Disqus - Latest Comments for MikeRT

Re: Open Source is Not the Enemy

MikeRT — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:21:07 -0000

The vendors need the government space because it is so uncritical of them and so driven by CYA politics over efficiency. It's an enormous cash cow for them in a way that is proportionally superior to private business because the will to fight for the best bang for the buck isn't usually there.

CMS products are just a drop in the bucket. What we really need is for PostgreSQL or EnterpriseDB to very aggressively attack Oracle's position in the government market. Oracle is so expensive, and so overused that it would save tax payers a significantly greater amount of money.

Re: Does TV Cause Violence Against Women? PTC’s “Women in Peril” Report

MikeRT — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:33:22 -0000

The question is whether children are exposed to the types of content we all agree is inappropriate for them.

That's what parental authority is for.

Re: Does TV Cause Violence Against Women? PTC’s “Women in Peril” Report

MikeRT — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:55:26 -0000

If they were truly outraged by this subject, they'd be campaigning aggressively against the way that fathers are portrayed on shows: bumbling, incompetent, immature, irresponsible, overweight @$$holes who have a smart, sexy, saint of a wife who can hit them, condescend to them and degrade them whenever she feels like it.

But as we all know, the PTC is the worst possible bastard child of liberalism and social conservatism. It's what happens when you give that annoying old church lady that no one really likes, and who is always campaigning for taking away someone's ability to have fun or making a federal case out of a minor moral incident, and giving her a lobbyist office in DC with millions in funding.

They don't care about the social issues behind any of this, and certainly not in an honest way. They just want to ruin it for everyone.

Re: Against faith in government

MikeRT — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:24:33 -0000

Tools like MAPLight.org show that there is a strong correlation between campaign contributions and legislative votes. Some of these may indeed be corrupt bargains, and some may not.

They could avoid this by being, as the Bible says, "blameless." Do not associate with the corrupt, do no risk appearing to be associated with them. No politician that I know of lost an election by refusing to talk to a lobbyist, let alone taking campaign money or freebies from them.

In fact, an enterprising politician could probably win a landslide by promising to not take a single dime from PACs, only from voters.

Re: The Dangers of Government-Subsidized News

MikeRT — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:35:23 -0000

Subsidizing it will complete the transformation of the mainstream media into a government lapdog. They already do things like uncritically repost the press releases of prosecutors and the police. Now they'll have a financial incentive to not rock the boat.

Re: Internet Companies’ Bogus Plea for Regulation

MikeRT — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:49:44 -0000

Plain and simple, these companies want regulation to ensure that ISPs can’t capture a larger share of the profits that the Internet generates. They want it all for themselves. Phrased another way, the goal is to create a subsidy for content creators by blocking ISPs from getting a piece of the action.

The ISPs create the perception with the public that they are getting neutral access to these websites with their ISP service plan. If they are secretly jacking these websites, then they are defrauding their customers in a moral, if not legal, sense.

Metered bandwidth is the answer to most of this, but the FCC should be empowered to force them to advertise these policies to their customers so that they do not give them the perception of neutral access to basic internet services.

They can't have it both ways.

Re: Software, the Public Option? Genachowski’s Government iTunes Apps Store

MikeRT — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:38:41 -0000

But if a private company wants to incorporate a government-developed app into proprietary software, they should be free to do so.

I think the LGPL would be the best compromise here. The LGPL would allow them to link it into a bigger app without open sourcing their main product, but require that any changes they make to the open source code get released to the public.

Re: What I Don’t Get about the FTC’s New Blogger Guidelines

MikeRT — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:50:33 -0000

I'd bet good money that most of the violations that get reported are reported by smug, self-assured trolls who think they're doing a public service by reporting someone with whom they disagree.

Re: Lessig: Mysterious, Boring—and LOL Funny!

MikeRT — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:42:21 -0000

“naked transparency movement”—unvarnished access to government data—”is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system off the cliff.”

The public has no idea how bad it is because they've never been up close to the system. They hear vague reports of misconduct, but they are ignorant of the mind and soul-numbing banality and breadth of how badly borked our system of government really is.

When they find out how bad it is, it'll be like a family hearing that not only is the cancer in their loved one's body significantly worse than they'd been told, but that it was easily preventable and that 95% of the treatment money went to cocaine and strippers.

Re: Cyberbullying Hearing Yesterday: Education, not Criminalization or Intermediary Deputization

MikeRT — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:44:11 -0000

Criminalizing what is mostly child-on-child behavior simply will not solve the age-old problem of kids mistreating each other, a problem that has traditionally been dealt with through counseling and rehabilitation at the local level.

While that is true, it also stands to reason that the states should look into ways to update their harassment laws. Most of the minor-on-minor cases that we see in the news are cases where one party is behaving in a way that realistically should be covered by a harassment or stalking law.

Re: Verizon CTO Endorses Metered Broadband, Which Should Allay Net Neutrality Concerns

MikeRT — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:23:51 -0000

$20/month for 10GB is plenty for the average person. If they would set up a $10/5GB plan, then I think we'd see the end of dialup altogether.

Re: The Washington Post Slams Net Neutrality Regulation

MikeRT — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:40:40 -0000

I think a full disclosure policy would certainly be beneficial and one of those compromises that libertarians must make on regulations. The way that ISPs operate is often very weasely, bordering on fraudulent, in the way that they work to instill a perception in their potential customers that they are getting unlimited service for a fixed price. That does need to be addressed.

Re: Jenkins on Net Neutrality & Free Press Hypocrisy over Metering

MikeRT — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:04:07 -0000

Metered usage is the only thing that will make ISPs not play games with bandwidth. Discrimination against different services and web sites only makes sense if your business is providing a rationed supply of bandwidth.

Re: Skype, Child Safety & the Worse Case Scenario Mentality

MikeRT — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:04:56 -0000

This is all part of a greater anti-male bigotry that came into our society as feminism became mainstream. The underlying root cause is the belief that male sexuality is dark and predatory, and women are more moral by nature. You see it all the time in this particular type of moral panic with people automatically assuming that a man who has any interaction with kids not related to him just might be a pedophile. Bloggers like Dr. Helen have written volumes about this issue, and this particular post is only one of many symptoms.

Re: List Recent of State Cyberbullying Measures

MikeRT — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:46:44 -0000

Public awareness does not actually solve the issue of how parents and society in general will control these people. Parents need legal tools with which to sue and even prosecute those who subject their children to serious harassment, defamation and other such systematic, cruel behavior.

Personally, I would settle for the days when a bully's victim could knock their lights out at school without any legal recourse for the bully, but that's a non-starter since most people have been spoonfed that rubbish about violence not solving anything. It stands to reason that if we are going to prohibit their victims from punching them a few times on the playground or between classes, that we owe it to them to let them sue or prosecute their harassers.

Or, I suppose a 3rd option, is to have 4chan set up an escrow account where it can take payments from parents who want Anonymous to go nuclear on their kids' bullies...

Re: Courts Confront Changing Attitudes towards Privacy

MikeRT — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:32:45 -0000

But Mr. Conway is a lawyer. And unlike millions of other online hotheads, he found himself hauled up before the Florida bar, which in April issued a reprimand and a fine for his intemperate blog post.

Punish a guy for saying some hostile things about a judge, but they wink and nod as prosecutors routinely resort to unethical behavior like using the testilies of jailhouse snitches and withholding exculpatory evidence.

With priorities like that, it's no wonder why the public believes the system doesn't work.

Re: More on the FCC’s e-Government Transparency Efforts: ECFS, RSS, Social Media & Setting Priorities

MikeRT — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:25:21 -0000

The FCC needs a modern Content Management System. The announcement of today’s news isn’t available in HTML on the FCC website.

If they implement one for their blogs, it better not be WordPress, considering all of the wondering security issues WordPress has been having of late.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

MikeRT — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:23:29 -0000

I will say that the one thing no libertarian should support, of any variety, is large-scale forcible deportation. It's just not feasible, even if you think we should do much more to control the border.

I think that that remains to be seen. The federal government could certainly scare most of them into leaving by rounding up, say, 50,000 of the 10,000,000 and forcibly deporting them. Given the reach of federal law enforcement, they could have that many detainees gathered up in a month.

I agree with you that it is not feasible to round them up by the millions, but the objection there is utilitarian, not moral. If it were feasible, then there would be no reason not to do it since our immigration laws are inefficient, not immoral.

The most practical case for controlling immigration is that a free society is not just a sovereign body, but that it is priceless, unique thing that must be valued more than short term gains in wealth. As such, it must be very picky to only admit new members who not only are peaceful and productive, but who share its values.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

bszoka — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:11:06 -0000

Before this descends into a "More Libertarian than Thou" catfight, let me simply refer everyone to the excellent symposium conducted in the Journal of Libertarian Studies back in 1998 on immigration, in which libertarians came to a wide diversity of positions on this difficult issue: http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=3&volume=Vo...

I will say that the one thing no libertarian should support, of any variety, is large-scale forcible deportation. It's just not feasible, even if you think we should do much more to control the border.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

MikeRT — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:18:44 -0000

In all fairness to them, if they start a successful partnership like that, I say let them stay. I'd rather have them starting a successful cab company on a H1 visa, than have the government and private business collaborating on deciding what constitutes a successful startup. The possibilities there for corruption are just too high. We are better off just setting an education litmus test and denying them welfare benefits.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

MikeRT — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:00:41 -0000

It doesn't matter what you would call them. There are a number of libertarians like Vox Day who are firmly in favor of enforcement and restrictions on immigration. In fact, some of them like Vox and Ilana Mercer have stronger libertarian bona fides than the average person at Reason or Cato.

Your argument is essentially just a variant of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. I don't believe that law enforcement is generally a function of the state, ergo I generally support the abolition of municipal police departments. Most libertarians don't. Using your method of attack here, I would just write them off.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

Tim Lee — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:56:28 -0000

I think you're confusing a night watchman state with a police state. I have no doubt that there are some people on the right who want to forcibly deport around 10 million otherwise law-abiding residents, but I wouldn't call them libertarians.

Re: More Inflated FCC Indecency Complaints

MikeRT — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:46:07 -0000

At this point, it's a he-said, she-said since the evidence for either claim is not exactly public.

Re: An No-Brainer Immigration Reform: Visas for Start-up Founders

MikeRT — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:43:35 -0000

The main barrier to immigration reform comes from the left. The left is unwilling to protect the borders and enforce the existing laws which has caused a negative reaction to immigration reform in most moderates and on the right. Even the libertarian party in 2004 took the position that a true open borders policy is national suicide in an age of easy international travel and terrorism; a libertarian state needs to know who is coming across the border and what they're bringing with them as part of its night watchman role.

This is an excellent proposal, and if it were combined with a generous work visa provision, enforcement of the existing laws against illegal immigrants, a large increase in the strength of the Border Patrol on both borders and a proposal to make immigrants ineligible for welfare, it would be politically viable.

Re: More Inflated FCC Indecency Complaints

facebook-721697788 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:27:28 -0000

From our own database, Mike.