As for O'Rourke, whether HE favored leftism or rightism at the time he wrote "Parliament of Whores" depended on whether, at a particular moment, he was writing an article for "Rolling Stone" or the "American Spectator". (A comparison of his simultaneous pieces for those two magazines is hilarious; it makes the Batman villain "Two-Face" pale by comparison.)

The most interesting question of all, however, is why Joyner himself is willing to quote the drivel from these two in the first place.

Wrt my sed... Oh well, it's not like I make a stunning amount of use of it these days...

Wrt cygwin... Not true- many of my cohorts are pure windows developers and simply can't live without it. Guess your mileage may vary...

The Internet began as a Defense Department project, the DARPANet. The World Wide Wide was conceived at the CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, again a government-supported institution.

Mosaic, the predecessor to Netscape, was developed at the NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. More government interference.

But without Netscape, AOL and porn, none of it would be where it is today.

Hey, there's always cygwin...

Windows users don't use cygwin. Unix users who have to deal with Windows use cygwin, but they already had a Win32 port of perl installed, so they would just s/lying/laying/g anyway. And yes, the order was wrong in the original command.

Hey, there's always cygwin...

Close on its heels has to be the Apollo program, though. Integrated circuits, micro electronics, satellites, beginnings of bio tech (monitoring and equipment, not the organic stuff) and a huge slew of other stuff. In 1980, it was figured we reaped at least $7 for every dollar we invested in it. I think that number is far greater now.

No, it wasn't; your history is lacking. The underpinnings for the world wide web were created by educational institutions, for the most part, as was the browser that eventually became Netscape.

The Internet began as a Defense Department project, the DARPANet. The World Wide Wide was conceived at the CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, again a government-supported institution.

Mosaic, the predecessor to Netscape, was developed at the NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. More government interference.

There's probably no better example of federal government support having beneficial commercial application than the Internet.

sed -e 's:laying:lying:g'

Watch your language; Windows users read this blog.

sed -e 's:laying:lying:g' <previous comment>

And it should be noted that without the web lying around, no commercial interests would have created it. No one is arguing that commercial interests didn't capitalize on it. The issue is that the costs were socialized and the profits were privatized.

Come to think about it, we're seeing another wave of the same thing with the sub-prime/prime/credit crunch. The costs are socialized and the profits are all privatized.

Bizarre to call it capitalism, but what the hey. Maybe that's what capitalism actually is in practice.

Certainly what became the "world wide web" was entirely created by commercial interests.

No, it wasn't; your history is lacking. The underpinnings for the world wide web were created by educational institutions, for the most part, as was the browser that eventually became Netscape.

Yea, you tell 'em. That's why we need a military budget that is larger than the next dozen or so nations combined. Geebus, I guess the whole military doesn't ever figure into your fiscal arguments. I'm certainly not suggesting so, but just a 50% cut in the military budgets could finance a zillion social silliness and we'd still be able to kick anyone's ass. I guess we'd have to do without the top brass' "comfort modules", though. I guess those are the military equivalent of "welfare queens" - except for the several orders of magnitude in actual money wasted.

Certainly what became the "world wide web" was entirely created by commercial interests.

Um, no. It was started in a government funded Physics lab by Lee. Commercial interests didn't really start taking any advantage of it until it was already very well developed.

That's what encryption is for.

Ah, the sweet smell of freedom wafting over from our friends on the right. Smell the glove!

Geebus. Is it any wonder we're in the state we're in?

Don't forget that one thing that government did was build the very internet that allows that cranky old coot to complain about it. No, private industry didn't, wouldn't, and couldn't have done it.

It started as a DoD project, but what became the "internet" was more an educational venture than a defense one. Certainly what became the "world wide web" was entirely created by commercial interests.

it's really just a military tool, anyway - something that is kind of underscored, I guess, by the recent consolidation of all spying (now with zero warrants!) via the converged communication through the internet.

You don't want your communications overheard, don't broadcast them in the open. That's what encryption is for.

The federal government has far different spending priorities - the largest of which is the military.