I haven't listened this podcast, but I find something either simply wrong or just sensationalist about the question "whether it's really possible to make money without doing evil." That's so fraught with straw men and bad philosophy that I don't have the stomach to delve into it. All I'll say for the moment is that millions of people do so every day, and so if one doesn't find it self-evident, one simply isn't looking.

Cox and Forkum's, er, unusual take on Father's Day. It's good stuff, though.

And, to all the fathers (including myself): Happy Father's Day!

This would be cool, if I could stomach DirecTV. Which I can't, and so I won't.

Here we have three major American companies--Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google-- engaging in precisely the same sorts of competively-driven acquisitions, and the FTC decides to investigate all of them.

How can anyone maintain the illusion that this has anything to do with competition?

I agree that it's a bit over the top to say that intellectual property theft is worse than "real" property theft. At the same time, I hardly think it's any better. The lack of violence may seem worth noting, but in reality there would likely be plenty of violence were one to try to break up the larger and more powerful Asian counterfeit rings. And, there are plenty of "real" property thefts that involve no violence at all.

The one thing that does make intellectual property very different, though, is the ease of it. It's trivial today to steal thousands of pieces of intellectual property, all without leaving the comfort of one's home, and just as trivial to distribute it to thousands--or millions--of other people. It's also relatively easy to do so anonymously; if one is careful, the chances of getting caught approach zero.

One can't say the same about "real" property.

An interesting discussion on atheism and Ayn Rand. I agree: she's the only one who's ever gotten it right. Rational atheism isn't against religion, it's for reason and man's life on Earth.

An interesting debate on the healthcare system. Notice the two different approaches to the argument (any reader of this blog should be able to recognize which argument I support). The comments are also illustrative, at least in part because they demonstrate a lack of knowledge of how government regulation has dictated private insurance policies. The private payor system hasn't developed in a vacuum.

Can anyone wonder what kind of nation China is, that it maintains such tight control over how people name their children?

What this really means is that such decisions should be made by free people via free markets, not by government fiat via political calculations. Had our government acted as it should have when Middle Eastern oil fields were first nationalized, and American investments confiscated, we wouldn't have nearly these concerns.

Here's the money quote in just about all modern discussions of intellectual property:

"For better or for worse, real property should not be confused with intellectual property, which is not subject to the same rules of scarcity."

I'm not sure where this idea of "scarcity" regarding intelletual property, or the lack thereof, orginated. I'll have to do some research, because it's such a ridiculous notion. The only reason that intellectual property isn't scarce nowadays, as opposed to when it was pressed on vinyl, tapes, and CD's, and when books were properly bound, and video provided on tapes and DVDs (let alone simple film at theatres), is precisely because technology has made its copying in virtually infinite numbers entirely trivial.

It's the fact that intellectual property can now be so easily copied that makes it seem like some sort of "non-scarce" resource. Of course, the artists themselves are plenty scarce, which seems to escape those who make this inane argument. The latter use the seemingly infinite nature of digital intellectual property, which is really just intellectual property like any other, only in a digital form, the crux of their argument--thus evading the fact that property requires not just possession, but also control.

They like to argue that the creator doesn't actually lose any thing when his intellectual property is taken, but that's not the point. He loses control over it, which is entirely the point. It would be no different if someone were to let me keep my house, but determined who could live in it with me. Even if they added on space so that I wasn't inconvenienced, the point would remain the same.

Anyways, no time to delve into this at the moment, but delving will be done at some point.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. And by the Lord, of course, I mean "government."

Michael Moore's "Sicko" has hit the Internet. I'm sure Moore won't mind, since he's all against things like property and the like. He should be happy, since I'm sure his only intent in producing his sensationalist, journalistically sloppy, exploitative "documentaries" is to enlighten his fellow man, and not to make any money.

Making money is evil, see, in Moore's world. Therefore, he should feel right at home. I think I'll download a copy, clean it up, burn it to DVD, and hand it out to ALL my friends. Not for them to watch, mind you--rather, to burn. To my enemies who already believe Moore's shit, I'll just give free copies to watch to their hearts' content.

Maybe Castro will make up the difference for all the good publicity, courtesy of Moore.

If this is true about Bush deciding not to destroy Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, it's vastly disappointing. It's also ironically more destabilizing for the Middle East--it leaves Israel almost no choice but to go it alone. One can only imaging the maelstrom that will occur should Israel attack Iran.

Or, maybe it would just be a tempest in a teapot, centered around the Arab "street" and with most of the West at least silently commending Israel for its actions. Part of me believes in this particular outcome, and so I'm rooting for Israel to do what it must.

This looks like fun. I'm not sure it's worthy of a Ph.D. thesis, though.

And so, who wins here? I'd say, Iran and Syria. Who loses? Israel and the US, because our "leadership" won't let either deal with the obvious repercussions.

As I've always thought, things are bound to get much worse before they get much better.

I really have to wonder at how gullible people must be to fall for such obvious attempts to do nothing but foment sectarian violence. It must be obvious to everyone by now that these attacks are meant specifically to push Iraq toward civil war, and for no other purpose. It's almost as if these people believe that a self-fulfilling prophecy, even fully identified, can't be altered.

Computer problems, and so light blogging today. Maybe some posts tonight if I can get everything resolved.

I'm not sure what Boing Boing means here by the title "Yahoo! blocks anti-censor, pro-human rghts move by sharehoders." It looks like the shareholders themselves simply voted against the measure. And, indeed, who is "Yahoo!" besides the shareholders?

I agree, although I feel this way about all social networking sites. Ultimately, I think they take too much time to maintain, and so unless one makes a career out of them, their attractiveness quickly pales the more of a time-suck that they become. I used LinkedIn, but primarily only to maintain contact with past coworkers--and, not even active contact, but just to know when they've switched jobs.

When I first saw the recent demos of the upcoming OS X upgrade from Apple, Leopard, I thought the same thing. Much of it just seems to be Vista with a little bit more development, and I'm sure that we'll see much of the same in future Vista updates. The Apple stuff is good, but it's not so far advanced over Vista that it offers a compelling reason to switch.

Of course, the fact that a Mac can run Windows (including Vista) has changed things considerably. My next PC will be a Mac, but I'll likely run OS X only as a novelty.