The same applies to Bitcoins. Yes, they are worthless. So what? It wasn't clear that they'd turn out to be, and now that they did, the EFF didn't lose anything compared to the hypothetical scenario where they didn't accept them in the first place.
Yeah, nothing is lost at all - unless you count the potential thousands or millions of dollars in billable time, court fees, and judgements which you could end up having to pay because you accepted a currency which violated numerous laws in ways which have not been tested in a court of law yet.
Really, accepting donations of bitcoins is sort of like saying "I'll accept donations of radioactive waste, and just toss it in the pond out back if I can't use it for anything." I "lose nothing" by accepting a worthless donation, but I might incur all kinds of penalties and fines when the EPA and DHS find out I'm storing nuclear waste in my back yard.
Yeah, just like we've turned up all that hard evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses in the wikileaks dumps?
"Crowdsourcing" your analysis is absolutely fantastic if you want to simply propagate a bunch of myths and reinforce peoples' biases: "There's MILLIONS of documents in that leak, there MUST be some evidence of a war crime. I'm sure somebody else will find it, so I'll just assume it's there!"
As an actual tool for finding actual wrongdoing? Not so much.
Facebook hopes to become a distributor of HTML5 apps. Good for them. How does this "take on" Apple in any way? If they're successful, they'll simply add another compelling feature to the list of reasons why people might want to buy an iOS device. That is pure benefit for Apple.
In other words, a better way of putting this would be, "Facebook hopes to leverage Apple's successful and popular platform and hardware with a mobile app store of their own that will focus on providing web-based (rather than native) mobile apps." There is no scenario where this is bad, or results in something negative, for Apple. This is not "Facebook takes on Apple," this is "Facebook leverages successful Apple products to try and generate more profit for themselves."
Explain to me again how Facebook creating a site that will encourage more people to write additional software for Apple's platform is "taking on" Apple?
Giving people a stronger reason to use Apple's products is only going to help them sell more iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches... and anybody who's even glanced at Apple's earnings statements in the past 5 years knows that the vast majority of their revenues (and profits) come from hardware sales.
So, Apple gets more hardware sales - their high margin, high profit business, at the *possible* expense of slightly lower app sales - their low margin, low profit business; Facebook is able to serve up more ads and gather more data about its users to resell because all the apps will be tied into their storefront. Seems like a win-win if they can make it work and attract useful applications.
Out of curiosity, since I see this crop up occasionally: what sites are not available through any other method than flash these days - either H.264 video streams, or a native app? My parents have an iPad, and a laptop, and they use the iPad almost exclusively now, too, because it's easier and faster for them.
Honest question - curious what "listen to all her favorite gurus," actually means in practice.
Somebody in the state government assembled this collection from her records; When given a chance to review the collection, her lawyers asked for no further withholdings or redactions, and signed off on the release of the collection of emails.
"Curious decisions" aren't illegal simply because they're not the same decision you would have made. "Inconveniently formatted" records aren't illegal simply because they're not easily indexed and searchable.
The GP post opined that she's "getting away" with something by doing this, meaning that she's escaping punishment for some misdeed. Please explain for us exactly what law she's breaking that she's escaping punishment for?
Additionally, the Alaska Legislature has mandated that FOIA requests be filled electronically when reasonably possible.
If you're basing this off the law you quoted above, then no, they haven't "mandated" that these requests be fulfilled electronically. They've "encouraged" the agencies to make the records available electronically "to the greatest extent feasible."
I'm pretty sure I could drive a dump truck through a loophole that large. "We did an analysis, and discovered we simply don't have the in-house expertise to convert this data to electronic formats. It simply wasn't feasible, so we printed them instead." When asked, all of the clerks simply profess complete ignorance of "print to PDF," or any other way of converting emails to a dumped electronic format.
You may find it hard to swallow, and you may not LIKE that they've chosen to do this, but the wording of the law you quoted above is very clear - there is no mandate from the legislature requiring release of electronic records "whenever it is possible to do so." It's simply a suggestion, which "encourages" them to release electronically "to the greatest possible extent."
Sorry, I'm never sure who to hate when posters don't use enough idiotic neologisms to express their outrage. It's hard to understand what you mean when you don't alter common words to make yourself sound clever or funny.
Could you restate your point and include references to "teabagging," "republicunts," "core-pirate greed," "the MAFIAA," "Micro$oft" and "Dubya" as well?
What did Palin "get away" with here? The state of Alaska is doing this, Sarah Palin doesn't have Bristol and Willow sitting there printing things out on the fucking family inkjet while watching Dancing with the Stars reruns.
From the article:
Once the state reviewed the records, it gave Palin's attorneys an opportunity to see if they had any privacy concerns with what was being released. No emails were withheld or redacted as a result of that, said Linda Perez, the administrative director for Gov. Sean Parnell who has been coordinating the release.
Please explain how something *published by law enforcement* (the only way it would get by clause 1) could also *encourage and enable* drunk driving (which would run it afoul of clause 2), in light of the fact that law enforcement's entire mission is to discourage and punish the practice of drunk driving?
It's like arguing that those "Buckle Up For Safety" billboards put up by the state police to remind people to buckle up are actually *encouraging* people to drive without seatbelts.
You can certainly dispute the effectiveness of roadblocks in discouraging the practice of drunk driving. You can also dispute the constitutionality of roadblocks in general, and argue that patrol-based enforcement is the only constitutional way to go about this. But there is no way to make the logical leap from "The police published this information about roadblocks," to "The police, in publishing this information, want to encourage you or assist you in your efforts to drive drunk."
One thing's for certain though - if somebody DID release this information, it wouldn't be available on a public web site or anything for every retard in creation to click around and find it... it'd be deep web, you'd have to go visit 4chan just to hear whispers of it, and probably wouldn't be able to access it unless you're using TOR.
I know, maybe we can infiltrate the ranks of Apple's employees and get someone to leak some information about the service to wikileaks! Then we can finally learn with iCloud does.
Logic fail. Please explain how information that is published by law enforcement "encourages and enables drunk driving," when the entire mission of law enforcement vis-a-vis drunk driving is to *discourage* and *disable* it?
Hey brainiac, I know reading the fucking article is so last-year around here, but if you had bothered to read it, you would have seen this:
In revised app store guidelines discovered by Mac Rumors, Apple has updated Section 22.8 to now read: Apps which contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving, will be rejected.
This submission is retardedly inaccurate flamebait. If your app contains information about checkpoints that have been published by law enforcement, then your app meets the requirements set forth in the guidelines.
Do we live in a world with an "ideal libertarian economy"? Of course not. Much like we will never live in a world with an ideal socialist economy, or any other economic form. Idealism in any form tends to get bruised and dented when it meets reality. So pointing at Lady Gaga's success in the "real world" and saying that it disproves my comment about some "ideal" libertarian economic model is kind of foolish, even if we were to grant your assumption that there is some "objective" truth about intensely personal matters of taste like what music we like.
But, to respond specifically to your comments about Lady Gaga: 1) I never suggested we live under an ideal libertarian economy; I also never said that libertarianism would require rational thought and intellectual rigor in every choice made by every person at all times. I said it would "encourage" intellectualism because it is up the individual to assess & choose based on their own rational capacity. Latching on to a single aspect of my argument, twisting it so that it suggests something I, in fact, never said, and then refuting that single made-up point as if it disproves everything I've said is known as a straw man fallacy.
2) Do you really mean to suggest that through intellectual rigor and rational thought alone, we can arrive at some single objective (rather than 6 billion intensely subjective) definition of what constitutes "the best music"? Note I said "best musicians" - a group, not a single superlative. Music, being a very personal preference, will always be highly subjective, and thus difficult to pin down simply with rational thinking. But please, explain to me how a musician who succeeds in connecting to a broad base of fans, who writes & performs music that people want to dance/fuck/party/chill to, and who puts on shows that many people are happy to spend their hard-earned money buying a ticket to see is an example of someone being a bad or unsuccessful popular musician?
But does it say the same for her fans?
This comment says far more about your desperate need to feel superior to someone over something as trivial as a personal musical preference than it says about Lady Gaga's fans, or libertarian economic models. Thanks for playing, and thanks for the straw man. If you'd care to try again, by all means, go for it
but when you sell a billion items, it starts to add up.
Of course it does. That doesn't mean it is the largest part - or even a major part - of Apple's total revenues, or their total profits, which is what the GP post suggested when he asserted that the 30% cut of apps, etc. is the source of Apple's recent rise to "corporate giant."
That 30% accounts for a very small piece of Apple's revenues. Hardware sales accounts for the overwhelming majority of revenues.
You need to spend some time understanding the difference between revenues, profits, and market caps, because they're absolutely not the same thing, and your arguments are conflating the three concepts to reach an entirely incorrect conclusion.
They sell 1 iMac, and bump their revenues by $2000+ dollars. They sell 1 99-cent app, and bump their revenues by $0.30.
Note that that 30 cents is not "profit" to Apple, it is revenue. They still have to pay for administration & maintenance of the online store (disk space, server space, network connections), staffing the app reviewers, paying credit card processors, etc. Apple have publicly stated that they run the app store at "slightly above" break-even after they pay their administrative costs.
Some teardowns estimate an iMac's *profit margin* at 40%, which means that Apple makes $800 in *profit* off of a single $2000 iMac sale. Even if they have a 40% profit margin on app sales, they need to sell 6,667 apps at that profit margin to make $800 in profit - 30 cents in revenue per app times 40% profit margin = 12 cents profit per app. They've implied quite publicly that their profit margins on the app store are nowhere near 40%.
And Steve Jobs has said publicly that is where the majority of their revenue comes from.
Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.
10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.
So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.
Funny, many analysts - and Apple themselves - have said that the App Store runs at "slightly better than break-even." From your hyperbolic claims, you'd think that they were minting money with the app stores and barely breaking even on their hardware sales, which is in fact exactly opposite from reality.
The vast majority of Apple's revenue comes from hardware & device sales. Whether you assign App store sales to "Itunes" or "Software" in this chart, it's still a very small fraction of their revenue.
I see... so while your business is failing over the course of 4 years, you would have magically acquired income from... what, exactly? Or did you start your business with no seed capital, and spend your $20k or so of savings on living expenses? But you lived like a king for those 4 years.
There is no world in which a (failing business + living expenses) * 4 years = $20,000 dollars + no debt from living & business expenses.
You're either being willfully ignorant about the cost of living, or you literally have no clue how much money rent food and basic utilities actually cost.
-- I went home. -- I lit a fire in the fireplace. -- I filled up a tank of gasoline. -- I left the house.. -- I bought matches and charcoal.
Without knowing what time (or at least, the relative chronological ordering) of each of the events above occurred in, was it arson or an accident that burned my house down?
If you know those "trivial" facts about when something occurred, you might see additional significance in the events which occur before and after. You're going to have trouble understanding the significance of the event without knowing some of those "trivial" facts about the event. Tell me, what intellectual conclusions can you draw about the causes and repercussions of the Battle of Hastings if you only know "it was a battle, that took place near, in, or involved somebody or something named Hastings?"
When somebody says you've won a Pyrrhic Victory, would you be inclined to pat yourself on the back for a job well done? You might, if you don't know the context of the battle being referred to there. But why would you need to know trivial facts about an old battle? It's stupid to waste time with that stuff, right?
If you want to talk about libertarian economics, yes, their belief is that a free & unregulated market will direct the most money to "the best" people at doing whatever they are trying to get paid for. In an ideal libertarian economy:
-- the best musicians will make the most money, because they produce the most widely-loved music; -- the best writers will make the most money, because they produce the most widely-enjoyed literature; -- the best doctors will make the most money, because they provide the best possible care and can command high prices for their time; -- the best lawyers will make the most money, because they provide the best legal advice and courtroom performance; -- the best programmers will make the most money, because they produce the most robust, high-performance, and feature-rich software with the fewest bugs;
I'm not sure why you'd think this turns into a mistrust of intellectual authority.
To be the "best" doctor, you must provide the best care; to provide the best care, you must have the deepest and broadest understanding of your patients and their conditions, as well as all of the current research & thinking about the best treatments for each condition your patients present with.
To be the "best" programmer, you must understand computer languages and software; you must understand and be able to design high quality algorithms, and then implement them in well-written, well-planned, robust systems of software; you must have a broad and deep understanding of the tools and techniques available to you, as well as all of the current research and thinking about the best techniques for each problem domain.
In what way is that anti-intellectual, or exemplary of a mistrust of intellectual authority?
What libertarians mostly distrust is the fact that some political appointee is going to insert himself into the decision making process and tell you, "You must go to Dr. Jones, even though Dr. Smith is an internationally recognized expert in treating your condition. Why? Because fuck you, I have the authority to tell you what to do, that's why." Or that the same appointee who is probably in his position simply by virtue of knowing somebody who got elected will (after taking away your ability to choose which doctor you wish to go see), tell Dr. Smith, the internationally-recognized expert in treating the condition you have to have that, "Sorry, Dr. Smith, we're simply not paying for that treatment because we don't feel the benefits justify its costs." They mistrust arbitrarily granted authority, wielded by non-experts with political power - with numerous and good reasons.
I could argue that libertarianism actually encourages intellectualism in every citizen, because it leaves it up to the individual to assess the facts of the situation, and make the best decision possible, based on those facts. Someone who lacks logic, intellectual rigor, and the ability to synthesize disparate facts into a rational whole would largely be unable to function in a "libertarian" model.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, nothing is lost at all - unless you count the potential thousands or millions of dollars in billable time, court fees, and judgements which you could end up having to pay because you accepted a currency which violated numerous laws in ways which have not been tested in a court of law yet.
Really, accepting donations of bitcoins is sort of like saying "I'll accept donations of radioactive waste, and just toss it in the pond out back if I can't use it for anything." I "lose nothing" by accepting a worthless donation, but I might incur all kinds of penalties and fines when the EPA and DHS find out I'm storing nuclear waste in my back yard.
Yeah, just like we've turned up all that hard evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses in the wikileaks dumps?
"Crowdsourcing" your analysis is absolutely fantastic if you want to simply propagate a bunch of myths and reinforce peoples' biases: "There's MILLIONS of documents in that leak, there MUST be some evidence of a war crime. I'm sure somebody else will find it, so I'll just assume it's there!"
As an actual tool for finding actual wrongdoing? Not so much.
Not in the least.
Facebook hopes to become a distributor of HTML5 apps. Good for them. How does this "take on" Apple in any way? If they're successful, they'll simply add another compelling feature to the list of reasons why people might want to buy an iOS device. That is pure benefit for Apple.
In other words, a better way of putting this would be, "Facebook hopes to leverage Apple's successful and popular platform and hardware with a mobile app store of their own that will focus on providing web-based (rather than native) mobile apps." There is no scenario where this is bad, or results in something negative, for Apple. This is not "Facebook takes on Apple," this is "Facebook leverages successful Apple products to try and generate more profit for themselves."
Explain to me again how Facebook creating a site that will encourage more people to write additional software for Apple's platform is "taking on" Apple?
Giving people a stronger reason to use Apple's products is only going to help them sell more iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches... and anybody who's even glanced at Apple's earnings statements in the past 5 years knows that the vast majority of their revenues (and profits) come from hardware sales.
So, Apple gets more hardware sales - their high margin, high profit business, at the *possible* expense of slightly lower app sales - their low margin, low profit business; Facebook is able to serve up more ads and gather more data about its users to resell because all the apps will be tied into their storefront. Seems like a win-win if they can make it work and attract useful applications.
Out of curiosity, since I see this crop up occasionally: what sites are not available through any other method than flash these days - either H.264 video streams, or a native app? My parents have an iPad, and a laptop, and they use the iPad almost exclusively now, too, because it's easier and faster for them.
Honest question - curious what "listen to all her favorite gurus," actually means in practice.
Please explain what she's "getting away with," for us simple minded folks.
Somebody in the state government assembled this collection from her records; When given a chance to review the collection, her lawyers asked for no further withholdings or redactions, and signed off on the release of the collection of emails.
"Curious decisions" aren't illegal simply because they're not the same decision you would have made.
"Inconveniently formatted" records aren't illegal simply because they're not easily indexed and searchable.
The GP post opined that she's "getting away" with something by doing this, meaning that she's escaping punishment for some misdeed. Please explain for us exactly what law she's breaking that she's escaping punishment for?
Thank you.
If you're basing this off the law you quoted above, then no, they haven't "mandated" that these requests be fulfilled electronically. They've "encouraged" the agencies to make the records available electronically "to the greatest extent feasible."
I'm pretty sure I could drive a dump truck through a loophole that large. "We did an analysis, and discovered we simply don't have the in-house expertise to convert this data to electronic formats. It simply wasn't feasible, so we printed them instead." When asked, all of the clerks simply profess complete ignorance of "print to PDF," or any other way of converting emails to a dumped electronic format.
You may find it hard to swallow, and you may not LIKE that they've chosen to do this, but the wording of the law you quoted above is very clear - there is no mandate from the legislature requiring release of electronic records "whenever it is possible to do so." It's simply a suggestion, which "encourages" them to release electronically "to the greatest possible extent."
Sorry, I'm never sure who to hate when posters don't use enough idiotic neologisms to express their outrage. It's hard to understand what you mean when you don't alter common words to make yourself sound clever or funny.
Could you restate your point and include references to "teabagging," "republicunts," "core-pirate greed," "the MAFIAA," "Micro$oft" and "Dubya" as well?
You just described every politician in the history of mankind.
What makes Sarah Palin so noteworthy in this regard?
What did Palin "get away" with here? The state of Alaska is doing this, Sarah Palin doesn't have Bristol and Willow sitting there printing things out on the fucking family inkjet while watching Dancing with the Stars reruns.
From the article:
Please explain how something *published by law enforcement* (the only way it would get by clause 1) could also *encourage and enable* drunk driving (which would run it afoul of clause 2), in light of the fact that law enforcement's entire mission is to discourage and punish the practice of drunk driving?
It's like arguing that those "Buckle Up For Safety" billboards put up by the state police to remind people to buckle up are actually *encouraging* people to drive without seatbelts.
You can certainly dispute the effectiveness of roadblocks in discouraging the practice of drunk driving. You can also dispute the constitutionality of roadblocks in general, and argue that patrol-based enforcement is the only constitutional way to go about this. But there is no way to make the logical leap from "The police published this information about roadblocks," to "The police, in publishing this information, want to encourage you or assist you in your efforts to drive drunk."
Yes, if only there were some explanation of what iCloud is, and what you might use it for.
One thing's for certain though - if somebody DID release this information, it wouldn't be available on a public web site or anything for every retard in creation to click around and find it... it'd be deep web, you'd have to go visit 4chan just to hear whispers of it, and probably wouldn't be able to access it unless you're using TOR.
I know, maybe we can infiltrate the ranks of Apple's employees and get someone to leak some information about the service to wikileaks! Then we can finally learn with iCloud does.
Let me rephrase that for you:
"No WinXP. Less space than an Amazon Cloud Drive. Lame."
Is that about right?
Logic fail. Please explain how information that is published by law enforcement "encourages and enables drunk driving," when the entire mission of law enforcement vis-a-vis drunk driving is to *discourage* and *disable* it?
Hey brainiac, I know reading the fucking article is so last-year around here, but if you had bothered to read it, you would have seen this:
This submission is retardedly inaccurate flamebait. If your app contains information about checkpoints that have been published by law enforcement, then your app meets the requirements set forth in the guidelines.
I see you omitted a key part of my statement:
Do we live in a world with an "ideal libertarian economy"? Of course not. Much like we will never live in a world with an ideal socialist economy, or any other economic form. Idealism in any form tends to get bruised and dented when it meets reality. So pointing at Lady Gaga's success in the "real world" and saying that it disproves my comment about some "ideal" libertarian economic model is kind of foolish, even if we were to grant your assumption that there is some "objective" truth about intensely personal matters of taste like what music we like.
But, to respond specifically to your comments about Lady Gaga:
1) I never suggested we live under an ideal libertarian economy; I also never said that libertarianism would require rational thought and intellectual rigor in every choice made by every person at all times. I said it would "encourage" intellectualism because it is up the individual to assess & choose based on their own rational capacity. Latching on to a single aspect of my argument, twisting it so that it suggests something I, in fact, never said, and then refuting that single made-up point as if it disproves everything I've said is known as a straw man fallacy.
2) Do you really mean to suggest that through intellectual rigor and rational thought alone, we can arrive at some single objective (rather than 6 billion intensely subjective) definition of what constitutes "the best music"? Note I said "best musicians" - a group, not a single superlative. Music, being a very personal preference, will always be highly subjective, and thus difficult to pin down simply with rational thinking. But please, explain to me how a musician who succeeds in connecting to a broad base of fans, who writes & performs music that people want to dance/fuck/party/chill to, and who puts on shows that many people are happy to spend their hard-earned money buying a ticket to see is an example of someone being a bad or unsuccessful popular musician?
This comment says far more about your desperate need to feel superior to someone over something as trivial as a personal musical preference than it says about Lady Gaga's fans, or libertarian economic models. Thanks for playing, and thanks for the straw man. If you'd care to try again, by all means, go for it
Of course it does. That doesn't mean it is the largest part - or even a major part - of Apple's total revenues, or their total profits, which is what the GP post suggested when he asserted that the 30% cut of apps, etc. is the source of Apple's recent rise to "corporate giant."
That 30% accounts for a very small piece of Apple's revenues. Hardware sales accounts for the overwhelming majority of revenues.
You need to spend some time understanding the difference between revenues, profits, and market caps, because they're absolutely not the same thing, and your arguments are conflating the three concepts to reach an entirely incorrect conclusion.
30% of a small number is another small number.
They sell 1 iMac, and bump their revenues by $2000+ dollars. They sell 1 99-cent app, and bump their revenues by $0.30.
Note that that 30 cents is not "profit" to Apple, it is revenue. They still have to pay for administration & maintenance of the online store (disk space, server space, network connections), staffing the app reviewers, paying credit card processors, etc. Apple have publicly stated that they run the app store at "slightly above" break-even after they pay their administrative costs.
Some teardowns estimate an iMac's *profit margin* at 40%, which means that Apple makes $800 in *profit* off of a single $2000 iMac sale. Even if they have a 40% profit margin on app sales, they need to sell 6,667 apps at that profit margin to make $800 in profit - 30 cents in revenue per app times 40% profit margin = 12 cents profit per app. They've implied quite publicly that their profit margins on the app store are nowhere near 40%.
Citation most definitely needed for this. The majority of their revenue may be coming from iOS devices, but it is the *device sales,* not the *app store,* that is accounting for the vast majority of their revenue.
10 billion plus apps downloaded. 200 million iOS devices sold to date. That's roughly 50 apps per device. Some year-old numbers suggest that 75% of the apps in the app store are paid apps - so let's assume that 38 of the 50 apps per device are also paid apps. Again from last year, average price of a paid app was $3.63.
So the "average" iOS device, with 38 paid apps, has generated 137.94 in app store revenue. Apple keeps 30% of that, for a cool $41.40 per iOS device, or 8.3 billion in revenues from every app sold since the app store was opened.
Last year, Apple had 65.2 billion in revenue.
Please show your math that leads you to conclude that the app store is the "major source" of Apple's revenues?
Funny, many analysts - and Apple themselves - have said that the App Store runs at "slightly better than break-even." From your hyperbolic claims, you'd think that they were minting money with the app stores and barely breaking even on their hardware sales, which is in fact exactly opposite from reality.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20008540-37.html
The vast majority of Apple's revenue comes from hardware & device sales. Whether you assign App store sales to "Itunes" or "Software" in this chart, it's still a very small fraction of their revenue.
I see... so while your business is failing over the course of 4 years, you would have magically acquired income from... what, exactly? Or did you start your business with no seed capital, and spend your $20k or so of savings on living expenses? But you lived like a king for those 4 years.
There is no world in which a (failing business + living expenses) * 4 years = $20,000 dollars + no debt from living & business expenses.
You're either being willfully ignorant about the cost of living, or you literally have no clue how much money rent food and basic utilities actually cost.
-- I went home.
-- I lit a fire in the fireplace.
-- I filled up a tank of gasoline.
-- I left the house..
-- I bought matches and charcoal.
Without knowing what time (or at least, the relative chronological ordering) of each of the events above occurred in, was it arson or an accident that burned my house down?
If you know those "trivial" facts about when something occurred, you might see additional significance in the events which occur before and after. You're going to have trouble understanding the significance of the event without knowing some of those "trivial" facts about the event. Tell me, what intellectual conclusions can you draw about the causes and repercussions of the Battle of Hastings if you only know "it was a battle, that took place near, in, or involved somebody or something named Hastings?"
When somebody says you've won a Pyrrhic Victory, would you be inclined to pat yourself on the back for a job well done? You might, if you don't know the context of the battle being referred to there. But why would you need to know trivial facts about an old battle? It's stupid to waste time with that stuff, right?
If you want to talk about libertarian economics, yes, their belief is that a free & unregulated market will direct the most money to "the best" people at doing whatever they are trying to get paid for. In an ideal libertarian economy:
-- the best musicians will make the most money, because they produce the most widely-loved music;
-- the best writers will make the most money, because they produce the most widely-enjoyed literature;
-- the best doctors will make the most money, because they provide the best possible care and can command high prices for their time;
-- the best lawyers will make the most money, because they provide the best legal advice and courtroom performance;
-- the best programmers will make the most money, because they produce the most robust, high-performance, and feature-rich software with the fewest bugs;
I'm not sure why you'd think this turns into a mistrust of intellectual authority.
To be the "best" doctor, you must provide the best care; to provide the best care, you must have the deepest and broadest understanding of your patients and their conditions, as well as all of the current research & thinking about the best treatments for each condition your patients present with.
To be the "best" programmer, you must understand computer languages and software; you must understand and be able to design high quality algorithms, and then implement them in well-written, well-planned, robust systems of software; you must have a broad and deep understanding of the tools and techniques available to you, as well as all of the current research and thinking about the best techniques for each problem domain.
In what way is that anti-intellectual, or exemplary of a mistrust of intellectual authority?
What libertarians mostly distrust is the fact that some political appointee is going to insert himself into the decision making process and tell you, "You must go to Dr. Jones, even though Dr. Smith is an internationally recognized expert in treating your condition. Why? Because fuck you, I have the authority to tell you what to do, that's why." Or that the same appointee who is probably in his position simply by virtue of knowing somebody who got elected will (after taking away your ability to choose which doctor you wish to go see), tell Dr. Smith, the internationally-recognized expert in treating the condition you have to have that, "Sorry, Dr. Smith, we're simply not paying for that treatment because we don't feel the benefits justify its costs." They mistrust arbitrarily granted authority, wielded by non-experts with political power - with numerous and good reasons.
I could argue that libertarianism actually encourages intellectualism in every citizen, because it leaves it up to the individual to assess the facts of the situation, and make the best decision possible, based on those facts. Someone who lacks logic, intellectual rigor, and the ability to synthesize disparate facts into a rational whole would largely be unable to function in a "libertarian" model.