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Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 0) 34

by Arker (#47453391) Attached to: 1k words
Can you really have so much trouble understanding the difference between WEALTH and INCOME?

Let's try a water analogy. One lake has 10million gallons of water in storage, and at the moment has no water flowing into it at all. The other is essentially dry, with a mere 500 gallons available. It is receiving water at a rate of 500 gallons/hour, however it is currently releasing 498 gallons/hour to satisfy downstream obligations.

Which of these two lakes controls more water?

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 0) 34

by Arker (#47450811) Attached to: 1k words
"The platforms that I see Ron Paul preach about the most often all share the common connection of reducing the tax burden of the top earners"

Yes, EARNERS. People that work for their money. They should get to keep more of it. THAT is something libertarians both left and right agree on.

What you claimed was "The libertarian party wants to give more power to the people with the most money."

These two things are not the same thing. Not even CLOSE to the same thing.

The people with the most money are the ones that have effective control of; first and foremost, the Federal Reserve, the large banks, and the companies that receive the bulk of our 'defense' and 'law enforcement' budgets. They may or may not have high income - one does not need income when one controls capital.

What you are doing is conflating the guy that's out there working his tail off to be the best in his field, draw a salary proportionate, and desperately hoping to retire in time to enjoy raising a family; with the guy that can and does buy and sell Senators and has never had to work for a living.

The other side of Pauls platform is about reducing the power of the Fed, reducing the power up for grabs to regulatory capture, reducing the resources devoted to corporate welfare. That's how you actually do something about the people that have it all.

Punitive taxation on incomes is easy for them to evade, and only hurts the innocent.

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 1) 34

by Arker (#47449693) Attached to: 1k words
"That's not a good thing. You're telling me there's a whole bunch of people who share similar consistent values, and have worked for decades (if not longer, the values of LP existed before the official party existed) promoting those values, and yet still have consistently failed to stop the growing government, who is apparently much less coherent or capable of satisfying its members"

The government has the advantage of being able to take money out of our pocket, and spend it against us, more or less at-will.

And we could go on for ages about all the other ways the Duopoly party is entrenched and what a massive disadvantage we started at - and anyone who wants any sort of change in this country starts at.

All considered, I would say we have actually done very well. Don't forget we won several Republican primaries last time and were only defeated with the most shameless series of dirty tricks seen at a national convention since '68, if not before.

Yes, it's bad news that we havent won yet, and arent likely to win immediately, but the good news is that momentum is on our side now, and so are the majority of the american people, on several of our most important issues.

The cup may be half empty but that means it's half full. A few decades ago that was nowhere near true.

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 0) 34

by Arker (#47448441) Attached to: 1k words
"there is an argument to be made that there really is no libertarian party in this country - or at least, none that can possibly encompass the values of all the people who call themselves libertarians."

To a degree that is true, but less so of the LP than any other parties we can compare it to. The LP platform has remained remarkably consistent for decades, and there is little in any incarnation of it that many libertarians would have more than minor quibbles with.

"His platform, beyond any shadow of a doubt, embraces the values that I outlined above."

You are, beyond any shadow of a doubt, wrong. It's not a near miss, you are not even on the same planet.

Comment Re:Which alternative exists? (Score 1) 34

by Arker (#47447409) Attached to: 1k words
"The libertarian party wants to give more power to the people with the most money, which just reinforces this problem."

That's simply not true. It's a leftie-progressive-whatever-you-call-it-this-week bullshit propaganda line and always has been.

Libertarians want to first remove power from interpersonal dealings insofar as possible, and only secondarily devolve whatever power cannot be removed entirely and spread it out as evenly as possible rather than letting it centralize and metastasize into a capitol and imperial beaureacracy.

Comment The good news? (Score 0) 131

by Arker (#47443341) Attached to: Chinese Couple Sells Children To Support Online Game Addiction
It sounds like these two will soon be executed. Without being in favor of the death penalty it sounds like it may well have a silver lining in this case. If the facts are as presented, at least, it's probably a very good thing they wont be reproducing again.

Still, surgical sterilization would do the job as well, and unlike the death penalty, it is at least possible it could be reversed, should it eventually come out that the two were somehow framed and not really guilty.

Comment Kudos to Dennis Fisher (Score 0) 75

by Arker (#47440961) Attached to: Source Code Leaked For Tinba Banking Trojan
For writing an article about IT-criminals in which he refers to them as IT-criminals.

Even if it does appear on a page with a prominent link to another article which misuses the term 'hackers' in its very title. I am sure that was beyond his personal control.

Also it sounds like some really good programming! 20kb compiled, and full functional. From <a href="https://www.csis.dk/en/csis/news/4303/">this report</a> it appears that it's written in assembler. Does anyone have a link to the actual code?

Comment Re:Needs functionality (Score 2) 381

by Arker (#47440677) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: Do You Want a Smart Watch?
"I guess if you didn't turn it on, and I'm calling BS."

I had a laptop of that era that lasted me days between charges at times, and the battery on it was old, I could easily see it going weeks with light use and a fresh battery.

It had a low power monochrome display, and was mostly solid state. The only moving disk was the 3.5" floppy, the OS was built in on ROM, it had 2mb RAM so there was plenty for ramdisk. The only thing that really hit the battery at all was the floppy, and with the ramdisk that didnt need to be hit very often.

Just because it isnt part of your experience does not mean it didnt exist.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

by Arker (#47436585) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
Sure.

Which is why I do not in any way defer to their judgements, but make my own.

"To draw truths from reading for yourself."

Drawing truths from the book with the longest continuous editorial history known to man, one that warns you it has been tampered with by scribes with lying pens (Jeremiah 8:8) is not an easy thing, it is a puzzle. But our creator gave us rational minds to solve puzzles with.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

by Arker (#47434269) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
No, I am sorry but you are wrong. They were certainly not part of the original Bible. They were *added* to some Greek translations of the Scripture, somewhere around 100bc, but no one considered them Canonical until centuries later. We are talking the 4th century AD on the "Christian" side and perhaps a couple of centuries earlier on the Rabbinate side, but in each case it was a multi-generational project to ultimately *add* these books, to elevate the works of men to the status of scripture.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 1) 30

by Arker (#47431411) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive

That may be a matter of opinion and perspective as well.

Those are late compositions in Greek and clearly not part of the original Hebrew Bible (properly called the Tanakh.)

The books you mention, along with the so-called New Testament books, both those declared 'canonical' by the Imperial Roman authorities and the other books that were banned instead, along with the Talmud, are all in my mind defensible and even in cases valuable, as Midrash, as Commentary, as a record of what men at the time thought on some important subjects - but NOT as scripture to be elevated to stand with the Tanakh, let alone to actually be set ON TOP of the Bible proper as so many do.

Comment Re:self-correcting (Score 0) 30

by Arker (#47430995) Attached to: These secular priests just keep slicing on the drive
"What was the last time there was a retraction of inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible?"

It's actually a good question if refined a bit.

I would propose to you that what you see as 'inaccurate or harmful material from the Bible' is better defined as 'inaccurate or harmful interpretations of the Bible' and while retractions of those are not unheard of, they are certainly relatively rare.

I think the deeper point here is simply that the theoretical bright-line between science and religion has a worrying tendency to evaporate in practice, and simply pointing out that tel-evangelists are even worse is not much of a defense.

There's a huge difference between appreciating the scientific method and having faith in whatever the 'scientist' says - in fact they are mutually incompatible.

Comment Re:To what end? (Score 1) 219

by Arker (#47427281) Attached to: After NSA Spying Flap, Germany Asks CIA Station Chief to Depart
"My impression, also from German newspapers etc., is that most germans including politicians are truely mad and are seriously considering to cool down relations with the USA."

As they should be, frankly the reaction seems inexplicably mild.

Can you imagine the reaction if the shoe was on the other foot? If this was a BD spy caught infiltrating the CIA?

A 'cool down' in relations would be a serious understatement.

Comment Re: haven't we learned from the last 25 exploits? (Score 1) 68

by Arker (#47426261) Attached to: 'Rosetta Flash' Attack Leverages JSONP Callbacks To Steal Credentials
"Over the years, I've done a lot of work with games and simulations for training."

OK. That really doesnt have anything to do with the web, however. Sure, the web can be used to deliver the project - that doesnt mean it has to actually run inside the browser. There is a HUGE difference.

"We could not have produced this educational game with just HTML."

I get where you are coming from but I still think it's far off the mark. The web is not a game platform, that is not it's purpose, so 'we could not do games this way' is not a very telling criticism.

You can use better tools to make the games, and use the web merely to deliver the game. Where is the problem with that?

It would NOT be slower, clunkier, or more prone to error. It could be done using exactly the same technologies in virtually exactly the same way - the only difference would be very slightly less easy to get it started, and in return for that, your browser is no longer a malware vector.

Or, it could be done using technologies better suited for the purpose, in which case I would expect the results to be less clunky, faster, and more stable - but the development process would be more expensive as well.

I get why you would want to use RAD to lower costs, just not why you see the tiny convenience of running in the browser automatically as worth the cost of turning the web into a malware distribution network.

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