Michelangelo was paid for his work. Painters and artisans are paid for their garments and paintings. Shakespeare was paid, he was part owner of the theatre company....nobody gets paid when you download.
What is the problem here? They GOT PAID, they earned a living and in many cases a better than average living.
If today artists and other creators were to get paid in the same way those people in your examples got paid, then who cares if nobody gets paid when you download? That's like saying - the guys on the car manufacturing line got paid for every car they built, but everytime someone takes a trip in one of those cars nobody gets paid.
Unfortunately, their website needs a major overhaul. They need to have a BIG FREAKING LINK right at the top that explains just what the hell they are talking about. We all know what it is over here, but the general public doesn't have a clue.
Ever try explaining free software to someone by saying "its free as in liberty not free as in beer" -- they just look at you with a big "what the fuck?" expression on their face. Same thing happens when you say that DRM is "defective by design" - all you get is a big "HUH?"
You can't just drop a link to the DBD website in any old non-DRM aware forum and expect people to click it and "get it" -- yet that's exactly the role the website should play. You want to join up some DBD protest somewhere? Great, but why is that the first damn thing on the site? No one is going to sign up until they know just what it is they are protesting.
Wow. Pre-emptively demonizing those who might dare disagree with the great RMS. I'm sure all those people won't post now!
I think you've illustrated the RMS cult of personality far better than you realize. Keep that mind closed! It's much safer that way!
You are way over-stretching your example. Anyone who has been on slashdot very long has heard all the complaints about RMS, by now its just a litany of repitition - nobody has come up with anything new to complain about RMS for long, long time.
So the guy posts first and says, "yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before and most of the arguments against RMS break down as either A, B or C." That doesn't mean he's close minded, it means he's tired of hearing the same well refuted drivel over and over again.
Anyone who wants to criticize RMS should take that as a declaration that they need to do better than they have in the past, that same tired old specious arguments aren't worth the effort to type them in.
By the way, your "cult of personality" bit - that's one of the referenced specious arguments that nobody cares about.
In the same way that I am sympathetic to the animal rights movement yet think PETA is counterproductive, I am sympathetic to the Open Source movement yet think Stallman is, generally, overshrill for his/our own good. The idea that you have to match extremity with extremity in politics finds no home with me.
I don't think you know what extreme is.
Communism as a solution to the problems of proprietary software would be extreme, but that isn't even close to what Stallman promotes.
Stallman's position is to the proprietary software industry as the expectation of being able to open the hood of your car is to the automobile industry. No reasonable person would argue that the hoods of all cars should be welded shut and only openable by the manufacturer, so why is it extreme for Stallman to make the same argument about software?
So how much did Adam Smith write about sustainibility of natural resources? Yes the answer is none.
Clearly you are not very wise, else the few words I've spared for you would have been enough. Here's a few more. Smith also didn't write a single word about automobile manufacturing, yet his observations are just applicable to that industry as they were to farming. Exactly what part of "Natural resources are part of the set of limited resources." do you fail to understand? Doof.
Ottoman empire is now Turkey again it pays to crack the history books once in a while.
Not even close. The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, Turkey is highly secular and far, far smaller. What you clearly fail to understand here is that just because people continue to live in the same physical location does not mean that their "civilization" as it applies to an example of a sustained economic system and governance which - your original use of the term in asking for examples of such - has continued uninterrupted.
They have tried monarch, various degrees of theocracy, democracy, and have all settled on some sort of socialism.
Oh, I get it, you are changing your definition because you had your face rubbed in how [i]stupid[/i] your first version was. Well, by your new definition, all of those countries have tried, and continue to try, varying degrees of Libertarian principles just as they've tried other systems too. [i]None[/i] of the systems at all have remained constant for very long. If, as you imply when you say 'settled,' you think the current socialism is a steady-state, you haven't been paying attention -- it too has been decaying due to inherent problems with sustainability and the countries are adopting more Libertarian, free-market principles. For example, utility privitization and deregulation is occuring more and more frequently -- sometimes it's done well, sometimes it is done poorly, but regardless it is happening and it definitely isn't socialist.
LOL. Yes try it and see how well it works. You can't even convince.5 percent of Americans that it's a good idea!
I can't even convince you to understand simple English, surely I am an idiot. I refer you back to my previous statement that, unlike yourself, I am actually capable of understanding a philosophy for better and for worse without necessarily buying in to it.
I will admit, it is sure a lot easier to go tilting at windmills of your own creation, makes it a lot easier to win an argument when all you are doing is knocking down your own strawmen. See that part about mental masturbation again while you are reviewing things. As long as you feel good, what does it matter if all you are doing is flaunting your ignorance? Keep on fighting the good fight, or whatever the hell it is you think you are doing wasting your time on slashdot.
One common - or at least I've encountered it a few times - criticism of the Gates foundation is their funding for AIDS medicines. Instead of funding the development of in-country production facilities to make AIDS medicines for local distribution, they fund the purchase of western manufactured medicines.
The criticism comes from the fact that most 2nd and 3rd world countries disregard western medical patents and pay no royalties to "Big Pharma" in the West. By ignoring such patents, the same money buys signficantly more locally produced drugs than it does imported drugs from the West.
So by purchasing drugs from the West, the Gates foundation is supporting a questionable intellectual property rights system that itself directly benefits Microsoft at the expense of the people whom the charity is suppossed to be serving.
The obvious response that "Big Pharma" would never invest in the development of such drugs without incentives of royalties is hard to evaluate. Some would argue that there are enough patients in the West to pay for the development, and that without the charity money, the 3rd world would make no purchases anyway. But when the charity gets to be the size of Gates Foundation, it is possible (I really don't know either way) that "Big Pharma" would factor in the charitable purchases as part of the expected return on investment in new drugs.
Whatever the case, it is at least an interesting criticism of the Gates Foundation's policies with respect to intellectual property law and Microsoft's indirect benefit.
Really? So it was a treatise on how we should carefully manage natural resources and make sure we preserve the environment right? It was a book that talked about sustainable development right? No? It wasn't? Adam Smith never actually took the environment into account you say?
Silly doof, quit rubbing your head like that, it will grow hair. Natural resources are part of the set of limited resources. Economics being a study of human nature it doesn't simply lose all applicability when the word "natural" is spoken.
Well the china has been around longer then that.
The China had this little upheavel known as the cultural revolution less than 100 years ago, I guess that didn't really change their system of government and economic policies at all did it? Lol!
The ottomans, indians, persians, arabs, iraqis and dozens of other nations have been around for more then five hundred years.
Yep, the Ottoman Empire is a real force in modern geo-politics isn't it? Persia, what country is that? Oh yeah, Iran, that little revolution back in 1979 was no big deal, not a change from secularist to theocratic government. India's got such a long history as the world's largest democracy, doesn't it - going back all of 55 years! Iraq - the very model of a stable economic policy right. And don't forget those arabs, the house of Saud has dominated the pennisula for millenia!
Hell the english have been around more then five hundred years.
Feudalism and monarchy, England sure hasn't seen any change at all in her economic system has she? The Glorious Revolution was no big deal, really, trust me.
No wonder you are a liberterian, you are completely ignorant of history.
Why do you think I am a libertarian? Just because I understand a philosophy and its history doesn't mean I agree with it. But when I criticize it, I know enough to leave the strawmen behind and talk about facts. You, on the other hand, are damn good at demonstrating your ignorance of history, Libertarianism and just about everything else you've stroked out so far.
But hey I will play nice. Show me a country that was run by liberterian principles that existed for five years. Go ahead, I dare you. Then ask yourself "gee if in the thousands of years that people have been building societies there has never once been a liberterian society what makes me think it will ever work?"
Yeah, what the fuck were people like Jefferson and Franklin thinking listening to that whack-pack of crazy freaks like Voltaire, Kant, Locke and Hume. A democracy based on natural law? It had never been done before so obviously it could never work - if it ain't been done before, it ain't worth doing - that's what I always say.
Perhaps they would like to see China have a second revolution to democracy, just like the former USSR?
Although I am too lazy to dig up links to the online citations - from what I have read - one of the largest causes of the economic problems in the former USSR was Wall Street & the US government's poorly conceived and even more poorly executed attempts to "jumpstart" a captalist system over there after the fall of socialism.
In extremely simplistic terms, they simply threw money at the situation without much in the way of accountability. The end result, as is always the case when accountability is not a strong requirement, was endemic corruption.
From the tone of the reports I've seen, Russia would probably be a whole lot more democratic with decently competitive free markets if the US had just left it alone to sort things out on its own after the revolution. Instead, they got the equivalent of the dot-com-bomb - tons of companies spending willy-nilly in order to "get in on the ground floor" who eventually abandonded the country to the aftermath of all that poorly spent money and political 'advising.'
The fact that natural resources were finite and were being used up faster then they were being re-generated never occured to him.
What a doof you are. The Wealth of Nations is all about the efficient utilization of limited resources. Everything else you've said is equally nonsensical -- There is no continuing 'civilization' that's been around for even 500 years, Libertarian or not and all these weak governments you think are somehow representative of Libertarianism are so far from the egalitarian ideal of Adam Smith that in citing them you've become just another don Quixote.
The kids in the West are pampered and spoilt. No wonder there is a trend towards immaturity.
I think you left out one of the most important factors - the government's use of hysteria about "protecting the children" to justify all kinds of nanny-state laws. We have this strange dichotomy enforced on us that people are helpless, naive babes in the woods until they reach 18 (and in some cases 21) years of age, which is completely geared to isolating them from any maturity-developing life experiences.
I see it as the social sciences version of that recent study indicating that children raised in too clean of an environment end up with weakend immune systems because they've never been exposed to grit and grime of the real world and thus never had the opportunity for their immune systems to mature and build up sufficient biological defenses.
My guess is that liberterians believe that in the same way that a hippie believes that crystals cure diabetes. They think it ought to be true. Neither one has a lick of evidence for it and both will ignore all evidence that contradicts their belief.
Yeah... that's pretty much it. None of those Libertarians actually know how to read - Adam Smith was really a cover story given to a room full of monkies with typewriters.
Now, if there was accountability behind these pledges, such as "We are bonded for a $10,000 per customer coverage to never leak any customer information" or "Under penalties of perjury with a minimum of five years prison time to be served by each member of the entire Board of Directors, we pledge to never sell or otherwise distribute any personal information collected by us. Furthermore, under threat of the same penalites we pledge to use this information only for verification of your account, and never for marketing purposes of any sort."
A-fucking-MEN!
But we will never see it, as long as the sheeple are so easily herded along by hollow promises, there is no incentive to do anything substantive.
the unregulated free market will work smoothly and provide for everyone's best interest
It sure is easy to knock down strawmen.
Your statement is in no way a basic tenant of the Libertarian ideal. What Libertarians believe is that an unregulated free market is the least worst way to run an economy - not that it will work smoothly, nor that it will provide for everyone's best interest - only that it will provide for more people's best interest, over the long run, than any other system.
And if you want to rant about the good old days when everyone in this country was pure and honest and had common sense... well, keep dreaming. Little has changed, except the fact that now we've got the 6 o'clock news to tell us exactly how bad it is and that, in turn, has made people more cautious. Despite what you say, this isn't a bad thing. Not in the least...
I disagree. I think the 6 o'clock news is one of the worst problems with America today. For the same reason that so many people will rubberneck at the scene of an automobile accident, misery and misfortune attract viewers. As a group, people are exceptionally bad at evaluating risk and the morbid focus of most news television just intensifies how strongly people over-react to the exceptionally rare risks of everyday life.
I'm not arguing for a naive "what you don't know can't hurt you" approach to life. Just that today, we have a "culture of fear" that encourages all kinds of irrational behaviour which can easily turn the situation into a self-fullfiling prophecy if we let it.
However, the system is set up to discourage that. All BBB funding comes from 'member' businesses. So they have a strong incentive to 'resolve' complaints against dues-paying members (and also to use complaints against non-members as a way to shake them down for membership).
I read TFA, and it made no mention of speed, distance or any other aspect of the contest.
I saw this on TV a while back actually. I forget what show it was, but the host/narrator was really obnoxious. Anyway, the details are that the test conditions required them to go downhill... in a hurricane, in order to achieve those results.
I don't really care if the government wants to find out how to better target their product advertisements. In fact, I prefer it because it should reduce the number advertisements that I have to watch for government products that I am not interested in.
New capabilities create new vulnerabilities all the time, I don't see anyone talking about what new vulnerabilities these drones open up and how they are going about protecting against them.
The first thing I think of when I hear about remotely controlled vehicles is, "how easily can the control part of 'remote control' be disrupted?" If the idea is that they can use these things against criminals - what is to stop a criminal from buying a pre-made unit from some grey-market in the far-east, or modifying an "almost there" off the shelf transmitter that is capable of disrupting the two way communication required to operate these drones?
Depending on the specifics, one might even be able to impersonate the unit and send your own video feed to the ground-station. At the very least, I would expect that one could simply dump enough noise into the relevant frequencies to severe the link between ground-station and drone - after all the drone is tiny, it can't have too many watts of transmitting power. A smart criminal could use multiple transmitters, and reflections off of buildings and such, making it that much harder for anyone to get a triangulation on the source of the noise too.
I assume you never use shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, or soap then?
Per a recent Economist article, only 11% of the population of India use shampoo. That statistic probably covers some more of the items you mention. That's nearly a quarter of the planet's population that doesn't need at least some of those personal hygiene products
Somewhat ironicaly, the Economist was pointing out that Uni-Lever (and their local subsidiary Hindustan Lever) sees that shampoo-free 89% as a huge potential market.
I routinely analyze crashdumps from unix systems that take kernel panics - I am quite sure I know more about stack traces and crash images than you do. I definitely know what should be in there, as well as what could easily end up in there given the right conditions. I also know that without inspecting the outgoing packets each time, I can't know what MS sends back. Why should I "trust you?" - your presumption that the data is always the same is quite naive. For example, an unintialized buffer may easily contain old data - some crash reports may fill the buffer, thus completely overwriting it, while some may not, thus leaving the original data exposed. That's just one case, I could probably come up with 4 or 5 more plausible information leaks without much effort.
Your analysis of when sensitive information might or might not be lying around in memory... I'll just say that it is excessively optimistic and overy simplistic, about on par for a recent CS grad.
As for your claims about people being "legally bound" - what planet are you living on? There is no contract in place, the license for Windows disclaims any and all responsibilities - with no requirements placed on them, MS and any other companies they pass the reports on to are guaranteed to have sloppy procedures that make zero effort to protect the data from "interested" 3rd parties who might be poking around their servers.
Then there is the chance of actively giving you up to another organization. If a crash report came in from an engineer's computer at Airbus with useful parts of a CAD file in it, MS could sell it to Boeing if they felt like it. Even if Airbus had a support contract that explictly disallowed any disclosure - it still would not stop a government organization like the NSA from demanding and getting access to the data if it wanted it - and in case you were unaware, the US spy agencies routinely hand over competitive information, collected in the course of their investigations, to American businesses that they are friendly with.
Perhaps all you do with your PC is play half-life - my clients typically have highly proprietary, competition sensitive data on their systems such that they can not risk uncontrolled distrbution of any sort. Just because you haven't thought these issues through doesn't mean they are not serious concerns. Sure, the chances are indeed small, but when the cost of disclosure is high, why take the risk? As one AC already said - if the DoD won't send in crash reports for fear of disclosure, why should anyone else?
Just because gasoline cars are bad for them doesn't mean electric cars would be good. Just like major metro areas in the US, they ought to be going with mass transport, not more cars - pollution is only part of it, congestion is arguably just as bad.
One last thing, had the type of electric car been marketable, why aren't there anythings similiar? how come coutries like china? they would benefit greatly from electric cars, why aren't they used there?
Because they already use bicycles.
Seriously, why do you think China would benefit greatly from electric cars? The population centers are very dense - so cars aren't too useful there, outside of the cities, the roads are not like America's and the majority of people who live outside the cities generally could not afford a card of any sort anyway.
Despite many claims on here, the jump from a normal DVD on a 1080p television to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc is more significant than VHS to DVD. A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p).
Pixels isn't all there is to it. For example - good contrast easily wins out over resolution - universally people will prefer a transfer with good contrast at 720p and in most cases even 480p over a washed out 1080p transfer.
But, presuming DVDs and the HD formats have equal quality transfers there are still other factors. The biggest one is if you can see it or not. HDTVs are in less than 20% of the households in the USA, and outside of the USA the numbers are down in the low single digits. If you don't have a HD display, you will get zero benefit from HD media.
Another one is cost - you can buy good quality titles on DVD for $3.88 at Wal-Mart today. They are a few years old, but they are still very nice. Similarly, you can get highly functional DVD players for under $50 -- compare that to around $450 for the HD-DVD players and the $1K for BLU-RAY. As for the cost of the display, you can get a 27" HDTV CRT from wal-mart for around $500, but a DVD on 27" tv is going to look just about the same as a 1080p version unless you sit with your knows up against the glass.
Then there are the non-picture issues - convenience, longevity, shelf space, etc. DVD meets or exceeds the HD formats in all such comparisons - those new cases for both HD-DVD and BLU-RAY are FUGLY.
And don't forget that both formats are DRM - Defective Recorded Media. At least with DVD the defectiveness has been mostly corrected, despite the ongoing efforts of companies like sony to make it worse. HD-DVD and BLU-RAY are significantly more defective, its going to be a while before we are able to fix them.
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Michelangelo was paid for his work. Painters and artisans are paid for their garments and paintings. Shakespeare was paid, he was part owner of the theatre company. ...nobody gets paid when you download.
What is the problem here? They GOT PAID, they earned a living and in many cases a better than average living.
If today artists and other creators were to get paid in the same way those people in your examples got paid, then who cares if nobody gets paid when you download? That's like saying - the guys on the car manufacturing line got paid for every car they built, but everytime someone takes a trip in one of those cars nobody gets paid.
Unfortunately, their website needs a major overhaul. They need to have a BIG FREAKING LINK right at the top that explains just what the hell they are talking about. We all know what it is over here, but the general public doesn't have a clue.
Ever try explaining free software to someone by saying "its free as in liberty not free as in beer" -- they just look at you with a big "what the fuck?" expression on their face. Same thing happens when you say that DRM is "defective by design" - all you get is a big "HUH?"
You can't just drop a link to the DBD website in any old non-DRM aware forum and expect people to click it and "get it" -- yet that's exactly the role the website should play. You want to join up some DBD protest somewhere? Great, but why is that the first damn thing on the site? No one is going to sign up until they know just what it is they are protesting.
Wow. Pre-emptively demonizing those who might dare disagree with the great RMS. I'm sure all those people won't post now!
I think you've illustrated the RMS cult of personality far better than you realize. Keep that mind closed! It's much safer that way!
You are way over-stretching your example. Anyone who has been on slashdot very long has heard all the complaints about RMS, by now its just a litany of repitition - nobody has come up with anything new to complain about RMS for long, long time.
So the guy posts first and says, "yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before and most of the arguments against RMS break down as either A, B or C." That doesn't mean he's close minded, it means he's tired of hearing the same well refuted drivel over and over again.
Anyone who wants to criticize RMS should take that as a declaration that they need to do better than they have in the past, that same tired old specious arguments aren't worth the effort to type them in.
By the way, your "cult of personality" bit - that's one of the referenced specious arguments that nobody cares about.
In the same way that I am sympathetic to the animal rights movement yet think PETA is counterproductive, I am sympathetic to the Open Source movement yet think Stallman is, generally, overshrill for his/our own good. The idea that you have to match extremity with extremity in politics finds no home with me.
I don't think you know what extreme is.
Communism as a solution to the problems of proprietary software would be extreme, but that isn't even close to what Stallman promotes.
Stallman's position is to the proprietary software industry as the expectation of being able to open the hood of your car is to the automobile industry. No reasonable person would argue that the hoods of all cars should be welded shut and only openable by the manufacturer, so why is it extreme for Stallman to make the same argument about software?
So how much did Adam Smith write about sustainibility of natural resources? Yes the answer is none.
.5 percent of Americans that it's a good idea!
Clearly you are not very wise, else the few words I've spared for you would have been enough. Here's a few more. Smith also didn't write a single word about automobile manufacturing, yet his observations are just applicable to that industry as they were to farming. Exactly what part of "Natural resources are part of the set of limited resources." do you fail to understand? Doof.
Ottoman empire is now Turkey again it pays to crack the history books once in a while.
Not even close. The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, Turkey is highly secular and far, far smaller. What you clearly fail to understand here is that just because people continue to live in the same physical location does not mean that their "civilization" as it applies to an example of a sustained economic system and governance which - your original use of the term in asking for examples of such - has continued uninterrupted.
They have tried monarch, various degrees of theocracy, democracy, and have all settled on some sort of socialism.
Oh, I get it, you are changing your definition because you had your face rubbed in how [i]stupid[/i] your first version was. Well, by your new definition, all of those countries have tried, and continue to try, varying degrees of Libertarian principles just as they've tried other systems too. [i]None[/i] of the systems at all have remained constant for very long. If, as you imply when you say 'settled,' you think the current socialism is a steady-state, you haven't been paying attention -- it too has been decaying due to inherent problems with sustainability and the countries are adopting more Libertarian, free-market principles. For example, utility privitization and deregulation is occuring more and more frequently -- sometimes it's done well, sometimes it is done poorly, but regardless it is happening and it definitely isn't socialist.
LOL. Yes try it and see how well it works. You can't even convince
I can't even convince you to understand simple English, surely I am an idiot. I refer you back to my previous statement that, unlike yourself, I am actually capable of understanding a philosophy for better and for worse without necessarily buying in to it.
I will admit, it is sure a lot easier to go tilting at windmills of your own creation, makes it a lot easier to win an argument when all you are doing is knocking down your own strawmen. See that part about mental masturbation again while you are reviewing things. As long as you feel good, what does it matter if all you are doing is flaunting your ignorance? Keep on fighting the good fight, or whatever the hell it is you think you are doing wasting your time on slashdot.
One common - or at least I've encountered it a few times - criticism of the Gates foundation is their funding for AIDS medicines. Instead of funding the development of in-country production facilities to make AIDS medicines for local distribution, they fund the purchase of western manufactured medicines.
The criticism comes from the fact that most 2nd and 3rd world countries disregard western medical patents and pay no royalties to "Big Pharma" in the West. By ignoring such patents, the same money buys signficantly more locally produced drugs than it does imported drugs from the West.
So by purchasing drugs from the West, the Gates foundation is supporting a questionable intellectual property rights system that itself directly benefits Microsoft at the expense of the people whom the charity is suppossed to be serving.
The obvious response that "Big Pharma" would never invest in the development of such drugs without incentives of royalties is hard to evaluate. Some would argue that there are enough patients in the West to pay for the development, and that without the charity money, the 3rd world would make no purchases anyway. But when the charity gets to be the size of Gates Foundation, it is possible (I really don't know either way) that "Big Pharma" would factor in the charitable purchases as part of the expected return on investment in new drugs.
Whatever the case, it is at least an interesting criticism of the Gates Foundation's policies with respect to intellectual property law and Microsoft's indirect benefit.
Really? So it was a treatise on how we should carefully manage natural resources and make sure we preserve the environment right? It was a book that talked about sustainable development right? No? It wasn't? Adam Smith never actually took the environment into account you say?
Silly doof, quit rubbing your head like that, it will grow hair. Natural resources are part of the set of limited resources. Economics being a study of human nature it doesn't simply lose all applicability when the word "natural" is spoken.
Well the china has been around longer then that.
The China had this little upheavel known as the cultural revolution less than 100 years ago, I guess that didn't really change their system of government and economic policies at all did it? Lol!
The ottomans, indians, persians, arabs, iraqis and dozens of other nations have been around for more then five hundred years.
Yep, the Ottoman Empire is a real force in modern geo-politics isn't it? Persia, what country is that? Oh yeah, Iran, that little revolution back in 1979 was no big deal, not a change from secularist to theocratic government. India's got such a long history as the world's largest democracy, doesn't it - going back all of 55 years! Iraq - the very model of a stable economic policy right. And don't forget those arabs, the house of Saud has dominated the pennisula for millenia!
Hell the english have been around more then five hundred years.
Feudalism and monarchy, England sure hasn't seen any change at all in her economic system has she? The Glorious Revolution was no big deal, really, trust me.
No wonder you are a liberterian, you are completely ignorant of history.
Why do you think I am a libertarian? Just because I understand a philosophy and its history doesn't mean I agree with it. But when I criticize it, I know enough to leave the strawmen behind and talk about facts. You, on the other hand, are damn good at demonstrating your ignorance of history, Libertarianism and just about everything else you've stroked out so far.
But hey I will play nice. Show me a country that was run by liberterian principles that existed for five years. Go ahead, I dare you. Then ask yourself "gee if in the thousands of years that people have been building societies there has never once been a liberterian society what makes me think it will ever work?"
Yeah, what the fuck were people like Jefferson and Franklin thinking listening to that whack-pack of crazy freaks like Voltaire, Kant, Locke and Hume. A democracy based on natural law? It had never been done before so obviously it could never work - if it ain't been done before, it ain't worth doing - that's what I always say.
Perhaps they would like to see China have a second revolution to democracy, just like the former USSR?
Although I am too lazy to dig up links to the online citations - from what I have read - one of the largest causes of the economic problems in the former USSR was Wall Street & the US government's poorly conceived and even more poorly executed attempts to "jumpstart" a captalist system over there after the fall of socialism.
In extremely simplistic terms, they simply threw money at the situation without much in the way of accountability. The end result, as is always the case when accountability is not a strong requirement, was endemic corruption.
From the tone of the reports I've seen, Russia would probably be a whole lot more democratic with decently competitive free markets if the US had just left it alone to sort things out on its own after the revolution. Instead, they got the equivalent of the dot-com-bomb - tons of companies spending willy-nilly in order to "get in on the ground floor" who eventually abandonded the country to the aftermath of all that poorly spent money and political 'advising.'
The fact that natural resources were finite and were being used up faster then they were being re-generated never occured to him.
What a doof you are. The Wealth of Nations is all about the efficient utilization of limited resources. Everything else you've said is equally nonsensical -- There is no continuing 'civilization' that's been around for even 500 years, Libertarian or not and all these weak governments you think are somehow representative of Libertarianism are so far from the egalitarian ideal of Adam Smith that in citing them you've become just another don Quixote.
The kids in the West are pampered and spoilt. No wonder there is a trend towards immaturity.
I think you left out one of the most important factors - the government's use of hysteria about "protecting the children" to justify all kinds of nanny-state laws. We have this strange dichotomy enforced on us that people are helpless, naive babes in the woods until they reach 18 (and in some cases 21) years of age, which is completely geared to isolating them from any maturity-developing life experiences.
I see it as the social sciences version of that recent study indicating that children raised in too clean of an environment end up with weakend immune systems because they've never been exposed to grit and grime of the real world and thus never had the opportunity for their immune systems to mature and build up sufficient biological defenses.
My guess is that liberterians believe that in the same way that a hippie believes that crystals cure diabetes. They think it ought to be true. Neither one has a lick of evidence for it and both will ignore all evidence that contradicts their belief.
Yeah... that's pretty much it. None of those Libertarians actually know how to read - Adam Smith was really a cover story given to a room full of monkies with typewriters.
Now, if there was accountability behind these pledges, such as "We are bonded for a $10,000 per customer coverage to never leak any customer information" or "Under penalties of perjury with a minimum of five years prison time to be served by each member of the entire Board of Directors, we pledge to never sell or otherwise distribute any personal information collected by us. Furthermore, under threat of the same penalites we pledge to use this information only for verification of your account, and never for marketing purposes of any sort."
A-fucking-MEN!
But we will never see it, as long as the sheeple are so easily herded along by hollow promises, there is no incentive to do anything substantive.
the unregulated free market will work smoothly and provide for everyone's best interest
It sure is easy to knock down strawmen.
Your statement is in no way a basic tenant of the Libertarian ideal. What Libertarians believe is that an unregulated free market is the least worst way to run an economy - not that it will work smoothly, nor that it will provide for everyone's best interest - only that it will provide for more people's best interest, over the long run, than any other system.
And if you want to rant about the good old days when everyone in this country was pure and honest and had common sense... well, keep dreaming. Little has changed, except the fact that now we've got the 6 o'clock news to tell us exactly how bad it is and that, in turn, has made people more cautious. Despite what you say, this isn't a bad thing. Not in the least...
I disagree. I think the 6 o'clock news is one of the worst problems with America today. For the same reason that so many people will rubberneck at the scene of an automobile accident, misery and misfortune attract viewers. As a group, people are exceptionally bad at evaluating risk and the morbid focus of most news television just intensifies how strongly people over-react to the exceptionally rare risks of everyday life.
I'm not arguing for a naive "what you don't know can't hurt you" approach to life. Just that today, we have a "culture of fear" that encourages all kinds of irrational behaviour which can easily turn the situation into a self-fullfiling prophecy if we let it.
Some of them do work like they're supposed to.
However, the system is set up to discourage that. All BBB funding comes from 'member' businesses. So they have a strong incentive to 'resolve' complaints against dues-paying members (and also to use complaints against non-members as a way to shake them down for membership).
I read TFA, and it made no mention of speed, distance or any other aspect of the contest.
... in a hurricane, in order to achieve those results.
I saw this on TV a while back actually. I forget what show it was, but the host/narrator was really obnoxious. Anyway, the details are that the test conditions required them to go downhill
I don't really care if the government wants to find out how to better target their product advertisements. In fact, I prefer it because it should reduce the number advertisements that I have to watch for government products that I am not interested in.
Doh!
New capabilities create new vulnerabilities all the time, I don't see anyone talking about what new vulnerabilities these drones open up and how they are going about protecting against them.
The first thing I think of when I hear about remotely controlled vehicles is, "how easily can the control part of 'remote control' be disrupted?" If the idea is that they can use these things against criminals - what is to stop a criminal from buying a pre-made unit from some grey-market in the far-east, or modifying an "almost there" off the shelf transmitter that is capable of disrupting the two way communication required to operate these drones?
Depending on the specifics, one might even be able to impersonate the unit and send your own video feed to the ground-station. At the very least, I would expect that one could simply dump enough noise into the relevant frequencies to severe the link between ground-station and drone - after all the drone is tiny, it can't have too many watts of transmitting power. A smart criminal could use multiple transmitters, and reflections off of buildings and such, making it that much harder for anyone to get a triangulation on the source of the noise too.
I assume you never use shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, or soap then?
Per a recent Economist article, only 11% of the population of India use shampoo. That statistic probably covers some more of the items you mention. That's nearly a quarter of the planet's population that doesn't need at least some of those personal hygiene products
Somewhat ironicaly, the Economist was pointing out that Uni-Lever (and their local subsidiary Hindustan Lever) sees that shampoo-free 89% as a huge potential market.
And then they followed up with, "Gimme some sugar, baby!"
I routinely analyze crashdumps from unix systems that take kernel panics - I am quite sure I know more about stack traces and crash images than you do. I definitely know what should be in there, as well as what could easily end up in there given the right conditions. I also know that without inspecting the outgoing packets each time, I can't know what MS sends back. Why should I "trust you?" - your presumption that the data is always the same is quite naive. For example, an unintialized buffer may easily contain old data - some crash reports may fill the buffer, thus completely overwriting it, while some may not, thus leaving the original data exposed. That's just one case, I could probably come up with 4 or 5 more plausible information leaks without much effort.
Your analysis of when sensitive information might or might not be lying around in memory... I'll just say that it is excessively optimistic and overy simplistic, about on par for a recent CS grad.
As for your claims about people being "legally bound" - what planet are you living on? There is no contract in place, the license for Windows disclaims any and all responsibilities - with no requirements placed on them, MS and any other companies they pass the reports on to are guaranteed to have sloppy procedures that make zero effort to protect the data from "interested" 3rd parties who might be poking around their servers.
Then there is the chance of actively giving you up to another organization. If a crash report came in from an engineer's computer at Airbus with useful parts of a CAD file in it, MS could sell it to Boeing if they felt like it. Even if Airbus had a support contract that explictly disallowed any disclosure - it still would not stop a government organization like the NSA from demanding and getting access to the data if it wanted it - and in case you were unaware, the US spy agencies routinely hand over competitive information, collected in the course of their investigations, to American businesses that they are friendly with.
Perhaps all you do with your PC is play half-life - my clients typically have highly proprietary, competition sensitive data on their systems such that they can not risk uncontrolled distrbution of any sort. Just because you haven't thought these issues through doesn't mean they are not serious concerns. Sure, the chances are indeed small, but when the cost of disclosure is high, why take the risk? As one AC already said - if the DoD won't send in crash reports for fear of disclosure, why should anyone else?
Just because gasoline cars are bad for them doesn't mean electric cars would be good.
Just like major metro areas in the US, they ought to be going with mass transport, not more cars - pollution is only part of it, congestion is arguably just as bad.
One last thing, had the type of electric car been marketable, why aren't there anythings similiar? how come coutries like china? they would benefit greatly from electric cars, why aren't they used there?
Because they already use bicycles.
Seriously, why do you think China would benefit greatly from electric cars? The population centers are very dense - so cars aren't too useful there, outside of the cities, the roads are not like America's and the majority of people who live outside the cities generally could not afford a card of any sort anyway.
Despite many claims on here, the jump from a normal DVD on a 1080p television to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc is more significant than VHS to DVD. A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p).
Pixels isn't all there is to it. For example - good contrast easily wins out over resolution - universally people will prefer a transfer with good contrast at 720p and in most cases even 480p over a washed out 1080p transfer.
But, presuming DVDs and the HD formats have equal quality transfers there are still other factors. The biggest one is if you can see it or not. HDTVs are in less than 20% of the households in the USA, and outside of the USA the numbers are down in the low single digits. If you don't have a HD display, you will get zero benefit from HD media.
Another one is cost - you can buy good quality titles on DVD for $3.88 at Wal-Mart today. They are a few years old, but they are still very nice. Similarly, you can get highly functional DVD players for under $50 -- compare that to around $450 for the HD-DVD players and the $1K for BLU-RAY. As for the cost of the display, you can get a 27" HDTV CRT from wal-mart for around $500, but a DVD on 27" tv is going to look just about the same as a 1080p version unless you sit with your knows up against the glass.
Then there are the non-picture issues - convenience, longevity, shelf space, etc. DVD meets or exceeds the HD formats in all such comparisons - those new cases for both HD-DVD and BLU-RAY are FUGLY.
And don't forget that both formats are DRM - Defective Recorded Media. At least with DVD the defectiveness has been mostly corrected, despite the ongoing efforts of companies like sony to make it worse. HD-DVD and BLU-RAY are significantly more defective, its going to be a while before we are able to fix them.