This is actually interesting - I don't think I've seen a real discussion of this sort of thing in ages.
Couple of points:
So, Libertarians agree with the anarchists: total personal liberity is an ideal. But, the Libertarians don't take the governmental acualisation of this imperative as a finality.
Couple of things, the first of which is annoying. There are _l_ibertarians and _L_ibertarians. The Libertarian Party does not represent everyone who calls themselves libertarians, which stands in contrast to the term, "Republican", for instance. Everyone qualified to vote in the U.S. is both a republican, and a democrat, by virtue of birth or naturalization, but they break up on the capital letters. Sorry if you already know this, but it is an important distiction.
Second point: I believe you're attempting to triangulate on things by sweeping the dial from side to side, so to speak. By doing so, you're missing the point, in subtle ways. People who call themselves 'libertarians' disagree on many, many points, but the fundamental point of agreement that makes one a libertarian is this: 'relations betweeen people should be voluntary'.
Note that there is no statement about 'total personal liberty' or anything along those lines. Seeking off in that direction doesn't lead to libertarian thought - it leads to, as you said, anarchism.
The difference is that the anarchist will let someone drown, because, hey? maybe they wanted to, whereas the libertarian will pull them out, and then bill them. Old joke, but it does illustrate part of the difference.
However, we've reached a similar and equally insoluble situation. For the sake of good measure: Anarchists(if one could imagine utilitarianistic anarchists -- they sure wouldn't have too much problem coming to a conclusion utilitarianisticly - ha!) would say "no laws!" Marxist-Leninists would say something else, distinguishably none that defend private property etc. Again, it becomes a matter of ideology/beleif of what a functional society is/what is a moral imperative etc.
Sometimes I think I should be studying philosophy instead of physics, particularly right now when i should be studing for midterms. Oh well, I can consider this leisure time. But what a sad Friday evening that makes this...
Actually, I think your mistake is in thinking of names like 'libertarian' being things that describe certain points on a series of sliders. While it is true that some theories of governance would result in more or fewer laws, the point is what sort of laws are in place. There are factions of Christians who want almost no law, other than the ten commandments. Hey, almost no law, right? Until you're obligated to kill your daughter for making out with a boy. (No, I'm not kidding.) (To be clear, I'm also not bashing christians - I'm not one, but some of my best friends, etc. No, really, a person very close to me is an Episcopal, and her take I respect heavily.) The point is that the matters of public law should be aligned with what makes sense, and less is better.
Are you being compelled to do something? That is wrong.
Is someone stealing from you? That is wrong.
Are you killing yourself slowly with drugs? That's not good, but that's your business.
Did you take up a collection to fund a hiway? Great. Enjoy it.
There are problematic issues, involving national defense, game theory, and public goods. Libertarians tend to believe they're soluble, but they are there.
(BTW, the concept of 'utilitarian anarchist' isn't as goofy as you think- google 'anacho-syndicalist'. While it doesn't make a cohesive philosohy, people do try.)
And they don't offer any definitive reasons that trump any other political parties' reasons for choosing their particular ideological position.
If you're looking for a well reasoned philosophical argument for libertarianism (small "l"), you should really just google it, or perhaps start with Libertarianism: a Primer, by Boaz. Basically, it comes down to a distillation of classic liberalism (which should not to be confused with recent U.S. redefinitions of the word) - a human owns itself, the right to property is right and proper, interfering with other's actions is immoral, unless that person's actions themselves are immoral, etc.
The short version is simple to state: all human relations should be voluntary. Folks that aren't familiar with the arguments tend to be on board with that statement, until they're surprised by the implications. Libertarians differ on the proper scope of the state, but tend to sort of cluster around the notion that the state's only legitimate role is to protect its citizens from the illegitimate initiation of force.
Variations include Objectivism/Randian thought, which include things that start looking like moral precepts. (I'll not include my kneejerk Rand humour here.), Anarcho-Capitalism, which starts with the above, but holds that there is _no_ legitimate role for the state, and Anarcho-Syndicalism, which tends to hold, roughly, that the whole human race is the state, and that property is owned by all, but it tends to shift all over the place, from espouser to espouser.
Names to google, if you want a strong background on the arguments:
Classic liberalism:
David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith
Modern libertarianism:
Well, just google around - there's a lot of material on the web.
Anarcho-Capitalism:
David Friedman (especially recommended - The Machinery of Freedom), Roy Childs, some of the writings of Timothy May.
Anarcho-Syndicalism:
The most respectable was probably Krotopkin.
Objectivism:
Well, Ayn Rand. And that eager looking 11th grader over there. (OK, sorry.)
Take India, for example. While they may have pop singers and the like who are enormously popular domestically, the global market for such music doesn't even begin to approach that of America's.
And when India's pop singers become wildly famous internationally, thus multiplying the available funds, a local influence aggregator will take interest in passing laws to "protect" them.
That's an amazing group of people you're lumping together.
I believe the point is to identify most, but not all, of the easily cateorizable folks who like to experiment in social engineering on a grand scale based on a vision of what things should be, rather than what they will be.
Put another way, people who want to tell you what to believe, do, and think, because they think they know what is best for you.
Next to the only thing missing is intelligent psychic snails from the star system of Epsilon Eridani.
Not being an exohistorian, I can't comment on their social or political policies.
amazing, you don't know who I'm voting for or if I'm even an american.
Sorry, I don't understand. What's amazing?
Correct, I don't know, on either count. I did state my bias, in order to cut out ambiguity there. And, I admit, I did rant a little, which is part of why I stated my bias. But most of my post was about the grandparent, which quibbled about margins of error and statistical bias.
and what happens if you add in defense spending I wonder? Why pull that out?
The rationale is that defense is (a) vital and (b) not an accurate reflection of policy, because it depends heavily on the behaiours of the rest of the world. There's a lot to that, and a lot to the observation that it should be included, as Bush's foreign policy shows, because it actually is "discretionary spending".
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began
We all know "official" figures are better, because officials making official statements have no agenda, and are only interested in facts.
I'm not sure why you're interested in the "since the conflict began" part. I mean, that's the stated point - to measure things since the conflict began.
some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000.
Sure, and some faith-based visionaries will talk about the "opportunity value" of not having people tortured by Saddam, while ignoring the people tortured by the U.S. People disagree about all sorts of things, and estimates even more so.
concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision,"
Are you taking issue with people stating that their data has a margin of error?
quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study
I don't understand getting excited about a fact: if you ask someone a question, and they lie, you get bad data.
report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.
It was probably partisan. Neat. The neat thing about partisan behaviour: both sides can play. What does Rove come up with? "Well, the troops are to blame for those explosives being missing. And Kerry is a waffly guy."
possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq
It is also possible that people were flown in to die there, just to make the faith-based coalition of the willing look bad. What's the problem you're attempting to identify?
more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report
Um. Are you taking issue with the fact that they failed to survey every single person in Iraq? The U.S. seems to be willing to elect the next president on faith-based voting platforms, and you're taking issue with a statement about margin of error?
For the record: yes, I'm for Kerry, and fail to see how anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. can't be. I expect to hate him as soon as he's elected (in a contest between nearly anyone and Kerry, I'd take nearly anyone), but the combination of Bush's incompetence, hubris, political calculation and unwillingness to visit reality, I'll take Kerry, thanks.
As for this survey, sure, it is a partisan attack. It is also based on facts. It is inprecise, to be sure. Are you willing to talk about the overall underlying reality of what it is pointing out, or do you want to pick at nits while plugging your ears?
You're right, to an extent. Few folks are actually going to deploy the reference release.
I've used parts of prior releases, though - there are handy things there, and it saved me a hell of a lot of work.
The conjunction of the features are terribly useful in many specialized settings, and not having to either ingregrate a bunch of different crap or rebuild it is great. I suspect this is how most people use it.
The next step in our evolution is to for us to transcend humanity... which is likely to make some people very unhappy because we would, in effect, be emulating god.:)
Being really obsessed with language, it is hard for me to pass up things like "us [transcending] humanity..." but, I will.
What strikes me as important here is which is likely to make some people very unhappy because we would.
I do believe the next N years are going to be all about various people who would really, really like it if various other people didn't do X. Where X is any number of things, including worshipping the wrong god, allowing women to have a life, failing to to(e) the line when called, etc.
Imagine a world filled with tort lawyers and claims adjusters. That's where your kids are going to live.
These are people who couldn't be bothered to get off their a**es to register themselves, they just happened to fill out a form only when someone came and pestered them to do it. I'm not terribly bothered by the fact they won't be voting this election either.
In that case, I won't be terribly bothered when you have no rights. Me, I'll be sitting in a country where people actually give a damn.
Thanks for clearing things up for me - for a minute, I felt a twinge of guilt sbout you poor suckers.
Because guess what: XML + XQuery is a reimplementation of a hierarchic database system. It may be optimal for hierarchic data, but wait until the majority apply it to tabular/set-type data. Ugly, ugly.
Hey, no need to wait - I've seen people doing this already.
Some code in a project my company just took over was using XML for moving what amounts to array-of-arrays style data around _internally_, in the application. Had XSDs and everything. One of the worst cases of consultant-work padding I've seen in a while.
Well as for the first part, this is really due to poor design.
[...]
Null was meant to take the place of all the hack jobs that were used in older databases to signify non-value, NaN and so on.
Yes, and this is a big part of the point of D. The authors assert that the way that current DB structures are designed leads to bad design- that there shouldn't be nulls. They have a lot of good reasons for this belief, and it is true that SQL leads people to rely on nulls in cases is a sort of synergystic nightmare of lazyness.
(1.08X10^8 Clueless points to the first person who says they don't use nulls, and instead set everything that is be null to ''.)
The language goes hand in hand with designing databases differently, without the influence of SQL.
And if it were actually relational, then it might be interesting in the current discussion. But it ain't. That it comes up is funny, in context, because mistaking things like XML for relational is something that Date regularly has massive heart failure over.
I would expect you to provide some evidence showing CO2 levels and the average global temperature from a few hundred years ago. I think going back 1000 years should be sufficient for this exercise.
Debate desperation tactic #5: Attack the medium when you have no way to counter the factuals.
So, now that that's taken care of, AC: back on track: Please post _anything_ that (a) has not been amply proven false and (b) supports the notion that rising CO2 levels aren't a problem. If you can't, can I suggest you head to a forum that you might like better?
You're forgetting the reason they wanted to retard browser growth - to retard the growth of an alternate platform for developing business apps.
That reason to keep other browsers from spreading is still valid - XAML, etc. will take several years to spread. In the mean time, they have a massive hole in the casle wall.
(Not sure why I was modded off-topic on the parent... whatever.)
Sure, Hollywood folk deserve a voice like any other person, and they have a vector.Having spent 10 years in SF, I'm not inclined to give LA folks much credit for is-a-person creditentials, but I suppose that's different.
I met a couple of rock stars and film magnets, and I must say that I was only impressed once. As for office?...no. buch of unrealistic pucks.
Actually, Tom Waits would be my candidate for president. Yes, I'd have a beef with him in short order. But at least the SOTU addess would kick ass.
you don't see anything wrong with trying to steal $2 billion dollars from taxpayers? If GW Bush asked the taxpayers to bail him out on a $2-billion dollar flop investment he made, there'd be a feeding frenzy (and rightfully so).
Um, you see the irony here, yes? For the purposes of debate, I'll grant your take on Soros (something that in reality is a lot more interesting than a certain flawed book may illustrate, but whatever). How much has in taxpayer debt has fed the companies attached to the Bush apparat? Halliburton, sure, but look deeper - lots of smaller oil exploration companies, various mercenary firms now doing swift business, Quallcomm (featured here just recently) is still trying to suckle at the teat, etc.
You want to talk about "theft from the taxpayers"? Take a good, hard look at your government.
"Wealth governs this country, and wealth uses military violence to control the
rest of the world the best it can. And we're responsible. And we will pay the
price for it."
- former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark
You appear to be confusing "capitalism" with "victor mandated spoils of war". Sure, the concepts can be a little difficult to keep straight - lots of folks appear to be encumbered by the same problem of late. Keep working at it though.
This is almost surely some engineering company that wants to harvest all of the town's data to set up a for-profit service. The argument about why or why not to favor this individual is hard to settle, but both sides of the argument about "freedom of information" and "security" are disingenuous.
Why the anti-profit bias? So long as this hypothetical engineering company can't keep others from getting the data too, it is not in the least disingenuous to talk about freedom of information.
Come on - Anyone who asks for data does so for a reason - as part of a larger goal. That some goals benefit the requestor financially doesn't make the request less legitimate than any other requestor.
Or put it a different way - any request for this data that is granted is a financial benefit, in that the requestor would otherwise have to gather it themselves at great expense. Centralizing the gathering in the government either should be seen as a legitimate function of government, and therefor a benefit for all citizens, or as an illegitimate function, in which case it shouldn't happen.
By the way, as someone who once held a TS SIOP ESI clearance in the USAF, I do indeed believe there is information that is rightly classified and kept from the public. I'm not saying that specifically GIS data should or should not be, but not all information obtained by the government should be made public.
Of course you do. And in some cases, you may even be right. But relying on 'if you knew what I know" arguments is inherently weak and not a little manipulative.
One excellent test of whether or not a government action is legitimate is whether or not it is done in the sight of the people it supposedly serves. Just because it isn't doesn't directly imply that is isn't legitimate (it is a dangerous world), but it is a definite symptom of illegitimate behaviour.
The Bush crew are one of the most secretive administrations in a very long line of creeping nanny statists. It is trite to say but true - rot grows in dark places.
But hey, I'm one of these unrealistic small government types. What do I know.
That's pretty funny. Complaining that some people tars a group of things with the same brush, you tar a group of things with the same brush.
Although I'm not sure what you mean by "extreme spamfighter", but I am rather vehement about the topic, and do not belong to the subset of pople who think that high collateral damage is a good method of stopping spam (You seem to be thinking of the ORBS jerks from back-when).
Slashdot Mirror
Couple of points:
So, Libertarians agree with the anarchists: total personal liberity is an ideal. But, the Libertarians don't take the governmental acualisation of this imperative as a finality.
Couple of things, the first of which is annoying. There are _l_ibertarians and _L_ibertarians. The Libertarian Party does not represent everyone who calls themselves libertarians, which stands in contrast to the term, "Republican", for instance. Everyone qualified to vote in the U.S. is both a republican, and a democrat, by virtue of birth or naturalization, but they break up on the capital letters. Sorry if you already know this, but it is an important distiction.
Second point: I believe you're attempting to triangulate on things by sweeping the dial from side to side, so to speak. By doing so, you're missing the point, in subtle ways. People who call themselves 'libertarians' disagree on many, many points, but the fundamental point of agreement that makes one a libertarian is this: 'relations betweeen people should be voluntary'.
Note that there is no statement about 'total personal liberty' or anything along those lines. Seeking off in that direction doesn't lead to libertarian thought - it leads to, as you said, anarchism.
The difference is that the anarchist will let someone drown, because, hey? maybe they wanted to, whereas the libertarian will pull them out, and then bill them. Old joke, but it does illustrate part of the difference.
However, we've reached a similar and equally insoluble situation. For the sake of good measure: Anarchists(if one could imagine utilitarianistic anarchists -- they sure wouldn't have too much problem coming to a conclusion utilitarianisticly - ha!) would say "no laws!" Marxist-Leninists would say something else, distinguishably none that defend private property etc. Again, it becomes a matter of ideology/beleif of what a functional society is/what is a moral imperative etc. Sometimes I think I should be studying philosophy instead of physics, particularly right now when i should be studing for midterms. Oh well, I can consider this leisure time. But what a sad Friday evening that makes this...
Actually, I think your mistake is in thinking of names like 'libertarian' being things that describe certain points on a series of sliders. While it is true that some theories of governance would result in more or fewer laws, the point is what sort of laws are in place. There are factions of Christians who want almost no law, other than the ten commandments. Hey, almost no law, right? Until you're obligated to kill your daughter for making out with a boy. (No, I'm not kidding.) (To be clear, I'm also not bashing christians - I'm not one, but some of my best friends, etc. No, really, a person very close to me is an Episcopal, and her take I respect heavily.) The point is that the matters of public law should be aligned with what makes sense, and less is better.
Are you being compelled to do something? That is wrong.
Is someone stealing from you? That is wrong.
Are you killing yourself slowly with drugs? That's not good, but that's your business.
Did you take up a collection to fund a hiway? Great. Enjoy it.
There are problematic issues, involving national defense, game theory, and public goods. Libertarians tend to believe they're soluble, but they are there.
(BTW, the concept of 'utilitarian anarchist' isn't as goofy as you think- google 'anacho-syndicalist'. While it doesn't make a cohesive philosohy, people do try.)
If you're looking for a well reasoned philosophical argument for libertarianism (small "l"), you should really just google it, or perhaps start with Libertarianism: a Primer, by Boaz. Basically, it comes down to a distillation of classic liberalism (which should not to be confused with recent U.S. redefinitions of the word) - a human owns itself, the right to property is right and proper, interfering with other's actions is immoral, unless that person's actions themselves are immoral, etc.
The short version is simple to state: all human relations should be voluntary. Folks that aren't familiar with the arguments tend to be on board with that statement, until they're surprised by the implications. Libertarians differ on the proper scope of the state, but tend to sort of cluster around the notion that the state's only legitimate role is to protect its citizens from the illegitimate initiation of force.
Variations include Objectivism/Randian thought, which include things that start looking like moral precepts. (I'll not include my kneejerk Rand humour here.), Anarcho-Capitalism, which starts with the above, but holds that there is _no_ legitimate role for the state, and Anarcho-Syndicalism, which tends to hold, roughly, that the whole human race is the state, and that property is owned by all, but it tends to shift all over the place, from espouser to espouser.
Names to google, if you want a strong background on the arguments:
Classic liberalism:
David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith
Modern libertarianism:
Well, just google around - there's a lot of material on the web. Anarcho-Capitalism:
David Friedman (especially recommended - The Machinery of Freedom), Roy Childs, some of the writings of Timothy May.
Anarcho-Syndicalism:
The most respectable was probably Krotopkin.
Objectivism:
Well, Ayn Rand. And that eager looking 11th grader over there. (OK, sorry.)
And when India's pop singers become wildly famous internationally, thus multiplying the available funds, a local influence aggregator will take interest in passing laws to "protect" them.
I believe the point is to identify most, but not all, of the easily cateorizable folks who like to experiment in social engineering on a grand scale based on a vision of what things should be, rather than what they will be.
Put another way, people who want to tell you what to believe, do, and think, because they think they know what is best for you.
Next to the only thing missing is intelligent psychic snails from the star system of Epsilon Eridani.
Not being an exohistorian, I can't comment on their social or political policies.
n/t
Sorry, I don't understand. What's amazing?
Correct, I don't know, on either count. I did state my bias, in order to cut out ambiguity there. And, I admit, I did rant a little, which is part of why I stated my bias. But most of my post was about the grandparent, which quibbled about margins of error and statistical bias.
So again, please, what is your point?
The rationale is that defense is (a) vital and (b) not an accurate reflection of policy, because it depends heavily on the behaiours of the rest of the world. There's a lot to that, and a lot to the observation that it should be included, as Bush's foreign policy shows, because it actually is "discretionary spending".
But, there you go, that's the reasoning.
We all know "official" figures are better, because officials making official statements have no agenda, and are only interested in facts.
I'm not sure why you're interested in the "since the conflict began" part. I mean, that's the stated point - to measure things since the conflict began.
some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000.
Sure, and some faith-based visionaries will talk about the "opportunity value" of not having people tortured by Saddam, while ignoring the people tortured by the U.S. People disagree about all sorts of things, and estimates even more so.
concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision,"
Are you taking issue with people stating that their data has a margin of error?
quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study
I don't understand getting excited about a fact: if you ask someone a question, and they lie, you get bad data.
report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.
It was probably partisan. Neat. The neat thing about partisan behaviour: both sides can play. What does Rove come up with? "Well, the troops are to blame for those explosives being missing. And Kerry is a waffly guy."
possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq
It is also possible that people were flown in to die there, just to make the faith-based coalition of the willing look bad. What's the problem you're attempting to identify?
more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report
Um. Are you taking issue with the fact that they failed to survey every single person in Iraq? The U.S. seems to be willing to elect the next president on faith-based voting platforms, and you're taking issue with a statement about margin of error?
For the record: yes, I'm for Kerry, and fail to see how anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. can't be. I expect to hate him as soon as he's elected (in a contest between nearly anyone and Kerry, I'd take nearly anyone), but the combination of Bush's incompetence, hubris, political calculation and unwillingness to visit reality, I'll take Kerry, thanks.
As for this survey, sure, it is a partisan attack. It is also based on facts. It is inprecise, to be sure. Are you willing to talk about the overall underlying reality of what it is pointing out, or do you want to pick at nits while plugging your ears?
A lot of people seem to feel that way, which is why the constitution is in tatters.
One of the prices of freedom is that other people get to have it, too.
I've used parts of prior releases, though - there are handy things there, and it saved me a hell of a lot of work.
The conjunction of the features are terribly useful in many specialized settings, and not having to either ingregrate a bunch of different crap or rebuild it is great. I suspect this is how most people use it.
Being really obsessed with language, it is hard for me to pass up things like "us [transcending] humanity..." but, I will.
What strikes me as important here is which is likely to make some people very unhappy because we would.
I do believe the next N years are going to be all about various people who would really, really like it if various other people didn't do X. Where X is any number of things, including worshipping the wrong god, allowing women to have a life, failing to to(e) the line when called, etc.
Imagine a world filled with tort lawyers and claims adjusters. That's where your kids are going to live.
In that case, I won't be terribly bothered when you have no rights. Me, I'll be sitting in a country where people actually give a damn.
Thanks for clearing things up for me - for a minute, I felt a twinge of guilt sbout you poor suckers.
Hey, no need to wait - I've seen people doing this already.
Some code in a project my company just took over was using XML for moving what amounts to array-of-arrays style data around _internally_, in the application. Had XSDs and everything. One of the worst cases of consultant-work padding I've seen in a while.
[...]
Null was meant to take the place of all the hack jobs that were used in older databases to signify non-value, NaN and so on.
Yes, and this is a big part of the point of D. The authors assert that the way that current DB structures are designed leads to bad design- that there shouldn't be nulls. They have a lot of good reasons for this belief, and it is true that SQL leads people to rely on nulls in cases is a sort of synergystic nightmare of lazyness.
(1.08X10^8 Clueless points to the first person who says they don't use nulls, and instead set everything that is be null to ''.)
The language goes hand in hand with designing databases differently, without the influence of SQL.
And if it were actually relational, then it might be interesting in the current discussion. But it ain't. That it comes up is funny, in context, because mistaking things like XML for relational is something that Date regularly has massive heart failure over.
Will a dataset covering 500x that long be sufficient?
Note the current ramp up, from a cyclic highpoint.
Sooooo... next quibble? If we work through enough, maybe you'll notice that reality isn't optional.
So, now that that's taken care of, AC: back on track: Please post _anything_ that (a) has not been amply proven false and (b) supports the notion that rising CO2 levels aren't a problem. If you can't, can I suggest you head to a forum that you might like better?
That reason to keep other browsers from spreading is still valid - XAML, etc. will take several years to spread. In the mean time, they have a massive hole in the casle wall.
Sure, Hollywood folk deserve a voice like any other person, and they have a vector.Having spent 10 years in SF, I'm not inclined to give LA folks much credit for is-a-person creditentials, but I suppose that's different.
I met a couple of rock stars and film magnets, and I must say that I was only impressed once. As for office? ...no. buch of unrealistic pucks.
Actually, Tom Waits would be my candidate for president. Yes, I'd have a beef with him in short order. But at least the SOTU addess would kick ass.
Being a Rosa Parks takes a lot of luck (if you can call it that), and you can't pick your timing.
Um, you see the irony here, yes? For the purposes of debate, I'll grant your take on Soros (something that in reality is a lot more interesting than a certain flawed book may illustrate, but whatever). How much has in taxpayer debt has fed the companies attached to the Bush apparat? Halliburton, sure, but look deeper - lots of smaller oil exploration companies, various mercenary firms now doing swift business, Quallcomm (featured here just recently) is still trying to suckle at the teat, etc.
You want to talk about "theft from the taxpayers"? Take a good, hard look at your government.
"Wealth governs this country, and wealth uses military violence to control the rest of the world the best it can. And we're responsible. And we will pay the price for it."
- former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark
Why the anti-profit bias? So long as this hypothetical engineering company can't keep others from getting the data too, it is not in the least disingenuous to talk about freedom of information.
Come on - Anyone who asks for data does so for a reason - as part of a larger goal. That some goals benefit the requestor financially doesn't make the request less legitimate than any other requestor.
Or put it a different way - any request for this data that is granted is a financial benefit, in that the requestor would otherwise have to gather it themselves at great expense. Centralizing the gathering in the government either should be seen as a legitimate function of government, and therefor a benefit for all citizens, or as an illegitimate function, in which case it shouldn't happen.
Of course you do. And in some cases, you may even be right. But relying on 'if you knew what I know" arguments is inherently weak and not a little manipulative.
One excellent test of whether or not a government action is legitimate is whether or not it is done in the sight of the people it supposedly serves. Just because it isn't doesn't directly imply that is isn't legitimate (it is a dangerous world), but it is a definite symptom of illegitimate behaviour.
The Bush crew are one of the most secretive administrations in a very long line of creeping nanny statists. It is trite to say but true - rot grows in dark places.
But hey, I'm one of these unrealistic small government types. What do I know.
That's pretty funny. Complaining that some people tars a group of things with the same brush, you tar a group of things with the same brush.
Although I'm not sure what you mean by "extreme spamfighter", but I am rather vehement about the topic, and do not belong to the subset of pople who think that high collateral damage is a good method of stopping spam (You seem to be thinking of the ORBS jerks from back-when).