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Two more articles in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- {@Clinton Budget}: "Would 'paying down the federal debt' and other obligations be a good idea? Maybe. It would be interesting to see if Americans would accept a $200,000 cash payoff, per person (somewhat less for those under age 40), in exchange for the permanent shutdown of the actuarially bankrupt Social Security Ponzi scheme - no more FICA withholdings out of any American paycheck, ever." I certainly would. "Once more, Mr. Clinton has made it clear that even to 'new' Democrats, the care and feeding of the bureaucracy is more important than allowing American families to keep, spend, and invest the sweat of their brow." I heard on the radio this morning some republican congress critter asking whether 1% of the feral tax dole was too much to give back to taxpayers to eliminate the "marriage penalty". No, it's a factor of 100 too little.
- Bonus 2nd Amendment Dialog, part 1 is an email discussion between Vin and T.P., a reader. No excerpt can do it justice, but I couldn't resist: "The purpose of the armed citizenry, as properly pointed out in the amendment you keep insisting we cite correctly, is to preserve 'the security of a free state.' To interpret that as meaning 'the overthrow the government of The United States of America' is disingenuous. There is no need to overthrow a government which is kept within its constitutional bounds by the knowledge that it faces an armed populace ever jealous of its liberties -- nor is there any way to keep any government within such bounds WITHOUT an armed citizenry. The founding fathers knew this. You would merely like to wish away this truth -- demonstrated time and again, down through the centuries... If you wish to live in a country where the citizenry is disarmed, then you do not want to live in the America envisioned by our founding fathers. You can either move to Cuba or Red China, or you can endeavor to repeal the Second Amendment -- instead of trying to twist its real and obvious meaning, which is that any 14-year-old girl must be allowed to buy a shoulder launched heat-seeking missile over the counter at Home Depot, for cash, without showing any 'government-issued ID.'" I'll post part 2 on or soon after February 14, in sha' allah.
A.J. Mayo at Linux Today - As Robert Cringely might have put it...: "What DeCSS lets the consortium do is determine who will make players, and on what terms, and who will provide content. If you can neither encrypt or decrypt the bit stream, you are locked out of both markets. If you purchase a license to use the technology, then the consortium has a way of controlling your actions." A good analysis of the likely real motives of the DVD consortium.
Salon via Wide Open News - The Net Scare: "Once you turn down the volume of the 'Hack Attack!' headlines, you're left with a keener awareness of the interdependent nature of the Internet, and a renewed respect for its fundamental strength as an open platform. On this network, it turns out, where we are all our brothers' computers' keepers, news about problems travels fast, fixes travel fast -- and today's nightmarish 'cybercrime' is likely to be a long-forgotten news blip tomorrow."
ZDNet - Microsoft moves to mandatory registration: "...Microsoft Corp.'s latest anti-piracy measure: forced registration. The company is inserting a new feature into an upcoming release of its word-processing software that will cause the product to malfunction if a user doesn't register after launching it 50 times."
UMass - Honey, They've Shrunk the Logo! Some nanotechnology researchers at UMass have created a logo the size of a red blood cell. Photos included.
Quick "offers a way to convert XML files into a structure of objects, using the classes of your choice." The mapping from XML to Java data structures is described with XML. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a great idea. I wrote a simple state machine to do this for the XML that describes user interface layouts in my User Interface Manager. Had Quick been available then, it would likely have saved me some time. Another one for my links page.
