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1

The Show / Re: Mark re: LifeLock

« on: March 24, 2011, 07:38:39 PM »

I guess it's time to call the "no utopias" rule.

Clearly you're right, that there would be "unsolved crimes" in a free market.  I think the important part of the assertion is that their impact would be less without their ability to use the state to protect the very criminals.  Without the monopoly violence peoples' mindsets would subtly change.  They wouldn't be under the false impression that the state is protecting them, and they would be marginally more active in their own protection, which I believe would be better than what we have now.  In support of this, I reference advancements which come from (true) deregulation (however rare) and the resulting increased competition.

To put a slightly finer point on it, reliance on government regulation encourages consumers and other actors to think that they don't need to regulate things for themselves. Furthermore, because the state is inept/corrupt, it generally does a poor job of obtaining the stated goals of those regulations and/or the entities carrying out those regulations can be outright highjacked to serve the interests of the powerful. The consequence of all this is that the bad actors (1) have a centralized venue through which to enable any malfeasance that has a relatively low barrier of entry (campaign contribs or other lobbying), and (2) can get away with more because the government, even when not corrupt, sucks at what it does.

2

General / Re: Free Talk Live Silver Bar

« on: March 24, 2011, 06:58:00 PM »

I answered Neither since, at the moment, I would prefer a more widely minted coin like the eagle. If I thought I could do useful things with less-recognizable silver (and I'd say there's a reasonable likelihood of this in the future), I would rather not be subjected to the production overhead of the shiny coins.

3

General / Re: RAR files

« on: March 24, 2011, 05:56:48 PM »

(1)  For all you know I could be posting this from vim or a relatively simple perl script.  I'm not, but I coulda...  

(2)  Web browsers are completely different from system tools, because they deal with visual concepts.  That, and graphics editing apps, are the only scenarios where using a mouse is justified.  There's nothing visual about saying "extract this file".  People who use a computer for the long haul are a lot more efficient without the GUI.

(3)  Web forums would have been better with an NNTP gateway for fallback.

Of course you could use another method get/view web pages. But you don't because it is inconvenient and makes the web less useful to you. I happen to agree that using a shell/command line is more convenient for many, many things (including most explicit file manipulation operations), but that is neither convenient nor appropriate for many (arguably most) computer users.

I'm not really trying to start a thing here; the point of my original comment was to point out the irony of using a GUI as the tool through which you express your distaste for GUIs.

4

General / Re: Focus on Peace’s First Action

« on: March 24, 2011, 04:33:21 PM »

King of Prussia, PA – Focus on Peace held its first action the "Sign Wave for Peace on the Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq" on Saturday, March 19, 2011. It was a success with five peace lovers coming out to mark the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. We stood on a very busy street corner in King of Prussia, PA. Our message seemed well received there compared to other places I've done this kind of peace advocacy at. There were many "honks for peace" and few insults.

http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2011/03/focus-on-peaces-first-action.html

You seem very optimistic considering that the US entered a new war (Libya) while you were standing there protesting.

5

General / Re: RAR files

« on: March 24, 2011, 01:49:04 PM »

(1)  GUI's are for losers.  Install Interix or at least Cygwin and use the `unrar` command.

And learn to use the command line before your brain rots. 

How do you feel about the fact that you are posting these anti-GUI sentiments to this forum via a web browser?

6

The Show / Re: Suggestions for Marks "Edgington Post" Interviews

« on: March 21, 2011, 04:33:11 AM »

The guy who did the movie "FatHead" would be a great interview.

His general blog...

The FatHead blog...

This.

I stumbled upon Fat Head via Netflix Instant last week, and was pretty impressed. His blog is pretty interesting as well -- thanks for the tip, Kenneth!

7

The Show / Re: Stop the Sunbeam Bullshit...please :)

« on: March 21, 2011, 03:58:40 AM »

Sunbeam is pretty funny. If she was slightly more coherent she would make for super interesting radio but since she rambles a lot I'll give her a 6.5 out of 10.

8

The Show / Re: 3 hosts 1 caller

« on: March 21, 2011, 03:43:38 AM »

h(maybe fields of expertise e.g. Ian on drug laws and Mark on...advertising), callers would do it naturally.

I gotta stick up for Mark on this. He is also the expert on prison, the bible/religion in general and other specific topics that aren't coming immediately to mind. He also brings a lot of value to the show's content since he tends to be more pragmatic (though this seems to be becoming less true over the last year or so), which counterbalances Ian's ways.

9

The Show / Re: Gary Johnson

« on: March 21, 2011, 02:53:03 AM »

Mostly you.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate their similarity as a 4.

10

General / Re: Any good resources for an employee to opt out of income taxes?

« on: January 11, 2011, 01:20:03 AM »

After debating over this step for a long time I want to opt out and remove my "support" for the system by stopping bi-weekly contributions to the government. If I worked for myself or was a contractor this would be easier, but as an employee my employer withholds the money from my paycheck, so if I just stop filing I lose thousands of dollars to the state.

From what little I've found about the topic the employer may be required to forward my W4 to the IRS if I mark exempt. If I were to mark off 9 exemptions they would take much less of my money but not all of it.

Obviously the fear is being put in a cage for not paying them so I'd like to take the least risk as possible with my change but understand that the choice doesn't come without risk.

Are you the guy who called into the show about this issue a little while ago (maybe around 01/01/11 or so)? If so, I have some advice for you that I will just throw out there (and if it doesn't apply just ignore me). You mentioned that you work for a a company that does defense contracting. If one of those contracts is audited, your company will be in some shit if it is found that one of the people on the contract doesn't pay their federal taxes (they actually look for this when auditing contractors).

You may not care about this, but I will point out that that since their ass is on the line if one of their employees doesn't pay taxes, they probably will not look so kindly on it if you are one of these (and they probably have processes in place to identify and minimize their risk in such situations). In summary: if this is your situation there is a strong chance that you could lose your job.

I'm with you on the morality of this, but in practical terms it doesn't seem like a good idea. But more power to you decide to pull it off and you do it unscathed.

11

General / Re: 'Exterminator' armored truck will watch Illinois neighborhoods

« on: October 26, 2010, 01:21:27 AM »

I cant see this ending well. And it is such harassment to the peoples houses they park it by. What if a person in one of those neighborhoods builds their own and uses it to harass the police department?

I like your thinking, but a better analog would be to park it front of the sheriff's place of residence.

12

General / Re: Average Person Cheats Death 5 Times

« on: May 11, 2010, 08:14:49 PM »

Just to hate on an otherwise fine thread, it isn't really "cheating" death to win an 80/20 (or 4) against it.

13

General / Re: Dad orders drink. Kid sips drink. Mom calls police on restaraunt.

« on: May 04, 2010, 01:31:52 AM »

This kind of shit baffles me. How did this mom figure out how to stay alive for 22 years when she is clearly retarded?

14

General / Re: get my coumputer repaired or replace it

« on: May 04, 2010, 01:19:59 AM »

Another option: buy a PCI network card for like $10.

newegg.freetalklive.com <--- search for pci network card

15

General / Re: "SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS"

« on: May 02, 2010, 10:51:55 PM »

oh, pardon me, they don't want to live 30-to-a-shack....
it's called ''living wage'', something 3rd-worlders know nothing about (their country's problem, not ours)
i would gladly pay $2 a head more for lettuce, if it kept a u.s. citizen employed.....or a few $ more a head at disney...

So go pay more for patriotic lettuce and leave me the hell alone so I can buy normal lettuce.

was i talkin to you, nigga?

Touche!