You seem legitimately interested in hearing a perspective different from your own, so I'll oblige. Note that libertarianism is diverse, like any political affiliation, so not everyone who identifies with that label would agree with my responses.

Insurance is a common libertarian answer in this situation, and one that makes sense to me.

Then he can't do it. If the fair premium is higher than the benefit of the project, that tells you that the total benefits of the project are lower than the total costs, so the project should not be undertaken. If he thinks the premium is unfairly high, or if nobody will cover it due to the size and uncertainly, he could work to build up significant evidence of the safety of the proposed activity (which is exactly what most people would probably want to see before he started anyway, libertarian or not).

This seems like an argument that applies to any crime under any political system... but if he did that in a libertarian society, then anyone who was potentially going to be affected would be eligible to defend themselves by preventing him from doing it. Note that people could delegate their self-defense, so even someone who lives far away and/or has a busy life already could still exercise their right of self-defense without undue inconvenience.

I don't know of many people who consider self-defense to be initiation of force. Of course people would only be justified in using as much force as reasonable to stop him... initiating an experiment like this would not be carte blanche for dialing up the assassins. (This just follows from current common-law precedent for justifying self-defense.)

Yep. The main problem I personally have with prisons is not their existence but the high number of people locked up for acts of non-aggression (e.g. marijuana possession). Also note that, in the hierarchy of monopoly government institutions that libertarians want to get rid of, the justice system is typically near the end of the list because of the problems inherent in having two people with opposing interests (plaintiff and defendant) jointly select from multiple competing private court/prison systems.

"Regulations" are not necessarily against libertarian principles. After all, most libertarians want to live in stable modern society too, and are against direct aggression such as theft as well as indirect and/or probabilistic aggression like pollution of other people's property or reckless endangerment (e.g. driving drunk or attempting large-scale unproven geo-engineering experiments affecting other people's property). Remember not to confuse us with anarcho-capitalists!

I appreciated your reasonable tone when referring to libertarian principles so I was actually willing to respond, unlike in most slashdot flamefests. Hope you found the perspective interesting at least.

Self-defense is a widely-accepted exception.

It seems in this particular case that Wikipedia editors wanted something they could cite. This strikes me as rather reasonable. If I read the statement "according to the author, the book was inspired by an unhappy event in the life of his late friend Melvin Tumin," with no citation, how could I possibly verify that? If the citation was "the author sent Wikipedia private correspondence, trust me," is that any better? For all you criticizing this decision, is that what you want the encyclopedia to look like?

Asking the author to put a previously unknown fact into a citeable public record before reflecting it in the Wikipedia article is a process that I am personally in favor of, since it now allows me to follow up and see exactly where that information came from and why it's in the article.

Wikipedia does have its problems with overzealous and protective editors, but this particular case doesn't seem to be one. Perhaps there is some additional detail that I've missed in this case but reading TFA actually makes me more confident in the information in Wikipedia.

Came for crash blossom post. Leaving satisfied. Mod parent up.

According to your own link, this is completely false.

From the source, with my emphasis:

"2nd Degree Bias Intimidation
(For 3rd Degree Invasion of Privacy charge on Sept. 19)
[...]
* Invasion of Privacy, knowing that the conduct constituting invasion of privacy would cause Tyler Clementi to be intimidated because of sexual orientation: GUILTY"

"3rd Degree Bias Intimidation
(For 4th Degree Invasion of Privacy charge on Sept. 21)
* Invasion of Privacy, with the purpose to intimidate Tyler Clementi because of sexual orientation: GUILTY
[...]
* Invasion of Privacy, knowing that the conduct constituting invasion of privacy would cause Tyler Clementi to be intimated because of sexual orientation: GUILTY"

"2nd Degree Bias Intimidation
(For 3rd Degree Attempted Invasion of Privacy charge on Sept. 21)
* Invasion of Privacy, with the purpose to intimidate Tyler Clementi because of sexual orientation: GUILTY
[...]
* Invasion of Privacy, knowing that the conduct constituting invasion of privacy would cause Tyler Clementi to be intimidated because of sexual orientation: GUILTY"

This is a ridiculous strawman mockery of the position held by most small-government advocates. If you seriously believe that anyone other than perhaps the unscrupulous factory owner himself would make that argument with a straight face, you are the problem with modern political discourse. That sort of complete unwillingness to attempt to understand the positions of those you disagree with is what creates hostile, unproductive standoffs at all ranges of the political hierarchy, from your water cooler at work all the way up to congress.

There is a class of high-end non-SLR cameras called "ultrazoom." They don't have removable lenses, but the built-in lens is versatile (with long optical zoom as well as macro capability) and they are smaller and lighter than SLRs or probably MILCs. It's a good compromise if you don't think you'll appreciate the SLR or if you're on a budget.

I've has a Sony DSC-HX1 for a few years and have been very happy with it. Looks like you can get one new for $350 on Amazon. It has a 20x optical zoom, gyroscopic stabilization so you can actually take reasonable pictures at those zoom levels without a tripod, and of course a host of software features including a pretty smart "intelligent auto" mode. The quality of photos is excellent: I've framed some 18"x12" prints as gifts, and people have been surprised when I tell them I took the photo myself.

Review sites often have a separate category for these ultrazooms, e.g.: http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/Extended-Zoom.htm. Good luck in your search.

What? That's the exact opposite of what Google is doing. I've heard of not reading the article, but did you even read the summary's title?

What makes you think it's honest, or that it's mourning for Kim Jong-Il?

In the absurdist documentary The Red Chapel, the director speculates that when their North Korean guide starts crying at the monument to Kim Il-Sung, she is actually crying for her relatives who died under his policies.

Looks like you stumbled across a textbook example of Simpson's Paradox. Like with the Monty Hall Problem, gaining a thorough understanding of it will dramatically improve your intuitive understanding of probability and statistics. (At least it did for me!)

CarrierIQ bandwidth is not counted against your cap. At least it's not supposed to be, although we know how good the telcos are at billing you properly.

Hollywood makes plenty of great movies. The problem is they aren't marketed as much, because of the Big Mac effect you mentioned. However, just becuse there are lots of McDonald's doesn't mean there aren't awesome restaurants around too. You just need to search them out yourself instead of relying on advertising (or complaining about it :-)).

You don't even need to go outside the U.S., although it does help if you're feeling tired of the "same old formula," since other countries' fimmakers are going to follow different storytelling norms. Anyway, here's the IMDb list of top movies from 2000-2009 to get you started: http://www.imdb.com/chart/2000s. I've seen most of them, and they definitely deserve to be on that list... just look for one that suits your taste in genre and enjoy.

Another way to find good movies is to follow directors who don't compromise creative integrity. I recommend Christopher Nolan (Memento), Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream), and David Fincher (Se7en). Those movies are all masterpieces in one way or another, and all came out of Hollywood within the last 20 years. Find one you like and start watching other movies by the same director.

Awfully arrogant of you to claim that some people benefit from your work without realizing it, without acknowledging that the same could be true of his. If he adds liquidity to the market, then you save money every time you buy or sell stock (or your 401k/mutual funds do). It's not necessarily true that he does, but you certainly aren't in a position to know. You could read more here, but I suppose that would just get in the way of your populist rage so maybe you'd rather not.

Oh, and you follow it up with another stunning display when you criticize him for not using his real name and then you wish him death in the very next sentence. Wow.

Do you ever buy or sell stock? Perhaps indirectly, through a mutual fund or 401k type plan? If so, then you benefit from high liquidity in the market. HFT and other Wall Street shenanigans do skim from the top, but they also provide liquidity. It's almost certain that the liquidity benefits small market players more than the skimming hurts them. In other words, the money they're skimming comes from the banks and brokers rather than you and me.

For example, take the stock of Red Hat (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHT). Yahoo Finance right now shows that, as of the last time the market was open, I could buy 100 shares for $42.56 (that's the "ask" or best current asking price), or I could sell 300 shares for $42.09 (the best available "bid"). That's a bid-ask spread of about 50 cents. That spread is a hidden cost to either buying or selling stock: If you buy and then sell RHT, you will have paid about 50 cents per share just for the privilege, even if nothing in particular happens to the company. Let's split that 50-50 and say that every stock transaction in RHT (buy or sell) costs you 25 cents per share in implied fees.

Those bids and asks are set by individuals and companies who are competing. They want to get a good deal for either buying or selling the stock, but they also know that if they set asking price too high or their bid too low, they'll never make any trades. The more competition there is, the tighter the bid-ask spread will be. HFT and other algorithmic approaches allow firms to set prices on tons of stocks without requiring human attention for each one, which dramatically increases the competition and thus tightens the bid-ask spread.

In this example, if you outlaw HFT and similar trading strategies, maybe RHT will have a spread of $1 intead of 50 cents. Maybe you'll be happy that HFTers aren't making ther 5 cent skim off the top anymore, but it'll be cold comfort when you're paying 25 cents more on each transaction and it's just going to a different Wall Street firm.

If you think I'm exaggerating the effect of computerized trading of the spread, have a look at slide 8 (page 4) of this study: http://fisher.osu.edu/~diether_1/b822/trading_costs_2up.pdf. Starting in 1960, the average bid-ask spread has ben dropping steadily every decade to a small fraction of what it used to be.

Background: I am an actuary trained in quantitative finance. I've never worked in Wall Street or done any HFT or other algo trading.

You're really reaching here, like someone who claims the warm hum and crackle of LPs makes them better. You can certainly claim that the objectively-worse aspects of books make them subjectively better for you, but you shouldn't expect anyone else to be convinced!

Whether a book is electronic has nothing to do with taking our time to enjoy it. You can sit down, take your time and read all the classic works of literature you want, at whatever pace you want, on an eReader. Modern eReaders do not have screen glare and have batteries that last for months. If you spill your Dew on a physical book you might have to throw away the actual book, whereas if you spill your dew on an eReader, the book itself is in perfect condition and always will be, safe on your hard drive and Amazon's backup servers. Just replace the device (not so expensive nowadays) and your entire library is restored for free.

If their conditions are that bad, do you think they're spending their money on libraries and textbooks? They're not going to have access to many books, electronic or not.

Most countries at least have cellular phone networks even if their other infrastructure is lacking, or they have one satellite internet access point. A few eReaders with cellular internet (or occasional access to satellite net) and months-long battery lives could be more valuable than an entire library, and wouldn't cost nearly as much to transport.