And if there is no debug flag? Just some print statements, or #ifdef's being removed, or something like that?
There's no way to guarantee that this problem will ever be caught via an automated test. You can (and should) certainly test for specific scenarios that you can think of, but there's no way automated testing can know the intent or possible ripple effects of changes the developer has checked in; "verify no debug information is included in the production binary" can be automated. "Make sure the developer didn't remove an #ifdef block that turns on / turns off clear-text password logging for this particular binary," is a different question, and really all you can say for sure via an automated test is, "the developer changed some lines of code, here's the diff."
It's possible that the developer's mistake *could* have been prevented, but automated testing is not a magic cure-all that can divine the intent of the developer, and in a situation like this, it's not a "security bug," - e.g., expoitable hole that allows an attacker to escalate privileges - it's a "security bad practice." There's not a lot an automated test tool can do to catch that. It can take informed guesses that something "might" be a risk, but at some point, you need to involve someone who knows the code, and have them inspect the changes to verify that the changes match the intent of the developer without implementing bad practices.
Could those tests also easily (and fairly trivially) be worked around by a developer just "trying to figure out what's happening" and accidentally checking in some bad code to a release branch? Sure.
It's very likely that Apple does builds where "CCFLAGS += -g -D__DEBUG__" doesn't get appended on the compile line. It's very likely that the developer who did this was trying to figure something out, got sloppy/rushed, and checked in something that hard-coded this behavior into the code, and that code - intended for test only - never got removed from the production build.
There's a million ways you could look for this sort of thing, and a million and one ways a developer could - accidentally, or maliciously - circumvent it by hard-coding (or removing) things intended to prevent this type of code from being compiled into production releases.
That doesn't excuse the sloppiness; But there's no way to prevent this sort of a thing 100% of the time - automated tests are useful, and could help minimize the risk, but you simply can't automate away dumb mistakes. The "best" way to have prevented this would probably be a change review by another developer familiar with the code who would say "whoa whoa, you checked in debug code, man" - presuming that second developer takes the time to actually review the change report.
There's an "HD HomeRun" service which purports to work with "HD HomeRun Prime" - so I presume he doesn't need a cablecard, but can simply connect his iPad over wifi to a cable-carded device. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hdhomerun/id444454129?mt=8)
Hulu+ has an app for the iPad, I can't speak for whether or not it works well, as I've never used it, but it's available; Netflix works *great* on an iPad, I can speak to that, I use it frequently when traveling. Youtube works fine. Many cable providers also will allow you to stream some/all their programming to an iPad app / web browser. I have Comcast, and the Xfinity TV app works well.
Depending on what you watch, and how well HD HomeRun works, it's entirely possible they could put together a decent selection; The problem is with all of these services, the networks and the cable providers don't offer a full lineup of channels to mobile devices.
Web browsing, skype/facetime, and other general light usage, and some selection of tv/video/music would work pretty well; pair this with a small set of bluetooth speakers (or wired), and you'd have a decent kitchen setup. I use my iPad a lot in the kitchen for recipes, though I just have a small stand I put it on while I'm using it.
So I should pay AT&T for an unlimited plan, when my phone will do everything in its power to avoid using that service, and only use it as an absolute last resort?
That seems like something the carriers would love.
Thanks for letting us know about your brand preferences, friend.
Since we're sharing, I just thought you might like to know that I have never bought a Lexus, and probably never will. Also, I really dislike Puffs facial tissue, it leaves my nose feeling oily with that moisturizing nonsense they add.
Users can't download any app that uses the NEW Dropbox SDK, and ONLY if they don't ALREADY have the Dropbox app installed on their phone.
You see, what happens is that the app using the SDK will attempt to set you up with Dropbox if you don't already have it - this CAN be done through the Dropbox app. But if the Dropbox app won't launch, it'll fire you off to Dropbox in the browser, circumventing Apple's TOS restrictions, because you can purchase additional storage for Dropbox via that browser page, meaning apple doesn't get their cut.
Now, you may disagree with the 30% cut, but this is a NEW version of the SDK, and no existing apps are being delisted.
Your right to peaceful protest doesn't give you the right to live in public parks, stop other people's legitimate use of the roads and sidewalks around their businesses, vandalize private property, or assault a police officer.
I'll lend the argument that "politicians are engaging in more and more violent suppression of peaceful protest" more credence when Occupy has a Bloody Sunday moment.
If Obama wanted to send me to a Siberian salt mine, what legal obstacles would he face?
Well, for one, it'd be a lot easier and more final for you to simply disappear, and be pushed out of the back of a C130 somewhere far out over the Atlantic. Yes, there's historical precedent for that sort of thing.
And this is the part conspiracy theorists miss: it's a hell of a lot easier to simply arrange for an "accident" to happen to your opponents to silence them. You are building up this insanely complex and far-reaching conspiracy in your head, where thousands and thousands of people will be rounded up and sent off to detention camps, and you've lost sight of the simple facts that: 1) It would be a public relations nightmare; 2) It wouldn't 'silence' you, it would simply create a whole lot of additional mouthy fucks shouting for your release; 3) You, and 5,000 other individuals are simply not fucking important enough and not fucking scary enough that the government needs to silence you;
I know these things are hard to hear, but you can score this, "+5, Uncomfortable Truth": If the government ever moves into a mode where it is actively rounding up dissidents with the intent of suppressing their dissent, those 'roundups' will take the form of disappearances (followed by something very much like the aforementioned Death Flights), or random accidents - a 'mugging' gone awry, a car accident, etc. It will not take the form of rounding up thousands of dissidents for no legal reason other than "because we can, under the NDAA," and shipping them to Gitmo, where they can shout and yell to the Red Cross and every other international organization who comes through there, along with their tens of thousands of family, friends, and acquaintances who will be screaming bloody murder to the press and anybody else who will listen. Remember, we're not talking about "some random Yemeni who was captured in Northern Afghanistan and shipped to Gitmo."
I don't always agree with your points, Hatta, but you usually make GOOD points that are well-argued and cogent. This one's way beneath your usual standard, bordering on paranoid delusion.
Maybe not in Obama's (or Romney's) presidency, but we'll get there eventually if nothing changes.
Describe the sequence of events that you consider inevitable, where we end up with Pres. Obama, Romney, or any other future president, creating prison camps, and sending American citizens en masse to them, because they dared to disagree with his policies?
Go live in a fucking cabin w/out police protection, food subsidies, roads, fire protection, and water management or shut the fuck up.
You are, of course, aware that libertarians do not oppose any of these things, except food subsidies. No libertarian would suggest that police functions, roads, fire protection, or water treatment have no value. What they tend to believe is that it shouldn't be the role of the government to provide most of these things through taxation.
If you really wanted to make a point about libertarians, you'd say, "Go live in a fucking cabin and form voluntary-membership private groups with your fellow citizens to provide yourselves with the benefits of police protection, roads, fire protection, and water utilities." You see, libertarians don't suggest that man must exist as an island, independent and complete in himself, with no contact or communication with anybody else in the community around him. They merely suggest that man should be free to enter into (or decide not to enter into) voluntary associations with his fellow citizens according to his own conscience, rather than through a confiscatory tax policy which declares that he must support any and all programs his citizens decide are 'necessary.' Of course, stating the libertarian case *that* way, it sounds fairly reasonable, and so rather than making any effort to understand libertarianism, you'll just shout "SOMALIA LOL."
Apparently your reading comprehension failed you about halfway through the quote. I'll repost it for you - try again, and see if maybe you can make it through the entire thing without getting tired out and needing a nap and a blanky.
5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
You see, what he's saying is, if you describe everything as 'infinite', the word 'infinite' loses any usefulness as a descriptive term when it's actually relevant. In much the same way, if you call *everybody who disagrees with you* 'Stalinesque,' then when one of your opponents actually *is* 'Stalinesque,' you will have bastardized the meaning of the word so much that it will have no useful meaning other than "somebody the speaker doesn't like."
Think of it as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf (The Political Edition)." Obama and Romney may have faults and ideologies you don't like. But they are NOT Joseph Stalin.
Now please, connect ANYTHING you just said as a logical rebuttal to ANYTHING I said.
(Hint: I didn't say "You should agree with Obama and/or Romney, or disagree with Paul." I said, "You should stop suggesting that any modern american politician is going to initiate soviet-style gulags for voicing opposition to his policies, because it makes you look like a fucking nutjob who has lost touch with reality.")
I hope when either President Obama or Romney start rounding-up Americans (anyone who speaks-out against the Iran War will be labeled a "terrorist") that you care one of the first to land in jail w/o right to trial. You deserve to get what you have voted for.
Please understand that I say this as someone whose politics lean fairly 'libertarian' on the whole. But:
Stop that. Seriously. Just stop it.
You're doing your cause no good by pretending it's even remotely likely that we're going to suddenly see Soviet-style gulags implemented by either Obama or Romney. You may not like their policies, but it's possible to disagree with them without needing them to be Joseph Stalin reincarnated. When you spout this stuff, you come across like a hapless conspiracy-theorist-slash-nutjob, which allows people to handily dismiss ANY valid points Ron Paul and his supporters make because you have included so many absolutely-fucking-crazy exaggerations and distortions along with the legitimate points.
5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Stop turning "I don't agree with Romney's and Obama's policy proposals," into "therefore they're going to send me to a Siberian salt mine!" This is nothing but idiotic marketing sloganeering, and has NO BUSINESS in a political discussion, unless your goal is to perpetuate the issues already afflicting our political process. In other words: don't bemoan the bumper-sticker-ization of politics on a fucking bumper sticker.
Traffic has to be the worst of any city I have been too.
The public transport is a nightmare.
No coordination between services.
No traffic enforcement, so unless you discharge a fire arm
All of which make it sound like a fucking *great* city to implement an integrated control center for - even if it doesn't work flawlessly, it'll likely provide some significant benefits in alleviating some of the issues you've just described - helping to ease some of the traffic jams & keep public transport flowing more smoothly.
Because if life doesn't look like us, there's no point in finding it. Seriously, do you want to have a hot makeout session with a 5-limbed cross between a cockroach and a slime mold from Rigel 7 No, of COURSE you don't.
You'd much rather do a little heavy petting with a light-green hottie with blonde hair and 4 boobs from Proxima Centauri. If Star Trek (and the Secret Service) have taught us anything, it's that getting it on with hot chicks in other places is pretty much the only reason to explore.
If it weren't for those pinko Native-Americans, they'd all have been dead after that first winter, so again, they depended on others for their continued existence.
Are you really so stupid that you think I'll grant your red herring that libertarianism necessitates its practitioners to disappear behind a giant steel barricade, never to be seen again, and to exist in isolation, cut off from the world? Jesus Christ, you're thick. The representation that libertarianism would forbid its practitioners from trading and communication with natives, or neighbors, or anybody else is patently false - even worse since you appear to be making this shit up with specific malicious intent to mislead readers into believing that your fairy tale definition of libertarianism bears any resemblance to the theory, principles, or practice of the same.
Your misrepresentations about libertarianism aside, it's also worth noting that the colonists in New England weren't libertarians; If they were, they would have understood the value of consensual trade - you know, giving value in return for value - with the natives, rather than simple appropriation of anything they felt they were entitled to. I think the Natives would have greatly preferred peaceful libertarians to have arrived on their shores, don't you?
Libertarian principles say it's not the *government's job* to provide for you, and that your need for something doesn't entitle you to take it from someone else by force. Two individuals are welcome to trade anything however they like, in whatever measure and proportion they like: as long as it's consensual and peaceful on both ends of the trade, there is no restriction on the structure of the trade.
It's like you people think that the only way to live in a society is to compel other people to fulfill your wishes with no value or consideration given in return, so try shoveling your BS somewhere else. We're on to you.
Libertarianism is at odds with reality, at odds with everything we understand about sociology and human behavior.
Congratulations, you've discovered the deep, dark secret that NO THEORY is perfect in practice. You'll note that the same critiques are true of socialism, communism, capitalism, anarchism, and any other political or economic system you care to name.
What's entertaining is that the current conditions in Somalia are primarily due to the failure of the communist government that took over in the ~1969 coup, replacing a fledgling independent government, which then devolved into civil war by the early 90's. There was never any "libertarian" practice that contributed to the current state of Somalia. It was not a grand democracy in Libertarian politics, it was a colony and a protectorate that secured its independence, fell under communist rule, then devolved as economic & environmental conditions worsened into a full civil war as the central *communist* government fell apart and couldn't maintain order, resorting to increasingly totalitarian methods which further alienated rebels.
A strong police force & court system, as well as a military, are fully consistent with libertarian philosophy. Your argument that "giving people too much freedom will mean that society will devolve into rubble" simply shows your own totalitarian leanings. In seeking to discredit "libertarianism," you're simply distorting and twisting your already-limited understanding of the principles involved - in much the same way that I would be distorting and twisting the definition of "socialism" if I started arguing that the Soviet gulags were the natural guaranteed endpoint of any socialist regime - the only difference would be that I would actually be citing a SOCIALIST system that implemented gulags, whereas you're citing a failed, military-led, communist regime as some sort of poster child for Libertarianism.
But please, tell us more about how Somalia has any relevance to libertarian principles. If you want an example of someplace that is much more closely aligned with libertarian principles, you could look to New Hampshire, which in 2009 ranked 6th in the nation in average income, while ranking 49th in overall tax burden. Imagine that - a government that mostly stays out of your way, in a peaceful, modern setting, and which in no way resembles modern Somalia.
The reason people are asking "where's the profit" is because *operating at a loss cannot be sustained indefinitely.* If you cannot at least break even, your system *will* break down, and *will* fail as soon as you stop pouring money into it.
If you have a 500 liter tank with 300 liters of water in it, and you can add water at a rate of 1 liter per minute, but there's a drain at the bottom that removes water from the tank at a rate of 2 liters per minute, when will you overflow the tank?
They'll monetize their investment by allowing intelligence agencies to use their telescopes to gather data on suspicious people. Where suspicious is defined as "anybody who happens to be in the telescope's field of view." Now that's synergy!
Elon Musk has said that he believes "$500 per pound is achievable" - someday, with better technology, economies of scale, and a bit of luck.
That will *eventually* bring the price of lobbing 100 tons of material into orbit to ONLY 100 million dollars. That's still a LOT of money. Currently, prices range from an average of about 3500 (LEO) to 9500 (Geosynchronous) per pound, or 700 million to 1.9 billion. Consider that the International Space Station - with room and supplies for... 6? full time crew members... weighs just shy of 500 tons, and consider that launching that under SpaceX's "blue sky" estimates are still half a billion dollars.
Then consider how much additional mining material you're actually going to need to ship up there, and how much it's going to weigh, and even with these low, low costs to launch, you're still looking at easily a few *billion* dollars just to be able to launch. Then you have to also make sure all of your equipment can stand up to mining in those conditions for years to make it even remotely cost-effective.
Platinum currently trades for about $1540 per ounce. To recoup the cost of a 4 billion dollar launch & mission, you would need to find an asteroid with *82 tons* of platinum in it, and sell every ounce of that 82 tons without destroying the price of platinum back here on earth.
It boggles my mind that people can hand-wave away billions of dollars in costs as if it's irrelevant, and assert that somehow we'll "find a way" to make it profitable. The materials and environment here on earth would have to be taxed FAR beyond what they currently are in order to even begin to make this type of venture even remotely profitable. If you want this to happen, you're pretty much stuck depending on the largesse of wealthy geeks who aren't satisfied with the toys available to them, like this group.
If people want to supply those things on a charitable basis they might happen. But there's no guarantee people are not going to let you starve.
Which is why it's incumbent upon individuals, under Libertarian thought to:
1) Take responsibility for their own activities; 2) Build your own safety nets with your own community and family. This pairs nicely with #1: if you're not a rotten son of a bitch to everybody around you, chances are they will value you, and be willing to help you out when you're down on your luck. 3) Engage in private charity, and encourage others to do so, to provide those safety nets for other people.
There's a lot of people who love to pretend that "if government doesn't save you, nobody will," and that's a false dichotomy, because there is: a) No guarantee the government will save you (how many issues have we heard about with quality of care in the VA medical system, DSS/Family Services, and the like?) b) No reason to assume that private charities (and there are many) will suddenly cease to exist and stop providing charity to people who need it if you begin scaling back on government-provided charity.
Probably the same thing that happened when they tried to go it on their own originally
What's that, struggle initially, but eventually develop into one of the most affluent and successful regions in North America? Because I swear, I thought you were trying to make it sound like the Plymouth Colony failed.
Somalia should be a Libertarian paradise,
No, it shouldn't. It never has been, and never will be. Libertarians understand and support the rule of law, as well as the exclusion of force as a means for individuals to deal with one another. Neither of these conditions are found in Somalia, a land with a failed government, no effective governance, ruled by rival warlords.
But I guess you missed Libertarianism 101, you must've been such an expert that they let you skip forward to the really advanced classes.
Something like a flat 20% (no deductions) on all income over median sounds reasonable to me, would probably grow revenue, or be neutral.
That's something a little more approximately reasonable, but as you know, the devil's in the details. Where do you set the breakpoint to say "Anything over this is taxable?" Ask a hundred people, and you'll get a hundred different answers - and those answers will probably take the form of something like, "Tax anything higher than Respondent's Current Income + 10%."
While I'm sensitive to the notion that low-income households can't afford to pay a lot in taxes, *everybody* should be making some contribution into the system. I'd like to see a system where low income households can choose: a nominal low income tax (e.g., 1%), performing community service (e.g., X hrs of community service over the course of a year = no taxes this year"), or participating in some sort of educational program (e.g., "if you're actively learning new skills to get yourself a better job and grow your income, we will cut you slack on your tax bill this year.")
Make these program unavailable to higher income households so you don't have stories like, "Warren Buffett spent 40 hours volunteering at a soup kitchen this year, and paid no taxes on his billions of dollars!", and make the income tax increase sharply above the median point, but I think going from "0% taxes under the median" to "20% above the median" is likely to cause some controversy: median US household income is (was) about $46k in 2006, and for a married-filing-jointly household, that's currently taxed in the 15% bracket. If you want to enact a flat tax, I think you'd have to go higher than median as the cutoff point. I'd much rather see the taxes increase in a stepped fashion, rather than a single flat tax, anyway, but flat tax would almost certainly have to apply to median + X% for it to be politically viable, and not send a whole lot of middle-class households into the lower class.
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And if there is no debug flag? Just some print statements, or #ifdef's being removed, or something like that?
There's no way to guarantee that this problem will ever be caught via an automated test. You can (and should) certainly test for specific scenarios that you can think of, but there's no way automated testing can know the intent or possible ripple effects of changes the developer has checked in; "verify no debug information is included in the production binary" can be automated. "Make sure the developer didn't remove an #ifdef block that turns on / turns off clear-text password logging for this particular binary," is a different question, and really all you can say for sure via an automated test is, "the developer changed some lines of code, here's the diff."
It's possible that the developer's mistake *could* have been prevented, but automated testing is not a magic cure-all that can divine the intent of the developer, and in a situation like this, it's not a "security bug," - e.g., expoitable hole that allows an attacker to escalate privileges - it's a "security bad practice." There's not a lot an automated test tool can do to catch that. It can take informed guesses that something "might" be a risk, but at some point, you need to involve someone who knows the code, and have them inspect the changes to verify that the changes match the intent of the developer without implementing bad practices.
Could it be? Sure.
Could those tests also easily (and fairly trivially) be worked around by a developer just "trying to figure out what's happening" and accidentally checking in some bad code to a release branch? Sure.
It's very likely that Apple does builds where "CCFLAGS += -g -D__DEBUG__" doesn't get appended on the compile line. It's very likely that the developer who did this was trying to figure something out, got sloppy/rushed, and checked in something that hard-coded this behavior into the code, and that code - intended for test only - never got removed from the production build.
There's a million ways you could look for this sort of thing, and a million and one ways a developer could - accidentally, or maliciously - circumvent it by hard-coding (or removing) things intended to prevent this type of code from being compiled into production releases.
That doesn't excuse the sloppiness; But there's no way to prevent this sort of a thing 100% of the time - automated tests are useful, and could help minimize the risk, but you simply can't automate away dumb mistakes. The "best" way to have prevented this would probably be a change review by another developer familiar with the code who would say "whoa whoa, you checked in debug code, man" - presuming that second developer takes the time to actually review the change report.
There's an "HD HomeRun" service which purports to work with "HD HomeRun Prime" - so I presume he doesn't need a cablecard, but can simply connect his iPad over wifi to a cable-carded device. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hdhomerun/id444454129?mt=8)
Hulu+ has an app for the iPad, I can't speak for whether or not it works well, as I've never used it, but it's available;
Netflix works *great* on an iPad, I can speak to that, I use it frequently when traveling.
Youtube works fine.
Many cable providers also will allow you to stream some/all their programming to an iPad app / web browser. I have Comcast, and the Xfinity TV app works well.
Depending on what you watch, and how well HD HomeRun works, it's entirely possible they could put together a decent selection; The problem is with all of these services, the networks and the cable providers don't offer a full lineup of channels to mobile devices.
Web browsing, skype/facetime, and other general light usage, and some selection of tv/video/music would work pretty well; pair this with a small set of bluetooth speakers (or wired), and you'd have a decent kitchen setup. I use my iPad a lot in the kitchen for recipes, though I just have a small stand I put it on while I'm using it.
So I should pay AT&T for an unlimited plan, when my phone will do everything in its power to avoid using that service, and only use it as an absolute last resort?
That seems like something the carriers would love.
Thanks for letting us know about your brand preferences, friend.
Since we're sharing, I just thought you might like to know that I have never bought a Lexus, and probably never will. Also, I really dislike Puffs facial tissue, it leaves my nose feeling oily with that moisturizing nonsense they add.
UP FREEDOM! UP THE REVOLUTION!
Users can't download any app that uses the NEW Dropbox SDK, and ONLY if they don't ALREADY have the Dropbox app installed on their phone.
You see, what happens is that the app using the SDK will attempt to set you up with Dropbox if you don't already have it - this CAN be done through the Dropbox app. But if the Dropbox app won't launch, it'll fire you off to Dropbox in the browser, circumventing Apple's TOS restrictions, because you can purchase additional storage for Dropbox via that browser page, meaning apple doesn't get their cut.
Now, you may disagree with the 30% cut, but this is a NEW version of the SDK, and no existing apps are being delisted.
Your right to peaceful protest doesn't give you the right to live in public parks, stop other people's legitimate use of the roads and sidewalks around their businesses, vandalize private property, or assault a police officer.
I'll lend the argument that "politicians are engaging in more and more violent suppression of peaceful protest" more credence when Occupy has a Bloody Sunday moment.
Well, for one, it'd be a lot easier and more final for you to simply disappear, and be pushed out of the back of a C130 somewhere far out over the Atlantic. Yes, there's historical precedent for that sort of thing.
And this is the part conspiracy theorists miss: it's a hell of a lot easier to simply arrange for an "accident" to happen to your opponents to silence them. You are building up this insanely complex and far-reaching conspiracy in your head, where thousands and thousands of people will be rounded up and sent off to detention camps, and you've lost sight of the simple facts that:
1) It would be a public relations nightmare;
2) It wouldn't 'silence' you, it would simply create a whole lot of additional mouthy fucks shouting for your release;
3) You, and 5,000 other individuals are simply not fucking important enough and not fucking scary enough that the government needs to silence you;
I know these things are hard to hear, but you can score this, "+5, Uncomfortable Truth": If the government ever moves into a mode where it is actively rounding up dissidents with the intent of suppressing their dissent, those 'roundups' will take the form of disappearances (followed by something very much like the aforementioned Death Flights), or random accidents - a 'mugging' gone awry, a car accident, etc. It will not take the form of rounding up thousands of dissidents for no legal reason other than "because we can, under the NDAA," and shipping them to Gitmo, where they can shout and yell to the Red Cross and every other international organization who comes through there, along with their tens of thousands of family, friends, and acquaintances who will be screaming bloody murder to the press and anybody else who will listen. Remember, we're not talking about "some random Yemeni who was captured in Northern Afghanistan and shipped to Gitmo."
I don't always agree with your points, Hatta, but you usually make GOOD points that are well-argued and cogent. This one's way beneath your usual standard, bordering on paranoid delusion.
Describe the sequence of events that you consider inevitable, where we end up with Pres. Obama, Romney, or any other future president, creating prison camps, and sending American citizens en masse to them, because they dared to disagree with his policies?
Please, dazzle us with your prognostication.
You are, of course, aware that libertarians do not oppose any of these things, except food subsidies. No libertarian would suggest that police functions, roads, fire protection, or water treatment have no value. What they tend to believe is that it shouldn't be the role of the government to provide most of these things through taxation.
If you really wanted to make a point about libertarians, you'd say, "Go live in a fucking cabin and form voluntary-membership private groups with your fellow citizens to provide yourselves with the benefits of police protection, roads, fire protection, and water utilities." You see, libertarians don't suggest that man must exist as an island, independent and complete in himself, with no contact or communication with anybody else in the community around him. They merely suggest that man should be free to enter into (or decide not to enter into) voluntary associations with his fellow citizens according to his own conscience, rather than through a confiscatory tax policy which declares that he must support any and all programs his citizens decide are 'necessary.' Of course, stating the libertarian case *that* way, it sounds fairly reasonable, and so rather than making any effort to understand libertarianism, you'll just shout "SOMALIA LOL."
Apparently your reading comprehension failed you about halfway through the quote. I'll repost it for you - try again, and see if maybe you can make it through the entire thing without getting tired out and needing a nap and a blanky.
You see, what he's saying is, if you describe everything as 'infinite', the word 'infinite' loses any usefulness as a descriptive term when it's actually relevant. In much the same way, if you call *everybody who disagrees with you* 'Stalinesque,' then when one of your opponents actually *is* 'Stalinesque,' you will have bastardized the meaning of the word so much that it will have no useful meaning other than "somebody the speaker doesn't like."
Think of it as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf (The Political Edition)." Obama and Romney may have faults and ideologies you don't like. But they are NOT Joseph Stalin.
Great.
Now please, connect ANYTHING you just said as a logical rebuttal to ANYTHING I said.
(Hint: I didn't say "You should agree with Obama and/or Romney, or disagree with Paul." I said, "You should stop suggesting that any modern american politician is going to initiate soviet-style gulags for voicing opposition to his policies, because it makes you look like a fucking nutjob who has lost touch with reality.")
Please understand that I say this as someone whose politics lean fairly 'libertarian' on the whole. But:
Stop that. Seriously. Just stop it.
You're doing your cause no good by pretending it's even remotely likely that we're going to suddenly see Soviet-style gulags implemented by either Obama or Romney. You may not like their policies, but it's possible to disagree with them without needing them to be Joseph Stalin reincarnated. When you spout this stuff, you come across like a hapless conspiracy-theorist-slash-nutjob, which allows people to handily dismiss ANY valid points Ron Paul and his supporters make because you have included so many absolutely-fucking-crazy exaggerations and distortions along with the legitimate points.
CS Lewis offered some advice on writing that's relevant to everyone:
Stop turning "I don't agree with Romney's and Obama's policy proposals," into "therefore they're going to send me to a Siberian salt mine!" This is nothing but idiotic marketing sloganeering, and has NO BUSINESS in a political discussion, unless your goal is to perpetuate the issues already afflicting our political process. In other words: don't bemoan the bumper-sticker-ization of politics on a fucking bumper sticker.
All of which make it sound like a fucking *great* city to implement an integrated control center for - even if it doesn't work flawlessly, it'll likely provide some significant benefits in alleviating some of the issues you've just described - helping to ease some of the traffic jams & keep public transport flowing more smoothly.
Because if life doesn't look like us, there's no point in finding it. Seriously, do you want to have a hot makeout session with a 5-limbed cross between a cockroach and a slime mold from Rigel 7 No, of COURSE you don't.
You'd much rather do a little heavy petting with a light-green hottie with blonde hair and 4 boobs from Proxima Centauri. If Star Trek (and the Secret Service) have taught us anything, it's that getting it on with hot chicks in other places is pretty much the only reason to explore.
Are you really so stupid that you think I'll grant your red herring that libertarianism necessitates its practitioners to disappear behind a giant steel barricade, never to be seen again, and to exist in isolation, cut off from the world? Jesus Christ, you're thick. The representation that libertarianism would forbid its practitioners from trading and communication with natives, or neighbors, or anybody else is patently false - even worse since you appear to be making this shit up with specific malicious intent to mislead readers into believing that your fairy tale definition of libertarianism bears any resemblance to the theory, principles, or practice of the same.
Your misrepresentations about libertarianism aside, it's also worth noting that the colonists in New England weren't libertarians; If they were, they would have understood the value of consensual trade - you know, giving value in return for value - with the natives, rather than simple appropriation of anything they felt they were entitled to. I think the Natives would have greatly preferred peaceful libertarians to have arrived on their shores, don't you?
Libertarian principles say it's not the *government's job* to provide for you, and that your need for something doesn't entitle you to take it from someone else by force. Two individuals are welcome to trade anything however they like, in whatever measure and proportion they like: as long as it's consensual and peaceful on both ends of the trade, there is no restriction on the structure of the trade.
It's like you people think that the only way to live in a society is to compel other people to fulfill your wishes with no value or consideration given in return, so try shoveling your BS somewhere else. We're on to you.
Congratulations, you've discovered the deep, dark secret that NO THEORY is perfect in practice. You'll note that the same critiques are true of socialism, communism, capitalism, anarchism, and any other political or economic system you care to name.
What's entertaining is that the current conditions in Somalia are primarily due to the failure of the communist government that took over in the ~1969 coup, replacing a fledgling independent government, which then devolved into civil war by the early 90's. There was never any "libertarian" practice that contributed to the current state of Somalia. It was not a grand democracy in Libertarian politics, it was a colony and a protectorate that secured its independence, fell under communist rule, then devolved as economic & environmental conditions worsened into a full civil war as the central *communist* government fell apart and couldn't maintain order, resorting to increasingly totalitarian methods which further alienated rebels.
A strong police force & court system, as well as a military, are fully consistent with libertarian philosophy. Your argument that "giving people too much freedom will mean that society will devolve into rubble" simply shows your own totalitarian leanings. In seeking to discredit "libertarianism," you're simply distorting and twisting your already-limited understanding of the principles involved - in much the same way that I would be distorting and twisting the definition of "socialism" if I started arguing that the Soviet gulags were the natural guaranteed endpoint of any socialist regime - the only difference would be that I would actually be citing a SOCIALIST system that implemented gulags, whereas you're citing a failed, military-led, communist regime as some sort of poster child for Libertarianism.
But please, tell us more about how Somalia has any relevance to libertarian principles. If you want an example of someplace that is much more closely aligned with libertarian principles, you could look to New Hampshire, which in 2009 ranked 6th in the nation in average income, while ranking 49th in overall tax burden. Imagine that - a government that mostly stays out of your way, in a peaceful, modern setting, and which in no way resembles modern Somalia.
I'm sorry, could you rephrase your nonsensical question in the form of a typical space nutter rebuttal?
"your mom" jokes are so passe.
The reason people are asking "where's the profit" is because *operating at a loss cannot be sustained indefinitely.* If you cannot at least break even, your system *will* break down, and *will* fail as soon as you stop pouring money into it.
If you have a 500 liter tank with 300 liters of water in it, and you can add water at a rate of 1 liter per minute, but there's a drain at the bottom that removes water from the tank at a rate of 2 liters per minute, when will you overflow the tank?
They'll monetize their investment by allowing intelligence agencies to use their telescopes to gather data on suspicious people. Where suspicious is defined as "anybody who happens to be in the telescope's field of view." Now that's synergy!
Elon Musk has said that he believes "$500 per pound is achievable" - someday, with better technology, economies of scale, and a bit of luck.
That will *eventually* bring the price of lobbing 100 tons of material into orbit to ONLY 100 million dollars. That's still a LOT of money. Currently, prices range from an average of about 3500 (LEO) to 9500 (Geosynchronous) per pound, or 700 million to 1.9 billion. Consider that the International Space Station - with room and supplies for... 6? full time crew members... weighs just shy of 500 tons, and consider that launching that under SpaceX's "blue sky" estimates are still half a billion dollars.
Then consider how much additional mining material you're actually going to need to ship up there, and how much it's going to weigh, and even with these low, low costs to launch, you're still looking at easily a few *billion* dollars just to be able to launch. Then you have to also make sure all of your equipment can stand up to mining in those conditions for years to make it even remotely cost-effective.
Platinum currently trades for about $1540 per ounce. To recoup the cost of a 4 billion dollar launch & mission, you would need to find an asteroid with *82 tons* of platinum in it, and sell every ounce of that 82 tons without destroying the price of platinum back here on earth.
It boggles my mind that people can hand-wave away billions of dollars in costs as if it's irrelevant, and assert that somehow we'll "find a way" to make it profitable. The materials and environment here on earth would have to be taxed FAR beyond what they currently are in order to even begin to make this type of venture even remotely profitable. If you want this to happen, you're pretty much stuck depending on the largesse of wealthy geeks who aren't satisfied with the toys available to them, like this group.
Which is why it's incumbent upon individuals, under Libertarian thought to:
1) Take responsibility for their own activities;
2) Build your own safety nets with your own community and family. This pairs nicely with #1: if you're not a rotten son of a bitch to everybody around you, chances are they will value you, and be willing to help you out when you're down on your luck.
3) Engage in private charity, and encourage others to do so, to provide those safety nets for other people.
There's a lot of people who love to pretend that "if government doesn't save you, nobody will," and that's a false dichotomy, because there is:
a) No guarantee the government will save you (how many issues have we heard about with quality of care in the VA medical system, DSS/Family Services, and the like?)
b) No reason to assume that private charities (and there are many) will suddenly cease to exist and stop providing charity to people who need it if you begin scaling back on government-provided charity.
What's that, struggle initially, but eventually develop into one of the most affluent and successful regions in North America? Because I swear, I thought you were trying to make it sound like the Plymouth Colony failed.
No, it shouldn't. It never has been, and never will be. Libertarians understand and support the rule of law, as well as the exclusion of force as a means for individuals to deal with one another. Neither of these conditions are found in Somalia, a land with a failed government, no effective governance, ruled by rival warlords.
But I guess you missed Libertarianism 101, you must've been such an expert that they let you skip forward to the really advanced classes.
I stand corrected - and I should have remembered that. As my only defense, it was late when I wrote that comment.
That's something a little more approximately reasonable, but as you know, the devil's in the details. Where do you set the breakpoint to say "Anything over this is taxable?" Ask a hundred people, and you'll get a hundred different answers - and those answers will probably take the form of something like, "Tax anything higher than Respondent's Current Income + 10%."
While I'm sensitive to the notion that low-income households can't afford to pay a lot in taxes, *everybody* should be making some contribution into the system. I'd like to see a system where low income households can choose: a nominal low income tax (e.g., 1%), performing community service (e.g., X hrs of community service over the course of a year = no taxes this year"), or participating in some sort of educational program (e.g., "if you're actively learning new skills to get yourself a better job and grow your income, we will cut you slack on your tax bill this year.")
Make these program unavailable to higher income households so you don't have stories like, "Warren Buffett spent 40 hours volunteering at a soup kitchen this year, and paid no taxes on his billions of dollars!", and make the income tax increase sharply above the median point, but I think going from "0% taxes under the median" to "20% above the median" is likely to cause some controversy: median US household income is (was) about $46k in 2006, and for a married-filing-jointly household, that's currently taxed in the 15% bracket. If you want to enact a flat tax, I think you'd have to go higher than median as the cutoff point. I'd much rather see the taxes increase in a stepped fashion, rather than a single flat tax, anyway, but flat tax would almost certainly have to apply to median + X% for it to be politically viable, and not send a whole lot of middle-class households into the lower class.