Not to mention, had Apple won, they would have immediately been sued by and lost to Xerox
Sorry, no. Apple bought the rights to go to Palo Alto and take whatever they wanted. It was a major coup, and it was mostly because the Xerox execs were clueless about what they had. I believe Xerox was very close to liquidating the Palo Alto team, and they saw Apple as a chance to make some quick cash out of the "losing investment".
Regardless, Apple was fully in the right basing some of their work off the Palo Alto team --- they bought the rights to it!
Good to hear, I'm definitely a supporter of people getting married to hot, cool women. Me, for instance. Big supporter of that.
Just thought the juxtaposition was hilarious.
Re:It Wasn't Columbine! It's Always Been Like This
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To your point about adverse discrimination being bad in many of its colors and shapes, I would like to add that, currently, black geeks have it pretty damn hard. Some sub-cultures (I say sub because this refers to the American urban black culture that we run into. What particular flavor it is, I don't care) have it in even worse for certain forms of discrimination.
Much has been made about why these kids beat the snot out of each other, and why they target the way they do (and each form of violence seems to have its own targets, now doesn't it?), but I remember crossing the fence when I was very young. I started out as a bully (much bigger than the rest of the kids, hated by the teacher for wanting to learn faster than she would teach, angry over many things, and not really close to anyone in the class), and I became a different kind of outcast: the bookish type.
Two interesting things about that: first, the bullies really have no damn clue what they're doing. Most of it has to do with groupthink more than anything else.
Second, the point of view from the bully and the bullied is much the same when the bully knows you'll fight back.
This is one of the reasons why I got so damn pissed off at my high school policy of "if you defend yourself you will be suspended."
In my opinion, it's a microcosm of what is going wrong with our administrative, justice, social, and ethical systems all wrapped up into one:
Administrative: we'll have a problem proving who did it, and don't want to take the time, so we'll punish everyone. Fighting is a social problem, therefore punishing the society for letting it happen will curb it, right?
Justice: we can catch pretty much anyone who's fighting at any time, and break them up before something serious happens. Anything that happens off campus is immaterial.
Social: the school knows what's best. My child lies and all administrators and teachers both tell the truth, and have all the information.
Ethical: acts are wrong or right based solely upon the action taken, not upon the reasons for it being taken and regardless of information present at the time.
The really cool chicks: a retrospective
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For some reason I find it hilarious that a person who claims that those who "smoke and refuse to participate" are "the ones who get the really cool chicks" runs a site that collects porn from other sites.
Now, with porn there are two options that imply that you can get chicks:
No porn: you're too busy with chicks to photograph them.
Original porn: you're busy with chicks, but you photograph them.
Lots of porn, but none original? Not looking good.
Perhaps you were referring to a class of person that you remember got a bunch of chicks, many of which you classified as cool.
Or perhaps you learned, as I have observed, that the "smoke and refuse to participate" bunch pretty much sheds itself of interesting people about the sophomore year of high school, and were merely referring to what was then current.
Of course, this could be my own personal biases at play, and I'm not exactly stocked up on my chick supplies, but as we both seem to be comparing observations here, I figured I'd weigh in.
Oh, and yes: the chicks that go after the jocks are insipid beyond human understanding.
Linus: We can now be loaded in Windows as a driver, either taking over the entire system, leaving the Windows API and GUI shim in place, or just providing industry standards.
Microsoft: Our new mandatory patch fixes a recent stability feature....
Hmmm, globalization, corporatization and deregulation of everything isn't helping consumers, big shock.
If the government would truly deregulate the phone companies, I don't think we'd have this problem.
This whole thing with "the local bell owns the wires" effectively emasculates any thoughts of deregulation. Makes it worse, in fact, as the Bell can claim that it's the competition that's driving up the prices[1], what with "competitors not paying their fair share" and such.
There are several solutions to each component of the situation.
One of the problems is that the bells usually have control of all right-of-ways. So here are some possible solutions (notice that few of these require anything but city-level involvement. This means that these are very possible to implement. This year, perhaps.):
allowing new right-of-ways
having the city eminent domain the right-of-ways and having companies bid for maintenance and new installation, being paid by the telcos based on how much bandwidth they're using through the cable (this is very risky politically, and there is the possibility that current monopoly will rig the bid. They're not shy about that sort of thing). Of course, this also be good as the granularity of sale could be down to the individual neighborhood. You could also have the neighborhood have a say in who they choose for their line upkeep and installation...since they are the people being serviced, after all.
Piggyback on other right-of-ways, such as electricity
wireless works for broadband. Add in VoIP, and you have a total replacement for your telco. Of course, you can have a problem where a local company deliberately takes up all the wireless bandwidth in an area, to staunch competition. Then you're back in the same boat.
Split the bells again into line and service. This is also risky, as they might merge right back up again. You also have a very high possibility of good old boy systems between the two companies.
Also, there is the problem with getting phone numbers and upstream hookup into the POTS network. I don't know much about this, I admit, but I have heard that there has been some nasty business with local bells and phone numbers. There's also been some cases where the local bell controls the hookup in the POTS network and charges exorbitant rates or provides crappy service.
If anyone in the field knows something about this second class of problems, I'd like to hear it.
And, as usual, if I'm wrong, I want to hear about it.
[1]: actually, given the shoddy accounting practices and horrible miscommunication between branches, the company as a whole might really think that it is the competition that's driving up the prices. Doubtful, but they might. Oh, that and the very poor grasp of economics that is prevalent.
I think everyone here is suffering from a severe case of no-timeline-prespective-itis.
Consider for a moment just how long the telephone was in operation before we gained our current level of quality and flexability. Now consider the state of VoIP.
Do you really expect VoIP to do what POTS does now next month?
But that's not all the needs to be considered. I keep hearing this and that about regulation resulting in a higher quality of service. While regulation can provide a higher quality of interoperability, it very rarely provides a higher quality of service.
While we're swapping anecdotal evidence, I'll bring up two situations that most people on/. are quite familiar with now:
Airport security. Yes, it's the whipping boy of everyone right now, but consider for a moment: this is a regulated service now. Admittedly, it's the ultimate in regulation (total control), but still. Has the quality of service gone up or down since regulation? In the places where it has gone up, could that have been as easily achieved by hieghtened citizen concern about the state of airport security?
UPS/FedEX vs. Postal Service. UPS/FedEX are essentially wihout regulation. The Postal Service is highly regulated. Supposedly the Postal Service is run entirely off of revenues, so they are essentially a heavily-regulated semi-private entity. Now consider which company has more trust: UPS (or FedEX), or the USPS?
I've chosen some easy targets here, so let me choose some harder ones so I don't get flamed for just showing the negative cases.
Consider the phone company, which the above post thinks so highly of in terms of quality of service. Local phone service is more regulated than long distance phone service. Taking into account increased entropic tendancies inherint to long-distance communications, which service provides a higher quality at a lower price? Also consider the responsiveness of your local phone service in comparison to your long-distance phone service (I'm assuming here that you're not going for a bottom-of-the-barrel-no-frills long distance service).
How about an example of a tech-oriented thing that is without government regulation (as much as that is possible in this day and age)? How about Ethernet. Any 10BaseT card out there can talk to any other 10BaseT card out there, in addition to any 10BaseT hub/switch/router. This is entirely done with standards by committee, not standards by mandate. (sidenote: yes, I know...the electricity flowing across those cables is "regulated" by the FCC, and your purchase of the NIC was probably "regulated" by the Commerce Department. The question is: would Ethernet be better off as a government-regulated system?)
Now, given the number of people on/. who are "pro-innovation", I think it highly likely that many of the people saying that regulation would be a good thing intersect with the "pro-innovation" group. It's unfortunate that the two proposals conflict. How? Let me describe this for you:
We consider an inventor to be an innovator. Let's say that I am an inventor, and I build a new kind of refridgerator. Wonderful little device, cools things much better than anything else out there. Let's say that I want to sell my little contraption, and a hundred of its brothers. If refridgerators are regulated, however (as they are...the cooling system in a refridgerator is regulated by...oh, I can't remember what agency. Probably a TLA, if I had to guess), then I cannot sell my little box. Instead, I have to submit its designs and probably a sample to a regulatory commission, and pay the regulatory fees and so on and so forth. This means I have to get more money together to do this, which increases my reliance on capital investors, and reduces the likelyhood of me going to market. Thus my innovation has a reduced chance of success. Chilling effect, if you will.
There are quite a few other reasons why regulation tends not to be a great idea:
As a practical matter, if a company conforms to regulations, they are idemnified from mishaps due to poorly thought out regulations. Bad juju.
Regulatory commissions are notoriously slow to change, so rolling out a new system can be painfully slow - regardless of technical merit
Regulatory commisions tend to amplify the power of the leading company in the industry, as that company is the one most listened to when it comes to forming standards. This can be used to enforce that company's lead on the other companies, and, further, make other companies fight on the leading company's turf.
Regulations tend to be overbroad in classification, conflating roles more often than not. Consider power systems. Now, whether or not you agree with power deregulation (in ANY of its forms) it is very difficult to argue that power delivery, and power generation are the same role. This is not to say that one company cannot assume both roles (it is routine for a company to assume many different roles), but the roles are distinct.
One last thing: a common argument for regulation is expectation of service. The "post-failure lawsuits are not a satisfactory regulatory option" jab as in the above post is usual. Consider, though: a failure to meet regulatory requirements in one customer instance and a failure to meet a previous Service Level Agreement in one customer instance works pretty much the same: you sue for damages. In the regulatory instance, you have the additional leverage of putting pressure on the company through the commission, but an SLA violation case is much easier to try and damages are usually much greater than the cumulative effects of a lawsuit against a regulated agency and regulatory pressuring.
Oh, and in regards to the SLA you get out of an unregulated company vs what you'll get from regulation...take the SLA. Every time.
As usual, I could be wrong. If you think I am, I'd be delighted to see your reasons for thinking so. I've changed my mind in the past.
the gateway will then rewrite URLs on the pages sent back to your browser, appending automatically the ".sixxs.org". This way, all the links will still go through the IPv6 gateway, letting you transparently surf the web over IPv6!
Yes, but now the phrase is better! Yes, better! It's been enhaced with an exclamation mark!
You too can have all the fun and glory of high-priced translators and english professors by the mere addition of an exclamation mark! Yes! You!
They're not higher. Companies pay less taxes now than they paid back in the 50s.
Companies "pay taxes" in several ways, are you taking them into account?
First off there's the straight-out income tax, business tax, infrastructure tax, whatever tax. That's pretty much always counted in these numbers, and yes that is lower than the 50's. Probably even including inflation.
Then there's the other way: they pay higher salaries to their employees because those salaries are taxed, and so they must pay more for the employees to have the compensation they demand.
Companies also pay taxes when the price of their goods is inflated by taxes. This is done twice, in fact: once by lost sales because people no longer thing the item is worth the price, and again by reduced revenue per item.
Taxes that you would not think are immediate tend to creep up on you. They also take their toll as it were over a longer period of time.
One last thing: don't forget the other form of taxes we pay: increased price due to regulation. Now I agree that some regulation seems to do a good job, but the regulation DOES increase prices. OSHA, FDA, EPA, increased paperwork for SEC. So on and so forth.
So, taking all that into account, companies now probably have more tax-based burden than back in the 50's.
You are comparing a government monopoly to a private sector monopoly. Part of the purpose of privatization is to get rid of monopolies (government-enforced/supported, at least). Your comparison is not amongst what it would seem to be.
Now, whether a private-sector monopoly is worse than a government monopoly is debatable. On the one hand, a private sector monopoly is not beholden to the public (usually a private sector monopoly is burdened only by their stockholders/president, and so is usually a direct reflection of that entity). Also, the private sector monopoly can shelter itself behind pet legislators, and further evade responsibility.
On the other hand, a government monopoly can create law to work for itself, can dip into the government money pool (and thus you never know how much the services really cost), has a very nasty tendancy of being unsueable (the DEA and FBI are famous for this), and people are more likely to just put up with the government monopoly (whereas they go screaming to the AG or their congressman if things get bad enough with a company).
So it's a mixed bag.
Now to address several of your points.
First off, the US Postal Service is able to compete with FedEx and UPS for several reasons: prebuilt infrastructure (though that's not as big a point as it used to be), monopoly over post boxes, different type of service (usually slower, less urgent), junk mail monopoly, and they get a big fat check from the federal government every year. Yes, they do. It's coyly put in "off-budget spending". I don't have numbers (my book that mentions it is with another person right now), but it's in the 100's of millions. At least, that was true as of 1993. It's probably risen since then. Oh yeah, and the postal service is not responsible if your mail is lost. Part of the cost of FedEx and UPS is their sue-ability.
Also, I'd like to add: send $1,000 in cash in an envelope marked "cash, do not open" via FedEx, UPS, and the postal service.
Continuing.
How are you counting profits in your 30-60% number? Difference between selling price and buying price? That's not all that accurate, as it doesn't count in capital costs, investment costs, employee paychecks, return merchandise, insurance, so on and so forth.
If that's not how you're counting it, then you're probably mistaken. I say "probably," because I do not know the financial situation of every private business in America. But I do know a few things: most businesses in America are small. I'm counting here by quantity of businesses, not dollars earned, since I don't know that number (though I'm willing to guess that that number would be similar). Gas stations, book stores, grocery stores, so on and so forth. These places as individual businesses do not make a high percentage profit. Their parent corporations may, but probably not. Most gas stations, for example, survive by selling a lot of gas at little profit. They hope that they don't buy too much gas that week, as their competitors may lower their prices, and force them to lower their own prices to near what they paid for the gas. Happens all the time.
As far as "unnecessary government programs" go...well, it all depends on who's doing the deciding of what's necessary, just as you say. Libertarians are not cold-hearted people who don't want to spend a dime on other people; they merely see government as not being the vehicle they choose for their money, and they honestly see other ways to get things done. A Green on the other hand, would probably see most programs as necessary, as the government is (in their opinion) more accountable and more under the control of socially concerned people than business is.
I won't go into naming what programs I think are unnecessary, because it's pointless. There are numerous debates about that by people far more informed than I in such matters, and I'd rather listen and think about what they say than flap my lips about something I'm half informed on.
As far as Edison Schools goes...corpwatch was extremely one-sided in that review. They have also completely neglected to discuss the political problems that Edison Schools has faced. That doesn't excuse their actions, but it certainly does put them in a different light. I'd like to see a rebuttal paper before I make up my mind how I feel about Edison Schools.
If you want a good example of private schools that are run pretty well, and have been for many, many years, take a look at the parochial schools. Especially those run by the Jesuits.
While I too enjoy hyperbole, it should be remembered that there are two important distinctions in most legality questions: for profit, and explicit task.
Taking your examples: a person that sold OCR software for the explicit task of ripping an e-bok(ie they made promises to that effect, and/or included a booklet showing you how to), that company would be in court quite quickly.
Another example: a person with data entry skills. If this person advertised as being able and willing to retype in e-books for a fee, they would also be in court.
The DMCA has muddied the waters a bit, making things we don't view as illegal apparently illegal, and this does include things such as academic investigation into audio watermarking (that was one big mess), macrovision strippers, and other (as we view it) fair use cases. However it is best to keep in mind that most of these cases have yet to see a judge make a decision. You can sue for any reason at all. You can threaten to sue for even less justification. Until some of this stuff gets settled out by the judges and lawyers, anything goes.
My point is that even though the DMCA has screwed some things up, the big things that will for sure land you in a criminal trial are explicit task and for profit. Unless you have those, most DAs don't even want to bother with it, as there's no guarantee of them winning.
EA: as I originally heard it, Winston Churchill said to Lady Astor "Yes, madame, it is true. I am drunk. But you are ugly, and in the morning I will be sober."
Kinda has a better ring to it at the least. Just thought you might like to know.
(I really need to learn how to send a message to someone. I thought you could do that in the new slashcode)
Modern peacemakers use all-natural, organic material which has not been shown to be affected by any electromagnetic fields in the area. In 100% of use cases the peacemaker was able to adapt to the environment and perform its function.
"The problem is that the government has to waste several hours tracking down the judge to get the warrant signed."
There are magistrates devoted full-time to the issue of warrants. They do nothing but sign warrants all day, and they are used to only getting a moment's notice.
"If someone breaks into your house, and you see them snooping around, do you want the FBI to have to get a warrant to go into your house?"
Here they do not need a warrant, as a crime is being committed, and they are not searching your property, they're taking someone into custody (hopefully). With the computer case, if an unauthorized person was trespassing on your computer things get a bit hazy: a crime is being committed, so they can pursue. They don't need to go dredging through your files.
Having said that, I was glad to see the provision in PATRIOT to allow owner's permission obviate the need for a warrant, but for the reason of clarifying the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, no. Apple bought the rights to go to Palo Alto and take whatever they wanted. It was a major coup, and it was mostly because the Xerox execs were clueless about what they had. I believe Xerox was very close to liquidating the Palo Alto team, and they saw Apple as a chance to make some quick cash out of the "losing investment".
Regardless, Apple was fully in the right basing some of their work off the Palo Alto team --- they bought the rights to it!
NineNine,
Good to hear, I'm definitely a supporter of people getting married to hot, cool women. Me, for instance. Big supporter of that.
Just thought the juxtaposition was hilarious.
To your point about adverse discrimination being bad in many of its colors and shapes, I would like to add that, currently, black geeks have it pretty damn hard. Some sub-cultures (I say sub because this refers to the American urban black culture that we run into. What particular flavor it is, I don't care) have it in even worse for certain forms of discrimination.
Much has been made about why these kids beat the snot out of each other, and why they target the way they do (and each form of violence seems to have its own targets, now doesn't it?), but I remember crossing the fence when I was very young. I started out as a bully (much bigger than the rest of the kids, hated by the teacher for wanting to learn faster than she would teach, angry over many things, and not really close to anyone in the class), and I became a different kind of outcast: the bookish type.
Two interesting things about that: first, the bullies really have no damn clue what they're doing. Most of it has to do with groupthink more than anything else.
Second, the point of view from the bully and the bullied is much the same when the bully knows you'll fight back.
This is one of the reasons why I got so damn pissed off at my high school policy of "if you defend yourself you will be suspended."
In my opinion, it's a microcosm of what is going wrong with our administrative, justice, social, and ethical systems all wrapped up into one:
For some reason I find it hilarious that a person who claims that those who "smoke and refuse to participate" are "the ones who get the really cool chicks" runs a site that collects porn from other sites.
Now, with porn there are two options that imply that you can get chicks:
Lots of porn, but none original? Not looking good.
Perhaps you were referring to a class of person that you remember got a bunch of chicks, many of which you classified as cool.
Or perhaps you learned, as I have observed, that the "smoke and refuse to participate" bunch pretty much sheds itself of interesting people about the sophomore year of high school, and were merely referring to what was then current.
Of course, this could be my own personal biases at play, and I'm not exactly stocked up on my chick supplies, but as we both seem to be comparing observations here, I figured I'd weigh in.
Oh, and yes: the chicks that go after the jocks are insipid beyond human understanding.
I can see it now....
If the government would truly deregulate the phone companies, I don't think we'd have this problem.
This whole thing with "the local bell owns the wires" effectively emasculates any thoughts of deregulation. Makes it worse, in fact, as the Bell can claim that it's the competition that's driving up the prices[1], what with "competitors not paying their fair share" and such.
There are several solutions to each component of the situation.
One of the problems is that the bells usually have control of all right-of-ways. So here are some possible solutions (notice that few of these require anything but city-level involvement. This means that these are very possible to implement. This year, perhaps.):
Also, there is the problem with getting phone numbers and upstream hookup into the POTS network. I don't know much about this, I admit, but I have heard that there has been some nasty business with local bells and phone numbers. There's also been some cases where the local bell controls the hookup in the POTS network and charges exorbitant rates or provides crappy service.
If anyone in the field knows something about this second class of problems, I'd like to hear it.
And, as usual, if I'm wrong, I want to hear about it.
[1]: actually, given the shoddy accounting practices and horrible miscommunication between branches, the company as a whole might really think that it is the competition that's driving up the prices. Doubtful, but they might. Oh, that and the very poor grasp of economics that is prevalent.
I think everyone here is suffering from a severe case of no-timeline-prespective-itis.
Consider for a moment just how long the telephone was in operation before we gained our current level of quality and flexability. Now consider the state of VoIP.
Do you really expect VoIP to do what POTS does now next month?
But that's not all the needs to be considered. I keep hearing this and that about regulation resulting in a higher quality of service. While regulation can provide a higher quality of interoperability, it very rarely provides a higher quality of service.
While we're swapping anecdotal evidence, I'll bring up two situations that most people on /. are quite familiar with now:
I've chosen some easy targets here, so let me choose some harder ones so I don't get flamed for just showing the negative cases.
Consider the phone company, which the above post thinks so highly of in terms of quality of service. Local phone service is more regulated than long distance phone service. Taking into account increased entropic tendancies inherint to long-distance communications, which service provides a higher quality at a lower price? Also consider the responsiveness of your local phone service in comparison to your long-distance phone service (I'm assuming here that you're not going for a bottom-of-the-barrel-no-frills long distance service).
How about an example of a tech-oriented thing that is without government regulation (as much as that is possible in this day and age)? How about Ethernet. Any 10BaseT card out there can talk to any other 10BaseT card out there, in addition to any 10BaseT hub/switch/router. This is entirely done with standards by committee, not standards by mandate. (sidenote: yes, I know...the electricity flowing across those cables is "regulated" by the FCC, and your purchase of the NIC was probably "regulated" by the Commerce Department. The question is: would Ethernet be better off as a government-regulated system?)
Now, given the number of people on /. who are "pro-innovation", I think it highly likely that many of the people saying that regulation would be a good thing intersect with the "pro-innovation" group. It's unfortunate that the two proposals conflict. How? Let me describe this for you:
We consider an inventor to be an innovator. Let's say that I am an inventor, and I build a new kind of refridgerator. Wonderful little device, cools things much better than anything else out there. Let's say that I want to sell my little contraption, and a hundred of its brothers. If refridgerators are regulated, however (as they are...the cooling system in a refridgerator is regulated by...oh, I can't remember what agency. Probably a TLA, if I had to guess), then I cannot sell my little box. Instead, I have to submit its designs and probably a sample to a regulatory commission, and pay the regulatory fees and so on and so forth. This means I have to get more money together to do this, which increases my reliance on capital investors, and reduces the likelyhood of me going to market. Thus my innovation has a reduced chance of success. Chilling effect, if you will.
There are quite a few other reasons why regulation tends not to be a great idea:
One last thing: a common argument for regulation is expectation of service. The "post-failure lawsuits are not a satisfactory regulatory option" jab as in the above post is usual. Consider, though: a failure to meet regulatory requirements in one customer instance and a failure to meet a previous Service Level Agreement in one customer instance works pretty much the same: you sue for damages. In the regulatory instance, you have the additional leverage of putting pressure on the company through the commission, but an SLA violation case is much easier to try and damages are usually much greater than the cumulative effects of a lawsuit against a regulated agency and regulatory pressuring.
Oh, and in regards to the SLA you get out of an unregulated company vs what you'll get from regulation...take the SLA. Every time.
As usual, I could be wrong. If you think I am, I'd be delighted to see your reasons for thinking so. I've changed my mind in the past.
Yes, but now the phrase is better! Yes, better! It's been enhaced with an exclamation mark!
You too can have all the fun and glory of high-priced translators and english professors by the mere addition of an exclamation mark! Yes! You!
(sorry, I couldn't help but be an ass here...)
They're not higher. Companies pay less taxes now than they paid back in the 50s.
Companies "pay taxes" in several ways, are you taking them into account?
First off there's the straight-out income tax, business tax, infrastructure tax, whatever tax. That's pretty much always counted in these numbers, and yes that is lower than the 50's. Probably even including inflation.
Then there's the other way: they pay higher salaries to their employees because those salaries are taxed, and so they must pay more for the employees to have the compensation they demand.
Companies also pay taxes when the price of their goods is inflated by taxes. This is done twice, in fact: once by lost sales because people no longer thing the item is worth the price, and again by reduced revenue per item.
Taxes that you would not think are immediate tend to creep up on you. They also take their toll as it were over a longer period of time.
One last thing: don't forget the other form of taxes we pay: increased price due to regulation. Now I agree that some regulation seems to do a good job, but the regulation DOES increase prices. OSHA, FDA, EPA, increased paperwork for SEC. So on and so forth.
So, taking all that into account, companies now probably have more tax-based burden than back in the 50's.
Just something to consider. I could be wrong.
You are comparing a government monopoly to a private sector monopoly. Part of the purpose of privatization is to get rid of monopolies (government-enforced/supported, at least). Your comparison is not amongst what it would seem to be.
Now, whether a private-sector monopoly is worse than a government monopoly is debatable. On the one hand, a private sector monopoly is not beholden to the public (usually a private sector monopoly is burdened only by their stockholders/president, and so is usually a direct reflection of that entity). Also, the private sector monopoly can shelter itself behind pet legislators, and further evade responsibility.
On the other hand, a government monopoly can create law to work for itself, can dip into the government money pool (and thus you never know how much the services really cost), has a very nasty tendancy of being unsueable (the DEA and FBI are famous for this), and people are more likely to just put up with the government monopoly (whereas they go screaming to the AG or their congressman if things get bad enough with a company).
So it's a mixed bag.
Now to address several of your points.
First off, the US Postal Service is able to compete with FedEx and UPS for several reasons: prebuilt infrastructure (though that's not as big a point as it used to be), monopoly over post boxes, different type of service (usually slower, less urgent), junk mail monopoly, and they get a big fat check from the federal government every year. Yes, they do. It's coyly put in "off-budget spending". I don't have numbers (my book that mentions it is with another person right now), but it's in the 100's of millions. At least, that was true as of 1993. It's probably risen since then. Oh yeah, and the postal service is not responsible if your mail is lost. Part of the cost of FedEx and UPS is their sue-ability.
Also, I'd like to add: send $1,000 in cash in an envelope marked "cash, do not open" via FedEx, UPS, and the postal service.
Continuing.
How are you counting profits in your 30-60% number? Difference between selling price and buying price? That's not all that accurate, as it doesn't count in capital costs, investment costs, employee paychecks, return merchandise, insurance, so on and so forth.
If that's not how you're counting it, then you're probably mistaken. I say "probably," because I do not know the financial situation of every private business in America. But I do know a few things: most businesses in America are small. I'm counting here by quantity of businesses, not dollars earned, since I don't know that number (though I'm willing to guess that that number would be similar). Gas stations, book stores, grocery stores, so on and so forth. These places as individual businesses do not make a high percentage profit. Their parent corporations may, but probably not. Most gas stations, for example, survive by selling a lot of gas at little profit. They hope that they don't buy too much gas that week, as their competitors may lower their prices, and force them to lower their own prices to near what they paid for the gas. Happens all the time.
As far as "unnecessary government programs" go...well, it all depends on who's doing the deciding of what's necessary, just as you say. Libertarians are not cold-hearted people who don't want to spend a dime on other people; they merely see government as not being the vehicle they choose for their money, and they honestly see other ways to get things done. A Green on the other hand, would probably see most programs as necessary, as the government is (in their opinion) more accountable and more under the control of socially concerned people than business is.
I won't go into naming what programs I think are unnecessary, because it's pointless. There are numerous debates about that by people far more informed than I in such matters, and I'd rather listen and think about what they say than flap my lips about something I'm half informed on.
As far as Edison Schools goes...corpwatch was extremely one-sided in that review. They have also completely neglected to discuss the political problems that Edison Schools has faced. That doesn't excuse their actions, but it certainly does put them in a different light. I'd like to see a rebuttal paper before I make up my mind how I feel about Edison Schools.
If you want a good example of private schools that are run pretty well, and have been for many, many years, take a look at the parochial schools. Especially those run by the Jesuits.
While I too enjoy hyperbole, it should be remembered that there are two important distinctions in most legality questions: for profit, and explicit task.
Taking your examples: a person that sold OCR software for the explicit task of ripping an e-bok(ie they made promises to that effect, and/or included a booklet showing you how to), that company would be in court quite quickly.
Another example: a person with data entry skills. If this person advertised as being able and willing to retype in e-books for a fee, they would also be in court.
The DMCA has muddied the waters a bit, making things we don't view as illegal apparently illegal, and this does include things such as academic investigation into audio watermarking (that was one big mess), macrovision strippers, and other (as we view it) fair use cases. However it is best to keep in mind that most of these cases have yet to see a judge make a decision. You can sue for any reason at all. You can threaten to sue for even less justification. Until some of this stuff gets settled out by the judges and lawyers, anything goes.
My point is that even though the DMCA has screwed some things up, the big things that will for sure land you in a criminal trial are explicit task and for profit. Unless you have those, most DAs don't even want to bother with it, as there's no guarantee of them winning.
EA: as I originally heard it, Winston Churchill said to Lady Astor "Yes, madame, it is true. I am drunk. But you are ugly, and in the morning I will be sober."
Kinda has a better ring to it at the least. Just thought you might like to know.
(I really need to learn how to send a message to someone. I thought you could do that in the new slashcode)
Modern peacemakers use all-natural, organic material which has not been shown to be affected by any electromagnetic fields in the area. In 100% of use cases the peacemaker was able to adapt to the environment and perform its function.
"The problem is that the government has to waste several hours tracking down the judge to get the warrant signed."
There are magistrates devoted full-time to the issue of warrants. They do nothing but sign warrants all day, and they are used to only getting a moment's notice.
"If someone breaks into your house, and you see them snooping around, do you want the FBI to have to get a warrant to go into your house?"
Here they do not need a warrant, as a crime is being committed, and they are not searching your property, they're taking someone into custody (hopefully). With the computer case, if an unauthorized person was trespassing on your computer things get a bit hazy: a crime is being committed, so they can pursue. They don't need to go dredging through your files.
Having said that, I was glad to see the provision in PATRIOT to allow owner's permission obviate the need for a warrant, but for the reason of clarifying the law.