You're making a pedantic argument. What are experiments, if not observations?
You beleive in what 1) you can observe 2) what others have observed and what you've heard about 3) what you suspect is observable
the reason your example doesn't work is that presumably in your valence of acquantances, there is probably someone beleivable that can tell you they witnessed a friend hugging their brother. Additionally, hugging ones brother does bypass any currently understood set of observations.
If being a religious person means believing in something supernatural (like the resurrection of Jesus, women becoming men before going to heaven, thunder from Thor's hammer and so forth) then a religious person is almost certainly wrong about his/her perception of the world. It is hard to quantify how certain, but beyond 99% at least.
Actually, people that assume their observations are truth are almost certainly wrong - once upon a time people didn't even beleive in newtonian motion, and once people did, einstein came along and introduced relativistic motion, and then planck and friends suggested quantum motion. Each person beleiving in one of these models observed what they observed and beleived that model to be an accurate representation of reality, yet none infact were true.
The new testament was written long after Jesus death, btw, and the different writers don't agree on much. I remember at least 3 contradictional accounts of the birth of Jesus, e.g. Thus, we can assume that most of these accounts are somewhat or completely wrong.
Define "long after"? I stated originally that the gospels and indeed most of the new testament were commited to paper within the first 100 years or so following the death of Jesus.
From an information complexity stand point, the bible might be described as "supernaturally" accurate - compare the "bit error" rate of bibles that were copied (by hand), distributed, and translated across the world -- faster and more pervasively than any other text up until that time, and compare translations and editions more than 1500 years apart, and you'll find that the number of instances of meaningful errors or deviations between them is artificially low.
If you are truly interested in well written arguments against some of the points you raise (when was the bible written, what is the historical accuracy, what errors were made, etc), I recommend "The Case for Christ" and "The Case For Faith" by Lee Strobel.
If, on the other hand, you're someone that has a conclusion and only considers evidence that supports that conclusion, you're much more "religious" than I am:)
Although the call for violence is probably more rare than the accusations of insanity or incompetance.
As near as I can tell, radical leftists think anything to the right of them is evil and stupid, and radical rightists think anything to the left of them is un-american and stupid.
It would have been sufficient for the KSFO crew to say that they felt that the NYT reporting was treasonous and left it at that. Now they've lost any point they might have had, they've furthered the gap between left and right.
This style of political punditry (which dailykos is also famous for) is unfortuneate. When people want to be right more than they want to learn, there's no hope for progress.
All religion is inherently a bad thing, even when "good" things are done in it's name, because it is based on a falsehood, i.e., a superstitious belief in the supernatural[1]. It's wrong, and that makes it bad.
How do you know religion is based on falsehood?
Everything you haven't experenced first hand, heard about from a reputable source, or beleive to be correct from your constrained understanding of the universe is by definition supernatural. It's all supernatural until one day it isn't.
100 years ago nobody would have beleived that putting a clock on an airplane and flying it around at 600mph would have changed how it kept time. Then in 1905 Einstein changed that, and 50 years later the US Navy verified that yes, infact, you can measure relatavistic time dilation using conventional aircraft.
Much of the new testament is the recording of testimony given by eye witness acocunts of those who witnessed the teaching and miracles of Jesus (some of it passed word of mouth prior to its first recording on paper, but even this detail has been widely discussed to my satisfaction)
You can beleive the whole thing is fabrication if you like, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that the accounts depicted in the Bible are historical, not fictional. It's not like people were vastly more gullible then - many of Jesus own followered needed convincing on several occasions. People that saw him perform miracles with their own eyes still had doubts about who he was.
You only get to read about it, so its understandable that you're skeptical.
By claiming that something is false even though it might be true simply because you cannot explain how it could be true, doesn't that suggest a certain amount of... beleif on your part?... which is according to you.... evil? (pinky goes to corner of mouth)
If more immigrants were legal as opposed to illegal, there'd be less wage disparity, which would counter many of the negative effects you point out. I.e. once immigrants are getting paid the same wage structure under the same rules as native borns are, the only incentives to continue hiring immigrants are their work ethic. Americans wanting what amount to trade tariffs to protect their lazy duffs are not deserving of the citizenship they were born with.
Steps I think are worth considering:
1) Reduce the # of illegal immigrants by making the process of immigrating legally easier for most people 1a) legal immigration should involve some basic checks: 1.a.i ) health - perhaps including free vaccinations on entry 1.a.ii ) criminal status 1.a.iii) terrorist screening
2) seriously step up prosecution and prevention of illegal immigration.
The 04 libertarian presidental candidate (Badnarik) proposed bringing home our deployed military and parking them on the Mexican border. Constitutionally, the rationale for a federally controlled military is national defense against foreign invaders. I wonder if it is a straightforward legal argument to suggest that millions of foreigners streaming across our border, killing citizens, destroying property, etc, constitutes a foreign threat that the US military should be prepared to meet. I don't much care about the response or opinion of the Mexican government - if they weren't running such a shitty country, millions wouldn't be risking their lives to get to the US, which is doing a shoddy job of things in its own right.
3) refactor the safety net mechanisms in our society such that there is a large incentive to not use them, yet they still function in a humane way. Milton Friedmans Negative Income Tax sounds interesting - yes,you'd get some benefits, but each dollar you earned would yield you a larger benefit than simply absorbing government money.
I think we sort of agree - keep out the locusts. And I hear you in regards to people that do not want to assimilate - I don't want Jihadists or people that want to tear down democracy and replace it with Sharia any more than I want a sepratist Arizona, NM, and Texas.
We need to make America attractive to immigrants for the _right_ reasons - a relatively corruption free government, free trade, unlimited upward mobility - a land of opportunity. The wrong reasons are "free ride", "powerless police force", and "poor internal security".
You have a romanticized view of African history. I don't know what motive you have for pinning the ills of the world on whites and on capitalism, but a cursory examination of reality will show that Africa and Africans had their own share of self-made problems prior to white people even existing, much less being able to read, build armies, or colonize other lands.
An inconvenient fact reparitionists tend to overlook is that the majority of slaves sold to North America from Africa were captured by warring African tribes or Eurasian Moslems, and sold willingly to white buyers. Where did this money go? Not to other whites or colonists.
Despite this inherently evil start, now the majority of African Americans in this country lead a better life than their distant relatives in Africa. Pick any standard of measure you like-- i think the generality still holds.
I finally visited NYC this summer and I cannot tell you how great of an experience it was. The Parks and Recreation guy that gave the speech at the base of the statue of liberty made a pretty damn moving speech. Sure, he's had a lot of practice, but even so -- mission accomplished.
What could be a more basic expression of human freedom than the freedom to choose which space you physically occupy, which nationality or society you choose to be a part of? Which flag you'll lend allegience to, and which nation your sweat and tears will help build?
I don't care how skilled or unskilled you are - we should make it as easy and as affordable as possible to enter the United States. Economics is not a zero sum game - the more people we have, the more mouths to feed, the more clothes to make, the more houses to build - these are all jobs for all kinds of people.
People that worry about immigrants simply collecting benefits are misplacing their fears for two reasons.
1) i don't think most immigrants (certainly illegal ones) collect any significant welfare. how could they if they're illegal? 2) your complaint should be that we have a pervasive cradle-to-grave entitlements system, rife with corruption and buearocracy, which collects significantly more dollars than it distributes, and which provides little incentive to ever leave the public dole. Fix this, and then we don't have to care who or who doesn't benefit from a safety net.
I'd argue that it should be as easy as possible to enter this country legally. A basic health check, some evidence that you can do some sort of work, and some sort of background check, and that's it. If we make it easy for people to do the right thing, we can punish with impunity those who insist on doing the wrong thing.
The large influx of people from the world over who wanted to live in a society that had free trade and strong individual liberties was what made this country great. We need to make it easier to absorb people, not harder, and we need to make it easier for them to succeed once they get here (i.e. fewer regulations and back-door manipulation for starting small businesses, etc).
How can you back up this accusation? A number of current security bulletins contain the words "responsible disclosure", and they list who reported the bugs to Microsoft.
That indicates that at least some of the responsibly disclosed bugs get fixed, doesn't it?
I understand the consternation about unpatched IE vulns. Unfortuneately I don't know off the top of my head what the real story is.
They have something sort of like that. If you are the first to responsibly disclose a bug, during the security bulletin, you or your organization will be thanked in the bulletin for disclosing it. I think there is some kind of rudimentary financial compensation. ($500 comes to mind?) also, but i can't find any record of it currently.
It's good to see that opinion seems to be shifting on the matter.
A few years ago when Microsoft started pressing for "responsible disclosure", they were pretty much mocked and ridiculed by everybody.
I'd like to think that there is now some real discourse on the effectiveness and responsibility of full disclosure vs responsible disclosure, and that security researchers are choosing responsibile disclosure more often.
I'd prefer to think of things that way then to cynically surmise that this is simply a case of "when it's an MS bug, let's roast them with a 0-day disclosure, but if its anyone else, let's give them a fair shake at fixing it"
If you relish this sort of analogy or quest for isomorphism amongst various information codings, read "A New Kind of Science" by Wolfram.
Would you have guessed that amongst the set of 2 or 3 color nearest neighbor cellular automata programs, you can find designs which are almost exactly replicated in nature?
The book suggests some interesting implications for the amount of apparent intelligence we see as the result of some informational coding (i.e. DNA), and the required complexity of the underlying program.
But how different is application of physical force to, say, denial of essential services if the customer does not bargain
a competing entity will arise to supply the appropriate product/service at a price the customer will, pay, or, the pricing system will have done its job and told the customer the true value of the good or service that they want to acquire
or a situation where education is controlled by corporate sponsors?
When is education controlled by corporate sponsors? Or did you mean "when government controlled education outsources some aspect of eduction to a corporation" ?
Why is physical force to limit freedom bad, whilst subtler forms of psychological manipulation, from billboard ads and banner ads and so on, ok?
Advertising doesn't limit freedom. As much as I tend to dislike advertising, I only object when someone thinks they can MAKE me put up with it, and the only way they can do so is via government cooperation.
As an aside, I don't buy that advertising is psychological manipulation. In egregious cases of advertising gone awry - there's already a word for that - fraud, and it's already been discussed.
There's plenty of ways Coke can force you to watch their commercials - install screens on every street, say, so that when you go out to buy food, you cannot help but view their ads.
No, there isn't. I can choose to: - not go outside - buy all of the property that they bought and put my own billboards there insteaed - memorize where they are and close my eyes during that part of my trip - have my food delivered to me
I have a variety of options available to me.
On the other hand, consider the options you have when you decide to disagree with the government: - Go to Jail
The system favours the rich, because the rich can manipulate the rules of the system.
Right. The key innovation of the US system was to separte the interests of the rich from the government by making the government as small as possible. As the size of the government has grown, so also has its usefulness as an instrument of those that would seek to use it to consolidate their own power or wealth.
In an extreme case, if the rich were to employ the mafia to shoot people who do not participate in the trade, then naturally all the poor people would make a trade where they give away everything for no return - the trade would then be beneficial to the rich, obviously, but also beneficial to the poor, since they don't get shot. But just? Hardly.
Now you're talking about a role which government is squarely responsible for - note that free trade is couched on the assumption that the trade is done without force or fraud. That is the 1st, best, most critical role for government to play - assuring that trade, such as it is done, is executed without force (i.e. the mafia) or fraud (i.e. wanton misrepresentation).
From advertising to propaganda to education to law and so on, control of people's perceptions and reality of 'their best interest' is an established strategy. Why grant regulation by elected governments special attention as only one of such maneuvers?
I don't follow you. Only the government can _force_ me to behave a certain way. Irrespective of how much they'd like to, Coke cannot force me to like Coke, or to watch Coke commercials...although a few corporate interests out there would _like_ me to have to watch their commercials, and guess how they're going about that? Government intervention...
Government is the only instrument that can limit freedom.
Yeah, right. Capitalism is so fair that Starbucks can frickin' trademark the Italian word for "twenty", but when poor farmers try to trademark the names of their coffee varieties (which is what this dispute is about), they get the shaft.
All of the things that are wrong with capitalism are the fault of government regulation and manipulation of the economy.
capitalism is reliant on a powerful state to create and enforce all sorts of artificial property rights, from trademarks and copyrights to corporate charters to land deeds.
The state is too powerful and creates rules and rights that contravene what is just and natural. Here here! I'm with you so far...
And once the state has concentrated weath into the hands of a few, those few can then exercise that wealth to unduly influence the state. What a perfect system of trade.
AMEN!
It sounds like you and I agree - the state and its manipulation of the economy is the real problem here.
If you meant to say that capitalism cannot exist without an interventionist government, i think i'd have to disagree with you. Capitalism worked just dandy prior to copyrights in the US, which was one of the first instances of artificial or intellectual property coming into existance.
No, can you think of any company which isn't supported by decree of government? Didn't think so.
Sure - companies are a quasi-artificial construct of the government but are not a necessary feature for monopolies to exist.
I hate that stupid chicken and egg argument
Which argument?
The fact that we (the government in the US) have created laws means that we like to live by rules rather than by whatever madmax system you seem to be promoting.
Clearly I'm not advocating lawlessness - societies form and governments are created so that people can escape the state of fear and bring some amount of order where before there was none.
What I am advocating is that government should do only what is necessary and no more - limited government - because every expansion of government by definition is an erosion of some individual right. The US started with much fewer laws and regulations on the books than it has today. It wasn't because the founding fathers ran out of ink or parchment. I of course don't pretend to suggest that no new laws are ever needed, but I would suggest - and you'd probably agree with me - they we have a number of laws on the books which no individual citizen asked for, and which certainly do not prmote individual liberties or anything of the sort. For instance, what percentage of Americans, if taken to a direct vote, would have voted for the DMCA?
The cases of government abuse of power are many, as are the cases of legislation to benefit companies, monpoloies, or other special interests. Expansive government detests the inherent freedom that arises from free trade (and capitalism). When government manipulation of the market place produces some undesirable result, the failure is always attributed to capitalism by adherents of large government, when in fact, one can argue that government manipulation was wholly or significantly responsible for failure.
The question I am asking in the OP is - in cases of undesirable monopoly conditions in the US - are those an obvious result of the system of capitalism, or are they a peculiar result because of government intervention in that market. When you consider all of the back-door ways that governments regulate the market (i.e. building permits, licensing for hairdressers, etc), it's hard to suggest that we have a truly free-market economy.
You'll have to bear with me - I'm working my way through Milton Friedman. If you can save us both the argument and point me to some well-reasoned criticisms of Friedman's work (which presumably you base your disagreement with me on), I'd appreciate it.
The business model Microsoft relies on exists only because of Copyright - which by its very definition is a government granted monopoly on the distribution of copies of a work granted to the author (or "rights holder") of that work.
Microsoft is the easiest example of a monopoly that exists only via a construct of government.
It favours those that have the infrastructure in place to produce efficiently while the ones that don't fall further behind and resort to resource exploitation, produce, or tourism for their economy
The "infrastructure to produce efficiently" required investment, investment which apparently in the short term pays off, but which may not pay off in the future. Nothing practically prevents the "disadvantaged" party in a free trade system from not only duplicating, but leapfrogging any investment done by the other party. You will see the obvious truth in this by considering the automobile and consumer electronics industries of the US, Japan, and South Korea as case studies.
For a less macroscopic scenario, consider a lawyer who types at 150wpm and a secretary that types at 100wpm. The lawyer is certainly the better typist, and has every advantage over the secretary in terms of typing speed. One might think that in this case that the lawyer would do all her own typing, and the secretary might be unemployed. But of course this is not the case - the lawyer makes some money typing, but makes considerably more money litigating, such that it is worth her while to seek the assistance of a secretary. The lawyer and the secretary both benefit, irrespective of the resource, talent, and financial advantages the lawyer has.
It's not that the lawyer is good at litigating and the secretary is good at typing (Adam Smith's comparative advantage) -- in this case, the lawyer is good at both but litigating is a better expenditure of the fixed asset involved - time.
I don't think you mean to suggest that the lawyer should work less efficiently and not hire the secretary at all, citing some dubious ethical judgement that the secretary is "disadvantaged" and that the lawyer employing the secretary would thus be "exploitation". Why don't you ask the secretary about that?
I think people are confusing free market economies with capitalism (which is easy to do). Any system where by two parties mutually agree to trade without force or fraud is inherently just - if a particular transation were not mutually benefitial as determined by each party according to their own interests, the transaction would not take place.
The notion that you or I or anybody else knows what is in the best interest of someone besides us is the central and singular failure of all market-interventionist government policies, and why absolutely all such systems devolve into autocratic tyranny - they presuppose that an invidiual knows not what is best for herself, and therefore, should not be afforded invidiual decision making authority. Once a governance supposes that an individual cannot be trusted to make decisions in their own best interest, and that the government should take on responsibility for said decision making, freedom, both real and economic, effictively ceases to exist.
Monopolies cannot exist without government blessing. The failure of the market to prevent monopoly is not the fault of capitalism, but rather, the fault is with government involvement in the marketplace that allows and entrenches monopolies
Examples of government blessing of monopoly: - land usage easements (for utilities, etc) - the copyright/patent system (for intellectual property) - airwaves / frequency ranges (for cell carriers, radio stations, etc)
Can you think of some monopoly in the US that isn't supported by decree of government?
- based on the ip address (of what? how was it determined), he thinks the computer wasn't connected to the internet wirelessly (i hope he's smarter than this and is just leaving out details)
- he doesn't think the harddrive they've got was one that ever had kazaa or any media files on it. IOW, its not the "right one"
Ads that do not apply to me in any way whatsoever. I do not want spam about penis enlargement, about meeting women, or about hot stock tips.
If I only ever saw ads for: - specials on go-fast parts for the particular year and model of each of my cars - deals on ram from brands i trust for types of computers i already own - used sun equipment on ebay - lenses for Canon EOS systems
i'd probably click on a ton more ads, and buy more stuff. I wish there was a way to get MORE of my _preference_ data into advertising engines. I'd be happy to tell them the year and model fo all my cars, what types of electronic gadgets I own and like, and so on.
For instance - i am in the process of buying a new car. I was vaguely in the market for a "new(er)", and knew what brand and model i was interested in. What I didn't realize was some of the financial incentives going on currently that applied to me. It was just by matter of luck (word of mouth) that I heard about a program on new vehicles. I wasn't even considering a new vehicle until I happened to hear of this deal.
With all of the work people are going through trying to sell new cars, how is it that i had to work / get lucky to find out about some buying incentive program? It should be plainly obvious that I like German cars, where I live, what my credit / demographics are like - i would expect to see ads for different incentive, leasing, and financing deals from BMW, Audi, VW, MB, and Porsche.
Instead, i see "hit the monkey, win a prize"
Right now, the state of advertising is that you get spammed with shit you couldn't possibly care about. When i actually DO want to buy something, i have to go out and look for it. All of this money spent on ads, none of it actually making me buy anything.
This is an absolutely fascinating data mining, search, and technology problem. I think there is the opportunity for less intrusive and more relevant advertising to undo user resentment, and actually generate some worthwhile sales. It's better for advertisers and better for me. And hopefully advertisers will see the value-add of intelligent advertising done by Google, MS, etc, and the intrusive, non-targeted ads will fall by the wayside.
actually, the most important thing about my computer is that it does what i ask it to. satisfying that requirement depends on what i ask, and what i deem as a passable attempt at "does".
There are not too many things i do on my main desktop at home: - read email - post to slashdot - view RSS feeds / general websurfing - listen to free&clear mp3s - watch anime - instant messaging - dabble with visual studio
I have been doing all of these things on Vista without difficulty. Whatever it allegedly doesn't let me do - I can tell you that I'm not missing it.
Freedom in a theoretical sense _is_ important. I'm glad that the FSF and others are making software that respects my freedoms. But when I get home from work, I don't always have the energy to be a freedom fighter. Sometimes I just want to read about old cars or watch this weeks episode of "Death Note" or whatever. Vista doesn't make that any worse - in fact, it makes it a bit better (mostly via the per-app volume sliders, my #1 favorite feature)
Unless there has been an imposter or misattribution, at least one highly respected "expert" but from a non-traditional background has said that it was definitely possible:
When I disliked ISA server is when it ruined my browsing experience with a much higher frequency than it does today. My involvement with it has always been the same - i forget all about it until it tells me that it can no longer find the hostname of the site i was _just_ looking at 30 seconds ago.
I used to call the helpdesk (god what a PITA) once or twice a month "isa server 24 is f@#$ked up and not resolving host names, please kick it" and they'd never have any idea what i was talking about.
I haven't bothered anyone about ISA server in years. It very rarely does something that makes me remember that it's still there, which is a good thing.
I wish i could tell you more about how some of this stuff is deployed, but i cant precisely because i am working on a product team doing testing, not doing IT work -- infact, I've never done IT work inside of Microsoft. (disclaimer: i consider producing commercial software and IT to be different things. There is certainly a software development aspect of IT, but typically its internal, and i'd still refer to it as software development as opposed to network ops or system administration. Producing productized software is a different activity IMO.)
That is what i am referring to, but i am talking about it in the opposite direction.
We use ISA server as an outbound proxy, so when i make an https connection to whereever, ISA presents me a cert that i trust (because what i trust is controlled via my domain membership) and then makes another https connection on my behalf, and then does stateful inspection between the two connections. So it proxy's the clear-text https connection.
This is good if you are a company and you want to be able to figure out what is going in and out of your network if you need to.
Slashdot Mirror
You beleive in what
1) you can observe
2) what others have observed and what you've heard about
3) what you suspect is observable
the reason your example doesn't work is that presumably in your valence of acquantances, there is probably someone beleivable that can tell you they witnessed a friend hugging their brother. Additionally, hugging ones brother does bypass any currently understood set of observations.
Actually, people that assume their observations are truth are almost certainly wrong - once upon a time people didn't even beleive in newtonian motion, and once people did, einstein came along and introduced relativistic motion, and then planck and friends suggested quantum motion. Each person beleiving in one of these models observed what they observed and beleived that model to be an accurate representation of reality, yet none infact were true.
Define "long after"? I stated originally that the gospels and indeed most of the new testament were commited to paper within the first 100 years or so following the death of Jesus.
From an information complexity stand point, the bible might be described as "supernaturally" accurate - compare the "bit error" rate of bibles that were copied (by hand), distributed, and translated across the world -- faster and more pervasively than any other text up until that time, and compare translations and editions more than 1500 years apart, and you'll find that the number of instances of meaningful errors or deviations between them is artificially low.
If you are truly interested in well written arguments against some of the points you raise (when was the bible written, what is the historical accuracy, what errors were made, etc), I recommend "The Case for Christ" and "The Case For Faith" by Lee Strobel.
If, on the other hand, you're someone that has a conclusion and only considers evidence that supports that conclusion, you're much more "religious" than I am
Unfortuneatly, no.
Although the call for violence is probably more rare than the accusations of insanity or incompetance.
As near as I can tell, radical leftists think anything to the right of them is evil and stupid, and radical rightists think anything to the left of them is un-american and stupid.
It would have been sufficient for the KSFO crew to say that they felt that the NYT reporting was treasonous and left it at that. Now they've lost any point they might have had, they've furthered the gap between left and right.
This style of political punditry (which dailykos is also famous for) is unfortuneate. When people want to be right more than they want to learn, there's no hope for progress.
I liked conservatives better when they listened the the vitriol of the left and just sighed and kept quiet... you know.. being conservative.
It is a perverse state of affairs when someone representing DailyKos has the legal and ethical highground over their adversary.
How do you know religion is based on falsehood?
Everything you haven't experenced first hand, heard about from a reputable source, or beleive to be correct from your constrained understanding of the universe is by definition supernatural. It's all supernatural until one day it isn't.
100 years ago nobody would have beleived that putting a clock on an airplane and flying it around at 600mph would have changed how it kept time. Then in 1905 Einstein changed that, and 50 years later the US Navy verified that yes, infact, you can measure relatavistic time dilation using conventional aircraft.
Much of the new testament is the recording of testimony given by eye witness acocunts of those who witnessed the teaching and miracles of Jesus (some of it passed word of mouth prior to its first recording on paper, but even this detail has been widely discussed to my satisfaction)
You can beleive the whole thing is fabrication if you like, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that the accounts depicted in the Bible are historical, not fictional. It's not like people were vastly more gullible then - many of Jesus own followered needed convincing on several occasions. People that saw him perform miracles with their own eyes still had doubts about who he was.
You only get to read about it, so its understandable that you're skeptical.
By claiming that something is false even though it might be true simply because you cannot explain how it could be true, doesn't that suggest a certain amount of... beleif on your part?... which is according to you.... evil? (pinky goes to corner of mouth)
I appreciate your response. To which i'd counter:
If more immigrants were legal as opposed to illegal, there'd be less wage disparity, which would counter many of the negative effects you point out. I.e. once immigrants are getting paid the same wage structure under the same rules as native borns are, the only incentives to continue hiring immigrants are their work ethic. Americans wanting what amount to trade tariffs to protect their lazy duffs are not deserving of the citizenship they were born with.
Steps I think are worth considering:
1) Reduce the # of illegal immigrants by making the process of immigrating legally easier for most people
1a) legal immigration should involve some basic checks:
1.a.i ) health - perhaps including free vaccinations on entry
1.a.ii ) criminal status
1.a.iii) terrorist screening
2) seriously step up prosecution and prevention of illegal immigration.
The 04 libertarian presidental candidate (Badnarik) proposed bringing home our deployed military and parking them on the Mexican border. Constitutionally, the rationale for a federally controlled military is national defense against foreign invaders. I wonder if it is a straightforward legal argument to suggest that millions of foreigners streaming across our border, killing citizens, destroying property, etc, constitutes a foreign threat that the US military should be prepared to meet. I don't much care about the response or opinion of the Mexican government - if they weren't running such a shitty country, millions wouldn't be risking their lives to get to the US, which is doing a shoddy job of things in its own right.
3) refactor the safety net mechanisms in our society such that there is a large incentive to not use them, yet they still function in a humane way. Milton Friedmans Negative Income Tax sounds interesting - yes,you'd get some benefits, but each dollar you earned would yield you a larger benefit than simply absorbing government money.
I think we sort of agree - keep out the locusts. And I hear you in regards to people that do not want to assimilate - I don't want Jihadists or people that want to tear down democracy and replace it with Sharia any more than I want a sepratist Arizona, NM, and Texas.
We need to make America attractive to immigrants for the _right_ reasons - a relatively corruption free government, free trade, unlimited upward mobility - a land of opportunity. The wrong reasons are "free ride", "powerless police force", and "poor internal security".
You have a romanticized view of African history. I don't know what motive you have for pinning the ills of the world on whites and on capitalism, but a cursory examination of reality will show that Africa and Africans had their own share of self-made problems prior to white people even existing, much less being able to read, build armies, or colonize other lands.
An inconvenient fact reparitionists tend to overlook is that the majority of slaves sold to North America from Africa were captured by warring African tribes or Eurasian Moslems, and sold willingly to white buyers. Where did this money go? Not to other whites or colonists.
Despite this inherently evil start, now the majority of African Americans in this country lead a better life than their distant relatives in Africa. Pick any standard of measure you like-- i think the generality still holds.
I finally visited NYC this summer and I cannot tell you how great of an experience it was. The Parks and Recreation guy that gave the speech at the base of the statue of liberty made a pretty damn moving speech. Sure, he's had a lot of practice, but even so -- mission accomplished.
What could be a more basic expression of human freedom than the freedom to choose which space you physically occupy, which nationality or society you choose to be a part of? Which flag you'll lend allegience to, and which nation your sweat and tears will help build?
I don't care how skilled or unskilled you are - we should make it as easy and as affordable as possible to enter the United States. Economics is not a zero sum game - the more people we have, the more mouths to feed, the more clothes to make, the more houses to build - these are all jobs for all kinds of people.
People that worry about immigrants simply collecting benefits are misplacing their fears for two reasons.
1) i don't think most immigrants (certainly illegal ones) collect any significant welfare. how could they if they're illegal?
2) your complaint should be that we have a pervasive cradle-to-grave entitlements system, rife with corruption and buearocracy, which collects significantly more dollars than it distributes, and which provides little incentive to ever leave the public dole. Fix this, and then we don't have to care who or who doesn't benefit from a safety net.
I'd argue that it should be as easy as possible to enter this country legally. A basic health check, some evidence that you can do some sort of work, and some sort of background check, and that's it. If we make it easy for people to do the right thing, we can punish with impunity those who insist on doing the wrong thing.
The large influx of people from the world over who wanted to live in a society that had free trade and strong individual liberties was what made this country great. We need to make it easier to absorb people, not harder, and we need to make it easier for them to succeed once they get here (i.e. fewer regulations and back-door manipulation for starting small businesses, etc).
How can you back up this accusation? A number of current security bulletins contain the words "responsible disclosure", and they list who reported the bugs to Microsoft.
That indicates that at least some of the responsibly disclosed bugs get fixed, doesn't it?
I understand the consternation about unpatched IE vulns. Unfortuneately I don't know off the top of my head what the real story is.
They have something sort of like that. If you are the first to responsibly disclose a bug, during the security bulletin, you or your organization will be thanked in the bulletin for disclosing it. I think there is some kind of rudimentary financial compensation. ($500 comes to mind?) also, but i can't find any record of it currently.
n /policy.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulleti
If you search "microsoft.com" for "responsible disclosure", many of the recent security bulletins list who reported it to them properly.
It's good to see that opinion seems to be shifting on the matter.
A few years ago when Microsoft started pressing for "responsible disclosure", they were pretty much mocked and ridiculed by everybody.
I'd like to think that there is now some real discourse on the effectiveness and responsibility of full disclosure vs responsible disclosure, and that security researchers are choosing responsibile disclosure more often.
I'd prefer to think of things that way then to cynically surmise that this is simply a case of "when it's an MS bug, let's roast them with a 0-day disclosure, but if its anyone else, let's give them a fair shake at fixing it"
People are up in arms about a company that does software QA work not following its own procedures when analyzing voting machines?
Why?
Irrespective of who gets elected, they're not going to act on your behalf anyway.
Sorry to be a bit cynical about this, but voting machines are not how elections are being "stolen".
If you relish this sort of analogy or quest for isomorphism amongst various information codings, read "A New Kind of Science" by Wolfram.
Would you have guessed that amongst the set of 2 or 3 color nearest neighbor cellular automata programs, you can find designs which are almost exactly replicated in nature?
The book suggests some interesting implications for the amount of apparent intelligence we see as the result of some informational coding (i.e. DNA), and the required complexity of the underlying program.
a competing entity will arise to supply the appropriate product/service at a price the customer will, pay, or, the pricing system will have done its job and told the customer the true value of the good or service that they want to acquire
When is education controlled by corporate sponsors? Or did you mean "when government controlled education outsources some aspect of eduction to a corporation" ?
Advertising doesn't limit freedom. As much as I tend to dislike advertising, I only object when someone thinks they can MAKE me put up with it, and the only way they can do so is via government cooperation.
As an aside, I don't buy that advertising is psychological manipulation. In egregious cases of advertising gone awry - there's already a word for that - fraud, and it's already been discussed.
No, there isn't. I can choose to:
- not go outside
- buy all of the property that they bought and put my own billboards there insteaed
- memorize where they are and close my eyes during that part of my trip
- have my food delivered to me
I have a variety of options available to me.
On the other hand, consider the options you have when you decide to disagree with the government:
- Go to Jail
Right. The key innovation of the US system was to separte the interests of the rich from the government by making the government as small as possible. As the size of the government has grown, so also has its usefulness as an instrument of those that would seek to use it to consolidate their own power or wealth.
Now you're talking about a role which government is squarely responsible for - note that free trade is couched on the assumption that the trade is done without force or fraud. That is the 1st, best, most critical role for government to play - assuring that trade, such as it is done, is executed without force (i.e. the mafia) or fraud (i.e. wanton misrepresentation).
I don't follow you. Only the government can _force_ me to behave a certain way. Irrespective of how much they'd like to, Coke cannot force me to like Coke, or to watch Coke commercials...although a few corporate interests out there would _like_ me to have to watch their commercials, and guess how they're going about that? Government intervention...
Government is the only instrument that can limit freedom.
All of the things that are wrong with capitalism are the fault of government regulation and manipulation of the economy.
The state is too powerful and creates rules and rights that contravene what is just and natural. Here here! I'm with you so far...
AMEN!
It sounds like you and I agree - the state and its manipulation of the economy is the real problem here.
If you meant to say that capitalism cannot exist without an interventionist government, i think i'd have to disagree with you. Capitalism worked just dandy prior to copyrights in the US, which was one of the first instances of artificial or intellectual property coming into existance.
Sure - companies are a quasi-artificial construct of the government but are not a necessary feature for monopolies to exist.
Which argument?
Clearly I'm not advocating lawlessness - societies form and governments are created so that people can escape the state of fear and bring some amount of order where before there was none.
What I am advocating is that government should do only what is necessary and no more - limited government - because every expansion of government by definition is an erosion of some individual right. The US started with much fewer laws and regulations on the books than it has today. It wasn't because the founding fathers ran out of ink or parchment. I of course don't pretend to suggest that no new laws are ever needed, but I would suggest - and you'd probably agree with me - they we have a number of laws on the books which no individual citizen asked for, and which certainly do not prmote individual liberties or anything of the sort. For instance, what percentage of Americans, if taken to a direct vote, would have voted for the DMCA?
The cases of government abuse of power are many, as are the cases of legislation to benefit companies, monpoloies, or other special interests. Expansive government detests the inherent freedom that arises from free trade (and capitalism). When government manipulation of the market place produces some undesirable result, the failure is always attributed to capitalism by adherents of large government, when in fact, one can argue that government manipulation was wholly or significantly responsible for failure.
The question I am asking in the OP is - in cases of undesirable monopoly conditions in the US - are those an obvious result of the system of capitalism, or are they a peculiar result because of government intervention in that market. When you consider all of the back-door ways that governments regulate the market (i.e. building permits, licensing for hairdressers, etc), it's hard to suggest that we have a truly free-market economy.
You'll have to bear with me - I'm working my way through Milton Friedman. If you can save us both the argument and point me to some well-reasoned criticisms of Friedman's work (which presumably you base your disagreement with me on), I'd appreciate it.
The business model Microsoft relies on exists only because of Copyright - which by its very definition is a government granted monopoly on the distribution of copies of a work granted to the author (or "rights holder") of that work.
Microsoft is the easiest example of a monopoly that exists only via a construct of government.
How?
The "infrastructure to produce efficiently" required investment, investment which apparently in the short term pays off, but which may not pay off in the future. Nothing practically prevents the "disadvantaged" party in a free trade system from not only duplicating, but leapfrogging any investment done by the other party. You will see the obvious truth in this by considering the automobile and consumer electronics industries of the US, Japan, and South Korea as case studies.
For a less macroscopic scenario, consider a lawyer who types at 150wpm and a secretary that types at 100wpm. The lawyer is certainly the better typist, and has every advantage over the secretary in terms of typing speed. One might think that in this case that the lawyer would do all her own typing, and the secretary might be unemployed. But of course this is not the case - the lawyer makes some money typing, but makes considerably more money litigating, such that it is worth her while to seek the assistance of a secretary. The lawyer and the secretary both benefit, irrespective of the resource, talent, and financial advantages the lawyer has.
It's not that the lawyer is good at litigating and the secretary is good at typing (Adam Smith's comparative advantage) -- in this case, the lawyer is good at both but litigating is a better expenditure of the fixed asset involved - time.
I don't think you mean to suggest that the lawyer should work less efficiently and not hire the secretary at all, citing some dubious ethical judgement that the secretary is "disadvantaged" and that the lawyer employing the secretary would thus be "exploitation". Why don't you ask the secretary about that?
I think people are confusing free market economies with capitalism (which is easy to do). Any system where by two parties mutually agree to trade without force or fraud is inherently just - if a particular transation were not mutually benefitial as determined by each party according to their own interests, the transaction would not take place.
The notion that you or I or anybody else knows what is in the best interest of someone besides us is the central and singular failure of all market-interventionist government policies, and why absolutely all such systems devolve into autocratic tyranny - they presuppose that an invidiual knows not what is best for herself, and therefore, should not be afforded invidiual decision making authority. Once a governance supposes that an individual cannot be trusted to make decisions in their own best interest, and that the government should take on responsibility for said decision making, freedom, both real and economic, effictively ceases to exist.
Monopolies cannot exist without government blessing. The failure of the market to prevent monopoly is not the fault of capitalism, but rather, the fault is with government involvement in the marketplace that allows and entrenches monopolies
Examples of government blessing of monopoly:
- land usage easements (for utilities, etc)
- the copyright/patent system (for intellectual property)
- airwaves / frequency ranges (for cell carriers, radio stations, etc)
Can you think of some monopoly in the US that isn't supported by decree of government?
The expert report says two things:
- based on the ip address (of what? how was it determined), he thinks the computer wasn't connected to the internet wirelessly (i hope he's smarter than this and is just leaving out details)
- he doesn't think the harddrive they've got was one that ever had kazaa or any media files on it. IOW, its not the "right one"
This is _exactly_ what I want.
You know what pisses me off more than ads?
Ads that do not apply to me in any way whatsoever. I do not want spam about penis enlargement, about meeting women, or about hot stock tips.
If I only ever saw ads for:
- specials on go-fast parts for the particular year and model of each of my cars
- deals on ram from brands i trust for types of computers i already own
- used sun equipment on ebay
- lenses for Canon EOS systems
i'd probably click on a ton more ads, and buy more stuff. I wish there was a way to get MORE of my _preference_ data into advertising engines. I'd be happy to tell them the year and model fo all my cars, what types of electronic gadgets I own and like, and so on.
For instance - i am in the process of buying a new car. I was vaguely in the market for a "new(er)", and knew what brand and model i was interested in. What I didn't realize was some of the financial incentives going on currently that applied to me. It was just by matter of luck (word of mouth) that I heard about a program on new vehicles. I wasn't even considering a new vehicle until I happened to hear of this deal.
With all of the work people are going through trying to sell new cars, how is it that i had to work / get lucky to find out about some buying incentive program? It should be plainly obvious that I like German cars, where I live, what my credit / demographics are like - i would expect to see ads for different incentive, leasing, and financing deals from BMW, Audi, VW, MB, and Porsche.
Instead, i see "hit the monkey, win a prize"
Right now, the state of advertising is that you get spammed with shit you couldn't possibly care about. When i actually DO want to buy something, i have to go out and look for it. All of this money spent on ads, none of it actually making me buy anything.
This is an absolutely fascinating data mining, search, and technology problem. I think there is the opportunity for less intrusive and more relevant advertising to undo user resentment, and actually generate some worthwhile sales. It's better for advertisers and better for me. And hopefully advertisers will see the value-add of intelligent advertising done by Google, MS, etc, and the intrusive, non-targeted ads will fall by the wayside.
actually, the most important thing about my computer is that it does what i ask it to. satisfying that requirement depends on what i ask, and what i deem as a passable attempt at "does".
There are not too many things i do on my main desktop at home:
- read email
- post to slashdot
- view RSS feeds / general websurfing
- listen to free&clear mp3s
- watch anime
- instant messaging
- dabble with visual studio
I have been doing all of these things on Vista without difficulty. Whatever it allegedly doesn't let me do - I can tell you that I'm not missing it.
Freedom in a theoretical sense _is_ important. I'm glad that the FSF and others are making software that respects my freedoms. But when I get home from work, I don't always have the energy to be a freedom fighter. Sometimes I just want to read about old cars or watch this weeks episode of "Death Note" or whatever. Vista doesn't make that any worse - in fact, it makes it a bit better (mostly via the per-app volume sliders, my #1 favorite feature)
Unless there has been an imposter or misattribution, at least one highly respected "expert" but from a non-traditional background has said that it was definitely possible:
m ail428.html#Carmack
http://www.pournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/
The expert? John Carmack.
His qualifications? Mixing easily available chemicals into rocket propellants.
Diclosure of Bias:
I happen to respect both Jerry Pournelle and John Carmack. And I happen to think the register is a lousy "publication".
When I was in IT I did unix stuff exclusively.
When I disliked ISA server is when it ruined my browsing experience with a much higher frequency than it does today. My involvement with it has always been the same - i forget all about it until it tells me that it can no longer find the hostname of the site i was _just_ looking at 30 seconds ago.
I used to call the helpdesk (god what a PITA) once or twice a month "isa server 24 is f@#$ked up and not resolving host names, please kick it" and they'd never have any idea what i was talking about.
I haven't bothered anyone about ISA server in years. It very rarely does something that makes me remember that it's still there, which is a good thing.
I wish i could tell you more about how some of this stuff is deployed, but i cant precisely because i am working on a product team doing testing, not doing IT work -- infact, I've never done IT work inside of Microsoft. (disclaimer: i consider producing commercial software and IT to be different things. There is certainly a software development aspect of IT, but typically its internal, and i'd still refer to it as software development as opposed to network ops or system administration. Producing productized software is a different activity IMO.)
That is what i am referring to, but i am talking about it in the opposite direction.
We use ISA server as an outbound proxy, so when i make an https connection to whereever, ISA presents me a cert that i trust (because what i trust is controlled via my domain membership) and then makes another https connection on my behalf, and then does stateful inspection between the two connections. So it proxy's the clear-text https connection.
This is good if you are a company and you want to be able to figure out what is going in and out of your network if you need to.