[speak-freely] for Windows 7.6-A2 pre-release now available (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 02:35:08 +0100 From: John Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Speak Freely Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [speak-freely] for Windows 7.6-A2 pre-release now available This announcement is addressed to experienced users of Speak Freely for Windows interested in testing experimental releases. Users of Speak Freely for Unix or Windows users inexperienced in testing pre-release software need read no further. Speak Freely for Windows pre-release 7.6-A2 (Alpha 2) is now available for downloading: Ready to run executable: http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/windows/download/7.6-A2/speakfb.zip Complete source code (for Visual Studio .NET): http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/windows/download/7.6-A2/speakfs.zip These are classic zipped archives--no installer is included. The executable archive simply unpacks into a directory containing the SPEAKFRE.EXE program, help, and audio files. The source code archive must be unpacked with options set to preserve directory structure and using a utility which preserves long file names. In addition, source code may be checked out from the public CVS (Concurrent Version System) archive on Source Forge: https://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=72602 Developers interested in modifying Speak Freely source code and submitting their changes for integration in a future version are encouraged to discover the many benefits of configuration management with CVS. An excellent place to start is: http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html Summary of Changes == Here's an overview of changes in this release. For a detailed description of all changes, please consult the development log, which may be found in the References section of the help file or as the file Htmlhelp\html\log.htm in the source archive. Changes in 7.6-A2 are as follows. AES (Advanced Encryption System) The FIPS-197 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is now supported. This recently-adopted standard supports encryption with 128, 192, and 256 bit keys, and is free of all patent and licensing constraints. Speak Freely permits you to specify 128 or 256 bit keys with one or two key phrases, or 128, 196, and 256 bit keys directly in hexadecimal. AES will eventually become the mainstream encryption mode supported by Speak Freely. For additional information on AES, see: http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/ Persistent Window Geometry -- As suggested by Dennis Antonisin, Speak Freely now remembers the window size, position, and normal/maximised modes from the last run and restores them the next time it's launched. GPG Session Key Exchange GPG (the GNU Privacy Guard, http://www.gnupg.org/) may now be used to exchange session keys as an alternative to PGP. You select which public key encryption package you prefer with a new Options/Public Key Package menu item. Unless you're very, very careful how you install the packages and generate your keys, you'll probably have to select the same public key package as the person you're communicating with in order for key exchange to work. Answering Machine Improvements -- If the user has specified a name and E-mail address in the Phonebook/Edit Listing dialogue (or with the corresponding SPEAKFREE_* environment variables in the Unix version), they're shown when displaying calls in the answering machine, along with the fully qualified domain name of the host, assuming it can be resolved from the IP address. These items appear regardless of whether the calling party has published them on an LWL server. Per Dennis Antonisin's recommendation and subsequent discussion on the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list, the answering machine now provides three mechanisms for returning calls. You can either launch a connection directly to the IP address (for a fixed IP user), by looking up the host name (for fixed IP users or floating IP users who register their IP address with a DNS registry service such as DNS2Go http://www.dns2go.com/), or by looking up the user's E-mail address (or whatever identity they entered in that field; there's no need to disclose your E-mail address if you don't want to, and plenty of excellent reasons not to) on the currently selected Look Who's Listening server, which permits finding on-line users with dynamic connections wherever they happen to be. If the information required by a given button to return a call wasn't specified, the button is disabled. Assorted Bug Fixes and Minor Tweaks --- If compression mode was set to Simple+CELP, buffer overflows could lead to crashes. Fixed. There's now an item on the Help menu which takes you directly to the Quick Start Guide in the help file. Setting the voice activation level by dragging the thumb in the level scroll bar
Re: Give cheese to france?
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. 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. Some corporate entities have more money than many smaller countries. So said 100% of owners can easily be both owners of the megastore chains within 50 miles near you. Where you will go then, if smaller local shops were long ago erradicated by said stores (see eg. Walmart strategy)? 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. It doesn't have to be 100.00%; significant amount is enough to cause rather large-scale inconvenience. This is especially dangerous in areas with high barrier to entry, preventing easy operative formation of new competing subjects. Forming of artificial barriers to entry - closed standards, firewalling of critical technologies with patents, etc. - is another dangerous trend; for many small subjects, interoperability is beneficial, while for one or a handful of big! subjects lack of interoperability (at least without paying obscene fees and signing NDAs) is a neat tool to squeeze the potential competition out of the market.
The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
I just realized this morning that corporations can't exiest in an anarchy, they are whole a fiction of the state. And, since corporations are just a method for thieves and criminals to evade the reprecussions of their crimes, i.e., no personal financial or legal responsibility as there would be in private ownerships or partnerships. Which is great -- if the state withers away, the megacorps goes with it. People will hold the employees of the megacorps personally responsible, as they should be, for the crimes of the group. The new car you bought turns out to be a lemon? Grab a few of the employees and make them cough up the money. Don't like the pollution coming out of that smokestack, start shooting employees until they clean it up. If corporations go away, people would form contractual partnerships to build cars, whatever, and act much more responsible. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Social democrats on our list
At which point Tim will countersue with an arguement similar to this: Mega Corporation: Your oxygen is tresspassing on my private property. Any oxygen that does so becomes mine to do with as I please. Further, since you have been unable to keep your pesky Oxygen off my property, I am hereby charging you rent at $1000/cubic centimeter/day. Since you were granted these rights over three years ago, you are now in my debt. I see however by your balance sheet that you do not possess enough property to cover this expense, therefore you are now my property. As your owner, I move that your CEO, board of trustees and management are all fired. Have a lovely day. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :NSA got $20Bil/year |Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :and didn't stop 9-11|share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ --*--:Instead of rewarding|monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :their failures, we |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :should get refunds! |site, and you must change them very often. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Anonymous wrote: On Saturday 08 March 2003 01:33 am, Tim May wrote: Silly person, a property does not have rights. Owners have rights. And these apply whether one person, 5 persons, or a group of co-owners own something. Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe, LP 2000 Maynard Way New York, NY Mr. May Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe represent the Mega Corporation. Recently the Mega Corporation (aka MegaCorp) purchased the rights to all oxygen in the Corralitos, CA area and any such material that may move into or be produced in that area. By being a resident of the Corralitos, CA area and utilizing their property you are bound to the Terms and Condtions of their Breathe Through Oxygen Use Contract. However, you have violated several parts of said aggreement by using their oxygen to express views that are contrary to views of Mega Corporation (See section 3.1.23.444 pargraph 2 of the Oxygen Use Contract). As representatives of Mega Corporation we here by request that you and your familly cease and desist utilizing Mega Corporation resources IMMEDIATELY. You have twenty-four hours to comply with our request or face further legal action. Thank you for your cooperation. Fred Dewey, Atty, Dewy, Cheatum, and Howe Lawyers for Mega Corporation
Re: Social democrats on our list
Thomas Shaddack wrote: Last time I checked, cryptography (and technologies in general) empowers the Individual against the Bigger Entities - regardless if they are Megacorps or Governments[1]. Hence, anticorporate views have their natural place on this list. [1] As the entanglement between private sector and the Governments grows, the difference is becoming somehow blurred. Yes, but it's much easier to attack big government than to trace the arcane ways government hides the favors it does for business, especially the stock market fleecers. It may be that government plays no more important role than to cloak business profits in the sack-cloth of commonweal protection, or vulgarly, national security (vite Bush a day ago)-- oft derided as capitalism or even funnier, the free market, the American way, white man's burden, homeland is a castle, bleed the downtrodden, a sucker born every day, winner take all, and a fool's litany of exculpatory viciousness. What's a Crank Wanker is the way Presidents of the USA are increasingly, maybe forever, picked to disarm suspicion by spouting ignorant platitudes about what's best for the country. From the First George to Jefferson to Lincoln to FDR to JFK to the Peanut Vendor today, guys who speak for the interests of the nation contemn the citizenry by their speaking for us shit, as if the sufferers have no voice worth listening to. If you want to help the commonweal kill anybody who speaks for it or any other exhorter of grand oversight of the mulititudes, pro or con. The American people is a CYA locution narrowly conceived of all humanity. Fuck, so to speak, the imaginary everybody, the everybody of everybody knows such and such, aka the fictitious American people invented by leaders, pols and pollsters to push vile national security and economy products and policies. Off a fat cat, say, if the thieving sumbitch every says what this country needs, especially those with humanitarian love cloaking their homicidal lust for cops and military offing their competitors. A die-hard anarchist doesn't talk, just acts -- in self-defense never needing the cowardly narcotic of what's needed by our people-customers.
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Saturday, March 8, 2003, at 04:15 PM, Anonymous wrote: On Saturday 08 March 2003 01:33 am, Tim May wrote: Silly person, a property does not have rights. Owners have rights. And these apply whether one person, 5 persons, or a group of co-owners own something. Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe, LP 2000 Maynard Way New York, NY Mr. May Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe represent the Mega Corporation. Recently the Mega Corporation (aka MegaCorp) purchased the rights to all oxygen in the Corralitos, CA area and any such material that may move into or be produced in that area. By being a resident of the Corralitos, CA area and utilizing their property you are bound to the Terms and Condtions of their Breathe Through Oxygen Use Contract. An argument that was silly 35 years ago, when I first dealt with it. And time has not improved it. Neither MegaCorp nor anyone else has property rights to the air. Case dismissed. I expected more from subscribers here, even Anonymous Cowards. --Tim May The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights. --President William J. Clinton
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Friday 07 March 2003 00:52, gann wrote: A tiny fuel cell that detects the alcoholic breath of a drink-driver and calls the police has been developed snip I'm in favor of it snip Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. DUI laws define a political crime (as opposed to a crime with an actual victim) based on an arbitrary biological baseline (blood alcohol content). Reckless endangerment of another person is a real crime with a real victim regardless of the amount of alcohol or other drugs in the person's system. Laws against reckless endangerment can be enforced without violating constitutionally protected rights. DUI laws need to be abolished. This would all be academic if this were not a socialist country where the roads are built on stolen property with stolen money. If the roads were private property owned by private individuals then you would be free to travel on roads that required onboard breath testers, submission to random searches of your vehicle and body cavities, along with background checks of your criminal history, credit, and bank records if that made you feel safe and secure. If the terms of use of that road company were not to your liking you would be free to travel on a competing company's roads. Live free or die, David Neilson
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Sunday 09 March 2003 11:52, Tim May wrote: Neither MegaCorp nor anyone else has property rights to the air. MegaCorp doesn't have property rights to the air, but Amazon was recently granted a patent on A Process for Bringing Oxygen into the Body. -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel Guns will get you through times of no duct tape better than duct tape will get you through times of no guns. -- Ron Kuby
Re: The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 07:14 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: I just realized this morning that corporations can't exiest in an anarchy, they are whole a fiction of the state. And, since corporations are just a method for thieves and criminals to evade the reprecussions of their crimes, i.e., no personal financial or legal responsibility as there would be in private ownerships or partnerships. Which is great -- if the state withers away, the megacorps goes with it. People will hold the employees of the megacorps personally responsible, as they should be, for the crimes of the group. The new car you bought turns out to be a lemon? Grab a few of the employees and make them cough up the money. Don't like the pollution coming out of that smokestack, start shooting employees until they clean it up. If corporations go away, people would form contractual partnerships to build cars, whatever, and act much more responsible. I'm not very surprised that you're only just now seeing the obvious...you've only been subscribed to the list for, what, several years? This has been covered in our discussions of polycentric law and agoric markets, a la Bruce Benson, David Friedman, and many of us over the years. Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. --Tim May The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. --John Stuart Mill
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 08:57:43AM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: You need to find some Green Party, anti-globalization, lesbo-pagan, registration of crypto mailing list that has your kind on it. Last time I checked, cryptography (and technologies in general) empowers the Individual against the Bigger Entities - regardless if they are Megacorps or Governments[1]. Hence, anticorporate views have their natural place on this list. [1] As the entanglement between private sector and the Governments grows, the difference is becoming somehow blurred. There is no real difference, that's what fascism is: the meld of corporate and state. The military/industrial complex, for instance, and the prison/industrial complex. And is clear now, the Enron/whitehouse complex. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Social democrats on our list
You need to find some Green Party, anti-globalization, lesbo-pagan, registration of crypto mailing list that has your kind on it. Last time I checked, cryptography (and technologies in general) empowers the Individual against the Bigger Entities - regardless if they are Megacorps or Governments[1]. Hence, anticorporate views have their natural place on this list. [1] As the entanglement between private sector and the Governments grows, the difference is becoming somehow blurred.
Re: Social democrats on our list
It's actually Onizuka Air Force Station. It is contiguous to Moffet. And if one realizes the difference between collection, control, and interpretation, Some of the vile despicable actions become more clear. PHM - Original Message - From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 19:27 Subject: Re: Social democrats on our list On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 06:46 PM, John Young wrote: SNIP NRO is a robin's egg blue collection of spanking new buildings, and nowhere in the neighborhood are any antennas and aerials and the usual detritus of high tech snooping like the NRO has at Buckley and Moffett AFBs in California NAS, not AFB. SNip --Tim May Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.--Barry Goldwater
CAPPS II pilot at San Jose - Delta to CAPPS II Boycotters: No more Coffee Mugs
Breaking news - The three airports in Delta's pilot project include San Jose. --- Last week Bill Scannell [EMAIL PROTECTED] announced the BoycottDelta.org protest against Delta's collaboration with the CAPPS II pass-law pilot project. Among other publicity activities, BoycottDelta.org had T-shirt for sale on CafePress.com, but Delta has filed a intellectual property complaint to stop them, in spite of the Supreme Court's position that parody is protected, and if you've seen the BoycottDelta.org logo, it's clearly just parody. - Delta Shuts Down BoycottDelta Shop CAPPS II Collaborator Stops T-Shirt Sales, Continues Privacy Invasion Austin, TX (8 March 2003) -- BoycottDelta, an on-line website advocating a total boycott of Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) until the airline stops all cooperation with a test of the CAPPS II program, had its on-line 'BoycottDelta Action Tools' store closed down as a result of an intellectual property rights violation alleged and filed by Delta with the store's host, CafePress.com . The store sold t-shirts, coffee mugs and stickers affixed with the BoycottDelta logo, allowing activists to show their support for the campaign. The BoycottDelta logo consists of an all-seeing eye within a red and blue triangle. All BoycottDelta products were sold at cost. BoycottDelta founder Bill Scannell expressed astonishment with Delta's move. Delta Air Lines has been deluged with thousands of emails and calls from their customers over the past week complaining about their CAPPS II testing, and the best Delta can come up with is to say 'don't wear a t-shirt'? This is corporate arrogance at its finest. Over 200,000 unique visitors have visited the BoycottDelta website since it went live on the 3rd of March. Alternate sources of BoycottDelta protest tools are being identified. A new on-line store will be launched shortly. The Google cache of the store can be seen at: http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:HSkdQ1hc4coJ:www.cafeshops.com/boycottd elta+boycottdelta+action+toolshl=enie=UTF-8
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:31 am, david wrote: Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ?
Questionable science and drunk drivers
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:10:35PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Doing the technical part of detecting alcohol vapor is cool, [...] Actually, that's not even really a solved problem yet, but that's not well-known outside of people who litigate drunk driving cases for a living. This article - http://www.forensic-evidence.com/site/Biol_Evid/Breath_Tests.html does a pretty good job of explaining how the breath testers start by measuring one thing (alcohol in exhaled air) to reach conclusions about something entirely different (alcohol content of the blood). For those who don't like to read links, in a nutshell - The extrapolation of blood alcohol content (BAC) from breath air depends on a few assumptions - that the machine will be able to read deep lung air (where the alcohol concentration in the air will be equal to the alcohol concentration in the blood, due to Henry's Law) and not mouth air (which may be contaminated by residual alcohol liquid or vapors in the mouth, deposited there by drinking, burping, or vomiting, which aren't unusual in people who've been partying) - and that there's a standard conversion ratio (called the partition ratio) which is used to calculate the BAC. That conversion ratio depends on a number of factors (like body size, gender, body temperature, hematocrit density) which differ from person to person, and can differ so widely (between 60% and 150% of the standard) that it's very difficult to get an accurate result without taking the other factors into consideration. Breath testing is the least accurate of the three widely used methods - blood, breath, or urine - though it's the most popular because it's cheap and less invasive than blood or urine sampling. When law enforcement needs a defensible BAC measurement (in death-related DUI cases, for example) they use a blood test (taken by force, if necessary); they use breath tests for misdemeanor cases where they're not as concerned about the outcome. Given the relatively poor quality of the results achieved in a controlled setting for breath testing, I think it's very unlikely that the device described works well enough to achieve anything positive. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 09:31:40 -0500 (est), Sunder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Screw that - just buy a few thousand of these little devices, disable them so that they're always transmitting drunk driver and install them in politicians' cars all over DC (make sure you install'em in cop cars too.) You can also leave them in cabs. They'll be banned immediately. What the fuck makes you think you'd need to disable them for politicians? Ted Kennedy, anyone?
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Kevin S. Van Horn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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.) Not if he wants to keep his job. This is supposed to be a profit-making operation, remember? Pissing off or outright throwing out paying customers is a good way to make the company lose money, which is bound to get the owners quite upset. That's too logical, and as you state below mere economic incentive does not cover the case where organised bigotry drives an agenda of exclusion. Your much vaunted Constitution and the Bill of Rights are supposed to address this issue, since the principles in question govern the overall social fabric, which is supposed to provide for a measure of equality in `the commons', but in practice that is not so. I'll note that as a practical matter it looks sort of like your Constitution (and the Charter up here in Canukistan) have become of little more use than as bog-roll, so while these discussion are nice to have in theory, there is no practical application to be made in this environment. Let's suppose, however, that the owners are such extreme bigots that they prefer nursing their prejudices over making money. Should the owners be able to arbitrarily deny certain people access to their property? In the absence of a valid contract to the contrary, OF COURSE. Anybody for whom this is not blindingly obvious still hasn't grasped the fundamental concept that most children acquire by the age of three or four: the difference between MINE and YOURS. This has always been something of a peeve of mine; that certain people consistently fail to make this distinction. If I were more knowledgeable in the fields of genetics and human neurophysiology I might suggest that the widespread nature of this moral failure results from a common psychological artifact that is manifest from some bizarre recessive gene. But the simpler explanation is that it is learned behaviour, which implicates bad parenting. Whatever the cause, its prevalence has resulted in norms coded in law which agents of the state surely appreciate. The way I see it is there's private property, there's public property, and then there's reality with lots of stuff in between. No, there's private property, there are unowned (unclaimed) resources, and that's it. I don't consider the State to have any valid property rights at all, as everything which it claims as its property was obtained by theft, violence, or both. Your stuff in between is just a bunch of hooey invented in order to justify violations of property rights. Sort of like this compelling state interest test invented by the frauds in the Supreme Court to weasel their way past the clear and unambiguous wording of the First Amendment; no trace of the concept exists in the Constitution. I agree. The state should not be able to own property. But again, as a practical and historical matter, states own the planet; government employees have parceled much of it out to corporations, or sold bits to private individuals. Supposedly, property of the government is held in trust for the population, but that fiction is of course quite laughable. I would say that some tuning of government is indicated given the current mess, but these days that sort of talk is bound to get one thrown into a gulag. Though, perhaps this state of affairs isn't quite as much of a problem. Crypto-anarchy and the march of science are tending towards the obsolescence of the nation-state, so no-one may need to do much of anything radical at all to effect changes in this regard. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Re: Give cheese to france?
Tyler Durden wrote: Actually, I am dimly aware of this. From the little I've been able to glean, there is a very slow, steady progress in the 'science' of economics/econometrics. By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; in particular, it has been applied to investment analysis and portfolio theory, resulting in significant improvements in investment performance.
Re: Social democrats on our list
We did a drive-by this afternoon of the National Reconnaissance Office HQ in Chantilly, VA, to see what corporations who operate its technology were in the neighborhood. Across the street was Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a gaggle of same-faced untitled buildings. Down Conference Dr was the FBI's CALEA Implementation Office in a NYNEX marked structure next to the building under consideration for Homeland Security HQ if the Naval Station in NW Washington proves undesirably downclass. NRO is a robin's egg blue collection of spanking new buildings, and nowhere in the neighborhood are any antennas and aerials and the usual detritus of high tech snooping like the NRO has at Buckley and Moffett AFBs in California. And only NRO had guardhouses, barbed fences, sensors galore and no tresspassing signs. At its back about ten yards from a busy boulevard there were a few empty wooden shacks, looking as if the fiercly-protected front was only for photo psyops. Like NYNEX runs the CALEA op, Lockheed Martin and Boeing reportedly run the vast antenna farms in California and world-wide, with tens of thousands of workers, all presumably pig-shit happy about gearing up the market for the war on terrorism, once called the government dole when dole meant starvation riot avoidance not swell townhouses, long lunches, fancy SUVs and mirrored facades. It's creepy to go by these money pits when there's nobody around. Curving boulevards, lush landscape, chain hotels for industry displays, mucho space and clean air far from Tim's welfare terrorists in DC. Sure, the whole shebang is under a Dulles flight path, so there's hope for evolution in action. It's a fair assumption that NSA leaked its UN bugging memo to advertise brazen biz op to the vendors who sell it equipment, software and out-sourcing. It's a fair assumption that suppliers of the Echelon four are pissed about being cut out of the SIGINT gold rush by piggish US manufacturers, and may have snagged the NSA memo as it passed through a contract hub or packet forwarder. Lockheed is said to run the classified internets and to enhance profits out-sources in foreign lands. Happily, greedy HQs always fuck the field offices, and field operatives retaliate against chickenshit HQ. If you think you're protected against venality by the constitution and benevolent caretakers, you need to eyeball your 1040 and the other side of the tracks, ie, dont watch Iraq and North Korea. Best, visit the greater DC area and skip the yokel monuments serving as mini-me WTCs.
Re: The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
Major Variola (ret) wrote: I just realized this morning that corporations can't exiest in an anarchy, they are whole a fiction of the state. In the sense of a govt-recognized, protected entity, granted. But not in terms of voluntary associations. Not all companies are corporations. Corporations are a particular kind of company chartered by the state in order to absolve certain people of responsibility for their actions. There is a business form, whose name I forget but which used to be called a Massachusetts corporation when Massachusetts didn't allow actual corporations, that achieves many of the legitimate benefits of a corporation through entirely contractual means. The basic idea is that the company has trustees who make all the operating decisions for the company, and are personally responsible for their actions. Investors have partial ownership, but no control over the operation of the company (other than selection of trustees) and hence have no liability beyond their investment. Contracts include boiler-plate wordage that states that liability shall be limited to the assets of the company (and trustees, perhaps; I'm not sure on this). This allows one the advantages of pooling resources without absolving decision-makers of responsibility for their actions.
Re: The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
At 09:14 AM 3/9/03 -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: I just realized this morning that corporations can't exiest in an anarchy, they are whole a fiction of the state. In the sense of a govt-recognized, protected entity, granted. But not in terms of voluntary associations. And, since corporations are just a method for thieves and criminals to evade the reprecussions of their crimes, Actually its pretty hard to do things like make a car by yourself. One of the many voluntary groups you might be part of is a car-making association. People will hold the employees of the megacorps personally responsible, as they should be, for the crimes of the group. The new car you bought turns out to be a lemon? Grab a few of the employees and make them cough up the money. Don't like the pollution coming out of that smokestack, start shooting employees until they clean it up. But one of the benefits of joining the Fnord Motor Uncorporation is the excellent FMU private police force. A real benefit in an anarchy. If corporations go away, people would form contractual partnerships to build cars, whatever, and act much more responsible. I suppose if medical malpractice insurance went away (it would have to be by fiat force; insurance providers fill a fundamental niche), there'd be more careful doctors. But also many fewer. The calculus of personal risks vs. benefits. (A strategy also employed by the christian-taliban doctor-snipers.) Unless you explicitly ban (again, using violence) voluntary associations of people, they *will* pool resources to buy stuff they can't individually afford. Like a fab. So corps usually have more assets to lose than its members. And smart corps tie their employees (esp officers) futures to their own. So there is feedback motivating responsible behavior by corps. Certainly removing the State's corporate protections would increase the feedback. But it would probably also stifle productive associations. Why risk my personal wealth because I contributed to an association that sold a car that brought a lawsuit? I wonder if this trade off is stated in the law (cf patents in the constition, which explicitly states the trade off)? But besides this pragmatic, the corp concept seems to let me define (limit) my involvement with an association (with a defined purpose) of others. Thus it seems a refinement of contract law --which I hold to be a fundamental. Although patent and copyright are established for practical reasons, there (to me) is a right to profit from your IP; and similarly, although a corp may be a practical tool, it seems right for people to be able to limit their commitment to an association. There's also something called piercing the corp veil, if folks screw up royally.
Re: The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 10:31:52PM -0600, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: Not all companies are corporations. Corporations are a particular kind of company chartered by the state in order to absolve certain people of responsibility for their actions. There is a business form, whose name I forget but which used to be called a Massachusetts corporation when Massachusetts didn't allow actual corporations, that achieves many of the legitimate benefits of a corporation through entirely contractual means. The term you're looking for is Massachusetts business trust; they look a lot like corporations from a legal tax standpoint. The liability of the trustees to the grantors/beneficiaries can be limited by mutual agreement. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 06:46 PM, John Young wrote: We did a drive-by this afternoon of the National Reconnaissance Office HQ in Chantilly, VA, to see what corporations who operate its technology were in the neighborhood. Across the street was Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a gaggle of same-faced untitled buildings. Down Conference Dr was the FBI's CALEA Implementation Office in a NYNEX marked structure next to the building under consideration for Homeland Security HQ if the Naval Station in NW Washington proves undesirably downclass. NRO is a robin's egg blue collection of spanking new buildings, and nowhere in the neighborhood are any antennas and aerials and the usual detritus of high tech snooping like the NRO has at Buckley and Moffett AFBs in California NAS, not AFB. If you think you're protected against venality by the constitution and benevolent caretakers, you need to eyeball your 1040 and the other side of the tracks, ie, dont watch Iraq and North Korea. Best, visit the greater DC area and skip the yokel monuments serving as mini-me WTCs. Why visit the greater D.C. area? I left in 1970, and even then the signs of imperialism were evident way beyond the Beltway. The Empire had long outgrown the Arlington-Bethesda-Chevy Chase-Alexandria-PG County zone, and was pushing out into redneck parts of Virginia and Maryland. I was living just inside where the Beltway was to go when it was being built around 1962-63. It must have opened when I was in France in 1964, as by the time I returned to the D.C. area in 1965 it was already open and gridlocked. Sterling, Vienna, Reston, Columbia, Potomac, Chantilly, and a dozen other suburban towns were already filling up with the detritus of empire when I left the area. My high school prom was held at the newly opened Tyson's Corner Shopping Center (presumably Tyson's I, as I understand there are now two of them nearby. I remember when this was where some of the fathers of the spooks I was in high school with, at Langley High School, just over the fence and through some woods from the Department of Transportation Highway Testing Center, or somesuch, aka, CIA, was located. I lived in a house on Churchill Road, off of Old Dominion Drive, vacated by an agent posted suddenly to Teheran that summer of 1965 to help the Shah crush his opponents. My mother used to run into Everett Dirksen (a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money) at the local grocery store, we had Birch Bayh address our class, my sister Trick-or-Treated at Bobby Kennedy's house, and one of my first female friends had a father who was a bigwig in the Cosmos Club. I grew up realizing how sick the entire D.C. system is. An entire community, 60 miles in diameter, devoted to the idea of stealing money from hardworking folks in Grand Forks and Tumwater and Boise and giving it to corrupt dicatators, inner city negro breeders, and defense contractors building weapons to be used to attack those who are not threats to U.S. security. D.C. is a cancer which needs radiation therapy. --Tim May Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.--Barry Goldwater
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
--- Kevin S. Van Horn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Thompson wrote: That's too logical, No, it's not. Logical actors dominate in the economy because those prone to excessive irrationality end up with little money to play with. Perhaps you aren't joking... I would be forced to agree with you is you defined `logical' in this context to mean actors following the logic of the current economic status quo. Obviously, our present economic order resists (strongly!) fundamental change; and there is a logical consistency to it. Concerning irrationality in the sense that applies above, well, I think that's a difficult one. Some are irrational in their expectations of returns from the economy; others are irrational in their assessment of its very structure. Obviously there are many ways of going wrong and losing. and as you state below mere economic incentive does not cover the case where organised bigotry drives an agenda of exclusion. No, I do not state this; I merely answered a what-if question. So you weren't suggesting that organised bigotry in any way drives an economic agenda? Fine. You could say that, but you would be ignoring the obvious exclusion of the poor/uneducated from many areas of the economy by way of a conscious set of policies. But perhaps you don't notice that sort of thing? Your much vaunted Constitution and the Bill of Rights are supposed to address this issue, since the principles in question govern the overall social fabric, What in the world is overall social fabric supposed to mean? The only thing the Constitution and Bill of Rights are meant to govern is the U.S. Federal Government itself (and, to some extent, the states comprising this federation). I suppose I could have merely said `social fabric' and it would have been better English, but I am not perfect. Otherwise, I understand the scope of authority imputed to be the sole domain of said documents. I don't believe that my comments are completely beyond the scope of the philosophy that was, or at least should have been, the motive for their creation. which is supposed to provide for a measure of equality in `the commons', You won't find any trace of any notion of equality in the commons -- whatever the phrase is supposed to mean -- in the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, nor any of the discussions involved in the drafting and ratification of these documents. I would think that the idea of `equality in the commons' is implicit in the motivation for such documents, whether or not it is stated in so many words. It seems rather obvious to me, but of course that may not be the case. I wasn't there when they were written, and I do not really know anything about the people involved, their personalities, beliefs, and motives. Perhaps I'm projecting what I *think* should be a part of the principles behind such documents. I'll note that as a practical matter it looks sort of like your Constitution Why in the world are you bringing the U.S. Constitution into this anyway? I never even mentioned it, and it wasn't mentioned in the material to which I was responding. My answers are meant to be normative, addressing fundamental issues of rights that are entirely independent of the decrees or scribblings of any group who styles themselves a government. I mentioned them because they are not only a frequently occurring subject of debate in this forum, but they are pertinent to the subject of this thread, and because they have seen mention recently in other messages. Anybody for whom this is not blindingly obvious still hasn't grasped the fundamental concept that most children acquire by the age of three or four: the difference between MINE and YOURS. This has always been something of a peeve of mine; that certain people consistently fail to make this distinction. [...] Well, we seem to be in violent agreement w.r.t. the rest of what you have written... Perhaps that is so. I'll ask that you excuse my tangential comments, but that said, I was merely using your reply as a foil for my comments and wasn't intending to stick exclusively to the nominal focus of your post. I expect you'll understand that while I was indeed spawning a subthread, that sort of thing does happen from time-to-time in this forum. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Tim May wrote: Did I invite the public in when an announcement was made for a meeting at my house last September? There were many people I had never met personally, nor even heard of. Nearly all were well-behaved, but what if someone had not been? Were my property rights somehow lost by the fact that I had many to attend that I did not know personally? Could somehow who disrupted the meeting, perhaps even by wearing a Support the War Against Crypto or Buy Alcohol Detectors for Your Car tee-shirts, have claimed that they had some right to remain in my house even after I asked them to leave? Does my right to control my own property vanish when I become a shop or restaurant? How about when I get larger? Renowned cypherpunk Dave Del Torto thinks it does. This is the argument that he was using to try to gain admittance to CodeCon this year, after being blacklisted by the producers due to disturbances at the previous year's CodeCon. Do you mean to say DDT could be wrong about his rights as a member of the public wishing to attend an event open to the public on private property? (Those of us who went were subjected to his rants about being Gandhi vs. Hitler, as he stood in front of the venue for 7 hours, protesting his PNG status. We hear lawsuits are pending.)
Re: Social democrats on our list
At 09:58 AM 3/9/03 -0500, Sunder wrote: At which point Tim will countersue with an arguement similar to this: Mega Corporation: Your oxygen is tresspassing on my private property. Any oxygen that does so becomes mine to do with as I please. Further, since you have been unable to keep your pesky Oxygen off my property, I am hereby charging you rent at $1000/cubic centimeter/day. A use for that plastic sheeting and duct tape! Good fences make good neighbors. Can farmers sue the airlines because the contrails demonstrably (thank' to the bin Laden/FAA meteorological experiment of 11-13 sept 01) reduce solar flux?
Re: Give cheese to france?
At 10:19 PM -0600 on 3/9/03, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; Well, finance, anyway, where it is possible to calculate some risk. You can't calculate prices, though. You discover them. Most economics is still about top-down design these days, and, as such, is hogwash. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 03:05 PM, Anonymous Sender wrote: On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Tim May wrote: Did I invite the public in when an announcement was made for a meeting at my house last September? There were many people I had never met personally, nor even heard of. Nearly all were well-behaved, but what if someone had not been? Were my property rights somehow lost by the fact that I had many to attend that I did not know personally? Could somehow who disrupted the meeting, perhaps even by wearing a Support the War Against Crypto or Buy Alcohol Detectors for Your Car tee-shirts, have claimed that they had some right to remain in my house even after I asked them to leave? Does my right to control my own property vanish when I become a shop or restaurant? How about when I get larger? Renowned cypherpunk Dave Del Torto thinks it does. This is the argument that he was using to try to gain admittance to CodeCon this year, after being blacklisted by the producers due to disturbances at the previous year's CodeCon. Do you mean to say DDT could be wrong about his rights as a member of the public wishing to attend an event open to the public on private property? I wouldn't know anything about this, but, yes, the organizers of CodeCon are able to control the property they have made arrangements for (e.g., contracting with DNA Lounge or wherever it was held this year...I couldn't justify going, so I didn't, so I don't know the details). This is the means by which restaurants and bars can kick out unruly guests, by which casinos can exclude those they think are cheaters, and by which stores can tell some people Don't come back. Dave DT was, by the way, at the September meeting/party at my house. He behaved just fine. Note that in my meeting/party announcement I had specifically said this was *NOT* some kind of open meeting on U.S. soil, open to all, as the recent cant has had it. (The idea that if one is nonselective about who attends then one is immune from legal action is silly, and untested.) Had anyone misbehaved at my meeting/party, or had any obvious narcs sent to monitor the meeting been spotted, I would have no qualms about kicking them out. By the way, I limited all speakers to 10 minutes, tops. Many finished in 5, which is about right for introducing a theme. Some topics take more than 10 minutes to explain, which is why classroom lectures are typically 50 minutes. And why some technical talks are 30 minutes or longer. But most talks don't have enough material, or are not as detailed (as a classroom lecture might be). Limiting talks to a reasonable amount of time stops the droning. (Speaking for myself, nothing puts me to sleep faster at a Cypherpunks meeting than having an invited outside speaker, some spokesbimbo for some alphabet soup digital rights group, for example, drone on about stuff that is all obvious and that could be summarized in a 2-page posting the length of the one you are reading now. I don't like driving 120 miles round-trip to listen to pro forma drones.) --Tim May That government is best which governs not at all. --Henry David Thoreau
Re: Monocultures, Choice, and Access to Food Must Be Equal!
Tim May wrote: More time-consuming than I am prepared to commit to for an article which maybe 5 people will read!) Ah, you're too modest, Tim. In spite of the fact that you're a bigoted, misanthropic curmudgeon, at least you're an INTERESTING bigoted, misanthropic curmudgeon. :-)
Re: Social democrats on our list
On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 05:04 PM, Paul H. Merrill wrote: It's actually Onizuka Air Force Station. It is contiguous to Moffet. And if one realizes the difference between collection, control, and interpretation, Some of the vile despicable actions become more clear. He said Moffett. I pointed out that it's a Naval Air Station, not an Air Force Base. What may be next to it, including NASA Ames, Onizuka, Lockheed, Yahoo, etc., is not what I was talking about. --Tim May
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
david wrote: But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ? If I did mind, I'd just find a different insurance company. It's a little bit harder for me to say, I don't like government X; I choose to be governed by Y instead while continuing to live in the same spot.
New release of Invisible IRC available
IIP 1.1.0 (stable) is released. (2003-03-10) Invisible IRC Project is a three-tier, peer distributed network designed to be a secure and private transport medium for high speed, low volume, dynamic content. Features: * Perfect Forward Security using Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Protocol * Constant session key rotation * 128 bit Blowfish node-to-node encryption * 160 bit Blowfish end-to-end encryption * Chaffed traffic to thwart traffic analysis * Secure dynamic routing using cryptographically signed namespaces for node identification * Node level flood control * Seamless use of standard IRC clients * Gui interface * Peer distributed topology for protecting the identity of users * Completely modular in design, all protocols are plug-in capable The IIP software is released under the GPL license and is available for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, *nix/BSD and Mac OSX. http://invisiblenet.net/
Re: Questionable science and drunk drivers
At 09:41 AM 03/09/2003 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:10:35PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Doing the technical part of detecting alcohol vapor is cool, [...] Actually, that's not even really a solved problem yet, but that's not well-known outside of people who litigate drunk driving cases for a living. I'm not surprised - I found the assertion that the tester could tell the difference between drivers and passengers and open or closed windows and precise enough alcohol levels reliably enough to call the police without major false positives and false negatives to be somewhat dubious. In particular, testing for Ethanol as opposed to metabolites sounds highly unreliable, unless you're really just testing for zero or non-zero quantities of the stuff. (But this was a Southern religious college doing the research)
Re: Give cheese to france?
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. Open your eyes and look around yourself. Take any bigger, established market - news, radio, TV stations, retail chains are the first examples coming to my mind - take its top 80-90%, and count the number of players there. Do the same with the situation 10, 20, and 30 years ago. You will see the number of players is dramatically diminishing. The news announcements of high-profile mergers and acquisitions can be another clue for you. Does it mean that such observations are invalid just because Marx predicted them?
Re: Give cheese to france?
R. A. Hettinga wrote: By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; Well, finance, anyway, where it is possible to calculate some risk. You can't calculate prices, though. You discover them. For commodities, if you could somehow discover the demand and supply curves and predict how they were going to move, you could in fact calculate what prices were going to be. The problem is that you can only observe exactly one point on the demand or supply curve -- where it crosses the other curve. You can't observe any other point until at least one of the two curves moves. It's conceivable (although I'm not aware of anyone even attempting this) that if you had some (perhaps probabilistic) model for both curves as a function of some exogenous variables, that you might get some useful predictive information about prices.
Re: Give cheese to france?
On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 07:55 PM, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: R. A. Hettinga wrote: By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; Well, finance, anyway, where it is possible to calculate some risk. You can't calculate prices, though. You discover them. For commodities, if you could somehow discover the demand and supply curves and predict how they were going to move, you could in fact calculate what prices were going to be. The problem is that you can only observe exactly one point on the demand or supply curve -- where it crosses the other curve. You can't observe any other point until at least one of the two curves moves. It's conceivable (although I'm not aware of anyone even attempting this) that if you had some (perhaps probabilistic) model for both curves as a function of some exogenous variables, that you might get some useful predictive information about prices. All markets involve versions of supply and demand curves. However, predicting the future of market prices is notoriously difficult. The problem is caused by a lot more than inability to see more than just the one point where the two curves intersect...that's just a statement of the market clearing price. Whether the price of GE stock, for example, may go up next week, or down, or follows a shape described after the fact by some complex equation is unknown for a LOT of reasons. (Friends of mine operate a medium-sized hedge fund, using as much knowledge as they can gather from tens of thousands of market values per day, using a whole panoply of buzzword math technologies (support vector machines, neural nets, Bayesian networks, agents, blah blah). They spent time with Doyne Farmer, formerly of Prediction and now at the Santa Fe Insitute. And yet they are only trying to gain a slight edge.) Commodity prices are close enough to being like stock prices that the prediction problems are comparable. (And predicting commodity prices is a popular regime for trying these techniques.) --Tim May
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
At 08:52 AM 03/10/2003 -0500, david [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 18:16, you [whoever that was?] wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:31 am, david wrote: Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ? I wouldn't mind if some insurance companies required that, as long as any laws against annoying the police with bogus complaints didn't affect me. In particular, if the Bad Drivers' Insurance Company wanted to offer them with a special rate to people who might otherwise not be able to get insurance because of previous drunkenness, great. That level of market differentiation is unlikely to become available in most of the US, because states tend to protect consumers by regulating what kind of insurance is available and at what prices, though. I'd mind substantially if _my_ insurance company required it, because I've been fairly satisfied with the service and prices I get from them, and I'd have to go find a new company that wasn't blazingly stupid. I'd mind a lot if the government required insurance companies to use them, and required every driver or car owner to use one of those insurance companies, especially if drivers were still responsible if their machines made incorrect calls to the police.
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
I wonder what the effect would be in states like WI which don't require auto insurance. Insurance is noticably cheaper here than in MN which does require it. On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 01:25:05PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 08:52 AM 03/10/2003 -0500, david [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 18:16, you [whoever that was?] wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:31 am, david wrote: Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ? I wouldn't mind if some insurance companies required that, as long as any laws against annoying the police with bogus complaints didn't affect me. In particular, if the Bad Drivers' Insurance Company wanted to offer them with a special rate to people who might otherwise not be able to get insurance because of previous drunkenness, great. That level of market differentiation is unlikely to become available in most of the US, because states tend to protect consumers by regulating what kind of insurance is available and at what prices, though. I'd mind substantially if _my_ insurance company required it, because I've been fairly satisfied with the service and prices I get from them, and I'd have to go find a new company that wasn't blazingly stupid. I'd mind a lot if the government required insurance companies to use them, and required every driver or car owner to use one of those insurance companies, especially if drivers were still responsible if their machines made incorrect calls to the police. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
CodeCon happenings [was: RE: Social democrats on our list]
Anon wrote quoting Tim: Does my right to control my own property vanish when I become a shop or restaurant? How about when I get larger? Renowned cypherpunk Dave Del Torto thinks it does. This is the argument that he was using to try to gain admittance to CodeCon this year, after being blacklisted by the producers due to disturbances at the previous year's CodeCon. Do you mean to say DDT could be wrong about his rights as a member of the public wishing to attend an event open to the public on private property? Renowned Cypherpunk? Some would consider deleterious to be a more appropriate word choice. At any rate, it is undisputed that the producers of CodeCon made it abundantly clear, in particular to DDT, that CodeCon was not open to the public, but open only to those that the producers had no reason to believe would act disruptively. CodeCon was held in a location licensed to sell alcoholic beverages and there is a reason why many bars have bouncers. I am not a lawyer, but I predict that the odds of anybody recovering damages for being 86'ed from a bar are slim indeed. Having attended CodeCon both last year and this year, I can say the following: last year, DDT repeatedly abused the QA periods of the highly-technical presentations not to ask questions about the technology, as was the purpose of the QA periods, but to deliver repeated, unwelcome, and frankly, annoying rants on the supposed merits of the Cryptorights Foundation. As was observed by others, DDT's inappropriate behavior cut into, and for some sessions absorbed virtually entirely, the time available for technical QA. I am grateful that the organizers of CodeCon had the courage to refuse admission to a potential attendee known to have been disruptive in the past. The technical QA sections of the program were all the more useful to the bona fide attendees because of it. Countless other attendees have expressed the same gratitude in private conversations. --Lucky
Re: Give cheese to france?
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 02:44:44AM +0100, 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. Their right? Why not? Let me take your hypothetical and move it closer to home.* I take photographs and occasionally license them or sell prints. I post some general terms on my website: http://www.mccullagh.org/cgi-bin/photodownload.cgi?name=licensing-conditions Yes, I have the right to license (sell) my photos only to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, or socialist Eurotrash, as Tim might call them. And these same folks have the right to shop elsewhere if they conclude my terms are onerous or objectionable. In fact, I've declined to do business with the Disclosure Project, a we've-seen-UFOs type of group, because I didn't want to support their cause. (http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/disclosure-project-ufo-may01.html) Many newspapers and magazines will choose not to do business with people who want to use their photographs for derogatory purposes. (http://www.politechbot.com/p-03181.html) And so on. This is a Good Thing. It's called voluntary transactions, and it's part of living in a free society. -Declan * Yes, all this assumes that intellectual property laws exist, but the arguments are true in general. I chose to switch the hypothetical since yours about grocery stores muddles things -- I can imagine complaints that somehow that should be different, as if people would starve without giving $$$ to Hillary.
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Steve Thompson wrote: Logical actors dominate in the economy because those prone to excessive irrationality end up with little money to play with. Perhaps you aren't joking... I would be forced to agree with you is you defined `logical' in this context to mean actors following the logic of the current economic status quo. I mean logical in the sense of being able to do a reasonable job of making choices that further one's own self interest. The above is a standard justification for the rational man assumption of economics. It has nothing to do with whether the big picture is logical by some standard, only with whether an individual's choices make sense in furthering his/her self-interest, given that he/she can only control his/her own actions and not those of others. Now one could suppose that some people place such a high value on nurturing their own bigotry that they value it more than wealth, so that they are still acting logically when they sacrifice wealth in order to maintain their bigotry, but such people will also have minimal economic impact because they will have minimal wealth. For of how money trumps bigotry, look at the history of Citibank. They used to tell their recruiters to go to the top business schools and recruit the top MALE graduates. At some point in the early 70's their recruiters began to report that increasing numbers of the top graduates were female. Citibank management decided that making money was more important than humoring their own prejudices, and instructed their recruiters to go after these women. Peter Drucker ascribes a large part of Citibank's success to this choice, as for a period of time they had exclusive access to a pool of talent nobody else was tapping... until their competitors finally caught on. Obviously, our present economic order resists (strongly!) fundamental change; Don't you mean our present political order? There have been pretty drastic changes in the economy over the last twenty-five years, far dwarfing any political changes. (Hint: microcomputer revolution, the Internet, the effect of quicksilver capital, etc.) What in the world is overall social fabric supposed to mean? I suppose I could have merely said `social fabric' and it would have been better English, You still haven't told me what you mean by social fabric. I don't like to be rude, but I am highly suspicious of terms such as social fabric; it's one of those vague, often semantically vacuous terms that obscure more than enlighten. You won't find any trace of any notion of equality in the commons -- whatever the phrase is supposed to mean -- in the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, nor any of the discussions involved in the drafting and ratification of these documents. I would think that the idea of `equality in the commons' is implicit in the motivation for such documents, whether or not it is stated in so many words. Opinions count for nothing; facts do. We have the actual documents. We also have a pretty thorough record of the discussions that went on in the Constitutional Convention and the debates during ratification, and we have a wealth of original writings from the time indicating what the political thought of the day was. None of these, to my knowledge, contain any trace of a notion of equality of the commons. The only notion of equality that I am aware of appearing in these is equality before the law.
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: Social democrats on our list
On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:52 am, Tim May wrote: Neither MegaCorp nor anyone else has property rights to the air. So rights only apply to land ? What's the frigg'in difference between dirt and air. It's all atoms. Did you specify that you also wanted rights to the air on your property when you signed the purchase contract ? If not, tough it's MegaCorp's. The fact is you don't OWN your land. It was here long before you existed and will be here long after you and your vermin pass from this earth. What you do have is the temporary right to use the land. And the only reason you have that right is that you can use enough physical violence to keep someone else from using it. In reality you have made an agreement with a 3rd party to enforce your rights. What stops them from requiring you to agree to certain conditions before they will enforce your rights for you ? Payments for services, conditions on what you use the land for, and who has the permission to come on to your land (or even under or over it). Can't they make different conditions based on what the land is going to be used for ? If it's a mall, can't they require that you have to let persons in even though they are of different race, religion, or what their damn T-shirt says ? I suppose that you could defend your land yourself or have another third party do it, but you or they better have some pretty big weapons if you are going to challenge the 3rd party my aggreement's with. Case dismissed. Dismissed Indeed.
Monocultures, Choice, and Access to Food Must Be Equal!
(First, I apologize for my heavy use of parenthetical remarks here. Even more than usual, I see in reviewing what I have written. Writing in a smooth, continuous, no parenthetical or offset remarks style is time-consuming. More time-consuming than I am prepared to commit to for an article which maybe 5 people will read!) On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 04:50 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 02:44:44AM +0100, 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. Their right? Why not? Let me take your hypothetical and move it closer to home.* I take photographs and occasionally license them or sell prints. I post some general terms on my website: http://www.mccullagh.org/cgi-bin/photodownload.cgi?name=licensing- conditions Yes, I have the right to license (sell) my photos only to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, or socialist Eurotrash, as Tim might call them. And these same folks have the right to shop elsewhere if they conclude my terms are onerous or objectionable. In fact, I've declined to do business with the Disclosure Project, a we've-seen-UFOs type of group, because I didn't want to support their cause. (http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/disclosure-project-ufo-may01.html) Many newspapers and magazines will choose not to do business with people who want to use their photographs for derogatory purposes. (http://www.politechbot.com/p-03181.html) And so on. This is a Good Thing. It's called voluntary transactions, and it's part of living in a free society. Indeed, voluntary transactions are at the core of our freedoms. Some say this is a right which emerges from theology (God gave us these rights), some say such organizing principles arise as Schelling points for noncoercive interactions (e.g., I won't try to enter your house to check on your reading materials if you don't try to enter my house to check on mine, i.e., a kind of territorial boundary mutually agreed-upon without much, if any, explicit negotiation). Free markets are not perfect, but they are an excellent price discovery and knowledge-auctioning system, as the past century has amply shown. And there are many connections to organization of complex systems in general (top-down vs. bottom-up, issues of emergence, etc.), communication in diverse systems (command economies move too slowly), and issues of multiple values (what I value something at is not what others do, and vice versa). Free markets and voluntary transactions are a natural political system, against which all other systems must be measured. This does not always mean that the optimum will be achieved (whatever that is!) in a free, uncoerced market. It may be that Declan, for example, will price his photographs too highly, and thus they will not get wide distribution. And it may be that Red Hat Linux will price its software too lowly and thus eventually go out of business, hurting many. Such is the market. Schumpeter rightly called this the creative destructionism of capitalism. Ideas and businesses come and go, succeed and fail, propagate their genes/memes to descendants, merge with other companies, and on and on. This is one of the basics that I urged newcomers (and eurotrash) to brush up on. (Although I have no hope whatsoever for those who have reached the age of 23-25 and are still social democrats or interventionists of one sort or another. Sometimes a college socialist wakes up and become a free market supporter, but this is rare. And such transformations typically happen around age 20-22, if they are going to happen. (Many of us were Randites and Heinleinites since reading them in our teens...) In particular, here on this list, I cannot ever recall seeing one of the Eurotrash trollboys ever giving up his leftist leanings and switching to a free market stance. The folds in the brain are just too set by age 25.) Anyway, there are many arguments in favor of capitalism and freedom of choice, though recounting them here or on the Usenet (or in a blog) is pointless--preaching to the converted. Still, I will add to my pile of tens of thousands of such futile attempts. Another argument in favor of free choice is the issue of wisdom of the market and evolutionary learning. This is a practical reason why voluntary transactions are favored by so many: the diverse nature of markets makes for more rapid evolutionary learning, through mistakes, borrowing of ideas, and even disasters. The process of creative destructionism aids in rapid learning. (Critics refer to this as social Darwinism and moan about displaced or fired workers...but not even the socialists and Social
Re: Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
Quoting Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Would there be an easy blacknet way to offer those t-shirts that would be un-shutdownable? Also, as an added (perhaps necessary) benefit, the ability to protect (through anonymity) those that ran the site? There are three requirements for anonymous merchandise sales: advertisement of services, payment, and shipping of goods to the customer. Advertising can work through Freenet or remailed postings to usenet or mailing lists. Anonymous payment can be through DMT/ALTA. As long as the shirts are less than the USPS weight limits, they can be mailed in any drop box. APAS Anonymous Remailer Use FAQ http://www.eskimo.com/~turing/remailer/FAQ/ Freenet http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ DMT/ALTA https://196.40.46.24/ -- Keith Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- OpenPGP Key: 0x79269A12
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 00:52:29 -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A tiny fuel cell that detects the alcoholic breath of a drink-driver and calls the police has been developed by a team of engineers at Texas Christian University. A pump draws air in from the passenger cabin, a platinum catalyst converts any alcohol to acetic acid, which then produces a current proportional to the concentration of alcohol in the air. A chip analyses the data, and if it is too high, turns on a wireless transmitter that calls the police. Great, a perfect reason for using Tequila Air Freshener. Or perhaps vodka, since it's less likely to stain the upholstery. And then sue the living fuck out of the pigs. And since it's succeptible to tobacco smoke, Joe Camel just became my new best friend. Pack a day? Only when I'm driving.
Re: Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
At 08:06 PM 3/10/03 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 09:52:04AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Would there be an easy blacknet way to offer those t-shirts that would be un-shutdownable? As Bill notes, there's no need to do it here. Specifically, my Epson Stylus 2200 can print t-shirt transfers. The cost is $1 for the iron-on transfer, and a few dollars for a t-shirt. Most modern inkjet printers can do the same. Yes, but can it do organic synthesis?
Re: Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Yes, but can it do organic synthesis? Current microfluidics will result in a chymische hochzeit with desktop nanolithoprinting. If you thought *current* ink cartridges were expensive...
Re: Give cheese to france?
At 07:04 AM 3/11/03 +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: 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. Open your eyes and look around yourself. Take any bigger, established market - news, radio, TV stations, retail chains are the first examples coming to my mind - take its top 80-90%, and count the number of players there. Do the same with the situation 10, 20, and 30 years ago. Actually there are a lot more heavy-duty news channels (FWIW) now than when there were 3 US broadcasters. But more importantly, there are optimal sizes for an organism (company) in a given environment. Buying things in bulk is cheaper, for instance; and some costs are amortized more widely. Its just physics/economics. For an animal, its things like heat loss vs. size, available calories, predation that influence optimal size. The merging of N companies into 1 can be more productive (efficient) than maintaining N companies. Its a simple fact. You might regret it or embrace it, depending on which side of the cash register you're on. (Ma and pa shops vs. Walmart: Ma und pa's perspective differs from the customer who evidently prefers Walmart) You will see the number of players is dramatically diminishing. The news announcements of high-profile mergers and acquisitions can be another clue for you. The dot-com bomb (and other tech/social 'bubbles') can be thought of as one of the paleobio radiation / contraction events in geological history. When things are good, plenty of plans are tried out. A few asteroids later, you are left with pruned innovation. NASDAQ's IPOs and delistings are the Burgess Shale of tech. (Modulo some irrational exuberance :-)
Re: Doubts on k-distribution
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Sarad AV wrote: Taking v=3 bit accuracy,the 3 leading bits are 000 100 110 111 In the example k=3 and v=3 So according to definition there are 2^(kv) possible combinations of bits occur the same number of times in a period. i.e 2^(3*3)=512 combinations. But where are the 512 combinations. We are choosing 3 bits out of 4 bits hence C(4,3)=4!/(3!*1!)=4 There are k=4,hence total combinations arising is only 4*4=16. where did i go wrong? The order of the blocks. You have v=3 bits and k=3 blocks, so 9 bits total. In a block of 9 bits there are 512 possible combinations. The order of each block matters (in this example). Also why is k-distribution considered as a strong test for randomness? It's a useful test, also called chi^2. It's been applied to feedback shift registers for a long time, so tradition is now part of the reason :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
At 09:52 AM 03/10/2003 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Just wondering... Would there be an easy blacknet way to offer those t-shirts that would be un-shutdownable? If you wanted to do all the work of printing and mailing t-shirts yourself, and had a blacknet that was sufficiently strong for this kind of threat, you could, but that's not the problem here. Easy is the problem. Scannell's not trying to do a secret subversive t-shirt printing operation, he's trying to do a convenient quick add-on to a publicity hack, as well as making it easy for people who want to protest at airports or annoy Delta when they're flying anyway to have cool shirts. But he's in the publicity business, not the shirt business. That's much different from the issue of where to do the web page, which is at a small friendly provider in the US. Cafepress.com is the best-known of a number of Internet shops that do T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. in single-quantity as well as large batches, so if you want to get them printed, all you do is fill out a form and hand them the jpegs and kaboom, you've got a T-shirt store that will sell your shirts to anybody who wants to order them. It's not the totally obvious model (which would be fill out the form, attach the jpeg, charge the credit card, get the shirt), but it scales well because they can do fulfillment directly to the person who wants the shirt instead of the person who designs the shirt, and it lets you pick the price of your shirt, anything from cost on up, so if you want to do shirt designs as a business, you can.
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Tom Veil wrote... Otherwise, if the company really wanted such a dickheaded policy, then yes, it would be their right. Of course, it would also be your right to organize a boycott, take an alternate route, or build your own spur route. This is the general gist of the arguments and so far I'm not convinced. Here's my play-by-play: Of course, it would also be your right to organize a boycott, Seems impossible. Only a boycott with a nationwide information campaign would likely have much of an impact: trucks come from all over the country to cross the George Washington Bridge via the turnpike. Also, there are large numbers of individuals and busses that MUST cross the GWB to get people to work. I really doubt people are going to stop going to work for this boycott. (And this is assuming the operating company gives a damn about the boycott. If there's no toll on the road, then the private company gets paid by the state even if no one rides it. So actually, a boycott lowers the maintenance expenses on the road.) take an alternate route, Well, let's assume there IS no alternate route. And in this case that is partly true. Or at least, any alternate routes would be quickly jammed if the boycott was even remotely successful, with the result being that there are still large numbers of people using that road. (And of course, like above the operating company might actually LIKE people not using their road. Hell, maybe they engineered this whole event for that purpose...) or build your own spur route. Assuming I could amass the capital, there's the strong likelihood I wouldn't be able to get the zoning permits and whatnot. People are getting tired of perpetual roadwork in some towns. (This of course could headway into the traditional Libertarian handwaving arguments with respect to natural resources...What Global Warming? Prove it!) Sorry. Lotsa easy answers and big holes in logic with these arguments. -TD _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 09:52:04AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Would there be an easy blacknet way to offer those t-shirts that would be un-shutdownable? As Bill notes, there's no need to do it here. Specifically, my Epson Stylus 2200 can print t-shirt transfers. The cost is $1 for the iron-on transfer, and a few dollars for a t-shirt. Most modern inkjet printers can do the same. -Declan
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:56:36PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not crazy about everything that the government does, but there are trade- offs in a non-perfect society. One of them is monitoring the innocent to, in turn, attempt to prevent the guilty from trampling over everything, God willing. Yes. Perhaps you'll be the first to volunteer for 24/7 invasive, implant-based, GPS-trackable, body-cavity-explorable monitoring to keep the rest of us safe? After all, you're innocent, and you have nothing to hide, right? -Declan
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Sunday 09 March 2003 18:16, you wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:31 am, david wrote: Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ?
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
On Sunday 09 March 2003 18:16, A.Melon wrote: On Sunday 09 March 2003 10:31 am, david wrote: Neither you nor anyone else has the right to force me or any other individual to subsidize your welfare. This device, if forced on individuals by a government entity, would violate fourth amendment protections against self-incrimination. DUI laws requiring breath or blood tests do the same thing. But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ? Not as long as it was truly a free market transaction involving no government regulation of the insurance company or laws requiring you to buy the insurance. Any transaction freely entered into by both parties is acceptable. David Neilson
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Tyler Durden wrote on March 7, 2003 at 12:46:35 -0500:
Tom Veil wrote...
These fuckards really need to learn what private property is.
('Fuckards'. I like that. GIMMEE.)
Alright. There's something I'm not getting here, so the Libertarians on the
board are free to enlighten me.
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.)
That's not a very good way to keep customers. I wonder what the patroller's
boss, the company that operates the turnpike, would think of his actions?
If I was the company, I'd fire the guy.
Otherwise, if the company really wanted such a dickheaded policy, then yes,
it would be their right. Of course, it would also be your right to organize
a boycott, take an alternate route, or build your own spur route.
James brought up an interesting point; that if the road system had been
developed privately, your scenario would not be as big a hassle, as the
road system would more closely resemble the multiple redundant routes of
the Internet.
--
Tom Veil
Sell inverse floaters to france
Kevin Horne wrote... By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; in particular, it has been applied to investment analysis and portfolio theory, resulting in significant improvements in investment performance. Oh, that! That's kind of different. I used to do some work in evaluating funds comprised of mortgage-backed securities sprinkled with derivative securities. We used the Ho-Lee model (I later had one of my strangest interviews with the very same Ho). Indeed, such models are extremely mathematical, but this wasn't exactly what I was thinking about. (The models are not 'predictive' in the sense of predicting the econmy, but rather predicts the value of certain derivatives as a function of interest rates over time. The model actually generates a future price for every even remotely likely scenario, and then describes the output spread in terms of volatility wrt interest rates.) (Actually, there are some computer-based trading firms that leverage minute instabilities of price, buying/selling huge numbers of shares to make big $$$. They certainly have teams of engineers/physicists/financial engineers building these models.) -TD _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Blacknet Delta CAPPS II Boycott?
Just wondering... Would there be an easy blacknet way to offer those t-shirts that would be un-shutdownable? Also, as an added (perhaps necessary) benefit, the ability to protect (through anonymity) those that ran the site? Plus, another thought occurs to me. Is it possible, perhaps, via Blacknet for the site operator to put up the site for a predefined time period, during which it is impossible even for the site operator to take it down? How would that work as a legal defense? (Sorry Delta. My site is on an autonymous Server and even I can not shut it down until its expiration date on 6/22/03. Indeed, I do not even know where the server or service provider is.) -TD From: Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CAPPS II pilot at San Jose - Delta to CAPPS II Boycotters: No more Coffee Mugs Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2003 22:42:40 -0800 Breaking news - The three airports in Delta's pilot project include San Jose. --- Last week Bill Scannell [EMAIL PROTECTED] announced the BoycottDelta.org protest against Delta's collaboration with the CAPPS II pass-law pilot project. Among other publicity activities, BoycottDelta.org had T-shirt for sale on CafePress.com, but Delta has filed a intellectual property complaint to stop them, in spite of the Supreme Court's position that parody is protected, and if you've seen the BoycottDelta.org logo, it's clearly just parody. - Delta Shuts Down BoycottDelta Shop CAPPS II Collaborator Stops T-Shirt Sales, Continues Privacy Invasion Austin, TX (8 March 2003) -- BoycottDelta, an on-line website advocating a total boycott of Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) until the airline stops all cooperation with a test of the CAPPS II program, had its on-line 'BoycottDelta Action Tools' store closed down as a result of an intellectual property rights violation alleged and filed by Delta with the store's host, CafePress.com . The store sold t-shirts, coffee mugs and stickers affixed with the BoycottDelta logo, allowing activists to show their support for the campaign. The BoycottDelta logo consists of an all-seeing eye within a red and blue triangle. All BoycottDelta products were sold at cost. BoycottDelta founder Bill Scannell expressed astonishment with Delta's move. Delta Air Lines has been deluged with thousands of emails and calls from their customers over the past week complaining about their CAPPS II testing, and the best Delta can come up with is to say 'don't wear a t-shirt'? This is corporate arrogance at its finest. Over 200,000 unique visitors have visited the BoycottDelta website since it went live on the 3rd of March. Alternate sources of BoycottDelta protest tools are being identified. A new on-line store will be launched shortly. The Google cache of the store can be seen at: http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:HSkdQ1hc4coJ:www.cafeshops.com/boycottd elta+boycottdelta+action+toolshl=enie=UTF-8 _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: CDR: Monocultures, Choice, and Access to Food Must Be Equal!
Tim Writes: Access to Food Must Be Equal! The Bush Administration is proposing radical changes in the way food has been purchased by Americans for the past hundred years. Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is floating the idea of a voucher system for groceries which would allow families to make their food and beverage purchases at any supermarket, regardless of location. Allowing this kind of choice would destroy the system which has made America so competitive today! A favorite theme of mine, although I usually phrase it as What if the Teachers Union Ran Your Local Grocery Store? Obvious features of the system. Stores are funded by property taxes. You may of course choose to shop at a Private Store, but you will still have to pay the same amount to your local community store, whether you pick up food from it or not. Store employees would of course be rude and obnoxious, because customer discontent no longer affects their job security. Customers who complain can be suspended from shopping, and as they starve to death in the streets, ridiculed for their poor choices. Your good standing with the store would of course be checked everytime you applied for a job, or credit. The stores would be filthy, the food spoiled, and you would have to shop during particular hours. Any suggestion that food dollars be distributed to eaters in the form of vouchers would be met with horror stories about community stores, which have to meet everyone's shopping needs, failing as a consequence, destroying nutrition for all but the wealthy. The Grocer's Union would spend lots of your tax dollars, collected in the form of union dues, lobbying for less rights for eaters, and near police state powers for grocery employees. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: Social democrats on our list
Anonymous wrote on March 8, 2003 at 01:15:10 +0100: On Saturday 08 March 2003 01:33 am, Tim May wrote: Silly person, a property does not have rights. Owners have rights. And these apply whether one person, 5 persons, or a group of co-owners own something. Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe, LP 2000 Maynard Way New York, NY Mr. May Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe represent the Mega Corporation. Recently the Mega Corporation (aka MegaCorp) purchased the rights to all oxygen in the Corralitos, CA area and any such material that may move into or be produced in that area. By being a resident of the Corralitos, CA area and utilizing their property you are bound to the Terms and Condtions of their Breathe Through Oxygen Use Contract. This is mentally retarded. You will quickly find a property claim to all oxygen in a certain area to be utterly unenforceable if you don't want to be shot. -- Tom Veil
Canaries in a corralitos coalmine.
I'm imagining Tim sitting at his window with a shotgun and some high-tech oxygen detector... Or a couple of low tech parrots like Declan McCatohead and jya.Hopefully Mongo will do a Hemingway soon. The idea is not to convince anyone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which they later convinces themselves. pr for open source crypto-anarchy.
Re: Give cheese to france?
Does it mean that such observations are invalid just because Marx predicted them? Good point. And also, just because someone points out that it looks like Marx's predictions may be coming true, it doesn't mean that that person believes this is desirable. -TD From: Thomas Shaddack [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Give cheese to france? Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 07:04:11 +0100 (CET) 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. Open your eyes and look around yourself. Take any bigger, established market - news, radio, TV stations, retail chains are the first examples coming to my mind - take its top 80-90%, and count the number of players there. Do the same with the situation 10, 20, and 30 years ago. You will see the number of players is dramatically diminishing. The news announcements of high-profile mergers and acquisitions can be another clue for you. Does it mean that such observations are invalid just because Marx predicted them? _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
