And for some reason marijuana is an important issue? Are you kidding me? I don't see how it could possibly be more relevant than any of the issues I already listed. If we could solve all of them, then I would be comfortable with our national government looking into this "marijuana issue" (whatever the hell the issue is). But until then I don't see why it merits the time of our government.
Lets see... You legalize marijuana and you can cut down on the number of arrests made, cut down on the number of cops, when you legalize it you would also allow for new industries to thrive, tax dollars to collect, Assuming even only a moderate increase of marijuana consumption as a part of it being legalized, you open up an entire new industry, more jobs, less spending for the government, more freedom and more revenue.
There is no way you can argue for marijuana to not be legalized by a purely financial standpoint. Plus, legalizing it will cut costs, and spend less time looking at the issue rather than the more time you are foolishly suggesting.
In most cases, a seller who asks for a credit card will take a debit card. Banks in most U.S. states will open a checking account in the name of "$adult as custodian for $child under UTMA" which reverts to $child a few years later, and checking accounts nowadays tend to come with VISA check cards.
Yes, but these aren't the "financially responsible independent working for all the fancy phones" kind of kids, but rather, "mom and dad are never home so to compensate buy their kids all the fancy gadgets" type who usually have iPhones and Blackberries.
Do they pay cash for groceries? For car payments?
The thing is the media has them so convinced that their identity will be stolen to the point where buying anything online sounds risky to them. I don't know how many times I've had to convince someone that no, wal-mart isn't going to steal your identity when you buy online from them (over HTTPS of course) nor that some E-Bay seller when you pay with PayPal will hack into your bank accounts. On the other hand these people have no problem with handing credit cards to a waitress for them to do whatever with it. But the fact that its online scares them. I've never really understood it myself considering that more people have been scammed in person than online.
I think the thing is that there are a proportion of users for both platforms that are weary of giving out credit card information, either A) they can't get a credit card because they are too young (and there are large amount of iPhone/Blackberry users who are 16/17) or B) are afraid that their identity might be stolen. The iPhone has gift cards so you can bypass the credit card step, plus a lot of people already have iTunes accounts and gift cards are commonly given out for birthdays, etc.
The camera isn't useless and on most newer phones taking the pictures off is as easy as buying a $10 Micro (or mini) SD card and adapter and just getting them off there. Although data plans are priced way to high for what you get, with a modern phone (iPhone, Pre, or G1) you can browse the net just fine about the only problem is if you want Flash which isn't supported on a lot of phones. Heck, even Opera Mini or Opera Mobile gives you a halfway decent experience.
When was the last time you actually bought a (physical) movie though? Most of the times I usually rent, stream, or download a movie. On average I buy about 1 or 2 movies a year. Considering that most tech people tend to buy less physical movies (either preferring to stream, rent, download or pirate) and the fact that HD isn't in most people's houses, cars and in all TVs in the house, leaves a very low amount of Blu-Ray sales.
Exactly. The main reasons people got DVDs is that they were more reliable, didn't have to rewind, you didn't have players that would "eat" the DVD as with tapes, they were smaller so you could store more and you could store more on it so a movie that took 2 tapes would take only 1 DVD.
The problem with unspecified is that its effectively 0. When you walk into a courtroom, they need evidence to convict you, sure, you could argue that she was guilty but they don't have any evidence to prove she really distributed the song, what if she only sent part of the file? Does that mean that the RIAA are claiming copyright on random bits that could be found in almost any digital item? So with no evidence, you can only say that she might have possibly gave the song to a few people and our justice system is designed to give the benefit of the doubt especially in cases with absolutely 0 hard evidence.
And games, and things with regional lockout. Today, there is no reason with the rise of digital distribution that there shouldn't be 20 year copyright along with a clause that states that if the item is no longer available new, in your region for 3 years you have a right to download it for non-profit, non-commercial use. You only need to look at all the old video games that have passed into obscurity to notice the need for such laws, without the illegal dumping of ROMs a vast majority of early gaming would be completely lost forever.
...Its Google, its an American company. They can do the same thing over here. When you think about it and the recent "block everything" mentality from both democrats and republicans, soon China's internet might just be your internet.
1) Build most of the architecture that has lasted through time
Anyone can do that when you have a large captive population that you can make them do whatever you want them to. It just so happened that most rulers back in time had that, wanted greatness and had slave labor. If you really look at it, private companies have built far more larger and grander structures than the Greeks and Romans did, the thing is that because its modern you can't exactly say it has lasted through time.
2) Build the infrastructure in most countries
Again, anyone can do that with a large captive population. In the US at least, a lot of the infrastructure was privately done such as the railroads (although the railroads had to be given to the railroad companies because the government maintained a monopoly on the land unless someone wanted to build a house and live on it out west) I also believe that some of the roads were originally private projects such as various turnpikes.
3) Manger large services
Yah, they can manage large services.... However they can't turn a profit without either A) taxing to oblivion or B) raising rates all the time (see the USPS for an example). I'd say that private companies manage large services a ton better and with a lot less waste.
4) War
War is pointless and doesn't solve anything. If you were attacked first that is where the point that governments should protect against fraud and force comes in, the force being the invading armies.
5) Maintain records to a standard that private companies haven't come remotely close to
...And these are purposeful how? Sure, the census is nice and all but it really provides little in the way of information and a ton of government waste goes in to doing the census and other government records.
6) Create a 500 track record of a decrease in criminal activity, which while having infrequent bumps is rapidly declining in all respects
Again, if they protect against fraud and force that takes all real crimes out of the way.
7) Create a regulated system of tariffs and tolls which has allowed for free commerce between nearby locals to prosper.
...Or you know, not have any tariffs and have you know... really free commerce. Its simple economics, you import from the cheapest and export to who will pay the most. Private companies do that too.
8) Insure the safety of most consumer products
Again, that falls under protecting from fraud.
9) Spread information about agriculture to the point that hunger is essentially abolished and food prices are fairly close to transportation costs.
...And you know, things like books, magazines and the internet would never do that on its own?
In relationship to actual damages is the key part. How do you figure a song is worth $80,000? What, do you go on iTunes and buy songs for that much? No, the value of a song is at most $1.29 because that is the highest priced digital song available (and if you use Amazon its still $.99). This is as stupid as saying that you lost $300 an hour when you were sick because occasionally the boss has been known to give bonuses, never mind the fact that no bonuses were given out when you were sick and your normal wage is $10 an hour and even bonuses are usually $200 a piece. The RIAA effectively committed fraud.
You can study the effects of victimization on children without personally witnessing the act, just like we do with any other crime.
Right. And this has to do with child porn possession how? Especially when child porn can be legally defined as not even real children (!) just things drawn to seem underage. By that arguement every time someone views "adult" porn they are raping a porn actress (or actor). We know that not to be true. CP possession is effectively a victimless crime. Please tell me who gets harmed whenever someone downloads something legally defined as CP over the internet for no fee. Really, does someone get raped again for every time someone views it? If I watch an execution does that mean the person gets killed every time you watch it? By all means, prosecute and criminalize the production and possibly even the buying of it for profit, but simple possession of images that may or may not even be a real child being harmed in any way, should not be a crime especially when not explicitly asked for (for example someone being charged when they downloaded a huge zip file of porn with 1 or 2 underage people).
And please, tell me how you get across the problem of hearsay when you can't actually look at the pictures? Do you agree with the total prohabition of alcohol just because someone told you that alcohol may have had some influence in someone wrecking a car? But no way that you would ever drink alcohol nor read a study on it. And really, the logic of "they are reading CP that means that automatically makes them a predator" makes as much sense as someone who reads erotic fiction as going to carry out those acts.
...And if your job is to revise these laws of course no one would ever go see what is out there to see if its really that bad. No not anyone. Just like we want the people who make our drug laws to have never taken any drugs, never looked at any drugs, never talked to people who have taken drugs, heck while we're at it we don't want them to even look at research about drugs either. Or how about we have people making computer laws who have never even used a computer for more than 2 minutes! That works out really well for everyone, right? The thing is, if you are going to make laws about something, you have to at least know what it is you are dealing with, the problem is we have essentially banned all information about CP other than "its bad", if you are in charge of figuring out just how bad it is, I'd say that you would have to look at it to at the very least know what you were dealing with.
Yah, only because they have been dumping money in it for most of their working life. I like to get what I paid for, thank you very much. However, I'm sure for people who haven't worked much such as anyone younger than 25 would probably be overjoyed to get the extra $ back in their paycheck even if it meant not getting it* when they turn old.
*assuming that social security hadn't gone bankrupt
How do you express dislike for the only thing you know? Its like saying to dial up customers in the '90s if they were satisfied with 56K downloads. Being as they didn't know anything else they would say sure. Today would be a different story because people have had more speed and would be appalled to go back to dial-up. Another thing is, other than protecting citizens from force and fraud what else have governments been able to do successfully? Not much. This is true for all governments throughout history.
The problem with CP is that its impossible to actually "see" whats wrong with it without running afoul of laws. When information itself is banned, its then becomes impossible to get the information needed to rule on such things. For example, its like someone making laws that affect, say the liquor industry, however this person has never drank any alcohol, doesn't know anyone who drinks alcohol, and hasn't read any studies about alcohol. However when it comes to making informed decisions about CP its impossible to do so without breaking any of the laws because viewing it is so prohibited. So not only can you not drink the alcohol, but you can't really read about it, there are no formal studies done on it, so all you hear are reactionary stories of "so and so was drinking and they hit a tree and died!" rather than any hard information.
Well, although it does seem far fetched it legitimately could be used for research in the fact that he could either use it to convince people that certain parts of the law as unreasonable (such as, this counts as child porn, however as you can plainly see it is not).
No, no, no. If you are paying for music from the RIAA, you are financing this. If I buy some CDs from a non-RIAA affiliated label, or send money directly to a band, I'm not paying for any of this.
The problem is, our current system of selling music as a commodity is illogical. Music has existed, still exists and will still continue to exist in a for hire mode. How do you think most artists of the past made their living? Oh wait, working for hire. How do you think most bands make money? Oh wait, in concerts which are essentially for-hire performances? Who is going to do the hiring? A bunch of people, music fans buy tickets for a concert and go to the concert, if a movie or TV show is released that needs a good theme contact an artist and have them do it. If an artist gave away all their CDs for free and still performed live I highly doubt their bottom line would be affected. How to get the capital to get all of it? Simple, loans. The same way that a home builder is able to (or at least was before Obama screwed the nation) get a loan to build a house that they don't have the capital to do right that second. Similarly, an artist can pool together enough cash with other bands to make a down payment to rent out a larger arena, make money on tickets to keep making money and so on.
But you have to take that information with a grain of salt though. There is no Opera for iPhone, so all iPhone devices along with iPod touch devices are effectively excluded and I don't see Apple approving Opera for the iPhone anytime soon. Nokia has their browser pre-installed on their phones so it takes an active download to download Opera. So, yes, while Opera doesn't exactly dominate, they sure have a high marketshare considering the amount of work needed to install it and the amount of devices that don't have Opera.
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And for some reason marijuana is an important issue? Are you kidding me? I don't see how it could possibly be more relevant than any of the issues I already listed. If we could solve all of them, then I would be comfortable with our national government looking into this "marijuana issue" (whatever the hell the issue is). But until then I don't see why it merits the time of our government.
Lets see... You legalize marijuana and you can cut down on the number of arrests made, cut down on the number of cops, when you legalize it you would also allow for new industries to thrive, tax dollars to collect, Assuming even only a moderate increase of marijuana consumption as a part of it being legalized, you open up an entire new industry, more jobs, less spending for the government, more freedom and more revenue.
There is no way you can argue for marijuana to not be legalized by a purely financial standpoint. Plus, legalizing it will cut costs, and spend less time looking at the issue rather than the more time you are foolishly suggesting.
In most cases, a seller who asks for a credit card will take a debit card. Banks in most U.S. states will open a checking account in the name of "$adult as custodian for $child under UTMA" which reverts to $child a few years later, and checking accounts nowadays tend to come with VISA check cards.
Yes, but these aren't the "financially responsible independent working for all the fancy phones" kind of kids, but rather, "mom and dad are never home so to compensate buy their kids all the fancy gadgets" type who usually have iPhones and Blackberries.
Do they pay cash for groceries? For car payments?
The thing is the media has them so convinced that their identity will be stolen to the point where buying anything online sounds risky to them. I don't know how many times I've had to convince someone that no, wal-mart isn't going to steal your identity when you buy online from them (over HTTPS of course) nor that some E-Bay seller when you pay with PayPal will hack into your bank accounts. On the other hand these people have no problem with handing credit cards to a waitress for them to do whatever with it. But the fact that its online scares them. I've never really understood it myself considering that more people have been scammed in person than online.
I think the thing is that there are a proportion of users for both platforms that are weary of giving out credit card information, either A) they can't get a credit card because they are too young (and there are large amount of iPhone/Blackberry users who are 16/17) or B) are afraid that their identity might be stolen. The iPhone has gift cards so you can bypass the credit card step, plus a lot of people already have iTunes accounts and gift cards are commonly given out for birthdays, etc.
The camera isn't useless and on most newer phones taking the pictures off is as easy as buying a $10 Micro (or mini) SD card and adapter and just getting them off there. Although data plans are priced way to high for what you get, with a modern phone (iPhone, Pre, or G1) you can browse the net just fine about the only problem is if you want Flash which isn't supported on a lot of phones. Heck, even Opera Mini or Opera Mobile gives you a halfway decent experience.
I love it how some mod managed to moderate about 50% of the comments here trolls... Including this one which actually isn't a troll.
When was the last time you actually bought a (physical) movie though? Most of the times I usually rent, stream, or download a movie. On average I buy about 1 or 2 movies a year. Considering that most tech people tend to buy less physical movies (either preferring to stream, rent, download or pirate) and the fact that HD isn't in most people's houses, cars and in all TVs in the house, leaves a very low amount of Blu-Ray sales.
Exactly. The main reasons people got DVDs is that they were more reliable, didn't have to rewind, you didn't have players that would "eat" the DVD as with tapes, they were smaller so you could store more and you could store more on it so a movie that took 2 tapes would take only 1 DVD.
The problem with unspecified is that its effectively 0. When you walk into a courtroom, they need evidence to convict you, sure, you could argue that she was guilty but they don't have any evidence to prove she really distributed the song, what if she only sent part of the file? Does that mean that the RIAA are claiming copyright on random bits that could be found in almost any digital item? So with no evidence, you can only say that she might have possibly gave the song to a few people and our justice system is designed to give the benefit of the doubt especially in cases with absolutely 0 hard evidence.
And games, and things with regional lockout. Today, there is no reason with the rise of digital distribution that there shouldn't be 20 year copyright along with a clause that states that if the item is no longer available new, in your region for 3 years you have a right to download it for non-profit, non-commercial use. You only need to look at all the old video games that have passed into obscurity to notice the need for such laws, without the illegal dumping of ROMs a vast majority of early gaming would be completely lost forever.
...Its Google, its an American company. They can do the same thing over here. When you think about it and the recent "block everything" mentality from both democrats and republicans, soon China's internet might just be your internet.
1) Build most of the architecture that has lasted through time
Anyone can do that when you have a large captive population that you can make them do whatever you want them to. It just so happened that most rulers back in time had that, wanted greatness and had slave labor. If you really look at it, private companies have built far more larger and grander structures than the Greeks and Romans did, the thing is that because its modern you can't exactly say it has lasted through time.
2) Build the infrastructure in most countries
Again, anyone can do that with a large captive population. In the US at least, a lot of the infrastructure was privately done such as the railroads (although the railroads had to be given to the railroad companies because the government maintained a monopoly on the land unless someone wanted to build a house and live on it out west) I also believe that some of the roads were originally private projects such as various turnpikes.
3) Manger large services
Yah, they can manage large services.... However they can't turn a profit without either A) taxing to oblivion or B) raising rates all the time (see the USPS for an example). I'd say that private companies manage large services a ton better and with a lot less waste.
4) War
War is pointless and doesn't solve anything. If you were attacked first that is where the point that governments should protect against fraud and force comes in, the force being the invading armies.
5) Maintain records to a standard that private companies haven't come remotely close to
6) Create a 500 track record of a decrease in criminal activity, which while having infrequent bumps is rapidly declining in all respects
Again, if they protect against fraud and force that takes all real crimes out of the way.
7) Create a regulated system of tariffs and tolls which has allowed for free commerce between nearby locals to prosper.
8) Insure the safety of most consumer products
Again, that falls under protecting from fraud.
9) Spread information about agriculture to the point that hunger is essentially abolished and food prices are fairly close to transportation costs.
Um, there are several games made by Sega which use an emulator behind scenes.
In relationship to actual damages is the key part. How do you figure a song is worth $80,000? What, do you go on iTunes and buy songs for that much? No, the value of a song is at most $1.29 because that is the highest priced digital song available (and if you use Amazon its still $.99). This is as stupid as saying that you lost $300 an hour when you were sick because occasionally the boss has been known to give bonuses, never mind the fact that no bonuses were given out when you were sick and your normal wage is $10 an hour and even bonuses are usually $200 a piece. The RIAA effectively committed fraud.
You can study the effects of victimization on children without personally witnessing the act, just like we do with any other crime.
Right. And this has to do with child porn possession how? Especially when child porn can be legally defined as not even real children (!) just things drawn to seem underage. By that arguement every time someone views "adult" porn they are raping a porn actress (or actor). We know that not to be true. CP possession is effectively a victimless crime. Please tell me who gets harmed whenever someone downloads something legally defined as CP over the internet for no fee. Really, does someone get raped again for every time someone views it? If I watch an execution does that mean the person gets killed every time you watch it? By all means, prosecute and criminalize the production and possibly even the buying of it for profit, but simple possession of images that may or may not even be a real child being harmed in any way, should not be a crime especially when not explicitly asked for (for example someone being charged when they downloaded a huge zip file of porn with 1 or 2 underage people).
And please, tell me how you get across the problem of hearsay when you can't actually look at the pictures? Do you agree with the total prohabition of alcohol just because someone told you that alcohol may have had some influence in someone wrecking a car? But no way that you would ever drink alcohol nor read a study on it. And really, the logic of "they are reading CP that means that automatically makes them a predator" makes as much sense as someone who reads erotic fiction as going to carry out those acts.
...And if your job is to revise these laws of course no one would ever go see what is out there to see if its really that bad. No not anyone. Just like we want the people who make our drug laws to have never taken any drugs, never looked at any drugs, never talked to people who have taken drugs, heck while we're at it we don't want them to even look at research about drugs either. Or how about we have people making computer laws who have never even used a computer for more than 2 minutes! That works out really well for everyone, right? The thing is, if you are going to make laws about something, you have to at least know what it is you are dealing with, the problem is we have essentially banned all information about CP other than "its bad", if you are in charge of figuring out just how bad it is, I'd say that you would have to look at it to at the very least know what you were dealing with.
Yah, only because they have been dumping money in it for most of their working life. I like to get what I paid for, thank you very much. However, I'm sure for people who haven't worked much such as anyone younger than 25 would probably be overjoyed to get the extra $ back in their paycheck even if it meant not getting it* when they turn old.
*assuming that social security hadn't gone bankrupt
How do you express dislike for the only thing you know? Its like saying to dial up customers in the '90s if they were satisfied with 56K downloads. Being as they didn't know anything else they would say sure. Today would be a different story because people have had more speed and would be appalled to go back to dial-up. Another thing is, other than protecting citizens from force and fraud what else have governments been able to do successfully? Not much. This is true for all governments throughout history.
The problem with CP is that its impossible to actually "see" whats wrong with it without running afoul of laws. When information itself is banned, its then becomes impossible to get the information needed to rule on such things. For example, its like someone making laws that affect, say the liquor industry, however this person has never drank any alcohol, doesn't know anyone who drinks alcohol, and hasn't read any studies about alcohol. However when it comes to making informed decisions about CP its impossible to do so without breaking any of the laws because viewing it is so prohibited. So not only can you not drink the alcohol, but you can't really read about it, there are no formal studies done on it, so all you hear are reactionary stories of "so and so was drinking and they hit a tree and died!" rather than any hard information.
Well, although it does seem far fetched it legitimately could be used for research in the fact that he could either use it to convince people that certain parts of the law as unreasonable (such as, this counts as child porn, however as you can plainly see it is not).
And have 99% of CS students either not enroll or be mad that they have to take a course in what is effectively a dead language?
No, no, no. If you are paying for music from the RIAA, you are financing this. If I buy some CDs from a non-RIAA affiliated label, or send money directly to a band, I'm not paying for any of this.
The problem is, our current system of selling music as a commodity is illogical. Music has existed, still exists and will still continue to exist in a for hire mode. How do you think most artists of the past made their living? Oh wait, working for hire. How do you think most bands make money? Oh wait, in concerts which are essentially for-hire performances? Who is going to do the hiring? A bunch of people, music fans buy tickets for a concert and go to the concert, if a movie or TV show is released that needs a good theme contact an artist and have them do it. If an artist gave away all their CDs for free and still performed live I highly doubt their bottom line would be affected. How to get the capital to get all of it? Simple, loans. The same way that a home builder is able to (or at least was before Obama screwed the nation) get a loan to build a house that they don't have the capital to do right that second. Similarly, an artist can pool together enough cash with other bands to make a down payment to rent out a larger arena, make money on tickets to keep making money and so on.
But it is a jury case, eventually you get a smart judge and a decent enough jury and this case will be reversed.
Because they all use WebKit for rendering, so effectively they are Safari with a different UI. Opera does not use WebKit.
But you have to take that information with a grain of salt though. There is no Opera for iPhone, so all iPhone devices along with iPod touch devices are effectively excluded and I don't see Apple approving Opera for the iPhone anytime soon. Nokia has their browser pre-installed on their phones so it takes an active download to download Opera. So, yes, while Opera doesn't exactly dominate, they sure have a high marketshare considering the amount of work needed to install it and the amount of devices that don't have Opera.