I've been saying essentially the same thing about metadata for about 4 years. Removing the use of metadata from OS X was dumb. If other (extension-using) platforms need to interact with OS X well, modify the apps that allow the interaction. E.g., customize samba to "add" a file extension based on the metadata. Don't drop Mac users to the lowest common denominator.
OK, that sounds like a reasonable metric. Any idea about when that was? 3.1, 3.2? Were the binaries produced at that point smaller/faster than 2.95-compiled binaries as well, or do you believe it was primarily an issue of stability?
I've always known that most people using gcc are probably on x86, but it would be nice to know some numbers. It would be interesting to know how well PPC has fared since Apple began contributing. I still use some 68k boxen at home, and have been wondering if upgrading gcc will result in smaller/faster binaries.
Use command-line commands safely on HFS+ files. Utilities such as cp, mv, tar, rsync now use the same standard APIs as Spotlight and access control lists to handle resource forks properly.
Personally I'm somewhat appalled at this. It took this long for Apple to update basic Unix commands to work properly with the filesystem? Four years?
I was half-way tempted to recreate beowoof with my own stack of pizza boxes, but alas, I'm giving them all away. It will be nice to use the 2nd garage stall for a vehicle again, though.
I'd like to see some other people actually using them before I jump on the bandwagon. Isn't it confusing to see a price in "dollars" that fluctuates against the value of your silver money? If I see something today that's priced $10, and that's calibrated to be equivalent to my @10 (silver dollars, for lack of a better symbol), but tomorrow it's $11 because the paper devalued, do I still pay @11??? I don't understand how it works.
It's one thing to have the official national currency be returned to a gold standard. It's another to try to use an alternative currency.
Right. The goal of government isn't to make as much money as possible, it is to collect more power to itself. And the beauty of it is, it's all legal when you get to write the laws.
Government is more dangerous than private companies can ever be. When assigning powers to government, you shouldn't think of how they could be used for good, you should think of how they might be used for ill. You cannot guarantee that only people with your best interest at heart, people you agree with, will be weilding that power.
I don't think it's right to assign everybody a little bit of the guilt in order to account for those who are actually violating copyright. Just because it's incredibly hard to catch the lawbreakers doesn't make it right to presume everyone guilty. Were I Canadian, I'd probably think "well I've paid my dues for copying, I might as well go ahead and make the copies".
I've been playing with A/UX lately, and it is pretty cool. The Mac toolbox integration with Unix works really well. It would be cool if they'd open the source. The floppy driver code would be helpful to NetBSD.
I wonder where the Mac would be by now if Apple had decided to make that the official company direction for MacOS.
Heck, I wonder what would have happened to Apple if they had decided the original Macintosh would be based on Unix, or at least some Unix ideas, back in the early 80s. At the very least we'd have slashes for path separators instead of colons. And maybe the hardware wouldn't have been hard-wired to boot the MacOS.
I could live with Approval, though I'd greatly prefer Condorcet. My problem with Approval is that it requires you to determine a cut-off at which you go from Up to Down on a candidate. Reality is not always that clear-cut. I can assign candidates to a spectrum of approval and thus rank them in order (Condorcet!) but where do I put my dividing line?
If there are 5 candidates and I like 4 pretty well, should I approve only the 3 I like the most in an effort to "vote against" #4 whom I perceive as popular in the general public? It's the same old problem.
Most people are Ds or Rs, and ignorant of anything outside that. Do you think they'll approve a 3rd party? The people that might cast multiple approvals are the third party members (because they actually educate themselves on the issues, at least enough to know they don't fit one of the two main parties) - thus they weaken their own cause. With Condorcet I could express my preference for major candidate A over major candidate B and thus not hurt myself (or A) in that match-up, but I could still express my preference for minor party X over both of them, thus not weakening the 3rd party effort at all.
I don't object to a primary/caucus system being used by a party to select it's candidate - but Condorcet voting should be used there, too. I do object to "general" or "open" primaries because they are just run-offs then, which fail every mathematical test for what a voting system ought to be. The only virtue of run-offs is that they are simple to comprehend, but if they're not selecting the right person, what's the point?
they only care about the constitution when it's not preventing them from declaring a national religion and making laws directly based on said religion
I forgot to mention that this is a completely ridiculous assertion for another reason: there is no one single religion represented in the Constitution Party. There are arch-traditional Catholics and Anglicans alongside charismatic evangelical pentecostal types. If the goal of instituting a theocracy were the goal of the CP, it would have flown apart years ago. There are even some Jews in the party - they recognize that America is the best friend the Jewish people have ever had, because the Christian value of "freedom of conscience" (enshrined in the 1st Amendment) means less persecution than they face elsewhere, and while Judaism and Christianity are very different in religious forms they share a very similar value system.
So I stand by my claim of anti-religious hysteria fueled by ignorance. Fears about a CP-imposed theocracy just don't stand up to the challenge of reason.
declaring a national religion and making laws directly based on said religion. Seriously, read their platform sometime. If you have already, and you don't think that these people are theocrats, then read it again
Citations, please. I've worked extensively with the party. In my opinion, the CP most closely represents the views of the people who wrote the DoI, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Yes, including the 1st Amendment. Defending the right to publicly express religious views, even by elected officials, from secularists who want to infringe on it, is perfectly compatible with freedom. It's freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Government's duty is neither to inflict religion on you, nor to protect you from religion. The latter removes freedom of religious expression from others, which is just as egregious an offense against them as the former would be an offense against you.
If the notion that a political figure may have religious beliefs makes him a "theocrat" in your opinion, then I completely disagree with your definition. No single church or religion runs our government, nor should it. But there's nothing wrong with people having religious worldviews holding political office, and using values instilled by their respective religions to guide their judgment. In fact, a majority of America would probably agree that it's a good thing. I'm talking of religious values and principles here, not religious dogma or practice. I don't see anything wrong with expecting a certain standard of morality from people. But there is something wrong if I expect people to bow to Mecca or pray to St. Catherine or wash the pastor's car for speeding. The First Amendment doesn't mean government should try to enforce a divorce of God from society, and those who try to twist it to mean that really need to reread history.
Their only support for many parts of their platform is "because God said so".
Again, cite what you're talking about. Otherwise your post amounts to libelous rumor-mongering. Certainly a God-oriented worldview may arrive at different conclusions than a secular worldview, but it's still a big leap from that to instituting a policy just "because God said so".
You seem to be rabidly paranoid about religion, and ignorant of what the Constitution Party actually stands for. If you want honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, small-government, balanced-budget conservatism - that's the Constitution Party.
The (plurality) voting system virtually guarantees a two-way race. You could think of it as a run-off system with all the initial rounds taking place in the media. We need Condorcet (ranked) voting. Unfortunately, since the current system benefits Duopoly candidates, there's not much incentive to change it. (Chicken-and-the-egg is what it's called.) The establishment press isn't agitating for it, either - and isn't the job of the press to be a watchdog on government? Unless we can implement a voting system that encourages honest voting instead of "strategic" voting, or somehow convince everyone to vote honestly regardless, things aren't likely to change. But I will stand by my principles regardless of what others do. The question to ask yourself is, will you?
Gold has real value because they are relatively scarce, treasured for some reason (perhaps the scarcity itself), and the supply is relatively fixed. Paper money can be produced (and destroyed) at the will of the government, meaning that the value of your money is subject to arbitrary fluctuation at the government's whim - i.e. inflation/deflation. What's really backing it? Confidence in the government - that's all. Gold is inherently valuable, paper is not. It's basic supply and demand.
Any commodity could be used as money. You could talk about how many "cows" something cost, or how many "breadloaves", if you wanted. Precious metals are chosen because they fit the criteria listed above better than cows or bread. You could breed more cows or bake more bread to alter the money supply, but not as quickly as you can print on paper. You can mine for metals, but this requires real work. Printing a $100,000 note requires no more effort than printing a $1 note. Also, metal coins are highly valuable in small amounts, which makes them easily transportable - a very nice feature.
This is a very rushed summary. For more information, a good starting point would be the excellent Remarkable Remedy by Jean Carpenter. The US Constitution does not authorize printed money, the language refers to coined money. The language was chosen for a reason, if you read the quotes in the book.
I give myself my monthly "pocket cash" in as many $2 bills as the bank carries. (I like to leave them as tips, which is about the only thing I pay cash for anymore.) This month I got the entire amount in crisp, fresh 2003-series twos. When I spend them, people often say, "No you can keep that one, give me something else." See, here in the US at least, people like to collect outdated currency. Since they so seldom see anyone spend a two, they assume they're not printed any longer.
I'd like to see them not printed any longer, nor any other bill. Money should be gold and silver, not fiat currency.
Sorry, I have to disagree strongly. Private ownership of property is a hallmark of a free society.
Why? Because you say so? IMO absolute private ownership of real property is a hallmark of a non-free society.
If I'm free, I can do what I want with my life, my time. If I trade it to do something of value to someone else, and he pays me, that money now represents my time. Likewise if I trade that money for something else of value, like land or a car or whatever. If I don't actually possess property, or get to keep my money in its entirety, my life is no longer mine - I am no longer a free man. John Adams said, "Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist," and I believe that. Kill me, you take away my future; lock me up, you take away my present; seize my property, and you've taken my past. Life, liberty, and property are inextricably linked.
How is private property a hallmark of a non-free society? Communism might sound nice in theory, but it never works in practice. Some of the earliest American colonies almost failed until they ditched the idea in favor of individual ownership as incentive.
I'm fully in favor of limited government. In fact, I don't think we'd have to raise property taxes at all to fund the kind of government I'd like to see.
I think we'd be able to abolish nearly all taxes. I haven't given a lot of thought, but I think the best would be a return to only duties and tariffs on imported goods. These would be very minimal on goods not produced in the US, perhaps somewhat higher (but still not burdensome) on goods that are also produced domestically. I'm no expert on the economics of protectionism and free trade, so I won't get into that debate.
Replacing it with a sales tax though, I mean, besides the fact that I've seen no plan which wasn't riddled with loopholes and inconsistencies, it just wouldn't be fair.
Nothing could be simpler than this plan: tax all sales except food, clothing, and medicine. There are zero loopholes. The exceptions are entirely consistent with the idea that life is an inherent right and thus government shouldn't make maintaining it any more difficult.
By the way, how can you consider yourself to have absolute ownership of property if you're not allowed to sell that property without paying a tax?
I'd prefer no taxes at all. But I don't see how government (beyond a few thousand people at most) could exist without taxation. Sales tax makes the cost of government obvious, whereas automatically withheld income tax is not obvious. "The power to tax is the power to destroy", and it should be plainly obvious to taxpayers how much of their lives is being destroyed.
Someone suggested a VAT rather than a sales tax. It's the same thing, just more cumbersome to calculate. If you tax the entire price several times at 10% or just the added value once at 20%, it's going to work out to about the same in the end. Maybe a VAT would be more fair in that you can resell it at a stage without adding value and also not have to add tax. (How do you calculate the value differential between a candy bar being in your local grocery store vs being in a warehouse 100 miles away?) But simplicity has merits too. I'll let the economists work that one out.
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I've been saying essentially the same thing about metadata for about 4 years. Removing the use of metadata from OS X was dumb. If other (extension-using) platforms need to interact with OS X well, modify the apps that allow the interaction. E.g., customize samba to "add" a file extension based on the metadata. Don't drop Mac users to the lowest common denominator.
OK, that sounds like a reasonable metric. Any idea about when that was? 3.1, 3.2? Were the binaries produced at that point smaller/faster than 2.95-compiled binaries as well, or do you believe it was primarily an issue of stability?
I've always known that most people using gcc are probably on x86, but it would be nice to know some numbers. It would be interesting to know how well PPC has fared since Apple began contributing. I still use some 68k boxen at home, and have been wondering if upgrading gcc will result in smaller/faster binaries.
What about the performance on MIPS? PPC? C'mon, people...enquiring minds want to know!
At what point (of 3's evolution) would you say it surpassed 2.95? Why?
How about he reinvents himself as a director who can make good sequels? He still has episodes 7-9 to go....
If you want to pick it up in Omaha, sure.
Personally I'm somewhat appalled at this. It took this long for Apple to update basic Unix commands to work properly with the filesystem? Four years?
I was half-way tempted to recreate beowoof with my own stack of pizza boxes, but alas, I'm giving them all away. It will be nice to use the 2nd garage stall for a vehicle again, though.
I'd like to see some other people actually using them before I jump on the bandwagon. Isn't it confusing to see a price in "dollars" that fluctuates against the value of your silver money? If I see something today that's priced $10, and that's calibrated to be equivalent to my @10 (silver dollars, for lack of a better symbol), but tomorrow it's $11 because the paper devalued, do I still pay @11??? I don't understand how it works.
It's one thing to have the official national currency be returned to a gold standard. It's another to try to use an alternative currency.
Right. The goal of government isn't to make as much money as possible, it is to collect more power to itself. And the beauty of it is, it's all legal when you get to write the laws.
Government is more dangerous than private companies can ever be. When assigning powers to government, you shouldn't think of how they could be used for good, you should think of how they might be used for ill. You cannot guarantee that only people with your best interest at heart, people you agree with, will be weilding that power.
n/t
I don't think it's right to assign everybody a little bit of the guilt in order to account for those who are actually violating copyright. Just because it's incredibly hard to catch the lawbreakers doesn't make it right to presume everyone guilty. Were I Canadian, I'd probably think "well I've paid my dues for copying, I might as well go ahead and make the copies".
I've been playing with A/UX lately, and it is pretty cool. The Mac toolbox integration with Unix works really well. It would be cool if they'd open the source. The floppy driver code would be helpful to NetBSD.
I wonder where the Mac would be by now if Apple had decided to make that the official company direction for MacOS.
Heck, I wonder what would have happened to Apple if they had decided the original Macintosh would be based on Unix, or at least some Unix ideas, back in the early 80s. At the very least we'd have slashes for path separators instead of colons. And maybe the hardware wouldn't have been hard-wired to boot the MacOS.
I could live with Approval, though I'd greatly prefer Condorcet. My problem with Approval is that it requires you to determine a cut-off at which you go from Up to Down on a candidate. Reality is not always that clear-cut. I can assign candidates to a spectrum of approval and thus rank them in order (Condorcet!) but where do I put my dividing line?
If there are 5 candidates and I like 4 pretty well, should I approve only the 3 I like the most in an effort to "vote against" #4 whom I perceive as popular in the general public? It's the same old problem.
Most people are Ds or Rs, and ignorant of anything outside that. Do you think they'll approve a 3rd party? The people that might cast multiple approvals are the third party members (because they actually educate themselves on the issues, at least enough to know they don't fit one of the two main parties) - thus they weaken their own cause. With Condorcet I could express my preference for major candidate A over major candidate B and thus not hurt myself (or A) in that match-up, but I could still express my preference for minor party X over both of them, thus not weakening the 3rd party effort at all.
Yes, we have run-offs. Mathematically, run-offs are a very poor solution. They don't solve the problem. Condorcet voting does.
I don't object to a primary/caucus system being used by a party to select it's candidate - but Condorcet voting should be used there, too. I do object to "general" or "open" primaries because they are just run-offs then, which fail every mathematical test for what a voting system ought to be. The only virtue of run-offs is that they are simple to comprehend, but if they're not selecting the right person, what's the point?
I forgot to mention that this is a completely ridiculous assertion for another reason: there is no one single religion represented in the Constitution Party. There are arch-traditional Catholics and Anglicans alongside charismatic evangelical pentecostal types. If the goal of instituting a theocracy were the goal of the CP, it would have flown apart years ago. There are even some Jews in the party - they recognize that America is the best friend the Jewish people have ever had, because the Christian value of "freedom of conscience" (enshrined in the 1st Amendment) means less persecution than they face elsewhere, and while Judaism and Christianity are very different in religious forms they share a very similar value system.
So I stand by my claim of anti-religious hysteria fueled by ignorance. Fears about a CP-imposed theocracy just don't stand up to the challenge of reason.
Citations, please. I've worked extensively with the party. In my opinion, the CP most closely represents the views of the people who wrote the DoI, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Yes, including the 1st Amendment. Defending the right to publicly express religious views, even by elected officials, from secularists who want to infringe on it, is perfectly compatible with freedom. It's freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Government's duty is neither to inflict religion on you, nor to protect you from religion. The latter removes freedom of religious expression from others, which is just as egregious an offense against them as the former would be an offense against you.
If the notion that a political figure may have religious beliefs makes him a "theocrat" in your opinion, then I completely disagree with your definition. No single church or religion runs our government, nor should it. But there's nothing wrong with people having religious worldviews holding political office, and using values instilled by their respective religions to guide their judgment. In fact, a majority of America would probably agree that it's a good thing. I'm talking of religious values and principles here, not religious dogma or practice. I don't see anything wrong with expecting a certain standard of morality from people. But there is something wrong if I expect people to bow to Mecca or pray to St. Catherine or wash the pastor's car for speeding. The First Amendment doesn't mean government should try to enforce a divorce of God from society, and those who try to twist it to mean that really need to reread history.
Again, cite what you're talking about. Otherwise your post amounts to libelous rumor-mongering. Certainly a God-oriented worldview may arrive at different conclusions than a secular worldview, but it's still a big leap from that to instituting a policy just "because God said so".
You seem to be rabidly paranoid about religion, and ignorant of what the Constitution Party actually stands for. If you want honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, small-government, balanced-budget conservatism - that's the Constitution Party.
The (plurality) voting system virtually guarantees a two-way race. You could think of it as a run-off system with all the initial rounds taking place in the media. We need Condorcet (ranked) voting. Unfortunately, since the current system benefits Duopoly candidates, there's not much incentive to change it. (Chicken-and-the-egg is what it's called.) The establishment press isn't agitating for it, either - and isn't the job of the press to be a watchdog on government? Unless we can implement a voting system that encourages honest voting instead of "strategic" voting, or somehow convince everyone to vote honestly regardless, things aren't likely to change. But I will stand by my principles regardless of what others do. The question to ask yourself is, will you?
You only just realized this?
There will be finger-pointing. But know that the Democrats and Republicans are equally culpable.
There are solutions, however.
Gold has real value because they are relatively scarce, treasured for some reason (perhaps the scarcity itself), and the supply is relatively fixed. Paper money can be produced (and destroyed) at the will of the government, meaning that the value of your money is subject to arbitrary fluctuation at the government's whim - i.e. inflation/deflation. What's really backing it? Confidence in the government - that's all. Gold is inherently valuable, paper is not. It's basic supply and demand.
Any commodity could be used as money. You could talk about how many "cows" something cost, or how many "breadloaves", if you wanted. Precious metals are chosen because they fit the criteria listed above better than cows or bread. You could breed more cows or bake more bread to alter the money supply, but not as quickly as you can print on paper. You can mine for metals, but this requires real work. Printing a $100,000 note requires no more effort than printing a $1 note. Also, metal coins are highly valuable in small amounts, which makes them easily transportable - a very nice feature.
This is a very rushed summary. For more information, a good starting point would be the excellent Remarkable Remedy by Jean Carpenter. The US Constitution does not authorize printed money, the language refers to coined money. The language was chosen for a reason, if you read the quotes in the book.
I give myself my monthly "pocket cash" in as many $2 bills as the bank carries. (I like to leave them as tips, which is about the only thing I pay cash for anymore.) This month I got the entire amount in crisp, fresh 2003-series twos. When I spend them, people often say, "No you can keep that one, give me something else." See, here in the US at least, people like to collect outdated currency. Since they so seldom see anyone spend a two, they assume they're not printed any longer.
I'd like to see them not printed any longer, nor any other bill. Money should be gold and silver, not fiat currency.
If I'm free, I can do what I want with my life, my time. If I trade it to do something of value to someone else, and he pays me, that money now represents my time. Likewise if I trade that money for something else of value, like land or a car or whatever. If I don't actually possess property, or get to keep my money in its entirety, my life is no longer mine - I am no longer a free man. John Adams said, "Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist," and I believe that. Kill me, you take away my future; lock me up, you take away my present; seize my property, and you've taken my past. Life, liberty, and property are inextricably linked.
How is private property a hallmark of a non-free society? Communism might sound nice in theory, but it never works in practice. Some of the earliest American colonies almost failed until they ditched the idea in favor of individual ownership as incentive.
I think we'd be able to abolish nearly all taxes. I haven't given a lot of thought, but I think the best would be a return to only duties and tariffs on imported goods. These would be very minimal on goods not produced in the US, perhaps somewhat higher (but still not burdensome) on goods that are also produced domestically. I'm no expert on the economics of protectionism and free trade, so I won't get into that debate.
Nothing could be simpler than this plan: tax all sales except food, clothing, and medicine. There are zero loopholes. The exceptions are entirely consistent with the idea that life is an inherent right and thus government shouldn't make maintaining it any more difficult.
I'd prefer no taxes at all. But I don't see how government (beyond a few thousand people at most) could exist without taxation. Sales tax makes the cost of government obvious, whereas automatically withheld income tax is not obvious. "The power to tax is the power to destroy", and it should be plainly obvious to taxpayers how much of their lives is being destroyed.
Someone suggested a VAT rather than a sales tax. It's the same thing, just more cumbersome to calculate. If you tax the entire price several times at 10% or just the added value once at 20%, it's going to work out to about the same in the end. Maybe a VAT would be more fair in that you can resell it at a stage without adding value and also not have to add tax. (How do you calculate the value differential between a candy bar being in your local grocery store vs being in a warehouse 100 miles away?) But simplicity has merits too. I'll let the economists work that one out.
Check out ShadowKiller from Unsanity.