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Because American Express rewards their customers by charging much higher merchant fees than their competition.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/general/2004-1 2-22-amex_x.htm

...since Sony says over 2 million disks containing the rootkit have been sold, that puts them under the gun for roughly U.S. $150 billion in damages :)

Perhaps the copyright owners could offer to settle: have Sony repay all of the people who have been extorted for money because of filesharing (double for damages), set up a legal defense for other file-sharers and promise to stop all such activities in the future. That would only run them about $100-$200 million, so it would be quite a deal.

(posted also at p2pnet)

Not that it lessens their tresspass, but Sony is apparently pulling the "infected" CDs:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity /2005-11-14-sony-cds_x.htm [usatoday.com]

Are they also pulling all of the infected PCs in for free repairs?

No? Then let's not help these wankers by helping to spread their desperate PR pieces.

Not that it lessens their tresspass, but Sony is apparently pulling the "infected" CDs:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity /2005-11-14-sony-cds_x.htm

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Actually, I thought the same thing ... turns out he still has AIDS http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/aids/2001-11-0 6-aids-johnson.htm ... I have no I dea why I (or you) thought this. Oops.

"The only problem is that it seems that the fuel effiency is either misrepresented or not much of an advantage -- our Civic currently gets about 30 city / 34 highway. Consumer Reports has tested a Honda Civic Hybrid and gotten about 40 city / 36 highway, which is both far less than the 47 / 46 advertised, and not worth the $3,000"

Some of the discrepancy is due to driving style. If you romp on the gas, don't expect to see better mileage rates.

Ford actually has a program to teach people how to get the best fuel efficiency from their hybrids:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-10-14-hyb rid-school-usat_x.htm?csp=34

"They look at how hypocritical our society is when it comes to judging the content or sexuality in the media," McGee said. "And they look at how these double standards or triple standards are applied to films versus games or music versus games or written fiction versus games, and it's a silly argument to get involved in."

Over the summer there was an article about the confusion by many parents about video game ratings...I wish I could find it. It was at USA Today.

Taking a look at the comments posted and moderated highly on /. on this thread is a bit horrifying. About 80% of the comments thus far are pointing to the fact that in spite of the fact that America gets so much flack for being a general world class jack ass the american's view of race/minority relations are so much better thought out than some of our european collegues. Let me point out some of the obvious issues here. There is a consensus forming that the "immigrants" have only themselves to blame as they have insulated themselves, refused to assimilate and are just leechers of a welfare state embracing multiculturalism and more over islam is "antidemocratic".

If you replaced "French Riots" w/ Watts Riots in Chicago and "north african/immigrant communities" w/ Black people, would you be so comfortable repeating your statements? Have we after all these years come nowhere? I am not justifying what is going on there but people are burning thousands of cars and rioting that is now spreading all over europe. To not be somewhat self-reflective enough to ask how did it come to this is woefully ignorant.

Might not the idea that the two immigrant hoodlums running from the police who accidentally killed "electrocuted" themselves, might have some what less credibility being that just a few months ago, the police stalked, chased down and gunned down a brazillian immigrant at a subway stop and initially covered it up and blamed the immigrant that allegedly was wearing a coat in summer and acting suspiciously and running away all of which turned out not to be true at all and in fact was a complete fabrication?

How did did it come to this? Tell me why enforced secular humanism seems to be targeted primarily at the muslim community? Tell me about job prospects> and what the french have to do fix this problem. Tell me why the majority of people in french jails are muslim.

And most of all tell me why europe is insisting on creating 2nd and 3rd generation second class non citizens "gast-werkers" who will never be allowed to truly be "french", "german" or more generally european because being born european doesn't make you european. To understand this more clearly I am linking a comparison of citizenship laws for countries around the world. The american so called "myth" is the nation of immigrants, we are all american one. But the europeans (somewhat ironically w/ their neoliberalism) makes you be european by blood or by an arbitrary bureaucracy leading to 2nd and 3rd generation foreigners (witness Germany and the Turks). If what is now going on in france happened here, we would not hear an end to the "shame of the nation" (aka la riots), and I find it mortifying that we collectively do not have enough reflexitivity to go beyond the "they are not us, they are them and they hate us, they are foreign" mentality. And it is shameful.

Doesn't change the fact that their religious beliefs are fucking nuts.

That they are, and as with any mentally ill person, the "niceness" is often feigned and certainly not stable.

But, once you get past that, they're wonderful people. And I'm completely serious. Aside from the whacko religious rantings, society would be very much enhanced if we all acted slightly more like your average morman.

No, we wouldn't be better off. At all.

I am related to mormons (a parent, a sibling, various and sundry extended family), and I can tell you that they are "great people" only superficially, and only so long as they believe they can attract you to their way of thinking "by example."

I can tell you from personal experience that, if they don't get what they want from you, be it financial support of otherwise unsustainable lifestyles (they are told to have as many kids as possible, while still in college, then to hit up family first, friends second, and the church last when the money inevitably falls short, all the while still paying 10% of their gross income to the church), or "respect and acknowledgement" of the "superiority" of their beliefs, they turn into some of the most vindictive, nasty people you'll ever know.

To the point of taking it upon themselves to do everything in their power to break up marriages they don't approve of, as has happened to me personally, my parent leading the charge. (They failed, and now I thankfully have no contact whatsoever with them).

You really should check out exmormon.org, particularly the bullitin board where people are posting their personal experiences in recovering from the depredations of that partiuclar religious cult. As with most groups recovering from abuse, there is a lot of anger there, but read past that to what people there are going through, and what their Mormon family and friends are doing to them for their "crime" of doubting or rejecting the Mormon faith, and you begin to get an inkling of the ugliness that underlies the benign Mormon PR ficade. My experience, which my wife and I believed to be unbelievably extreme, is in fact almost laughably common among Mormons who begin to doubt the provably (and proven) false claims of their religion, and those of us non-Mormons unfortunate enough to have had close ties to the more devout (a number of people recovering from the abusiveness of Mormonism have themselves never been Mormons, but that has proven to be little protection when their spouse converts and then divorces them on instruction from their Bishop, in order to marry a "good, upstanding" Mormon, as happened in at least one case).

Back on topic, for "contributing" so much to genetics with their genealogoy fetish, the Mormon leadership sure is eager to reject genetic proof that the premise of the Book of Mormon (that native Americans are descendents of an Isrealite named Lehi) if false, and to excommunicate or disfellowship those who have done the science. Mormonism is anything but a bastion of science or intellectualism (in fact, their current leadership has stated openly that--and I'm paraphrasing--"intellectuals are an enemy of the church")

I somewhat agree. However I believe that the school's terms may not ask you to give up constitutional rights. I think there is a "free speech" issue in this case.

A New Jersey school, public, lost a similar case just a few days ago: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-07-schoo l-website-suit_x.htm?csp=34.

Student gets $117,500 in website free speech case

OCEANPORT, N.J. (AP) A New Jersey school district will pay $117,500 to a student who was punished for creating a website that included critical statements about his middle school. The settlement of the lawsuit brought nearly two years ago follows a decision by a federal judge ruling that Oceanport school administrators violated Ryan Dwyer's free speech rights.

There have been a lot of cases like this in the public school system in the last few years; when they go to trial the student usually wins. This was just today: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-07-schoo l-website-suit_x.htm

Here's something for you to read.

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/inthenews/archive/2005 _06_17.html

Toronto has had record number of smog days this year. So your ideas of dropping pollution levels are certainly wrong. Smog days mean that particulate matter is passing above a threshold value at which breathing becomes difficult. Much of the smog "arrive here in prevailing winds from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee". So it is coming from a fair distance away.

And I CAN say the US Govt isn't doing anything because it has pulled out from the Kyoto Protocol for the sake of $$$

Here

Here

and here

If you knew anything about the middle class of the Chinese, you would know that it is near impossible to own a car given the wages, the prices and the taxes. The middle class isn't the same as the middleclass in Western societies. Middleclass over there means you're just not peasant class. Which is hardly anything to be proud of.

In a global society, you can't point at others until you've pointed at yourself first.

Women have gained a tremendous amount of rights and freedoms? Oh really? How about the right to EXIST? China's One Child Policy results in more female babies being aborted or drowned than in most of the rest of the world combined (except India, perhaps).

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=39475

Wanna know what the murder of girl babies in China has resulted in?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/omicinski/069 .htm
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040308-0926 32-4101r.htm

Free trade with China makes ALL of us responsible for this tragedy. But hey, as long as your DVD players cost $50 or less, you can argue that that's not true, I suppose.

Yikes!

I'm really amazed at the rightwingnuts who've got nothing on Kennedy but his teenage car accident with its dubious conclusions about leaving a passenger to die while he rescued himself. In the forty years since then, has the "politically connected murderer" done anything in Congress to show you he's a monster? And exactly how do you feel, Anonymous denial Coward, about Laura Bush actually ramming her ex-boyfriend to death in her car, then getting off because of her political connections? How smart is Laura that she can kill someone, and leaves the media free from its obsession merely by being "unable to talk about it to this day"?

Using the Internet to watch a network newscast is like going to a newsstand and getting USA Today.

USA Today is available at newsstands? What will they think up next?!

I'm not surprised that the circulation of most newspapers is going down. What is happening is that there are too many liberal reporters and editors chasing after too few liberal readers. It isn't that anyone is intentionally "punishing" these papers, rather this is simply supply and demand. The invisible hand strikes again. There is less demand for liberal news and more demand for conservative news. Case in point, the circulation boom currently being enjoyed by the Washington Times:

http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050518-120247- 7729r.htm

Another example is Fox news, which currently pulls more viewers than CNN and MSNBC put together. If this were a technology issue created by the internet, you wouldn't be seeing a shift from liberal television outlets to a conservative one, instead you'd see an overall shift AWAY from television as a news source.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/20 04-07-25-media-mix_x.htm
http://www.jsonline.com/enter/tvradio/apr03/133295 .asp
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=43120

The premiere liberal radio network, Air America, is also doing badly. In Washington DC its listener share is actually so low that it can't even be detected according to the Arbitron rating service:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=46954

The issue here is not one of technology, but ideology. This country is, day by day, moving further and further away from the left and closer to the right. A conservative person is not going to choose news presented with a liberal bent to it when the same information is available with a conservative bent. The liberal media is basically selling the ideological equivalent of buggy whips. Each year there are fewer and fewer customers to sell their wares to. As a consequence the entire liberal media industry is suffering as a whole. The plight of the liberal newspaper business is just one aspect of this.

Lee

Here are some examples to get you started. For more, Google "university campus speech codes".

I guess they do need to save money considering they are losing clients. It appears that many companies are moving to smaller accounting firms to cut costs and saying no the the "Big Four" (Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Ernst & Young).

But NASA is busy in space! See for yourselves, here!

Assuming you agree that a virus is alive -- which is debatable --, creating life from scratch is old news. A few years ago scientists copied a virus based on an existing virus.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-ne w-life-usat_x.htm

And unless I am mistaking, another team created a virus from scratch (as in without a model) earlier this year.

I believe I've read the Wired article you are referring to, it is a year or two old. Here is a recent article (10/6/2005) from USA Today about man-made diamonds.

It's always interesting to hear how stories are covered in different parts of the world. I mean, my job has me reading the websites of the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, and the Telegraph on a daily basis, but I find that the stories covered on news websites and the stories covered on TV and print news (even if its they're both run by the same people) are often markedly different.

The whole deal with the UN's "peacekeepers" being portrayed as a good thing does seem to be quite common on the television news (its true here in the US, and in Canada, and apparently its true in the UK as well). The stories of UN peacekeepers, however, intentionally killing civilians in Congo, or complicity in similar actions in Haiti, or (and this one is actually from the BBC) sexual abuse of women and underage girls are things that can't just be ignored, even if a big deal is not generally made of them by the broadcast media.

In fact, Refugees International just recently released a report on the culture within UN peacekeeping forces showing that these are no isolated incidents, but rather endemic.

I guess the argument could be made that recent US aggression is liable to lead to an increase in attempts to control the internet, but personally I tend to see it as the exact opposite case: that they're too busy trying to conquer the world and reshape the middle east in their own image to really tackle any serious curbs on the internet. Indeed, I think that the seperate nature of the UN might make it appealing for the US to pursue an agenda of censorship of the internet that runs afoul of their own laws since its done under the auspices of "global control". I'm also concerned that an organization that has nothing better to do than make Smurf-bombing fanfics is liable to be more proactive.

If I had my way, I'd keep both of them and every other government entirely out of the internet.

You mean like how M$ wants to team up with Ford to make cars that don't crash http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-05-01-micro soft-cars_x.htm No pun intended.

The music industry would like you to pay every time you listen to your CD.

They would also like for pay every time you end up with defective cds .

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm

"If you say this about Apollo, what do you think about the pointless research on the even more expensive space station?"

It's a catastrophic waste of money. I'm glad we now have a NASA administrator who agrees.
Yes, there's been some science done on Apollo/ISS, but a ludicrously small amount in light of the cost of the operations. The ISS is estimated at circa $100b over its lifetime last I checked; in contrast, the Deep Impact probe cost $300m, 3% of the cost. Spirit and Opportunity cost under a billion. Hubble cost $14b inflation adjusted, and would've been less if it were serviced by anything but the Shuttle.

I'd take those over the ISS any day.

What rights are you referring to?

Your point is valid. But I can imagine a day, if it isn't already here, where the FBI can "request" database information from Google without a warrant, and make it against the law for Google to reveal that the FBI made a request.

Somewhat like this situation.

That would seem like a violation of individual rights to me.

I think Bill has already though about this

I picked one of your points at random and researched its veracity, and its wrong.
Saddam kicked out the UN ambassador on August 3, 1998 (usatoday)
"Iraq parliament votes to end cooperation with U.N.- The chief U.N. inspector, Richard Butler, was cutting short his trip to Baghdad following the collapse of talks with Iraqi officials over the dismantling of the Mideast country's weapons of mass destruction, U.N. officials said Monday."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq286.ht m

And on August 5 1998 "Iraq parliament votes to end cooperation with U.N.-" thus kicking out the inspectors.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq287.ht m

So, if this were a peer-reviewed paper, we would have to verify all the claims, as it would fail a spot QA/QC. Better find some more reliable sources of your info. Good luck with life.

I picked one of your points at random and researched its veracity, and its wrong.
Saddam kicked out the UN ambassador on August 3, 1998 (usatoday)
"Iraq parliament votes to end cooperation with U.N.- The chief U.N. inspector, Richard Butler, was cutting short his trip to Baghdad following the collapse of talks with Iraqi officials over the dismantling of the Mideast country's weapons of mass destruction, U.N. officials said Monday."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq286.ht m

And on August 5 1998 "Iraq parliament votes to end cooperation with U.N.-" thus kicking out the inspectors.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/iraq/iraq287.ht m

So, if this were a peer-reviewed paper, we would have to verify all the claims, as it would fail a spot QA/QC. Better find some more reliable sources of your info. Good luck with life.

When inflation is running over 3% and rising, a 2% pay raise is a real pay decrease. That is a real economic loss, and yes, that is a real "so called cut."

You see, this supposed "liberal world" you reference is really the real world, not a state sponsored "news agency."

And that is exactly why this administration has driven our economy into the ground. They spend like FDR and Lyndon Johnson on a drunken bender. This administration has single-handedly made the Great Society look like a drop in the bucket. The amazing thing is how fast they did it, because the deficit got huge (remember those days worrying about how the budget surplus was going to be spent?) well before 9/11, so don't give me this 9/11-Iraq crap. This administration has been the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history. Huge budgets coupled with massive tax cuts; duh, what do you think is going to happen? The only amusing thing is to see the Reagan Republicans get hot under the collar seeing the havoc this president has wrought on the smaller government, smaller spending philosophy Republicans used to hold in high esteem. When they control the White House and both sides of The Hill, it is amazing how the truely stupid and/or mindless sheep (such as you) still blame Democrats for anything.

"There exist outrageous levels of crime that create a powder keg every time the police isn't controlling the streets."

This is not correct. The crime rate in the U.S. has been declining since 1993:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm#Crime

And the reporting of violent crimes in New Orleans is mostly devoid of facts (i.e. sensationalism):

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?articl e_id=4797
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2002520986_katmyth26.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/20 05-09-29-after-further-review_x.htm

"Did you know a typical Chinese peasant now lives longer than a US citizen? (Bet they don't mention facts like that on Fox)"

That's an interesting theory, but not proven by sources. A typical Chinese citizen lives just under 71 years, but a typical US citizen lives just under 78 years.

http://www.china-club.de/english/chinaguide/ueberb lick.htm
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_1741500824_4/U nited_States_(People).html#p73

Never mess with groupthink, man. Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC. You go and confront groupthink with actual facts and you'll get it all grumpy and everything...

Facts are funny things.

It may not be the majority anymore, but it's still almost half of Americans (could that be the *conservative* half?), and considering that George W. Bush himself promoted the idea that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, it's no wonder the rest of the country considers conservatives a bit... dim.

From all evidence, it seems conservatives are the fucking *worst* at groupthink. "What's that? Evidence that Iraq is *no threat whatsoever*? Evidence that President Bush fucking *lied* to us? Well, support the troops! And, ah, if you think bad of the President, you're a traitor! And a bed-wetter!"

To paraphrase "Get Fuzzy," do you want to be Pot, or Kettle for Hallowe'en?

I recently read some news from South Korea, mentioning people who died by having gaming sessions for days (and nights) without sleeping and eating enough.

Different from people in Europe, about 70 percent of the South Koreans have broadband internet access, and half of them are gamers. Hence, I think, internet may be a real threat for the nation.

Here's an USA today article related to that topic in Korea.

Why shouldn't that be true for China as well?

Okay, China is a totalitarian system, but does that exclude, that this kind of threat exists there?

The lack of social contact and prolonged solitude has a profound effect on the mentality of the hikikomori, who gradually lose their social skills and the necessary social references and mores of the outside world. Anguished about their isolation and acutely self aware of their problem, they immerse themselves into the fantasy worlds of manga, television or computer games, which in turn becomes their only frame of reference. As time passes, the hikikomori, lacking interpersonal stimulus, developmentally stagnates into routine behaviors of sleeping all day and staying up all night only to sneak out into the kitchen for food when the family is asleep. Eventually, hikikomori may abandon their diversions of books and TV and simply stare into space for hours at a time. -- Wikipedia, "hikikomori"

It's such a big problem in Japan that the birth rate has dropped substantially.

431 times, yes, and yes. A CEO at a major corporation making $4.5M is the laughingstock of his fellow CEOs, whose median pay is somewhere around $10-14M.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management /2005-03-30-ceo-pay-2004-cover_x.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/26/news/economy/ceo_p ay/
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

Google for lots, lots more sources.

This writeup from USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technolog y/2005-10-07-rim_x.htm

says that USPTO "has now issued preliminary rejections of the five NTP patents that RIM was found to have violated in the jury trial. The most recent of those patent office decisions came last week".

Maybe this is why the story isn't getting much news coverage; RIM will probably be OK.

Very few professional athletes make enough money to live off.

No kidding...

Years in NBA - 0
Minimum salary - $349,458
Maximum salary - $10,067,750
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2002 -2003-nba-salaries-numbers.htm

It's amazing they can even afford Cristal on that sort of pittance.

Sorry to dismantle your quaint little rant by injecting reality, but...

China is not paying for our debt, nor is the rest of the world. The US/PRC trade imbalance is $162 billion in China's favor. The US/World trade imbalance is $693 billion. [Source] The monthly US/World trade imbalance is $57.9 billion as of July, 2005. [Source]

If anything, the world cutting off trade with the US would only result in half a trillion dollars pouring into our own economy, at the direct expense of everyone else. The only thing that would really hurt is if OPEC stopped selling us oil. And they would bankrupt themselves if they did.

Strictly speaking that's true, although the way you've worded that, you might lead people to believe that there is some doubt that FDR had polio. Who doubts this? Why?

Since I wasn't positive at the time if FDR had polio, I did a quick google search and came across a page that said it may have been something else that most doctors didn't know about at time. Something called Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-10-30-fdr -usat_x.htm
I don't know if he had polio or something else. All I know for sure is that he was pretty much confined to a wheel chair.

I'm not asking for music 'at cost', but I would expect reasonable pricing based on market demands. In digital format, mp3's can be treated as a commodity, the markup that needs to occur is much less to achieve a same level of profit.

you have no idea what the production "costs" might be,

The costs I was referring to are those involved in the manufacturing of the music itself. I believe I even cited examples, although, I could've been more explicit. The reduction in cost of CD's can be credited in large part to the litigation that occured that forced music retailers to stop price fixing their CD's. See here for a brief read. Further reduction in prices can be attributed to the reduction in the cost of manufacturing, new materials, etc...Ever notice how much 'denser' a CD from ten years ago is?

...online music (via iTunes let's say) is already cheaper than the physical album...if you were producing your own music, would you dramatically undercut your own prices?

The pricing structure of iTunes is not even. Yes, if I buy the whole album all at once, then I generally save money ($10/CD?). But, if I buy one or two tracks, then turn around and buy the Album, I will have lost out on the tracks I already purchased. The cost of the album has just increased. Not to mention the fact that a 15 minute track costs as much as a 3 minute track. And if I buy all the tracks individually, then I risk paying more for the album. What if I'm trying to discover a new artist and I'm not sure I want to purchase the whole album?

As for producing my own music, yes, I should be able to undercut my distributors, it's my choice, what they charge aren't my prices. If they want to charge more, should I have to?

it's easy for someone to drastically reduce prices when they don't have to pay for the material. I'd probably make a lot of money selling stuff for half the market value... when you consider I stole all of it from your home.

Your analogy is very poor, and I fail to see how it accurately depicts the situation we are discussing. But no matter. If they can reduce prices by saving on the manufacturing and reproduction costs, why don't they? I won't say that the only person being stole from is the consumer, but that shouldn't be overlooked. Why am I not ranting at allofmp3? Because thus far, they are legally allowing me to download music at below market value. I'd pay more at allofmp3, but not as much as they charge (and want to charge) at iTMS and MSN. You did notice that I also have a subscription to eMusic, right? Where I pay about .25 per download? The really great thing about allofmp3 that hasn't been adopted by others is the selective encoding rate.

In the end, I am still purchasing my music, be it online or at my local CD store. As a consumer, I will shop where I feel my $ is best served. And overpriced, DRM restricted, non-licensed music is not something I want to spend my money on.

and the next time you sarcastically refer to me as a 'smart guy' like that, I'm gonna drop a pile of bricks on your ears. :-)

Not portable? I'm inclined to agree, but then why are PSP movie sales through the roof? It seems that a market already exists.

If Apple can match the PSP's screen quality and beat its ease of use (by making movies downloadable, perhaps) they might have something.

It isn't about running away from anything. I've been fighting an uphill battle all those years. Everyone says "if you don't like things, then get out and vote". Well, I get out and vote. I try to get out and work in the community. I go to city council meetings. I am part of the school board. I write my congressman and Senator constantly almost to the point where I'm a nuisance. All to no avail.

When I have to sit in on meetings about teaching intelligent design in our school system, I try to object that it's not even science at all I get people looking at me like I'm nuts. I even had a guy tell me to move to France as he said they're Godless over there too...to which he had a bit of applause from the group! It's a long story on that one, but you get my point I hope.

So you say it's running away when things happen I don't like. Well, I suppose you would say that anyone that in the past has left an oppressive country and government were "running away when things happen" also? You seem to be one of these people that look down on people that bad-mouth their country...pathetic you call them. You even want to pass a law that if anyone says they want to leave the country would be deported in a month. And how dare I "cry" about it here. Sorry to muck up your perfect world order by my crying. I know you're just spouting off, but I'm not so sure that one day they would indeed pass this law...as our free speech that some still hold dear is eroding away year by year along with other freedoms...like the new bill about how the police would be able to take DNA samples from anyone detained. That's detained, not even arrested. Yes, this means that a minor traffic stop you "could" be required to give a DNA sample. More about this here.

I'm tired. I just now want to live my life in peace and quiet now. This Jack Thompson thing is just another straw on a very over burdened camel.

Haha. You obviously didn't even read your own "evidence" which states the opposite conclusion.

What happens when we do some basic research? Oh, we find out that midway through 2005, CD sales are already down 7.5%.

Hell, I don't expect you to ever acknowledge this. You'll dismiss these facts and just attack me some more. Meanwhile, the truth still stands. The pro-piracy contingent has a real problem with hard facts and common sense.

Cthulhu is real. Here's the proof :)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-07-02-se a-creature_x.htm

Cthulhu is real. Here's the proof :)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-07-02-se a-creature_x.htm

The record industry is too anachronistic to have the foresight to create this solution themselves and are still obsessed with selling a solid medium (LPs, tapes, CDs), while treating its customers as criminals and artists as expendable commodities that can ignore paying royalties if they can help it

A brief look at the practices of the record industry reveals that they are the dishonest lot:

Apple earns less than a nickel per iTunes track

States settle CD price-fixing case

RIAA Continues Distributing Dud CDs to Satisfy Settlement

A music industry case study Shows how little the artist makes thanks to middle men like the record industry

Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDsRemember when CDs first came out and people said it was too expensive and the record industry promised that it would go below $10 eventually. Never happened

How Apple saved the music biz

FTC: Labels charged with price-fixing - again

Music Firms to Look Harder For Artists Owed Royalties Spitzer announced a settlement in which the nation's five largest recording companies promised to do a better job of tracking down and paying $50 million in unclaimed royalties to thousands of performers.

Finally, last night 2005-Sep-29 on Nightly Business Review (NBR) was a four part series on the music industry. It shows how iTMS allowed one relatively unknown electronica artist sell directly to her consumers with the iTMS . Her music was featured on NPR and then people all over the world wanted to download and listen to her music. Stores like iTMS are the great equalizer from years of abuse from the greedy record labels. "The Business of Music,"-Part 4: The Down Low On Download Distribution

You forgot 4. The RIAA can't fix the price THEMSELVES. I can't believe they're being so public about their lack of ability to FIX THE PRICE OF MUSIC. You'd figure after they'd been found guilty of price fixing they'd be a little bit careful complaining about a someone charging a lower price!