Comcast is not blocking NetFlix.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gyG28E
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
The Unintended Humor in Wikileaks Criticism
The humor is dark, but it's there. I'm reminded of Mel Brooks' definitions of comedy and tragedy: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/goQE6G
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
The LA Times vs. American Travelers
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
The important thing to remember is that the weak point in American air travel safety is government.
In the long term, it’s the state that makes us targets for terrorists in the first place.
Al Qaeda didn’t hijack those planes because Osama bin Laden got an undercooked hamburger at a fast food joint, or because some big box chain store sold him a defective lawn chair.
They hijacked those planes by way of attempting to blackmail powerful politicians into doing things they don’t want to do by scaring their constituents into demanding it. Take the power away from the politicians and the tactic goes away with it.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/ieUD0m
Monday, November 15, 2010
WillUsingThePrefixCyberMakeMeLookLikeAnIdiot.com
The few seconds it takes to answer some simple questions can save you a lot of embarrassment.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aCF2R0
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Captive Audience
Friday, November 12, 2010
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Real-life gadgets for real-life superheroes
I've aged out of the Hero game, but ten, fifteen years ago... if I had the will this would be the way.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/evw7
Friday, November 05, 2010
Posterous Does What Others Can't
Posterous can post to Delicious and Live Journal, Amplify and Ping.fm can't. I suppose Amplify doesn't need to, auto-posting to Posterous gets the job done but Ping.fm used to. The rang of services Ping.fm can post to seems to be shrinking.
What's the big secret, Posterous?
What's the big secret, Posterous?
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/endz
Thursday, November 04, 2010
The Fed’s Latest Scam
David D'Amato of C4SS brings us play-by-play on the latest Federal Reserve shell game.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
In a press release yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced plans to undertake quantitative easing measures, “purchas[ing] … $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month.” Quantitative easing is the sly euphemism used to describe a policy whereby, instead of attempting to pass another highly visible stimulus package through Congress, the central bank purchases the federal government’s debt obligations.
If we didn’t know better, we might speculate that, considering its profligate spending, the Fed has a cache of wealth in a secret vault somewhere, some tangible value to back up its decision. Careful to characterize its latest move as a legitimate treatment for an ailing economy, the many voices of the Fed have stressed that the maneuver is a value-for-value exchange as opposed to a gratuitous handout to the banking/creditor class. While the Fed is paying for something — government Treasury bonds — it is acquiring that something at a price that no one in a market completely free from coercion would ever ante up for such rotten debt.
By diluting the money in our wallets, essentially dividing our dollars into parts and pretending those parts are worth as much as the original bills, the new round of quantitative easing is a veiled tax. Quantitative easing therefore operates to drain the real wealth out of productive society for sake of the banking elite, relieving their books of the debt that only an institution financed by brazen theft would buy; this is the perverse spectacle of the state-created and -backed central bank buying the state’s securities with the state’s fiat currency.
A system that allowed free market banks or credit unions to circulate their own currencies would reestablish the link between money and the things or services it is exchanged for; ratios between competing currencies would, in turn, provide the kind of price information that the state’s coercive system is so perilously lacking.
The Fed is showing the world what anarchists have always understood, that more regulation and state involvement in the marketplace and in banking are jeopardizing rather than protecting the average consumer. The free market, emancipating the working class and shattering privilege, is the lone answer to the corporate morass we’re stuck in today.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/el91
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Obamacare Feeds Insurance Oligarchs
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
Today, a Wall Street Journal opinion column titled Big Business, Big Medicine reports the “turn toward consolidation among insurance companies,” a “dynamic [that] is leading to much larger hospital systems and physician groups, and fewer insurers dominated by a handful of national conglomerates.” If this seems an anomalous result from an administration thought to represent a departure from the corporate cronyism of its predecessor, then the blatant and contrary writing on the wall was apparently ignored.
Like all regulations declaredly subduing Big Business predominance over consumer’s lives, the new laws synthesize “public” and “private” — both of which are ultimately meaningless is our system — boosting an already corporatist economy for health services. As we might have foreseen, the politicians’ solution nurtures a condition whereby smaller “carriers will collapse under the new mandates and higher overhead.” So in the face of everything the President said about “not accept[ing] the status quo as a solution” in health care, “Obamacare” delivered for Big Insurance, a cartel that loathes competition and welcomes impenetrable regulation. Both the state and Big Business — adversaries only in the popular imagination — are triumphant, the coordination of the two saddling us with another shakedown scheme.
The United States’ health care system, a teetering house of cards that will ultimately implode, exists through economic fallacy. Even so, by the time the elites’ scheme withers, they will have already thieved more than enough from the productive class; they will, as always, leave insolvency and beggary behind, but they’ll benefit from the presumption that their hearts were in the right place in trying to give health care to everyone. The insurance lobby is getting what it paid for with these policies and this President. We can inaccurately call this process of fraud and favoritism a free market, or we accept that such are the contours of American Capitalism and subscribe to free markets as a means of disbanding these price-fixing protection rackets.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/e156
Monday, October 25, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Michael Moore Almost Gets It Right
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
Michael Moore, writing at Alternet (“Why Republicans Are Always Worried About Their Pet Corporations Facing Any Real Free Market Competition,” Oct. 21), makes a very acute observation: “whenever corporate executives begin talking about how they support ‘free markets’ and ‘competition,’ check to see if you still have your wallet.” The reason is that “nobody” — not even Marxists — “hates competition more than corporations.”
Moore was so close — but he just missed it. Moore frames the issue as one of big corporations trying to suppress competition by weakening the antitrust laws. “When corporate executives start pushing for ‘free market policies,’ what they mean is a government that lets them become a monopoly.”
If he’d said they want “a government that HELPS them become a monopoly,” he’d have had it just right. The main factor behind monopoly isn’t whether government lets it exist by failing to enforce antitrust laws. It’s whether government enables it by erecting entry barriers, suppressing competition with cartelizing regulations, and enforcing legal monopolies like “intellectual property.” Government doesn’t “allow” monopoly. It props it up.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/a2x3Sm
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
How Public Employee Unions Can Halt the Pension Crisis
Brad Spangler at C4SS addresses the coming collapse of state-funded pensions.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
If public employee unions genuinely want to represent the interests of their members, they ought to be sounding the alarm to man the lifeboats and prepare to abandon the ship of state.
Government, at all levels, is bankrupting itself and taking the rest of the country (nay, world) with it. An equity for debt swap is relatively common in bankruptcy cases. In this case, unions can serve as advocates and midwives for a new model of worker-owned privatization that gives rank and file public employees shares of common stock in formerly public enterprises as compensation for the default on pensions that’s inevitably coming, whether they want it to or not.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aTcxh5
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Sharp In Klein
Mike Gibson at "Let A Thousand Nations Bloom" follows through on Ezra Klein's "What if the government were run more like a business?" thought experiment.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9QzvlQ
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Growing too many vegetables is illegal
Monday, October 04, 2010
An Immoral System Can Only Be Sustained By Immorality
(C4SS) Kevin Carson's comments on World War II and the Great Depression.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
I believe that Horwitz, in countering Krugman’s argument with a description of how economic growth would be achieved in a free market, ignores the point that the industrial system we’ve had over the past 150 years hasn’t even remotely resembled a free market. It has been a corporatist system built from the ground up through overwhelming state intervention and massive collusion between big business and big government.
The state has promoted the overaccumulation of capital in mass-production facilities that are only profitable when they can amortize the cost of their expensive specialized machinery by running at full capacity without regard to preexisting demand, and then find some way to dispose of the product. And the only way to dispose of that full product has been through state-aided planned obsolescence, state-aided expansion in to foreign markets, direct state purchases of surplus output and surplus capital, and–as a last resort–massive state destruction of output and capital in war.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cuXLVd
Friday, October 01, 2010
One Human’s Taxation is a Tragedy; Three Hundred Million is a Statistic
Check out Third Way's publications here: http://bit.ly/acsApG
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
An itemized receipt for taxes? How lovely and desirable!
A think tank entitled Third Way just issued a paper wherein they analzed what the $5400 in federal taxes the median taxpayer of 2009 (who earned $34,140) actually purchased. Among the reactions in the blogosphere, one recurring comment strikingly resounded.
Writers noted that everywhere else an exchange of goods occurs, a bill of transfer or receipt is produced. Why is one not given to taxpayers in the same manner? An honest and baffling question for American citizens to ponder, with a lousy answer.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9Uohdg
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The Market, Not Government, Is The Worker’s Friend
In the Center for a Stateless Society’s latest study, “Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model,” C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson examines the role of state labor regulation in halting the progress of unionism and explores the gains made for labor by direct action and worker solidarity in the face of combined state and corporate power.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
“The predominance of the conventional strike as we know it, as the primary weapon of labor struggle,” writes Carson, “is in fact a byproduct of the labor relations regime created under the Wagner Act. … In the system of labor relations extant before Wagner, strikes were only one part of the total range of available tactics. Unionism, and the methods it normally employed, was less about strikes or excluding non-union workers from the workplace than about what workers did inside the workplace to strengthen their bargaining power against the boss.”
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/du7zOY
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Fight the Copyright Trolls
Amplify’d from www.eff.org
EFF is trying to help by assisting people in finding lower cost or pro bono counsel, allowing people to fight back without the costs of defense bankrupting them. But in the meantime, these lawsuits are causing tremendous collateral damage — to the individuals targeted, to due process, and to the legal profession (which doesn’t need another example of unscrupulous lawyering). To be clear, no one is arguing that copyright owners don’t have a legal right to protect their works. But it’s quite another thing to game the legal system — and waste judicial resources, i.e., your tax dollars — to make a profit.
Read more at www.eff.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aqutAU
Banned Books Week: it's back
The L.A. Times looks at the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom top 10 most-challenged books of 2009
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cxwlht
Public vs. Private Charity
Bonnie Kristian addresses a classic false premise.
Amplify’d from bonniekristian.com
Q. Sometimes, when I have conversations with socialists (we call them “New Democrats” in Canada), I have no idea how to counter arguments like: But what do we do about the poor and marginalized? Cutting government spending only ensures that the poor and marginalized in society become more poor and marginalized. Then the elites can grab power and exploit the poor and marginalized. We need a balance, we need more government programs.
A. The “we must save the poor and marginalized one” is certainly a sympathetic one, I must admit. However, it’s also based on a completely false premise: that government helps the poor and marginalized.
In fact, I completed my honors thesis on this very subject of public vs. private charity, and I can tell you that the academic literature on the subject of private charity and comparable public programs is generally in agreement: Private organizations are more efficient and/or effective in their work.
Read more at bonniekristian.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bT37i8
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Artificial Crisis of Contention
David D'Amato points out the dangers of collusion while the MSM moans about "gridlock" and "partisan politics."
"Next time you hear a talking head lament the unwillingness of radicals to 'play ball,' consider what cooperation between agents of subjugation and theft really means."
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
The truth, that Republicans and Democrats represent the same statist orthodoxy, is decidedly more mundane and doesn’t lend itself very readily to the kinds of linguistic overkill used by the mainstream news to present the nonissues of electoral politics. Rather than the hostility-mired war zone lambasted by authoritarians rhapsodizing over the virtues of political compromise, this country’s political process is a paragon of back room collusion, of the connivance between power elites.
And, for some reason, we’re meant to prefer this to the genuine, unaffected, ideological confrontation dreamt up by the mainstream, as if the established “debate” would suffer any idea that actually was fresh or in any way subversive. In the same way that America’s civic lore spuriously pits Big Business against Big Government where the two are actually quite friendly, there is systematic denial in this country about the basic nature of the two-party system. This clueless belief in meaningful inter-party antagonism occasions another, related error, that if opposing politicians could put aside their perceived bickering their collective sage wisdom would overbear any problem society might face, the state of course possessing the magic bullets that no nonviolent institution could.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aYZVFr
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
One Law for the Lion, One Law for the Lamb
More Jobs for Kids
Minimum wage laws are a subtle form of discrimination against youth and other disenfranchised workers.
Amplify’d from reason.org
If lawmakers want to help kids find jobs, they would have more luck fixing the flaws in their current policies, not introducing new ones. The big culprit here: the minimum wage. Minimum wage laws kill jobs by making employing workers more expensive. Youth are especially vulnerable to this phenomenon because they, of all segments of the population, are most likely to work minimum wage jobs: the economics literature is quite clear on this point. Remove the minimum wage and you remove a substantial disincentive to hire young workers. New government interventions, like a make-work program for kids, would only be the latest in a long series of misguided, if well-intentioned, plans to help struggling workers.
Read more at reason.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bC3OXu
Monday, September 20, 2010
How to Record the Cops
Radley Balko at reason.com provides the Hows and Whys plus the Dos and Do Nots of keeping cops honest.
Amplify’d from reason.com
A guide to the technology for keeping government accountable
This summer the issue of recording on-duty police officers has
received a great deal of media attention. Camera-wielding citizens
were arrested in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts under
interpretations of state wiretapping laws, while others were
arrested in New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, and elsewhere
based on vaguer charges related to obstructing or interfering with
a police officer.
So far Massachusetts is the only state to explicitly uphold a
conviction for recording on-duty cops, and Illinois and
Massachusetts are the only states where it is clearly illegal. The
Illinois law has yet to be considered by the state's Supreme Court,
while the Massachusetts law has yet to be upheld by a federal
appeals court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently
issued an opinion concluding that arrests for recording cops are
based on a misreading of the state's wiretapping statute, but that
opinion isn't binding on local prosecutors.
In the remaining 47 states, the law is clearer: It is generally
legal to record the police, as long as you don't physically
interfere with them. You may be unfairly harassed, questioned, or
even arrested, but it's unlikely you will be charged, much less
convicted. (These are general observations and should not be
treated as legal advice.)
One reason this issue has heated up recently is that the
Read more at reason.com
democratization of technology has made it easier than ever for just
about anyone to pull out a camera and quickly document an encounter
with police. So what's the best way to record cops? Here is a quick
rundown of the technology that's out there.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bcpAGr
Friday, September 17, 2010
Developing Sofware for Activists
Entrepreneurs take note, it's a growth industry.
Amplify’d from www.eff.org
Writing software to protect political activists against censorship and surveillance is a tricky business. If those activists are living under the kind of authoritarian regimes where a loss of privacy may lead to the loss of life or liberty, we need to tread especially cautiously.
This post isn't going to get into the debate about the social processes that gave Haystack the kind of attention and deployment that it received, before it had been properly reviewed and tested. Instead, we want to emphasize something else: it remains possible to write software that makes activists living under authoritarian regimes safer. But the developers, funders, and distributors of that software need to remember that it isn't easy, and need to go about it the right way.
Read more at www.eff.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/byNqep
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Servile Mind and the Spirt of Modern Democracy « Let A Thousand Nations Bloom
Mike Gibson of “let a Thousand Nations Bloom” comments on Kenneth Minogue’s excerpt from his book “The Servile Mind”
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cFxvcJ
Disapora social network source code released
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Coming Soon: The War on Tacos
California elitists pursue their agenda of politically correct racism by claiming health issues.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dxgZBH
Friday, September 10, 2010
No Place for Entrepreneurs in todays Economy
Amplify’d from www.nationalreview.com
Read more at www.nationalreview.com
Indeed, Obama believes fundamentally that the middle class owes its existence to the government, not to wealth-creating entrepreneurs or businesses. Without skipping a beat, the president fails to recognize (let alone acknowledge) the difference between a truly free market, where individuals decide how to invest their resources, and a government-directed one that sets collective priorities which require individuals to tow the line for specific policy objectives implicitly defined by the political class:
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/941jiv
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Cisco@25, Cisco In 25 Video Contest
I'm betting on the "fire-hardened spear" to make a big comeback as the world degenerates into squabbling factions of religious zealots.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/d2aH2k
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Remember Constitution Day Sept. 17th
Amplify’d from thefire.org
Over the past few years, college students have embraced Constitution Day as an opportunity to remind fellow students about their rights on campus. Liberty-minded student groups host creative and attention-grabbing Constitution Day events to kick off the new school year. You can catch 2010 FIRE intern Nico Perrino with his group's "guerrilla gorilla" here, or read about Florida Atlantic University's "food for freedom" exchange here.Read more at thefire.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9JS7kE
Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round
Classically Liberal on the shift of power and the growing horde of "libertarians by default."
Amplify’d from freestudents.blogspot.com
The two extremes in modern politics are busy-body Democrats and busy-body Republicans. The Democrats are dominated by the Nanny Statists and the Republicans dominated by nasty Theocrats. Given those choices I too would like the Democrats more. The Democrats think I'm stupid and need them to care for me. That is pretty disgusting. But what really scares me is that Republicans think I'm sinful and need to be punished. While trying to stamp out stupidity is, well, stupid, trying to force people to be virtuous is downright dangerous.Read more at freestudents.blogspot.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aRXv8q
Business Start-Ups Creating Jobs
Anthony Randazzo brings us the numbers on new business and job creation at the Reason Foundation "Out of Control Policy Blog."
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/b5bhDR
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Kicking the Backside of the State with an Invisible Foot
Mike Gibson at "Let a Thousand Nations Bloom" reintroduces the concept of "The Invisible Foot" and its application to government services.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9fth4e
Let’s Open a Wireless Window to Cuba
Monday, August 30, 2010
Two Schools of Internet Pessimism
Adam Thierer at The Technology Liberation Front posits two schools of doomsaying regarding Internet policy:
1. Net Skeptics, Pessimistic about the Internet Improving the Lot of Mankind
and
2. Net Lovers, Pessimistic about the Future of Openness
He discusses their elitism, their desire for intervention and counters them with evolution. Please read:
Amplify’d from techliberation.com
Despite their different concerns, two things unite these two schools of techno-pessimism. First, there is an elitist air to their pronouncements; a veritable “the-rest-of-you-just-don’t-get-it” attitude pervades their work. In the case of the Net Skeptics, it’s the supposed decline of culture, tradition, and economy that the rest of us are supposedly blind to, but which they see perfectly—and know how to rectify. For the Net Loving Pessimists, by contrast, we see this attitude on display when they imply that a Digital Dark Age of Closed Systems is unfolding since nefarious schemers in high-tech corporate America are out to suffocate Internet innovation and digital freedom more generally. The Net Loving Pessimists apparently see this plot unfolding, but paint the rest of us out to be robotic sheep being led to the cyber-slaughter since we are unwittingly using services (AOL in the old days; Facebook today) or devices (the iPhone and iPad) that play right into the hands of those corporate schemers who are out to erect high and tight walled gardens all around us.
Unsurprisingly, this elitist attitude leads to the second thing uniting these two variants of Net pessimism: An underlying belief that someone or something—most often, the State—must intervene to set us on a better course or protect those things that they regard as sacred. They either fancy themselves as the philosopher kings who can set things back on a better course, or they imagine that such creatures exist in government today and can be tapped to save us from our impending digital doom—whatever it may be.
Read more at techliberation.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bqBXb3
Second Newspaper Chain Joins Copyright Trolling Operation
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Friends of the “Free Market” Are Its Worst Enemies
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
The people who talk most about “free enterprise” and “free markets” in American political discourse, far from actually favoring those things, have appropriated the label “free enterprise” for their system of corporate welfare, corporate protectionism, and crony capitalism.
Quite frankly, I’m thoroughly sick of seeing right-wing Republicans referred to as “free market fundamentalists” by people like Thomas Frank. I’m sick of seeing “free market” treated, on the Left, as synonymous with a modernized version of Robber Baron capitalism. But it’s hard to blame them for this, considering that about the only people you see praising “the free market” in the mainstream media are, well, Robber Barons.
The private sentiments of the so-called friends of “free enterprise” — people like Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, and Dick Armey — are probably more honestly represented by former Archer Daniels Midland CEO Dwayne Andreas: “The competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy.” “The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.”
Tom Friedman, the foremost defender of corporate globalization, knows exactly what the system really requires:
“For globalism to work, American can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
But then, I like the cheerfully sociopathic Blago unknowingly recorded on the phone (“effing golden”) a lot better than the guy on the talking head shows who lifts his eyes heavenward and compares himself to Gandhi and Mother Theresa. At least with people like Andreas and Friedman, you know what you’re dealing with. No hokum about “free enterprise.” Just flaming death from the skies for anybody who fails to ratify the Uruguay Round TRIPS accord or stops using the dollar as a reserve currency.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cm0VG2
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Time To Divorce Marriage and Government
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
Marriage licenses are a fairly new invention, created in the mid-nineteenth century as a tool the state could use to enforce social proscriptions on interracial marriages. By the early twentieth century they were nearly universally required as enforcement tools for the state’s increasing regulation of inheritance, parental authority, taxes and other matters. Churches were subsumed into the new regulatory scheme — required to themselves obtain licenses both as establishments and for their officiants, in order to perform wedding ceremonies and act as agents of the state in enforcing those licenses.
A license is defined as “the permission by competent authority to do an act which without such permission, would be illegal.” By obtaining a marriage license, a couple is begging for permission of the state to marry, which places both love and the church under the authority of government. While the state often condemns polygamists, it requires couples to marry a de facto third spouse — the government itself.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/90XV8U
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Breaking the Information Monopoly
This is the kind of article that gladdens my heart. No blamethrowing, no psychorants made up of buzzwords and soundbites. An honest assessment of what's happening and what can be done.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
What the current information landscape represents is an inkling of a free society in practice. Cheap startup costs and the distribution of knowledge foster nearly unlimited competition. Trust can be verified by sourcing (which makes news research more participatory), by recommendation from trusted services (which is based on individual choice and reputation, not on legislative mandates), and by peer recommendation. This is good news for those of us who don’t trust the authorities to put our interests ahead of the interests of those who make a living by advising them.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/b0Pd4C
Do We Really Need WikiLeaks?
Nick Ford at C4SS asks the musical question "Do We Really Need WikiLeaks?" Well, yes, we do. But more in the sense of leading by example than irreplaceability.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
What would happen without Assange and WikiLeaks? In little to no time they’d be most likely be replaced. The social networking revolution against top-down hierarchies like the state would continue with or without them. It is a given that there is no reason to rely on WikiLeaks or one organization to carry on the work of delegitimizing the state in the public mind. Rather, this can be continued through networking on an anonymous, decentralized, and horizontal manner. There is no need for any central organization such as Wikileaks in the first place; the individuals that take the action and have the drive to go against the state are the true heroes.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/biZPla
Monday, August 23, 2010
Pain Ray Installed in California Prision
An Active Denial System (called "Assault Intervention System" in the article) being tested in California correctional facility.
Amplify’d from www.pasadenastarnews.com
The "Assault Intervention System" (AIS) developed by the Raytheon Co., could give the Sheriff's Department "another tool" to quell disturbances at a 65-inmate dormitory at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correctional Facility, said Cmdr. Bob Osborne, head of the technology exploration branch of the sheriff's Department of Homeland Security Division.
AIS fires a directed beam of invisible "millimeter waves" that cause an unbearable burning sensation by penetrating 1/64 of an inch into the skin, where pain receptors are located, said Mike Booen, Raytheon's vice president of advanced security and directed energy systems.
The beam, which is about the diameter of a compact disc, causes an instant and intolerable burning sensation when it touches skin, but the sensation stops instantly when the device is turned off or the target moves out of the beam.
Similar devices have already been sold to the U.S. military, however the machine demonstrated Friday is the first to be placed in an American correctional institution, sheriff's officials said.
It is being installed as a test case at no cost to the Sheriff's Department, as part of a program through the National Institute of Justice, officials said.
"Millimeter wave" devices have been tested on more than 10,000 subjects so far and has been shown to cause no lasting injuries, Booen said.
The unit at the Pitchess Detention Center has a range of 80 to 100 feet, which is more than enough for the dormitory space it's to be used in.
When asked if the public can expect to see similar AIS devices mounted on patrol cars in the future or attached to deputies' utility belts, Osborne said, "not in my lifetime."
But Booen said his company is working on much smaller versions of the AIS. Progress on that research is a closely held secret, he added.
"That's our vision," said Booen. "We want to get to the point where it is a hand-held device."
Read more at www.pasadenastarnews.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dvzRht
Friday, August 20, 2010
DIY Industrial Revolution
Kevin Carson has a nice intro to minifacturing over at C4SS.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
The main material reason for the factory system and the predominance of wage labor was the technological shift a couple hundred years ago from relatively inexpensive, general-purpose artisan tools to expensive machinery. Only the very rich could afford the machinery required for production, and they then hired wage laborers to work it.
The computer revolution, and the revolution in cheap garage-scale machine tools, have reversed this shift. The computer is a cheap, general-purpose artisan tool that has destroyed the quality gap between what a person can produce at work and what they can produce at home, in a whole range of industries: software, recording, and desktop publishing, among them.
And now cheap digital machine tools mean the same thing for manufacturing. Open-source hardware hackers have come up with homebrew versions of CNC routers, cutting tables, milling machines, lathes, 3-D printers, etc., that cost one or two thousand dollars (or less) to build — compared to tens of thousands for commercial, proprietary digital tools, and millions for a factory equipped with old-style mass production machinery.
So a garage “factory” with $10k worth of homebrew machinery can do most of what used to require a million-dollar factory. And with a network of open-source hardware designers, it can design its own products, and produce “lean” style: producing in small batches and switching back and forth between lots of different products as the orders come in, and gearing production to a local/neighborhood market. That means low overhead, no inventory, drastically reduced shipping costs, and no mass-marketing costs.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dCqfcR
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
How to Be an Ideas Factory: Loosen Your Grip on Your Creations | BNET
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
'John Doe' Speaks Out After 6-year Battle With FBI
Earlier I posted some views on voting ( http://drewt333.amplify.com/2010/08/05/hello-im-drew-im-a-voter/ ). As we learn in PoliSci 101, voting is only a tiny slice of the activism pie. Here's a story of one man who defended his right to be heard while defending the privacy of others.
Amplify’d from www.wired.com
The owner of an internet service provider who mounted a high-profile court challenge to a secret FBI records demand has finally been partially released from a 6-year-old gag order that forced him to keep his role in the case a secret from even his closest friends and family. He can now identify himself and discuss the case, although he still can’t reveal what information the FBI sought.
“After six long years of not being able to tell anyone at all what happened to me – not even my family – I’m grateful to finally be able to talk about my experience of being served with a national security letter,” Merrill said in a statement. “Internet users do not give up their privacy rights when they log on, and the FBI should not have the power to secretly demand that ISPs turn over constitutionally protected information about their users without a court order. I hope my successful challenge to the FBI’s NSL gag power will empower others who may have received NSLs to speak out.”
Read more at www.wired.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9I3Hgv
Monday, August 09, 2010
House Ready to Pass the "Whatever" Bill
I know this for a fact: if I signed off on anything with "XXXXX" as a title, $26 billion worth of spending aside, I would be in the street before the ink dried.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/daDdcs
Friday, August 06, 2010
Darian Worden on Practical Anarchy
The principles of liberty, classical liberalism, and anarchist society.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9uSPCY
Help Fund the Punk Mathematics Book
Check out the previous interview and judge for yourself just how badly the world needs this book.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cCHlaV
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Hello. I'm Drew. I'm a voter.
Tom Knapp over at C4SS manned up and admitted he has a problem.
He's a voter.
Well that monkey's on my back too, and he's got his teeth in my neck pretty deep.
"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." ~ Otto von Bismarck
Voting is indeed part of the ugly, filthy, bloody, bone-grinding process of turning your hopes, dreams, ideals and principles into law sausages and I'm hooked. I don't vote to "win." What is there to win? I vote so the sleazy spin-meisters of the Demopublican elite know what extra hoops they have to jump through before they can even dream of getting my vote.
And I won't vote for them. I'm cruel that way.
Some say "If voting could change anything they'd make it illegal." Did that work for booze? Has "making it illegal" worked for pot, sex, cheating on your income tax? No.
If voting could change anything they'd regulate it, making sure you could only do it at approved times in approved places for approved reasons.
And if they don't approve, it doesn't count.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
Yes, I voted. Schlepped down to the polling place on Tuesday, presented my papers, and poked the screen until the machine informed me that I had successfully cast my ballot.
The anarchist arguments against voting (“it only encourages them;” “if it changed anything, they’d make it illegal;” “it falsely legitimizes the system”) all strike me as sound, although Murray Rothbard’s “voting as self-defense” argument holds some water, too.
The “voting as self-defense” bit was part of what got me this time (this one last time, just this one last time, I keep promising myself).
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cGWK5D
Armistice Day on Net Wars? Not Yet
Will Google and Verizon make a stand for internet liberty? Or is this the thin end of the wedge for federal regulation?
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9m37xf
Net Neutrality, Verizon and Google: A Separate Peace?
"The buzz in telecom policy circles this morning is the word that Verizon and Google are close to an agreement that will allow the search giant to purchase from Verizon a faster tier for delivery of its bandwidth heavy services, notably YouTube, its video-sharing site.
"If the two companies reach an agreement, it could be a death blow to the entire “non-discriminatory” idea behind network neutrality: that no service provider should be give favored treatment to any service or application. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has made it a mission to get the “non-discrimination” principle encoded into law, to the point of calling for reclassification of broadband ISPs as regulated telecommunications carriers."
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/a2jrG6
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Time to Feel Good About Feeling "Bad"
“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
For many years I believed my constant irritation with the willful ignorance and thundering stupidity copiously displayed by humankind was something to be ashamed of. But shame and regret couldn't stop the natural, logical revulsion at blatant displays of smug corruption and gleeful malice. For my own self-preservation I decided to enjoy my "bad attitude." In a moment of zen-like clarity I entered a state of "joyous antipathy." I learned damn quick that my feelings of self-righteous superiority were no less despicable than the smug boasting of any schoolyard bully.
"Hate the sin, love the sinner." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Well, "love," is a rather strong term. I think I'll stick with a sort of "compassionate distaste" for now. I will enjoy the freedom to call "Bullshit!" when I smell it. While the freedom lasts.
Amplify’d from c4ss.org
The next time you hear complaints about someone having a “bad attitude,” keep this in mind: It’s entirely because of people with “bad attitudes” that you’re not a slave. For the fact that you’re not working on a chain gang building a pyramid, you should thank all those whose previous bad attitudes won your present degree of freedom. Their bad attitudes echo down to us through time as the principal obstacle to your re-enslavement in the here and now.
When, in all of human history, have those with wealth and power ever willingly surrendered the tiniest crumb of it, or extended the range of freedom by a single milimeter, merely because in the goodness of their hearts they thought it would be a nice thing to do? Have the classes that own the world ever voluntarily reduced the tribute they charged to labor?
No. Throughout history, what Adam Smith called “the masters of mankind” have been motivated by a single “vile maxim”: All for ourselves and nothing for other people. They have departed from it only in the face of resistance. To quote Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand.
Read more at c4ss.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aFBMH6
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Egalitarians Against Democracy
On the drawbacks of democracy and the advantage of a market in governance.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/awvwjA
Consumer Spending Doesn’t Drive the Economy
Amplify’d from www.thefreemanonline.org
The truth is that consumer spending does not account for 70 percent of economic activity and is not the mainstay of the U. S. economy. Investment is! Business spending on capital goods, new technology, entrepreneurship, and productivity are more significant than consumer spending in sustaining the economy and a higher standard of living. In the business cycle, production and investment lead the economy into and out a recession; retail demand is the most stable component of economic activity.
Read more at www.thefreemanonline.org
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bc3ziJ
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