Re: CDR: Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- On 23 Mar 2003 at 8:09, Jamie Lawrence wrote: Hey, what do you guys want? Not only are we not very useful, but, hell, I don't think we've been *communist* since at least the first attempt around at asian nations. Oh, wait. Commie means not like me. Commie is an explanation for the fact that hostile lies about US allies who fought communists are usually accompanied by favorable lies about the Soviet Union and its servants. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 2k9j5EK5Y4xNHQyHIAHgfLEiBFSDcgpeGajUQCOX 4+j+jTZ2GtM5shPO9ERgehUNxAfGbwxxmz4PJ1VFo
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- On 23 Mar 2003 at 17:39, Mike Rosing wrote: What they *can't* do is destroy small armies. So the Persians, Talibs and other muslim groups that have a grudge against the US will bleed them to death one soldier at a time. The US is not bleeding in Afghanistan. Iraq, like the french and unlike Afghanistan, has a long history of rolling over for tyrants foreign and domestic and begging for the tummy to be tickled, so the comparatively light hand of the US should lead to little friction. Assuming the war is as short and victorious as seems likely from events so far, Iraqi resistance wil not be one of the problems that results. Of course the war is far from over yet, but once it is over, it will indeed be over -- as the war in Afghanistan, against people far tougher and more determined, is over. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KtUZvg8HqIFOjO7TntiUtvJukF5ylhS4ToL3G4SJ 4r/cJgkx4X+dQYBr41/4Z/r/mWGlutzeNbOJsgwUk
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Mike Rosing: The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? Furthermore, the plan appears to be to take cities as they were taken in Afghanistan, by laying seige to them and fostering revolt from within, a process that in Afghanistan took cities with very few civilian casualties. This is already working in the North, where the US has allies on the ground. It is not yet working the the South, indeed it failed conspicuously and embarrassingly, but it is early days yet -- we shall see. Rome was not burnt in a day. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CEot0/Fv5upkisp2OkrlJ7HOSs54PKAvATPS9MMh 4yzGvQnbJbVyDJ/tpJS7TGIrVyZ/9wVT0lt6W2p9a
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- Ken Brown: But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart James A. Donald: Commie lies. At the beginning of the recent Afghan war the US estimated the Taliban had at most fifty stingers. During the war it became apparent that they had far fewer, probably only the twelve that Hekmatyar gave them. Tyler Durden 1. What makes these lies as you claim commie? Do you think that by impugning US policy in the region we are by implication stating that the forced exit of the Soviets was bad? Yes. The demonization of US allies in Afghanistan is usually accompanied by a whitewash of the Soviet regime they were fighting -- as for example in the much repeated lie that the US intervened in Afghanistan before the Soviets did -- see the post http://groups.google.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ing.google.com for Nathan Folkert's response to this lie. Quite saying commie all the time. All the commies are dead, except for 1 in Cuba and a couple of really old guys in rural China. Yet oddly, I encounter the ideology and program of Pol Pot every day in the newsgroups. Dan Clore is still defending the Khmer Rouge, and G*rd*n assures us we have no way of knowing that Kim in North Korea has done anything wrong, people are still arguing that Stalin's efforts to subdue Greece was a spontaneous uprising of the oppressed Greek masses against their fascist overlords, and that Stalin's alliance with Hitler was forced on him by the planned imperialist aggression of Britain and the US. 2. You knowledge of history is as shoddy as your ability to spot communists and their lies. The CIA actively recruited and trained Isalmic religious students and helped build and arm the Taliban. The Taliban did not exist until long after the CIA had entirely forgotten about Afghanistan. As the enemies of the Taliban pointed out frequently and vigorously, the people who became the Taliban had no freedom fighter credentials, had not fought against the Soviet Union. Since they had not fought against the Soviets they had not received aid from the US. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Xr+mXsZhgSN1VunXmTNlLq6WqQMj7FBTXHVmf9cG 4eeh8LJgnQvPDD/UTHjbkqVEnW+ciCAm09E3q9vA1
Re:Liberation party express concern over war
-- On 22 Mar 2003 at 2:00, Sarad AV wrote: Starting a war with saudi is a simple thing.How ever unless they don't find enough oil in iraq,they will turn onto KSA. How ever Saudi with Mecca and Madina is a dangerous country to attack.Saudi will surely take it as a war on muslims and the impact of that is severe.Saudi is the holy country.Its not like attaking iraq. Saudi arabia has vastly less power, than Iraq, and there is real evidence implicating it in terrorism, unlike Iraq. The reason the US does not attack it despite its subsidies to terrorists is because they have been kissing US ass while simultaneously kissing terrorist ass. It is embarrassing to attack someone who loudly proclaims I am on your side, even if one is inclined to doubt the sincerity of these loud proclamations. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG i69sCTK4xl9bzZuwXZNoM7SqxuK3sIovKZBGTCpg 4nm9I8mKvQEzSj94Huk5OMSVE7LSIZiBJSfR0QW5L
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- Ken Brown: But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart James A. Donald: Commie lies. At the beginning of the recent Afghan war the US estimated the Taliban had at most fifty stingers. During the war it became apparent that they had far fewer, probably only the twelve that Hekmatyar gave them. Tyler Durden 1. What makes these lies as you claim commie? Do you think that by impugning US policy in the region we are by implication stating that the forced exit of the Soviets was bad? Yes. The demonization of US allies in Afghanistan is usually accompanied by a whitewash of the Soviet regime they were fighting -- as for example in the much repeated lie that the US intervened in Afghanistan before the Soviets did -- see the post http://groups.google.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ing.google.com for Nathan Folkert's response to this lie. Quite saying commie all the time. All the commies are dead, except for 1 in Cuba and a couple of really old guys in rural China. Yet oddly, I encounter the ideology and program of Pol Pot every day in the newsgroups. Dan Clore is still defending the Khmer Rouge, and G*rd*n assures us we have no way of knowing that Kim in North Korea has done anything wrong, people are still arguing that Stalin's efforts to subdue Greece was a spontaneous uprising of the oppressed Greek masses against their fascist overlords, and that Stalin's alliance with Hitler was forced on him by the planned imperialist aggression of Britain and the US. 2. You knowledge of history is as shoddy as your ability to spot communists and their lies. The CIA actively recruited and trained Isalmic religious students and helped build and arm the Taliban. The Taliban did not exist until long after the CIA had entirely forgotten about Afghanistan. As the enemies of the Taliban pointed out frequently and vigorously, the people who became the Taliban had no freedom fighter credentials, had not fought against the Soviet Union. Since they had not fought against the Soviets they had not received aid from the US. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Xr+mXsZhgSN1VunXmTNlLq6WqQMj7FBTXHVmf9cG 4eeh8LJgnQvPDD/UTHjbkqVEnW+ciCAm09E3q9vA1
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
-- The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing list operators. On 22 Mar 2003 at 13:24, Thomas Shaddack wrote: However, it penalizes everyone without an infrastructure for electronic payment. Would need infrastructure for micropayments. At present NO ONE has any infrastructure for small electronic payments. Also the payments would have to be anonymous, or somehow grouped, or there would be massive loss of privacy. The obvious solution is chaumian micro cash. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XbRtjiSCRH0VGobxmd0F5OSaviUp1XcQlfNA8RuC 43wJasFibfm7tEkw64d/V2etWo46wdb0klDarUL9Q
Re:Liberation party express concern over war
-- On 22 Mar 2003 at 2:00, Sarad AV wrote: Starting a war with saudi is a simple thing.How ever unless they don't find enough oil in iraq,they will turn onto KSA. How ever Saudi with Mecca and Madina is a dangerous country to attack.Saudi will surely take it as a war on muslims and the impact of that is severe.Saudi is the holy country.Its not like attaking iraq. Saudi arabia has vastly less power, than Iraq, and there is real evidence implicating it in terrorism, unlike Iraq. The reason the US does not attack it despite its subsidies to terrorists is because they have been kissing US ass while simultaneously kissing terrorist ass. It is embarrassing to attack someone who loudly proclaims I am on your side, even if one is inclined to doubt the sincerity of these loud proclamations. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG i69sCTK4xl9bzZuwXZNoM7SqxuK3sIovKZBGTCpg 4nm9I8mKvQEzSj94Huk5OMSVE7LSIZiBJSfR0QW5L
Re: When is iraq expected to fall.
-- On 19 Mar 2003 at 22:55, Sarad AV wrote: how long does US analysts expect iraq to be completely occupied by US and allied troops? No definite plans, but Rumsfeld is thinking of an occupation force of 75 000 for several years. Some want the kind of occupation where any time any Iraqi utters a racist slur, the marines take him away for sensitivity training, which would require about 200 000, whereas Rumsfeld has in mind an occupation more like Afghanistan, where so long as the rivers run with water, not blood, we pat ourselves on the back and count it a job well done. Of course, all this assumes the war goes smoothly -- with a kill ratio of a thousand to one. There is widespread failure to appreciate how remarkable such kill ratios are. If it is merely one hundred to one, the war will be perceived as a defeat, and if it is merely ten to one, it actually will be a defeat. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pXZ8V7ZVSnZEJTIAOWVcd7RvKnGDxic8agd6TY6o 453h7nDyLl5QIvUPrVvYm1kEJJ/vJpfXSwkzd8wbm
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- The Taliban did not exist back then. The guys the US aided were for the most part, the guys that are running Afghanistan now. The major recipients of US aid, for example the lion of Afghanistan were the people the Taliban murdered. On 20 Mar 2003 at 8:16, Mike Rosing wrote: The Talib's have been around for more than a century. The British fought them in the late 1800's in their first try to conquer Afghanistan. The British did not fight Sunni islamic fundamentalists. The Taliban belongs to a sect that has never had a large following in Afghanistan, which is part of the reason why they drove out much of the Afghan population. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 53Wyhn5mvmbLsfCa8xeusjGGTFC0Ynkauohr4Uov 4nszIWnEYzkvcoHX0K/dqcsoCOCdvV1NwFasx3H/G
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- On 21 Mar 2003 at 12:55, Ken Brown wrote: US originally helped the kind of people who later became the Northern Alliance - a rather odd mixture of unreconstructed Stalinists, liberals in the European sense of the word, separationists, local bandit chiefs, drug growers, pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists and who knows what else. The Taliban formed later, in Pakistan, and was at least at first indirectly funded by the US through Pakistan and through material inherited from some other groups - and of course later by various Arabs (who may or may not have thought of themselves as Al Qaida before the US pinned the name on them while looking for a New Enemy for the New World Order). But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart Commie lies. My understanding is that the Taliban got twelve stingers, not five hundred, and they got them from Hekmatyar, who did get them from the US. Hekmatyar was certainly anti US, arguably a Stalinist and a supporter of terrorism, but he was not and is not an islamic fundamentalist -- his alliance with the taliban was rather like Saddam's alliance with Bin Laden. They temporarily agreed to hate someone else more than they hate each other. At the beginning of the recent Afghan war the US estimated the Taliban had at most fifty stingers. During the war it became apparent that they had far fewer, probably only the twelve that Hekmatyar gave them. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pxk0mbAvt7SxFwMxwrkSN3mDpHDczpZ/IKSVwwwl 4cZ+JYzhHn8RflEW05yx4Hv0MWgjjo0Ywhp9imV1O
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
-- On 21 Mar 2003 at 23:01, Jamie Lawrence wrote: We all want to get rid of spam. I think most folks on this list are in favor of using market dynamics to influence behaviour. I think adding an artificial fee to sending email is stupid. It is creating false scarcity to fix a broken system. Further, it will end up becoming a new profit center for ISPs - send an email, pay 5 (or whatever) cents. I I know this is being thought about, but what about ad-hoc lists like CP? Who will pay for AOL delivery for that? Who pays for ASRG? Sender pays is stupid. Don't support false scarcity. The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing list operators. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y6FMx3kifAEols9uNP5y5vg8sKYvXPMDutZc4nWU 4vxTg06gsQlG1PONar3AxatOVjnthx9NfjJGIDu6C
Spending a billion dollars an hour produces a hell of a light show!
-- On 21 Mar 2003 at 15:22, Damian Gerow wrote: That aside, riddle me this: If Iraq does indeed have WMDs, where are they? Why aren't they using them? They're about to be slaughtered by the beloved U.S., so why aren't they defending themselves? They are not defending themselves much with guns or scuds either. Some of them do not like Saddam, some of them do not like the fact that any resistance gets swiftly blasted, some of them are waiting for orders that will never come, because the command and control system has been blown up. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6OB3+yj38vf3Dh+Wjhdc3lYVpWVM0v3Vk2UPgwHO 4ngc4yVzfRoB1NojR71Lmypj2x7DNPtIddi3bJqkj
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- The Taliban did not exist back then. The guys the US aided were for the most part, the guys that are running Afghanistan now. The major recipients of US aid, for example the lion of Afghanistan were the people the Taliban murdered. On 20 Mar 2003 at 8:16, Mike Rosing wrote: The Talib's have been around for more than a century. The British fought them in the late 1800's in their first try to conquer Afghanistan. The British did not fight Sunni islamic fundamentalists. The Taliban belongs to a sect that has never had a large following in Afghanistan, which is part of the reason why they drove out much of the Afghan population. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 53Wyhn5mvmbLsfCa8xeusjGGTFC0Ynkauohr4Uov 4nszIWnEYzkvcoHX0K/dqcsoCOCdvV1NwFasx3H/G
Re: When is iraq expected to fall.
-- On 19 Mar 2003 at 22:55, Sarad AV wrote: how long does US analysts expect iraq to be completely occupied by US and allied troops? No definite plans, but Rumsfeld is thinking of an occupation force of 75 000 for several years. Some want the kind of occupation where any time any Iraqi utters a racist slur, the marines take him away for sensitivity training, which would require about 200 000, whereas Rumsfeld has in mind an occupation more like Afghanistan, where so long as the rivers run with water, not blood, we pat ourselves on the back and count it a job well done. Of course, all this assumes the war goes smoothly -- with a kill ratio of a thousand to one. There is widespread failure to appreciate how remarkable such kill ratios are. If it is merely one hundred to one, the war will be perceived as a defeat, and if it is merely ten to one, it actually will be a defeat. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pXZ8V7ZVSnZEJTIAOWVcd7RvKnGDxic8agd6TY6o 453h7nDyLl5QIvUPrVvYm1kEJJ/vJpfXSwkzd8wbm
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- On 19 Mar 2003 at 14:53, Tyler Durden wrote: I agree the above would be bullshit if it weren't on some occasions demonstrably true. After the US helped get the Taliban rolling (through providing them with stingers and other weapons as well as subversive opps training to knock out the soviets), The Taliban did not exist back then. The guys the US aided were for the most part, the guys that are running Afghanistan now. The major recipients of US aid, for example the lion of Afghanistan were the people the Taliban murdered. The story you are telling is part of a big commie lie -- that the US aided the bigoted Taliban against the elightened communists who created a constitutional democracy where every man and every women have a vote, and universal education and health care were guaranteed, etc. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 7RHG6436iyu0CEZRgLVbrRD6e9vztOYBLPDj87tj 47sltWxQU907jJOEeQwyKRWdG0+3Gl04FmdgDHSqa
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- On 11 Mar 2003 at 9:35, Tyler Durden wrote: Does it mean that such observations are invalid just because Marx predicted them? Marx was both untruthful, and spectacularly in error. If commies actually believed what they said, if they still believed the prophecies, then they would still be working at labor organization, rather than at conspiracy. Ever since Lenin, a core principle of communism has been to know the truth, and to lie about it. Lying is to communism, as prayer is to Christianity. The shared lie provides the solidarity and cohesion, the sense of identity, that shared prayer does to Christians. Every lie provides a bond of conspiracy. Trotskyists take this principal to bizarre extremes. Stalinist lying is analogous to the old Catholic mass, where the priest speaks and the masses say amen, whereas Trotskyist lying is analogous to the prayer of the charismatics, where the congregation prays in tongues, rolls on the floor and has fits. The Trotskyists demand greater personal involvement and investment in lying, whereas the Stalinists merely expect the faithful to display solemn credulity. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /Hq03OpaW0rXDTXag6XeEQfadxRGzzjBh12ZU+Wx 4OFCSisd7OtfMp1I1Fuzb32PHD2i7GVF7l9eaIZeD
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- James A. Donald: The difference between private property owners doing this, and the governemnt doing this is that 100% of private property owners are NOT going to agree on anything. On 9 Mar 2003 at 8:36, Thomas Shaddack wrote: This presumes the existence of significant amount of (at least potentially) competing private owners - then it is valid argument. However, there is the growing trend of mergers and consolidations, producing megacorporations and limiting the number of said owners. Comie fantasy. That theory is Marx's monopoly capitalism. Commies have been loudly announcing Marx's prophecies to be coming true, even though after 1910 they no longer took the prophecies seriously themselves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pn7EKC9aBTqrOyM4bzwtwFZtOdqAOmXvvbLxZrlA 4YfWL2n2mbdOvyx1+q5PrE3PPyZbwP/aYDT7In7J4
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
-- On 7 Mar 2003 at 12:46, Tyler Durden wrote: Let's take one of my famous extreme examples. Let's say a section of the New Jersey Turnpike gets turned over to a private company, which now owns and operates this section. So...now let's say I'm black. NO! Let's say I'm blond-haired and blue eyed, and the asshole in the squad car doesn't like that, because his wife's been bangin' a surfer. So...he should be able to toss me off the freeway just because of the way I look? (Or the way I'm dressed or the car I drive or whatever.) The turnpike is a hard problem, sincve you have a clash between two legitimate rights -- the right to wall people out, against the right not to be walled in. The mall is not a hard problem, any more than the nightclub is a problem. Do you have a problem with a night club turning away those it feels would clash with the theme? Let us suppose, instead of a small number of big roads (where such a thing as the new Jersey Turnpike is the sole vital way of getting from A to B), a rather illogical stitched together maze of small roads -- much like the internet, where paths tend to ramble in not very direct fashion, the kind of road system an anarchic society, where roads were not made according to any central plan, would produce. Then, there would be no problem with one particular turnpike operator turning away blacks, or turning away whites. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG j6r53OQ7j4k1SqdtDWsWdOebG2XED5sN/423GSxD 4tlIUPZ+1lsAuFtEOwpEqrbUmzsGZVc9i4A6Rpm9E
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- On 8 Mar 2003 at 2:44, Anonymous wrote: But let's cut to the chase. Assume that all private grocery store owners want to exclude people from their stores. Now assume that 100% of them agree that effective Tuesday, only those people who have a receipt for a $100 or more donation to George W Bush (or Hillary Clinton, whatever) may enter their property to shop for groceries. The difference between private property owners doing this, and the governemnt doing this is that 100% of private property owners are NOT going to agree on anything. The 100% assumption presupposes that the capitalists are like the state, a single entity with a single will, in which case it is obvious that simply replacing the will of the capitalists with the will of the people would be a vast improvement, rather than slavery terror and mass murder. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HgEdYNVKv2tU/toXy+I4n7ghSLCNWUPXGAeW1QBT 4k9jI77S/WhRm+irKmtf3wrOpbIQpPsFLWh2y5bwz
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- On 8 Mar 2003 at 2:44, Anonymous wrote: But let's cut to the chase. Assume that all private grocery store owners want to exclude people from their stores. Now assume that 100% of them agree that effective Tuesday, only those people who have a receipt for a $100 or more donation to George W Bush (or Hillary Clinton, whatever) may enter their property to shop for groceries. The difference between private property owners doing this, and the governemnt doing this is that 100% of private property owners are NOT going to agree on anything. The 100% assumption presupposes that the capitalists are like the state, a single entity with a single will, in which case it is obvious that simply replacing the will of the capitalists with the will of the people would be a vast improvement, rather than slavery terror and mass murder. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HgEdYNVKv2tU/toXy+I4n7ghSLCNWUPXGAeW1QBT 4k9jI77S/WhRm+irKmtf3wrOpbIQpPsFLWh2y5bwz
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
-- On 7 Mar 2003 at 12:46, Tyler Durden wrote: Let's take one of my famous extreme examples. Let's say a section of the New Jersey Turnpike gets turned over to a private company, which now owns and operates this section. So...now let's say I'm black. NO! Let's say I'm blond-haired and blue eyed, and the asshole in the squad car doesn't like that, because his wife's been bangin' a surfer. So...he should be able to toss me off the freeway just because of the way I look? (Or the way I'm dressed or the car I drive or whatever.) The turnpike is a hard problem, sincve you have a clash between two legitimate rights -- the right to wall people out, against the right not to be walled in. The mall is not a hard problem, any more than the nightclub is a problem. Do you have a problem with a night club turning away those it feels would clash with the theme? Let us suppose, instead of a small number of big roads (where such a thing as the new Jersey Turnpike is the sole vital way of getting from A to B), a rather illogical stitched together maze of small roads -- much like the internet, where paths tend to ramble in not very direct fashion, the kind of road system an anarchic society, where roads were not made according to any central plan, would produce. Then, there would be no problem with one particular turnpike operator turning away blacks, or turning away whites. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG j6r53OQ7j4k1SqdtDWsWdOebG2XED5sN/423GSxD 4tlIUPZ+1lsAuFtEOwpEqrbUmzsGZVc9i4A6Rpm9E
Re: Who Owns the News
-- James A. Donald: You are making all this crap up. Eric Cordian Each of the stories I cited was reported by multiple news outlets. Multiple pinko liars. The Donahue story alone had 12 hits on Google News. Donahue's abysmal ratings disprove the story that Donahue was fired for opposing the war.. If you get twelve hits on a story that is obviously phony, then that shows which views are being promoted, and which censored, shows the direction of the bias -- indeed even if the story was not obviously false, the number of hits that you get on it would also be evidence that it is obviously false. If you get twelve hits from major news sources promoting the claim that pinkos do not get a fair deal on major news sources, that is pretty good evidence that they get a good deal more than a fair deal. If you got twelve hits saying he was fired for his views, the story is self refuting. One would hardly make up a story about a court of appeals decision. One can make up an absurd spin on a court of appeals decision. James A. Donald: Liberals cannot succeed in talk shows because they hate and despise their audience. Eric Cordian You know, I think conservative is one of the nicest-sounding terms ever invented for backward prude. Just as I said. James A. Donald: He was getting about one quarter the audience of the competion. The nightmare scenario that MSNBC was so alarmed by was that no one was watching him vomit hatred over his audience. Eric Cordian Donahue was doing no worse than other crap on MSNBC which wasn't cancelled, and Donahue's ratings had recently risen. News is supposed to be a ratings anchor, the defining capability that makes a network a network. Donahue was not being compared to reruns of Dora the explorer, but to other people's talk shows, in particular to The O'Reilly Factor. Donahue was a distant third in the _cable__news__ratings_, and the reason for his failure was that he was out of touch with the current marketplace -- polite euphemism for the fact that he despised his audience. You can get prime time video news from a major network, cannot get it from Blockbuster rentals or from most cable channels. You can get videos from the internet, but you cannot get video news Thus if a prime time news show gets ratings similar to other crap, it is going to be canceled very fast indeed. And we can tell which way the bias goes, from the fact that O'Reilly is universally called a right wing, or extreme right wing, show host, when in reality his purported views are constructed on the basis of focus groups to be right down the exact middle of the target demographic. The Fox slogan is fair and balanced news, and whether or not it is fair, it is certainly balanced -- balanced to be right down the middle of their target audience -- a policy that must sometimes get in the way of being fair. James A. Donald: Sure the press is biased, but there is plenty of stuff that is very far from pro Israel, even on channels that are openly pro Israel, such as Fox. Eric Cordian Let me know when the first station puts the logo JINSA under Richard Perle and the rest of the pundits we are supposed to think are randomly picked objective commentators on the Middle East. I saw a representative of Hamas on some Fox talk show. He was introduced as such, but they did not put the logo Hamas baby killer under him. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG A7dKZ6eYZa4mNJ6b3MUit+B7f0J5wsQ9npVLVkOQ 4mfx/Ub5+cRkD1mZngr/hdQdwTTsqoA+UnYyisG+t
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 2 Mar 2003 at 1:00, Bill Stewart wrote: Most of the national talk shows on radio are either conservatives or ranting right wingers or sports shows (which don't count.) The ranters get some mileage out of insulting people for a while, trying to keep finding new people to hate and insult, but it gets old after a while, and now that there's no longer a Clinton Administration supplying easy targets, it's hard to sustain. You take for granted that news shows are to the right of their audience. This does not seem to be the case. Fox has determined the political views of the typical person who is interested in news, and Fox is dead center on that demographic. If O'Reilly is neither right nor left, but instead balanced, even if far from fair, then existent talk shows are fairly representative of their audience, about equally split between right and left, which of course makes them all extreme right wing as compared to most of the people who run the news. As to which side is spewing rage and hatred, try googling for references to Ann Coulter. Anne laughs at her opponents. I get the feeling that they would put me in the gulag if they could, along with most of their audience. Similarly recall the debate between Chagnon and his various opponents. The joke so often made about feminists is also very much applicable to those than in the America call themselves liberals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gs4XF9FlWtm8J1QfFNuWUi7Oq6NmCglTocpcIxAG 44Ui+eIfir//QVw+66bb3d5P+L4iWlBIkDXQFVERa
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 2 Mar 2003 at 1:00, Bill Stewart wrote: Most of the national talk shows on radio are either conservatives or ranting right wingers or sports shows (which don't count.) The ranters get some mileage out of insulting people for a while, trying to keep finding new people to hate and insult, but it gets old after a while, and now that there's no longer a Clinton Administration supplying easy targets, it's hard to sustain. You take for granted that news shows are to the right of their audience. This does not seem to be the case. Fox has determined the political views of the typical person who is interested in news, and Fox is dead center on that demographic. If O'Reilly is neither right nor left, but instead balanced, even if far from fair, then existent talk shows are fairly representative of their audience, about equally split between right and left, which of course makes them all extreme right wing as compared to most of the people who run the news. As to which side is spewing rage and hatred, try googling for references to Ann Coulter. Anne laughs at her opponents. I get the feeling that they would put me in the gulag if they could, along with most of their audience. Similarly recall the debate between Chagnon and his various opponents. The joke so often made about feminists is also very much applicable to those than in the America call themselves liberals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gs4XF9FlWtm8J1QfFNuWUi7Oq6NmCglTocpcIxAG 44Ui+eIfir//QVw+66bb3d5P+L4iWlBIkDXQFVERa
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 1 Mar 2003 at 11:25, Eric Cordian wrote: FOX recently fired two reporters after they refused to change the facts of a news story. Fox said to them, We paid $13 billion for these stations, and we'll tell you what the news is. In a unanimous decision, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned a $425,000 jury award to another FOX reporter who was fired after refusing to alter the facts of a story. THe judge ruled FOX had a right to lie, deceive, and mislead. MSNBC just fired Phil Donahue after a marketing report outlined a nightmare scenario in which MSNBC was perceived as giving a forum to anti-war sentiment while all other networks were engaged in patriotic flag-waving. You are making all this crap up. For example Donahue was fired because few were watching him sneer at them. Liberals cannot succeed in talk shows because they hate and despise their audience. He was getting about one quarter the audience of the competion. The nightmare scenario that MSNBC was so alarmed by was that no one was watching him vomit hatred over his audience. Much the same for all your other stories When CNN tried to cover the Palestinian side of the Mideast Conflict, Israel threatened to drop CNN and pick up FOX instead. CNN caved instantly. All CNN copy is now required to be reviewed by upper management in Atlanta before broadcast, and anything that isn't pro-Israel is killed. Funny. Some time ago I saw some Israelis murder a Palestinian kid on numerous stations, Fox among them. Channel surfing last night I saw bits of a long boring documentary where the camera followed various Palestinians around in their daily lives, depicting the distressing effect on the Palestinians of various Israeli collective punishments. Not sure what station it was on. Terribly earnest public good stuff. Sure the press is biased, but there is plenty of stuff that is very far from pro Israel, even on channels that are openly pro Israel, such as Fox. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mmaHCD9F1B++2Aq7X7ytnGlqgDM6kFzF3Ua7X2Ke 4bHENQyj656gmwUnwj85NQSorfvZ2KiZtsroyXrdv
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 1 Mar 2003 at 11:25, Eric Cordian wrote: FOX recently fired two reporters after they refused to change the facts of a news story. Fox said to them, We paid $13 billion for these stations, and we'll tell you what the news is. In a unanimous decision, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned a $425,000 jury award to another FOX reporter who was fired after refusing to alter the facts of a story. THe judge ruled FOX had a right to lie, deceive, and mislead. MSNBC just fired Phil Donahue after a marketing report outlined a nightmare scenario in which MSNBC was perceived as giving a forum to anti-war sentiment while all other networks were engaged in patriotic flag-waving. You are making all this crap up. For example Donahue was fired because few were watching him sneer at them. Liberals cannot succeed in talk shows because they hate and despise their audience. He was getting about one quarter the audience of the competion. The nightmare scenario that MSNBC was so alarmed by was that no one was watching him vomit hatred over his audience. Much the same for all your other stories When CNN tried to cover the Palestinian side of the Mideast Conflict, Israel threatened to drop CNN and pick up FOX instead. CNN caved instantly. All CNN copy is now required to be reviewed by upper management in Atlanta before broadcast, and anything that isn't pro-Israel is killed. Funny. Some time ago I saw some Israelis murder a Palestinian kid on numerous stations, Fox among them. Channel surfing last night I saw bits of a long boring documentary where the camera followed various Palestinians around in their daily lives, depicting the distressing effect on the Palestinians of various Israeli collective punishments. Not sure what station it was on. Terribly earnest public good stuff. Sure the press is biased, but there is plenty of stuff that is very far from pro Israel, even on channels that are openly pro Israel, such as Fox. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mmaHCD9F1B++2Aq7X7ytnGlqgDM6kFzF3Ua7X2Ke 4bHENQyj656gmwUnwj85NQSorfvZ2KiZtsroyXrdv
Re: Ethnomathematics
-- On 25 Feb 2003 at 23:58, Sarad AV wrote: Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematics which takes into consideration the culture in which mathematics arises. Mathematics is often associated with the study of universals. When we speak of universals, however, it is important to recognize that often something we think of as universal is merely universal to those who share our cultural and historical perspectives. Doubtless among Margaret Mead's happy fun loving socialist free love practicing Samoans, three plus three equalled four. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG v+NaePzhJvBgWFvKEiBLJz6Xkkcnk4Si7pg+h+Gd 4dztWvm+OzZ43IaSm6G69uaLLisWXr4ltulX/X5tE
Re: Ethnomathematics
-- On 25 Feb 2003 at 23:58, Sarad AV wrote: Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematics which takes into consideration the culture in which mathematics arises. Mathematics is often associated with the study of universals. When we speak of universals, however, it is important to recognize that often something we think of as universal is merely universal to those who share our cultural and historical perspectives. Doubtless among Margaret Mead's happy fun loving socialist free love practicing Samoans, three plus three equalled four. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG v+NaePzhJvBgWFvKEiBLJz6Xkkcnk4Si7pg+h+Gd 4dztWvm+OzZ43IaSm6G69uaLLisWXr4ltulX/X5tE
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 23 Feb 2003 at 15:55, Tyler Durden wrote: With respect to the Cambodia issue, Chomsky is pointing out how US agit-prop and media take advantage of our lack of certainty with respect to the real numbers. Originally Chomsky lied about Cambodia, to deny the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. He changed his tune after the Soviet Union changed their tune. Chomsky estimates that only 800,000 are verifiable via publically accessible documentation. Chomsky originally claimed thousands, not tens of thousands, a statement he attributed to highly qualified specialists although the people he cited were too cautious to make the claim he attributed to them. As for the Cambodia issue, I think the US government's complicity in 'inadvertently' bringing the KR into power is a good precedent for what we're doing in the Middle East. Originally, Chomsky claimed that the Khmer Rouge were rebuilding Cambodia, that they were comparable to the french resistance, that the stories of massacres had been repeatedly discovered to be false, and so on and so forth. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TF+XPgep9hB6HF8pL+yRUVdu6a9ckBKBghjWDY6S 4fZOVskt09IN81+t/M242V4VkWHdcJA35Af5Em3ET
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 23 Feb 2003 at 15:55, Tyler Durden wrote: With respect to the Cambodia issue, Chomsky is pointing out how US agit-prop and media take advantage of our lack of certainty with respect to the real numbers. Originally Chomsky lied about Cambodia, to deny the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. He changed his tune after the Soviet Union changed their tune. Chomsky estimates that only 800,000 are verifiable via publically accessible documentation. Chomsky originally claimed thousands, not tens of thousands, a statement he attributed to highly qualified specialists although the people he cited were too cautious to make the claim he attributed to them. As for the Cambodia issue, I think the US government's complicity in 'inadvertently' bringing the KR into power is a good precedent for what we're doing in the Middle East. Originally, Chomsky claimed that the Khmer Rouge were rebuilding Cambodia, that they were comparable to the french resistance, that the stories of massacres had been repeatedly discovered to be false, and so on and so forth. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TF+XPgep9hB6HF8pL+yRUVdu6a9ckBKBghjWDY6S 4fZOVskt09IN81+t/M242V4VkWHdcJA35Af5Em3ET
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
-- James A. Donald Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. On 21 Feb 2003 at 17:09, David Howe wrote: but their highly capitalist companies sometimes do. Don't be silly. You have been reading too much Lenin. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qQotsl6wN3i4RMqlTN1JTdpA5gU7wC9mp4Gj2fVs 4WN+iLzobxHF9dI56LAcJhpMotMMgyrx983tvS7YA
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 21 Feb 2003 at 11:13, Tyler Durden wrote: However, one way to see the situation is more of a buy-off. Arguably, the government plunders in order to pay off welfare society, because if they didn't the masses would rise up and kill off the system But among reasonably capitalist societies, those with least welfare, for example Hong Kong, are in the least danger of political disturbance from the poor, whereas those with the highest welfare, in particular france, are frequently on the edge of revolution. High welfare state countries tend to have high permanent unemployment, so there are lots of able people who cannot get jobs, who therefore become revolutionaries, lots of able people who have jobs they hate but cannot change -- which is why in America going postal has come to mean an explosion of destructive rage -- post office employees are well paid, but of such low competence they cannot get well paid jobs elsewhere, so they are trapped. Secondly in high welfare state countries, by definition, wealth is politally distributed, leading to correspondingly high levels of organized group violence, as frequently illustrated in France. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U48sX6NjfrRrL9phB4/+EDmv+60I2TdKVSEEAb4a 4+X/X9IOWyzrFjI3Sd2AdJhWeQ1dYpT72RgMVDgm4
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 21 Feb 2003 at 11:13, Tyler Durden wrote: However, one way to see the situation is more of a buy-off. Arguably, the government plunders in order to pay off welfare society, because if they didn't the masses would rise up and kill off the system But among reasonably capitalist societies, those with least welfare, for example Hong Kong, are in the least danger of political disturbance from the poor, whereas those with the highest welfare, in particular france, are frequently on the edge of revolution. High welfare state countries tend to have high permanent unemployment, so there are lots of able people who cannot get jobs, who therefore become revolutionaries, lots of able people who have jobs they hate but cannot change -- which is why in America going postal has come to mean an explosion of destructive rage -- post office employees are well paid, but of such low competence they cannot get well paid jobs elsewhere, so they are trapped. Secondly in high welfare state countries, by definition, wealth is politally distributed, leading to correspondingly high levels of organized group violence, as frequently illustrated in France. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U48sX6NjfrRrL9phB4/+EDmv+60I2TdKVSEEAb4a 4+X/X9IOWyzrFjI3Sd2AdJhWeQ1dYpT72RgMVDgm4
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
-- On 20 Feb 2003 at 16:09, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Ah yeah, the good old front against communists. Some people haven't learned that political views aren't what makes one a bastard. Commies *must* be bad, you see ? Too much capitalism is as bad as too much communism. Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG LS0PPszrbHPaadDyv9OpkI1d4Tym+mjxMyowVUMa 4dEsfuHBg8G0mXDn/U8FBak0jzB4WFSXGPt/n1Lt9
Re: Blood for Oil (was The Pig Boy was really squealing today
So the US killed a lot of people there, so as to spread respect for freedom and democracy, and installed another dictator without elections, or any plan for elections The current leader was elected, not in accordance with western democratic norms that some people want to impose of Afghans at gunpoint, but in accordance with Afghan democratic norms.
Re: Blood for Oil (was The Pig Boy was really squealing today
So the US killed a lot of people there, so as to spread respect for freedom and democracy, and installed another dictator without elections, or any plan for elections The current leader was elected, not in accordance with western democratic norms that some people want to impose of Afghans at gunpoint, but in accordance with Afghan democratic norms.
A prediction
-- Predictions are risky, cause the future has not happened yet. But I think I have a history of making good predictions, for example I predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, so I will foolishly stick my neck out and make some predictions: The Iraq war will, as everyone knows, be launched on the 27 or 28th of february. It will be short and victorious, ending some time in april or march. War coverage will be highly patriotic and gung ho, but will remind viewers of what they have tended to forget -- the cost of war, with damaging effects on the presidency. The conquered Iraqis will be eager to please, and much less truculent than those damned french. They will gladly seek direction on their future political institutions. Despite that, the peace will prove considerably harder to win than the war. with servants of the Iranian theocrats demanding unlimited democracy, and absolute popular sovereignty, a democracy similar to that which we have so often seen in Africa -- one man, one vote, once, a demand which will receive European and UN support. The new imperial domain will come to haunt Americans. This message posted while drunk, because no sober person would make a prediction that will stay around forever, and that anyone can access. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3rT39X0tK/achxadga6VroywQS4zOG2gO3dRqVMR 4CYbiDrubd6eY/xSd0CfSlyyJD9PAqYEqRlxKFMjS
Re: Crypto anarchy now more than ever
-- On 14 Feb 2003 at 20:30, Tim May wrote: Whether people agree with my views or not, I expect that if I am arrested and charged with something I'll get coverage in some parts of the press, and maybe even some support from the commies and socialists in the civil rights alphabet soup around D.C. You are too soft on communism. Recall what happened with Randy Weaver. Seems to me that the pinkos stand only for pinko speech. Wiping out only a few intruders is sort of a waste, though. I would be more honored if there were a practical way I could exterminate thousands at a time. But I am not a military or explosives expert of any kind, so this is not really possible. I will, however, cheer if a thermonuclear weapon exterminates millions of burrowcrats in D.C. Trouble is, west coast might be in reach of North Korea, east coast is not. They will be testing another missile soon. We shall see how far it goes. They would not waste a nuke on an untested missile --- which is why they test them. I think a liquid fueled top stage, and a bit of tuning up on the rocket motors of all three stages, would bring Washington in reach. Of course retuning the rocket motors will require quite a few tests, which requires quite a bit of money, and their major source of income is shaking down aid agency workers. They used to get substantial income by renting and selling slave laborers to regimes that make extensive use of slave labor, but with the spread of capitalism, the regime has suffered a shattering loss of this income source. Unless they find a major alternate income source -- (I suggest they follow Castro and go into the sex trade) -- they have little hope of being able to reach Washington for some time. I hear that Castro no longer encourages sex acts with children (though the last time I visited Cuba it was open for business). This provides a gap in the market that North Korea might profitably fill. another possibility is that North Korea might simply sell nukes. Trouble is, Bin Laden is more likely to use them on Hollywood and New York, which he sees as Jew central, than on Washington. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG uiZiEjO95FxTeiMKMVdRJWhz4aA8aiyXg5robB1O 4hSIDs1M/EEsg1tg9XPSN672+2gUYMy1JvcaEymHs
Re: M Stands for Moron? You gotta be kidding...
-- On 13 Feb 2003 at 16:51, Eric Cordian wrote: If the small scale structure of the universe isn't manifold-like, then a theory which says it is an 11-dimensional manifold is not a great leap over a theory which says it is a 4-dimensional manifold. As one approaches the plank length, the structure of space time will become more like fractal quantum foam, with an increasingly complex topology. Therefore, at distances comparable with the plank length, spacetime will not have a definite dimensionality. It might be that in the limit of very small distances, it becomes eleven dimensional, or it might be that the description of spacetime at distances smaller than the plank length cannot be given any definite dimensionality. The measure of the usefulness of a new theory is the increment in predictive power over the prior way of thinking about it. Not how many pages you can cover with indecipherable equations that are Friggin' Hard. The shape of standard particle physics suggests that all of what we think of as physical law is the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking, merely a particular solution to a set of highly non linear equations, that have an infinite number of possible solutions, most of which correspond to universes nothing like our own -- that at sufficiently small scales and sufficiently high energies we encounter a metaphysics, capable of generating an infinite variety of systems of physical law. Suppose we had the ultimate theory of everything handed to us on a platter by supercilious aliens. In order to test it we first would have to find the solution, out of an infinite number of solutions, that corresponds to the normal physics of the universe. It seems likely that just finding the solution that corresponds to our vacuum would be very difficult indeed. Suppose we had the theory of everything, and suppose we could solve it, and suppose we could manipulte energies trillions of trillions of times larger than those we can now manipulate, with precision trillions of trillions of times larger than we can now control. Then we could remake a small region of space time to have physical laws that we might find more convenient for some purposes. All of this, however, seems hard. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ok+QpWKWbKVF8q5f7HW4Ghw4PpqAPEr2FG3ocN2v 4Bd0OSE0YuN4HkOpXceSnWYuUaZou9XXgseFFRkXv
Re: M Stands for Moron? You gotta be kidding...
-- On 13 Feb 2003 at 16:51, Eric Cordian wrote: If the small scale structure of the universe isn't manifold-like, then a theory which says it is an 11-dimensional manifold is not a great leap over a theory which says it is a 4-dimensional manifold. As one approaches the plank length, the structure of space time will become more like fractal quantum foam, with an increasingly complex topology. Therefore, at distances comparable with the plank length, spacetime will not have a definite dimensionality. It might be that in the limit of very small distances, it becomes eleven dimensional, or it might be that the description of spacetime at distances smaller than the plank length cannot be given any definite dimensionality. The measure of the usefulness of a new theory is the increment in predictive power over the prior way of thinking about it. Not how many pages you can cover with indecipherable equations that are Friggin' Hard. The shape of standard particle physics suggests that all of what we think of as physical law is the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking, merely a particular solution to a set of highly non linear equations, that have an infinite number of possible solutions, most of which correspond to universes nothing like our own -- that at sufficiently small scales and sufficiently high energies we encounter a metaphysics, capable of generating an infinite variety of systems of physical law. Suppose we had the ultimate theory of everything handed to us on a platter by supercilious aliens. In order to test it we first would have to find the solution, out of an infinite number of solutions, that corresponds to the normal physics of the universe. It seems likely that just finding the solution that corresponds to our vacuum would be very difficult indeed. Suppose we had the theory of everything, and suppose we could solve it, and suppose we could manipulte energies trillions of trillions of times larger than those we can now manipulate, with precision trillions of trillions of times larger than we can now control. Then we could remake a small region of space time to have physical laws that we might find more convenient for some purposes. All of this, however, seems hard. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ok+QpWKWbKVF8q5f7HW4Ghw4PpqAPEr2FG3ocN2v 4Bd0OSE0YuN4HkOpXceSnWYuUaZou9XXgseFFRkXv
RE: The Wimps of War
-- Steve wrote quoting: PAUL KRUGMAN And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States. On 12 Feb 2003 at 1:21, Lucky Green wrote: And this matters how? Why would Bush, or for that matter the Europeans, care about rebuilding (what?) in Iraq? Other than the minimum investments required to prevent the population from rising up against their future leaders, why should the U.S. concern itself with making investments in Iraq not directly related to creating and maintaining oil extraction and transport facilities? The arabs hunger for development and modernity. In the past they absorbed the worst poisons spewed by western universities, socialism and anti-imperialist nationalism, and attempted to apply them, with predictably disastrous results, Then they healthily came to reject these foolish and dangerous ideas, and attempted to return to their roots, with results that were bad for us as well as them. The theory of the democratic imperialists is to export better ideas at gunpoint. It is far from clear that this will work, even if tried honestly and vigorously -- we are running into a bit of trouble applying it in Kosovo. It is also far from clear that the US has the necessary will and virtue to apply it in Iraq. The Germans and the French are not very keen on doing it at all, but realizing that position is unpopular, instead say they doubt the US will to do it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3cgDYFmaaqwoNleSbHMta+Lh1jBHPKeYH8milYX4 4Jd1XwS8ngV1yW9WaN7beF2CZS5t7tXSXrmZDptBR
RE: The Wimps of War
-- Steve wrote quoting: PAUL KRUGMAN And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States. On 12 Feb 2003 at 1:21, Lucky Green wrote: And this matters how? Why would Bush, or for that matter the Europeans, care about rebuilding (what?) in Iraq? Other than the minimum investments required to prevent the population from rising up against their future leaders, why should the U.S. concern itself with making investments in Iraq not directly related to creating and maintaining oil extraction and transport facilities? The arabs hunger for development and modernity. In the past they absorbed the worst poisons spewed by western universities, socialism and anti-imperialist nationalism, and attempted to apply them, with predictably disastrous results, Then they healthily came to reject these foolish and dangerous ideas, and attempted to return to their roots, with results that were bad for us as well as them. The theory of the democratic imperialists is to export better ideas at gunpoint. It is far from clear that this will work, even if tried honestly and vigorously -- we are running into a bit of trouble applying it in Kosovo. It is also far from clear that the US has the necessary will and virtue to apply it in Iraq. The Germans and the French are not very keen on doing it at all, but realizing that position is unpopular, instead say they doubt the US will to do it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3cgDYFmaaqwoNleSbHMta+Lh1jBHPKeYH8milYX4 4Jd1XwS8ngV1yW9WaN7beF2CZS5t7tXSXrmZDptBR
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- These geologists very accurately predicted the peaking of oil production in the US, Completely false. These geologists are not Hubbert, nor did they very accurately predict the peaking of oil in the US, nor do they use Hubbert's methodology, though they claim to. Rather, they are people who would like to associate themselves with Hubbert these geologists are not the successors to Hubbert, but the successors to LImits to Growth, and the club of Rome, who predicted total exhaustion of oil supplies and ensuing economic collapse in the 1980s. Hubbert estimated the amount of oil remaining from the logistic curves. Those who claim to be his successors assert that there is X amount of oil remaining, and then fit the logistic curve to match X. That is the club of rome technique, which is the opposite of the Hubbert technique. Hubbert predicts oil reserves from observed success in finding oil. Doomsayers predict failure to find oil from alleged oil reserves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG C9e+ZUPyVGI4wbdMUNNKXWkQWaRXRTL/Nu+zv66g 4tjmevo5q83abI8gkC1baI1odUsQH0a8O86Tquf+1
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 11:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: I'm not arguing pro strong state. I'm merely saying that the tax funded ivory tower RD is complementary in scope to privately funded research. If 95% of it is wasted (and lacking libertarian drive in Euland it's bound to stay that way for quite a while), it's still nice to see a percent or two to go into bluesky research. You will notice a disproportionate amount of blue sky research comes from countries that are highly capitalist. Thus Switzerland is roughly comparable to Sweden in size and wealth, but we see quite a bit of blue sky research coming out of Swizterland, not much from Sweden. Since blue sky research is a public good, only governments can efficiently produce blue sky research. Does not follow, however, that governments *will* efficiently produce blue sky research, and on the available evidence, they do not. There are several mechanisms that lead companies to produce and publish interesting data -- one is to make a name for themselves, as in the human genome project, another his that they like to employ scientists that have published interesting research findings, which means that their scientists want to publish interesting research findings. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vj9XFJICkQyBZHtzNbSmc+aK6sW4+dfeCW2jBsxp 4SNzRPDCqDY1oqcXuKPS207CG2oaSOsRAObNR7CKl
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 12:16, Harmon Seaver wrote: I'll have to find the studies, but it was the same oil geologists (not enviros) who used the same model to accurately predict the peak of US oil production who did the one on world oil production. Not true. Rather, what happened is that there have been thousands of overly pessimistic estimates, and one overly optimistic estimate for US oil production (an over reaction to past low side errors) , and everyone who makes implausibly pessimistic estimates for world oil production likes to associate themselves with those who disagreed with the one overly optimistic estimate -- but the association is thin. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8af9YKuTzIfi6eW+kuKC5iSQr1ItRdPJmiiqa7oK 40um9WOOe1GxHnczql5Bykr/viCnjY0+DHauSAK8v
Re: CDR: US health care,a winner for Hillary in 04?
On 28 Jan 2003 at 19:46, Marc de Piolenc wrote: PS - the infant mortality statistics are bogus; they are a record-keeping artefact. Other countries (notably Sweden, to which the USA is always being compared) don't count a child as born until it has reached a certain age (three weeks in Sweden). Guess when most infant deaths occur? Interesting datum. Could you give a source for this. If true, needs wide publicity, since we web search for infant mortality and Sweden gives a zillion hits, all saying what you would expect.
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 11:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: I'm not arguing pro strong state. I'm merely saying that the tax funded ivory tower RD is complementary in scope to privately funded research. If 95% of it is wasted (and lacking libertarian drive in Euland it's bound to stay that way for quite a while), it's still nice to see a percent or two to go into bluesky research. You will notice a disproportionate amount of blue sky research comes from countries that are highly capitalist. Thus Switzerland is roughly comparable to Sweden in size and wealth, but we see quite a bit of blue sky research coming out of Swizterland, not much from Sweden. Since blue sky research is a public good, only governments can efficiently produce blue sky research. Does not follow, however, that governments *will* efficiently produce blue sky research, and on the available evidence, they do not. There are several mechanisms that lead companies to produce and publish interesting data -- one is to make a name for themselves, as in the human genome project, another his that they like to employ scientists that have published interesting research findings, which means that their scientists want to publish interesting research findings. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vj9XFJICkQyBZHtzNbSmc+aK6sW4+dfeCW2jBsxp 4SNzRPDCqDY1oqcXuKPS207CG2oaSOsRAObNR7CKl
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 12:16, Harmon Seaver wrote: I'll have to find the studies, but it was the same oil geologists (not enviros) who used the same model to accurately predict the peak of US oil production who did the one on world oil production. Not true. Rather, what happened is that there have been thousands of overly pessimistic estimates, and one overly optimistic estimate for US oil production (an over reaction to past low side errors) , and everyone who makes implausibly pessimistic estimates for world oil production likes to associate themselves with those who disagreed with the one overly optimistic estimate -- but the association is thin. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8af9YKuTzIfi6eW+kuKC5iSQr1ItRdPJmiiqa7oK 40um9WOOe1GxHnczql5Bykr/viCnjY0+DHauSAK8v
Re: CDR: US health care,a winner for Hillary in 04?
On 28 Jan 2003 at 19:46, Marc de Piolenc wrote: PS - the infant mortality statistics are bogus; they are a record-keeping artefact. Other countries (notably Sweden, to which the USA is always being compared) don't count a child as born until it has reached a certain age (three weeks in Sweden). Guess when most infant deaths occur? Interesting datum. Could you give a source for this. If true, needs wide publicity, since we web search for infant mortality and Sweden gives a zillion hits, all saying what you would expect.
Re: Palm Pilot Handshake
-- On 28 Jan 2003 at 20:54, Tyler Durden wrote: Yo! Anyone out there in codeville know if the following is possible? I'd like to be able digitally shake hands using a Palm Pilot. Is this possible? What I mean is, Let's say some disgruntled and generic crypto-kook (let's call him, say,...'Tyler Durden') has been signing his (tiring) cyber-missives with a public key. And now let's say there's some guy at a party claiming to be that very same Tyler Durden, but you're not so sure (this real-life Tyler Durden is WAY too much of an obvious chick-magnet to be the same guy that posts on the Internet). BUT, you happen to have your Palm Pilot(TM), and so does he. So you both both engage the little hand-shaking app on your PP (using Tyler Durden's public key) and there's verification. Yep. Same dude. (You then procede to prostrate yourself before this obvious godlet, stating I'm not worthy, Sire.) This can be done without a palm pilot. Normally the flesh and blood Tyler Durden would reveal knowledge of information sent encrypted to the net Tyler Durden, or vice versa. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG +OfNblhcCuKIKF5MFg7gpgfNLhp99TtnhvtpjA6D 4yJKSl2sqFg6P1vGn5ClsKRon31LJE1uCGdVuiQEE
Re: Palm Pilot Handshake
-- On 28 Jan 2003 at 20:54, Tyler Durden wrote: Yo! Anyone out there in codeville know if the following is possible? I'd like to be able digitally shake hands using a Palm Pilot. Is this possible? What I mean is, Let's say some disgruntled and generic crypto-kook (let's call him, say,...'Tyler Durden') has been signing his (tiring) cyber-missives with a public key. And now let's say there's some guy at a party claiming to be that very same Tyler Durden, but you're not so sure (this real-life Tyler Durden is WAY too much of an obvious chick-magnet to be the same guy that posts on the Internet). BUT, you happen to have your Palm Pilot(TM), and so does he. So you both both engage the little hand-shaking app on your PP (using Tyler Durden's public key) and there's verification. Yep. Same dude. (You then procede to prostrate yourself before this obvious godlet, stating I'm not worthy, Sire.) This can be done without a palm pilot. Normally the flesh and blood Tyler Durden would reveal knowledge of information sent encrypted to the net Tyler Durden, or vice versa. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG +OfNblhcCuKIKF5MFg7gpgfNLhp99TtnhvtpjA6D 4yJKSl2sqFg6P1vGn5ClsKRon31LJE1uCGdVuiQEE
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- On 23 Jan 2003 at 9:48, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:38:47AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. Of course you would. Look, once again, this isn't a normal strike, this is a conspiracy of traitors working with an evil foreign power to overthrow a legitimate government. Perhaps they are exercising their will over the facilities of production and distribution by CIA microwaves beamed into people's brains :-) Don't we all know that that CNN, et al, are going to do everything possible to minimize an anti-corporate leader? No, we do not know that. Recall live from Baghdad. Recall Ted Turner's declaration that he is a socialist. Radosh lists him as one of his fellow radicals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9oeXHSnCgD5NmMmb8PrREjcnC1LEpeQCYyDS5ef2 4cnSq5ZshJsZCa5hpwa9OJurd0GHVS0jozg8GR8Na
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- On 23 Jan 2003 at 9:48, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:38:47AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. Of course you would. Look, once again, this isn't a normal strike, this is a conspiracy of traitors working with an evil foreign power to overthrow a legitimate government. Perhaps they are exercising their will over the facilities of production and distribution by CIA microwaves beamed into people's brains :-) Don't we all know that that CNN, et al, are going to do everything possible to minimize an anti-corporate leader? No, we do not know that. Recall live from Baghdad. Recall Ted Turner's declaration that he is a socialist. Radosh lists him as one of his fellow radicals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9oeXHSnCgD5NmMmb8PrREjcnC1LEpeQCYyDS5ef2 4cnSq5ZshJsZCa5hpwa9OJurd0GHVS0jozg8GR8Na
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives James A. Donald: Then why the army? Harmon Seaver: Why not the army? If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG fQ/byy7jedqE9oGHEXqKrfXHoCvauj3bVa72KMSa 4PWFvnoRJp9TevLqmWauGP6Xq+IgM3/kHhET6aqGD
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives James A. Donald: Then why the army? Harmon Seaver: Why not the army? If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG fQ/byy7jedqE9oGHEXqKrfXHoCvauj3bVa72KMSa 4PWFvnoRJp9TevLqmWauGP6Xq+IgM3/kHhET6aqGD
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives Then why the army? It's pretty clear by now that last Spring's attempted coup and the current strike was all engineered by the CIA and the current whitehouse scum. Then why the army and the guest worker scab laborers? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HF32U1ydzozTdZ6i7yRo/SgdkaZuGDrT5P2V9z6i 4YTrwmYIFejPLVEGKL7Y3nFQ6Mg+g07DVuTLLqTN2
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives Then why the army? It's pretty clear by now that last Spring's attempted coup and the current strike was all engineered by the CIA and the current whitehouse scum. Then why the army and the guest worker scab laborers? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HF32U1ydzozTdZ6i7yRo/SgdkaZuGDrT5P2V9z6i 4YTrwmYIFejPLVEGKL7Y3nFQ6Mg+g07DVuTLLqTN2
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- On 20 Jan 2003 at 7:20, Harmon Seaver wrote: It's hard to tell from the US media reports what's really going on. Is the nation-wide strike a strike of the workers or just a lockout of the workers by the companies opposed to Chaves? Given his popularity with the lower class, it's difficult to understand why they would be striking against him. It is a strike. You can tell by the fact that Chavez has been trolling poorer latin American countries, in particular Brazil, to recruit guest workers to do scab labor. However he recently discovered that many of these guest workers, though they theoretically have the skills of those they are supposed to replace, do not actually have the skills. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG kwfJU4cOdKICpZB82NV/SqXAxmw3TVvx9Mj+s73N 4qKieDYF+J3ghbatlXw9fpFG6hLJOwipHAEQ+/QjK
Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
-- On 18 Jan 2003 at 10:01, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: The terrorists have made it pretty clear what their gripe with the U.S. Government is, and it has nothing to do with trade, the American lifestyle, or the elusive freedoms that Americans supposedly enjoy. It has everything to do with US troops stationed in nearly every country in the world (specifically, Saudi Arabia), That was one indictment of many. Another indictment was the crusades. Bin Laden seemed most strongly upset about the reconquest of of what we call Spain, but which muslims call by another name. In the most recent communique (which may not be Osama Bin Laden but his successor pretending to be him) he gave a Leninist rant that the arabs are poor because the rich countries are rich, espousing the Marxist argument that simply being a citizen of a wealthy country is a crime deserving of death. This makes me suspect that the original Bin Laden is now a grease smear on some Afghan rocks, since the original Bin Laden was a Heideggerean, and would spit on any Marxist unless that Marxist was dying of thirst in the desert. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sV5AglG+l7RX7GtAdr2sqFU4waW0+YXAMUKk12Nm 4LvMyqqmmLejQafyYLGOpTioRrPohNzS4GFkFqk6Y
Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
-- On 18 Jan 2003 at 10:01, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: The terrorists have made it pretty clear what their gripe with the U.S. Government is, and it has nothing to do with trade, the American lifestyle, or the elusive freedoms that Americans supposedly enjoy. It has everything to do with US troops stationed in nearly every country in the world (specifically, Saudi Arabia), That was one indictment of many. Another indictment was the crusades. Bin Laden seemed most strongly upset about the reconquest of of what we call Spain, but which muslims call by another name. In the most recent communique (which may not be Osama Bin Laden but his successor pretending to be him) he gave a Leninist rant that the arabs are poor because the rich countries are rich, espousing the Marxist argument that simply being a citizen of a wealthy country is a crime deserving of death. This makes me suspect that the original Bin Laden is now a grease smear on some Afghan rocks, since the original Bin Laden was a Heideggerean, and would spit on any Marxist unless that Marxist was dying of thirst in the desert. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sV5AglG+l7RX7GtAdr2sqFU4waW0+YXAMUKk12Nm 4LvMyqqmmLejQafyYLGOpTioRrPohNzS4GFkFqk6Y
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 14 Jan 2003 at 21:48, Tyler Durden wrote: My thought was that James is some kind of Fed. I suspect Chomsky is one guy they most don't want around these days. His accusations on the Chomsky dis website were technicalities and hair-splitting, even somantic. Liar: Chomsky claimed that : : such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, : : the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of : : Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided : : analyses by highly qualified specialists who have : : studied the full range of evidence available, and : : who concluded that executions have numbered at most : : in the thousands But in fact the at most is Chomsky's lie, not present in the articles he cited. Someone who read the economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review at the time would rather have concluded that the death rate from brutality and mistreatment was many hundreds of thousands, likely over a million, and that the executions proabbly numbered at least a hundred thousand or so. According to Chomsky these highly qualified specialists also made :: repeated discoveries that massacre reports were :: false. Of course no such discoveries are to be found in the material he cites, and his article appeared shortly after the massacres reported by the refugees were devastatingly confirmed by when such a massacre occurred on the border. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hbp33+OpO++a/lQY1xLV9c3yccNAe3n+c3apD50B 4tlZyjrzU1UNgJfno/6lepfIRPdedtsG1UAQ8tRVn
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 14 Jan 2003 at 21:48, Tyler Durden wrote: My thought was that James is some kind of Fed. I suspect Chomsky is one guy they most don't want around these days. His accusations on the Chomsky dis website were technicalities and hair-splitting, even somantic. Liar: Chomsky claimed that : : such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, : : the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of : : Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided : : analyses by highly qualified specialists who have : : studied the full range of evidence available, and : : who concluded that executions have numbered at most : : in the thousands But in fact the at most is Chomsky's lie, not present in the articles he cited. Someone who read the economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review at the time would rather have concluded that the death rate from brutality and mistreatment was many hundreds of thousands, likely over a million, and that the executions proabbly numbered at least a hundred thousand or so. According to Chomsky these highly qualified specialists also made :: repeated discoveries that massacre reports were :: false. Of course no such discoveries are to be found in the material he cites, and his article appeared shortly after the massacres reported by the refugees were devastatingly confirmed by when such a massacre occurred on the border. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hbp33+OpO++a/lQY1xLV9c3yccNAe3n+c3apD50B 4tlZyjrzU1UNgJfno/6lepfIRPdedtsG1UAQ8tRVn
Re: Question on Mixmaster
-- On 12 Jan 2003 at 20:12, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: I've known about Mixmaster for years, but only just now finally downloaded and installed it (Mixmaster 2.9.0). Does anyone know where I can find documentation on how to actually use it? It is intolerably painful to use Mixmaster by hand. Download quicksilver, which is a wrapper around Mixmaster. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG SOzCf2IlFaRP9bX1C0CNSyBqZtT2LHJw6xVNbuQg 42jEIkLSj0DRPCGqFJuNhf6tC8RHusnbDZzvJzdg5
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 13 Jan 2003 at 12:30, Todd Boyle wrote: What *was* your point in redistributing the nigger killing post from Cypherpunks, in the digital bearer settlement list? Does that have something to do with digital cash, or enhance your IBUC business somehow? Maybe, increasing traffic by being cool and shocking? Tim May pulled people's legs -- some sucker took it seriously, so someone decided to pull a little harder to see how much a sucker would swallow. The hunting post was obviously a joke, as the final line made clear. The real joke was that some readers would fail to see that the first line was a joke, would believe that cypherpunks really do go hunting black people. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VZWpdVuMGJXwD+8kUsrx9HO13zFp6hwvFIsezAEw 414DzHlNJd+xhIFwTZwjjprhbh3YCmMrWCkNV4SM5
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 8 Jan 2003 at 16:54, Thomas Shaddack wrote: In Japan, people are already wearing face masks frequently, ie. during the flu season. If such cultural shift happens here as well, we have partial protection against the face-recognition cams. In today's Vietnam women commonly dress like Ninjas, completely covering every square inch of skin. Even the eyes are covered with dark glasses. The costume however is tight, covering the face but revealing the figure. Men's fashions, however, change at the speed of glaciers, so there is little chance of that becoming acceptable for men. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG eeK7Lx/2xa/jMsqP3nKuxuq4g/yRmQtaTm/6pzMG 4WNfeWcezvgs7vrhiCTz68qRAGREiuHgqil78zrNJ
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 8 Jan 2003 at 16:54, Thomas Shaddack wrote: In Japan, people are already wearing face masks frequently, ie. during the flu season. If such cultural shift happens here as well, we have partial protection against the face-recognition cams. In today's Vietnam women commonly dress like Ninjas, completely covering every square inch of skin. Even the eyes are covered with dark glasses. The costume however is tight, covering the face but revealing the figure. Men's fashions, however, change at the speed of glaciers, so there is little chance of that becoming acceptable for men. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG eeK7Lx/2xa/jMsqP3nKuxuq4g/yRmQtaTm/6pzMG 4WNfeWcezvgs7vrhiCTz68qRAGREiuHgqil78zrNJ
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- James A. Donald: It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. Eugen Leitl The crunch power is there. We're lacking a good enough model, and empirical data to feed that nonexisting model. Every neuron's connection to every other cell is known, and yet the model does not run a worm. Every cell is mapped, but what these cells are doing is frequently unclear. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Vi3n3btgbJznuLwaZFHG2QzHC4WzqYUTP2PXc1eL 4iyLwSpYDYCB4gyr/ya7n2q23kHsZQmGXE2z7SUkD
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- James A. Donald: It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. Eugen Leitl The crunch power is there. We're lacking a good enough model, and empirical data to feed that nonexisting model. Every neuron's connection to every other cell is known, and yet the model does not run a worm. Every cell is mapped, but what these cells are doing is frequently unclear. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Vi3n3btgbJznuLwaZFHG2QzHC4WzqYUTP2PXc1eL 4iyLwSpYDYCB4gyr/ya7n2q23kHsZQmGXE2z7SUkD
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- On 23 Dec 2002 at 21:23, Tim May wrote: Inasmuch as we cannot even build a machine which even remotely resembles a bat, or even an ant, the inability to simulate/understand/be a bat is not surprising. There is no mapping currently feasable between my internal states and a bat's. Even if we are made of relays or transistors. On the other hand, our inability to emulate a nematode, or the a portion of the retina, is grounds for concern. This does not indicate that the mystery is QM, but does suggest that there is some mystery -- some special quality either of individual neurons or very small networks of neurons that we have not yet grasped. It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG s086giCwtcqu7XeskLWGWB1/rNYzhJZkH8XFagKR 48Gxb+aU0UhySFtRSBas+3fCnJhul0WOmmsY1eX0F
Re: Make antibiotic resistant pathogens at home! (Re: Policing Bioterro Research)
-- Tim wrote: Expect to hear not of a hausfrau being busted, but of the roundup (so to speak) of Mohammed Sayeed, Hariq Azaz, and other thought criminals for buying two many gallons of Roundup at the local Walmart. On 24 Dec 2002 at 19:42, Anonymous wrote: Not all that far-fetched, really. It would be fairly simple to create a dioxin bomb by heating a 55gal drum of polychlorinated phenols (2,4D or 2,45T) or polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs from a powerline transformer say) until it exploded. Put it upwind of the Whitehouse. The toxicity of dioxins is much overhyped. Any large power transformer that overheats is the equivalent of your dioxin bomb, and so far no one has noticed the supposedly devastating destruction created by such events. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG I/MUjNP0TjcfM8jSG/q6ilYM/BSusXQSnVFC62Oz 4qQn7Q8L8a5LQbDE/hF1+vLgvdmumy9NjYQuHGxYe
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- On 23 Dec 2002 at 21:23, Tim May wrote: Inasmuch as we cannot even build a machine which even remotely resembles a bat, or even an ant, the inability to simulate/understand/be a bat is not surprising. There is no mapping currently feasable between my internal states and a bat's. Even if we are made of relays or transistors. On the other hand, our inability to emulate a nematode, or the a portion of the retina, is grounds for concern. This does not indicate that the mystery is QM, but does suggest that there is some mystery -- some special quality either of individual neurons or very small networks of neurons that we have not yet grasped. It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG s086giCwtcqu7XeskLWGWB1/rNYzhJZkH8XFagKR 48Gxb+aU0UhySFtRSBas+3fCnJhul0WOmmsY1eX0F
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- On 20 Dec 2002 at 19:26, William Warren wrote: voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets elected. Those who do not exercise this duty do not deserve to complain about what goes on. By voting, you give the appearance of consent to what the government does to you. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xmBBW56MrvFmh7U6fPSMDbyYqa+PTDPhTlRLmwmD 4cHSTvSFFo32sjmnBGPqe0vLtp3CfQhXyVLccQaXm
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- William Warren voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. In http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_19/PT hy_Chap_19.html David Friedman explains why democracy does not work. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EE2kJk6NPO8w6BAmEjpZ3C4Ebd+deCFguLnVxSim 4l1W1bAjtNXV2/66RWaY7NrrWziR17QbWSWW4V9Ib
RE: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- Disney doesn't have the power to tell me what I may eat or smoke, except in their parks and on their property. On 20 Dec 2002 at 10:24, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Now, imagine a Disney owning the whole of the land of the USA, and having armed forces the size of the USA. If a single corporation owned everything, then it would be a socialist government. If the US government was socialist, if it owned all or nearly all of the means of production. it would behave the same way all other socialist governments have acted -- it would engage in terror and mass murder. The fact that Disney, and lots of other groups own various small things makes me free. Voting does not make me free. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qikI/Zvu3HswGlLSZkKaevQ3pU6OY28ELljC0Jbd 4cAxIRdESGs/ZREaCsKc0sn3T8IF21aiD8Wwoy3Os
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- On 20 Dec 2002 at 19:26, William Warren wrote: voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets elected. Those who do not exercise this duty do not deserve to complain about what goes on. By voting, you give the appearance of consent to what the government does to you. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xmBBW56MrvFmh7U6fPSMDbyYqa+PTDPhTlRLmwmD 4cHSTvSFFo32sjmnBGPqe0vLtp3CfQhXyVLccQaXm
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- William Warren voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. In http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_19/PT hy_Chap_19.html David Friedman explains why democracy does not work. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EE2kJk6NPO8w6BAmEjpZ3C4Ebd+deCFguLnVxSim 4l1W1bAjtNXV2/66RWaY7NrrWziR17QbWSWW4V9Ib
RE: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- Disney doesn't have the power to tell me what I may eat or smoke, except in their parks and on their property. On 20 Dec 2002 at 10:24, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Now, imagine a Disney owning the whole of the land of the USA, and having armed forces the size of the USA. If a single corporation owned everything, then it would be a socialist government. If the US government was socialist, if it owned all or nearly all of the means of production. it would behave the same way all other socialist governments have acted -- it would engage in terror and mass murder. The fact that Disney, and lots of other groups own various small things makes me free. Voting does not make me free. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qikI/Zvu3HswGlLSZkKaevQ3pU6OY28ELljC0Jbd 4cAxIRdESGs/ZREaCsKc0sn3T8IF21aiD8Wwoy3Os
Re: To Marcel Popescu On the Interventionist pseudo-Libs
-- On 18 Dec 2002 at 9:50, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Yeah, the Objectivists (TM) seem to have been taken over by militant zionist interventionists too. Of all the advanced states, Israel is arguably the one that accords least with Objectivist ideals. It is nominally socialist in land and quite a lot of other stuff. Of course if you are Jewish, that socialism can be set aside -- and is set aside to a greater or lesser extent for most Jews, though some Jews find it a lot easier to have a nominally socialist state treat stuff they care about as private property than other Jews. Objectivists having orgasms over Israel because it is supposedly a liberal democracy is rather like communists having orgasms over Cuba because it was supposedly egalitarian. It is also entertaining that the socialism of Israel is, like the socialism of the Sandinistas, a lot more socialist for ethnic groups that are hated than ethnic groups that are favored, which reminds me of the argument I sometimes hear from socialists about West Germany -- that all Germans were evil hateful nazi murderers, and therefore should have had a socialist economy imposed on them. But I ramble and digress. To get back on point, if those who purport to be objectivists are also militant zionist interventionists, we should not take their supposed objectivist ideals too seriously. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG z6cMJ26RNdOfjBLQ98HcwFLdNTnpcyr6pXXAMyQK 4tzr0wMoswCmhku2MWXFlT4ncUNcScZtE4v7JMJS4
Re: To Marcel Popescu On the Interventionist pseudo-Libs
-- On 18 Dec 2002 at 9:50, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Yeah, the Objectivists (TM) seem to have been taken over by militant zionist interventionists too. Of all the advanced states, Israel is arguably the one that accords least with Objectivist ideals. It is nominally socialist in land and quite a lot of other stuff. Of course if you are Jewish, that socialism can be set aside -- and is set aside to a greater or lesser extent for most Jews, though some Jews find it a lot easier to have a nominally socialist state treat stuff they care about as private property than other Jews. Objectivists having orgasms over Israel because it is supposedly a liberal democracy is rather like communists having orgasms over Cuba because it was supposedly egalitarian. It is also entertaining that the socialism of Israel is, like the socialism of the Sandinistas, a lot more socialist for ethnic groups that are hated than ethnic groups that are favored, which reminds me of the argument I sometimes hear from socialists about West Germany -- that all Germans were evil hateful nazi murderers, and therefore should have had a socialist economy imposed on them. But I ramble and digress. To get back on point, if those who purport to be objectivists are also militant zionist interventionists, we should not take their supposed objectivist ideals too seriously. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG z6cMJ26RNdOfjBLQ98HcwFLdNTnpcyr6pXXAMyQK 4tzr0wMoswCmhku2MWXFlT4ncUNcScZtE4v7JMJS4
Re: Verdict's in: Elcomsoft NOT GUILTY of criminal DMCA violations
On 17 Dec 2002 at 16:43, Steve Schear wrote: [I'm more convinced than ever that nullification figured into the verdict. If so, bravo for the jury. steve] Both the defense and the prosecution sought to make the facts clear and understandable to the jury. So the defense was betting on nullification.
Re: Verdict's in: Elcomsoft NOT GUILTY of criminal DMCA violations
On 17 Dec 2002 at 16:43, Steve Schear wrote: [I'm more convinced than ever that nullification figured into the verdict. If so, bravo for the jury. steve] Both the defense and the prosecution sought to make the facts clear and understandable to the jury. So the defense was betting on nullification.
Re: Extradition, Snatching,and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
-- James A. Donald US policy was to restore the status quo ante in Afghanistan, put things back the way they were before the Soviet invasion. Sarad AV How does that make things better for 'afghan' people,after all the bombing done on their home land? Obviously it makes things vastly better, and to those who think the Soviets were progress personified, look at the way the refugees were and are moving.When status quo ante was restored, the refugees came home Much the same story in Nicaragua. The refugees were always going away from the Sandinistas, towards the contras. The future of Afghanistan will probably be no less violent than it was before the Soviet invasion, but no more violent that it was before the Soviet invasion. Thats the only thing US seems to be doing for afghani people after all their promises.The US foreign policy is disliked world wide. The US foreign policy is highly popular in those countries most threatened by the Taliban -- Afghanistan and Uzbekhistan. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG m3BCbcTez7gMAJBd7yGjgbujWjkP967kgrflSJJM 4BtvgmCP/KjctqbJ5y1eHzxxGBFRTBeLGe+iXBMcb
Re: Extradition, Snatching,and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
-- On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Sarad AV wrote: Firstly,they cannot be exterminated.There is no proof of identity as we may have in our countries and no body will ask for it either,since most don't have one. The Taliban would have cut their beard and hair and mixed up with civilian population,while troops can go searching for orthodox civilians with a taliban look,making it hard to hunt them down.Once/if the international troops leave afghan,there are over hundred factions,who will keep fighting among themselves for 'land' and the taliban will be back. There have always been a hundred factions quarreling over land in Afganistan. The level of violence was tolerable to Afghans and outsiders. What went wrong with the Taliban is that one faction, with outside aid from international islamicists, managed to actually get most of the land. US policy was to restore the status quo ante in Afghanistan, put things back the way they were before the Soviet invasion. It seems to have succeeded well enough, and there is no reason to suppose it will be any less stable than it was. The future of Afghanistan will probably be no less violent than it was before the Soviet invasion, but no more violent that it was before the Soviet invasion. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k2IMyoZuE05D4VVX0FkW1hRQSzvJRDmLhlhwppHX 4+V+mECM7CjCVvLuL1WVl7q6w8saodTqAtyPLDY7v
Re: Extradition, Snatching,and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
-- On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Sarad AV wrote: Firstly,they cannot be exterminated.There is no proof of identity as we may have in our countries and no body will ask for it either,since most don't have one. The Taliban would have cut their beard and hair and mixed up with civilian population,while troops can go searching for orthodox civilians with a taliban look,making it hard to hunt them down.Once/if the international troops leave afghan,there are over hundred factions,who will keep fighting among themselves for 'land' and the taliban will be back. There have always been a hundred factions quarreling over land in Afganistan. The level of violence was tolerable to Afghans and outsiders. What went wrong with the Taliban is that one faction, with outside aid from international islamicists, managed to actually get most of the land. US policy was to restore the status quo ante in Afghanistan, put things back the way they were before the Soviet invasion. It seems to have succeeded well enough, and there is no reason to suppose it will be any less stable than it was. The future of Afghanistan will probably be no less violent than it was before the Soviet invasion, but no more violent that it was before the Soviet invasion. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k2IMyoZuE05D4VVX0FkW1hRQSzvJRDmLhlhwppHX 4+V+mECM7CjCVvLuL1WVl7q6w8saodTqAtyPLDY7v
Re: Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President'S Hotel
-- On 9 Dec 2002 at 9:17, Tim May wrote: Anyone in the U.S. can be declared an enemy combatant and vanished away from lawyers, habeas corpus, the 6th Amendment, and any semblance of the system of liberty we sort of had at one time. So far this has only been applied to people who are obviously hostile muslim terrorist wannabees, but the program will be steadily expanded. Indeed, part of the homeland security act already aims at people who make cartridges (reloaders), who will in due course be dealt with by the extrajudicial means provided for in the homeland security act. In general wars lead to a major temporary reduction in liberty, but a smaller permanent reduction in liberty. Unfortunately the war on terror will probably never end, so there will be no recovery. The government is on perfectly good constitutional ground when it claims that the army can do as it pleases on or near the battlefield. Trouble is, with terrorism or guerrilla war, the battlefield is arguably everywhere. We need a declaration of victory that will push the battlefield to somewhere far away. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG FLOmVFJWOQBqPSg63zjCLyzrGNzmKNAwje/jqRal 4BI7xjE+ItnxvhioCvggkQ6IREbp21mrBxAIeCBcg
Re: Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President'S Hotel
-- On 9 Dec 2002 at 9:17, Tim May wrote: Anyone in the U.S. can be declared an enemy combatant and vanished away from lawyers, habeas corpus, the 6th Amendment, and any semblance of the system of liberty we sort of had at one time. So far this has only been applied to people who are obviously hostile muslim terrorist wannabees, but the program will be steadily expanded. Indeed, part of the homeland security act already aims at people who make cartridges (reloaders), who will in due course be dealt with by the extrajudicial means provided for in the homeland security act. In general wars lead to a major temporary reduction in liberty, but a smaller permanent reduction in liberty. Unfortunately the war on terror will probably never end, so there will be no recovery. The government is on perfectly good constitutional ground when it claims that the army can do as it pleases on or near the battlefield. Trouble is, with terrorism or guerrilla war, the battlefield is arguably everywhere. We need a declaration of victory that will push the battlefield to somewhere far away. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG FLOmVFJWOQBqPSg63zjCLyzrGNzmKNAwje/jqRal 4BI7xjE+ItnxvhioCvggkQ6IREbp21mrBxAIeCBcg
Re: Microsoft on Darknet
-- According to Microsoft, http://crypto.stanford.edu/DRM2002/darknet5.doc Darknet is being undermined by free riders. : : Peer-to-peer file sharing assumes that a : : significant fraction of users adhere to the : : somewhat post-capitalist idea of sacrificing their : : own resources for the common good of the network. : : Most free-riders do not seem to adopt this idea. : : For example, with 56 kbps modems still being the : : network connection for most users, allowing uploads : : constitutes a tangible bandwidth sacrifice. One : : approach is to make collaboration mandatory. For : : example, Freenet [6] clients are required to : : contribute some disk space. However, enforcing such : : requirements without a central infrastructure is : : difficult. The obvious solution is to monetize the darknet services, with very small payments, payments that would typically ad up to five dollars a month for heavy users or heavy servers -- that is to say, a half a gram of gold a month. Mojo was intended to do this but it failed, I think it failed because they failed to monetize mojo before it was introduced as service management mechanism. We should get an anonymous micropayment system working, interconvertible to real money, or real e-gold, then apply it to such applications as mixmasters and darknet. Allegedly yodel is such a system, but yodel is connected to e-rand, which is connected to some people who fail to inspire me with confidence. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG beO567eji82JoZMjbN1JCWL6vQBr301pkVztKIR+ 4HzLNwHtW3q5fJqUcxtmJZ0gjqfcEJvGFfMRkWY0c
Re: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
-- On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 09:33:39AM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: To flesh this out a little more - the judge was Stephen Trott, speaking on September 18 2002 at the Commonwealth Club. Trott credits the torture warrant idea to Alan Dershowitz, whom he describes as a good friend and a great civil libertarian. On 21 Nov 2002 at 22:24, Declan McCullagh wrote: Yes. Clearly it's okay for torture warrants to exist -- as long as you're a member of the political class that gets to approve them... At present, if the US wants someone terminally interrogated, they ship him to Egypt and ask the Egyptians to do the interrogation. I am mildly suprised they do not ask the Afghans to do the interrogations, since poems have been written concerning the remarkable effectiveness of Afghan interrogations. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Jyf5nXEcZGYbFVFMsrtVZ973GZhAHY04PCKLDC4a 4OpiaSbnH8yY1vYQHQAPfTAfNqbAvyyBgFMDUG6Ir
RE: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
-- On 19 Nov 2002 at 15:45, Tyler Durden wrote: Mikey: I would suggest tangling with Chomsky for a bit. Start with... http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11ItemID=2 312 Chomsky is a liar. His citations are mostly fraudulent, and he has at one time or another defended every bloodthirsty tyranny, every reign of terror, with the possible exception of North Korea. His words sound bombastic, yet they equivocate, pointing in two directions at once. This is the text equivalent of someone who talks loud and very fast while unable to meet your eye. I recommend you check out my Chomsky web page: Chomsky lies http://www.jim.com/Chomsdis.htm --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 5U6Z7xMp4zTN7LYnZeRTOkIV+P8krIJAvwxGPmE3 4EkYXklGNdtijKPek7gdRsTyzwt1PLpWiSTSKliuv
RE: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
-- On 19 Nov 2002 at 15:45, Tyler Durden wrote: Mikey: I would suggest tangling with Chomsky for a bit. Start with... http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11ItemID=2 312 Chomsky is a liar. His citations are mostly fraudulent, and he has at one time or another defended every bloodthirsty tyranny, every reign of terror, with the possible exception of North Korea. His words sound bombastic, yet they equivocate, pointing in two directions at once. This is the text equivalent of someone who talks loud and very fast while unable to meet your eye. I recommend you check out my Chomsky web page: Chomsky lies http://www.jim.com/Chomsdis.htm --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 5U6Z7xMp4zTN7LYnZeRTOkIV+P8krIJAvwxGPmE3 4EkYXklGNdtijKPek7gdRsTyzwt1PLpWiSTSKliuv
Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's ne
-- On 19 Nov 2002 at 12:02, Kevin Elliott wrote: If you read between the lines of US history, you'll discover that America did not begin to succeed in the war until late in the war when the troops had become better trained and disciplined. This is not my interpretation. Rather, the American *never* succeeded in conventional warfare. The British were able to march hither and yon, destroying whatever they chose, and killing whoever got in their way. However this cost them, and it did not bring them political control. After marching up and down and back and forth, and losing lots of men in the process, they eventually gave up. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8rJK0TzKk1D62GWmAZ6vUvsi4CeZZEc5RL+nY/pG 4uNqMiU5DCnLXIoq1IVsaQobFOgZedKfb3qFuXYdl
RE: Where's Osama? (Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's next)
-- On 14 Nov 2002 at 14:47, Andrew John Lopata wrote: I'm no expert, but a friend of mine in the military suggested that invading Iraq now would be a lot different than the Gulf War. He said that urban combat, which will be necessary to depose Hussein, is the most difficult and dangerous type of combat there is. The last time the US engaged in urban combat, Somalia, US troops took significant casualties, and innocent bystanders suffered enormous casualties. In Afghanistan, urban combat was avoided by three a dimensional envelopment. The enemy inside the city was threatened by ground troops outside the city, from the sky, and by subversion from within the city. It was this final threat, subversion from within, combined with containment from above and around, that provoked capitulation. This third element, subversion from within, may well be unachievable in Iraq, or if it is achievable, the regular army not very deft at getting it done. For the Iraq war to be completed without enormous civilian casualties, massive destruction of infrastructure, and intolerable US casualties, successful political warfare is likely to be essential. There is no readily available alternate government to install in Hussein's place. The resulting destabilization in the region will likely result in a U.S. military presense in the country for a much longer time than in the Gulf War. When the US defeated Nazi germany, the nazi government was largely obliterated, and the remaining apparatus of government mostly signed up with the German communist party, which had been the second largest party before the nazis, and which was subservient to the Soviet Union. Thus the US eventually had to suppress every vestige of German government and foster a new government from nothing. It took about five years for a plausibly German government to get its hands on the reins of power, and few more years for it to get rid of the institutions and apparatus of nazism. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AoQslZIvueBx4Zn3xjfrmZVppIjzS70PWbcba9wQ 4QY9/UCaEXMTq2ePACwR96pH+xkCwMdSGqYXRuXaA
RE: Where's Osama? (Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's next)
-- On 14 Nov 2002 at 14:47, Andrew John Lopata wrote: I'm no expert, but a friend of mine in the military suggested that invading Iraq now would be a lot different than the Gulf War. He said that urban combat, which will be necessary to depose Hussein, is the most difficult and dangerous type of combat there is. The last time the US engaged in urban combat, Somalia, US troops took significant casualties, and innocent bystanders suffered enormous casualties. In Afghanistan, urban combat was avoided by three a dimensional envelopment. The enemy inside the city was threatened by ground troops outside the city, from the sky, and by subversion from within the city. It was this final threat, subversion from within, combined with containment from above and around, that provoked capitulation. This third element, subversion from within, may well be unachievable in Iraq, or if it is achievable, the regular army not very deft at getting it done. For the Iraq war to be completed without enormous civilian casualties, massive destruction of infrastructure, and intolerable US casualties, successful political warfare is likely to be essential. There is no readily available alternate government to install in Hussein's place. The resulting destabilization in the region will likely result in a U.S. military presense in the country for a much longer time than in the Gulf War. When the US defeated Nazi germany, the nazi government was largely obliterated, and the remaining apparatus of government mostly signed up with the German communist party, which had been the second largest party before the nazis, and which was subservient to the Soviet Union. Thus the US eventually had to suppress every vestige of German government and foster a new government from nothing. It took about five years for a plausibly German government to get its hands on the reins of power, and few more years for it to get rid of the institutions and apparatus of nazism. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AoQslZIvueBx4Zn3xjfrmZVppIjzS70PWbcba9wQ 4QY9/UCaEXMTq2ePACwR96pH+xkCwMdSGqYXRuXaA
Re: Fwd: [fc] list of papers accepted to FC'03
-- On 15 Nov 2002 at 10:55, IanG wrote: List of papers accepted to FC'03 I see pretty much a standard list of crypto papers here, albeit crypto with a waving of finance salt. Theory of what could be implemented has run well ahead of what has in fact been implemented. This has doubtless reduced enthusiasm for the theory. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XmqKAbnJ3zxWonUYjLQTEauIWVuczMy3fiZXjszK 4BOXbFJHRJ+piLFRffQdmB84zd8OiOgRKr7wytw+r
Poker
-- Internet Poker is a big money activity. A major problem with this activity is that the site can choose to allow certain privileged players to cheat. In principle it should be possible to create poker playing software where the server cannot cheat, but it is not obvious to me how this can be done. Does anyone know of a cheat proof algorithm? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG d4omBF08eFWhHQd6CDKVp4lJjfAS5GR56iMNcbAA 4XIes5IiykHpRT31kmyvZJTH0pPeUGMmBmORhd56d
Re: Fwd: [fc] list of papers accepted to FC'03
-- On 15 Nov 2002 at 10:55, IanG wrote: List of papers accepted to FC'03 I see pretty much a standard list of crypto papers here, albeit crypto with a waving of finance salt. Theory of what could be implemented has run well ahead of what has in fact been implemented. This has doubtless reduced enthusiasm for the theory. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XmqKAbnJ3zxWonUYjLQTEauIWVuczMy3fiZXjszK 4BOXbFJHRJ+piLFRffQdmB84zd8OiOgRKr7wytw+r
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
The Yodel does not have a web site where yodels can be converted into some other form of money, and other forms of money converted into Yodels. Instead it has an IIRC bot. Use of this bot is described at http://yodel.deep-ice.com/bankbot.html This means a command line interface, to do banking transactions. This of course greatly reduced the work required to implement the Yodel, but will greatly limit the acceptability of the Yodel.
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
The Yodel does not have a web site where yodels can be converted into some other form of money, and other forms of money converted into Yodels. Instead it has an IIRC bot. Use of this bot is described at http://yodel.deep-ice.com/bankbot.html This means a command line interface, to do banking transactions. This of course greatly reduced the work required to implement the Yodel, but will greatly limit the acceptability of the Yodel.
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
-- On 12 Nov 2002 at 8:50, Nomen Nescio wrote: According to this link, http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/11/11/4183/2039, a new form of digital cash called yodels is being offered anonymously: [...] Supposedly, then, this is cash which can be transferred anonymously via IIP or Freenet. Leaving aside the question of trusting an anonymous bank (trust takes time), the sticking point for ecash is how to transfer between yodels and other currencies. Without transferability, what gives yodels their value? Alleged attempts to introduce internet currencies have a ninety percent humbug and fraud rate. If his currency works well enough that one can buy addresses with it, this indicates a somewhat surprising level of success. I will check out his currency, and see what there is to see. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 46Ibm86cvcVoir/f4dSSPwM2gYCtHcpTds+N+jJq 4psLxBq0RMZOakFcGiILu6K8f4B1x/f6awQoD8K5c
