I think you miss the point. The point is no matter how good you are, all have sinned and fallen short. No mere human is good _enough_.
I haven't missed the point at all. You still haven't defined "good". There is no objective and universally held definition of what good is so how can anyone claim that no one is "good" or in your words is "good enough"?
Sure you can be good without having accepted Christ. But can you be good enough?
Define good first. But to answer your question, yes I think people can be "good enough" without any believing in any sort of mythology under what I expect most people would think the term to mean.
If Jesus asks you to follow him and you refuse, I'm not sure where your eventual destination will be.
You are not sure regardless of what my choice might be. (I'll ignore the somewhat silly idea that some cult leader 2000 years ago asked me to follow him) No one knows what happens after death. Could be nothing. Might be something none of us expect. Given that the majority of the worlds population believes in something other than the christian deity the only conclusion anyone can really draw is that no one knows.
You are an troll and a serious coward but this was too much fun to pass up.
The point that you're missing entirely is that there is NO SUCH THING as a good person.
Which is a premise that I fundamentally disagree with and why I'm not a christian. If you want to convince someone of your logic you might want to start with a premise both parties agree to. Furthermore you'll have to come up with a definition of "good" so that we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.
Even your hypothetical "good atheist's" actions were tainted with self-righteousness.
Helping others == "self-righteousness"? Can be but certainly doesn't have to be. Are you trying to say we shouldn't help others because that would be "self-righteous"?
Better to be a sinner and know it than a pompous ass who thinks that he's perfect.
I'm not aware of anyone who thinks they are perfect though I do know some people who try very, very hard to be. The fact that no one is perfect does not and never will logically equal "no such thing as a good person".
I don't have an account with you assholes, I just want you to stop calling me with recorded messages.
Just in case it helps:
AT&T these days will let you block up to 10 numbers to a land line you can specify through your web account. Other services often will allow the same. It's kept a few of the more annoying telemarketers away from our house. I'm particularly tired of the political messages but I seem to have no legal recourse for those.
You also can file a complaint with the FCC in many cases though it isn't always clear if any action will be taken. Satisfying though...
Contacting someone you do business with isn't illegal.
That depends very much on what business one is talking about. Trafficking in controlled substances, black market weapons sales, racketeering, theft, extortion, and blackmail are all businesses where "contacting someone you do business with" is typically quite illegal.
He is saying that IBM should not complain about not having open-source applications because they have shifted their workforce to Indian and Russian developers who contribute a lot less to the open-source community. Do you dispute this?
When Sam Palmisano complains then I'll concede the point. Until then it's irrelevant. Not everything IBM produces is open source so no one should care where they produce their code. Yes getting good quality code from India is a difficult management (not engineering) problem. News at 11.
Furthermore he was making a blanket statement that "I have yet to see an Indian developer who was trully(sic) creative and innovative" which I find preposterous on the face of it since I've seen the opposite with my own eyes.
You chose a poor example. India imported it's nuclear knowledge from the USA and Russia. They really didn't do anything themselves except labor
I think you should read a little more about India's nuclear programs before making that claim. Yes they got substantial help but they did a lot themselves too.
The simple reality is that, without exception, every single American, European, and Japanese developer I have met has complained about the quality of Indian and Chinese programming.
And I've seen very good code with my own eyes. I've also seen crap code like what you describe. Which of us is right? Both! When you have a poorly managed outsourcing project you get crappy code.
I have also noticed that Indian programmers take very little pride in their work. Their boss is 3000 miles away so they slack off.
Exactly my point. If you manage an outsourcing project from 3000 miles away you should expect poor results. Well managed outsourcing requires trusted management to be on site. Same goes for manufacturing or coding in China. If you throw it over the wall to some random company and expect great results you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Well, in my eleven years as a software developer, my experience does not agree with yours.
And my 10 years doing international export and global sourcing says that you haven't had enough of the right experience and/or haven't been dealing with the right people. I've been all over China and Southeast Asia as well as Mexico sourcing parts, commodities and engineering including software. Plenty of talented and innovative people live outside the US. Both for software and other products as well.
You have to admit that the vast majority of software innovations have come from the US.
You mean like linux? Or perhaps you meant the World Wide Web? Oh my bad. I forgot nothing creative comes from outside the US.
We invariably had to silently rewrite all the code from India. They were well able to follow a pattern that had been established but ask them to invent a design?
That most likely means you don't know how to manage an outsourced operation, not (necessarily) that the engineers on the other end are incapable of quality work. Getting good outsourced software work involves a lot of management and well defined specifications. You can't just throw it over a wall and expect good results. Generally speaking if you get a bad product odds are you either hired the wrong folks (which happens) or you didn't define the end product well enough. You think IBM and General Electric outsource as much as they do because they are fools with their money? Outsourcing isn't easy. Some do it well and others not so much.
However, the photos I see of India invariably show mud streets and vast numbers of poor, uneducated people. India is still a third-world country.
And I've been there. Yes there are a lot of poor people in India. There are a lot of wealthy ones too. You seem to have some bizarre distorted image that everyone in India is some poor dirt farmer. If all you know about the country is what you see in pictures you don't know anything about the country.
They really do not hire any Americans in significant numbers.
Yeah funny how a company called International Business Machines which operates in 170 countries and gets 63% of its revenue from outside the US would even think to hire someone anyone but Americans. I can't fathom why they want to hire locally in BRIC countries where IBM's revenue grew 26% in 2007. Apparently no one informed IBM that they have a responsibility to only hire Americans who know little to nothing about the countries where IBM is seeing the highest growth.
I cannot explain it but over the last several years I have yet to see an Indian developer who was trully creative and innovative.
Right, because a nuclear power like India with a billion citizens must not have a single creative person. I'm sure all the incredibly talented Indian engineers and doctors I've personally met must really be from somewhere else. After all, according to you they have no imagination or creativity if they are from India.
True enough though not all. More to the point it is rarely possible to correct "ugly" personalities in my experience. You know, the sort that call someone they've never met ugly in public without any justification whatsoever... I like Ron White's quote "You can't fix stupid".
That said, I don't really care and thought the picture was cute...but looked oddly out of place.
Unless you are fully aware that it will just make the poster, and those of a similar opinion, post even more, and that is your intended result
Yep I'm fully aware you are a clueless, rude, arrogant, cowardly troll and yes I'm having fun showing what an imbecile you are. Next topic.
In any event, no matter how hideous I am....the lady in that pic is both fat and ugly.
Ahh, presumed objectivity. How nice. Because as we all know there is a single arbitrary scale of what is attractive which you and you alone determine for the rest of humanity. Thank $diety I have you to tell me whether a woman is hot or not because I couldn't possibly have an opinion different from yours.
Re:Ugly guys shouldn't comment on appearance
on
The DIY Dialysis Machine
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· Score: 4, Insightful
i had some pretty awful pizza last night but since i'm not a chef I can't really say anything about it.
Sure you can because the chef can do something about how he cooks. Bad cooking can be a mistake and can be corrected. But if you call someone ugly in public because they didn't win the genetic lottery THEN you are just an ass.
Re:Ugly guys shouldn't comment on appearance
on
The DIY Dialysis Machine
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
Reality is unrelated to your belief.
Reality is also unrelated to your opinion of yourself.
And there's a whole lot of territory between "hideous" and "hot."
And only a self absorbed narcissist like yourself would be concerned about where anyone thinks you fall on that scale.
But if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an medium attractive woman.
I always find it amazing that guys who are rather hideous themselves (Howard Stern I'm looking at you) seem to feel it is their job to criticize the appearance of women. It's especially comical here on a website devoted to nerd news where most of the readership wouldn't have any idea how to please a woman. Here's a clue - no one cares what your ugly ass thinks of someone else's appearance. If you feel the need to criticize you had better be a model yourself. Given that you are posting here on Slashdot that's pretty unlikely - so kindly shut the hell up.
...but fair use doesn't cover making backup copies - it's different.
Fair use certainly can cover backup copies as that would generally be a form of space shifting which was most notably upheld in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984). The legalese you quoted are examples (indicated by the quote "for purposes such as"), not an exhaustive list of what constitutes fair use.
There is a four part test to determine if a copy is fair use. Considerations include the "purpose and character of use" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work". Despite the fact that the whole work is being copied, backup copies are highly unlikely to be viewed as copyright infringement absent some additional circumstances. Backups are unlikely to prejudice additional sales, diminish sales, or supersede the original work in any way.
It's fine for the copyright holder to explicitly grant the right to make a backup copy but as far as I know they would be on thin legal ground if they tried to prevent it absent some explicit agreement on your part.
Well, the US government is already contracting mercenaries for combat action, why not let the PIs in on the official investigative duties as well?
Nice irrelevant strawman comparing government hired military contractors in a foreign war zone with corporate hired domestic investigation of civil copyright infringement.
They're cheaper and more effective, since they don't have to obey those pesky "laws" that protect the public from the government.
But they do have to obey those pesky laws that protect the public from each other. Courts ultimately decide what evidence they will admit and what they won't. Being a PI isn't some sort of magical immunity from rules of evidentiary procedure.
The GP did specifically write "without permission". Under any reasonable readings of that expression,...
Don't confuse reasonable readings with legal interpretations. Fair use copying does not, under any circumstances I am aware of, require permission from the copyright holder. The GP post you refer to is at best ambiguous on this point and I see no reason why anyone should assume your broad interpretation of "without permission" since permission is not necessarily required.
Undercover cops buy drugs and the state doesn't have to prosecute them for buying them.
Police officers are sanctioned by the government to enforce the law. The RIAA and other private organizations do not (and should not) share the same legal protections as a police officer sanctioned with enforcing the laws. The act of traffickingschedule 1 controlled substances is always illegal for private citizens. Making a copy of copyrighted material often is entirely legal under fair use doctrine. Furthermore selling controlled substances without a license is a felony whereas selling copyrighted material without any special license is frequently legal.
If the plaintiff had assistance from legally sanctioned law enforcement authorities who, in the process of a properly conducted investigation, concluded that there was reasonable grounds to suspect attempted copyright infringement then it would seem more likely to be acceptable as evidence. But just because some private investigator found "evidence" doesn't mean a court will or should automatically allow it to be presented.
Why couldn't investigators "illegally" download copyrighted material and still have it considered infringing on the part of the defendant, but not be prosecuted?
Because a private citizen cannot manufacture a crime against another private citizen. Without getting into the particulars of any given case is is easy to think of situations where the defendant was not attempting to commit copyright infringement. Making copies of copyrighted material is not prima facia evidence of copyright infringement.
So, genius, explain to me how you upload something without making a copy.
Typically it is legal to make a copy of material under fair use guidelines. Whether the copy is on a CD or on a server or some other medium is generally irrelevant. What is relevant is whether mens rea can be proven and whether the use clearly falls outside fair use guidelines. Upload stuff to a website saying "Warez here - come and get it" and you likely are committing a copyright violation. But simply putting files on a server is not an automatic copyright infringement. The issue is a lot more complicated than that.
Both sides copy, and as you say, the act of copying without permission is illegal.
This statement could not be more wrong. Copying material is not an automatic copyright infringement and both case law as well as legislation have strongly established this fact. All copyright infringements require the act of copying but not all copying is an automatic copyright infringement.
ROI from NASA
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 4, Informative
What is the return on the American investment here?
All the Trillions of dollars the American tax payer has sent to NASA over the years.
What trillions? The total amount spent on NASA since its inception in 1958 is $592 billion. We spend that much every year on our military.
Not everything is about money
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 1
There is ZERO justification for a moon base at this time
Sure there is. Just not a financial one. Not everything is about dollars and cents you know. Exploration by definition means you don't know what you'll find and you don't know until you try.
By the way, have you seen the national debt lately?
NASA's budget is around $17 billion/year. The total US federal budget for 2008 was around $2.9 Trillion. That means NASA's budget is approximately half of one percent of the total federal budget. Compare that with the $549 billion spent on defense or the $581 billion spend on Social Security and I'm not really very worried about the money we spend on NASA. Cut a few bombers out of the defense budget and we can fund NASA for years.
I think NASA is doing EXACTLY what it should be doing, which is unmanned robotic missions.
Which account for roughly 1/3 of NASA's budget with the remainder dominated by manned spaceflight.
Imagine what we could gather from an array of hubble telescopes... and what little more we could learn from an expensive manned moon shot.
Not sure what your point is since we pretty much by definition don't know what we would learn from either. To be frank I think the applications of technology developed for a manned moonshot are more likely to have an application within my lifetime. The amount of technology that came out of the NASA programs that we take for granted these days is breathtaking.
The number of German or Itallian consumers is small compared to those who use English and the price reflects the marginal production costs per unit.
Those costs are still a tiny fraction of the actual development costs...
And smaller still when you consider that engineering costs in general are rarely more than 15-30% of total costs for any software company. Don't take my word for it, look at the financial statements for Adobe and you'll see Sales and Admin expenses greatly outweigh any engineering costs. This is pretty much universally true for almost any software company you might care to mention.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you miss the point. The point is no matter how good you are, all have sinned and fallen short. No mere human is good _enough_.
I haven't missed the point at all. You still haven't defined "good". There is no objective and universally held definition of what good is so how can anyone claim that no one is "good" or in your words is "good enough"?
Sure you can be good without having accepted Christ. But can you be good enough?
Define good first. But to answer your question, yes I think people can be "good enough" without any believing in any sort of mythology under what I expect most people would think the term to mean.
If Jesus asks you to follow him and you refuse, I'm not sure where your eventual destination will be.
You are not sure regardless of what my choice might be. (I'll ignore the somewhat silly idea that some cult leader 2000 years ago asked me to follow him) No one knows what happens after death. Could be nothing. Might be something none of us expect. Given that the majority of the worlds population believes in something other than the christian deity the only conclusion anyone can really draw is that no one knows.
You are an troll and a serious coward but this was too much fun to pass up.
The point that you're missing entirely is that there is NO SUCH THING as a good person.
Which is a premise that I fundamentally disagree with and why I'm not a christian. If you want to convince someone of your logic you might want to start with a premise both parties agree to. Furthermore you'll have to come up with a definition of "good" so that we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.
Even your hypothetical "good atheist's" actions were tainted with self-righteousness.
Helping others == "self-righteousness"? Can be but certainly doesn't have to be. Are you trying to say we shouldn't help others because that would be "self-righteous"?
Better to be a sinner and know it than a pompous ass who thinks that he's perfect.
I'm not aware of anyone who thinks they are perfect though I do know some people who try very, very hard to be. The fact that no one is perfect does not and never will logically equal "no such thing as a good person".
In the case of Mary, I understand the word is "venerate" not "worship".
Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me.
As to obliterating Iraq, that was not our doing. That was the doing of a dictator who we removed.
So you assert that absolutely no damage or looting was in any way a result of the US invasion and/or the policies and tactics in force thereafter? I think you might want to reconsider that idea.
Germany under Hitler was prosperous and had a very old cultural heritage. Does that mean we should not have gone to war against them?
Consider Godwin's law invoked.
I don't have an account with you assholes, I just want you to stop calling me with recorded messages.
Just in case it helps:
AT&T these days will let you block up to 10 numbers to a land line you can specify through your web account. Other services often will allow the same. It's kept a few of the more annoying telemarketers away from our house. I'm particularly tired of the political messages but I seem to have no legal recourse for those.
You also can file a complaint with the FCC in many cases though it isn't always clear if any action will be taken. Satisfying though...
Contacting someone you do business with isn't illegal.
That depends very much on what business one is talking about. Trafficking in controlled substances, black market weapons sales, racketeering, theft, extortion, and blackmail are all businesses where "contacting someone you do business with" is typically quite illegal.
Throughout my travels I saw a number of locals wearing masks in different places
As I understand it that is more of courtesy thing in Asia, particularly in China. Folks over there wear it to protect others/a., not so much themselves. I asked the same thing when I traveled through Shanghai, Chengdu and Hong Kong. The air quality is indeed terrible in places but they don't help much with that. I was in China right when the SARS epidemic was breaking out.
He is saying that IBM should not complain about not having open-source applications because they have shifted their workforce to Indian and Russian developers who contribute a lot less to the open-source community. Do you dispute this?
When Sam Palmisano complains then I'll concede the point. Until then it's irrelevant. Not everything IBM produces is open source so no one should care where they produce their code. Yes getting good quality code from India is a difficult management (not engineering) problem. News at 11.
Furthermore he was making a blanket statement that "I have yet to see an Indian developer who was trully(sic) creative and innovative" which I find preposterous on the face of it since I've seen the opposite with my own eyes.
You chose a poor example. India imported it's nuclear knowledge from the USA and Russia. They really didn't do anything themselves except labor
I think you should read a little more about India's nuclear programs before making that claim. Yes they got substantial help but they did a lot themselves too.
The simple reality is that, without exception, every single American, European, and Japanese developer I have met has complained about the quality of Indian and Chinese programming.
And I've seen very good code with my own eyes. I've also seen crap code like what you describe. Which of us is right? Both! When you have a poorly managed outsourcing project you get crappy code.
I have also noticed that Indian programmers take very little pride in their work. Their boss is 3000 miles away so they slack off.
Exactly my point. If you manage an outsourcing project from 3000 miles away you should expect poor results. Well managed outsourcing requires trusted management to be on site. Same goes for manufacturing or coding in China. If you throw it over the wall to some random company and expect great results you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Well, in my eleven years as a software developer, my experience does not agree with yours.
And my 10 years doing international export and global sourcing says that you haven't had enough of the right experience and/or haven't been dealing with the right people. I've been all over China and Southeast Asia as well as Mexico sourcing parts, commodities and engineering including software. Plenty of talented and innovative people live outside the US. Both for software and other products as well.
You have to admit that the vast majority of software innovations have come from the US.
You mean like linux? Or perhaps you meant the World Wide Web? Oh my bad. I forgot nothing creative comes from outside the US.
We invariably had to silently rewrite all the code from India. They were well able to follow a pattern that had been established but ask them to invent a design?
That most likely means you don't know how to manage an outsourced operation, not (necessarily) that the engineers on the other end are incapable of quality work. Getting good outsourced software work involves a lot of management and well defined specifications. You can't just throw it over a wall and expect good results. Generally speaking if you get a bad product odds are you either hired the wrong folks (which happens) or you didn't define the end product well enough. You think IBM and General Electric outsource as much as they do because they are fools with their money? Outsourcing isn't easy. Some do it well and others not so much.
However, the photos I see of India invariably show mud streets and vast numbers of poor, uneducated people. India is still a third-world country.
And I've been there. Yes there are a lot of poor people in India. There are a lot of wealthy ones too. You seem to have some bizarre distorted image that everyone in India is some poor dirt farmer. If all you know about the country is what you see in pictures you don't know anything about the country.
They really do not hire any Americans in significant numbers.
Yeah funny how a company called International Business Machines which operates in 170 countries and gets 63% of its revenue from outside the US would even think to hire someone anyone but Americans. I can't fathom why they want to hire locally in BRIC countries where IBM's revenue grew 26% in 2007. Apparently no one informed IBM that they have a responsibility to only hire Americans who know little to nothing about the countries where IBM is seeing the highest growth.
I cannot explain it but over the last several years I have yet to see an Indian developer who was trully creative and innovative.
Right, because a nuclear power like India with a billion citizens must not have a single creative person. I'm sure all the incredibly talented Indian engineers and doctors I've personally met must really be from somewhere else. After all, according to you they have no imagination or creativity if they are from India.
A lot of ugly can be corrected.
True enough though not all. More to the point it is rarely possible to correct "ugly" personalities in my experience. You know, the sort that call someone they've never met ugly in public without any justification whatsoever... I like Ron White's quote "You can't fix stupid".
That said, I don't really care and thought the picture was cute...but looked oddly out of place.
Agreed.
Unless you are fully aware that it will just make the poster, and those of a similar opinion, post even more, and that is your intended result
Yep I'm fully aware you are a clueless, rude, arrogant, cowardly troll and yes I'm having fun showing what an imbecile you are. Next topic.
In any event, no matter how hideous I am....the lady in that pic is both fat and ugly.
Ahh, presumed objectivity. How nice. Because as we all know there is a single arbitrary scale of what is attractive which you and you alone determine for the rest of humanity. Thank $diety I have you to tell me whether a woman is hot or not because I couldn't possibly have an opinion different from yours.
i had some pretty awful pizza last night but since i'm not a chef I can't really say anything about it.
Sure you can because the chef can do something about how he cooks. Bad cooking can be a mistake and can be corrected. But if you call someone ugly in public because they didn't win the genetic lottery THEN you are just an ass.
Reality is unrelated to your belief.
Reality is also unrelated to your opinion of yourself.
And there's a whole lot of territory between "hideous" and "hot."
And only a self absorbed narcissist like yourself would be concerned about where anyone thinks you fall on that scale.
Just because somebody is ugly doesn't mean they can't prefer to look at things that aren't ugly.
Look at and think whatever you want. Just don't be an ass and criticize out loud, especially in public.
Hypocrisy is everywhere.
Amen to that.
Speak for yourself.
My bad. Of course we all REALLY believe you are hot...
Hate to feed the trolls here.
Hate to break it to you but YOU are a troll.
But if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an medium attractive woman.
I always find it amazing that guys who are rather hideous themselves (Howard Stern I'm looking at you) seem to feel it is their job to criticize the appearance of women. It's especially comical here on a website devoted to nerd news where most of the readership wouldn't have any idea how to please a woman. Here's a clue - no one cares what your ugly ass thinks of someone else's appearance. If you feel the need to criticize you had better be a model yourself. Given that you are posting here on Slashdot that's pretty unlikely - so kindly shut the hell up.
...but fair use doesn't cover making backup copies - it's different.
Fair use certainly can cover backup copies as that would generally be a form of space shifting which was most notably upheld in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984). The legalese you quoted are examples (indicated by the quote "for purposes such as"), not an exhaustive list of what constitutes fair use.
There is a four part test to determine if a copy is fair use. Considerations include the "purpose and character of use" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work". Despite the fact that the whole work is being copied, backup copies are highly unlikely to be viewed as copyright infringement absent some additional circumstances. Backups are unlikely to prejudice additional sales, diminish sales, or supersede the original work in any way.
It's fine for the copyright holder to explicitly grant the right to make a backup copy but as far as I know they would be on thin legal ground if they tried to prevent it absent some explicit agreement on your part.
Well, the US government is already contracting mercenaries for combat action, why not let the PIs in on the official investigative duties as well?
Nice irrelevant strawman comparing government hired military contractors in a foreign war zone with corporate hired domestic investigation of civil copyright infringement.
They're cheaper and more effective, since they don't have to obey those pesky "laws" that protect the public from the government.
But they do have to obey those pesky laws that protect the public from each other. Courts ultimately decide what evidence they will admit and what they won't. Being a PI isn't some sort of magical immunity from rules of evidentiary procedure.
The GP did specifically write "without permission". Under any reasonable readings of that expression,...
Don't confuse reasonable readings with legal interpretations. Fair use copying does not, under any circumstances I am aware of, require permission from the copyright holder. The GP post you refer to is at best ambiguous on this point and I see no reason why anyone should assume your broad interpretation of "without permission" since permission is not necessarily required.
Undercover cops buy drugs and the state doesn't have to prosecute them for buying them.
Police officers are sanctioned by the government to enforce the law. The RIAA and other private organizations do not (and should not) share the same legal protections as a police officer sanctioned with enforcing the laws. The act of trafficking schedule 1 controlled substances is always illegal for private citizens. Making a copy of copyrighted material often is entirely legal under fair use doctrine. Furthermore selling controlled substances without a license is a felony whereas selling copyrighted material without any special license is frequently legal.
If the plaintiff had assistance from legally sanctioned law enforcement authorities who, in the process of a properly conducted investigation, concluded that there was reasonable grounds to suspect attempted copyright infringement then it would seem more likely to be acceptable as evidence. But just because some private investigator found "evidence" doesn't mean a court will or should automatically allow it to be presented.
Why couldn't investigators "illegally" download copyrighted material and still have it considered infringing on the part of the defendant, but not be prosecuted?
Because a private citizen cannot manufacture a crime against another private citizen. Without getting into the particulars of any given case is is easy to think of situations where the defendant was not attempting to commit copyright infringement. Making copies of copyrighted material is not prima facia evidence of copyright infringement.
So, genius, explain to me how you upload something without making a copy.
Typically it is legal to make a copy of material under fair use guidelines. Whether the copy is on a CD or on a server or some other medium is generally irrelevant. What is relevant is whether mens rea can be proven and whether the use clearly falls outside fair use guidelines. Upload stuff to a website saying "Warez here - come and get it" and you likely are committing a copyright violation. But simply putting files on a server is not an automatic copyright infringement. The issue is a lot more complicated than that.
Both sides copy, and as you say, the act of copying without permission is illegal.
This statement could not be more wrong. Copying material is not an automatic copyright infringement and both case law as well as legislation have strongly established this fact. All copyright infringements require the act of copying but not all copying is an automatic copyright infringement.
What is the return on the American investment here?
Here is a breakdown by state and here is just some of the technology that has come out of NASA.
All the Trillions of dollars the American tax payer has sent to NASA over the years.
What trillions? The total amount spent on NASA since its inception in 1958 is $592 billion. We spend that much every year on our military.
There is ZERO justification for a moon base at this time
Sure there is. Just not a financial one. Not everything is about dollars and cents you know. Exploration by definition means you don't know what you'll find and you don't know until you try.
By the way, have you seen the national debt lately?
NASA's budget is around $17 billion/year. The total US federal budget for 2008 was around $2.9 Trillion. That means NASA's budget is approximately half of one percent of the total federal budget. Compare that with the $549 billion spent on defense or the $581 billion spend on Social Security and I'm not really very worried about the money we spend on NASA. Cut a few bombers out of the defense budget and we can fund NASA for years.
I think NASA is doing EXACTLY what it should be doing, which is unmanned robotic missions.
Which account for roughly 1/3 of NASA's budget with the remainder dominated by manned spaceflight.
Imagine what we could gather from an array of hubble telescopes... and what little more we could learn from an expensive manned moon shot.
Not sure what your point is since we pretty much by definition don't know what we would learn from either. To be frank I think the applications of technology developed for a manned moonshot are more likely to have an application within my lifetime. The amount of technology that came out of the NASA programs that we take for granted these days is breathtaking.
The number of German or Itallian consumers is small compared to those who use English and the price reflects the marginal production costs per unit.
Those costs are still a tiny fraction of the actual development costs...
And smaller still when you consider that engineering costs in general are rarely more than 15-30% of total costs for any software company. Don't take my word for it, look at the financial statements for Adobe and you'll see Sales and Admin expenses greatly outweigh any engineering costs. This is pretty much universally true for almost any software company you might care to mention.