Thinking About Freedom
Robert LeFevre
The Freeman, February 1983, p. 115

                Could I control others by a simple exercise of my own will I would have no reason to inflict control, punishment or death upon another of my kind. Since my wishes would control others, each and every person would gladly do my bidding. Unhappily, for me, this isn’t true.
                Every other person has the same kind of control I have and is as eager for me to act as he wishes, as I am to have him act as I wish.
                The result is conflict. And from the days of Plato to Marx, stretching backward and forward from those polarities, the pages of the human record run red with blood and echo with the cries of anguish emitted by those who, at the moment, found themselves under the sway of some human being not content with self-management; seeking always to manage others in a way nature has not bargained for.

It's not "man", in general, but men that want to have some "kind of control" and "is ... eager for me to act as he wishes".

Most men don't have such ambitions. For some reason (the ability to actually exert this power over others), politics draws these kinds of men out.

On Firefox, I use Tree Style Tab with Tab Mix Plus, and I couldn't use any browser now that doesn't have a combo like that.

Having the tabs grouped in a hierarchy view on the left is just so well done. It really make looking at 5-100 tabs easier!

While watching the Macey's Parade last year, they mentioned that the parade balloons (big charlie brown, etc) makes it the single largest helium user in the US (maybe world?) next to the US Government.

Interesting stuff.

Ya, and that was based on early results from Win7, where *all* video card drivers were beta, and nasty to play with.

Any more, when you update ATI drivers, it just blinks the screen as it restarts the driver, and you go on. No reboot needed. No lockups or issues either.

And what if some of your plugins aren't ready for 4? suddenly, websites look different (like maybe a craigslist image laoder stops working), or worse yet your tab extension is borked, and you can't do anything with tabs any more?

Maybe a user doesn't like the new 4.0 look and wants to stay at 3.5?

Give the user a box and ask.

Do not change this behavior!

Although their chances are better than SCO's (debatable, but I'd give it to them), this story sounds as rosy as an SCO fanboy writing their weekly column.

"could mean millions" Could. Could.

I really wish we had a news service that posted honest stories.

Rambus has sued the world, and finally one of them stuck. nVidia is the loser this time. If only Rambus would die, then we could all move on in life.

See how much nicer that would be! ;)

You haven't driven in Oregon, have you? They will give you a ticket for 2-3 over.

That's funny. Even Galbraith later admitted that he was wrong on this point.

link

Galbraith’s magnum opus was The New Industrial State, in which he argued that large firms dominate the American economy. “The mature corporation,” he wrote, “had readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. . . . Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be.”

Well, not quite. Although GM would have loved to “decree” the shape of automobiles in the 1980s, it seems consumers had different ideas. That is one reason why GM, which did produce about half of all U.S.-bought autos in the 1960s, sells only a quarter of all U.S.-bought autos today.

Interestingly, in his autobiography Galbraith presented the very evidence that should have talked him out of his conclusion in The New Industrial State. In 1954 Galbraith was on a consulting team hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada ’s dominant railway at the time. He saw quickly that CPR’s most promising assets were its forests and land, not its railway. Yet CPR basically ignored the team’s advice. He wrote, “The railway men did not look with favor on such passing fads as airplanes.” This should have clued him in to the idea that large firms like CPR could “decree” virtually nothing.

To his credit, Galbraith ultimately admitted, with a 15-year lag, the major problem with his thesis. In July 1982 the steel and auto companies he had claimed were immune from competition and recessions were laying off workers in response to both foreign competition and recession. Asked on “Meet the Press” whether he had underestimated the extent of risk that even large corporations face, Galbraith paused and replied, “Yeah, I think I did.”

while our primary sources of energy are running out

And in the 1920s, they claimed we were running out of oil. In the 1970s, they claimed we were running out of oil. Just last year they found a new oilfield off of Brazil bigger than anything found yet. Last year. After everyone said no new large fields would ever be found.

Coal? Clinton locked up the Grand Staircase in Utah, the largest clean coal deposit, with 62 Billion tons of coal.

I don't know. I hate scare-mongering that has been going on already for 100 years, and shown wrong for 100 years, and the next generation doesn't see how poorly it looks.

When I go see a movie that is billed as 'entertainment', I am not there to be preached to about particular message.

When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.

I don't want to live my whole life as if I was in a combative forum. And, once "entertainment" crosses over the line, I don't enjoy it. It's not entertainment anymore. It's not the purpose of seeing the movie.

I use GP-PVR. It's free. It has a good plugin system with lots of plugins available. Overall, I'm happy with it. It does take some time to get everything set up, but once there, it just works.

I only use it to watch TV and recorded shows. I don't watch DVDs through it, etc.

It's just a number. Really.

Would it matter if it was going from version 2007 to 2009 (like MS office)? That's only a 0.1% change. At least .21 to .22 is a 4.5% change!

Star Wars space battles are copied from WWI biplane battles, where nobody can hit targets consistently, even at short range.

YES! We have technology today that can keep a laser pointed at a car hood for multiple seconds, from a plane flying by. Why can't they have targeting computers IN THE FUTURE that can do anything like that????

Big pet peeve right there. Best episode though from DS9 was the season finale when Sisko tells Warf to enable auto-targeting and all the photon torpedos just start sailing out of the station. Great battle.

I HATED this in Stargate SG-1. Where Carter would have to explain everything to Jack, in every episode. I turned off of the series, just for this reason!

Firefily: Very good.
Star Wars: Very good (hyperspanner was about it)
Star Trek: horrible. as everyone else has pointed out.

It just makes the series feel dated.