Verizon Must Die
"Political 'moderate' is a liberal code word for a slower walk to tyranny." -- Dan Belcher
#
My mother gave me some money for my birthday (it's tomorrow, I cashed
the check a couple of days early), so I bought at Best Buy yesterday a
Saitek X45 stick and throttle to fly the
1945 Skyfighters WWII era flight sim, which I ordered. I flew the
demo version yesterday. Works good. (Gamers Depot's Joel Durham, Jr.
gave the X45 six drips when it came out back in January of 2002. I
didn't base my purchase on his review; it was just the nicest looking
barely-affordable stick they had at the local Best Buy.) I spent huge
amounts of time on Skyfighters on my Macintosh a few years ago
(pre-blog, but post-wedding, much to my wife's chagrin), when it was
called WWII Skyfighters and ran only on the Mac. Engaged in lots of
4-person dogfights over my modem (peer-to-peer networking with one of
the players hosting the others). Now it runs on both Mac and Windoze
and supports eight-player internet dogfights. Hopefully, there's still
a community of pilots out there. They have an IRC server, but when I
went to it a week ago, nobody but a bot was there, and this weekend
it's refusing my connection attempts.
I also got the cheapest DVD player they had, the
Cyberhome DVD 300 ($32 after $5 rebate). It worked fine for the
movie I watched last night. I've been using my computer up to now to
play DVDs, but my local video store is about to phase out VHS tapes,
so I wanted a player that plugs into the TV.
# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Free State Project - Niel shares his opinion of the Free State Project. [tle]
In all of that time, for more than four decades, I have seen, and sometimes been involved in, every conceivable manner of libertarian enterprise--every attempt imaginable to discover, or to manufacture if need be, a truly free society--from sitting around listening to freedom and psychology lectures on vinyl 33 RPM LPs, to planning landfill operations on Pacific atolls, to establishing a "rational libertarian church", to the founding of our own political party in 1971.
The unvarnished truth is that, in terms of winning the quality and quantity of freedom each of us desires, these various undertakings have historically met with greater or lesser degrees of success, mostly lesser. Some even set us back. Most are long gone. A handful struggle on to this day, despite the fact that they largely failed to live up to the promise we wished and hoped they represented when they began. Perhaps for one or two of them, the whole story has yet to be told.
But now, the Free State Project has put the words "libertarian" and "movement" back together again, for the first time in something like thirty years, and I am more personally grateful than I can adequately express, because it is the Free State Project that stands the greatest chance, in my opinion, consistent with my understanding of history and human nature, of transforming the fictional worlds of freedom, adventure, and romance I have created in my novels into a reality.
# Carl Bussjaeger at The Libertarian Enterprise - Boycott of Verizon Communications - their "Code of Business Conduct" forbids employees to be armed while on the job or using a company vehicle. They fired Jeffrey "Hunter" Jordan for being armed while on vacation in his personal vehicle, without the contractually-mandated hearing. I currently have no business dealings with Verizon. This ensures that I will not do business with them until they change their policy and encourage their employees to travel armed. Verizon must die. Use the most powerful weapon in your arsenal, your wallet, to make it so. [tle]
