Phil Osborn

Reply to Ignore trolls at your own peril in Everything Else Stardock Forums

My condolences... In the late '70's I started a series on the subject of children's rights for a libertarian journal. It was a lousy series stylistically by my own current standards and I've shifted significantly in terms of my views as well since then, but most of the readership at the time liked it, as I ultimately found out. In between times, however, I got what anyone today would likely label troll attacks - multiple troll attacks - that ignored cont

Reply to A General Solution to Poverty in Economics Stardock Forums

See: http://sohodojo.com/views.html for one example... Loans are fine, but a whole lot of people prefer an investment that pays off in proportion to its success. Ooops - gotta check my google stock. Bought in at ~$800 a few months or so back. Darn! Only hitting $1,100. I had high hopes for a 200% gain. Only a measley ~40% in a few months.

Reply to A General Solution to Poverty in Economics Stardock Forums

Geo; If this system flies, it will be because people expect and do make a profit on their investments. There are plenty of nanocorps making bucks for their CEO/Board of Director as well as for the other shareholders. The chief reason for incorporating is to limit liability by state fiat - LTD. See Douglas Rushkoff's "Life, Inc." The Massachussetts Trust accomplishes the same goal by restricting liability to the Trustees in a purely private contract.&n

Reply to A General Solution to Poverty in Economics Stardock Forums

O'well... To respond to a post worth responding to would take perhaps one hour per post, or 200 hours. Just to read the posts thoughtfully would be a good day's work. I will try. But this poses a serious problem. I have a life, and am generally peaked out just with the daily business of living. Haven't been to a movie in a couple months, I think, and I don't even have a TV plugged in, and then

Reply to A General Solution to Poverty in Economics JoeUser Forums

Before we diverge into flame wars - and thanks to all of you who took the time to read and respond intelligently, which is most of you - I'm not proposing communism or socialism. Look up what those terms mean. Socialism economically is when the state is the primary owner of the means of production. Communism is a little more extreme, but the same idea overall. What we have now, BTW, is generally agreed to be an ad hoc muddy mixture of free enterprise, socialis

A General Solution to Poverty in Economics JoeUser Forums

A Solution – The Shorter Version Last update: 06/31/17 Reasons to support a basic income: http://www.basicincome.org.uk/reasons-support-basic-income What is different, important and unique in my approach to the "Basic Income" propo

The Mexican Solution in Current Events JoeUser Forums

What immediately follows is my own take on the discussion concerning problems with licensing more bars or liquor outlets in downtown Santa Ana, in the face of known problems of public drunkeness, under-age drinking and a history of related problems. <span data-reactid=".r[21scz].[1][3][1]{commen

Property Foundations in Economics JoeUser Forums

Notes on Property: Phil Osborn 06/15/2013 (Originally presented at the Santa Ana Escualita.) Note: this is hardly exhaustive of the subject, but I’m hoping it will provoke an ongoing discussion and some good ideas and understandings of the key elements of the various issues. What this covers: A fairly detailed overview of property history and theory focusing mainly on “land” property A number of key exampl

The Origins of Consciousness in Singularity JoeUser Forums

I would suggest that a critical point in the development of true consciousness came when we moved out of the forest. In the forest, the primary sensory mode was scent, the recognition and filing away of discrete molecules that conveyed specific digital meanings as to their source. Moving to the open grassland meant that proto-humans had to shift dominance from scent to sight, rather quickly on the fly. Sight is a completely different kind of processing from scent, requ

The Internet of Things Revisited in Internet JoeUser Forums

OK, think back to 1991 or perhaps '92. The web hadn't been invented yet - or implemented anyway. Ted Nelson's Xanadu was known throughout the digerati, and no doubt countless other thinkers had come up with their own mental or prototypical WWW, yours truly included, circu 1979 or so. I even spent most of a year writing a version of Prolog to run on a C64 as the foundation OS for a universal information network that I called the "Personal Knowledge Index

Reply to My Entry to the Robocall Challenge in Life, the Universe and Everything JoeUser Forums

Unfortunately, altho my entry was accepted, I never heard from them again. This is about up to par, I suspect, for these kind of GovCo efforts.

My Entry to the Robocall Challenge in Life, the Universe and Everything JoeUser Forums

The following is derived from my entry to the Robocall Challenge sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. The Challenge basically requests submissions of ideas on how to stop "robocalls," with a $50,000 prize for the winning submission. I emailed them yesterday about publishing this, as they do not publically publish the full content of submissions on their site, while I would like to get some feedback, as, even if I don't win the challenge, I am still very motivated to

Occupy Earth, Part II in Current Events JoeUser Forums

See http://philosborn.joeuser.com/article/412425/Occupy_Earth for the background for this thread, which is becoming ridiculously long and cumbersome. In summary, it deals with an attempt to launch a quid pro quo between a small group of listener subscribers to the Pacifica FM station, KPFK, and the local Occupy movement. In exchange for votes to put them on the Local Station Board, which would requir

Profile system not working in JoeUser in Stardockians JoeUser Forums

I tried to start a new blog yesterday on JoeUser, and decided to label it "adult," until I was finished and satisfied that I wouldn't be upsetting any kids. BAD MISTAKE!!! After saving the first few paragraphs, I discovered that I could not get to my own post, due to the "adult" checkoff. So, I tried going to my profile, where allegedly I could also change my password... Oops... Not only no option to select age - although I did find out that now

The Other Side of Morals - Evil in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

The other night I was listening to NPR's "This American Life," a Valentine's Day special, with various true tales of love. The most striking of the tales involved a drug bust. Imagine the situation. The cops have determined that to bust high-school dealers, they need to infiltrate the high-schools with cops who can pass as students. So, this one kid who is a straight-A student, even though he comes from an ethnic/economic background that is less th

Occupy Earth in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

Update: 090512 Note that I am starting a NEW BLOG, as I'm sure that I am going to hit the limit pretty soon, which used to be 512K, I think. Also, who wants to wade thru all this? Not ME! So, the new news is no news about the KPFK/Occupy deal - at least any that I'm privy to, and then there's a lot of nonsense and wild speculation on my part, if anyone cares... Wow, doesn't that just GRAB ya? I know that you're asking yourselves:&nb

Reply to HELP! My yahoo.com mail has totally crashed in Internet JoeUser Forums

Back up and running. Thanks for the response. Going to back up everything next...

HELP! My yahoo.com mail has totally crashed in Internet JoeUser Forums

My yahoo.com account has crashed. I can no longer access it and all mail sent to it bounces with a fatal and permanent error message. The last time this happened was years ago when I posted some material here and elsewhere about a Congressman's checkered past. Then I lost access to my blogs as well as yahoo.com mail for about a week. Of course, coincidence is not causality... Altho it did happen twice in the same year. I have not a clue as to why this tim

God is Bankrupt in Religion JoeUser Forums

04/12/15: Please note that of very recent notice, Dr. Schuller is no longer available at his personal or business phone. Those who have an urgent need to reach him should perhaps plan on an extended (VERY extended) trip, from which they may not return. We are awaiting news as to whether the good doctor will be in a really REALLY good place or otherwise. His retu

Reply to The Feds Fail to Think - Again in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

"For Windows 8, BTW, you have to cut off one of your fingers. It's THAT GOOD!" Nobody jumped for it. Darn. OK, here it is: The slogan that you've already heard for years; the sales meme that you will never be able to forget. "LETS EVERYBODY GIVE MICROSOFT THE FINGER!" See?

Reply to The Feds Fail to Think - Again in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

Nitro... How often do you go to the dentist? No, really, NPR ran an interview with a guy who headed some medical analysis group that looked at dentistry. They gave dental xrays to different dentists - and - guess what? The different dentists found different cavities. Only about a 50% overlap... It gets better. It turns out that dentists who both charge extra and cause the most pain, regardless of actual outcome have the longest and - by t

9/11 Fantasies in War on Terror JoeUser Forums

When we see someone investing huge amounts of energy in pursuit of ephemeral or fantasy goals that have no connection with the real world, we generally conclude that that person is "neurotic." In fact, that's nearly a definition of neurosis, the stupid expediture of real resources in the pursuit of symbolic values. Economists have, of course, also covered this ground. Like the person who walks three blocks to save 50 cents on a hamburger on sale, while ignoring the chance

The Recession is Over!!!! in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

EastAsia is our friend and ally. Oceana is our enemy. Oh, wait... For the past few months, I've been looking around for a replacement for my tiny little wonderful Creative Zen Nano (MP3, voice recorder, FM + recorder, storage, AAA). I've had two of them now for several years, and they're seen Yeoman service, going with me for regular workouts at Ballys, occasionally getting drenched in the jacuzzi when I forget to remove the device from my keys pouch. The only

Reply to The Feds Fail to Think - Again in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

There is much positive to be said about the open-source freeware market, and FireFox is certainly a good example. However, the browser capabilities of today are puny compared to the Xanadu model. I had worked out my own version of hypermedia by about 1979, and when I discussed it with a friend who was a top-notch AI programmer, he sent me the IEEE 17 pg. summary of hypermedia as well as mentioning that I might want to look up Xanadu. That IEEE summary of hypermedia, i

The Feds Fail to Think - Again in US Domestic JoeUser Forums

It sounded so very hopeful, and I heard it on KPFK's "Digital Village," a good source in general for what's hot in the digital memesphere. Perhaps in response to the Progressive X-Prise for the first production car to excede 100mpg, the feds have launched a whole slew of challenges in all kinds of areas, with prizes and publicity to entice people to think of new solutions. One of these challenges immedi