Opera 6.0 Rocks!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 17 Nov 2001 13:00:00 GMT

I'm now surfing with Opera 6.0 beta 1 for Windows. I purchased a $15 upgrade from my Opera 4.x license. 6.0 is even faster than 5.x. I don't care much about the new look and other new features, but the speed is noticeable. It appears stable so far. I reported one bug. On startup it restores all windows. It should leave minimized the windows that were minimized at the last close.

Salmon Days Cutlets - Ho-Ho-Howard the Happy to Help Paperclip.mpg (495K) - a curse-filled rendition of a highly shared opinion of the Microsoft paper clip. Hehe. I, too curse the paper clip whenever I see it, but I never see it for long. Whenever I do, I right click on it, select "Hide", and never see the bastard again. [brad]

The Herald via freedomofpress.tripod.com - Economist Sees Solution to Looming Worldwide Moron Shortage in FreeRepublic.com - hehe.

freedomofpress.tripod.com - The Politician Who Addressed the Troops - From 1918 Punch's History of the Great War. Hehe.

Wes Cowley - Leonids - we can expect a glorious show from 4-6am EST tomorrow morning. More links in Mr. Cowley's story. [cowlix]

William Safire at the New York Times - Seizing Dictatorial Power - A good characterization of GW's newest Executive Order. Requires registration. Use unknown/unknown for userid/password if you'd rather not register. [script]

Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.

Dave Winer at Scripting News - Even William Safire, a Republican, says that Bush has gone too far. - Dave's commentary on the article above. [script]

Sean Cearley - First They Came for the Jews - It's a good time to remember this classic. They've come for the drug users. They've come for many gun owners. They're starting to come for the non-citizens. How long before they come for you? [script]

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Declan McCullagh at Wired - Bush's Tribunals Under Fire - All that's necessary to challenge GW's new military star chambers is a writ of habeus corpus. Hopefully The Supreme's won't fold. [grabbe]

"To adopt this military tribunal is essentially to throw out the window all of the protections we have for 200 years considered critical to a fair determination of guilt," says Georgetown's [David] Cole. "It throws out the requirement that the trial be public, that the evidence that the government relies on be revealed to the defendant, that there be any judicial review. It throws out the requirement that the government provide exculpatory evidence."

Cole says that "these are the bottom-line constitutional principles that we have concluded are necessary to give a criminal judgment legitimacy."

bob lonsberry - Bring On the Tribunals - Mr. Lonsberry gets another one way wrong.

The Week Online with DRCNet - Medical Marijuana Proponents Prepare to Fight Back After Ashcroft Raids - more "fighting" in the courts. It's time to really "fight". Counties that have decided to allow medical marijuana need to start telling d.e.a. agents that they are not welcome there, have no jurisdiction there, and will be shot on site if they put one foot into the county.

Steve Terrell at The Santa Fe New Mexican via MAPInc - Johnson, Hutchinson To Debate Drug Laws At Yale - Like the Leary/Liddy debates in the 1980s, New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is on a debate tour with d.e.a. head Asa Hutchinson. There was a debate at the University of New Mexico on November 10. Thia article announced a debate on November 15 at Yale entitled "The War on Drugs: A Debate on its Past, Present, and Future." Links to announcements from the d.e.a. and Yale (both of which will be stale soon). A link to the n.p.r. taping of the New Mexico debate (this one looks permanent).

JPFO - To Dr. Laura -- Please Don't Be a Fourth Reich Jew - reasons to oppose a National ID. [jpfo]

Nazi Germany operated its socialist economic program using specially-tailored IBM punch cards and data sorting machines. Registering people and assets, allocating food, running the trains and documenting their doomed human cargo, and even managing the slave labor in the concentration camps. Such efficiency!

Imagine what today's national socialists could do with holographic ID cards, thumb prints, retinal scans and detailed computerized files (including all medical data) for every person in the country, not to mention the microsecond cross-references to vehicle, financial, and firearms ownership data.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds at Fox News - National ID Card Won't Improve Security - a thought experiment on the logistics of creating a National ID.

Let's say that this takes fifteen minutes (the two-hour time for the applicants still holds -- they'll spend the extra time filling out forms and waiting in line). Working seven hours a day (these are federal employees, remember), each employee could process 28 ID applications per day. That means that a million employees could process 280 million applications in just 280 workdays -- let's be generous and call it a year.

Of course, we don't have a million full-time federal employees to do this (if the federal employees we have now can spare this much of their time, we should be laying them off in carload lots), and we can hardly afford to hire so many just for this job. (A million employees at $30,000/year is $30 billion/year, and that doesn't count benefits, etc., that would likely push the cost above $50 billion, without allowing for the non-trivial expense of interviewing,and doing some kind of security check on, each candidate).

This looked good until I inspected Mr. Reynold's arithmetic. 28 ID applications per day per employee times 1 million employees = 28 million applications per day. That's 10 days for 280 million applications, not a year. This cuts the cost to under $2 billion, still expensive, but it makes his argument not nearly as good. I wrote email informing him of his error.

Bruce Schneier - Crypto-Gram Newsletter, November 15, 2001 - Full Disclosure, Crypto-Gram Reprints, News, Counterpane Internet Security News, GOVNET, Password Safe Vulnerability, Microsoft on Windows XP, Comments from Readers. I just skimmed this. Full Disclosure is worth reading. Senator Judd Gregg will not introduce a bill mandating government crypto backdoors.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair