"Being an entepeneur was supposed to be the dream? I find that even more depressing. Working extremely long hours, risking bankrupcy every day, insane stress levels, all for money? No thanks, I'd rather put in my 8 hrs a day, make a fair wage, and enjoy my life."
It wasn't supposed to be like that. The idea is that when you go into business you are contributing to the prosperity if your own community. You are being a good human being. That is the reward. The money you earn you are generally going to reinvest in the business. you aren't going to consume it. It is a wonderful feeling to see your community grow and prosper and know you are doing your part.
all that when downhill with limited liability and foreign investment. no one sees the results of their investments, and consequently no one cares.. to that end corporations will stop at nothing to rape and pillage and pass off every single possible cost to third parties because their shareholders dont see any effect outside the bottom line.
then on the one hand they argue that the proper model is that the government should pass rules and regulations to stop any truly vile practice, and then on the other hand they argue that they should be expected to voluntarily refrain from vile practices (notwithstanding that they are profitable and the shareholders are clueless).
So it isn't your fault that you are disenchanted with the entire idea of free market capitalism. The whole thing was a big hoax to begin with. Capitalists are not interested in competing. They are interested in using the state to block any and all competition as much as humanly possible.
And if you only need to work 8 hours a day to enjoy your life. You are one of the lucky ones. I'm sure the 8 hour day will go bye bye before long.
"Put a hard legal limit on the processing power any person is allowed to possess. Measured in gigaflops or some other metric.
Those are your words, and there is your material limit."
Thats not a material limit. Thats just a limit. It doesn't become material until it impairs the ability to achieve the intended goal.
If I sell shoes and have sufficient processing power to sell my shoes and no additional cpu power would affect my sales. Then preventing me from having any more cpu power is NOT MATERIAL to the business of selling shoes. It is a limit of no consequence.
The END goal of a cpu is NOT merely to have processing power. It is to achieve some USEFUL COMPUTATION fast enough to facilitate some kind of DECISION. Any processing power beyond that end is utterly immaterial to the goal. And prohibiting it is hardly any great inconvenience.
" I don't think I'll be conversing with you much longer; I think if your method of argument continues like it is here, there's not much benefit, for either of us. You seem to be trying to point out gaps in logic, in your opponents position, implying that your own thinking does not hold similar gaps. (If you did recognize the ubiquity of gaps, you wouldn't be criticizing on the basis of their existence.) "
there is at least 1 logical gap in your argument: Logical gaps are NOT ubiquitous.
all logically sound lines of reasoning contain exactly 0 logical gaps.
This being TRUE, it is sufficient for someone to demonstrate a single logical gap to utterly discredit a line of reasoning. Perhaps you should read the web pages you cite as support for your position.
Since you were too lazy here is a quote for you:
"If you have a single gap in the chain, logic no longer asserts anything beyond the chain.
In fact, working backwards, if you had a single gap leading up to the present point, then that part of the chain doesn't necessarily follow, either!
It's called "non-sequitur," or "It does not follow.""
Your objection sounds like: everyone knows that all people are illogical and all chains of logic people make are illogical. if you knew this, you would not attempt to show an argument is illogical by showing the logical gap in it. The fact that you attempted to dispute a logical gap is proof of your ignorance in matters of logic. Here is a web page which contradicts what I'm saying to help prove what I'm saying.
"I do not find your undercuts persuasive; I hear them, but I think you have still missed more important things. "
Are you telling me there are more important holes in your argument that I missed?
"Sadly, your battery of trivial undercuts are so numerous, I feel no motivation to respond to them:"
This is itself a trivial undercut. moreover it is a non-sequitur undercut. Because your inability to respond when someone points out holes in your reasoning does NOT make your own argument more persuasive. And simply accusing the other party of niggling over trivial flaws (whatever that is) and missing the greater picture (completely unsupported) also doesn't support your argument. I am free to be meticulous in proving my point. And accusing me of addressing too many flaws in your position, is no accusation at all. Next time I wont bother with you. I'll just say "you're wrong" and move on.
"You will find only other little unimportant things to undercut, which are always present, in all thinking, always, and make up more ridiculous extrapolations about what I mean, and so on."
I didn't make up any ridiculous extrapolations about what you mean; What you mean is ridiculous all by ITSELF. Perhaps you can look up proof by absurdity on that web site about logic which you didn't read.
"Once that technology-stifling legal limit is in place, it will be difficult to change. What looks like a good idea one day seems absurd the next. Obligatory "640K ought to be enough for anybody" reference..."
hell, my TI-99a4 had a 16kb limit. What is your point? We limit speed on the highway, although it would be economically superior if we allowed transports trucks to drive at 100 mph on the highway, there is a harm with this so we limit it.
If there is a harm to society in superfast processors and the harm outweighs the benefit, we limit it.
you are arguing against the very notion of limits.. as if limits are fundamentally so immoral, that under no circumstances can limits EVER be used.
"As for the software, how will use be (realistically) controllable? You can punish detected misuse within your legal and physical reach, which in the information age isn't very far. I could legally take pictures of someone in public, post them, and they could be analyzed offshore."
same with porn, same with the DMCA, same with drugs, same with patents. society has proved its willingness to outlaw things which can not actually "realistically" be controlled. (personal patent violation is still a violation.. it is not realistic to control but yet it is still prohibited)
However hardware speed CAN realistically be controlled. Because very few entities whatsoever have the technology to produce the fast CPU's. It costs too much to develop a cpu production plant and its almost unthinkable that any new parties are going to come to the table to try their hand if there is no legal market for a faster cpu.
The majority of people do NOT use their cpu power. So this amounts to almost a non-restriction. And if cpu power is that dangerous then limiting what can be built/sold/etc seems reasonable. A HARDWARE limitation on cpu speed is a lot less intrustive and less vague than a software limitation on what software may do.
"Sure, but how are you going to monitor something like that? You'll need something like the Secure Hardware Environment."
If there was a legal requirement to MONITOR something in order to make it illegal sure. However there are plenty of illegal activities which go completely unmonitored. How does the government monitor to insure you are not using copyprotection circumvention software? The exact same problems exist. And yet the law (regardless what people fantasize about) does decrease the use of copyprotection circumvention software.
"Nice; You'll also need to put a hard legal limit on the ability of people to congre-^H^H^H to network their intellig-^H^H^H devices."
Only if that becomes a problem. You are attacking a straw man. You seem to admit that my proposal would eliminate the problem of the lone stalker and then cite an example of a whole group of stalkers working together on a single victim and argue that since my proposal would not stop a whole group, it should not be applied to an individual.
Your argument could be applied to a gun ban as well. Since even without guns, someone can still kill you with an axe.
"Are our answers to those questions shaped by how easy it is to get ahold of a gun? Are our answers to those questions shaped by our ability to gather evidence from the scene of a crime? If you couldn't find bullets, blood, or any other evidence, after a gun had been used, is it reasonable to believe that our laws about guns would be different? Is it reasonable to believe that our world would be different, if that's how things worked?"
Perhaps but there is lots of evidence on computers of everything you do, and since manufacturing advanced computer chips is something only a few entites on earth have any ability to do and each CPU already has a unique serial number, it would be easy to track the sale. So I'm not sure what your point is.
"Backwards countries fear empowered people. "Ideas," and such."
You didn't answer my question. I asked you, do backwards countries have more privacy protection laws. because you suggest they do.
"Privacy, especially a forced privacy, hinders the flow of ideas; Just ask any Iranian blogger, who is having privacy forced onto them. "
You are intentionally confusing privacy with censorship.
"By limiting the processor count and such, you are forcing privacy on people."
As I said, you have confused privacy with censorship.
"You're also, quite materially, limiting their intelligence."
The vast majority of mankind derives no benefit from snooping on others, and has no desire to snoop on others. In fact many of us think it immoral, if not at least extremely RUDE to snoop on others. So I'm not sure how you get the conclusion that this is a "material limit" on intelligence. You will need to cite some evidence before I even concede to that much.
On the other hand:
since secrets have economic value as well as intelligence, you also need to prove that on the whole secrets have less economic value than intelligence for your argument to hold any water. Otherwise by raising intelligence and decreasing secrets you destroy value.
And just to give my argument an air of reality: R&D only takes place because of the ability to keep secrets. No one would invest money in research if the benefit goes primarily to their competition. In a capitalist system R&D becomes pointless if it can not be conducted secretly. Your ideal society makes the cost of R&D much higher since maintaining any secrets would become more expensive once privacy is abolished.
finally: if privacy is so materially harmful to society.. perhaps you should be arguing for a ban on privacy. We could make it a crime to refuse to show your ID to anyone who asks. While we are at it we could also ban private property since not being allowed to take whatever I want from whoever I want materially limits the wealth of the vast majority of mankind. (in as much as something like the richest 5%
"The police come busting down your door without a warrant and find said evidence. In this case, your right to privacy has been violated and the evidence found cannot be used against you. However, this evidence can still be used against me. Why? Because I had no expectation of privacy IN YOUR HOUSE."
Perhaps if you hid the evidence in my house without telling me. But if I promised to safeguard the evidence for you, then why would your expecation of privacy be unreasonable?
If I have promised you a certain degree of privacy then you have a reasonable expectation of that amount of privacy as long as my promise is reasonable and your belief in my ability and intention to uphold it is reasonable.
"As far as the law is concerned, the evidence found against me is as legitimate as if you had turned it in yourself. "
If that was the case the evidence would be usable against me as well.
If it was unreasonable for the PUBLIC to be in there searching. (as it would if it was a private home and they had no warrant), then it was reasonable for you to expect that this would NOT happen. And your expectation of privacy in regards to that search is REASONABLE.
"Back to the email thing, the minute you send an email to an outside party, you voluntarily concede your expectation of privacy as YOU were the one who freely divulged whatever information was in that email."
Yes. but only to that party. Not to the world.
If you tell me something in confidence and I publish it to the world.. you can actually sue me for damages. it all depends on the degree of secrecy you were promised. There is no general waver of privacy when dealing with third parties like you seem to be implying.
You have no right to promise people privacy and then violate their privacy. Likewise the public has no right to simply seize secrets about third parties from your person without a warrant.
"It is conceivable that you will be able to limit government use of this sort of technology. But will you be able to stop private users from using this sort of technology? "
easy enough. Put a hard legal limit on the processing power any person is allowed to possess. Measured in gigaflops or some other metric. The same way most places have legal limitations on what kinds of weapons a person is allowed to possess. There is no moral difference between a computer and a weapon. Both can be used for good or harm. Alternatively.. make it a crime to use facial recognition software without the consent of the person who's face is to be recognized.
Use your imagination.
"If you envision a future revolution of some sort, do you believe that the revolutionaries would not use this technology themselves? To track the motion of police vehicles, and individual policemen, and the people who work for and against you?"
Not sure what your point is here.
"The underlying activities behind these technologies: Collecting information, seeing, hearing, sensing, and then correlating what is seen, what is heard- these are foundational. The "problem" is simply intelligence, itself."
Right.. similarily weapons are so easy to make and use.. its irrational to ban murder.
the problem is anger itself.
no. the problem is murder. likewise the problem is intrusive use of datamining and IT.
"I doubt that willful blindness or doubt is going to help us in our path to the future. We see that backwards countries practicing willful blindness, not advanced ones."
backwards countries have more privacy protection laws than advanced ones?
"Next, people like to whine about the suspension of habeas corpus and about warrantless searches, like George Bush invented these things or in responsible for them. Suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war has been the standard for nearly 65 years in the United States. "
1: Prisoners of War? Since when was George Bush talking about Prisoners of War?
He are suspending habeas corpus for non POWs. people who Bush claims are in legal limbo with no rights and no status whatsoever. mere chattle of the US military. Conveniently labelled "detainee".
"Also, before moving forward on it, President Bush consulted congress, or as I like to call them elected representatives of the people, and had its full support, included the democrats."
I'm sure you like to call them "representatives of the people". It kind of makes them sound legitimate doesn't it. snicker. But come secret congressional comittee consisting of Dick Cheney and a few congressmen sworn to secrecy which does not include all of congress is NOT the same thing as consulting congress. Moreover congress does not approve or disapprove of anything except via passing LAW. It is not the executive branch.
Was a law passed which authorized warantless searches? NO. Congress does not offer support of things in real time. (not without violating the seperation of powers). It passes laws. Those laws are then carried out by the Executive, and overseen by the judicial branch which is the sole final arbiter for the meaning of the words of the law. It is the written word which counts. not backroom deals, winks, nods and handshakes.
As to the presence of democrats in congress.. Who cares? The democrats and the republicans are the same political party. There is no significant difference of opinion on almost any issues. Citing democrats as justification for the republican's wrongdoings is as fallacious as when the democrats point the finger at republicans to justify theirs. The entire system is corrupt. And both parties merely take turns screwing the people for private gain.
"Meanwhile, there is a legal standard for searches without warrants. "
yes. exigent circumstances. And there weren't any exigent circumstances here. There were plenty of chances to get a warrant.
"...and the Bush administration followed the standard required by the court." bull shit. which court case made such a finding?
"1) I'm assuming the members of the court have either not played God of War, not read the Odyssey, or both "
This is what witnesses are used for. Both sides need full opportunity to challenge any evidence, which would be impossible if the judge went off and performed an independant investigation. The question of whether or not GOW is similar to Odyssey or whether Odyssey has any educational value is up to expert witnesses to testify to. Judges are not capable of knowing what has educational value or not. They do not decide the curriculum and are experts on the law, nothing more. They are expected to remain unbiased by their own prejudice (i.e. personal opinion as to whether or not Odyssey is educational). If a Judge read Oddyssey and said "personally I think Oddyssey is crap, therefore I rule it is not educational" would anyone in the public feel like justice is served? Judges opinions are reserved to issues of the meaning of LAW.. not literature.
" you can choose to be a muslim, christian, whatever but you can't choose to be born either black or white. "
If you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and died for your sins, yadda yadda, how can you choose to be muslim?
If you don't believe in the holy trinity, how can you choose to be catholic?
If you actually believe in the supernatural and in god, how can you choose to be atheist?
If you believe in a purely natural world, how can you be anything BUT atheist?
If you learned how to count, how can you choose to believe that 1 + 1 = 0?
your belief system is not a question of choice if you are a rational person. Only an irrational person can choose to believe something arbitrarily. The rest aquire belief from their environment through experience, reaon or conditioning.
The question of choice is not material however. The question is behavior. It is natural to descriminate against people based on their behavior. And certain beliefs create certain behaviors, wherewas RACE does not create behavior.
Racism is irrational. Religious intolerance is not so irrational. That being said.. the state is fully justified banning religious intolerance as well, since even though it is rational to be intolerant to people for violating your moral code, the state has an interest in keeping the peace and allowing people to more or less live their own lives and keeping you out of the face of your religious rivals (and them out of your face).
Even though your religious rivals violate your morals, as long as they dont violate your rights the state prefers to keep you out of their way. And vice versa.
The state also has a vested interest in keeping all religious movements as weak as possible, as well as numerous, so no religion will not oust secular authority from the civil government. This is a good thing because every religion which ever existed was only held by a minority of the population. And most people feel very oppressed when they are forced to obey the rules of someone elses religion. Whenever a state allowed a religion to become too powerful, soon the state lost all power whatsoever, theocracy took hold and society fell to virtual ruins and oppression.
my post: "HAHAHA. you do understand that only right wing evangelical neoconservatives think that "liberty" means the same thing as "bombed into the stone age with no sustainable government/security/industry or future (except a civil war) or merger into a some mega theocratic union with our friends in Iran"."
you said: "First, it's outright derision with the laughter bit."
You interpretted correctly. Outright derision is the effect I was going for.
you: "Then, you seque directly into ad hominem, followed by a redefinition of terms. "
It was not me who redefined anything. The word "Liberty" has a specific meaning which does not include what America did to Iraq. It was the grandparent post which redefined words. As for the ad hominem, you are right. Although the right wing evangelical conservatives do pretend to believe that Iraq is "Liberated". And although it is predominantly right wing evangelical christian neoconservatives who cling to this perverse redefinition of the word "Liberty" we did fact in bomb them into a state of barbaric civilization reminiscent of the stone age with no electricity, no communication, no law, no security. It was overreaching of me to claim that we LITERALLY bombed iraq into the stone age. That is of course physically impossible. However... it was not for lack of trying. You protest too much.
My argument was against the neocon redefining the word "Liberty". And you cleverly now accuse me of redefining it.
"Bombing into the stone age" is an appropriate analogy for what we did to Iraq when we "Liberated" (by evangelical neocon lingo) or "invaded" (by the plain meaning of english terms) it. We have no other suitable description.... no other word or term would be any more accurate.
Certainly "bombing them into liberty" is an utterly absurd and far more misleading description; but it is the one you would use.
"Europe is doing a fine job of falling down on the way to superpower status all by itself."
the world currency markets disagree with you. Have you looked at how much faith the markets have in the american dollar?
you say: "The mission in Iraq was not and is not to destabilize. "
prove it. This is what America did. America is the worlds greatest superpower. The greatest superpower in all human history. There is a legal maxim which says that when a certain effect is the usual and reasonable outcome of a specific act: if a person intended to perform that act, then it is because they INTENDED to cause that effect. Instability was the reasonable and usual outcome of the kind of invasion America adventured into. thus, instability was the intended effect.
"The forces who oppose us (Al Qaeda and friends) have that as their goal. "
You are now attacking straw men. We are talking about IRAQ. Saddam Hussein was not a member, supporter or friend of Al Qaeda. In fact Saddam Hussein ran a secular government in direct opposition to the aspirations of Al Quaeda. THE SADDAM HUSSEN ADMINISTRATION DID NOT ASSIST OR SUPPORT AL QUAEDA.
You know this perfectly well but you are so comfortable regurgitating the neocon talking points that it comes naturally off your tongue. A Con artist should not believe his own lies.
"We want stability, because stability breeds prosperity and because we just like stability. "
why would necons and neoliberals want prosperity and stability? When instability, fear and oppression serve their interests far better. You are claiming that transnational corporations, whos profits are at RECORD HIGH LEVELS, did not want the instability which came hand in hand with these profits. Your claim is outlandish and demands proof.
the rates of profit is always LOWEST when stability and prosperity are maximized. Profits are HIGHEST when the economy is flat or in decline.
The US government is on the verge of complete bankruptcy (I can say that, I'm not in america: it is a crime for americans t
HAHAHA.. you do understand that only right wing evangelical neoconservatives think that "liberty" means the same thing as "bombed into the stone age with no sustainable government/security/industry or future (except a civil war) or merger into a some mega theocratic union with our friends in Iran".
The rest of us see your use of the word "Liberated" for what it is: stupid and empty repetition of Republican talking points.
The mission is already "Accomplished". The mission to create instability in the middle east in an attempt to slow down Europe from becoming the dominant superpower on earth. A mission to create world animosity against the US so that dumb neocon (even a camel can get through the eye of a needle if he's a born again camel) authoritarian followers have even more reasons to go to sleep each night wondering if perhaps the rapture will finally save them from this hell on earth we've created, and in the meantime to support every single right wing neofascist measure to transfer yet more funds from the public coffers into the bank accounts of our loving and benign "business leaders".
Bush and friends didn't give a rats ass about the iraqi people in 1991 through to 2003 and certainly don't give a flying fuck now. And if you think that they give a rats ass about the American people either, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
America has been royally screwed by the neocon movement and she is still taking it like a 2 cent whore. WAKE THE FUCK UP!
"In order to speak meaningfully of productivity, one first must be in the business of producing stuff. This is government work. Nothing's being produced, only consumed."
this statement shows a lack of understanding of economics. A person may have no other job than to facilitate the division of labour. Someone who answers phones produces nothing, but may in fact be far more valuable to productivity than any other single laberour in the production line.
If no person was specifically assigned to answer the phone, then a production line of 100 workers would need to shut down completely each time the phone rings.
So if the production line (employing 100 labourers) needed to stop for 3 hours each day due to the necessity of answering phone calls then hiring a single person to answer the phone in effect gains you an entire 300 hours of productivity. and a single secretary to answer phones may in fact this way create 300 hours of PRODUCTION. Not only this but s/he would answer the phone more efficiently and probably be more skilled at communicating on it since this is all s/he does. And yet.. at the end of the day... the secretary did not personally directly "produce" anything at all (by your mode of calculation).
The government is in the business of making sure that you can trust other people to honour their contracts with you and not stab you in the back on your way out the door; in protecting your property when you aren't looking, and in making sure the products you buy are relatively safe for you to use, and actually do what you were promised they would do. And to provide certain other services to make the cost of you raising a productive family cheaper than it otherwise would be.
The effort of you trying to defend yourself, provide your own security and enforce your own contracts would far exceed what you pay the government to provide this service. So the government is to that extent : MAKING YOU MORE PRODUCTIVE.
A bank would not loan you money at some fairly low interest rate except that the government is going to step in and FORCE you to pay back your loan. Thus the government makes the cost of you borrowing money cheaper. I could go on with dozens of additional examples. A good government SAVES YOU MONEY.
This is exactly the same as if it was the government which was being productive in the first place, since the end result is the same:greater productivity.
"And of course the devilish old questions, if you reassemble something atomically does that mean there is no such thing as a soul, or did you atomize it on the other side (or is it in fact, physical)?"
The most obvious answer would be "it is physical".
This hypothesis can be tested. If I hit you in the head with a very large hammer at a very high velocity will you lose your soul? answer : yes.
This principle is widely accepted by society (in the realm of superstition and religion apparently consensus matters). We hire forensic pathologists to do autopsies rather than tarot card readers and psychics. It wasn't that we would not prefer to use tarrot cards as this can be done by teenagers working for minimum wage. But occult means have never been reliable in telling us the cause of death (the cause of someone losing their soul).
"But what if the judge is a wacko leftie who impedes the investigation? Or worse, what if he is a terrorist sympathiser himself? "
Nothing forces you to go to a judge you think is a "wacko leftie or terrorist sympathiser" for your warrant. You can get a warrant from another judge. And you can try again and again. There is no limit to how many different judges you can try to get a warrant from. And you dont need to advise them that another 10 judges already dismissed your application for a search warrant.
What if the judge realizes that your investigation is merely a fishing expedition and rejects your application because it has NO MERIT?
Same answer... try again with another judge. You only need to convince a single judge, even if every other judge disagrees. Isn't it nice being a COP in America?
search warrants are extremely rarely refused.
"Quite simply, Bush does not trust ANYONE (congress, the courts, certainly not us) with the war on terror."
Too bad for him. It isn't his country and it isn't HIS war. America belongs to THE PEOPLE. Who Bush personally TRUSTS is irrelevant. Bush is an idiot and not capable of making a wise decision about who to trust. But that is also irrelevant. The Constitution of the Nation lays out who he is obligated to rely on in order to get certain things done or exercise certain authorities. He has to play by those rules or else loses all authority and all legitimacy whatsoever. It is ONLY THE CONSTITUTION which gives him the authority to do anything as President at all. He did not inherit the rights of Kings and Monarchs of centuries past via common law. If he bypasses The Constitution, he may as well seize control with a military coup because it amounts to the same thing.
"What happens when Hillary Clinton or someone more left gets into power and inherits all of these unlimited powers? What happens when they declare gun owners to be terrorists and bring to bear the full power of the electronic suveriliance and secrets court and warrants against them? "
You seem to think that those on the left would simultaneously be MORE LIKELY to use surveillance powers as well as LESS LIKELY to use them. This is off topic, but.. make up your mind.
1) If your judges are so politically biased as to make their legal rulings based on politics then you've got far bigger problems than terrorists. 2) If your politicians are so cynical as to be for or against a law purely on whether or not it was "left" or "right" (and not based on merit) then you've got a far bigger problem than terrorists.
Your entire society is on the verge of abject tyranny. And this is not good for the Nation.. people on both the left and right ought to be fricking alarmed. Terrorism is a very minor threat. The biggest harm Terrorism did was provide an excuse to transfer massive amounts of public wealth into private hands. Something that Bush oversaw and encouraged.
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." -Adam Smith , from The Wealth of Nations Book III, Chapter 4
You actually trust someone who has as much power as the President of the United States to use their power for Good?
"If I was a movie studio executive, I would support these triple-layer discs at any cost."
A movie executive wants a media format which is as cheap as possible with as few royaltees as possible. This way he can collect as much royaltees as possible himself on the CONTENT. Does this triple format fit the bill?
It seems that movie studios like the idea of selling disks with limited utility. So that the as few people as possible can actually play the disk. They will be more than happy to sell 3 different versions of the same movie, and even more if you count those UMD disk in the PSP. If movie executives wanted a single large unified market, why would they use region coding on DVD's? They don't want disks which can easily be passed around from person to person without regard for their equipment.
A triple disk is a boon for the movie rental industry. An industry which competes against the move sale industry. Movie execs dont like when people rent movies. They want people to buy. If a rental store needs to cary 3 times as much stock that helps the movie studio. This triple disk seems like the uber standard : Compatible with everything. Why would someone who makes a living selling the same content over and over want to cut their potenial market down by 300%?
Now if these triple disks wore out after a few years THEN toshiba would be on to something. Perhaps thats the secret unadvertised feature.
"What is this rosy view of the past I find many slashdotters seem to have?"
Its called rewriting history to suit our present purposes. Get with the program.
If we found out how much our ancient leaders were a bunch of lying stealing murdering tyrants we may start looking more carefully at who exactly is in charge in the modern world.
"This is nothing personal mind you, just a solid mix of market driven economics and realpolitik. "
Its not really market driven at all. It is power driven economics. Dont let a powermonger tell you that when governments throws away huge amounts of capital in support of idle labour (the military) for the purpose of diminishing competition that this is somehow good for the economy or prosperity. Military spending is harmful to the economy even if the military does nothing more than march back and forth and drill all day. All the labour that went into building and maintaining a military leaves absolutely nothing in its wake when the money has been spent (weapons themselves being idle implements capable of producing nothing). When the military then tries to stifle competion it is utterly absurd to suggest that this is good for prosperity.
These wackjobs are so obsessed with power that they would turn off the sun and instill a perpetual night if they could figure out how; the light bulb industry would boom and all the while they would claim that they did it for the good of mankind in the name of market economics.
Adam Smith was right when he said that these people seek to oppress the public.
"... employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit [...] an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations - Book 1 - Chapter XI
"If the majority of the Chinese are content with their government or its actions (which is the case otherwise their country would be in a civil war until it changed) we as a world community have to respect their right to govern their country."
Your logic is flawed. People do not go to war simply because they are discontent. Generally they must be so utterly discontent that to them death is a better outcome can maintaining the status quo. The degree of unhappiness people will tolerate scales upwards with the probability that any kind of rebellion will be quashed and the perpetrators swiftly dealt with. And even then there must be a reasonable prospect of actually WINNING a war. You dont just go to war out of spite. This would be tantamount to mere murder. While a small number of people may relish the idea of chaos and destruction, the vast majority of people are peace loving and loath to kill and loath to resort to violence under any circumstance.
China has seemingly developed a very efficient way of discouraging political dissent. controlling the access to information about the outside world, controlling the ability of people to freely congregate and communicate, punishing political dissent as if it was immoral to disagree with the state.
The disinclination to fight against authority figures is even stronger because something like 60% of the normal population are themselves authoritarian followers (probably a beneficial survival trait for the species but not very beneficial to individual human rights). Based on your language, I think you probably fall in this catagory. You have internalized the myth that whoever is in charge must be in charge for a just cause, and to overthrow that authority would be immoral.
We should liberate china because to not do so is an offense against humanity itself, regardless of what percentage of chinese citizens are educated enough to realize it. No person can choose to be oppressed. No person can choose to be kept ignorant. knowledge and versatility are the hallmarks of humanity and no human being would choose to live like a mere beast of burden if they knew something better existed. A person who has never experienced freedom, does not even understand that they are oppressed.
As for the "RIGHT TO GOVERN". There is no such thing. No one has any right to govern anything. Governing needs to be done, and people have the right to good government because to deny then that would be to criple a community's natural tendency to associate and organize and divide the product of their labour to mutual common needs; but no one specifically has any RIGHT to govern in particular.
Your logic could be applied directly to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Should the world Community not have respected the Taliban's RIGHT to govern? Or Hussein's right to Govern? Or Stalin's right to govern? Or a pimps RIGHT to pimp his bitches?
Your post is utterly overrated... It should be modded down. It practically amounts to a Troll, except that I suspect you actually believe the nonsense expressed by your words.
"Our business owners believe in free markets completely and totally, until someone bigger and better comes along and the market dictates their destruction. Then they squawk louder than any socialist I ever heard."
Adam Smith actually pointed out that business owners do NOT believe in free markets at all.
"...The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations - Book 1, chapter 11
"And what, may I ask, constitutes a inferior legal system."
Its a system where the people who decide what the rules are for society are, are the exact same people who decide in a case by case basis what those rules mean when applied to a particular set of facts, and are the exact same people who enforce those rules upon the people. In otherwords, the same person is lawmaker, enforcer, judge and executioner all at the same time.
Such a society has an inferior legal system.
Alternatively a society where any one of those classes of people is suspectible to bribes or corruption of any kind is an inferior legal system.
A system where people write laws for someone else but dont need to follow the same rules. such a system is inferior.
"People in diferent coutries have different morals, some people believe that the laws should reflect their religions, other takes pride in making their government non-religious. The core of this question is that your morals are different from mine, they may even be similar in some aspects but they are different so you can't judge how good is a legal system for me based on your morals."
You can't judge it based on "your" morals, because your morals are arbitrary.
That doesn't mean you can't judge something based on objective study of its outcomes, and make an objective determination as to what is better or worse.
There is nothing "conservative" about having the state enforce a monopoly. Intellectual property is a new invention. The founding father of modern free market economics/capitalism (Adam Smith) took it for granted that competetors would try to learn each others secrets and eventually imitate each other (and that this was normal). At no point did he consider that the state should actually PROTECT those secrets. This is NOT a conservative idea.
He also never considered that laborors and owners would simply throw their hands up and refuse to "invent" unless they had a state protected monopoly. He recognized that it was human nature to constantly seek new ways of making its life or work easier. And invention was inevitable.
In so far as mankind has been inventing for thousands of years without patents. How can you claim patents are "conservative"?
Adam Smith actually considered virtually all state intervention of any kind to be doomed in its effort to achieve what it set out to do and would just slow growth (which in his economic theory causes human suffering).
state protection of monopolies is the hallmark of something called NEO-LIBERALISM. So, perhaps you should get your terminology straight. For that matter Neo-conservatives should stop claiming to be conservatives as well. There is nothing conservative about big-government and unilateralism.
conservatives (I mean the real ones) believe in individual freedom and responsibility as well as minimal government involvement. This would include in taking on the responsibility of protecting your clever ideas simply by keeping your mouth shut.
A conservative would never think that someone ought to get a monopoly just because they were the first person to tell the government about their idea. The entire notion of REPORTING TO THE GOVERNMENT is absolutely anti-ethical to a true conservative. A true conservative would think that you can keep your manufacturing processes a secret for a time easily enough and if you can't turn around and make any money that way before someone else figures it out, perhaps it wasn't such a clever idea afterall.
Conservatism is not about being authoritarian and domineering or trusting the President. It is about keeping whatever worked in the past and sticking to it with only small incremental changes when necessary. In the past a person could do whatever they wanted with their PRIVATE physical property, and no lawyer or patent clerk was going to tell him otherwise.
Patents and intellectual property are legal fictions designed to keep you from being able to use your own private property how you see fit. That is not "conservative".
At the very minimum a conservative would argue that patents are a necessary evil because without patents no one would ever invent anything. (which is untrue, but if you believed such a notion at least you could still claim to be conservative). On the otherhand simply being pro-patent for no particuar reason other than "he invented it FIRST so he wins the prize of a state protected monopoly" is being quite modern in your thinking.
So if you are looking for an accurate label (most people claiming to be conservative aren't) how about calling yourself a "monopolist"?
"WHatever happened to trust you ask? I'm sure it went out the window after the first few people lied on their FAFSA applications. Or after the government handed out money to someone who could have easily afforded going to college, but just wanted the government to pay for as much of it as possible."
So why does the government mistrust the other 95+ percent who DONT lie?
"What do you have to hide?"
I have all sorts of stuff I choose to hide. Believe it or not: Not every secret is about YOU! Mind your own fucking business fascist!
"You are asking the government to put you under a microscope in order to determine how much money they will have to give you to pay for your education. You can't just say "Hey, give me money, but don't ask anything about me.""
uhhh... what does that have to do with handing over the records to other government agencies so they can perform whatever other analysis they can dream up on you?
Or do you figure that when a person asks for help from the government they must forfeit all rights and human dignity?
"Because a search warrant involves getting permission from a judge, which adds another layer of bureaucracy for no apparent protection."
really? Judges are not mere rubber stamps. In actual fact they actually JUDGE the information to determine if on the balance of probabilities a search is justified. They also obtain an OATH from a witness of some kind (albeit often a cop) as to what exactly they claim to believe. This can be held against the individual in the future with the possibile consequence of a perjurer going to jail. This is your ONLY protection from an unreasonable search and seizure.
Or do you think the personal discretion of some cop with no negative consequence when he abuses that discretion actually "protects" you?
Slashdot Mirror
"Being an entepeneur was supposed to be the dream? I find that even more depressing. Working extremely long hours, risking bankrupcy every day, insane stress levels, all for money? No thanks, I'd rather put in my 8 hrs a day, make a fair wage, and enjoy my life."
It wasn't supposed to be like that. The idea is that when you go into business you are contributing to the prosperity if your own community. You are being a good human being. That is the reward. The money you earn you are generally going to reinvest in the business. you aren't going to consume it. It is a wonderful feeling to see your community grow and prosper and know you are doing your part.
all that when downhill with limited liability and foreign investment. no one sees the results of their investments, and consequently no one cares.. to that end corporations will stop at nothing to rape and pillage and pass off every single possible cost to third parties because their shareholders dont see any effect outside the bottom line.
then on the one hand they argue that the proper model is that the government should pass rules and regulations to stop any truly vile practice, and then on the other hand they argue that they should be expected to voluntarily refrain from vile practices (notwithstanding that they are profitable and the shareholders are clueless).
So it isn't your fault that you are disenchanted with the entire idea of free market capitalism. The whole thing was a big hoax to begin with. Capitalists are not interested in competing. They are interested in using the state to block any and all competition as much as humanly possible.
And if you only need to work 8 hours a day to enjoy your life. You are one of the lucky ones. I'm sure the 8 hour day will go bye bye before long.
"Put a hard legal limit on the processing power any person is allowed to possess. Measured in gigaflops or some other metric.
Those are your words, and there is your material limit."
Thats not a material limit. Thats just a limit. It doesn't become material until it impairs the ability to achieve the intended goal.
If I sell shoes and have sufficient processing power to sell my shoes and no additional cpu power would affect my sales. Then preventing me from having any more cpu power is NOT MATERIAL to the business of selling shoes. It is a limit of no consequence.
The END goal of a cpu is NOT merely to have processing power. It is to achieve some USEFUL COMPUTATION fast enough to facilitate some kind of DECISION. Any processing power beyond that end is utterly immaterial to the goal. And prohibiting it is hardly any great inconvenience.
" I don't think I'll be conversing with you much longer; I think if your method of argument continues like it is here, there's not much benefit, for either of us. You seem to be trying to point out gaps in logic, in your opponents position, implying that your own thinking does not hold similar gaps. (If you did recognize the ubiquity of gaps, you wouldn't be criticizing on the basis of their existence.) "
there is at least 1 logical gap in your argument: Logical gaps are NOT ubiquitous.
all logically sound lines of reasoning contain exactly 0 logical gaps.
This being TRUE, it is sufficient for someone to demonstrate a single logical gap to utterly discredit a line of reasoning.
Perhaps you should read the web pages you cite as support for your position.
Since you were too lazy here is a quote for you:
"If you have a single gap in the chain, logic no longer asserts anything beyond the chain.
In fact, working backwards, if you had a single gap leading up to the present point, then that part of the chain doesn't necessarily follow, either!
It's called "non-sequitur," or "It does not follow.""
Your objection sounds like:
everyone knows that all people are illogical and all chains of logic people make are illogical. if you knew this, you would not attempt to show an argument is illogical by showing the logical gap in it. The fact that you attempted to dispute a logical gap is proof of your ignorance in matters of logic. Here is a web page which contradicts what I'm saying to help prove what I'm saying.
"I do not find your undercuts persuasive; I hear them, but I think you have still missed more important things. "
Are you telling me there are more important holes in your argument that I missed?
"Sadly, your battery of trivial undercuts are so numerous, I feel no motivation to respond to them:"
This is itself a trivial undercut. moreover it is a non-sequitur undercut. Because your inability to respond when someone points out holes in your reasoning does NOT make your own argument more persuasive. And simply accusing the other party of niggling over trivial flaws (whatever that is) and missing the greater picture (completely unsupported) also doesn't support your argument. I am free to be meticulous in proving my point. And accusing me of addressing too many flaws in your position, is no accusation at all. Next time I wont bother with you. I'll just say "you're wrong" and move on.
"You will find only other little unimportant things to undercut, which are always present, in all thinking, always, and make up more ridiculous extrapolations about what I mean, and so on."
I didn't make up any ridiculous extrapolations about what you mean; What you mean is ridiculous all by ITSELF. Perhaps you can look up proof by absurdity on that web site about logic which you didn't read.
"Once that technology-stifling legal limit is in place, it will be difficult to change. What looks like a good idea one day seems absurd the next. Obligatory "640K ought to be enough for anybody" reference..."
hell, my TI-99a4 had a 16kb limit. What is your point? We limit speed on the highway, although it would be economically superior if we allowed transports trucks to drive at 100 mph on the highway, there is a harm with this so we limit it.
If there is a harm to society in superfast processors and the harm outweighs the benefit, we limit it.
you are arguing against the very notion of limits.. as if limits are fundamentally so immoral, that under no circumstances can limits EVER be used.
"As for the software, how will use be (realistically) controllable? You can punish detected misuse within your legal and physical reach, which in the information age isn't very far. I could legally take pictures of someone in public, post them, and they could be analyzed offshore."
same with porn, same with the DMCA, same with drugs, same with patents. society has proved its willingness to outlaw things which can not actually "realistically" be controlled. (personal patent violation is still a violation.. it is not realistic to control but yet it is still prohibited)
However hardware speed CAN realistically be controlled. Because very few entities whatsoever have the technology to produce the fast CPU's. It costs too much to develop a cpu production plant and its almost unthinkable that any new parties are going to come to the table to try their hand if there is no legal market for a faster cpu.
The majority of people do NOT use their cpu power. So this amounts to almost a non-restriction. And if cpu power is that dangerous then limiting what can be built/sold/etc seems reasonable. A HARDWARE limitation on cpu speed is a lot less intrustive and less vague than a software limitation on what software may do.
"Sure, but how are you going to monitor something like that? You'll need something like the Secure Hardware Environment."
If there was a legal requirement to MONITOR something in order to make it illegal sure. However there are plenty of illegal activities which go completely unmonitored. How does the government monitor to insure you are not using copyprotection circumvention software? The exact same problems exist. And yet the law (regardless what people fantasize about) does decrease the use of copyprotection circumvention software.
"Nice; You'll also need to put a hard legal limit on the ability of people to congre-^H^H^H to network their intellig-^H^H^H devices."
Only if that becomes a problem. You are attacking a straw man. You seem to admit that my proposal would eliminate the problem of the lone stalker and then cite an example of a whole group of stalkers working together on a single victim and argue that since my proposal would not stop a whole group, it should not be applied to an individual.
Your argument could be applied to a gun ban as well. Since even without guns, someone can still kill you with an axe.
"Are our answers to those questions shaped by how easy it is to get ahold of a gun? Are our answers to those questions shaped by our ability to gather evidence from the scene of a crime? If you couldn't find bullets, blood, or any other evidence, after a gun had been used, is it reasonable to believe that our laws about guns would be different? Is it reasonable to believe that our world would be different, if that's how things worked?"
Perhaps but there is lots of evidence on computers of everything you do, and since manufacturing advanced computer chips is something only a few entites on earth have any ability to do and each CPU already has a unique serial number, it would be easy to track the sale. So I'm not sure what your point is.
"Backwards countries fear empowered people. "Ideas," and such."
You didn't answer my question. I asked you, do backwards countries have more privacy protection laws. because you suggest they do.
"Privacy, especially a forced privacy, hinders the flow of ideas; Just ask any Iranian blogger, who is having privacy forced onto them.
"
You are intentionally confusing privacy with censorship.
"By limiting the processor count and such, you are forcing privacy on people."
As I said, you have confused privacy with censorship.
"You're also, quite materially, limiting their intelligence."
The vast majority of mankind derives no benefit from snooping on others, and has no desire to snoop on others. In fact many of us think it immoral, if not at least extremely RUDE to snoop on others. So I'm not sure how you get the conclusion that this is a "material limit" on intelligence. You will need to cite some evidence before I even concede to that much.
On the other hand:
since secrets have economic value as well as intelligence, you also need to prove that on the whole secrets have less economic value than intelligence for your argument to hold any water. Otherwise by raising intelligence and decreasing secrets you destroy value.
And just to give my argument an air of reality:
R&D only takes place because of the ability to keep secrets. No one would invest money in research if the benefit goes primarily to their competition. In a capitalist system R&D becomes pointless if it can not be conducted secretly. Your ideal society makes the cost of R&D much higher since maintaining any secrets would become more expensive once privacy is abolished.
finally: if privacy is so materially harmful to society.. perhaps you should be arguing for a ban on privacy. We could make it a crime to refuse to show your ID to anyone who asks. While we are at it we could also ban private property since not being allowed to take whatever I want from whoever I want materially limits the wealth of the vast majority of mankind. (in as much as something like the richest 5%
"The police come busting down your door without a warrant and find said evidence. In this case, your right to privacy has been violated and the evidence found cannot be used against you. However, this evidence can still be used against me. Why? Because I had no expectation of privacy IN YOUR HOUSE."
Perhaps if you hid the evidence in my house without telling me. But if I promised to safeguard the evidence for you, then why would your expecation of privacy be unreasonable?
If I have promised you a certain degree of privacy then you have a reasonable expectation of that amount of privacy as long as my promise is reasonable and your belief in my ability and intention to uphold it is reasonable.
"As far as the law is concerned, the evidence found against me is as legitimate as if you had turned it in yourself. "
If that was the case the evidence would be usable against me as well.
If it was unreasonable for the PUBLIC to be in there searching. (as it would if it was a private home and they had no warrant), then it was reasonable for you to expect that this would NOT happen. And your expectation of privacy in regards to that search is REASONABLE.
"Back to the email thing, the minute you send an email to an outside party, you voluntarily concede your expectation of privacy as YOU were the one who freely divulged whatever information was in that email."
Yes. but only to that party. Not to the world.
If you tell me something in confidence and I publish it to the world.. you can actually sue me for damages. it all depends on the degree of secrecy you were promised. There is no general waver of privacy when dealing with third parties like you seem to be implying.
You have no right to promise people privacy and then violate their privacy. Likewise the public has no right to simply seize secrets about third parties from your person without a warrant.
"It is conceivable that you will be able to limit government use of this sort of technology. But will you be able to stop private users from using this sort of technology? "
easy enough. Put a hard legal limit on the processing power any person is allowed to possess. Measured in gigaflops or some other metric. The same way most places have legal limitations on what kinds of weapons a person is allowed to possess. There is no moral difference between a computer and a weapon. Both can be used for good or harm. Alternatively.. make it a crime to use facial recognition software without the consent of the person who's face is to be recognized.
Use your imagination.
"If you envision a future revolution of some sort, do you believe that the revolutionaries would not use this technology themselves? To track the motion of police vehicles, and individual policemen, and the people who work for and against you?"
Not sure what your point is here.
"The underlying activities behind these technologies: Collecting information, seeing, hearing, sensing, and then correlating what is seen, what is heard- these are foundational. The "problem" is simply intelligence, itself."
Right.. similarily weapons are so easy to make and use.. its irrational to ban murder.
the problem is anger itself.
no. the problem is murder. likewise the problem is intrusive use of datamining and IT.
"I doubt that willful blindness or doubt is going to help us in our path to the future. We see that backwards countries practicing willful blindness, not advanced ones."
backwards countries have more privacy protection laws than advanced ones?
"Next, people like to whine about the suspension of habeas corpus and about warrantless searches, like George Bush invented these things or in responsible for them. Suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war has been the standard for nearly 65 years in the United States. "
1: Prisoners of War? Since when was George Bush talking about Prisoners of War?
He are suspending habeas corpus for non POWs. people who Bush claims are in legal limbo with no rights and no status whatsoever. mere chattle of the US military. Conveniently labelled "detainee".
"Also, before moving forward on it, President Bush consulted congress, or as I like to call them elected representatives of the people, and had its full support, included the democrats."
I'm sure you like to call them "representatives of the people". It kind of makes them sound legitimate doesn't it. snicker.
But come secret congressional comittee consisting of Dick Cheney and a few congressmen sworn to secrecy which does not include all of congress is NOT the same thing as consulting congress. Moreover congress does not approve or disapprove of anything except via passing LAW. It is not the executive branch.
Was a law passed which authorized warantless searches? NO. Congress does not offer support of things in real time. (not without violating the seperation of powers). It passes laws. Those laws are then carried out by the Executive, and overseen by the judicial branch which is the sole final arbiter for the meaning of the words of the law. It is the written word which counts. not backroom deals, winks, nods and handshakes.
As to the presence of democrats in congress.. Who cares? The democrats and the republicans are the same political party. There is no significant difference of opinion on almost any issues. Citing democrats as justification for the republican's wrongdoings is as fallacious as when the democrats point the finger at republicans to justify theirs. The entire system is corrupt. And both parties merely take turns screwing the people for private gain.
"Meanwhile, there is a legal standard for searches without warrants. "
yes. exigent circumstances. And there weren't any exigent circumstances here. There were plenty of chances to get a warrant.
"...and the Bush administration followed the standard required by the court." bull shit. which court case made such a finding?
"1) I'm assuming the members of the court have either not played God of War, not read the Odyssey, or both
"
This is what witnesses are used for. Both sides need full opportunity to challenge any evidence, which would be impossible if the judge went off and performed an independant investigation. The question of whether or not GOW is similar to Odyssey or whether Odyssey has any educational value is up to expert witnesses to testify to. Judges are not capable of knowing what has educational value or not. They do not decide the curriculum and are experts on the law, nothing more. They are expected to remain unbiased by their own prejudice (i.e. personal opinion as to whether or not Odyssey is educational). If a Judge read Oddyssey and said "personally I think Oddyssey is crap, therefore I rule it is not educational" would anyone in the public feel like justice is served? Judges opinions are reserved to issues of the meaning of LAW.. not literature.
" you can choose to be a muslim, christian, whatever but you can't choose to be born either black or white. "
If you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and died for your sins, yadda yadda, how can you choose to be muslim?
If you don't believe in the holy trinity, how can you choose to be catholic?
If you actually believe in the supernatural and in god, how can you choose to be atheist?
If you believe in a purely natural world, how can you be anything BUT atheist?
If you learned how to count, how can you choose to believe that 1 + 1 = 0?
your belief system is not a question of choice if you are a rational person. Only an irrational person can choose to believe something arbitrarily. The rest aquire belief from their environment through experience, reaon or conditioning.
The question of choice is not material however. The question is behavior. It is natural to descriminate against people based on their behavior. And certain beliefs create certain behaviors, wherewas RACE does not create behavior.
Racism is irrational. Religious intolerance is not so irrational. That being said.. the state is fully justified banning religious intolerance as well, since even though it is rational to be intolerant to people for violating your moral code, the state has an interest in keeping the peace and allowing people to more or less live their own lives and keeping you out of the face of your religious rivals (and them out of your face).
Even though your religious rivals violate your morals, as long as they dont violate your rights the state prefers to keep you out of their way. And vice versa.
The state also has a vested interest in keeping all religious movements as weak as possible, as well as numerous, so no religion will not oust secular authority from the civil government. This is a good thing because every religion which ever existed was only held by a minority of the population. And most people feel very oppressed when they are forced to obey the rules of someone elses religion. Whenever a state allowed a religion to become too powerful, soon the state lost all power whatsoever, theocracy took hold and society fell to virtual ruins and oppression.
grand parent post: "Liberated Iraq."
.... no other word or term would be any more accurate.
my post:
"HAHAHA. you do understand that only right wing evangelical neoconservatives think that "liberty" means the same thing as "bombed into the stone age with no sustainable government/security/industry or future (except a civil war) or merger into a some mega theocratic union with our friends in Iran"."
you said: "First, it's outright derision with the laughter bit."
You interpretted correctly. Outright derision is the effect I was going for.
you: "Then, you seque directly into ad hominem, followed by a redefinition of terms. "
It was not me who redefined anything. The word "Liberty" has a specific meaning which does not include what America did to Iraq. It was the grandparent post which redefined words. As for the ad hominem, you are right. Although the right wing evangelical conservatives do pretend to believe that Iraq is "Liberated". And although it is predominantly right wing evangelical christian neoconservatives who cling to this perverse redefinition of the word "Liberty" we did fact in bomb them into a state of barbaric civilization reminiscent of the stone age with no electricity, no communication, no law, no security. It was overreaching of me to claim that we LITERALLY bombed iraq into the stone age. That is of course physically impossible. However... it was not for lack of trying. You protest too much.
My argument was against the neocon redefining the word "Liberty". And you cleverly now accuse me of redefining it.
"Bombing into the stone age" is an appropriate analogy for what we did to Iraq when we "Liberated" (by evangelical neocon lingo) or "invaded" (by the plain meaning of english terms) it. We have no other suitable description
Certainly "bombing them into liberty" is an utterly absurd and far more misleading description; but it is the one you would use.
"Europe is doing a fine job of falling down on the way to superpower status all by itself."
the world currency markets disagree with you. Have you looked at how much faith the markets have in the american dollar?
you say: "The mission in Iraq was not and is not to destabilize. "
prove it. This is what America did. America is the worlds greatest superpower. The greatest superpower in all human history. There is a legal maxim which says that when a certain effect is the usual and reasonable outcome of a specific act: if a person intended to perform that act, then it is because they INTENDED to cause that effect. Instability was the reasonable and usual outcome of the kind of invasion America adventured into. thus, instability was the intended effect.
"The forces who oppose us (Al Qaeda and friends) have that as their goal. "
You are now attacking straw men. We are talking about IRAQ. Saddam Hussein was not a member, supporter or friend of Al Qaeda. In fact Saddam Hussein ran a secular government in direct opposition to the aspirations of Al Quaeda. THE SADDAM HUSSEN ADMINISTRATION DID NOT ASSIST OR SUPPORT AL QUAEDA.
You know this perfectly well but you are so comfortable regurgitating the neocon talking points that it comes naturally off your tongue. A Con artist should not believe his own lies.
"We want stability, because stability breeds prosperity and because we just like stability. "
why would necons and neoliberals want prosperity and stability? When instability, fear and oppression serve their interests far better. You are claiming that transnational corporations, whos profits are at RECORD HIGH LEVELS, did not want the instability which came hand in hand with these profits. Your claim is outlandish and demands proof.
the rates of profit is always LOWEST when stability and prosperity are maximized. Profits are HIGHEST when the economy is flat or in decline.
The US government is on the verge of complete bankruptcy (I can say that, I'm not in america: it is a crime for americans t
"Liberated Iraq."
HAHAHA.. you do understand that only right wing evangelical neoconservatives think that "liberty" means the same thing as "bombed into the stone age with no sustainable government/security/industry or future (except a civil war) or merger into a some mega theocratic union with our friends in Iran".
The rest of us see your use of the word "Liberated" for what it is: stupid and empty repetition of Republican talking points.
The mission is already "Accomplished". The mission to create instability in the middle east in an attempt to slow down Europe from becoming the dominant superpower on earth. A mission to create world animosity against the US so that dumb neocon (even a camel can get through the eye of a needle if he's a born again camel) authoritarian followers have even more reasons to go to sleep each night wondering if perhaps the rapture will finally save them from this hell on earth we've created, and in the meantime to support every single right wing neofascist measure to transfer yet more funds from the public coffers into the bank accounts of our loving and benign "business leaders".
Bush and friends didn't give a rats ass about the iraqi people in 1991 through to 2003 and certainly don't give a flying fuck now. And if you think that they give a rats ass about the American people either, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
America has been royally screwed by the neocon movement and she is still taking it like a 2 cent whore. WAKE THE FUCK UP!
"In order to speak meaningfully of productivity, one first must be in the business of producing stuff.
:greater productivity.
This is government work. Nothing's being produced, only consumed."
this statement shows a lack of understanding of economics. A person may have no other job than to facilitate the division of labour. Someone who answers phones produces nothing, but may in fact be far more valuable to productivity than any other single laberour in the production line.
If no person was specifically assigned to answer the phone, then a production line of 100 workers would need to shut down completely each time the phone rings.
So if the production line (employing 100 labourers) needed to stop for 3 hours each day due to the necessity of answering phone calls then hiring a single person to answer the phone in effect gains you an entire 300 hours of productivity. and a single secretary to answer phones may in fact this way create 300 hours of PRODUCTION. Not only this but s/he would answer the phone more efficiently and probably be more skilled at communicating on it since this is all s/he does. And yet.. at the end of the day... the secretary did not personally directly "produce" anything at all (by your mode of calculation).
The government is in the business of making sure that you can trust other people to honour their contracts with you and not stab you in the back on your way out the door; in protecting your property when you aren't looking, and in making sure the products you buy are relatively safe for you to use, and actually do what you were promised they would do. And to provide certain other services to make the cost of you raising a productive family cheaper than it otherwise would be.
The effort of you trying to defend yourself, provide your own security and enforce your own contracts would far exceed what you pay the government to provide this service. So the government is to that extent : MAKING YOU MORE PRODUCTIVE.
A bank would not loan you money at some fairly low interest rate except that the government is going to step in and FORCE you to pay back your loan. Thus the government makes the cost of you borrowing money cheaper. I could go on with dozens of additional examples. A good government SAVES YOU MONEY.
This is exactly the same as if it was the government which was being productive in the first place, since the end result is the same
"And of course the devilish old questions, if you reassemble something atomically does that mean there is no such thing as a soul, or did you atomize it on the other side (or is it in fact, physical)?"
The most obvious answer would be "it is physical".
This hypothesis can be tested. If I hit you in the head with a very large hammer at a very high velocity will you lose your soul? answer : yes.
This principle is widely accepted by society (in the realm of superstition and religion apparently consensus matters). We hire forensic pathologists to do autopsies rather than tarot card readers and psychics. It wasn't that we would not prefer to use tarrot cards as this can be done by teenagers working for minimum wage. But occult means have never been reliable in telling us the cause of death (the cause of someone losing their soul).
"But what if the judge is a wacko leftie who impedes the investigation? Or worse, what if he is a terrorist sympathiser himself? "
.. make up your mind.
Nothing forces you to go to a judge you think is a "wacko leftie or terrorist sympathiser" for your warrant. You can get a warrant from another judge. And you can try again and again. There is no limit to how many different judges you can try to get a warrant from. And you dont need to advise them that another 10 judges already dismissed your application for a search warrant.
What if the judge realizes that your investigation is merely a fishing expedition and rejects your application because it has NO MERIT?
Same answer... try again with another judge. You only need to convince a single judge, even if every other judge disagrees. Isn't it nice being a COP in America?
search warrants are extremely rarely refused.
"Quite simply, Bush does not trust ANYONE (congress, the courts, certainly not us) with the war on terror."
Too bad for him. It isn't his country and it isn't HIS war. America belongs to THE PEOPLE. Who Bush personally TRUSTS is irrelevant. Bush is an idiot and not capable of making a wise decision about who to trust. But that is also irrelevant. The Constitution of the Nation lays out who he is obligated to rely on in order to get certain things done or exercise certain authorities. He has to play by those rules or else loses all authority and all legitimacy whatsoever. It is ONLY THE CONSTITUTION which gives him the authority to do anything as President at all. He did not inherit the rights of Kings and Monarchs of centuries past via common law. If he bypasses The Constitution, he may as well seize control with a military coup because it amounts to the same thing.
"What happens when Hillary Clinton or someone more left gets into power and inherits all of these unlimited powers? What happens when they declare gun owners to be terrorists and bring to bear the full power of the electronic suveriliance and secrets court and warrants against them? "
You seem to think that those on the left would simultaneously be MORE LIKELY to use surveillance powers as well as LESS LIKELY to use them.
This is off topic, but
1) If your judges are so politically biased as to make their legal rulings based on politics then you've got far bigger problems than terrorists.
2) If your politicians are so cynical as to be for or against a law purely on whether or not it was "left" or "right" (and not based on merit) then you've got a far bigger problem than terrorists.
Your entire society is on the verge of abject tyranny. And this is not good for the Nation.. people on both the left and right ought to be fricking alarmed.
Terrorism is a very minor threat. The biggest harm Terrorism did was provide an excuse to transfer massive amounts of public wealth into private hands. Something that Bush oversaw and encouraged.
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
-Adam Smith , from The Wealth of Nations Book III, Chapter 4
You actually trust someone who has as much power as the President of the United States to use their power for Good?
"If I was a movie studio executive, I would support these triple-layer discs at any cost."
A movie executive wants a media format which is as cheap as possible with as few royaltees as possible. This way he can collect as much royaltees as possible himself on the CONTENT. Does this triple format fit the bill?
It seems that movie studios like the idea of selling disks with limited utility. So that the as few people as possible can actually play the disk. They will be more than happy to sell 3 different versions of the same movie, and even more if you count those UMD disk in the PSP. If movie executives wanted a single large unified market, why would they use region coding on DVD's? They don't want disks which can easily be passed around from person to person without regard for their equipment.
A triple disk is a boon for the movie rental industry. An industry which competes against the move sale industry. Movie execs dont like when people rent movies. They want people to buy. If a rental store needs to cary 3 times as much stock that helps the movie studio. This triple disk seems like the uber standard : Compatible with everything. Why would someone who makes a living selling the same content over and over want to cut their potenial market down by 300%?
Now if these triple disks wore out after a few years THEN toshiba would be on to something. Perhaps thats the secret unadvertised feature.
"What is this rosy view of the past I find many slashdotters seem to have?"
Its called rewriting history to suit our present purposes. Get with the program.
If we found out how much our ancient leaders were a bunch of lying stealing murdering tyrants we may start looking more carefully at who exactly is in charge in the modern world.
"This is nothing personal mind you, just a solid mix of market driven economics and realpolitik. "
Its not really market driven at all. It is power driven economics. Dont let a powermonger tell you that when governments throws away huge amounts of capital in support of idle labour (the military) for the purpose of diminishing competition that this is somehow good for the economy or prosperity. Military spending is harmful to the economy even if the military does nothing more than march back and forth and drill all day. All the labour that went into building and maintaining a military leaves absolutely nothing in its wake when the money has been spent (weapons themselves being idle implements capable of producing nothing). When the military then tries to stifle competion it is utterly absurd to suggest that this is good for prosperity.
These wackjobs are so obsessed with power that they would turn off the sun and instill a perpetual night if they could figure out how; the light bulb industry would boom and all the while they would claim that they did it for the good of mankind in the name of market economics.
Adam Smith was right when he said that these people seek to oppress the public.
"... employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit [...] an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations - Book 1 - Chapter XI
"If the majority of the Chinese are content with their government or its actions (which is the case otherwise their country would be in a civil war until it changed) we as a world community have to respect their right to govern their country."
Your logic is flawed. People do not go to war simply because they are discontent. Generally they must be so utterly discontent that to them death is a better outcome can maintaining the status quo. The degree of unhappiness people will tolerate scales upwards with the probability that any kind of rebellion will be quashed and the perpetrators swiftly dealt with. And even then there must be a reasonable prospect of actually WINNING a war. You dont just go to war out of spite. This would be tantamount to mere murder. While a small number of people may relish the idea of chaos and destruction, the vast majority of people are peace loving and loath to kill and loath to resort to violence under any circumstance.
China has seemingly developed a very efficient way of discouraging political dissent. controlling the access to information about the outside world, controlling the ability of people to freely congregate and communicate, punishing political dissent as if it was immoral to disagree with the state.
The disinclination to fight against authority figures is even stronger because something like 60% of the normal population are themselves authoritarian followers (probably a beneficial survival trait for the species but not very beneficial to individual human rights). Based on your language, I think you probably fall in this catagory. You have internalized the myth that whoever is in charge must be in charge for a just cause, and to overthrow that authority would be immoral.
We should liberate china because to not do so is an offense against humanity itself, regardless of what percentage of chinese citizens are educated enough to realize it. No person can choose to be oppressed. No person can choose to be kept ignorant. knowledge and versatility are the hallmarks of humanity and no human being would choose to live like a mere beast of burden if they knew something better existed. A person who has never experienced freedom, does not even understand that they are oppressed.
As for the "RIGHT TO GOVERN". There is no such thing. No one has any right to govern anything. Governing needs to be done, and people have the right to good government because to deny then that would be to criple a community's natural tendency to associate and organize and divide the product of their labour to mutual common needs; but no one specifically has any RIGHT to govern in particular.
Your logic could be applied directly to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Should the world Community not have respected the Taliban's RIGHT to govern? Or Hussein's right to Govern? Or Stalin's right to govern? Or a pimps RIGHT to pimp his bitches?
Your post is utterly overrated... It should be modded down. It practically amounts to a Troll, except that I suspect you actually believe the nonsense expressed by your words.
"Our business owners believe in free markets completely and totally, until someone bigger and better comes along and the market dictates their destruction. Then they squawk louder than any socialist I ever heard."
...The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
Adam Smith actually pointed out that business owners do NOT believe in free markets at all.
"
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations - Book 1, chapter 11
"And what, may I ask, constitutes a inferior legal system."
Its a system where the people who decide what the rules are for society are, are the exact same people who decide in a case by case basis what those rules mean when applied to a particular set of facts, and are the exact same people who enforce those rules upon the people. In otherwords, the same person is lawmaker, enforcer, judge and executioner all at the same time.
Such a society has an inferior legal system.
Alternatively a society where any one of those classes of people is suspectible to bribes or corruption of any kind is an inferior legal system.
A system where people write laws for someone else but dont need to follow the same rules. such a system is inferior.
"People in diferent coutries have different morals, some people believe that the laws should reflect their religions, other takes pride in making their government non-religious. The core of this question is that your morals are different from mine, they may even be similar in some aspects but they are different so you can't judge how good is a legal system for me based on your morals."
You can't judge it based on "your" morals, because your morals are arbitrary.
That doesn't mean you can't judge something based on objective study of its outcomes, and make an objective determination as to what is better or worse.
There is nothing "conservative" about having the state enforce a monopoly. Intellectual property is a new invention. The founding father of modern free market economics/capitalism (Adam Smith) took it for granted that competetors would try to learn each others secrets and eventually imitate each other (and that this was normal). At no point did he consider that the state should actually PROTECT those secrets. This is NOT a conservative idea.
He also never considered that laborors and owners would simply throw their hands up and refuse to "invent" unless they had a state protected monopoly. He recognized that it was human nature to constantly seek new ways of making its life or work easier. And invention was inevitable.
In so far as mankind has been inventing for thousands of years without patents. How can you claim patents are "conservative"?
Adam Smith actually considered virtually all state intervention of any kind to be doomed in its effort to achieve what it set out to do and would just slow growth (which in his economic theory causes human suffering).
state protection of monopolies is the hallmark of something called NEO-LIBERALISM. So, perhaps you should get your terminology straight. For that matter Neo-conservatives should stop claiming to be conservatives as well. There is nothing conservative about big-government and unilateralism.
conservatives (I mean the real ones) believe in individual freedom and responsibility as well as minimal government involvement. This would include in taking on the responsibility of protecting your clever ideas simply by keeping your mouth shut.
A conservative would never think that someone ought to get a monopoly just because they were the first person to tell the government about their idea. The entire notion of REPORTING TO THE GOVERNMENT is absolutely anti-ethical to a true conservative. A true conservative would think that you can keep your manufacturing processes a secret for a time easily enough and if you can't turn around and make any money that way before someone else figures it out, perhaps it wasn't such a clever idea afterall.
Conservatism is not about being authoritarian and domineering or trusting the President. It is about keeping whatever worked in the past and sticking to it with only small incremental changes when necessary. In the past a person could do whatever they wanted with their PRIVATE physical property, and no lawyer or patent clerk was going to tell him otherwise.
Patents and intellectual property are legal fictions designed to keep you from being able to use your own private property how you see fit. That is not "conservative".
At the very minimum a conservative would argue that patents are a necessary evil because without patents no one would ever invent anything. (which is untrue, but if you believed such a notion at least you could still claim to be conservative). On the otherhand simply being pro-patent for no particuar reason other than "he invented it FIRST so he wins the prize of a state protected monopoly" is being quite modern in your thinking.
So if you are looking for an accurate label (most people claiming to be conservative aren't) how about calling yourself a "monopolist"?
"WHatever happened to trust you ask? I'm sure it went out the window after the first few people lied on their FAFSA applications. Or after the government handed out money to someone who could have easily afforded going to college, but just wanted the government to pay for as much of it as possible."
So why does the government mistrust the other 95+ percent who DONT lie?
"What do you have to hide?"
I have all sorts of stuff I choose to hide. Believe it or not: Not every secret is about YOU! Mind your own fucking business fascist!
what ever happened to TRUST?
"You are asking the government to put you under a microscope in order to determine how much money they will have to give you to pay for your education. You can't just say "Hey, give me money, but don't ask anything about me.""
uhhh... what does that have to do with handing over the records to other government agencies so they can perform whatever other analysis they can dream up on you?
Or do you figure that when a person asks for help from the government they must forfeit all rights and human dignity?
You are in error: 2+2=5
please recalibrate your equipment accordingly.
"Because a search warrant involves getting permission from a judge, which adds another layer of bureaucracy for no apparent protection."
really? Judges are not mere rubber stamps. In actual fact they actually JUDGE the information to determine if on the balance of probabilities a search is justified. They also obtain an OATH from a witness of some kind (albeit often a cop) as to what exactly they claim to believe. This can be held against the individual in the future with the possibile consequence of a perjurer going to jail. This is your ONLY protection from an unreasonable search and seizure.
Or do you think the personal discretion of some cop with no negative consequence when he abuses that discretion actually "protects" you?