You'd still have to fight for it just to start. Going to Somalia would have you competing against the people already there, and anyone else that wants to barge in. Plus some people would like to do this without taking someone's current country away from them. (Not that Somalia would be a big loss, but still.)

Also, I think people are misinterpreting what they're trying to do. This isn't to make "Libertopia". (Though it sounds like they certainly wouldn't mind that.) They want to enable *experiments* with government. If you want experiments, you want a plan that allows for multiple running at once, without having to wreak havoc on people that don't want to be your test dummies.

People disagree on what, exactly, libertarianism is. A few *very* different visions get lumped together. (I guess we need to start using more specific terms...) To me, the libertarian philosophy means that everyone gets the right to do whatever they want, so long as they don't interfere with others. My idea of a libertarian government would be one that seeks to prevent people from violating each others' rights, and that's it.

Some things that I think help prevent others from violating rights:
military
police (especially detectives)
courts
written laws
tax collection (since the rest of it isn't coming for free)

In my version of a libertarian society, smoking in public wouldn't be allowed, because that causes harm/risk to people that didn't consent to that risk. Others think that it means being able to do whatever drug they want, anywhere they want. While I think those people have serious problems, to me, it ultimately comes down to being able to make choices, including choosing what system of law you're in.
In my "ideal" world, it would be easier to move to another place in order to live under more favorable laws. Being able to move more easily is especially important for experimental governments. *If* anything is going to work for that, modular floating buildings might be what makes it work.

The point is, people have different ideas on how things might be made better, but often there are effects that aren't foreseen. What do we do? Try them on an existing country, making people be part of an experiment when some/many of them think it's crazy? Ignore these ideas, missing out on what might have been a major advancement?

Island building has problems, too, but they're only imposed upon whoever *decides* to risk it.

I don't have anything to do with the Seasteading Institute, but if you want to understand them, read their FAQs:
http://seasteading.org/about-seasteading/frequently-asked-questions

OTP is unbreakable, but you could argue that it isn't a "solution". :^)

If I steal your hard drive, you can't destroy the data anymore, or replace the solution on that hard drive. Even if I don't steal it, you're relying on having a secure way to destroy the data. OTOH, how much is a few bad sectors of old data worth?

If you can count on detecting the breach, and can take steps to make the data unimportant more quickly (change passwords, report card numbers stolen), then you just need enough time to react. If you can't do something like that, then the crypto needs to last until the data isn't sensitive anymore.

Not at all. Sell your supercomputer, buy savings bonds from various governments (or gold if you insist), buy a better supercomputer in 90 years, crack in 10 years after that.

YMMV

liar

Libertarianism is not anarchism. Why don't people get that?

You may not need a government to provide for your defense, but you're still paying for it. When someone commits a crime, some people will want to have them punished, and some people won't like it if they think you're punishing someone that shouldn't be punished. So you still need some kind of court, and lawyers are handy for that, even if the laws aren't complicated. A good lawyer asks good questions, you need that kind of person on your side to argue your case to whoever decides it. Welfare and much of the rest would become charity, which you would still pay for.

Now, you can argue that you'll be more efficient about all that, but how's the overhead of building and maintaining an island, and shipping in whatever you can't make?

Nice idea, but "if you love an idea, then you love it a little too much."

(BTW, cool website.)

How do we know that we know about them all? Odds are that we're more likely to hear about the ones that are more likely to fall apart. Whether others exist seems indeterminate.

What's wrong with that?

Not all Libertarians are island builders. Also, show me any reliable way to get the kind of government you want. Reforms are hard, and often fail. Revolution is hard, and usually fails. Island building is hard, and usually fails. "Nations" within nations appear less hard, and often fail. Much the same all around.

Looking at it that way, the ones that stand out are reform (more likely to last if you get it at all) and "nations" withing nations (probably the easiest option in the short run).

They could track where officers spend their time, and normalize the crime rate stats against that.

We should fix that. Users probably shouldn't get to enforce everything in the GPL, as coders should be able to show mercy, but we should be able to demand source code.

You'd have to prove that they got code under the GPL, though. That'd probably mean showing that they didn't write it, that the author released it under GPL, and that they didn't give them alternative terms. Sounds like you'd still need at least testimony from the rights-holders.

IANAL

Why would the UN get involved with this? What makes you think that UN control would mean no effective governmental control? A UN-controlled internet would likely turn into a recording/movie industry-controlled internet. It would have every spy agency getting whatever access they wanted. Countries would force each other into it, and blame the treaties they signed so no one has to answer to their people.

Free? Yeah, right. Who would pay for it? Are you talking about a zero-infrastructure network? If so, it's easier said than done. If not, who pays for the relays that have to support ever-increasing traffic?

If you think that hams are just being lazy by not building this, then get a ham licence and do it yourself. Seriously. If anyone had such a project that looked fairly viable, I'd get whatever licence needed to get involved right away and jump in. If you become a ham, you won't need permission from anyone to launch such a project. Prove that they're being lazy by ceasing to be lazy yourself. There's nothing stopping you.
(Me? I'm so lazy I haven't even become a ham yet. I'm guessing the same is true of you. Maybe I should get around to fixing that.)

Okay, I'll bite. It's been a while since I've wasted time arguing on Slashdot.

'Cause ham radio equipment is so much cheaper than the phones that they already have, and that they still use? Of the few hams I know, they all have phones, most of them including cell phones.

Some hams are also radio professionals. One ham I met was also a (cell phone?) network tech, who became a ham operator because he wanted to learn more about the fundamentals of radio technology. Being a ham makes him a better member of his "professional crew".

You mean like making the first cell phones? CDMA was made and used by hams before anyone else. How exactly would an inventor experiment with a new radio tech idea? Auction for bandwidth just to find out if your idea even works? Ask permission to innovate? Yeah, that's American.

Yeah, a lack of fault-tolerant, long range, emergency radio links will surely make this world a better place. If you figure letting polluting humans just die instead of coordinating rescue efforts is a net gain.

Ham radio is about freedom, something a few of us still care about, not just cool new cell phones. The freedom to transmit using any protocol, any modulation, to anyone, anywhere. For all the talk about the internet being a tool for free speech, it isn't nearly as free as ham radio. Hams have gotten information across borders in some of the countries cracking down on protesters, when the internet lines were completely cut off, and people were being searched for media at the border. They've got ATV to get video out of there. What do you have?

Is it slow for you for normal CPU work (office s/w, web browsing)? Do you have a dual-core processor?

(I'm just surprised that you're having performance issues with it. Maybe I just don't push it much.)

Try VirtualBox. I use it all the time, and get near-native speed. "Near-native" meaning that I hardly ever notice any slow-down during normal use, and I've watched videos in the guest without any of the acceleration stuff turned on, without any problems, except in one guest. I've run it on WinXP and Ubuntu 9.10 hosts, with WinXP, Win7 RC, Ubuntu 8.10, and 9.10 as guests. Of course, it does help that I have a dual-core processor.

True. Though VB has experimental support for hardware acceleration, it hasn't worked for me, and I haven't tried to run games in a VM, except once (unsuccessfully).

I heard a while back of companies offering DSL by itself, for about $20 more. Not much help...

The binaries have features not included in the OSE. In addition to the features listed in another comment, OSE doesn't let you use actual hard disks/partitions for the VM disk.

(You might be able to work around that by setting up the VDI with the binary, then switching to OSE. I haven't tried it.)