The fact that you can contractually give up this "right" demonstrates that it's fundamentally different from the right to live or to be free.
You can sign away your life specifically to allow a doctor to end it (pain, depression or disease). You can sign away your freedom (temporarily) in joining a church as a priest or a private army as a soldier. But you cannot generally give up your freedoms under an all encompassing law or threat of force.
Sony is wrong here because they install illegal things on your computer without telling you, breaking several laws in the process, not because they are violating some fundamental natural right.
Who is Sony? A construct. Nothing to go after that will prevent the problem from reoccuring. Rights were violated before the law is even reviewed. People violated those rights and people financed and voted to allow those who did the violating.
I'm not saying you must go after all who are Sony, but don't make the State do it. If you're mad, you are responsible to enforce your rights. Don't make me finance your bad decision.
ap that gives Slashdot advocates a bad rep. If you go up to Sony shareholders and tell them they are violating human rights, not only will they laugh you in the face, but so will the media.
Not exactly. At lunch with a major client yesterday, he mentioned a stock he owns that was doing well. I explained how that company was actually costing his company millions over his lifetime based on some legal wranglings they are behind. He might sell, he might not. He'll surely think about it. No one laughed at me.
Sony are installing stuff on your computer without your consent, not forcing children into prostitution.
And? The gun kills? The alcohol drove the car? The soldier was commanded by someone else? The grocery store didn't know the pills were tainted?
You're right. It is complex, beyond understanding. My point is that these complexities are enforced by government not by freedom or rights. Should we sue a Sony janitor? No. Should we sue every shareholder? No. Should we sue ourselves for buying the CD? Well, we did do something stupid!
There are many problems here. I'm just being logical that Sony isn't the problem, it is Sony's owners, operators, specific employees and government's allowance and protection of the rights abuses.
however mens rea dictates that only those who can be reasonably expected to know about this has any reason to feel guilty, or be guilty.
I have to partially agree, yet the problems attributed to big corporations are true about big government. I distrust both. In my preferred world, people are free to coalesce into groups of united beliefs (communists in Chicago, Christians in Milwaukee, Carb-lovers in Dayton). The same is true for investors -- taking the time to see the consequences of their investments. Is profit bad? NO. But profiting from destroying the rights of others is! Small groups of investors can do harm for a very short period of time.
if their manager instructed them to install a rootkit on every consumer's computer, they would rather polish their resume
Sure! We have accepted it, but it isn't OK, it isn't acceptable o anyone loving freedom.
and all companies switch to selling bonds for financing, how then would you proceed with the punishment?
I love bonds (loans) as they're closer to the savings-financed world I see as more stable and able to generate wealth without a large central State. Punish the business owners. I don't believe in criminal punishment anyway, civil restitution as agreed in a contract (and provided for by arbitration rather than court judgement) is better.
Now if only this concept could apply to the repeated breaches of our Constitution by our government.
The natural right to private property that you take an active role in maintaining and upgrading has been recognized for hundreds of years. Locke, George, and dozens of others have successfully debated it.
No. No lawsuits. Corporations don't do evi . CEOs aren't solely responsible for evil deeds. A corporation is a democracy of shareholders.
If I get this trojan, I will simply find Sony shareholders in my home town and sue them civilly. Or I might just verbally denounce them in public for violating my natural rights.
If you own Sony stock, you're liable in my opinion. Sell it.
Irregardless of the existence of government, the natural rights of an individual cannot be given away (you can't sell yourself into slavery, you can't tell a higher power that it's ok to kill you). One such right is the right to private property, closed to others' prying eyes or presence.
One great force behind this right is that past acts bear no allowances for future acts. If I let you into my house yesterday, you have no right to be here today. I may contractually allow you to come and go as you please, but I have to willfully sign the contract with witnesses noting the act.
Sony's DRM uses government force (through copyright provisions) to settle its legality. They say that by using their property, you have to permanently give up your natural right to private property (free speech Statists wrongfully call it Right to Privacy). Sony is wrong.
By violating numerous natural rights, Sony has opened itself to a demand for restitution. I wholeheartedly believe that corporate protections are wrong, as is copyright. My solution? Go after Sony through the shareholders directly (they own the business and allowed the breach of a basic human right). Demand restitution for the trojan if you receive it.
Imagine if you buy a Saab and Saab has an agreement stating "If you turn the car on, you allow two Saab employees to ride in your trunk and search your house for proof you might install a non-Saab oil filter." You've signed nothing. The two Saab employees open your house door, take up residence and leave the door wide open. Two typical pro-copyright arguments: You're not allowed to install non-Saab oil filters or how else would Saab make money? Why would they design cars?
This is the problem with copyright. Instead of individuals protecting proprietary information of value (books, music, etc) and producing it in the best way over anyone else (live shows, subscriptions to new music, etc), they say "copy us and government will use force against you."
It's all wrong. Don't publicly say anything valuable to you. Don't think you can come in my home because you did once before. Don't think you can rape me because a note in your pocket says you're allowed to, and I let you in without checking your pockets.
Sex is bad unless the State teaches it, to 7 year olds: California school district administered a survey to children (ages 7 to 10) in the early grades with questions concerning "thinking about having sex"
Violence is bad unless the State teaches it, without parental intervention: believed people were exclusively the products of their social environments, and that if nurtured properly by the state, could be molded into whatever was desired.
Prejudice is bad unless the State discriminates in order to generate more control and funding for itself.
There is no surprise here, folks. The law's delay is only to reduce its newsworthiness. In a few months we'll have forgotten (as a voting majority) and it'll still be enacted and enforced.
Do the right thing. Buy violent games for your kids if you think they can handle it. Bring you 15 year old adult with.
Your vote means nothing. Your safety means nothing. Your knowledge of your child isn't important, since you've given up responsibility to the teacher's unions long ago.
You made your bed? Out of shit? Don't make me sleep in it.
Also, I've always wondered why good old Ludwig seems to so strongly support the rights of "corporations" to be free from government regulation-when their very existence is owed to a government regulation.
We're not pro-corporation, we're against them. I believe a group of investors could tell creditors that a loan contract affords limited liability up to the amount invested, but they should still be personally liable.
What state do -you- live in that there is not an exception in the law allowing a person to use violence in self-defense?
Illinois. A local town made national news because they arrested a home owner for shooting a burglar who robbed him twice. I had my unregistered handgun stolen twice by the police.
Just how could we avoid the government having a "monopoly" on the use of military-scale force?
Great question! The federal government should have zero power to recruit or fund any standing army but the coast guard. States form militias to protect their territory. In the event of an attack on our land by another government, the Congress can enable the CiC to assemble the State militias.
I refuse to accept that Japan or Germany were threats to us, but that is a complex debate.
Might you point out to me which prescription drugs are produced by the government?
They set the standard for what is acceptable. Don't believe that those in power aren't getting amazing amounts of money to overlook a few red tape items? In my opinion, the UL does an amazing job protecting lives. They have competition. Let free market UL-like FDAs appear and drugs won't cost $300,000,000 to make.
The Founding Fathers saw fit to give Congress the authority to grant copyrights and patents.
I believe that invention and creation is important. I am a writer and I own a software company. I do well financially by supporting my books (free if you don't pay) with live appearances and consulting. I support my (free if you don't pay) software the same way. I could make millions but I like my free time more. If you spend $50,000,000 inventing a widget, you should initially find a market that will pay back your invention costs and analyze how long it will take competition to knock it off. It isn't free to copy drugs, machinery, etc.
. All these point to a central authority as the optimal way to do things, and the obvious use of taxation as the alternate payment method points to that agency being a government one.
I disagree. Stossel investigated private roads and found private roads are less congested, safer and less costly. Numerous iideas exist for privatized roadways. One of my companies supports a highway contractor and the waste of public dollars is incredible.
Really? What government agency created Standard Oil? The railroad barons? Microsoft? Government -can- create monopolies, true, but not -only- government can.
Standard Oil had a "monopoly" on kerosene. Before the government started antitrust investigations, a new energy source was discovered by a company unable to compete with SO: gasoline.
There w re no railroad barons. It is a myth. Our own government created these so called barons, who were actually Whig/Republican mercantilism supporters. Again, a complex story made simple when you realize the source of power was government regulations! Lincoln's War was started so he could get his friends government contracts.
Microsoft continually upgrades their software, develops new items and loses money on many fiascos. Microsoft will fall from google or apple like IBM from Compaq, GM from Honda, and on and on.
Natural monopolies can't exist without government backing them up. The usual culprits creating monopolies are licensing, regulations, specific mandates and safety requirements.
Heck, even farming peanuts is illegal in the US without a license to grow them.
Actually, the elite make money controlling the Central Bank (the Federal Reserve is a private corporation) and manipulating the money supply (M2 and M3) to legally counterfeit.
Once the money is created, only then is it doled out to their friends.
China and India have a huge savings rate (up to 60% in some towns) versus zero in the US. Wealth comes from savings not consumer debt.
China and India have a great deal of headstrong intelligent business people. In the US we have MBA students with no real world experience.
China and India have a rising standard of living but not a ridiculous one. In the US our government owes $50T ($166,000 per capita), meaning we're bankrupt.
Don't most government-endowed monopolies have chilling unintended consequences on the markets they're supposed to protect?
Copyright gives incredible power to the top publishers (with a lock on book stores), the recording industry, and the movie distributors.
Government's monopoly on violence prevents the average person from defending their property, and use of the monopoly outside of our borders causes anger towards our citizens.
Government's monopoly on prescription drugs causes the costs to skyrocket (death sentence for the poor) and useful drugs to be delayed for years.
Government's monopoly on patent licensing is no different. The playing field is far from level. Drug companies would initially have to charge more to sell their meds, or sell through doctors groups (where generics might be contractually offlimits for those doctors). Patents don't protect bootlegs anyway, which get more pervasive as the web gets larger.
For our society to grow, we need to accept that monopolies are always bad, and only government can create them. There are no natural monopolies. The 4 or 5 times there might have been in the past I'd argue weren't meant to last, but they're gone anyway.
INMARSAT is International Maritime Satellite, a company originally dedicated to ship communications. They're also a pipeline for information hacked by ship pirates to analyze booty to steal.
INMARSAT has enough satellites to cover the globe, and they've bribed every major government of the world to require large cargo ships to use their system, greatly increasing the cost. They now are manipulating the added profits to extend 3G internationally.
I'm a fan of 3G, but not by a megacorp that earned its income through coercion. The fact that large shippers are m ndated to use INMARSAT and that pirates are already receiving the information (speed, cargo weight, location) increases our costs of goods and puts more control powers to the company.
The site does no render properly from my PDA browser. I just tried it in an alternative one and it DID render OK, but I don't usually have the second one installed...
The warning is also a general one focused on any charity. Why would you think I am asking an inflammatory quesion? Because I've volunteered to charities in the past, and not one has kept its original vows. Over time, it is very easy to become corrupted by the money, so you have to check and re-check every charity, every time you give.
This is untrue and mostly a "help me US" bias. THe Malacca Straights by far have the most reported pirates, but those are also countries that are begging us to intervene financially, if you ask me.
I travel the countries on the Indian Ocean and from what I can tell, and this is my honest opinion, the wealthy independent nations don't complain about the problem as much as the poor dependent nations do.
Your mileage may vary, but I've little faith in the ICC or any other organization that is constantly looking for US taxpayer handouts.
The Maylasian government will be way more hardcore Muslim than the Middle East, within the decade.
Hence, many items, even liquor, will find a receptive black market. From personal experience (O'hare Airport contracting) I was told import customs by plane in Malaysia are getting tougher.
Do they have an "open books" policy regarding what percentage of donations actually go to recipients?
A "for the kids" charity organization keeps blitzing my church with videos, and when I researched them I found that they give out less than 50% of their take!
Bingo. The difference between iTunes and cable though is that most iTunes users already have the bandwidth, paid for originally with your stolen tax dollars for decades, and now paid for you monthly. Let's take away your DSL or cable and try to sell you iTunes for $39.99 / month (includes free Internet!) and $0.99 per song. This changes things greatly.
I'm not asking the cable company for free hardlines to my trailer. I'm asking for them to offer it free once they've recouped the expenses of rolling it out (if ever). I'd rather receive the On-Demand over IP if possible, but I don't see it happening any time soon. I honestly hate BitTorrent and Limewire (too slow, too long to find anything, too low quality in general). What P2P are people using for movies and TV shows?
I'm all for arming boats with heavy weapons. The ICC and other government cartels need these international laws in order to protect their Navy monopolies. I'm anti-piracy but pro-smuggling, but most smugglers are affiliated with piracy groups as well. Although in reality most of these pirates aren't organized as a large group (RIAA style?), they do generally have their own territories and shipping lanes. It amazes me that more ships aren't attacked, especially with the anti-heavy weapons laws that are more heavily enforced than the protection of the shipping lanes.
To be honest, everyone I know with a yacht in deep waters already carries decent guns for protection. It is pretty easy to dump them if you're boarded by a coast guard or naval vessel.
Somalia is a tough one for anarchocapitalists. Some people say its a terrorist blood-curdling country of death and nihilism. Others say that some of the overlords are very fair and the liberty is great. I haven't personally visited, but I would like to, just to see.
Traveling to countries that seem scary in the news is fun and I recommend it for everyone with a little bit of courage. It was one of the prime reasons I gave up government -- visiting Cuba 13 years ago, visiting Persia/Iraq before the second war, and visiting parts of the Saud region such as Dubai (freer than America every was and every will be in every way, including free religion). Now the lady and I travel more to the "worst" places only to see that they're sometimes better than what I see in my own Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In fact, even Ethiopia is a gorgeous country with wealth and opportunity. Just don't go living in the desert allowing your government to walk all over you.
That's basically what I have now, but we're paying around $15/month for it. It works fine (we get the entire 1-99 channels with a few minor ones missing) for now but it could be better. We also get all the HD channels, which is why I could really go for the On-Demand for everything deal.
Seychelles is strict on crimes committed on the Isles. But their immigration at the port is very laissez faire. I'll be going back to Dubai (and hopefully Seychelles) in a few months, and I actually was intending to do a web documentary about opportunities in working in the Indian Ocean black market. Robbery is wrong, but smuggling and violating tariffs/embargoes is A-OK to me.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you can contractually give up this "right" demonstrates that it's fundamentally different from the right to live or to be free.
You can sign away your life specifically to allow a doctor to end it (pain, depression or disease). You can sign away your freedom (temporarily) in joining a church as a priest or a private army as a soldier. But you cannot generally give up your freedoms under an all encompassing law or threat of force.
Sony is wrong here because they install illegal things on your computer without telling you, breaking several laws in the process, not because they are violating some fundamental natural right.
Who is Sony? A construct. Nothing to go after that will prevent the problem from reoccuring. Rights were violated before the law is even reviewed. People violated those rights and people financed and voted to allow those who did the violating.
I'm not saying you must go after all who are Sony, but don't make the State do it. If you're mad, you are responsible to enforce your rights. Don't make me finance your bad decision.
ap that gives Slashdot advocates a bad rep. If you go up to Sony shareholders and tell them they are violating human rights, not only will they laugh you in the face, but so will the media.
Not exactly. At lunch with a major client yesterday, he mentioned a stock he owns that was doing well. I explained how that company was actually costing his company millions over his lifetime based on some legal wranglings they are behind. He might sell, he might not. He'll surely think about it. No one laughed at me.
Sony are installing stuff on your computer without your consent, not forcing children into prostitution.
And? The gun kills? The alcohol drove the car? The soldier was commanded by someone else? The grocery store didn't know the pills were tainted?
You're right. It is complex, beyond understanding. My point is that these complexities are enforced by government not by freedom or rights. Should we sue a Sony janitor? No. Should we sue every shareholder? No. Should we sue ourselves for buying the CD? Well, we did do something stupid!
There are many problems here. I'm just being logical that Sony isn't the problem, it is Sony's owners, operators, specific employees and government's allowance and protection of the rights abuses.
We meet again ;) Bastard, show your face! Hah.
however mens rea dictates that only those who can be reasonably expected to know about this has any reason to feel guilty, or be guilty.
I have to partially agree, yet the problems attributed to big corporations are true about big government. I distrust both. In my preferred world, people are free to coalesce into groups of united beliefs (communists in Chicago, Christians in Milwaukee, Carb-lovers in Dayton). The same is true for investors -- taking the time to see the consequences of their investments. Is profit bad? NO. But profiting from destroying the rights of others is! Small groups of investors can do harm for a very short period of time.
if their manager instructed them to install a rootkit on every consumer's computer, they would rather polish their resume
Sure! We have accepted it, but it isn't OK, it isn't acceptable o anyone loving freedom.
and all companies switch to selling bonds for financing, how then would you proceed with the punishment?
I love bonds (loans) as they're closer to the savings-financed world I see as more stable and able to generate wealth without a large central State. Punish the business owners. I don't believe in criminal punishment anyway, civil restitution as agreed in a contract (and provided for by arbitration rather than court judgement) is better.
Now if only this concept could apply to the repeated breaches of our Constitution by our government.
Give it time, I think it will.
The natural right to private property that you take an active role in maintaining and upgrading has been recognized for hundreds of years. Locke, George, and dozens of others have successfully debated it.
Google for some great links.
No. No lawsuits. Corporations don't do evi . CEOs aren't solely responsible for evil deeds. A corporation is a democracy of shareholders.
If I get this trojan, I will simply find Sony shareholders in my home town and sue them civilly. Or I might just verbally denounce them in public for violating my natural rights.
If you own Sony stock, you're liable in my opinion. Sell it.
Irregardless of the existence of government, the natural rights of an individual cannot be given away (you can't sell yourself into slavery, you can't tell a higher power that it's ok to kill you). One such right is the right to private property, closed to others' prying eyes or presence.
One great force behind this right is that past acts bear no allowances for future acts. If I let you into my house yesterday, you have no right to be here today. I may contractually allow you to come and go as you please, but I have to willfully sign the contract with witnesses noting the act.
Sony's DRM uses government force (through copyright provisions) to settle its legality. They say that by using their property, you have to permanently give up your natural right to private property (free speech Statists wrongfully call it Right to Privacy). Sony is wrong.
By violating numerous natural rights, Sony has opened itself to a demand for restitution. I wholeheartedly believe that corporate protections are wrong, as is copyright. My solution? Go after Sony through the shareholders directly (they own the business and allowed the breach of a basic human right). Demand restitution for the trojan if you receive it.
Imagine if you buy a Saab and Saab has an agreement stating "If you turn the car on, you allow two Saab employees to ride in your trunk and search your house for proof you might install a non-Saab oil filter." You've signed nothing. The two Saab employees open your house door, take up residence and leave the door wide open. Two typical pro-copyright arguments: You're not allowed to install non-Saab oil filters or how else would Saab make money? Why would they design cars?
This is the problem with copyright. Instead of individuals protecting proprietary information of value (books, music, etc) and producing it in the best way over anyone else (live shows, subscriptions to new music, etc), they say "copy us and government will use force against you."
It's all wrong. Don't publicly say anything valuable to you. Don't think you can come in my home because you did once before. Don't think you can rape me because a note in your pocket says you're allowed to, and I let you in without checking your pockets.
Sex is bad unless the State teaches it, to 7 year olds: California school district administered a survey to children (ages 7 to 10) in the early grades with questions concerning "thinking about having sex"
Violence is bad unless the State teaches it, without parental intervention: believed people were exclusively the products of their social environments, and that if nurtured properly by the state, could be molded into whatever was desired.
Prejudice is bad unless the State discriminates in order to generate more control and funding for itself.
There is no surprise here, folks. The law's delay is only to reduce its newsworthiness. In a few months we'll have forgotten (as a voting majority) and it'll still be enacted and enforced.
Do the right thing. Buy violent games for your kids if you think they can handle it. Bring you 15 year old adult with.
Your vote means nothing. Your safety means nothing. Your knowledge of your child isn't important, since you've given up responsibility to the teacher's unions long ago.
You made your bed? Out of shit? Don't make me sleep in it.
Also, I've always wondered why good old Ludwig seems to so strongly support the rights of "corporations" to be free from government regulation-when their very existence is owed to a government regulation.
We're not pro-corporation, we're against them. I believe a group of investors could tell creditors that a loan contract affords limited liability up to the amount invested, but they should still be personally liable.
What state do -you- live in that there is not an exception in the law allowing a person to use violence in self-defense?
Illinois. A local town made national news because they arrested a home owner for shooting a burglar who robbed him twice. I had my unregistered handgun stolen twice by the police.
Just how could we avoid the government having a "monopoly" on the use of military-scale force?
Great question! The federal government should have zero power to recruit or fund any standing army but the coast guard. States form militias to protect their territory. In the event of an attack on our land by another government, the Congress can enable the CiC to assemble the State militias.
I refuse to accept that Japan or Germany were threats to us, but that is a complex debate.
Might you point out to me which prescription drugs are produced by the government?
They set the standard for what is acceptable. Don't believe that those in power aren't getting amazing amounts of money to overlook a few red tape items? In my opinion, the UL does an amazing job protecting lives. They have competition. Let free market UL-like FDAs appear and drugs won't cost $300,000,000 to make.
The Founding Fathers saw fit to give Congress the authority to grant copyrights and patents.
I believe that invention and creation is important. I am a writer and I own a software company. I do well financially by supporting my books (free if you don't pay) with live appearances and consulting. I support my (free if you don't pay) software the same way. I could make millions but I like my free time more. If you spend $50,000,000 inventing a widget, you should initially find a market that will pay back your invention costs and analyze how long it will take competition to knock it off. It isn't free to copy drugs, machinery, etc.
. All these point to a central authority as the optimal way to do things, and the obvious use of taxation as the alternate payment method points to that agency being a government one.
I disagree. Stossel investigated private roads and found private roads are less congested, safer and less costly. Numerous iideas exist for privatized roadways. One of my companies supports a highway contractor and the waste of public dollars is incredible.
Really? What government agency created Standard Oil? The railroad barons? Microsoft? Government -can- create monopolies, true, but not -only- government can.
Standard Oil had a "monopoly" on kerosene. Before the government started antitrust investigations, a new energy source was discovered by a company unable to compete with SO: gasoline.
There w re no railroad barons. It is a myth. Our own government created these so called barons, who were actually Whig/Republican mercantilism supporters. Again, a complex story made simple when you realize the source of power was government regulations! Lincoln's War was started so he could get his friends government contracts.
Microsoft continually upgrades their software, develops new items and loses money on many fiascos. Microsoft will fall from google or apple like IBM from Compaq, GM from Honda, and on and on.
Natural monopolies can't exist without government backing them up. The usual culprits creating monopolies are licensing, regulations, specific mandates and safety requirements.
Heck, even farming peanuts is illegal in the US without a license to grow them.
Actually, the elite make money controlling the Central Bank (the Federal Reserve is a private corporation) and manipulating the money supply (M2 and M3) to legally counterfeit.
Once the money is created, only then is it doled out to their friends.
China and India have a huge savings rate (up to 60% in some towns) versus zero in the US. Wealth comes from savings not consumer debt.
China and India have a great deal of headstrong intelligent business people. In the US we have MBA students with no real world experience.
China and India have a rising standard of living but not a ridiculous one. In the US our government owes $50T ($166,000 per capita), meaning we're bankrupt.
Don't most government-endowed monopolies have chilling unintended consequences on the markets they're supposed to protect?
Copyright gives incredible power to the top publishers (with a lock on book stores), the recording industry, and the movie distributors.
Government's monopoly on violence prevents the average person from defending their property, and use of the monopoly outside of our borders causes anger towards our citizens.
Government's monopoly on prescription drugs causes the costs to skyrocket (death sentence for the poor) and useful drugs to be delayed for years.
Government's monopoly on patent licensing is no different. The playing field is far from level. Drug companies would initially have to charge more to sell their meds, or sell through doctors groups (where generics might be contractually offlimits for those doctors). Patents don't protect bootlegs anyway, which get more pervasive as the web gets larger.
For our society to grow, we need to accept that monopolies are always bad, and only government can create them. There are no natural monopolies. The 4 or 5 times there might have been in the past I'd argue weren't meant to last, but they're gone anyway.
The Comptroller General David Walker just totalled US debt to $50 trillion /a>, or $166,000 per capita.
20,000 tons at 10 politicians per ton = 200,000 politicians shot into space. And it'll cost us nothing!
I pay $99 for 5000 anytime Minutes, free M2M, unlimited SMS, and unlimited GPRS data. I do all my /. posting from my PDA phone.
I'm had the package for 4 years.
I'm a PDA phone user, so links are hard, but here goes:
Anti-competitive
Orbit Act I think
Pirates + Govt Mandates
I have 9 years of history with Inmarsat and Iridium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat
430kbps. Not bad!
INMARSAT is International Maritime Satellite, a company originally dedicated to ship communications. They're also a pipeline for information hacked by ship pirates to analyze booty to steal.
INMARSAT has enough satellites to cover the globe, and they've bribed every major government of the world to require large cargo ships to use their system, greatly increasing the cost. They now are manipulating the added profits to extend 3G internationally.
I'm a fan of 3G, but not by a megacorp that earned its income through coercion. The fact that large shippers are m ndated to use INMARSAT and that pirates are already receiving the information (speed, cargo weight, location) increases our costs of goods and puts more control powers to the company.
You think Haliburton is bad?
The site does no render properly from my PDA browser. I just tried it in an alternative one and it DID render OK, but I don't usually have the second one installed...
The warning is also a general one focused on any charity. Why would you think I am asking an inflammatory quesion? Because I've volunteered to charities in the past, and not one has kept its original vows. Over time, it is very easy to become corrupted by the money, so you have to check and re-check every charity, every time you give.
This is untrue and mostly a "help me US" bias. THe Malacca Straights by far have the most reported pirates, but those are also countries that are begging us to intervene financially, if you ask me.
I travel the countries on the Indian Ocean and from what I can tell, and this is my honest opinion, the wealthy independent nations don't complain about the problem as much as the poor dependent nations do.
Your mileage may vary, but I've little faith in the ICC or any other organization that is constantly looking for US taxpayer handouts.
The Maylasian government will be way more hardcore Muslim than the Middle East, within the decade.
Hence, many items, even liquor, will find a receptive black market. From personal experience (O'hare Airport contracting) I was told import customs by plane in Malaysia are getting tougher.
Hence, smuggling via boat.
No non-sequitir.
Do they have an "open books" policy regarding what percentage of donations actually go to recipients?
A "for the kids" charity organization keeps blitzing my church with videos, and when I researched them I found that they give out less than 50% of their take!
Bingo. The difference between iTunes and cable though is that most iTunes users already have the bandwidth, paid for originally with your stolen tax dollars for decades, and now paid for you monthly. Let's take away your DSL or cable and try to sell you iTunes for $39.99 / month (includes free Internet!) and $0.99 per song. This changes things greatly.
I'm not asking the cable company for free hardlines to my trailer. I'm asking for them to offer it free once they've recouped the expenses of rolling it out (if ever). I'd rather receive the On-Demand over IP if possible, but I don't see it happening any time soon. I honestly hate BitTorrent and Limewire (too slow, too long to find anything, too low quality in general). What P2P are people using for movies and TV shows?
I'm all for arming boats with heavy weapons. The ICC and other government cartels need these international laws in order to protect their Navy monopolies. I'm anti-piracy but pro-smuggling, but most smugglers are affiliated with piracy groups as well. Although in reality most of these pirates aren't organized as a large group (RIAA style?), they do generally have their own territories and shipping lanes. It amazes me that more ships aren't attacked, especially with the anti-heavy weapons laws that are more heavily enforced than the protection of the shipping lanes.
To be honest, everyone I know with a yacht in deep waters already carries decent guns for protection. It is pretty easy to dump them if you're boarded by a coast guard or naval vessel.
Somalia is a tough one for anarchocapitalists. Some people say its a terrorist blood-curdling country of death and nihilism. Others say that some of the overlords are very fair and the liberty is great. I haven't personally visited, but I would like to, just to see.
Traveling to countries that seem scary in the news is fun and I recommend it for everyone with a little bit of courage. It was one of the prime reasons I gave up government -- visiting Cuba 13 years ago, visiting Persia/Iraq before the second war, and visiting parts of the Saud region such as Dubai (freer than America every was and every will be in every way, including free religion). Now the lady and I travel more to the "worst" places only to see that they're sometimes better than what I see in my own Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In fact, even Ethiopia is a gorgeous country with wealth and opportunity. Just don't go living in the desert allowing your government to walk all over you.
That's basically what I have now, but we're paying around $15/month for it. It works fine (we get the entire 1-99 channels with a few minor ones missing) for now but it could be better. We also get all the HD channels, which is why I could really go for the On-Demand for everything deal.
I will look into what you said though, thanks!
Seychelles is strict on crimes committed on the Isles. But their immigration at the port is very laissez faire. I'll be going back to Dubai (and hopefully Seychelles) in a few months, and I actually was intending to do a web
documentary about opportunities in working in the Indian Ocean black market. Robbery is wrong, but smuggling and violating tariffs/embargoes is A-OK to me.