes are generally kept low (or even non-existant in pure capitalism) as a result. Free markets mean freedom of the economy. Free-market economics doesn't solve all of the world's problems and it doesn't give other freedoms (Pinochet is proof of that), but it is the most free option that we have.
Leftist ideologies such as socialism and communism, on the other hand, can give a rat's behind about freedom. They would rather see the individual killed with a sickle and a hammer before he is economically free. Everything is about "the state" or "the community" (depending on the exact ideology), and the individual is just a small pawn in the chess board of society; in other words, individuals don't matter. You aren't free to trade with whom you want. You aren't free to opt out of paying for social programs. You aren't free to set up businesses without mounds of regulations and taxes (and in some ideologies, businesses don't exist). You aren't even free to grow your own crops at times (I'm referring to the USSR during the first few years of Stalin's rule). Basically, you aren't free. Everything must be for the benefit of "the community" (which turns out to be the state, in most cases). When the state grows more powerful, other freedoms are taken away. Now, I'm pretty sure that when Karl Marx sat down and wrote The Communist Manifesto, he didn't plan on restricting people's right to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, and other freedoms (other than economic ones). However, as the communist states are formed, the states grow in power. As the state grows in power, they find other freedoms to take away from you. In Cuba, for example, you better not speak out against leftism or Castro, or you'll find yourself heavily fined, at best. At the worst extremes, you get communist leaders like Mao. Mao's killing record makes Pinochet look like an angel, and I can run down the list of other communist leaders who also participated in the killing of people just because they were right-wing or anti-communistic in another way.
Put it like this: I do not support Pinochet's policies with dealing with socialists and communists (even though I am a huge supporter of his free-market economics). It is important for all of us to keep our ideologies and actions in check. We can become so passionate about not liking a certai
And what makes you think that the leftist movements were good? (Before you continue reading, I define leftist as socialist or communist). What makes you think that they would have made social improvements? As far as I know, most major leftist countries (USSR and Cuba, for example) have been total economic failures. The only ones that I can think of that have some level of success are some Western European countries, but they are social democratic, not outright socialist. (As far as I know, the US never tried to topple any social democratic countries like Austria or France, but give me a link if I'm incorrect). I still don't think it is right for the US to intervene in other countries' politics, but don't think that the rulers that the US displaced were angels. In Chile, for example, Salvador Allende basically placed Chile on the fast track to becoming another Cuba. He nationalized everything that he could see in sight, implemented socialistic/communistic policies everywhere, and basically destroyed the economy within 3 years of being in office, which made the people even poorer. Pinochet is no angel either (he is an authoritarian and basically killed off any leftists, censored the press, and did a lot of very bad things), but he did save Chile from becoming another communist nation and implemented many free-market policies that led Chile to become an economic success story. (I wish that the United States would take a more free-market direction). Even though Chile is once again run by socialists, they are socialists in name only; they haven't touched Pinochet's free-market policies, simply because they work. Read more about Chile's recent policies here
I still agree with you with the premise that the United States shouldn't meddle in other countries' business. That's how we got into this Iraq situation in the first place.
The title of the article is incorrect; the US government didn't develop the iPod. It just helped fund the development of certain technologies at various research labs and universities that private corporations picked up and further developed on.
In other news early this morning, the US government helped develop Linux. More details come later.
I understand now. But do the metric boards really expect us to naturally use words like kibibyte and gibibyte? I can barely pronounce the words; the new prefixes seem like a foreign language and are a concoction of terms instead of something naturally flowing. Heck, the terms "binary kilobyte" and "binary gigabyte" makes more sense; people won't be confused, and computer scientists/electrical engineers won't have to use those awful-sounding new prefixes. Heck; I don't have a problem with the abbreviations KiB and GiB.
Personally, I understand the need for some clarity with the terms. But I wish that the standards boards picked suffixes much better than "kibi-," "gibi-," and other nasty-sounding names. This is like taking candy from a baby, and replacing it with brussels sprouts. I like the new abbreviations, but the new prefixes need to be replaced with something a bit more pronouncable.
No, gigabyte in computer science and electrical engineering circles has always meant 2^30 (just like kilobyte = 2^10 and megabyte = 2^20), even if it doesn't fit with the SI definition of "giga-." Standards are determined by usage, not what some group decides in 1999. (I never heard the word kibibyte and gibibyte until I read another discussion about this topic on Slashdot a few months ago). I put blame on the marketroids for using the powers of 10 versions of the prefixes in order to deceive customers. There is a huge difference between 2^30 bytes and 10^9 bytes, for example. Unfortunately, the marketroids won, and and the computer scientists/electrical engineers had to regroup. We now have to bend over backwards to people who don't know their computing terms.
Now, we are forced to use "kibibytes" and "gibibytes" and "tebibytes" instead of "kilobytes," "gigabytes," and "terabytes," respectively. It is hard to even pronounce these new terms; the words sound like a foreign language (and I know a few languages). Gibibyte just sounds ugly and unnatural; I prefer my gigabytes, thank you. I prefer "binary kilobyte," "binary gigabyte," and "binary terabyte" to these new terms; they are much easier to pronounce, and they also keep the distinction clear.
Language (or at least the English language) is defined by the people who use it, not a committee.
Maybe I am a bit overly bitter, but I just don't like these terms at all.