Hitler wanted to conquer britain. The plan was to capture and send members of the british empire overseas as slaves. The women were to be used in population farms. This was broken up when the united kingdom won the battle of britain.
I dont really see why you think that sending off all the men and mating with the women isnt a form of genocide, but if you are going to be a pedant, at least do some research first.
To actually understand what hitler was trying to do, you might have to actually do more than partially quote wikipedia.
As for mussolini, he didnt understand what hitler was trying to do. He went as far as to point out that he has never read mein kampf, stating that it was too boring to read. Rather than explicitly disagree with hitler, mussolini just said that mein kampf was full of little more than commanplace cliches. Indifference is not opposition.
The germans wanted to kill anyone who wasnt german...just because they attempted to commit genocide against multiple groups doesnt make it not genocide.
You do realise that the Germans used the same argument - that collective punishment of the locals meant that they were less likely to help or join the resistance, and hence collective punishment helped to protect German lives?
First of all, that isn't true. Germans never made such an argument. Secondly, the germans were trying to commit genocide, using the Jews as scapegoats, not protect themselves. Third, Israel isnt sanctioning the palestinians in an effort to shut down resistance, but rather to protect both Israeli and palestinian lives.
And you do realise that sanctions on food, fuel, medical supplies and electricity lead to indiscriminate deaths? Hospitals need electricity and medicine, without it innocent people will die. And people need food too, without it, innocent people will die: "So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements." source, "Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death" and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa." source
While I realize that any area that has a lack of food, fuel, medical supplies or electricity can lead to death, that is due to the govermental system of the plo. Hamas does not properly distribute food, fuel, medical supplies, or electricity. If there were no economic sanctions by Israel, palestinians would still have these issues.
If a child is poking you with a stick, and you ask him to stop, and he doesnt listen, you take away the stick. You don't let him keep poking you, even if some idiot standby person says you are stifling his creativity. You certainly dont replace the stick with a baseball bat.
Do you know why people in the poorest parts of africa dont have economic sanctions from Israel? I have a couple of guesses, but I'll give you a chance to figure it out for yourself.
Probably because instead of responding by collecting everyone in gaza and killing every tenth person, Israel is responding with economic sanctions, for the purpose of protecting its own people. Again, in response to members of a militia attacking civilians at random.
You know, as opposed to germany, which responded by killing civilians for minor damage to soldiers (they just had to be fired at, not killed).
I find it disgusting that you can't recognize the difference.
Its for people who have stumbled onto/., figured out how to read the hidden comments, havent figured out what kph are but are too lazy to look it up in case there isnt a standard conversion, and have already gone back to digg, but somehow knew that someone else had replied already with an explanation that a conversion was readily available, but would not figure out to just use a search engine unless they figured it out from my allusion to the possibility.
Admittedly, its a niche group.
Seriously though, it was used as a comparison to the previously mentioned exchange rate, as to why a comparative to the exchange rate from today doesnt give relevant information. Should have been fairly obvious from the post, if you take the whole thing in context.
You have to base it on the exchange rate of when you received the fine, not today's exchange rate (exchange rates change over time, as compared to your mention of kph, which has a standard conversion for anyone who might be interested). Today's exchange rate is meaningless for your prior fine.
You didnt even tell us when you got the ticket or what currency you are exchanging from into USD, so we could look it up on our own.
Reviewers who claim that $1 apps are overpriced are probably right, those apps may not provide $1 worth of use to them. The value of anything is not necessarily tied to the amount of time spent using it. Particularly, in the entertainment industry, the value of a product is how much it entertains you, not how long it does.
If the value of a game was based on the time spent on it, every game would simply be a grindfest. It might take you 10000 hours to play through disgaea 2, and it might cost you $20 today. Fallout 3 will cost you $60. Fallout 3, in my opinion, is a better value, even though I might only spend 20-30 hours playing it.
The point is that the value of a product is not determined by the price placed upon it by the manufacturer, but rather by the utility of the product.
No, they cant do they, you arent in the business of selling PS3s. There is no manufacturing, marketing, or selling cost for used items. Accordingly, under the right of first sale, you can sell your PS3 for whatever amount you wish.
If you enter into the business of selling PS3s, then you have to factor in a price floor for the amount the system actually cost you in production/selling costs. It did not take a supreme court decision to make this a law; it has always been illegal to sell items below cost for the purpose of competition. The supreme court decision simply upholds this law.
This is news for nerds, not news for chicken little. The sky isnt falling, and your head is intact.
You are more likely to get safe drinking water from a 1200 dehumidifier than from sending 2926 letters to public water authority, which if it went through, would raise taxes on drinking water for everyone, effectively costing more anyway.
That being said, most people still wont buy a $1200 dehumidifier, because current water is still somewhat safe. or if not, a $20 filter is much cheaper.
Its one yellow card, then a second yellow car = a red card policy.
Perhaps a better comparative metaphor would be if a pitcher hits a player twice with a pitch, the batter will run up and and fight the pitcher, thus getting him thrown out of the game.
It happens all the time in the used textbook industry.
You buy a textbook, you get use out of it, publishers create a new edition, you cant sell it back to the bookstore. You cant sell it to other students, because they need the new edition for the class.
Although there is no legal right to prohibit resale, its a fairly effective method.
The video game equivalent would be an mmo(rpg), where you purchase a time-specific use of continually updating software.
Generally, when members of an oligopoly try to merge, they are prohibited. Even when they arent completely related.
More realistically, however, most companies dont want to merge with their competition. You arent going to see burgerking and mcdonalds, or exxon and bp, or coke and pepsi merging. There is no benefit to these companies in doing so. Generally, a merger occurs because the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. It has to be a pretty good fit to get shareholder approval too. With current patent law, a company is much, much more likely to purchase IP than to merge.
More importantly, companies cannot set prices how they see fit, because people will not purchase their product. People dont need LCD screens to survive (not even/.ers), so if prices get too high, they will do without. The new magically combined company you bring up also will still have shareholders, who will demand that prices be reasonable so that they company can make a profit. Finally, if prices are set too high, competition will break barriers to entry, even if that means that individuals being making lcd screens for themselves. Someone will get really good at it, and start a business, and charge less than the other companies, and eventually an oligopoly will be formed, and if prices dont drop, all the members will be fined, and shareholders will move out to companies that dont get fined. Ad nauseum.
Company colludes with other company to set prices. This reduces competition, which normally would have company selling at lower price to gain market share (but not at a loss, because this is an oligopoly, and when one company in an oligopoly lowers their price, everyone else does, but when one company raises their price no one else does).
Companies in collusion make 600M profit, receive 585M fine. Companies have offset fine with profits but are deterred from continuing to cartel.
Purchaser is not hurt due to fines, because lcd screens are not necessary for a standard quality of life (as opposed to electricity, running water, trash services, and public roads, to name a few examples of things that are necessary for a standard quality of life, which thus are government entities). Purchaser simply paid a little more than he or she otherwise would have had collusion not existed.
The fine, on the other hand, even if just a symbolic gesture, has a lasting impact on the comapny. If the company had received a warning - if you dont stop colluding on prices in the next time period your business will be shut down - it would have the exact same impact as a fine: shareholders begin taking money out of the company. Without investors, no business can truly grow. I dont care what kind of widgets you make or how much you sell them for; every business needs cash flow.
Any actual business owners out there want to chime in? I bet any amount of money that receiving a fine is a deterrent to continuing the behavior that caused it.
This is/., so I for those of you still reading, here is a car analogy. If you get a speeding ticket, you may have gotten more value out of speeding for several months or even years of getting places faster than those who follow the law, and you may even be unaffected financially by the fine you receive, and you may not even take a class for 3 hours so that you dont even have the speeding ticket on your record in the long term. But I guarantee you dont speed when the cop lets you go. The next you see a cop, you still slow down. And the next couple of weeks (on average), you are deterred from speeding.
In a business, a fine is not paid in one lump sum (at least on the books it isnt, even if the cash moves at once), so the business has a long term continual deterrent in both having to recognize the cost of the fine over time and from shareholders who dont want to see hits to profitability, regardless of the size, due to legal issues. Any business worth its salt gets audited, and has to disclose these items in the notes to the financial statements. Go read a 10k. This is why fines are an effective deterrent.
No, you idiot, that doesnt come out of cost of production, it comes out of profits.
Secondly, that comes from 3 companies that were participating in an effective cartel, not 1, and these companies are now encouraged to not continue in that path.
Reasonably, in the short term, LCD prices will drop, because if behavior is continued, the fine will be much higher, or these companies will be put out of business, lowering the barriers to entry.
In the long term, these companies will very easily make these profits back, because/.ers still like lcd screens, even if they have paid too much for them in the past.
You can't possibly be that stupid. Well... come to think of it, there's ample evidence supporting that people can. Still, that doesn't mean they should.
You mean you actually think people choose to be stupid? Do these people all choose to join the french senate?
Hopefully, the elections in a few days will prove (within constraints) that morons like you are a minority in your country. You know, so I don't lose what little faith I have left in humanity (and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way).
Just....wow. You seriously think that the elections are in a few days (they are tomorrow) and that the outcome of the election has anything to do with the intelligence or lack thereof of individuals in the US. Moreover, regardless of who wins, it isnt going to be by more than 5 points, so claiming that the not winning candidate is a minority is equally stupid.
When you stop and think about it for 5 seconds, I gues you can be that stupid.
As for faith in humanity, clearly mine is higher than yours. I believe that if our government didnt force us to be the humanitarian country of the world, there are enough people who would still give such that our actions would still encourage others countries to believe that Americans will take care of the world's problems, and that they can choose not to help while lambasting us for doing so.
Posting this AC? Why haven't you been modded troll yet (for the curious, even if not AC, should still be modded troll)?
The war in Iraq is in no way, shape or form related to this issue. But since you brought it up, the war in Iraq was not illegal. It was based on information that turned out to be false, but that was thought to be accurate at the time(for fucks sake, don't invoke godwins law here, and stay on topic, even though I got off topic a bit to bitch at AC). Now taxpayers in the US are paying for it, but thats the risk you take when the world views the US as required to give foreign aid to every country who doesnt have democracy despite the fact that countries who don't give foreign aid like to chastise us for doing so. Shame on all of you (Again, FWIW, I personally think this kind of funding should be left to charitable organizations, not government spending, but most of America likes to spend the money of those who have it to help those who don't, so the US is 11T in debt and everyone else still buys dollars like they are pounds).
If I give up bottled water (and FWIW, I dont drink the stuff, I have a filter on my tap, because I can figure out what things are worth buying and what aren't without advertisements telling me by doing a cost/benefit analysis, just like everyone else. We just choose to waste our money on things we dont need which is why boycotts actually do work. We stop buying things we dont need, and companies respond to public thought. How else do you possibly explain windmills?) I could just drink tap water. Or energy drinks. Or electroylyte drinks, like anything ending in "ade." Alcohol comes to mind (not wine though, thats the other 1/3 of France's economy).
As for the AC post below this, it will teach them not to create precedent for issues that they have not fully (or in this case, it seems even partially) thought through. I bring you back to the slippery slope raised earlier.
Seriously children, its Sunday. You aren't at work, post on your own username, so we can regulate ridiculous thought to where it belongs - below my scoring threshold, so I don't have to read this crap.
You are a truck driver. You are caught on 3 occasions driving your truck through a gas station to skip a traffic light, regardless of whether or not you actually stopped to buy gas (in some states in the US, this is considered an illegal use of private property). As a result, you are prohibited from using public roads. Whether for driving your truck or your bicycle or even taking the public city bus, you are not allowed to do so for 1 year, because you didnt pay for something you may have had the right to access.
Seems only 15 out of 312+ members of the French Senate have managed to keep their heads out of their asses long enough to realize how much this law stinks.
Never mind that the government of a country should not be using its resources to protect private businesses from their own failing business model.
The internet has become an essential service for most people in today's world.
The law doesnt address how to resolve an issue of employees using the internet to download copyrighted material at work, if 4 employees do it at once, the entire business would lose internet for a year.
The law doesnt even specify that the downloading of copyrighted material must be illegal. If I go to cnn.com and download a podcast, I have downloaded copyrighted material from the internet and have not paid for it.
On the other hand, in many cases the validity of whether material is copyrighted is not apparent. If I download a torrent that contains copyrighted material that is not labeled as such, I have permission to do so from whoever uploads the material. If the source material is in fact copyrighted, I could lose my internet for downloading it from someone who downloaded from someone who downloaded it from the original host. I would have no way of knowing that the material was copyrighted. And thousands of people could lose internet access because of one person's actions.
This is a slippery slope that ends in transfer of information without a fee or a EULA impossible, which in the long run, turns the internet from the information superhighway into the worlds biggest electronic shopping mall.
Its not like we didnt have reasons to hate France before, but if this passes the lower house of the senate, I for one will be boycotting all things French (admittedly, that means I have to give up bottled water, but still, thats about 2/3 of France's economy, right?)
Slashdot Mirror
From your own sources you are wrong.
Hitler wanted to conquer britain. The plan was to capture and send members of the british empire overseas as slaves. The women were to be used in population farms. This was broken up when the united kingdom won the battle of britain.
I dont really see why you think that sending off all the men and mating with the women isnt a form of genocide, but if you are going to be a pedant, at least do some research first.
To actually understand what hitler was trying to do, you might have to actually do more than partially quote wikipedia.
As for mussolini, he didnt understand what hitler was trying to do. He went as far as to point out that he has never read mein kampf, stating that it was too boring to read. Rather than explicitly disagree with hitler, mussolini just said that mein kampf was full of little more than commanplace cliches. Indifference is not opposition.
The germans wanted to kill anyone who wasnt german...just because they attempted to commit genocide against multiple groups doesnt make it not genocide.
You appear to have made my point - germany didnt kill people to fight resistance, but rather were committing genocide.
Unless of course you have the insane belief that killing 50 for 1 is a deterrent.
You do realise that the Germans used the same argument - that collective punishment of the locals meant that they were less likely to help or join the resistance, and hence collective punishment helped to protect German lives?
First of all, that isn't true. Germans never made such an argument. Secondly, the germans were trying to commit genocide, using the Jews as scapegoats, not protect themselves. Third, Israel isnt sanctioning the palestinians in an effort to shut down resistance, but rather to protect both Israeli and palestinian lives.
And you do realise that sanctions on food, fuel, medical supplies and electricity lead to indiscriminate deaths? Hospitals need electricity and medicine, without it innocent people will die. And people need food too, without it, innocent people will die: "So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements." source, "Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death" and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa." source
While I realize that any area that has a lack of food, fuel, medical supplies or electricity can lead to death, that is due to the govermental system of the plo. Hamas does not properly distribute food, fuel, medical supplies, or electricity. If there were no economic sanctions by Israel, palestinians would still have these issues.
If a child is poking you with a stick, and you ask him to stop, and he doesnt listen, you take away the stick. You don't let him keep poking you, even if some idiot standby person says you are stifling his creativity. You certainly dont replace the stick with a baseball bat.
Do you know why people in the poorest parts of africa dont have economic sanctions from Israel? I have a couple of guesses, but I'll give you a chance to figure it out for yourself.
Probably because instead of responding by collecting everyone in gaza and killing every tenth person, Israel is responding with economic sanctions, for the purpose of protecting its own people. Again, in response to members of a militia attacking civilians at random.
You know, as opposed to germany, which responded by killing civilians for minor damage to soldiers (they just had to be fired at, not killed).
I find it disgusting that you can't recognize the difference.
Way to completely miss the point, and then try to claim I was saying something else.
Obligatory: http://www.xkcd.com/169/
I couldn't really have been more straightforward, but how about you try this a second time:
Either make a logical, sound, or reasonable argument that Israelis or western powers stole Israel;
or apologize for insinuating that such an argument exists.
Although you are ridiculously off topic, I call bullshit.
Make a logical, sound, or reasonable argument that Israelis or western powers stole Israel, and I'll give you my car.
Fail to give one, and I demand you correct yourself, along with an apology.
Its for people who have stumbled onto /., figured out how to read the hidden comments, havent figured out what kph are but are too lazy to look it up in case there isnt a standard conversion, and have already gone back to digg, but somehow knew that someone else had replied already with an explanation that a conversion was readily available, but would not figure out to just use a search engine unless they figured it out from my allusion to the possibility.
Admittedly, its a niche group.
Seriously though, it was used as a comparison to the previously mentioned exchange rate, as to why a comparative to the exchange rate from today doesnt give relevant information. Should have been fairly obvious from the post, if you take the whole thing in context.
You have to base it on the exchange rate of when you received the fine, not today's exchange rate (exchange rates change over time, as compared to your mention of kph, which has a standard conversion for anyone who might be interested). Today's exchange rate is meaningless for your prior fine.
You didnt even tell us when you got the ticket or what currency you are exchanging from into USD, so we could look it up on our own.
...and nothing of value was lost.
Reviewers who claim that $1 apps are overpriced are probably right, those apps may not provide $1 worth of use to them. The value of anything is not necessarily tied to the amount of time spent using it. Particularly, in the entertainment industry, the value of a product is how much it entertains you, not how long it does.
If the value of a game was based on the time spent on it, every game would simply be a grindfest. It might take you 10000 hours to play through disgaea 2, and it might cost you $20 today. Fallout 3 will cost you $60. Fallout 3, in my opinion, is a better value, even though I might only spend 20-30 hours playing it.
The point is that the value of a product is not determined by the price placed upon it by the manufacturer, but rather by the utility of the product.
There is a link to the torrent in the summary, you lazy schmuck!
In both cases, 60% of the time, at least 3 (or 30) heads will show up (assuming fair coins).
Turn in your statistics card (parent). Assuming equal strength, 30 vs 20 or 3 vs 2, repeated over time, will have the same win rate.
No, they cant do they, you arent in the business of selling PS3s. There is no manufacturing, marketing, or selling cost for used items. Accordingly, under the right of first sale, you can sell your PS3 for whatever amount you wish.
If you enter into the business of selling PS3s, then you have to factor in a price floor for the amount the system actually cost you in production/selling costs. It did not take a supreme court decision to make this a law; it has always been illegal to sell items below cost for the purpose of competition. The supreme court decision simply upholds this law.
This is news for nerds, not news for chicken little. The sky isnt falling, and your head is intact.
I wasn't aware that there were 371 days in a year now.
*obligatory* 4 years of movies ought to be enough for anyone...
Most people.
Its all about the return on investment.
You are more likely to get safe drinking water from a 1200 dehumidifier than from sending 2926 letters to public water authority, which if it went through, would raise taxes on drinking water for everyone, effectively costing more anyway.
That being said, most people still wont buy a $1200 dehumidifier, because current water is still somewhat safe. or if not, a $20 filter is much cheaper.
You dont seem to understand football.
Its one yellow card, then a second yellow car = a red card policy.
Perhaps a better comparative metaphor would be if a pitcher hits a player twice with a pitch, the batter will run up and and fight the pitcher, thus getting him thrown out of the game.
It happens all the time in the used textbook industry.
You buy a textbook, you get use out of it, publishers create a new edition, you cant sell it back to the bookstore. You cant sell it to other students, because they need the new edition for the class.
Although there is no legal right to prohibit resale, its a fairly effective method.
The video game equivalent would be an mmo(rpg), where you purchase a time-specific use of continually updating software.
Neither scenario is accepted.
Generally, when members of an oligopoly try to merge, they are prohibited. Even when they arent completely related.
More realistically, however, most companies dont want to merge with their competition. You arent going to see burgerking and mcdonalds, or exxon and bp, or coke and pepsi merging. There is no benefit to these companies in doing so. Generally, a merger occurs because the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. It has to be a pretty good fit to get shareholder approval too. With current patent law, a company is much, much more likely to purchase IP than to merge.
More importantly, companies cannot set prices how they see fit, because people will not purchase their product. People dont need LCD screens to survive (not even /.ers), so if prices get too high, they will do without. The new magically combined company you bring up also will still have shareholders, who will demand that prices be reasonable so that they company can make a profit. Finally, if prices are set too high, competition will break barriers to entry, even if that means that individuals being making lcd screens for themselves. Someone will get really good at it, and start a business, and charge less than the other companies, and eventually an oligopoly will be formed, and if prices dont drop, all the members will be fined, and shareholders will move out to companies that dont get fined. Ad nauseum.
Not even close.
Company colludes with other company to set prices. This reduces competition, which normally would have company selling at lower price to gain market share (but not at a loss, because this is an oligopoly, and when one company in an oligopoly lowers their price, everyone else does, but when one company raises their price no one else does).
Companies in collusion make 600M profit, receive 585M fine. Companies have offset fine with profits but are deterred from continuing to cartel.
Purchaser is not hurt due to fines, because lcd screens are not necessary for a standard quality of life (as opposed to electricity, running water, trash services, and public roads, to name a few examples of things that are necessary for a standard quality of life, which thus are government entities). Purchaser simply paid a little more than he or she otherwise would have had collusion not existed.
The fine, on the other hand, even if just a symbolic gesture, has a lasting impact on the comapny. If the company had received a warning - if you dont stop colluding on prices in the next time period your business will be shut down - it would have the exact same impact as a fine: shareholders begin taking money out of the company. Without investors, no business can truly grow. I dont care what kind of widgets you make or how much you sell them for; every business needs cash flow.
Any actual business owners out there want to chime in? I bet any amount of money that receiving a fine is a deterrent to continuing the behavior that caused it.
This is /., so I for those of you still reading, here is a car analogy. If you get a speeding ticket, you may have gotten more value out of speeding for several months or even years of getting places faster than those who follow the law, and you may even be unaffected financially by the fine you receive, and you may not even take a class for 3 hours so that you dont even have the speeding ticket on your record in the long term. But I guarantee you dont speed when the cop lets you go. The next you see a cop, you still slow down. And the next couple of weeks (on average), you are deterred from speeding.
In a business, a fine is not paid in one lump sum (at least on the books it isnt, even if the cash moves at once), so the business has a long term continual deterrent in both having to recognize the cost of the fine over time and from shareholders who dont want to see hits to profitability, regardless of the size, due to legal issues. Any business worth its salt gets audited, and has to disclose these items in the notes to the financial statements. Go read a 10k. This is why fines are an effective deterrent.
32 inch tvs have long ago fallen through the $500 floor.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/display-devices-tvs-projectors/63061-32-inch-tv-suggestions-under-500-a.html
Also, too lazy to look for the link, but wasnt there an article on /. a couple days ago about a $430 pocket projector?
No, you idiot, that doesnt come out of cost of production, it comes out of profits.
Secondly, that comes from 3 companies that were participating in an effective cartel, not 1, and these companies are now encouraged to not continue in that path.
Reasonably, in the short term, LCD prices will drop, because if behavior is continued, the fine will be much higher, or these companies will be put out of business, lowering the barriers to entry.
In the long term, these companies will very easily make these profits back, because /.ers still like lcd screens, even if they have paid too much for them in the past.
You're kidding right?
About what?
You can't possibly be that stupid. Well... come to think of it, there's ample evidence supporting that people can. Still, that doesn't mean they should.
You mean you actually think people choose to be stupid? Do these people all choose to join the french senate?
Hopefully, the elections in a few days will prove (within constraints) that morons like you are a minority in your country. You know, so I don't lose what little faith I have left in humanity (and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way).
Just....wow. You seriously think that the elections are in a few days (they are tomorrow) and that the outcome of the election has anything to do with the intelligence or lack thereof of individuals in the US. Moreover, regardless of who wins, it isnt going to be by more than 5 points, so claiming that the not winning candidate is a minority is equally stupid.
When you stop and think about it for 5 seconds, I gues you can be that stupid.
As for faith in humanity, clearly mine is higher than yours. I believe that if our government didnt force us to be the humanitarian country of the world, there are enough people who would still give such that our actions would still encourage others countries to believe that Americans will take care of the world's problems, and that they can choose not to help while lambasting us for doing so.
I'm bored, I'll play your game for now.
Posting this AC? Why haven't you been modded troll yet (for the curious, even if not AC, should still be modded troll)?
The war in Iraq is in no way, shape or form related to this issue. But since you brought it up, the war in Iraq was not illegal. It was based on information that turned out to be false, but that was thought to be accurate at the time(for fucks sake, don't invoke godwins law here, and stay on topic, even though I got off topic a bit to bitch at AC). Now taxpayers in the US are paying for it, but thats the risk you take when the world views the US as required to give foreign aid to every country who doesnt have democracy despite the fact that countries who don't give foreign aid like to chastise us for doing so. Shame on all of you (Again, FWIW, I personally think this kind of funding should be left to charitable organizations, not government spending, but most of America likes to spend the money of those who have it to help those who don't, so the US is 11T in debt and everyone else still buys dollars like they are pounds).
If I give up bottled water (and FWIW, I dont drink the stuff, I have a filter on my tap, because I can figure out what things are worth buying and what aren't without advertisements telling me by doing a cost/benefit analysis, just like everyone else. We just choose to waste our money on things we dont need which is why boycotts actually do work. We stop buying things we dont need, and companies respond to public thought. How else do you possibly explain windmills?) I could just drink tap water. Or energy drinks. Or electroylyte drinks, like anything ending in "ade." Alcohol comes to mind (not wine though, thats the other 1/3 of France's economy).
As for the AC post below this, it will teach them not to create precedent for issues that they have not fully (or in this case, it seems even partially) thought through. I bring you back to the slippery slope raised earlier.
Seriously children, its Sunday. You aren't at work, post on your own username, so we can regulate ridiculous thought to where it belongs - below my scoring threshold, so I don't have to read this crap.
Car analogy:
You are a truck driver. You are caught on 3 occasions driving your truck through a gas station to skip a traffic light, regardless of whether or not you actually stopped to buy gas (in some states in the US, this is considered an illegal use of private property). As a result, you are prohibited from using public roads. Whether for driving your truck or your bicycle or even taking the public city bus, you are not allowed to do so for 1 year, because you didnt pay for something you may have had the right to access.
Seems only 15 out of 312+ members of the French Senate have managed to keep their heads out of their asses long enough to realize how much this law stinks.
Never mind that the government of a country should not be using its resources to protect private businesses from their own failing business model.
The internet has become an essential service for most people in today's world.
The law doesnt address how to resolve an issue of employees using the internet to download copyrighted material at work, if 4 employees do it at once, the entire business would lose internet for a year.
The law doesnt even specify that the downloading of copyrighted material must be illegal. If I go to cnn.com and download a podcast, I have downloaded copyrighted material from the internet and have not paid for it.
On the other hand, in many cases the validity of whether material is copyrighted is not apparent. If I download a torrent that contains copyrighted material that is not labeled as such, I have permission to do so from whoever uploads the material. If the source material is in fact copyrighted, I could lose my internet for downloading it from someone who downloaded from someone who downloaded it from the original host. I would have no way of knowing that the material was copyrighted. And thousands of people could lose internet access because of one person's actions.
This is a slippery slope that ends in transfer of information without a fee or a EULA impossible, which in the long run, turns the internet from the information superhighway into the worlds biggest electronic shopping mall.
Its not like we didnt have reasons to hate France before, but if this passes the lower house of the senate, I for one will be boycotting all things French (admittedly, that means I have to give up bottled water, but still, thats about 2/3 of France's economy, right?)