Don't equate salary and net worth. BillG's 70+ billions is that he's not made his income yet. How do you reduce your tax to just 21%? Cheers Slav -----Original Message----- From: luv-talk-bounces@lists.luv.asn.au [mailto:luv-talk-bounces@lists.luv.asn.au] On Behalf Of Trent W. Buck

actually for # taxes". He said he has paid a total of $US6 billion in tax.

Er, and his net worth is listed as US$72.7bn, so (oversimplifying) I make that out to be around 7.6%. My income tax is around 21% of my salary, so proportionally he's roughly a third as generous as I am. <censorship filter avoidance> yeah, I'm so nice! "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 07:45:19PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:

Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

...

Don't equate salary and net worth. BillG's 70+ billions is that he's not made his income yet.

Hence "oversimplification", though I daresay one of those other taxes I know nothing about (capital gains?) ought to apply.

don't be silly. taxes only apply to those who can't afford loophole exploiting accountants and lawyers to advise them on how to get away with putting their billions into a bogus tax-dodge charity. or "invest" the money in a foreign tax-haven company and "loan" themselves whatever spending money they need.

...

How do you reduce your tax to just 21%?

By being poor?

| 0 - $18200pa nil tax | $18201 - $37000 19c per dollar over $18201 | $37001 - $80000 $3572+32.5c per dollar over $37000

So e.g. if your salary is $20k/ann, that's 0.19*(37k-18k2) / 20k = 9%. Easy.

unfortunately, lots of people are innumerate and find this at least as difficult to understand as per-calendar-month rent not being the same as 4 weeks rent. they see the progressive tax rate of 32.5% and assume that once they hit that magical threshold of $37001 then ALL of their income is taxed at that rate, not just the portion between $37K and $80K. this is why some believe that earning that extra $1 can result in them paying hundreds or thousands of dollars more tax....when that extra dollar really means they pay an extra 32.5 cents tax and have another 67.5 cents in their pocket. in reality, given the progressive nature of the tax scale, the average[1] worker (with an income of $72800) pays $15207 income tax or 20.88% the average income, however, is hugely distorted by unusually high (and unusually low) incomes. the median income for 2013 is actually a lot lower than that, at $57400. income tax on that is $10202 or 17.77%. so you don't even have to be poor to get an overall tax rate of 21%. that's what you pay when you're on a pretty good - i.e. well above median - income....and if you're earning that much, you're earning more than 75% of australians. [1] average and median australian incomes sourced from: http://mattcowgill.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/what-is-the-typical-australians-... who, in turn, references the ABS web site. the median figure is from 2011 rather than 2013, and may have changed a little in 2 years. this was conveniently the first hit when i googled for 'average australian income'. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Linux professional should be on the upper side of the pay scale. That's what I like Linux for - feels like my youth (some assembly is required whatever you do), system administration is perceived to be more complex than that in Windows --> more money, and essentialy capitalist nature of major parties responsible for Linux - Linus Torvalds, Red Hat, IBM. Regards Slav -----Original Message----- From: luv-talk-bounces@lists.luv.asn.au [mailto:luv-talk-bounces@lists.luv.asn.au] On Behalf Of Trent W. Buck

How do you reduce your tax to just 21%?

By being poor? "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):

Also the "essentially capitalist" thing is something you can only believe if you are wilfully ignorant of everything relating to GNU, Debian, or even Linux itself - remember that Minix was always the somewhat commercial OS with source available. Linus could have extended Minix but he decided to make a non- commercial OS that was totally free, he doesn't talk about freedom as much as others like RMS and he is a multi-millionaire, but that wouldn't have happened if Linux was commercial.

Excuse me, but Linux is not 'non-commercial'. It is non-proprietary, but that is a wholly different concept. I and millions of other people use it in commerce, and it itself is also bought and so, every day. I'm surprised to see you make that elementary gaffe in 2013.

Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):

I'm not in any way claiming that Linux can't be used commercially. I am merely arguing that it's not "essentially capitalist".

I took -- and take -- issue with the (your) cited wording that 'Linus could have extended Minix but he decided to make a non-commercial OS that was totally free, he doesn't talk about freedom as much as others like RMS and he is a multi-millionaire, but that wouldn't have happened if Linux was commercial.' This reflects confusion between the proprietary vs. open-source distinction, the one that actually matters, and an illusive and bogus 'commercial vs. free' one.

Minix was created as part of a project to teach OS design and licensed to help sell a text book. That's what I call an "essentially capitalist" OS where anyone can read the source.

The fact that it was written to sell a textbook would have been meaningless trivia if the code had been issued under an open-source licence, but the publisher would not permit Tanenbaum to do so, so it was not done. (That situation has been remedied in recent years.) What something was 'designed for' _is_ meaningless trivia. Linux is used to sell books all the time, and what the OS was 'designed for' doesn't signify. Anyhow, _please_ cease using the word 'commercial' when the appropriate concept is 'propretary'. This sort of error has confused outsiders for decades, and been responsible for pretty nearly all of the rubbish rhetoric about hippy flawwer-power software that we used to hear.

No-one buys Linux.

I do. So do you. Pretty much everything has acquisition cost, including Linux in all of its forms. Don't try to fast-talk me on this one. You'll lose.

Quoting Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) (slav.pidgorny@anz.com):

Linux is as capitalist as it gets.

And socialist and anarchistic! It's a holy trinity!

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, "Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:

Red Hat sells support, not license to run their binaries.

You really should talk to some people who are involved in Red Hat "support" contracts. If it was really just "support" then you would be able to get Red Hat "support" on a single system (and maybe one of the cheaper licenses) and reproduce all bugs/problems on that one system. Among other things you ideally don't want to be trying out bug fixes on production systems anyway so reproducing bugs on a test system that is allowed to have down-time and which has no secret data is a good practice. But companies which pay for Red Hat "support" end up paying for all systems they run even though they usually don't have Red Hat people doing anything to the majority of systems. Every company which has multiple RHEL systems with paid licenses is proof that they aren't just paying for "support".

The GPL restrictions you're talking about don't seem to be that significant - companies use Linux for anything you can imagine.

But they can't ship binaries without shipping the source.

Linux is as capitalist as it gets. On par with BSD and Windows.

Repeating your mantra isn't going to convince any of us who have experience with using and developing Linux. I've had over 20 years experience of using and developing Linux and the difference between Linux and Windows in terms of all aspects of commercialisation is very clear. BSD is different. The source is available but anyone who modifies it is free to distribute binaries without the source. This makes certain forms of commercialisation easier but is still very different from Windows. As you continue this discussion please keep in mind the fact that EVERYONE here knows more about Linux than you do. Feel free to ask questions so you can learn. But don't think you'll be teaching us anything about Linux. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:

...

But companies which pay for Red Hat "support" end up paying for all systems they run even though they usually don't have Red Hat people doing anything to the majority of systems.

Yes, every system you install RHEL on, you pay for a license -- even if you have 10 virtual machines on one host server, you pay up to 11 times.

That's an issue of license terms which isn't really what this discussion was about. As an aside a RHEL license allows you to use any supported version of RHEL on that system. So if you want to upgrade or downgrade it's no extra cost to you - even though it's probably going to increase Red Hat's support burden. Compare with Windows where so many people are buying systems with Windows 8 and then buying an older version.

Oracle OTOH, on such a system, would cost you ONE Oracle Linux license. If you want to run ALL Oracle product on that box, it is far cheaper than using RHEL. Oracle want ALL your business and make it expensive if you choose different parts for your setup .... all due to licensing consideration.

Sure, that's a nice license feature. I believe that Red Hat has offered similar deals at various times, but I'm not an expert on such things. Also if you are buying sufficient quantities then I'm sure that you can phone your Red Hat sales person and give them the Oracle price that they have to beat.

Those wanting RHEL type /assurance/ can probably settle for CentOS as a binary equivalent alternative (on the whole), but even then there are some proprietory parts that Oracle and RHEL only make available under license with a cost.

CentOS isn't going to be exactly the same. The exact binaries are determined by the versions of all headers etc that were installed at the time and also often include things like the user-name of the account doing the build and the build time stamp. One would hope that the strings in binaries which have build times etc don't affect the operation of the program but such hope is sometimes in vain.

All systems are vulnerable at times to one issue or another (including the costly RHEL option), I prefer to stick with Debian stable wherever possible and update it regularly.

I personally prefer Debian too. But the only relevance of Debian to this discussion is as a fairly significant data point disproving any claims about Linux being inherently capitalist.

...

Every company which has multiple RHEL systems with paid licenses is proof that they aren't just paying for "support".

Too true. I like RHEL as an idea, but not with their pricing. And I like Oracle too for some reasons, but not for their lock in.

RHEL is cheaper than lots of other options. The support that they give is really good. If you ever find yourself running a mixture of different Linux systems and have a problem that's not distribution specific then reproducing it on RHEL and calling the Red Hat support line is a good strategy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

G'day -

-----Original Message----- From: Russell Coker [mailto:russell@coker.com.au]

...

Red Hat sells support, not license to run their binaries.

You really should talk to some people who are involved in Red Hat "support" contracts.

Why, I've got you right here, speaking on their behalf. There's no need to use scare quotes - you get support. If you have a problem - you can call a guy, he will answer, and he will try to see your issue to resolution, with reputable organisation backing him. For business customers that apparently beats free support through forums and mailing lists.

If it was really just "support" then you would be able to get Red Hat "support" on a single system (and maybe one of the cheaper licenses) and reproduce all bugs/problems on that one system.

If only I have dealt with issues that are limited to a single system... It's never that easy.

Every company which has multiple RHEL systems with paid licenses is proof that they aren't just paying for "support".

You probably should talk to other people who are involved in Red Hat support contracts. Might as well find out why they are choosing to have support. See, they are not coerced into entering the contract - it's a choice. And if you don't like it - you can go to Oracle for a discount, or start using CentOS or Scientific Linux that make use of free versions of tools that come with RH support, such as RHN Satellite. At any rate, your theory about sufficiency of single-image support in the enterprise is absurd.

...

Linux is as capitalist as it gets. On par with BSD and Windows.

Repeating your mantra isn't going to convince any of us who have experience with using and developing Linux.

I don't think there's much need to convince - this is self-evident: Red hat, IBM, Oracle and hundreds of other companies created a lot of capital (and resulting wealth) on Linux, ad helped many others, including (horrors!) Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse who advised on and underwrote Red Hat's IPO. All that is essentially capitalist.

I've had over 20 years experience of using and developing Linux

I applause your career. Regards Slav "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

On 13/06/2013 6:31 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

You can't just get a copy of RHEL binaries and run them on all your systems.

Actually, I think you can, but only one system has rights to software updates -- which makes it pretty pointless for anything other than a "quick" test on the hardware. A.

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013, "Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:

...

On 13/06/2013 6:31 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

...

You can't just get a copy of RHEL binaries and run them on all your systems.

...

Actually, I think you can, but only one system has rights to software updates - which makes it pretty pointless for anything other than a "quick" test on the hardware.

You can pull updates using single channel and distribute to unlimited number of system however you like without violating Red Hat license. There's no such thing as "rights to software updates" that I know of, that must be some other system terminology, IBM mainframe?

http://www.redhat.com/licenses/ Above is the main URL for Red Hat license agreements, below is text copied from the Australian agreement. Note that it's based on the number of units that you deploy, install, use, or execute. It's not based on the number of channels that you install. # Subscription Units: We charge you a fee for our Subscription Services based # on the total number of Units of Software or other Red Hat Products that you # deploy, install, use or execute (as described more fully in Tables 1.4, 1.5 # and 1.6 below and elsewhere in the Appendix). For example, Software # Subscriptions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server are priced based on the # number and other characteristics of Systems (e.g. Socket-pairs, Virtual # Guests, etc.) on which you install the Software, while Software # Subscriptions for Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform are priced # based on the number of Cores running that Software, in a range called a Core # Band. “Red Hat -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

G'day -

-----Original Message----- From: Russell Coker [mailto:russell@coker.com.au]

You can't just get a copy of RHEL binaries and run them on all your systems.

Sure I can. Download binaries, install on multiple systems, done. And it won't stop working.

...

If only I have dealt with issues that are limited to a single system... It's never that easy.

The basic Red Hat support doesn't cover such complex cases. If you want them to deal with that then you generally need some higher level of support which theoretically costs more. I say theoretically because you can get discounts when paying for RHEL licenses on multiple systems, so while you pay extra to have Red Hat people visit your office to fix things it could end up still being less than the list price for a sufficient number of RHEL licenses.

That's exactly the reason why people buy Red Hat support.

Is there a free version of RHN Satellite? That's all proprietary software so would need to be re-written from scratch.

http://www.spacewalkproject.org/ They open-source every product they use and support.

Also the choice of going to Oracle isn't really an option. Any organisation that would pay for RHEL support isn't going to switch to Oracle Linux to save some money so they are essentially stuck with RHEL.

Oracle will support and update existing RHEL installations. Switching to Oracle kernel is optional (comes with commercial support for Ksplice, which is a bonus). There's always a choice - that's the beauty of open source.

There are also companies that have created a lot of wealth publishing books that are out of copyright such as the Bible. If I found some examples of companies doing no business other than printing Bibles (and I'm sure that there are some of them) would that convince you that the Bible is "as capitalist as it gets

Yes - same applies to any product that is sold and bought on free market. Profiting from making goods and services such as Bibles, communist-themed t-shirts or free software support, is the essence of capitalism.

The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL. RMS believes that proprietary software shouldn't exist. The fact that Linux can be used for business is simply an issue of freedom for users as some companies are users.

Yes, that's result of freedom of choice. Proprietary software exist for that same reason. As free software bests proprietary, more people will switch to it and pay for services instead. Case in point: Android. Regards Slav "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

G'day Craig, all -

-----Original Message----- From: luv-talk-bounces@lists.luv.asn.au [mailto:luv-talk- bounces@lists.luv.asn.au] On Behalf Of Craig Sanders

or that a free market isn't required by capitalism - capitalism works just fine without one, and in fact due to the the concentrated accumulation of wealth, tends towards monopolies.

Monopolies appear and disappear unless they are institutionalised and supported by the state.

buying and selling things is orthogonal to that - i.e. it's something that a capitalist can do, but isn't required.

I'm struggling to come up with an example of capitalist that doesn't buy or sell goods or services. Please?

i blame the americans

But of course. Regards Slav "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 12:54:45PM +1000, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

...

or that a free market isn't required by capitalism - capitalism works just fine without one, and in fact due to the the concentrated accumulation of wealth, tends towards monopolies.

Monopolies appear and disappear unless they are institutionalised and supported by the state.

right, and here we are back at the basis of all Libertarian "thought": bizness gud, gubment bad. doesn't matter what anything is - if it's bad, it's the government's fault. if it's good, that's to the credit of capitalism. as long as you keep on shifting definitions to match your prejudice, you'll never have to actually think about anything.

...

buying and selling things is orthogonal to that - i.e. it's something that a capitalist can do, but isn't required.

I'm struggling to come up with an example of capitalist that doesn't buy or sell goods or services. Please?

well, the obvious one is mafia-style protection - you could invest in a standover racket. I guess you could call that a "service", but that's stretching the definition a lot. most would call that extortion. more seriously, the capitalist *invests* in something that produces a return. that return is often, *but not always*, related to the company they invest in buying or selling goods or services. sometimes, for example, the return is solely from the investment itself appreciating in value (e.g. capital gains). that share-price increase *may* be indirectly related to improved sales or cheaper production costs, and might be a result of increased profits or profit margins....but not necessarily. it may be simply due to herd mentality increasing the demand for shares in a particular company. or because of rumours and lies and marketing. or because the current investment fads favour one kind of industry over another. or because something else is doing badly and everyone need to quickly switch their investments to something - anything - else so that they're not the one left holding the turd. hence buying and selling of goods or services is NOT required. buying and selling things is incidental to capitalism. investing is not. which is why most people who think they're good little capitalists aren't. they're merchants or labourers (perhaps skilled labourers).

...

i blame the americans

But of course.

yes, they're so easy to blame. it's the things they do and say. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 05:19:32PM +1000, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

At any rate, your theory about sufficiency of single-image support in the enterprise is absurd.

you seem to have missed his point entirely. he wasn't saying that RH support is bad, or that you can pay for support on just a single machine and indirectly get support for all your machines, just duplicate the problem on that. he was saying that the fact you can't do that - that RH want you to pay for ALL of the machines you have RHEL installed on - is proof that you're paying for a license, not just for the support.

I don't think there's much need to convince - this is self-evident: Red hat, IBM, Oracle and hundreds of other companies created a lot of capital (and resulting wealth) on Linux, ad helped many others, including (horrors!) Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse who advised on and underwrote Red Hat's IPO. All that is essentially capitalist.

your argument is that because a parasite wasp's larvae fattened themselves on a spider, the spider is essentially a wasp. the big flaw with your assertion is that a spider is not a wasp, it's a spider. and free software is not at all capitalist, it is inherently socialist. you couldn't find a better example of socialism in action - it's ALL about the people owning the means of production (the software). capitalists can use and even exploit free software but even with all of the valuable and worthwhile contributions that some of them (IBM and RH and Oracle and others, but not Goldman Sachs and their ilk) have made, they're still not essential to the process of developing and distributing free software. socialist free software worked well enough before it became fashionable for large capitalist companies to join in, and it would still work well even if they all decided to quit. the one thing that IS essential is the communitarian spirit of giving and sharing - and that's socialism. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

On Fri, June 14, 2013 8:45 am, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

Strangely, it appears as though people can own, buy and sell means of production in capitalist society. On the other hand, all attempts at socialism lead to concentration of means of production under _state_ control and ownership. So you must be talking about some kind of socialist utopia.

Obviously state socialism will lead to, well, state socialism. But not all attempts at socialism are state socialism. For example, a couple of the world's more well-known worker owned cooperatives. Mondragon, Spain http://www.mondragon-corporation.com 83,869 'employees', 14.832 billion Euro revenue John Lewis Partnership, UK http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/ Largest retailer in the UK 84,700 'employees', £9.5 billion revenue Bank Hapoalim http://www.bankhapoalim.com/ 13,581 worldwide, largest bank in Israel Indian Coffee House 400 site large restaurant chain in India On a another level there is the socialisation of other means of production. For example the Georgists advocate the socialisation of the site-value of land as a source for public revenue, but don't mind private ownership of capital (at least they know the difference). As a banking person, I am sure you may have heard of credit unions at some stage as well. -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), MBA, GCertPM mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

Russell Coker wrote:

I've seen lots of debates in both directions about pay etc when comparing Linux and Windows. For each OS there are people who claim that companies should use it because staff are cheaper and people who claim that individuals should become proficient at using it because pay rates are higher.

IME, comparatively, - Windows sysadmins are cheap, abundant, and ineffective. - Unix sysadmins are expensive, rare, and effective. I attribute the former two properties primarily to supply-and-demand economics and the latter to Windows' emphasis on GUIs creating local maxima when it comes to automating routine work. I can't comment on the users, because, frankly, they give me the heebie-jeeebies and I avoid them wherever possible :-) PS: Hm... I may just be spouting platitudes -- I can't remember when I last saw any actual numbers. ^[citation needed]!

On 04/06/13 18:27, Aryan Ameri wrote:

There is a saying somewhere about a teaching a person to go fishing or something which I think is appropriate!

http://ronsays.tumblr.com/post/5851182128/ron-swanson-says-give-a-man-a-fish...

On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 06:27:59PM +1000, Aryan Ameri wrote:

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

...

Dear Libertarians, please try and be as generous as Bill.

Were you talking to me? I actually liked your previous label for me, anarcho-capitalist, much more! ;-)

that was me who said that - i object to the US Libertarians stealing the term from its original socialist meaning...and anarcho-capitalist more accurately describes their philosophy of unrestrained, unregulated capitalism.

Speaking of Bill Gates and charity.... charity creates dependency and stifles innovation and development. If you ask me, one of the major reasons why we still have poverty and hunger in this world is due to the left's need to "save the world".

you haven't read up on your dogma - most anarcho-capitalists praise charity as virtuous and philanthropic because it is a voluntary act by the wealthy. it's government welfare programs that they deride as creating dependancy. and, yes, there is some truth in that - welfare can create dependancy, as can charity. the alternative, letting people starve or suffer untreated illness or homelessness is worse. and those are just the negative effects on the individuals concerned...the effects on society of having a large, desperate underclass are far worse. it's why, for example, muggings and violent thefts are common in the US but relatively rare in civilised countries with a welfare system and public health system. desperation makes even decent people turn to crime if they need to feed themselves or their families....hard times force hard choices on people - rob someone or watch your kid starve or go without treatment or medication. welfare removes that desperation, so only the much smaller number of crazies and sociopaths commit such crimes. from my POV as one of the comfortable middle class, the cost of welfare is a bargain....the dole for a person is about a tenth of the cost of prison, and having relatively safe streets plus not having to turn my home into a fortress is priceless. it's also a good argument for legalising and regulating the supply of heroin and other drugs of dependancy - if junkies could get their fix cheaply and safely, very few of them would turn to burglary or prostitution. many doctors and nurses, for example, have opiate habits but they're able to function normally because petty theft from the hospital supply and bogus prescriptions give them access to their drug without needing to turn to violent crime. (and, given a choice between an alcoholic surgeon and an opiate addicted surgeon to operate on me, i'd have no hesitation whatsoever in choosing the opiate addict. aside from chronic constipation, there are no serious physical problems from long term opiate use - no shakes, no tremors, no DTs. it's the impoverished junkie lifestyle that fucks people up, not the drugs) destroying the highly profitable black-market in drugs would also be of huge benefit to society from legalising and regulating currently-illegal drugs. nobody gets shot or murdered over booze or tobacco deals gone bad, because there are legal means to redress grievances between buyer and seller. and users don't OD and die because they know that the hit they're taking today is exactly the same dosage and quality as the one they took yesterday - no surprise fluctuations in dosage strength.

There is a saying somewhere about a teaching a person to go fishing or something which I think is appropriate!

yeah, it leads to the destruction of the food chain in the world's oceans. the oceans are not an unlimited resource and our plundering of them has already exceeded their ability to heal and regenerate. which is why we have government regulation of fishing catches, and marine parks to give the fish safe breeding grounds. but anarcho-capitalists don't give a fuck about sustainability - future profits and income are irrelevant because it might be someone else who gets them. they want to plunder and loot whatever they can now and to hell with the consequences. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #256: You need to install an RTFM interface.

On 5/06/2013 11:17 AM, Trent W. Buck wrote:

A lot of the stuff I hear about US corrections is pretty horrifying -- like the recent case where a judge was caught taking kickbacks from a prison every time he gave a maximum sentence to a juvenile.

That is scary in itself .. reminds me of the movie Shawshank Redemption..... Cheers A.

I wrote a long reply last night but after seeing The Age this morning I have decided not to send it. it really isn't worth the bother. You're amused and impressed by the label of anarcho-capitalist. You obviously haven't thought through what it actually means - it devolves inevitably to a kind of neo-feudalism, where wealth=might and might makes right. without regulation and laws, things like the following are business as usual rather than crimes that can be prosecuted when they're discovered: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/visa-scheme-rorting-leaves-f... in short, up to $40,000 fees and loans of 48% interest just to get a shit job in australia, with bullshit promises of permanent residency. contracts that include agreeing to being sacked for falling sick or engaging in trade-union activity. threats of deportation for talking to authorities. THAT is what anarcho-capitalism is all about. exploitation, debt-bondage, slavery. Go live in Somalia if you think it's so fucking wonderful. You can even own other people there if you want, without evil socialist rules prohibiting such sales contracts. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 12:38:57PM +1000, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

Craig, you appear to be arguing with a straw man.

no, just a top-posting waste-of-fucking-time troll craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Quoting Lev Lafayette (lev@levlafayette.com):

...

On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 12:38:57PM +1000, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

...

Craig, you appear to be arguing with a straw man.

no, just a top-posting waste-of-fucking-time troll

Play nice, even if you disagree with a person.

Thank you.

Also, we Scandinavians appreciate people not further debasing the concept of 'troll'. <g, d, & r>

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 10:47 AM, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:

Aryan Ameri wrote:

...

PS: I hope I haven't distorted your black and white socialism/anarcho-capitalism view of the world too much!

You really, really haven't :-P

Someone has a sense of humour here at least! ;-) -- AA

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:

and, yes, there is some truth in that - welfare can create dependancy, as can charity. the alternative, letting people starve or suffer untreated illness or homelessness is worse.

There are people in Australia who prefer to live on the dole rather than to get work. If we abolished the dole then it seems unlikely that such people would get a job. I don't think that anyone who is capable of contributing in any significant way is going to become dependent by getting the dole, such people will get a job at their earliest opportunity.

it's why, for example, muggings and violent thefts are common in the US but relatively rare in civilised countries with a welfare system and public health system. desperation makes even decent people turn to crime if they need to feed themselves or their families....hard times force hard choices on people - rob someone or watch your kid starve or go without treatment or medication. welfare removes that desperation,

Yes.

so only the much smaller number of crazies and sociopaths commit such crimes.

http://tinyurl.com/7tkw6ou The above Sociological Images article is relevant, it shows a link between inequality and mental health problems. So not only does welfate dramatically reduce the incidence of sane people committing crimes but it also decreases the number of people with mental health problems.

it's also a good argument for legalising and regulating the supply of heroin and other drugs of dependancy - if junkies could get their fix cheaply and safely, very few of them would turn to burglary or prostitution.

Prostitution should be legal everywhere too, make it strictly a business issue and remove the crime from the industry. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:

On 4/06/2013 2:34 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

...

http://tinyurl.com/lo35nnt

Please provide both tinyurl (if you must) and the equivalent full URL; there are some sites that I just don't care to go to, ever, and I don't want to have to go to sites like this one to expand the tinyurl: http://longurl.org/

Other people have problems with long URLs. I am not providing two URLs for the same site.

Also, with tinyurl, you can do this: http://preview.tinyurl.com/lo35nnt

So.... if you won't give the full URL, at least provide the preview version.

You obviously know how to munge it to your satisfaction so there's no need.

...

Interesting article about Bill Gates on philanthropy, tax, etc.

# On the topic of tech giants being accused of setting up tax avoidance # schemes, Mr Gates said he was "one of those rare people who is actually for # taxes". He said he has paid a total of $US6 billion in tax. # "I feel like the services I get from the government are extremely # worthwhile," Mr Gates said.

It's very easy for someone of the wealth of Bill Gates to push for donations for worthwhile charities ... but often times ordinary people have more than enough trouble just paying their own bills, let alone sending monies overseas; it's nice if you can afford it though.

The entire discussion of Libertarianism etc started from some selfish people not wanting to have hospitals that would never treat them. The typical Randian extremism. Donating to charity doesn't require sending money to other countries, there are plenty of local charities. If "ordinary people" means people on the average income then they will find it quite easy to donate lots of money to charity. If however it means people on the median income then they will still be able to donate to assist people who are less fortunate than themselves. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

...but there are always some who won't follow it, so I do this:

cat >>/etc/hosts 127.254.254.254 blocked.invalid twitter.com facebook.com google-analytics.com ...

You might like my prototype BIND9 conffiles, which resolve locally a great many advertising, data-mining, and similar domains. http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/network/bind9-examples-linuxmafia.tar.gz

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

Not a bind9 fan....

I'm most definitely not, either. Thus the wording in the introductory section of http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Network_Other/dns-servers.html .

but since we're going down that rabbit warren,

[snip] Very nice.

I don't particularly care for adblockplus's lists, but I'm far too lazy to make my own, and I don't know anyone else (other than you, now, Rick) who maintains a list for me.

Yr. very welcome. ;->

Hm, have we had this entire conversation before? If so, apologies for my leaky memory.

It's very possible, and my memory's equally leaky (even if it weren't currently being clouded by a really nice Amarone Classico -- yum!). FWIW, I strongly recommend to people some combination of these alternatives to BIND9: NSD - authoritative only Unbound - recursive only PowerDNS Authoritative Server - authoritative only PowerDNS Recursor - recursive only Although in the past yr. humble servant mentioned favourably a number of other packages the DNS Servers bestiary cited above, IMO the increasing importance of DNSSEC protocols have gradually rendered all packages for *ix except the four cited above second-tier offerings. Well, technically BIND9 is _also_ in the running with those four -- except that its attractiveness is marred by all the various reasons you and I share for disliking it. ;-> -- Cheers, Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, Rick Moen "I know, I'll use Dvorak!" Now they have k,s rosnpdm;e rick@linuxmafia.com -- Colter Reed McQ! (4x80)

Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):

there's also the abine do-not-track plugin for firefox and chromium which blocks tracking spyware.

https://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php

i use it in addition to Noscript and Adblock Plus.

I respect Abine's offerings very much. For a proprietary software company, they seem extremely benign and very nice people. Abine is the company that took the indispensible Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) project proprietary, _but_ they then cooperated and shared information with the subsequent open-source fork from the last open-source version of TACO, a very nice project called BeefTaco. Such cooperation is very commendable and speaks well of them. They're so benign and such nice people that I feel like a bit of a heel in pointing out -- yes, sorry -- the fact you didn't mention (no criticism implied): Abine's do-not-track-me (DNTMe) plugin is proprietary software. And so is Abine Do Not Track Plus. I personally am reluctant to run proprieary extensions, but others will no doubt find great value in that.

*.googleapis.com is also a worry...e.g. the number of sites that use jquery hosted from ajax.googleapis.com rather than their own local copy is astounding. don't they realise that that's yet another web bug that potentially allows their users' identities to be linked across multiple sites by google? or do they just not care? developer convenience trumps security.

Very good point. FWIW, I notice that when I use my trick of resolving advertising / tracking / data-mining domains locally by declaring my nameserver authoritative for them, and even more so when I do that _and_ use the totally indispensible NoScript extension, I and all other users of my infrastructure enjoy _not only_ better privacy and security, but also better Web browser stability and performance. The difference is remarkable.

there's also a trend to make sites impossible to use without javascript.

Yes, I've noticed this. Evil. ;->

we're pretty much at the point where if you want to read something online, you have to allow it to read you too.

I'm still fighting the good fight.

most users don't know, and don't care. worse, they don't even know that they should care, least of all WHY they should care.

Quite so.

nice, but i would suggest a script to generate those zone definitions from a simple list of domains. it's easier and less error-prone to edit and manipulate (sed, perl, etc) an unformatted (one domain per line) list than it is to manually copy-paste-edit zone definitions.

e.g. add 'include "/etc/bind/named.conf.ad-zones";' to named.conf and adding/updating the blocked zone list becomes: 1. edit ad-zones.list, 2. run "make".

[snip] Oooh, shiny! Thank you, I will have a look at that, after I've sobered up (from the aforementioned Amarone Classico), caught up on a sadly large number of other neglected tasks, etc. I really appreciate your taking the effort. Thanks again.

Jason White wrote:

Agreed. Then they make it worse by ignoring W3C specifications (in particular, Aria) so that when I do visit the site with a Javascript-capable browser, it still isn't accessible.

I dunno about aria, but apparently there is this thing called a "DOM", which is why even though edbrowse uses the flipping mozilla js engine, I *still* can't use it for online banking.

We need good, well publicised examples of how the information collected can be (and preferably has been) misused by some site operators.

Bruce Schneier's blog is full of depressing examples of this. There was also that great one where Target knew some teen girl was pregnant before her dad did, by data mining her purchase history. The Target rep then went on to say "people found it creepy when we advertised baby stuff to them before they told us, so instead of stopping that practice, we now mix in unrelated ads, so people don't realize we know". Whee.

There are more subtle issues as well. For example, I heard it mentioned that in one particular study, researchers demonstrated how they could corrolate information extracted from photographs posted on the Web by different parties to make relatively reliable inferences about who the friends and associates were of the people depicted in the images.

Oh there's lots of fun ones. Facebook can find out who you are even if you've never used it, by doing facial recognition (like the international casino cabal) on all the photos your friends uploaded. And I remember a paper about identifying an individual human based on an average of seven (IIRC) timestamped geolocation tags. Not to mention stuff like identifying individual humans based on their writing style or the way they sit on a chair. Shit, now *I* need a drink.

Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:

I dunno about aria, but apparently there is this thing called a "DOM", which is why even though edbrowse uses the flipping mozilla js engine, I *still* can't use it for online banking.

It was announced recently on an accessibility-related list that someone had written a TTY interface to Firefox - it works by running Firefox under xvfb, then accessing the DOM and constructing an interface to present on a terminal. That, at least, is the theory; I don't know what the state of the code is, other than that it's still under development at a very early stage.

Bruce Schneier's blog is full of depressing examples of this.

There was also that great one where Target knew some teen girl was pregnant before her dad did, by data mining her purchase history.

Embarrassing, certainly. Where it becomes even more concerning is the data mining carried out by political parties, who are starting to employ many of the techniques used in the private sector to direct advertising toward the impressionable. Then there is this horrifying example: http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-wit...

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

As to cookies, I take a scorched earth approach of deleting anything that looks remotely like browser-created state every fifteen minutes. http://cyber.com.au/~twb/.bin/twb-privacy

Sure. And you'll probably want to give the same treatment to the far-worse Flash cookies (if you have the Adobe/Macromedia proprietary Flash plugin at all). Standard HTTP cookies have tiny capacity, while Flash cookies have immense capacity.[1] Part of the point of Samy Kamkar's Evercookie proof-of-concept invention, which you cite, is that the real keystone threat piece in this picture is actually Javascript. If not carefully controlled by something like NoScript, and ideally not just NoScript but NoScript with some of its non-default controls enabled and custom-tweaked, data-miners and other pests can and do use Javascript to orchestrate the contents of any of the many kinds of browser-local storage in your browser, for their purposes and not yours. If you look on the front page of the www.svlug.org Web site (or on linuxmafia.com/presentations), you'll find slides and lecture notes for talks I've given on this and related matters, that might possibly be of interest.

I also miss polipo's censorReferers = maybe option, which would only include the Referer if the TLD was the same.

Somehow, I'd missed hearing about Polipo until now. Thanks! [1] It's as if Adobe/Macromedia had stage-whispered to a bunch of pushy companies, saying 'Hey, gang! Want to spy on the public's Internet use and track them everywhere they go? Just get them to run Flash animations and we'll give you everything you need.'

I use the following to help make me a little less tracked at least: https://adblockplus.org/en/firefox https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/change-referer-button/ - I enable the GUI button, which I left click to change states (it operates like a "traffic light") 0 -- Red Never send the Referer header or set document.referrer 1 -- Amber Send the Referer header when click on a link, and set document.referer for the following page 2 -- Green (default normal setting) Send the Referer header when clicking on a link or loading an image, and set document.referer for the following page - the GUI icon in the status bar helps to make sure I know the state. These states are able to be set directly using about:config too. https://disconnect.me http://noscript.net/ - this can make some websites painful, so you've got to unblock with care or quite the site. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/toggle-cookies/ - use right click to turn party hat on (3rd party cookies), but usually have them off. I find that referer header and 3rd party cookies can stop pages working, particularly if I want to post comments on sites. All of the above can make things harder than they should be, but this is what we need to do to lessen the privacy leak risks. The day we can start using TOR browser project all the time and not be slowed down, will be a great day, but with TOR you have limited Internet usage as there are things you can't easily do, like watch flash video content [yes, I know, wish flash wasn't around either, but it's here today and unfortunately, a relative essential]. I've had bugmenot as a plugin installed too, but I very rarely use it. I never sign in to any services via OATH (Facebook, Google, now Amazon too). The less they link details together, the better as far as I'm concerned. Cheers AndrewM

hi Some more plugins for firefox, these show what is in the cache and empty it https://bitbucket.org/jsumners/cacheviewer-continued/wiki/Home https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clear-cache-button/

Rick Moen wrote:

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

...

As to cookies, I take a scorched earth approach of deleting anything that looks remotely like browser-created state every fifteen minutes. http://cyber.com.au/~twb/.bin/twb-privacy

Sure. And you'll probably want to give the same treatment to the far-worse Flash cookies (if you have the Adobe/Macromedia proprietary Flash plugin at all). Standard HTTP cookies have tiny capacity, while Flash cookies have immense capacity.[1]

Pfft, what kind of monster do you take me for? OTOH note the not-yet-released-but-everyone-apparently-supports-it HTML5 standard wherin sites can store entire SQL and key-value databases on the client side (that's ~/.local/share/webkit/databases in my script).

...

I also miss polipo's censorReferers = maybe option, which would only include the Referer if the TLD was the same.

Somehow, I'd missed hearing about Polipo until now. Thanks!

It is... a mixed blessing. I had strong opinions about it ignoring nsswitch's views on how to resolve hostnames, for example, though AIUI the GUI browsers do that too "because gethostbyname is too slow". It also tends to hang and leave you going "huh? why page no load? refresh no worky?... oh, I bet is polipo again, argh!" And because it goes out of its way to leverage HTTP/1.1iness (a LOT more than squid), some apps have a tendency to 417 at the drop of a hat unless you no_proxy them. In the end I stopped using it becuase it was more annoying than helpful, but YMMV. Certainly worth at least trying.

Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):

if BeefTaco does the same/similar thing but open source, then I may switch to that instead.

Just to be clear, BeefTaco is a revival of the very simple Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) idea, which was merely a set of preemptive HTTP cookie you install with effectively infinite expire times, to block known obnoxious HTTP cookies through the simple expedient of a cookie of the same name (but harmless contents) already being there. All of Abine's products in my experience attempt to be a great deal more featureful than that. And I vaguely recall that they did exactly that with TACO when they took it proprietary (though i might be misremembering). Anyway, BeefTaco is a follow-on to (a revival of) TACO -- not of do-not-track. When I looked for a new version of TACO and found that the developer site was gone and redirected me to something more grandiose at a firm called Abine, I was at first pretty cynical and was prepared to think the worst of them, but soon figured out that they're genuinely good and helpful people. So, I managed to avoid looking like an open-source crank and zealot by keeping my mouth shut until I knew the whole story. Lucky me.

it's my generic solution to the "I'm bored of making yet another yank-paste-edit config stanza" problem - convert to a simple format for the variable data, a perl script, and a makefile.

I might have to get serious about improving my facility with Perl, at which I still suck, having gotten by with sed/awk/etc. for a dog's age. Yes, I know, past time to get comfortable with the sysadmin's Swiss Army knife. I could trot out excuses, but they wouldn't be interesting.

it's part of the reason why i never got all that excited by puppet or chef - they just didn't seem all that revolutionary.

Indeed not. My percepti8on, FWIW: Chef is not a good idea unless you are really comfortable at writing ruby routinely. I.e., it's developer-focussed. Puppet is the other way; it's sysadmin-focussed. That's a vague handwave, but in my experience generally true.

might be time for another search for an alternative to puppet....hmmm, this looks like a good starting list.

Have a look at ansible if you want to see a fresh and well-balanced approach. http://www.ansibleworks.com/

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

...

http://www.ansibleworks.com/

Do you have experience with this?

Nope. I attended a talk about it at my local sysadmin guild's monthly meeting, and was conditionally impressed (a lazy man's way of saying it sounded good, but I haven't put it to the test). I hear that the Fedora Project is banking heavily on it, and they do not usually make significant mistakes concerning project infrastructure.

Craig Sanders wrote:

just about any programming task you can think of is probably already available as a cpan module.

My favourite is Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata. If you're looking that up for the first time, make sure you're sitting down and have a stiff drink handy.

...

Have a look at ansible if you want to see a fresh and well-balanced approach. http://www.ansibleworks.com/

my initial impressions of ansible weren't great, though. it's yet another web site that doesn't work without javascript [...] they've also done a pretty good job of hiding the license information,

Shrug, one more reason to look at wikipedia's <thing> article before I look at <thing>'s homepage. FYI, apt says you should try https://github.com/ansible/ansible I expect they use their .com as the "business portal" and the github.com as their "community portal", much as some of the more commercial projects did with sourceforge a decade ago.

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

I had to start sending a User-Agent field after Wikipedia decided to drop HTTP queries that lacked one, on the assumption they were from people who were leeching AND too stupid to use wget or libcurl.

I like using User-Agent Switcher. Also: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Web/user-agent-string.html

On 12/06/2013 1:14 PM, Rick Moen wrote:

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):

...

...but there are always some who won't follow it, so I do this:

cat >>/etc/hosts 127.254.254.254 blocked.invalid twitter.com facebook.com google-analytics.com ...

You might like my prototype BIND9 conffiles, which resolve locally a great many advertising, data-mining, and similar domains. http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/network/bind9-examples-linuxmafia.tar.gz

Okay, that's a little interesting, but the trouble with static entries is that some hosts go and other hosts appear. Perhaps EFF's "Adblock Plus" [1] is what you really /need/ ... at least that's an option. Also, I wonder if it is a good idea(tm) to use LOC resource records.... and also the HINFO [2] .... giving too much away? And /too easy/ to have old details that aren't relevant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus [2] http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch8/hinfo.html Cheers A.

Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

...

cat >>/etc/hosts 127.254.254.254 blocked.invalid twitter.com facebook.com google-analytics.com ...

Okay, that's a little interesting, but the trouble with static entries is that some hosts go and other hosts appear. Perhaps EFF's "Adblock Plus" [1] is what you really /need/ ... at least that's an option.

When that works in libcurl and wget and w3m and the other HTTP clients I use, let me know. (Elsethread, I do mention how I rip entries out of adblock+'s database for the above.)