Interesting. I wish I had a name for that AC, because I would like to read more of your opinions.
I agree that the bundling and differentiation of services allows for savings in certain cases. What bothers me about this is that it injects intelligence into the network, and routing is no longer a simple question of protocol. All major advances in internet usage came from random people throwing up a website, and discovering that they hit on a major need. Google, Yahoo, Webex, or even Penny-Arcade.... none would have had a chance in an intelligently managed network (where intelligence merely denotes making decisions based on things other than a technical protocol).
Since I have no interest in discussing the gold standard in-depth (done that too many times already), I'll just ask you a few questions: - Once the value of a currency is pegged to the amount of gold that nation holds, what happens when a new gold mine is opened? What happens when there's a sudden influx of gold into the market? (Hint: supply and demand). - If gold supplies are static, what happens to the wealth distribution when populations keep increasing? (Hint: static pie, more slices) - If gold is a currency, to be kept in vault, what happens to commercial and industrial applications of gold? (Hint: use is determined by cost)
Pining for the gold standard is like pining for the kings and emperors of old. Just because the current system isn't perfect doesn't mean you ought to go back to the one that was worse.
As for the department of education, I'll make the same comment: it isn't perfect, but the solution isn't to abolish it. If something isn't working, you fix it - the underlying assumption being that you're trying to reach a goal, and that you need to keep on trying to reach it. You don't just stop trying.
And I didn't define some of Paul's approaches as anarchy. I said that there are certain sections of government which Ron Paul wants to remove, but which I believe are necessary to prevent a slide back to feudalism - of which the education department is one. His entire gold standard idea is another (which, coincidentally, I think has nothing to do with libertarian principles).
A constitution that protects minority rights and a judicial system that protects and helps vindicate those rights should make violence unnecessary.
Absolutely. The reason I don't like the analogy is that it completely removes the social as well as the legal framework that is required for a nation to even exist - nevermind vote on anything. It essentially sets up a situation that cannot exist, which is therefore easily shown to be absurd.
You don't get it, do you? The point here is that in your scenario, it does not matter what the question at hand is, because the majority and minority will always have diametrically opposed goals - goals that can only be satisfied by the removal of the other party. It's an argument that makes absolutely no sense in any type of social structure.
Furthermore, the death sentence in the US is nothing but a majority having voted to put particular people to death. Should the people on death-row have a right to shoot anyone coming to arrest them? Oh, but you say, they broke the law. And exactly how do they make those laws? By having a majority vote. Doh.
Your approach is neither realistic nor expedient. It's merely being unable to see beyond your own nose. Your individualism would only find fulfillment in complete anarchy, where only your own strength (or firepower) will save you from destruction. You know, there is a place like that already. It's called Somalia. Have fun over there.
In the meantime, stop pretending that your brand of individualism is anything but selfishness of the highest order.
My point is, we all get the idea, but how far fetched is the difference from paying extra for the ability to send and receive SMTP traffic, paying extra to send/receive HTTPS traffic, and, of course, the coup de gras, paying extra to access Google or Yahoo! It is coup de grace, but otherwise, spot on. Someone mod this guy. This is the wet dream of all ISPs: to charge you by connection type, by port, by protocol and finally, by content and end-point access. They want to charge you the same way they charge your cell phone usage: lots of completely made up charges that are only differentiated because their tracking software can.
I predict in the fairly near future (5 years or so) that there'll be a lot of these tests going on, and a lot of cut-rate Internet offerings that have these sort of restrictions. If even 20% of all customers sign on, I expect that all future offerings will be of that nature.
Shudder. It will be the end of the Internet as a medium of innovation, communication and productivity enhancements... it'll become like TV and radio.
Hah. Pure idiocy. If the nation that is voting is that fractured, it has no business being a nation. The underlying assumption of democracy is that the vote is done by a general public that has some common interest, some common denominator (even if it the lowest).
Besides, your analogy is completely misleading. What if it's 2 lambs and a wolf voting on what's for dinner? You're implying that the minority has an inherent right to protect itself via violence from the outcome of a vote. Do you really want to open the door to wahabists buying guns and contesting votes via shootouts because in America, they're the lamb in the minority? Didn't think so.
If Paul has no chance, it will be because his positions are interesting at best, and laughable at worst. I like libertarian approaches to a lot of things, but there are some things that a government has to provide if it doesn't want the nation to slide into feudalism.
How's Murphy's law go? Anything that can go wrong, will? Anything that cannot possibly break, will, and at the worst possible time?
Randomness is weird like that. You can never rule it out just on the face that something is highly, highly, improbable. After all, life is the consequence of a series of highly, highly improbable events.
I agree that it is suspicious, but I'd like to see proof before blaming a US invasion on this. Besides, what would really be the point of this? Isolate Iran? They'll be up and running in two weeks again. Threaten them? With what? Lack of porn downloads?
I fail to see how this could be used to coerce Iran. After all, it's not a threat if the other party doesn't know it is a threat.....
I'll give you I was glib in me lumping all the current fighting as being under control of AQ. There are plenty of other elements in there.
As for needing to know the details of the strategy.... tell me, what does this sound like: hit and run tactics, ambushes, use of irregular forces, urban combat and bombings. Sounds pretty much like what's happening now, right? If the gp is right, that's what the general used... and I vaguely remember stories of that wargame in a similar fashion.
Sometimes, the details don't change the overall story.
To quote Clausewitz (I think), war is merely politics pursued with other means. All wars are political decisions, as are decisions on how to pursue a war. A retreat from Iraq would have been a political decision. And yes, the US was very, very close to "losing" this Iraq war. If the "surge" (in quotes because I don't believe it is the primary cause of the improvement in the situation on the ground) would not have been successful, I can guarantee you we would have left.
In your initial assessment, you made the exact same mistake that Bush and his political allies made: that enemies would be willing to engage the US troops in a traditional battlefield, and that asymmetric warfare cannot possibly lead to a withdrawal.
And sometimes, the goals that are given are pulled out of someone's ass and completely unrealistic.
I don't know what the goals of that wargame were, nor whether the goals were realistic or fit into a certain strategy. What I do know is that the strategy that the general used is the EXACT strategy that was used by Al-Qaeda, and which nearly kicked the US forces out of Iraq. The saving grace was some very unorthodox thinking of the commanders on the ground, who managed to change the minds of a number of Iraqis about who the real enemy was.
That general should have been given a medal, the wargames redone with that knowledge incorporated, and then reanalyzed. In short, they should have learned from their discovery, instead of just ignoring it.
In a market economy, the value of something is defined by the price someone wants to pay for it. It seems that SMS is an extremely valuable service for a lot of people - hence why they're willing to pay exorbitant prices for it. I'm happy for you that you quit sending text messages, and don't need them. However, that doesn't mean that people who find them valuable are morons. Or would you also like to argue that people who pay for Football tickets are morons (speaking of inflated value)? Or that people who pay for an expensive meal are morons (why have a steak when you can have a McD burger)? Scratch that - you probably would.
Actually, it's liberty, equality, fraternity. As someone states in his sig, this makes for an interesting set of priorities... too bad neither the french nor the americans seem to follow that set of priorities.
I have to say, that'd be hilarious. That could turn into the equivalent of Out of Office loops in badly configured email systems. I'd love to see the physical lawyer equivalent of that, as well as the pile of evidence when it comes to showing how much copyright infringement has taken place.
Wow. The two most incoherent replies in the last day or so came from people with Ron Paul sigs. I'm starting to change my opinion of him... for the worse.
Find where I said we should sit back and let the government do whatever it wants, and I'll buy you a brand new Ron Paul campaign sticker. I suspect though that instead, you'll find that I said that the current reality needs to be discussed. On account of it being, you know, reality. Reading comprehension FTW.
How exactly do you think is the law being implemented? Through capricious government functionaries. I'm with you that the law has turned into a ridiculous aberration, and that the SCOTUS hasn't helped in the last few years - but those capricious (and apparently lying) functionaries still have to be taken into account.
However, there is a certain reality to be discussed, along with what the most likely chain of events is going to be, given certain starting conditions. I'm glad that you're willing to stand up for your rights, but it's important to know how things are going to unfold.
Examples of unintended consequences are strawmen? Do you even know what a strawman argument is?
I'm sorry you don't feel the same way.
Feeling has nothing to do with it. Show me that the cost is smaller than the benefit within a reasonable band of uncertainty, and I'll buy the argument. However, simply stating that removing all mosquitoes from Africa is only going to result in saved lives is naive in the worst possible way.
Let me repeat it for you: I'm all for saving lives. I'm against saving lives through methods where past experience has shown that there is a massive potential for extremely expensive consequences. Don't fuck with a complex and chaotic system.
I'd have no hesitation in pulling the trigger if it mean eliminating every damn mosquito on earth. Sorry if that sounds unenlightened.
It's not unenlightened, it's stupid. It displays a staggering ignorance of the effect of introducing foreign species in a new environment (Northern Pike, rabbits, zebra mussel, spanish moss, etc. etc. etc.) or of removing one species from an ecosystem (grizzly bear, star fish, kelp, etc, etc, etc). Finally, you completely overestimate the redundancy and resilience of the tropical rain forests (hint: one controlled burn sets an area back about 400 years in terms of return to normal) and underestimate its complexity (hint: what's the impact of removing fire ants from the system?).
Feel free to google the terms. I've set you up with enough key terms that you can educate yourself on the impact. The basic point is that we, as a species, have optimized our behavior to the world as it is. Removing (or adding) to our system can have an impact that goes far beyond expectations, with an impact that is staggering in cost. Think Jenga on a global scale.
Look up "search incident on arrest". You might learn something new. Alternatively, you could just read the article. It's clearly explained in there that the 4th amendment has been stretched far and wide to provide simple guidance to field officers.
It is crystal clear that searches incident on arrest are common, and encompass pretty much everything within the car or on the person arrested. The question the author asks is that considering how much personal life is carried on an iPhone (which is used as a generic term for a gadget that does phone, text messages, email, webbrowser, pictures, voice, movies, calendar and more), does this type of search constitute an unreasonable search of personal property? He doesn't have an answer, but he proposes a couple of options, none of which are very fun.
My question though is: what if your phone is locked? The only reference in the pdf is about a state case that ruled that locked glove boxes can not be part of this type of search. On the other hand, federal law seems to force people to open up locked items as well.....
This entire discussion could be rendered moot by the simple act of locking your device. I'm hoping that locked devices will not become part of these types of searches, but I'm not convinced.... Especially with the entire problem "there be terrorists!", we could see laws similar to Great Britain's where you are forced to hand over passwords.
Why is it that, for instance, so many people think that whether someone gets the health care that determines whether they live or die (or live comfortable or live with constant, chronic illness) is something best left to the free market, but that getting from one outer-ring suburb to another in twenty minutes instead of forty is a pressing reason to spend billions of dollars on asphalt?
Two words: Natural Monopoly. Roads, by their nature, are natural monopolies. You only need one road to connect two points. What's more, roads take up space, sometimes very valuable space. Optimizing - or even minimizing - the space taken up by roads is critical. The end result is that the free market would be incapable of properly providing road service. There are just too many externalities at play that are currently not taken into account when pricing out construction costs and tolls, not to mention the fact that the first person in has an enormous structural advantage.
Since we're already going to end up with a monopoly, we might as well have a monopoly that can be influenced by the public via elections.
Health Care, on the other hand, does not suffer from the same problems. The first person to provide health care can establish a reputation, but so can the second one. There are space requirements to provide the service, but they are not nearly as constraining as the ones for roads. Overcapacity will not impact other areas of society, and can be quickly remedied. As a result, Health Care can be provided by private entities. The main problem I see with an all-private system is that most sick people won't be able to afford the insurance premiums. This then requires the government to step in and to provide a service that the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard of AT&T?
Interesting. I wish I had a name for that AC, because I would like to read more of your opinions.
I agree that the bundling and differentiation of services allows for savings in certain cases. What bothers me about this is that it injects intelligence into the network, and routing is no longer a simple question of protocol. All major advances in internet usage came from random people throwing up a website, and discovering that they hit on a major need. Google, Yahoo, Webex, or even Penny-Arcade.... none would have had a chance in an intelligently managed network (where intelligence merely denotes making decisions based on things other than a technical protocol).
Since I have no interest in discussing the gold standard in-depth (done that too many times already), I'll just ask you a few questions:
- Once the value of a currency is pegged to the amount of gold that nation holds, what happens when a new gold mine is opened? What happens when there's a sudden influx of gold into the market? (Hint: supply and demand).
- If gold supplies are static, what happens to the wealth distribution when populations keep increasing? (Hint: static pie, more slices)
- If gold is a currency, to be kept in vault, what happens to commercial and industrial applications of gold? (Hint: use is determined by cost)
Pining for the gold standard is like pining for the kings and emperors of old. Just because the current system isn't perfect doesn't mean you ought to go back to the one that was worse.
As for the department of education, I'll make the same comment: it isn't perfect, but the solution isn't to abolish it. If something isn't working, you fix it - the underlying assumption being that you're trying to reach a goal, and that you need to keep on trying to reach it. You don't just stop trying.
And I didn't define some of Paul's approaches as anarchy. I said that there are certain sections of government which Ron Paul wants to remove, but which I believe are necessary to prevent a slide back to feudalism - of which the education department is one. His entire gold standard idea is another (which, coincidentally, I think has nothing to do with libertarian principles).
Apparently you're unaware that Ben Franklin never uttered that quote. Idiot.
Absolutely. The reason I don't like the analogy is that it completely removes the social as well as the legal framework that is required for a nation to even exist - nevermind vote on anything. It essentially sets up a situation that cannot exist, which is therefore easily shown to be absurd.
You don't get it, do you? The point here is that in your scenario, it does not matter what the question at hand is, because the majority and minority will always have diametrically opposed goals - goals that can only be satisfied by the removal of the other party. It's an argument that makes absolutely no sense in any type of social structure.
Furthermore, the death sentence in the US is nothing but a majority having voted to put particular people to death. Should the people on death-row have a right to shoot anyone coming to arrest them? Oh, but you say, they broke the law. And exactly how do they make those laws? By having a majority vote. Doh.
Your approach is neither realistic nor expedient. It's merely being unable to see beyond your own nose. Your individualism would only find fulfillment in complete anarchy, where only your own strength (or firepower) will save you from destruction. You know, there is a place like that already. It's called Somalia. Have fun over there.
In the meantime, stop pretending that your brand of individualism is anything but selfishness of the highest order.
I predict in the fairly near future (5 years or so) that there'll be a lot of these tests going on, and a lot of cut-rate Internet offerings that have these sort of restrictions. If even 20% of all customers sign on, I expect that all future offerings will be of that nature.
Shudder. It will be the end of the Internet as a medium of innovation, communication and productivity enhancements... it'll become like TV and radio.
Hah. Pure idiocy. If the nation that is voting is that fractured, it has no business being a nation. The underlying assumption of democracy is that the vote is done by a general public that has some common interest, some common denominator (even if it the lowest).
Besides, your analogy is completely misleading. What if it's 2 lambs and a wolf voting on what's for dinner? You're implying that the minority has an inherent right to protect itself via violence from the outcome of a vote. Do you really want to open the door to wahabists buying guns and contesting votes via shootouts because in America, they're the lamb in the minority? Didn't think so.
If Paul has no chance, it will be because his positions are interesting at best, and laughable at worst. I like libertarian approaches to a lot of things, but there are some things that a government has to provide if it doesn't want the nation to slide into feudalism.
How's Murphy's law go? Anything that can go wrong, will? Anything that cannot possibly break, will, and at the worst possible time?
Randomness is weird like that. You can never rule it out just on the face that something is highly, highly, improbable. After all, life is the consequence of a series of highly, highly improbable events.
I agree that it is suspicious, but I'd like to see proof before blaming a US invasion on this. Besides, what would really be the point of this? Isolate Iran? They'll be up and running in two weeks again. Threaten them? With what? Lack of porn downloads?
I fail to see how this could be used to coerce Iran. After all, it's not a threat if the other party doesn't know it is a threat.....
I'll give you I was glib in me lumping all the current fighting as being under control of AQ. There are plenty of other elements in there.
As for needing to know the details of the strategy.... tell me, what does this sound like: hit and run tactics, ambushes, use of irregular forces, urban combat and bombings. Sounds pretty much like what's happening now, right? If the gp is right, that's what the general used... and I vaguely remember stories of that wargame in a similar fashion.
Sometimes, the details don't change the overall story.
To quote Clausewitz (I think), war is merely politics pursued with other means. All wars are political decisions, as are decisions on how to pursue a war. A retreat from Iraq would have been a political decision. And yes, the US was very, very close to "losing" this Iraq war. If the "surge" (in quotes because I don't believe it is the primary cause of the improvement in the situation on the ground) would not have been successful, I can guarantee you we would have left.
In your initial assessment, you made the exact same mistake that Bush and his political allies made: that enemies would be willing to engage the US troops in a traditional battlefield, and that asymmetric warfare cannot possibly lead to a withdrawal.
And sometimes, the goals that are given are pulled out of someone's ass and completely unrealistic.
I don't know what the goals of that wargame were, nor whether the goals were realistic or fit into a certain strategy. What I do know is that the strategy that the general used is the EXACT strategy that was used by Al-Qaeda, and which nearly kicked the US forces out of Iraq. The saving grace was some very unorthodox thinking of the commanders on the ground, who managed to change the minds of a number of Iraqis about who the real enemy was.
That general should have been given a medal, the wargames redone with that knowledge incorporated, and then reanalyzed. In short, they should have learned from their discovery, instead of just ignoring it.
In a market economy, the value of something is defined by the price someone wants to pay for it. It seems that SMS is an extremely valuable service for a lot of people - hence why they're willing to pay exorbitant prices for it. I'm happy for you that you quit sending text messages, and don't need them. However, that doesn't mean that people who find them valuable are morons. Or would you also like to argue that people who pay for Football tickets are morons (speaking of inflated value)? Or that people who pay for an expensive meal are morons (why have a steak when you can have a McD burger)? Scratch that - you probably would.
Actually, it's liberty, equality, fraternity. As someone states in his sig, this makes for an interesting set of priorities... too bad neither the french nor the americans seem to follow that set of priorities.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
Good places to get started to figure out where everyone stands. Don't forget your congress critters home page, either.
I have to say, that'd be hilarious. That could turn into the equivalent of Out of Office loops in badly configured email systems. I'd love to see the physical lawyer equivalent of that, as well as the pile of evidence when it comes to showing how much copyright infringement has taken place.
Wow. The two most incoherent replies in the last day or so came from people with Ron Paul sigs. I'm starting to change my opinion of him... for the worse.
Find where I said we should sit back and let the government do whatever it wants, and I'll buy you a brand new Ron Paul campaign sticker. I suspect though that instead, you'll find that I said that the current reality needs to be discussed. On account of it being, you know, reality. Reading comprehension FTW.
How exactly do you think is the law being implemented? Through capricious government functionaries. I'm with you that the law has turned into a ridiculous aberration, and that the SCOTUS hasn't helped in the last few years - but those capricious (and apparently lying) functionaries still have to be taken into account.
However, there is a certain reality to be discussed, along with what the most likely chain of events is going to be, given certain starting conditions. I'm glad that you're willing to stand up for your rights, but it's important to know how things are going to unfold.
Examples of unintended consequences are strawmen? Do you even know what a strawman argument is?
Feeling has nothing to do with it. Show me that the cost is smaller than the benefit within a reasonable band of uncertainty, and I'll buy the argument. However, simply stating that removing all mosquitoes from Africa is only going to result in saved lives is naive in the worst possible way.
Let me repeat it for you: I'm all for saving lives. I'm against saving lives through methods where past experience has shown that there is a massive potential for extremely expensive consequences. Don't fuck with a complex and chaotic system.
It's not unenlightened, it's stupid. It displays a staggering ignorance of the effect of introducing foreign species in a new environment (Northern Pike, rabbits, zebra mussel, spanish moss, etc. etc. etc.) or of removing one species from an ecosystem (grizzly bear, star fish, kelp, etc, etc, etc). Finally, you completely overestimate the redundancy and resilience of the tropical rain forests (hint: one controlled burn sets an area back about 400 years in terms of return to normal) and underestimate its complexity (hint: what's the impact of removing fire ants from the system?).
Feel free to google the terms. I've set you up with enough key terms that you can educate yourself on the impact. The basic point is that we, as a species, have optimized our behavior to the world as it is. Removing (or adding) to our system can have an impact that goes far beyond expectations, with an impact that is staggering in cost. Think Jenga on a global scale.
Look up "search incident on arrest". You might learn something new. Alternatively, you could just read the article. It's clearly explained in there that the 4th amendment has been stretched far and wide to provide simple guidance to field officers.
It is crystal clear that searches incident on arrest are common, and encompass pretty much everything within the car or on the person arrested. The question the author asks is that considering how much personal life is carried on an iPhone (which is used as a generic term for a gadget that does phone, text messages, email, webbrowser, pictures, voice, movies, calendar and more), does this type of search constitute an unreasonable search of personal property? He doesn't have an answer, but he proposes a couple of options, none of which are very fun.
My question though is: what if your phone is locked? The only reference in the pdf is about a state case that ruled that locked glove boxes can not be part of this type of search. On the other hand, federal law seems to force people to open up locked items as well.....
This entire discussion could be rendered moot by the simple act of locking your device. I'm hoping that locked devices will not become part of these types of searches, but I'm not convinced.... Especially with the entire problem "there be terrorists!", we could see laws similar to Great Britain's where you are forced to hand over passwords.
Two words: Natural Monopoly. Roads, by their nature, are natural monopolies. You only need one road to connect two points. What's more, roads take up space, sometimes very valuable space. Optimizing - or even minimizing - the space taken up by roads is critical. The end result is that the free market would be incapable of properly providing road service. There are just too many externalities at play that are currently not taken into account when pricing out construction costs and tolls, not to mention the fact that the first person in has an enormous structural advantage.
Since we're already going to end up with a monopoly, we might as well have a monopoly that can be influenced by the public via elections.
Health Care, on the other hand, does not suffer from the same problems. The first person to provide health care can establish a reputation, but so can the second one. There are space requirements to provide the service, but they are not nearly as constraining as the ones for roads. Overcapacity will not impact other areas of society, and can be quickly remedied. As a result, Health Care can be provided by private entities. The main problem I see with an all-private system is that most sick people won't be able to afford the insurance premiums. This then requires the government to step in and to provide a service that the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide.