"Corporations would be very different entities in a truly libertarian world."
I've gotta say I hope you're right, but I think we would not be as well off as many hope. I also think that it is predominately a mental exercise as for our Body Politic and economy to shift that far would be an amazing thing to see. I highly doubt it will ever come to pass. -nB
"You know what, let's do it the libertarian way, keep the fsking government out and hey, if Clear Channel owns the entire spectrum, oh fscking well, remember he who pays the piper gets to pick the song. If clear channel can afford it, why not let them, isn't that capitalism at it's finest?"
I hope you get modded up;). Yes this is true, but going the libertarian way is opening Pandora's box. The thing is if you are going to do that you need to go all in (IMHO). Most Americans (/. crowd included) don't really want that. The few that do are often seen as more conservative than the Republican Party. If we (U.S.A.) were to go truly into the libertarian way of doing things I think one of two things would happen: 1) All hell would break loose as MegaCorp Inc. takes over the world like some bad 80's SF movie. or 2) It actually works as the citizenship steps up to the plate and behave like adults (yeah right).
Heinlin got it right with Bread and Circuses. (If you don't understand the reference, go read Take Back Your Government).
For the record I did read the article.
""We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills," Foale said, referring to amenities like toilets and a kitchen."
He is not referring to the ISS. He is reverring to new ships to get out of the Earth's gravity well.
Nice bit o flamebait though:-)
"The real questions is why regulate the spectrum at all. [. ..] arbitration process put in place to prevent infringing use. [. . . ] The problem with massive deregulation is one of cost however. The FCC (and by proxy the Federal Govt.) makes lots of money from selling access rights."
The problem is not cost (or Fed income). The problem is the deepest pockets would win the spectrum. I personally like the EIB network even if I periodically disagree with them. What scares me is if their parent company (Clear Channel Communications) had their way they'd own even more spectrum. The FCC is (barely) keeping them in check and your idea would effectively give them access to the entire US spectrum.
I would tend to think this _does_ belong in the federal domain because radio emissions tend to carry across state (and national) borders, no matter how well you police them (on a good day I can send a 500 mW signal from CA to HI). If it was a state by state thing it would end up costing taxpayers more in the end and may result in those living at state borders not having any reasonable broadcast TV as two states are in a pissing contest as to who gets to host the transmitter (and thus get the tax revenue). By licencing on a federal level those issues are rendered non-issues. I fully understand your point of view, I just think that in this case the current governing system is fine the way it is. That does not mean I like the selling of spectrum the way the FCC does it, just that I think a bunch of SCC's (State Communication Commissions) is worse than one FCC. -nB
Wholly excellent. I wish you were not right about the "flaiming sword" point, but you are.
It's just that this (not so) perfect psychological and physical specimen really would like some basics if I "ain't comin back".
As to the article: I really liked the concept of using the space station as a base for Lunar exploration and, in turn using the Moon as a base of operations for a Mars expidition. -nB
""Microsoft affirmed that its recent security improvements to IE would be made available only to XP users." You don't see that as a BIG deal? That Recent security updates would be available ONLY to XP users??"
I don't understand why they are not willing to support one back generation of their software (Win2K). What they've effectively said in this statement is: 'Anytime we come out with a new OS you have no choice but to upgrade. If you don't you will be vulnerable to all the BadStuff(tm) out there and we won't help you. Nevermind that the products you just bought are not even halfway through their life cycle.'
This pretty much solidifies that I'm going to be a full time Linux Junky at home as soon as I can wean my wife off of Windows. -nB
We've been rollong our own patches for 3 years now. And while we're deploying XP Pro on all new notebooks we have a ton of older test equipment where the vendor has us locked into older revs of the WinOS (everything but ME, XP home, and PreNT4). It's a huge PITA when M$ tries a stunt like this and we are left holding the bag after our vendors (all smaller than us) give up and say they can't do anything about it.
We employ roughly 60K people worldwide and have double that many PCs (at least). I'm sure other mega corps like us will be able to pressure M$ into supporting at least 2K for quite some time to come.
With that said, half our data center and most all of our engineering data services are running on some form of *nix.
-nB
" big labels won't let their stuff be released with DRM 'protection' [. ..] all the big stuff is available for free anyhow so this gives the indies some exposure"
I would think that selling without DRM would be preferable to having it distributed via P2P but that's just me, and: At as little as 25c/song how much goes to the indie artists? I'll likely sign up just to try it out as it really is cheap enough to do that and I prefer the MP3 format b/c that way I don't have to sacrifice quality to transcode from other formats. -nB
So true. My last raise ammounted to my being able to afford three more sodas a week (assuming I saved the cans). I am not kidding. I got a 0.xx% raise which ammounted to 78c / week.
That didn't come close to increases in my Cost of Living. -nB
"HEY KOREA WE BLEW U UP IN WW2 W/ TEH ATOM BOMB WE'LL DO IT AGAIN."
That's just sad. That someone is that wrong on their history about such a major point. I would post a correction, but I'd rather not post my IP addr to the world on her blog. I'll have to do it when I get home from work. -nB
"I'd imagine that something like this would best be built along the equator anyways, for technical reasons."
IIRC this _must_ be built at the equator, specifically because of the requirements for a corrosponding point in space at a geo orbit.
-nB
That's still preferable to the normal way of doing things. This way when a 1user is spoofed into releasing account info in some e-mail, at least their account is still secure. Granted as an earlier poster noted, this only protects their AOL account and not their bank account. -nB
I'm on it. By the endo of today I'll have added a bunch of worthless files to my site with cool names.
This gets me wondering though. . .. If I wanted to take the ??AA to court over one of these would just listing some filenames be the equivelent of entrapment? If so I need some files that would be legitimate. Say a short video of someone grinding a point on a PCB and naming that grind.avi or something. Any ideas?
I live in Cali, so this could get quite fun as I have the 9th circus court to play with. -nB
Slashdot Mirror
Wierder . . . How do you loose a shuttle?
Even if it is a test vehicle I'd think they would keep pretty close tabs on it.
-nB
.eh - Western Sahara
Sponsoring Organization:
Not assigned
Administrative Contact:
Not assigned
Technical Contact:
Not assigned
URL for registration services: None listed.
Whois server: None listed.
Record last updated - 27-September-1999
Hm.....
not sure I trust that link from work.
-nB
"Are we going to post an article every time Google Local goes live in a country?" /. we worship all things Linux, Apple, and Google.
This is
-nB
http://www.inuvik.ca/index.html
Offical town of Inuvik website (just for kicks)
-nB
So does this mean I can get localized data for Canada by going to google.ca?
"Corporations would be very different entities in a truly libertarian world."
I've gotta say I hope you're right, but I think we would not be as well off as many hope. I also think that it is predominately a mental exercise as for our Body Politic and economy to shift that far would be an amazing thing to see.
I highly doubt it will ever come to pass.
-nB
"You know what, let's do it the libertarian way, keep the fsking government out and hey, if Clear Channel owns the entire spectrum, oh fscking well, remember he who pays the piper gets to pick the song. If clear channel can afford it, why not let them, isn't that capitalism at it's finest?"
;).
I hope you get modded up
Yes this is true, but going the libertarian way is opening Pandora's box. The thing is if you are going to do that you need to go all in (IMHO). Most Americans (/. crowd included) don't really want that. The few that do are often seen as more conservative than the Republican Party. If we (U.S.A.) were to go truly into the libertarian way of doing things I think one of two things would happen:
1) All hell would break loose as MegaCorp Inc. takes over the world like some bad 80's SF movie.
or
2) It actually works as the citizenship steps up to the plate and behave like adults (yeah right).
Heinlin got it right with Bread and Circuses. (If you don't understand the reference, go read Take Back Your Government).
-nB
For the record I did read the article. ""We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills," Foale said, referring to amenities like toilets and a kitchen." He is not referring to the ISS. He is reverring to new ships to get out of the Earth's gravity well. Nice bit o flamebait though :-)
"The real questions is why regulate the spectrum at all. [. . .] arbitration process put in place to prevent infringing use. [. . . ] The problem with massive deregulation is one of cost however. The FCC (and by proxy the Federal Govt.) makes lots of money from selling access rights."
The problem is not cost (or Fed income). The problem is the deepest pockets would win the spectrum. I personally like the EIB network even if I periodically disagree with them. What scares me is if their parent company (Clear Channel Communications) had their way they'd own even more spectrum. The FCC is (barely) keeping them in check and your idea would effectively give them access to the entire US spectrum.
-nB
I would tend to think this _does_ belong in the federal domain because radio emissions tend to carry across state (and national) borders, no matter how well you police them (on a good day I can send a 500 mW signal from CA to HI). If it was a state by state thing it would end up costing taxpayers more in the end and may result in those living at state borders not having any reasonable broadcast TV as two states are in a pissing contest as to who gets to host the transmitter (and thus get the tax revenue). By licencing on a federal level those issues are rendered non-issues.
I fully understand your point of view, I just think that in this case the current governing system is fine the way it is. That does not mean I like the selling of spectrum the way the FCC does it, just that I think a bunch of SCC's (State Communication Commissions) is worse than one FCC.
-nB
Wholly excellent.
I wish you were not right about the "flaiming sword" point, but you are.
It's just that this (not so) perfect psychological and physical specimen really would like some basics if I "ain't comin back".
As to the article: I really liked the concept of using the space station as a base for Lunar exploration and, in turn using the Moon as a base of operations for a Mars expidition.
-nB
Not sure what I think of no toilets :-|
-nB
""Microsoft affirmed that its recent security improvements to IE would be made available only to XP users."
You don't see that as a BIG deal? That Recent security updates would be available ONLY to XP users??"
I don't understand why they are not willing to support one back generation of their software (Win2K). What they've effectively said in this statement is:
'Anytime we come out with a new OS you have no choice but to upgrade. If you don't you will be vulnerable to all the BadStuff(tm) out there and we won't help you. Nevermind that the products you just bought are not even halfway through their life cycle.'
This pretty much solidifies that I'm going to be a full time Linux Junky at home as soon as I can wean my wife off of Windows.
-nB
We've been rollong our own patches for 3 years now. And while we're deploying XP Pro on all new notebooks we have a ton of older test equipment where the vendor has us locked into older revs of the WinOS (everything but ME, XP home, and PreNT4). It's a huge PITA when M$ tries a stunt like this and we are left holding the bag after our vendors (all smaller than us) give up and say they can't do anything about it. We employ roughly 60K people worldwide and have double that many PCs (at least). I'm sure other mega corps like us will be able to pressure M$ into supporting at least 2K for quite some time to come. With that said, half our data center and most all of our engineering data services are running on some form of *nix. -nB
" big labels won't let their stuff be released with DRM 'protection' [. . .] all the big stuff is available for free anyhow so this gives the indies some exposure"
I would think that selling without DRM would be preferable to having it distributed via P2P but that's just me, and:
At as little as 25c/song how much goes to the indie artists?
I'll likely sign up just to try it out as it really is cheap enough to do that and I prefer the MP3 format b/c that way I don't have to sacrifice quality to transcode from other formats.
-nB
Thank you. ;-)
Just about what I hd in mind.
-nB
Sure, why not?
It makes as much sense as all (o.k. many of) the other aspects of our political system.
-nB
So true.
My last raise ammounted to my being able to afford three more sodas a week (assuming I saved the cans). I am not kidding. I got a 0.xx% raise which ammounted to 78c / week.
That didn't come close to increases in my Cost of Living.
-nB
Zealot or nimrod?
or is zealot == nimrod?
-nB
"HEY KOREA WE BLEW U UP IN WW2 W/ TEH ATOM BOMB WE'LL DO IT AGAIN."
That's just sad. That someone is that wrong on their history about such a major point. I would post a correction, but I'd rather not post my IP addr to the world on her blog. I'll have to do it when I get home from work.
-nB
"I'd imagine that something like this would best be built along the equator anyways, for technical reasons." IIRC this _must_ be built at the equator, specifically because of the requirements for a corrosponding point in space at a geo orbit. -nB
If they made it cheap enough that could be quite a lucrative tourism business, esp. if there is a hotel at the end.
-nB
it'd be funnier if it was the 42nd post and not the 27th.
-nB
That's still preferable to the normal way of doing things. This way when a 1user is spoofed into releasing account info in some e-mail, at least their account is still secure. Granted as an earlier poster noted, this only protects their AOL account and not their bank account.
-nB
I'm on it. By the endo of today I'll have added a bunch of worthless files to my site with cool names.
.
This gets me wondering though. . .
If I wanted to take the ??AA to court over one of these would just listing some filenames be the equivelent of entrapment? If so I need some files that would be legitimate. Say a short video of someone grinding a point on a PCB and naming that grind.avi or something. Any ideas?
I live in Cali, so this could get quite fun as I have the 9th circus court to play with.
-nB