factual errors (was Re: PHIL: The (im)moral state (was Re:

Jeff Fabijanic (jeff@primordialsoft.com)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 15:19:45 -0500


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.

>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.

>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).

tschau,
jeff