From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Mon Mar 23 1998 - 15:24:23 MST
Jeff Fabijanic wrote:
> Not that I disagree with your other overall points, Michael. But a lot of
> your specifics are in error...
>
> Michael Lorrey <mike@lorrey.com> wrote:
>
> >Outside of ARPAnet, the entire internet here in the US does happen to have
> >been
> >built independently by corporations. It has the largest bandwidth and
> >redundancy
> >of any part of the internet in the world. It also has the largest growth and
> >commercial business transactions being conducted of any nation. This was
> >not done
> >with government money.
>
> Untrue. Most of the universities that are part of the Internet were
> not part of the original ARPANet project. Neither are the many thousands
> of privately-owned servers that still make up a large minority of
> internet sites. Corporate (ie commercial) sites have a higher
> profile, but are have not been as intergral as the aforementioned
> parties. Most new hosts are still placed on the Net via academia.
As I said, outside of ARPAnet, which was an early network linking research centers
and universites that did research for the defense department, all of the rest of
the internet has been build independently of government. That state owned
universities have hooked up to this can cause an understandable confusion, however
just as many private universities have hooked up to the internet, and they cannot
be construed to be government owned. They may be non-profit, but they are still
corporations. The internet, however is not those academic sites, but the backbones
that interconnect them, and those back bones are decidedly NOT government owned or
operated. They are all privately owned, built by corporations with corporate money
to generate corporate profits. Likewise the ISPs that provide local internet
service are overwhelimingly privately owned, not government owned.
> >If you think that the government is responsible for protecting your personal
> >security, you are severely misinformed. Police are only there to catch the bad
> >guy AFTER he has robbed, raped or killed you, not to prevent it from
> >happening.
>
> Although this may too often end up being the case, it is not what
> law enforcement officials would claim. Real mileage may vary, but
> their stated aims almost always include crime *prevention*. They
> spend a lot of time (and money) talking/training/etc about it.\
And very little time actually doing it. The proof is in the pudding.
> >New Hampshire, which has open borders with three other US states
> >(one of which has one of the highest crime rates in the US, btw)
>
> I love New Hampshire, but if New Hampshirites have a failing, it's
> that they love to slam the Commonwealth, usually for the wrong
> reasons. The 1995 census says that MA is ranked 15th in violent
> crime. One third of the way down hardly qualifies as "one of the
> highest". In fact MA's *rate* is almost exactly the National average
> (685 per 100K). And MA's rate is dropping faster than NH's (which
> admittedly, doesn't have as far to go).
Being average has always been Massachusetts claim to fame and its major failing. It
has also been the major cause of immigration from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. I
was born in Massachusetts, something I typically try to not mention. The wealth of
the Commonwealth is just all too common for anybody who posesses extropian values.
And yes, If NH's crime rate were 1/10th of MA, it would be difficult for us to
improve as much as Massachusetts does, especially as we spend less than 1% of what
Massachusetts does on law enforcement,. Its a matter of diminishing returns as well
as how smartly we go about it. Funny how NH always spends far less money to get
better results at anything than tax and spend socialist states like Massachusetts.
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