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Comment All scientific thought is under-appreciated (Score -1) 1130

I'd say all of sci-fi is under-appreciated by society at large, especially hard science fiction, as is science in general. The mob wants fantasy and sensationalist entertainment, and that's what it gets in abundance. The most serious issues that humanity is likely to face in the coming century are ignored. Even the books that everyone has read (ex. Orwell, Heinlein) are not appreciated in full.

And... "U.S. libertarian bent of the Slashdot audience"? Everything is relative, I guess... If that was true by my standards, my karma would be 5, not -1. A few libertarian rants, and you're ostracized for life...

Comment Web history / cache archives (Score -1) 180

What I'm really hoping for is that they'd put up compressed archives of their Web history, or perhaps X most popular sites, segmented by domain name. With solid compression across many raw dumps of similar HTML pages (especially different versions of the same page), that could save >99% of bandwidth compared to a scraper script that loops through "http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/$domain/*" ... That would encourage many people to download their favorite sites to burn on DVD, and perhaps client-side software (ex. cache proxies, "timegate" browser plug-ins, personal search engines, etc) could utilize this data as well. It would also add much decentralization and redundancy, if the goal is to ensure data proliferation in case of a cataclysmic event or government censorship of the Internet.

On a less significant note, I find it interesting that they're not running any BT-specific seeding software on their servers (ex. hekate), relying on Web seeds instead. I wonder what exactly the downsides are: limited BT client support, magnet URL's, etc. It's also interesting that they're not using Metalink.

Comment Glad it's Apache licensed & gets away from wx (Score -1) 280

My fellow supporters of market-friendly free software licenses (as opposed to the commie GNU crap) will be happy to hear that BitcoinJ has an Apache license, and hopefully it will be able to run on the Apache Harmony JVM in addition to the restrictive GPL one from Oracle.

The original Bitcoin client also has a Copyfree license, but it has some restrictive dependencies (ex. wx) and it's a pain to install on *BSD.

About that empty link in the last sentence of the summary - did the author intend to link to a story about commie thuggery against the Liberty Dollar?

Comment Re:Free Staters? (Score -1) 164

Corporations are simply groups of individuals who freely enter into an agreement. A marriage is a corporation of sorts, and so is any charity, club, community Web-site, etc. Any corporation consists of an explicit list of members, and acts on the basis of their rights as individuals.

New Hampshire actually still has the highest business tax rate in the nation, which is what's keeping it from being the wealthiest place in the world, and something that I hope my fellow Free States will soon be able to change.

Don't confuse Free State Project as a central organization, which just promotes NH as a destination for libertarian political migration, with the much broader decentralized Free State movement that is now forming in and about New Hampshire.

Comment Re:Government is ALWAYS the problem. (Score 0) 87

No one said anything about any "utopia"! I'm talking about the pure hard science of economics. (Not to be confused with the socialist corruption of economics that is based on political cronyism and not empirical reality.)

This is the creationism vs evolution debate applied to economics. Human ignorance and failure to understand complex emergence-based systems leads to perceived need for top-down order, whether from the church or from the state. Blind faith in coercive monopolies (governments) cannot reliably produce objectively valid results compared to a scientific process of open inquiry, open experimentation, and individual responsibility for the results (free market capitalism).

The Nordic Potemkin Villages are moderately wealthy (though still much poorer than comparable U.S. states), because they have been the most capitalist countries in the world for centuries, and it takes more than a few decades of welfare statism to destroy it, but their days are numbered. Every time those countries move to the left their economy nears collapse, so they move back to the right, and in spite of high government spending they have some of the highest levels of economic freedom anywhere in the world, which, along with cultural momentum, is what's keeping them afloat.

Private charity is an order of magnitude more efficient at providing for poor people than a government monopoly, because private institutions exist in a competitive environment and are directly accountable to their donors for providing cost-effective results. Government bureaucrats only care about their job security - the more they screw up, the better off they are.

Comment Government is ALWAYS the problem. (Score -1) 87

Don't like companies like Facebook and Twitter - don't use them! I certainly don't. It's that simple!

The real danger to the Internet all of human civilization comes from coercive monopolies that some commie idiots are trying to empower with ever-more control over your and everyone else's lives with Orwellian propaganda slogans like "Net Neutrality". Then unaccountable mafia thugs who call themselves "government" will have 100% control of everything you do on any digital device anywhere!

Resist! Study Anarcho-Capitalist philosophy and economics. Don't vote - it only legitimizes their irrational religion. Don't pay taxes. Don't obey irrational laws.

Comment Re:Fucking fascists... (Score -1) 200

No, you brainwashed politically illiterate little space monkey, Pinochet is one of the least evil leaders Latin America has ever had, and Chile is rapidly becoming one of the greatest countries in the world (ex) in part due to Pinochet's successful defense of that country from communism, in which effort he only spilled 1/1,000,000th the innocent blood that the commies (including the German and Italian variety of commies that called themselves "fascists") have spilled!

To answer some of the other space monkeys who replied (Slashdot limits my daily post count, which, BTW, is a great example of corporate freedom, as well as my freedom to go elsewhere)... Corporations are just voluntary agreements between rational economic actors (i.e. human beings). Every Web-site or open source project is a corporation. Every marriage is a corporation. Every non-profit organization (and free market does eventually lead to the triumph of non-profits) is a corporation. This is contrasted with the overgrown mafia organizations you call "governments", which, like churches that came before them, brainwash the sheep into a creationist view of the world, with them as the sole entity capable of establishing proper social order. If a thug with a knife holds you up on the street asking for "taxes", then he is your "government", for his power over you is just as legitimate. When thugs like that get more powerful, they establish territorial agreements and collusion with neighboring thugs, start reinvesting the loot into their infrastructure (to be able to steal more in the long run), establish a bureaucracy, and brainwash their subjects into a dogma of benevolence. Anyone who sees the government as anything else is either a collaborator thug or a useful idiot.

Comment Awesome news! (Score -1) 231

With my 19-hour-a-day computer screen addiction, I'm looking forward to a time when people can change eyes as easily as they change glasses. A human body is like a car - after every X miles, each part just simply needs to be replaced... 8-)

Comment Legalize it. (Score -1, Offtopic) 209

(1) Open all borders. End all taxation. Auction off all government property and put all politicians / government bureaucrats in work prisons, with the profits going to their victims in the form of tax rebates. Ostracize anyone who ever thought government was a good idea, for any purpose whatsoever.

(2) Install FreeBSD.

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