Well, it might be constant in reality, but our knowledge of the number will keep changing as we perform more precise experiments.
Doing an actual measurement on an quantum-level, easily-measurable oscillating phenomena which is generally resistant to external influences (like they do in atomic clocks) is probably the best way to have a time standard.
I always thought they should make 0-hour for each location at the point where the sun-line hits that location every morning (I'll assume you have to abstract the Earth's surface to be smooth, so you don't get weird effects due to mountain shadows & such).
Then your time zones are defined by physical phenomena, and "daylight savings" happens automatically all the time.
You're probably a troll, but come on...if federal investigators have reasonable cause to believe any particular person is violating the law, they have all kinds of resources to plant bugs, trackers, wire-tap, put under surveillance etc - most of these techniques will work whether the target is using encryption or not.
What they WANT is to the ability to do this to anyone, anytime, while using a bare minimum of physical resources. I don't believe making it this easy to violate civil liberties is in the best interests of our society.
Let me clarify my position a bit, to try and avoid getting painted into a "I-love-big-government-no-matter-what" stereotype and to correct some misrepresentations of my views which you seem to be following. As I stated before, I tend to view society and all of its elements (including corporations, individuals, organizations & government) as part of a large system. My idea of a preferable system is one where all parts of the system balance each other's power somehow, and that the system as a whole is stable even with either accidental or purposeful attempts by elements of the system to distort the system to their benefit.
Keeping this system model in mind, the larger the player in this kind of system, the harder it is for the system to remain stable, because the larger players can cause larger perturbations which are harder to damp by the other elements in the system.
In fact, for the system to remain stable, the OTHER elements (which can include government at any level, media, citizens, other corporations, etc) in the system MUST be powerful enough, either individually or collectively, to restrain the worst excesses of the largest "players" in the system. If they aren't, then the largest players will be able to distort the system's functionality for their own benefit, to the point where they can prevent ANY element of the system from presenting any kind of challenge to them.
Now, any government, whether state/local/federal, is a special kind of "player". Instead of a company or an individual, where you can expect them to try and pursue their own interests at the expense of others, any government is (in an abstract sense) a "defender of the system" - w/in the scope of their authority, it is their charter to try and maintain the stability of the system. (Some might call this maintaining the status quo.)
In this role, they almost BY DEFINITION assume the role of opponent to any other large player (whether corporation, individual, special interest, etc) who is trying to change the system's natural dynamics in a way which does not enhance the system's stability. And to achieve this goal, governments will accumulate the power necessary (in whatever form) to challenge those special interests.
This is where your views & mine diverge. Working from MY model, I believe that any time you have a system with powerful special interests, to balance the system you will need a powerful "anti special interest" agent (or agents). The anti-special-interest power will concentrate at the level of society where the powerful special interests are working - in the case of powerful trans-state companies, this would be at the federal level.
If there were a cohesive effective global government, then power would be concentrating there to try and constrain the multi-national corporations. (Although, the current situation between the multi-national corporations & global bodies like the UN might well prove a test case to see what happens when a government is not anywhere near as powerful as its opponents...)
As I understand YOUR beliefs, the collective action of the individual elements of our society will always suffice to constrain the worst behavior of the large players.
In the absence of an active force organizing our society's "individual elements" into one cohesive force (which is essentially what happens when the media manages to whip the public into a crusade of some sort), I strongly disagree that this will happen automatically - and the players who are actively seeking to manipulate the system for their own benefit will do their best to prevent organized opposition from such elements.
Now, having either made my viewpoint clear or obfuscated the point beyond rational thought, I will address your points:)
To give you an example of how things backfire, the very same laws that prevent corporations from making incompatible phone hardware are preventing folks on the Asterisk project (an open source effort to create free linux-based PBX software) from making their own affordable medium-density PBX hardware. All laws have unintended consequences -- even the DMCA wasn't intended by its creators to give the MPAA the power it's taken. Having lots of laws hamstrings everyone in a society, not just those who need to be controlled.
I am not arguing that we need MORE laws - far from it. In fact, I believe that the current web of laws (on all levels of the US legal system) is making the system very "brittle" - just like an overly-complex computer program, with many interlocking & conflicting parts w/o little or no flexibility.
This doesn't effect my argument that the government needs to be powerful enough to reign in the rogue players in society, however - and actually, the incredibly complex & inflexible state of the law is hampering the government's effectiveness & precision at controlling those rogue players (e.g., "loopholes").
I'll repeat it again - as long as you have powerful special interests in your society, there must be an organized force (or forces) capable of restraining them. The more powerful, the larger the counter-force is required. Much to your irritation, this force will often be embodied as a government.
What you propose to do is to move from 'what's good for General Motors is good for the country' to 'what's good for the government is good for the country'. Neither of these is absolute truth. While 'what's good for the public's individual freedoms is good for the country' may not be absolute truth either, I believe that this mantra, if followed, will cause less abuse and harm to the public as a whole than either of the alternatives mentioned above.
You are misconstruing my views. They are more accurately described as, "what's good for General Motors is not necessarily what is good for the public", and, "the proper function of the government is to perform the actions which are best for the public, even if it hurts General Motors". (NOTE: I'm _not_ saying "especially if it hurts General Motors:).
I believe that any entity responsible for the health of the society as a whole MUST keep its attention on the society as a whole, and keep issues such as individual freedom firmly w/in the framework of how individual freedoms contribute to the health of the society as a whole. I definitely don't believe that focusing on individual freedoms as a PRIORITY will automatically result in a healthy society, although apparently you do.
If the implied assumption in your argument -- that everyone wants the laws they
support to affect the largest possible area -- then the default organization to go to for a policy change would be the United Nations.
No, the implied assumption in my argument is that people go to the level of government which is most effective at dealing with the problem they are trying to address. In the case of a nationwide company, they will try and go to the federal government to place constraints on that company's behavior, because the state governments don't generally have the power to affect such large companies much. Companies which are constrained to act w/in a single state aren't generally powerful enough to cause much damage to the overall society, so you end up with much more complaints about the large players to the nationwide scene.
As far as the United Nations is concerned, people perceive them as almost totally ineffectual at being able to control the actions of multi-national corporations, so not too many people go to the UN as a solution to any problems caused by such companies. Who do they end up going to? The US federal government, of course.
The crux of the issue is this: When I want a law passed, I want that law to affect the community I live in. I really don't give a sh*t about people out of state, just as folks promoting Federal laws don't generally spend much time thinking about how much better the world would be if their law also were applied in New Guinea.
Then you must not really care about really solving problems. When a company has a nationwide policy of dumping toxic chemicals in local streams, it's not exactly efficient to have 3000 local governments each pass a law making it illegal to dump toxic waste in that locale's stream. You go to the federal level & get a law passed which makes it illegal to dump toxic waste in ANY local stream. That's one law versus 3000 separate laws - much more rational than your proposed scheme of forcing each local government to deal with it. I'm sure even you can think of a few similar examples.
No, I'm not that idealistic. However, do you really think that those in control of a large government will regularly describe the legal & political actions of their large corporate owners in unfavorable terms?
If your government has become "owned" by special interests, then your system has got problems, since the most effective societal agent for resisting special interest pressure has been "coopted". Whether or not this has actually happened, or is in the process of happening with the US government, is a whole other discussion.
You are the greater idealist here, by believing that a large government will become less corrupt rather than more.
No, as I stated above, I believe that a powerful government will form naturally in response to the pressure of powerful special interests. I don't think this because of idealistic or moral arguments - I believe it will happen because that's the way balanced systems form. If your government gets coopted by those special interests, and no anti-special-interest agent grows powerful enough to take its place, then your system has become unbalanced and will start distorting and producing more inequality until something breaks.
My view of government is cynical in the extreme; I'm somewhat less cynical about business. The reason? Those who go into government do so because they want power; they want to change the society of those around them. Those who go into business do it for money; they want to get rich -- perhaps their means of doing so may affect other men, but their goal is for themselves. I trust greedy men more than power-hungry ones; they want only my wallet, not my freedoms. While there exist among them men who would use the law to reduce consumer choice -- just as there have been those in the socialist
movement who spoke of the unimportance of individual freedoms -- these are (thankfully) precious few.
This is kind of silly - when you say you "trust" people who are acting greedily, you don't actually mean that you think they're looking out for your best interests - what you REALLY mean is that you think you know what to expect from them. Whereas from a government, which may or may not have corrupt elements, you don't know whether it will 1) look out for you (if it doesn't hurt anyone else), 2) sacrifice your good for the sake of the society's health (if they're balancing society's good against yours), or 3) sacrifice your good for the sake of some special interest (if its corrupt).
So instead, you think that it's better for society to be controlled by people who will always have their own interests as a priority instead of yours? And you think that they won't take your freedom if it means they can get more of your money? If so, I guess we have a irreconcileable opinion about the nature of greedy people.
You presume it's even possible to have another agent acting on your behalf.
No, I'm assuming that any government's charter is to maintain the stability of the system (or to maximize the health of the overall society). (This is MY idealism.) Hopefully, a healthy society will mean a good life for me (as an individual). I understand, though, that the government as an agent of the society might have to make decisions which will negatively impact my personal life to fulfill their charter. I start getting upset when I suspect that the government is making decisions which negatively impact my personal life to fulfill the desires of special interests, however, rather than addressing the needs of the society as a whole.
One of the design premises of our government, however, was that no part of it could be trusted to act in the public interest; thus, the power of the whole was limited, and each individual part set against another. The goal in this, of course, is to impede action in general -- to make it as difficult as possible for special interests or any other group to assert control.
Yes, the implementation & concept of checks & balances in the Constitution is an excellent example of a system where the founders were attempting to balance the power of the separate elements of government with each other (w/o making the implementation too complicated). If we knew of a way to implement such a simple & balanced sharing of power among all the elements of our society (large and/or small) I would be all for it (and it would greatly reduce the need for most government, actually). I do not believe that maximizing personal freedoms at at the expense of overall society concerns will accomplish this, however.
This equality of difficulty is important, if only for one reason: To me, you look like a special interest. You're a small group of people that wants to change the operation of government for everyone, as what you propose looks beneficial to
you.
I'm not sure if you are using me as an example of a special interest, or as an actual special interest who has some stake in a large government. My "interest" in arguing for a powerful government is solely from my ruminations about society as a system. As I've stated above, my preferred system would be where ALL players (including the government) are relatively small, and can therefore cause only small perturbations in the system (and are systemically constrained from growing too large). Since we exist in a society where there ARE large, powerful special interests, however, I believe from my system model, that there must be a large, powerful organized agent to oppose them. Otherwise (and here's my special interest, I guess), I'm probably gonna get screwed by those large, powerful interests in the end.
On the other hand, I'm a fairly high-paid professional in the information industry, so I'd probably end up in one of the "upper classes" which seem to be forming in our society. So I could claim that my interest is more academic than anything.
One of its (rather interesting) findings is that monopolies -- such dangerous things they are -- are frequently created as a result of government action, and that in many cases the lifting of regulations would permit new entrances to the market.
I'm sure I could argue that once a "natural" monopoly has been established, whether by governmental action (sometimes for societal benefit, sometimes by request by special interest) or by normal competitive means, the mere lifting of regulations is NOT usually enough to create a competitive market. By "natural", I mean activities which require a great deal of resources from a limited resource pool before becoming cost effective. Once a "natural" monopoly has established control over the "resource pool", then it is simplicity for an unregulated company to keep any potential competitors from reaching threshhold of competitiveness. "Natural" monopolies also cover "network effects" - products like Microsoft's software which are only valuable in the context of other products (like other Microsoft products and/or PCs and/or learning curves). It is very difficult for anyone to compete with Microsoft, because they have to compete not just on an individual product's merits, but against the merits of the ENTIRE Microsoft product "network".
On the other hand, there are monopolies granted by the government (for instance, anything having to do with intellectual property), which are highly "unnatural" - if the regulations concerning THOSE monopolies were lifted, competition would arise in those markets as fast as people could write the investment checks.
Finally, should this story be archived before we finish our discussion, I'd appreciate it if you'd contact me by email to continue this; frankly, rather enjoy it.
If you wish, although I've pretty much exhausted my original thoughts on this topic - all I'd be able to do is try and provide rebuttals, which isn't exactly the basis of a healthy debate:)
If everyone thought the way you did (and thank God you're in the minority), our society would devolve back into a slave society in two or three generations. Of course, as long as YOUR family wasn't enslaved, then why the hell should you care? (In fact, having a couple slaves around the house might be enhance your reputation quite a bit.)
I've read that a large airship (with a fixed framework structure) could carry humongous amounts of weight compared to an equivalently sized airplane. Anyone else got any numbers?
What position do such organizations as the NSA, the FBI, the FCC and the infrastructure created by them take among the resources you speak of?
I'm still trying to understand exactly what you term a 'resource'.
Those organizations ARE resources, and they HAVE resources. Examples of resources: money, manpower, technology, connections, laws. Anything or anyone someone can depend on to achieve a goal.
I was hoping you would recognize the origin of the quote and thus acknowledge that your pro-big-government stance is really quite new to this country.
Sorry, I read a lot, but have a lousy memory for quote sources (a definite annoyance when I'm trying to find a quote to buttress my own arguments:).
I don't think of myself as pro-big-government as I do anti-powerful-special-interests. And I don't really care about moral arguments, partly because "morals" tend to be restated to fit the goals of the preacher, and partly because "morals" ain't going to mean squat to most of the population when it gets down to matter of survival.
I tend to treat the whole situation by analyzing it as a system (product of being an engineer I guess), and my sense of system balance tells me that you can't control powerful-special-interests w/o having an equal or more-powerful agent acting on your behalf.
The only other option for a balanced society is to have a systemic way of continually reducing the power of the special interests.
And WHY do the state governments have less media attention given to them and (thus) fewer "resources"? Because "everybody knows" that the federal government is where the power is.
The state governments are paid less attention BECAUSE the scope of their power is limited to their own state. People go to the federal government when they want laws which apply across the entire country. It's much more efficient & effective (and much less chaotic) than trying to get the same law passed in every state. People go to the states when they want a law which only applies to the residents of that state (or as I stated before, when they are trying to slip something in under the mainstream radar). As more and more of society's actions have cross-state-boundary implications, this makes the state governments irrelevant in many legal areas.
This is also happening on a larger (global) scale w/regard to national borders, as technology has been pushing both transportation, shipping & communication ever faster.
If your average American looked to the state government when they wanted a new program, a new law, and otherwise saw that as the means of production, and the media looked there when trying to find something sensational to be investigated, then the state government would be able to withstand corruption.
I believe that the average American is looking at the appropriate level of government to handle issues at the appropriate level, and the media is responding the same way. On a slightly more cynical note, do you really think that the mainstream media will regularly describe the legal & political actions of their large corporate owners in unfavorable terms?
The governed are the only resource which may be used by a morally correct government. Is it not the support of the governed which gives the government both the moral and literal power to act? Any use of military or police force to sustain the government against the will of the governed is wrong.
As I stated above, I believe that "moral" arguments are pretty much worthless when looking at the stability of a society from a systems viewpoint.
Furthermore, remember that the police and military are made up of the governed; attempts to take actions clearly to the public detriment will likely result in a coup -- as they should.
It's a classic strategy when creating a totalitarian state to make sure that your police & military forces are isolated & alienated from the general populace, and/or treated preferentially by those in power. When they associate themselves with the rulers instead of the rulees, then it has been shown, with distressing historical regularity, to be quite happy with the job of subjugating the rest of the populace. (You could probably make a good argument that the current US public distrust of law enforcement, esp. in ghettos & other poor places, has already provided the seeds for this kind of alienation.)
If the governed do not believe that the government is acting in their best interests, the government should be destroyed and replaced, not sustained through repression.
Should be and will be are totally different concepts. People will put up with quite a bit of crap, as long as it is slowly increased & up until the point where they realize they've got a gun to their head, but find death preferable than the status quo. This is because most people are interested in survival, rather than promoting ideals like yours.
If you're going to design a functioning society, then you'd better take into account that most people don't really care about your ideals or morals.
That's not buying an amendment but rather buying public support, and it's a different thing because if the amendment is a bad enough idea, public support can't be bought at any price.
Sure it can - you just lie to the public. Tell them what they want to hear, get them to rally behind you, then use their "public support" to get stuff done which benefits mainly you. Pretty easy for special interests, especially when they own most of the mainstream media outlets.
On the other hand, let's say that the little guy has been cranking out the black boxes 2 or 3 a month for a couple years, and doesn't seem to be able to improve his production beyond that any.
The big company gets wind of this cool device, comes to the little guy & says up front, "We'd like to license your technology so that we can create 200,000/month at $100/unit. This'll make us & you a lot of money, and help save the environment."
Now for whatever reason, the little guy has a small ego problem so he refuses to license his technology to anybody. Because the patent lasts for 17 years (or is it up to 20 yet?), society isn't going to be able to access the benefits of that technology (which is the whole point of the patent process!) until that 17 years is up.
On the other hand, if the patent term is a lot shorter, but long enough for a little guy to make some bucks, then society won't be deprived of the benefits of the technology either way - either the little guy is gonna make it, or after a reasonable amount of time, anybody can use the technology & society will benefit.
No. Money alone is not enough to permit anyone to arbitrarily modify political process, and money is not the sole (or even the primary) thing a government needs to govern.
I talked about "resources", not just money - money is an extraordinarily flexible "resource", but anyone with influence has additional resources, which might be stuff they have purchased with their money, or might be other "intangible" resources like "connections" to other influential people.
Do you, then, believe that the government which does the most -- which is the most active in the lives of the governed -- is the most resiliant to attack?
No, I believe that a government will not be able to stave off an attack unless it has more resources than its enemies (and the organization necessary to use them). It doesn't have anything to do with the "activism" of the government.
One thing we partly agree on:
A government's source of power is not the taxes it collects, but rather the full faith and trust of the governed.
Yes, I agree that the GOVERNED can be an incredibly important "resource" - as long as they trust that the government is ultimately acting in their best interests. If they don't, then the government will have to use other important resources - like the police force and/or the military.
The government that governs least, governs best. It was true two hundred years ago and is still true today.
You have not said anything which proves this to me (or even provided a good example which counteracts my opinions). I do not believe in proof by mantra, no matter what the Libertarians hope.
If you tell me that you honestly believe that anyone -- William H. Gates included -- could buy a constitutional amendment, I'll give up and let you have the last say in this thread.
Depends on the amendment. For a "bad" amendment (one which would probably destroy the society), no one in the world has the resources to force something like that through the US government - because the US government is so powerful. Plenty of examples of "bad" amendments being forced through 3rd world nation governments though, where the well-off individuals in those nations are more powerful than the entire government (and they like it that way).
For a "good" amendment, though - one which said rich person can use their money to convince (via advertising or whatever) most of the society that it would be in their best interests to pass that amendment - sure, a rich (or connected) person or organization has a much better chance of getting an amendment like that passed than any other individual.
Were this framework established more strictly, then -- without the elastic clause and other openings which permit the Federal government to grab power which rightfully belongs to the states...
Ahah, you have used the correct buzzwords to identify yourself as a "state's rights"-above-all advocate. I'll assume you're not a "mainstream" Republican, since their leaders seem to flip back and forth between state's rights depending on what political matter they happen to be arguing.
Well, I completely disagree with your opinion - the state governments are MUCH more amenable to pressure by special interests than the federal government, because they have so much less resources to defend themselves against an organized attempt to "bend" them, and because there is (usually) so much less widespread publicity on such attempts. It's MUCH more difficult to do such things on a federal level, because of the sheer power of the federal government & due to the deep scrutiny that almost any federal action undergoes.
That's one of the main reasons the conservative Christian movement loves any arguments which gives more legal authority to the states, because it diffuses the power down to organizations which are more amenable to pressure by special interests than the federal government and aren't monitored as carefully by the media so active opposition won't be rallied as quickly.
You're still being too idealistic - your idea of a minimalistic government will never occur as long as there are people who have many more resources than the bulk of the population.
The fundamental problem: the government has to have MORE resources than the people it is trying to constrain, otherwise they will use THEIR resources to overwhelm it whenever they want. And it will have to have the organization necessary to manage those resources (otherwise the resources will be ineffective).
Even if the government used its resources at 100% efficiency (which I highly doubt, given historical precedent), I don't think the result will fit your idea of a "minimalist" government.
The cost of keeping such a superconductor at 5 K is going to keep the general public, and even most corporations, from buying this technology.
What do you mean? The article says: "These days, about US $20 000 can buy a cryocooler that reaches down to 4-5 K and fits in the lower half of a standard 48-cm instrument rack. Commercial systems using off-the-shelf cryocoolers are now obtainable from Hypres to realize the SI definition of the volt; they require routine maintenance only once every 24 months. Further reductions in size, cost, and increased efficiency of cryocoolers should stem from increased volume of production and the availability of a cooler developed with cryogenic electronics as its specific application." This is certainly feasible in both cost & maintenance fees for any organization that has had to buy high-end workstations and/or mainframes.
I don't see people buying this for their home desktop, but there would certainly be a great deal of interest by any company or organization who customarily dealt with large amounts of computation.
Unless the prices come down, it will cost around twenty THOUSAND dollars to cool the chip down this much.
Certainly affordable for any company or organization who has a need for computation at any cost (simulations, physics modeling, ray tracing, code cracking). Most mainframes cost MUCH more than that!
The obvious answer to THAT (from a business perspective) is to get the laws changed so that your employees aren't allowed to organize (or to make it very difficult to organize), and then if the employees try and ignore those laws, then the GOVERNMENT goons will come and beat them up for you.
Actually, this scenario is just an example of the more general case where a small group of people with large amounts of resources can use those resources to coopt a government's functions into a form which is more favorable to that small group (and ignoring any negative effects on the rest of the population).
Except that if the employer gives in, that creates a precedent which tells the employees that they can get the employer to roll over anytime they want by presenting a united front. And as long as the employer is making a profit, the employees are going to feel like they deserve a piece of it.
So, the rational thing for the employer to do is to temporarily hire a gang of goons to beat the crap out of both "employees" and make sure they're too scared to demand better treatment, leave, or tell anyone (like the police). Cost effective, and sets a different precedent which is much more favorable for the business.
remember the managers are members of the communtiy too, and they are human so they do care about more than just profits. They aren't some mythical evil greedy beings who only care about money.
Very idealistic - but when looking at worst-case history, your statement is quite wrong. And that's why the law exists, to try and put constraints on the worst-case scenarios. (And why in the societies where such laws don't exist or aren't enforced, such abuses of employees DO exist and are widespread.)
I'm sorry, by posting this transcript, you have violated the Intellectual Property rights of the Simpson's owners. They'll be hauling you into court any day now.
See "Numerical Technologies" web page (www.numeritech.com). They've got technology which allows semiconductor manufacturers to use phase shifts to do optical lithography beyond the limits of what the wavelength of the light used would normally allow.
This only addresses the construction of such beasties, of course - the various companies still need a lot of tool development to deal with the "weird ass quantum things".
I think it was cray that made sure all the wires in one of their supercomputers were multiples of a clock tick in length.
I'm not sure, but I think I heard that this might have been from a design where Cray was using the length of the wires to control the time-of-flight for the electrical signals between different parts of his design
If you calculate & implement everything absolutely correctly, you can build a computing device that doesn't need a synchronous clock (runs asynchronously because the signals are arriving where they need to be at the right moments). Not exactly a mass-fabrication technique though!
Actually, they are probably also using a process created by a company called "Numerical Technologies" (here's a link to one of their press releases: http://www.numeritech.com/news/pressreleases/20000 531nan.html)
I don't get it - it seems like it would be pretty simple to sign up for phone service for a short period of time, long enough to get a bank account or loan.
Such an address is going to be just as valid as the address you give when you're getting a mobile phone...
All right, getting all the patches eventually is good - but you're not going to get them until the vendor has actually acknowledged the problem, analyzed it, created the patch, done (you hope) some testing, then posted it. And _that's_ if the vendor decides to actually acknowledge the problem.
In the meantime, you need defenses & some kind of workaround - and the most timely method of getting that information is from the people who just got slammed by the bug, and who are reporting their experiences to services like BugTraq.
In other words, I'm agreeing with you about needing to monitor the vendor releases closely so you can keep your system "officially" up to date, but if that's ALL you're relying on, then sooner or later you're going to get screwed and not even know what hit you.
To do more than that, you need services neutral w/respect to any individual vendors, like BugTraq.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it might be constant in reality, but our knowledge of the number will keep changing as we perform more precise experiments.
Doing an actual measurement on an quantum-level, easily-measurable oscillating phenomena which is generally resistant to external influences (like they do in atomic clocks) is probably the best way to have a time standard.
I always thought they should make 0-hour for each location at the point where the sun-line hits that location every morning (I'll assume you have to abstract the Earth's surface to be smooth, so you don't get weird effects due to mountain shadows & such).
Then your time zones are defined by physical phenomena, and "daylight savings" happens automatically all the time.
You're probably a troll, but come on...if federal investigators have reasonable cause to believe any particular person is violating the law, they have all kinds of resources to plant bugs, trackers, wire-tap, put under surveillance etc - most of these techniques will work whether the target is using encryption or not.
What they WANT is to the ability to do this to anyone, anytime, while using a bare minimum of physical resources. I don't believe making it this easy to violate civil liberties is in the best interests of our society.
Let me clarify my position a bit, to try and avoid getting painted into a "I-love-big-government-no-matter-what" stereotype and to correct some misrepresentations of my views which you seem to be following. As I stated before, I tend to view society and all of its elements (including corporations, individuals, organizations & government) as part of a large system. My idea of a preferable system is one where all parts of the system balance each other's power somehow, and that the system as a whole is stable even with either accidental or purposeful attempts by elements of the system to distort the system to their benefit.
Keeping this system model in mind, the larger the player in this kind of system, the harder it is for the system to remain stable, because the larger players can cause larger perturbations which are harder to damp by the other elements in the system.
In fact, for the system to remain stable, the OTHER elements (which can include government at any level, media, citizens, other corporations, etc) in the system MUST be powerful enough, either individually or collectively, to restrain the worst excesses of the largest "players" in the system. If they aren't, then the largest players will be able to distort the system's functionality for their own benefit, to the point where they can prevent ANY element of the system from presenting any kind of challenge to them.
Now, any government, whether state/local/federal, is a special kind of "player". Instead of a company or an individual, where you can expect them to try and pursue their own interests at the expense of others, any government is (in an abstract sense) a "defender of the system" - w/in the scope of their authority, it is their charter to try and maintain the stability of the system. (Some might call this maintaining the status quo.)
In this role, they almost BY DEFINITION assume the role of opponent to any other large player (whether corporation, individual, special interest, etc) who is trying to change the system's natural dynamics in a way which does not enhance the system's stability. And to achieve this goal, governments will accumulate the power necessary (in whatever form) to challenge those special interests.
This is where your views & mine diverge. Working from MY model, I believe that any time you have a system with powerful special interests, to balance the system you will need a powerful "anti special interest" agent (or agents). The anti-special-interest power will concentrate at the level of society where the powerful special interests are working - in the case of powerful trans-state companies, this would be at the federal level.
If there were a cohesive effective global government, then power would be concentrating there to try and constrain the multi-national corporations. (Although, the current situation between the multi-national corporations & global bodies like the UN might well prove a test case to see what happens when a government is not anywhere near as powerful as its opponents...)
As I understand YOUR beliefs, the collective action of the individual elements of our society will always suffice to constrain the worst behavior of the large players.
In the absence of an active force organizing our society's "individual elements" into one cohesive force (which is essentially what happens when the media manages to whip the public into a crusade of some sort), I strongly disagree that this will happen automatically - and the players who are actively seeking to manipulate the system for their own benefit will do their best to prevent organized opposition from such elements.
Now, having either made my viewpoint clear or obfuscated the point beyond rational thought, I will address your points :)
I am not arguing that we need MORE laws - far from it. In fact, I believe that the current web of laws (on all levels of the US legal system) is making the system very "brittle" - just like an overly-complex computer program, with many interlocking & conflicting parts w/o little or no flexibility.
This doesn't effect my argument that the government needs to be powerful enough to reign in the rogue players in society, however - and actually, the incredibly complex & inflexible state of the law is hampering the government's effectiveness & precision at controlling those rogue players (e.g., "loopholes").
I'll repeat it again - as long as you have powerful special interests in your society, there must be an organized force (or forces) capable of restraining them. The more powerful, the larger the counter-force is required. Much to your irritation, this force will often be embodied as a government.
You are misconstruing my views. They are more accurately described as, "what's good for General Motors is not necessarily what is good for the public", and, "the proper function of the government is to perform the actions which are best for the public, even if it hurts General Motors". (NOTE: I'm _not_ saying "especially if it hurts General Motors :).
I believe that any entity responsible for the health of the society as a whole MUST keep its attention on the society as a whole, and keep issues such as individual freedom firmly w/in the framework of how individual freedoms contribute to the health of the society as a whole. I definitely don't believe that focusing on individual freedoms as a PRIORITY will automatically result in a healthy society, although apparently you do.
No, the implied assumption in my argument is that people go to the level of government which is most effective at dealing with the problem they are trying to address. In the case of a nationwide company, they will try and go to the federal government to place constraints on that company's behavior, because the state governments don't generally have the power to affect such large companies much. Companies which are constrained to act w/in a single state aren't generally powerful enough to cause much damage to the overall society, so you end up with much more complaints about the large players to the nationwide scene.
As far as the United Nations is concerned, people perceive them as almost totally ineffectual at being able to control the actions of multi-national corporations, so not too many people go to the UN as a solution to any problems caused by such companies. Who do they end up going to? The US federal government, of course.
Then you must not really care about really solving problems. When a company has a nationwide policy of dumping toxic chemicals in local streams, it's not exactly efficient to have 3000 local governments each pass a law making it illegal to dump toxic waste in that locale's stream. You go to the federal level & get a law passed which makes it illegal to dump toxic waste in ANY local stream. That's one law versus 3000 separate laws - much more rational than your proposed scheme of forcing each local government to deal with it. I'm sure even you can think of a few similar examples.
If your government has become "owned" by special interests, then your system has got problems, since the most effective societal agent for resisting special interest pressure has been "coopted". Whether or not this has actually happened, or is in the process of happening with the US government, is a whole other discussion.
No, as I stated above, I believe that a powerful government will form naturally in response to the pressure of powerful special interests. I don't think this because of idealistic or moral arguments - I believe it will happen because that's the way balanced systems form. If your government gets coopted by those special interests, and no anti-special-interest agent grows powerful enough to take its place, then your system has become unbalanced and will start distorting and producing more inequality until something breaks.
This is kind of silly - when you say you "trust" people who are acting greedily, you don't actually mean that you think they're looking out for your best interests - what you REALLY mean is that you think you know what to expect from them. Whereas from a government, which may or may not have corrupt elements, you don't know whether it will 1) look out for you (if it doesn't hurt anyone else), 2) sacrifice your good for the sake of the society's health (if they're balancing society's good against yours), or 3) sacrifice your good for the sake of some special interest (if its corrupt).
So instead, you think that it's better for society to be controlled by people who will always have their own interests as a priority instead of yours? And you think that they won't take your freedom if it means they can get more of your money? If so, I guess we have a irreconcileable opinion about the nature of greedy people.
No, I'm assuming that any government's charter is to maintain the stability of the system (or to maximize the health of the overall society). (This is MY idealism.) Hopefully, a healthy society will mean a good life for me (as an individual). I understand, though, that the government as an agent of the society might have to make decisions which will negatively impact my personal life to fulfill their charter. I start getting upset when I suspect that the government is making decisions which negatively impact my personal life to fulfill the desires of special interests, however, rather than addressing the needs of the society as a whole.
Yes, the implementation & concept of checks & balances in the Constitution is an excellent example of a system where the founders were attempting to balance the power of the separate elements of government with each other (w/o making the implementation too complicated). If we knew of a way to implement such a simple & balanced sharing of power among all the elements of our society (large and/or small) I would be all for it (and it would greatly reduce the need for most government, actually). I do not believe that maximizing personal freedoms at at the expense of overall society concerns will accomplish this, however.
I'm not sure if you are using me as an example of a special interest, or as an actual special interest who has some stake in a large government. My "interest" in arguing for a powerful government is solely from my ruminations about society as a system. As I've stated above, my preferred system would be where ALL players (including the government) are relatively small, and can therefore cause only small perturbations in the system (and are systemically constrained from growing too large). Since we exist in a society where there ARE large, powerful special interests, however, I believe from my system model, that there must be a large, powerful organized agent to oppose them. Otherwise (and here's my special interest, I guess), I'm probably gonna get screwed by those large, powerful interests in the end.
On the other hand, I'm a fairly high-paid professional in the information industry, so I'd probably end up in one of the "upper classes" which seem to be forming in our society. So I could claim that my interest is more academic than anything.
I'm sure I could argue that once a "natural" monopoly has been established, whether by governmental action (sometimes for societal benefit, sometimes by request by special interest) or by normal competitive means, the mere lifting of regulations is NOT usually enough to create a competitive market. By "natural", I mean activities which require a great deal of resources from a limited resource pool before becoming cost effective. Once a "natural" monopoly has established control over the "resource pool", then it is simplicity for an unregulated company to keep any potential competitors from reaching threshhold of competitiveness. "Natural" monopolies also cover "network effects" - products like Microsoft's software which are only valuable in the context of other products (like other Microsoft products and/or PCs and/or learning curves). It is very difficult for anyone to compete with Microsoft, because they have to compete not just on an individual product's merits, but against the merits of the ENTIRE Microsoft product "network".
On the other hand, there are monopolies granted by the government (for instance, anything having to do with intellectual property), which are highly "unnatural" - if the regulations concerning THOSE monopolies were lifted, competition would arise in those markets as fast as people could write the investment checks.
If you wish, although I've pretty much exhausted my original thoughts on this topic - all I'd be able to do is try and provide rebuttals, which isn't exactly the basis of a healthy debate :)
So what do you do when the proxy admin refuses to change anything?
Geez, no interest in "equal opportunity" here.
If everyone thought the way you did (and thank God you're in the minority), our society would devolve back into a slave society in two or three generations. Of course, as long as YOUR family wasn't enslaved, then why the hell should you care? (In fact, having a couple slaves around the house might be enhance your reputation quite a bit.)
I've read that a large airship (with a fixed framework structure) could carry humongous amounts of weight compared to an equivalently sized airplane. Anyone else got any numbers?
I think you lost me - what concept exactly were you responding to?
Those organizations ARE resources, and they HAVE resources. Examples of resources: money, manpower, technology, connections, laws. Anything or anyone someone can depend on to achieve a goal.
Sorry, I read a lot, but have a lousy memory for quote sources (a definite annoyance when I'm trying to find a quote to buttress my own arguments :).
I don't think of myself as pro-big-government as I do anti-powerful-special-interests. And I don't really care about moral arguments, partly because "morals" tend to be restated to fit the goals of the preacher, and partly because "morals" ain't going to mean squat to most of the population when it gets down to matter of survival.
I tend to treat the whole situation by analyzing it as a system (product of being an engineer I guess), and my sense of system balance tells me that you can't control powerful-special-interests w/o having an equal or more-powerful agent acting on your behalf.
The only other option for a balanced society is to have a systemic way of continually reducing the power of the special interests.
The state governments are paid less attention BECAUSE the scope of their power is limited to their own state. People go to the federal government when they want laws which apply across the entire country. It's much more efficient & effective (and much less chaotic) than trying to get the same law passed in every state. People go to the states when they want a law which only applies to the residents of that state (or as I stated before, when they are trying to slip something in under the mainstream radar). As more and more of society's actions have cross-state-boundary implications, this makes the state governments irrelevant in many legal areas.
This is also happening on a larger (global) scale w/regard to national borders, as technology has been pushing both transportation, shipping & communication ever faster.
I believe that the average American is looking at the appropriate level of government to handle issues at the appropriate level, and the media is responding the same way. On a slightly more cynical note, do you really think that the mainstream media will regularly describe the legal & political actions of their large corporate owners in unfavorable terms?
As I stated above, I believe that "moral" arguments are pretty much worthless when looking at the stability of a society from a systems viewpoint.
It's a classic strategy when creating a totalitarian state to make sure that your police & military forces are isolated & alienated from the general populace, and/or treated preferentially by those in power. When they associate themselves with the rulers instead of the rulees, then it has been shown, with distressing historical regularity, to be quite happy with the job of subjugating the rest of the populace. (You could probably make a good argument that the current US public distrust of law enforcement, esp. in ghettos & other poor places, has already provided the seeds for this kind of alienation.)
Should be and will be are totally different concepts. People will put up with quite a bit of crap, as long as it is slowly increased & up until the point where they realize they've got a gun to their head, but find death preferable than the status quo. This is because most people are interested in survival, rather than promoting ideals like yours.
If you're going to design a functioning society, then you'd better take into account that most people don't really care about your ideals or morals.
Sure it can - you just lie to the public. Tell them what they want to hear, get them to rally behind you, then use their "public support" to get stuff done which benefits mainly you. Pretty easy for special interests, especially when they own most of the mainstream media outlets.
On the other hand, let's say that the little guy has been cranking out the black boxes 2 or 3 a month for a couple years, and doesn't seem to be able to improve his production beyond that any.
The big company gets wind of this cool device, comes to the little guy & says up front, "We'd like to license your technology so that we can create 200,000/month at $100/unit. This'll make us & you a lot of money, and help save the environment."
Now for whatever reason, the little guy has a small ego problem so he refuses to license his technology to anybody. Because the patent lasts for 17 years (or is it up to 20 yet?), society isn't going to be able to access the benefits of that technology (which is the whole point of the patent process!) until that 17 years is up.
On the other hand, if the patent term is a lot shorter, but long enough for a little guy to make some bucks, then society won't be deprived of the benefits of the technology either way - either the little guy is gonna make it, or after a reasonable amount of time, anybody can use the technology & society will benefit.
I talked about "resources", not just money - money is an extraordinarily flexible "resource", but anyone with influence has additional resources, which might be stuff they have purchased with their money, or might be other "intangible" resources like "connections" to other influential people.
No, I believe that a government will not be able to stave off an attack unless it has more resources than its enemies (and the organization necessary to use them). It doesn't have anything to do with the "activism" of the government.
One thing we partly agree on:
Yes, I agree that the GOVERNED can be an incredibly important "resource" - as long as they trust that the government is ultimately acting in their best interests. If they don't, then the government will have to use other important resources - like the police force and/or the military.
You have not said anything which proves this to me (or even provided a good example which counteracts my opinions). I do not believe in proof by mantra, no matter what the Libertarians hope.
Depends on the amendment. For a "bad" amendment (one which would probably destroy the society), no one in the world has the resources to force something like that through the US government - because the US government is so powerful. Plenty of examples of "bad" amendments being forced through 3rd world nation governments though, where the well-off individuals in those nations are more powerful than the entire government (and they like it that way).
For a "good" amendment, though - one which said rich person can use their money to convince (via advertising or whatever) most of the society that it would be in their best interests to pass that amendment - sure, a rich (or connected) person or organization has a much better chance of getting an amendment like that passed than any other individual.
Ahah, you have used the correct buzzwords to identify yourself as a "state's rights"-above-all advocate. I'll assume you're not a "mainstream" Republican, since their leaders seem to flip back and forth between state's rights depending on what political matter they happen to be arguing.
Well, I completely disagree with your opinion - the state governments are MUCH more amenable to pressure by special interests than the federal government, because they have so much less resources to defend themselves against an organized attempt to "bend" them, and because there is (usually) so much less widespread publicity on such attempts. It's MUCH more difficult to do such things on a federal level, because of the sheer power of the federal government & due to the deep scrutiny that almost any federal action undergoes.
That's one of the main reasons the conservative Christian movement loves any arguments which gives more legal authority to the states, because it diffuses the power down to organizations which are more amenable to pressure by special interests than the federal government and aren't monitored as carefully by the media so active opposition won't be rallied as quickly.
You're still being too idealistic - your idea of a minimalistic government will never occur as long as there are people who have many more resources than the bulk of the population.
The fundamental problem: the government has to have MORE resources than the people it is trying to constrain, otherwise they will use THEIR resources to overwhelm it whenever they want. And it will have to have the organization necessary to manage those resources (otherwise the resources will be ineffective).
Even if the government used its resources at 100% efficiency (which I highly doubt, given historical precedent), I don't think the result will fit your idea of a "minimalist" government.
What do you mean? The article says: "These days, about US $20 000 can buy a cryocooler that reaches down to 4-5 K and fits in the lower half of a standard 48-cm instrument rack. Commercial systems using off-the-shelf cryocoolers are now obtainable from Hypres to realize the SI definition of the volt; they require routine maintenance only once every 24 months. Further reductions in size, cost, and increased efficiency of cryocoolers should stem from increased volume of production and the availability of a cooler developed with cryogenic electronics as its specific application." This is certainly feasible in both cost & maintenance fees for any organization that has had to buy high-end workstations and/or mainframes.
I don't see people buying this for their home desktop, but there would certainly be a great deal of interest by any company or organization who customarily dealt with large amounts of computation.
The way I read the article, they've already solved most of the problems you're talking about. So what's the problem?
Certainly affordable for any company or organization who has a need for computation at any cost (simulations, physics modeling, ray tracing, code cracking). Most mainframes cost MUCH more than that!
The obvious answer to THAT (from a business perspective) is to get the laws changed so that your employees aren't allowed to organize (or to make it very difficult to organize), and then if the employees try and ignore those laws, then the GOVERNMENT goons will come and beat them up for you.
Actually, this scenario is just an example of the more general case where a small group of people with large amounts of resources can use those resources to coopt a government's functions into a form which is more favorable to that small group (and ignoring any negative effects on the rest of the population).
Except that if the employer gives in, that creates a precedent which tells the employees that they can get the employer to roll over anytime they want by presenting a united front. And as long as the employer is making a profit, the employees are going to feel like they deserve a piece of it.
So, the rational thing for the employer to do is to temporarily hire a gang of goons to beat the crap out of both "employees" and make sure they're too scared to demand better treatment, leave, or tell anyone (like the police). Cost effective, and sets a different precedent which is much more favorable for the business.
Very idealistic - but when looking at worst-case history, your statement is quite wrong. And that's why the law exists, to try and put constraints on the worst-case scenarios. (And why in the societies where such laws don't exist or aren't enforced, such abuses of employees DO exist and are widespread.)
I'm sorry, by posting this transcript, you have violated the Intellectual Property rights of the Simpson's owners. They'll be hauling you into court any day now.
See "Numerical Technologies" web page (www.numeritech.com). They've got technology which allows semiconductor manufacturers to use phase shifts to do optical lithography beyond the limits of what the wavelength of the light used would normally allow.
This only addresses the construction of such beasties, of course - the various companies still need a lot of tool development to deal with the "weird ass quantum things".
Yes - I want real-time, immersive as-real-as-you-can-get virtual reality environments as a "normal" part of my entertainment system.
The strain of trying to simulate "reality" will coopt ANY amount of processing power that ANYBODY could put together!
I'm not sure, but I think I heard that this might have been from a design where Cray was using the length of the wires to control the time-of-flight for the electrical signals between different parts of his design
If you calculate & implement everything absolutely correctly, you can build a computing device that doesn't need a synchronous clock (runs asynchronously because the signals are arriving where they need to be at the right moments). Not exactly a mass-fabrication technique though!
Actually, they are probably also using a process created by a company called "Numerical Technologies" (here's a link to one of their press releases: http://www.numeritech.com/news/pressreleases/20000 531nan.html)
Money will always be a useful concept whenever two or more people have resources worth trading.
I don't get it - it seems like it would be pretty simple to sign up for phone service for a short period of time, long enough to get a bank account or loan.
Such an address is going to be just as valid as the address you give when you're getting a mobile phone...
All right, getting all the patches eventually is good - but you're not going to get them until the vendor has actually acknowledged the problem, analyzed it, created the patch, done (you hope) some testing, then posted it. And _that's_ if the vendor decides to actually acknowledge the problem.
In the meantime, you need defenses & some kind of workaround - and the most timely method of getting that information is from the people who just got slammed by the bug, and who are reporting their experiences to services like BugTraq.
In other words, I'm agreeing with you about needing to monitor the vendor releases closely so you can keep your system "officially" up to date, but if that's ALL you're relying on, then sooner or later you're going to get screwed and not even know what hit you.
To do more than that, you need services neutral w/respect to any individual vendors, like BugTraq.