Where, in all of this, did you get the idea that it would become legal to not pay?
This, as far as I can tell, is merely suggesting that developers stop making the legal customer's experience an annoyance. For game studios, hunting down the pirates probably isn't worth their time. But they're still willing to fail gloriously at keeping gamers from copying the disc, regardless of the negative consequences to actual consumers. If Microsoft did the same, they could, at their discretion, file suit against any corporation without the appropriate license. They just wouldn't annoy users with their various "features" that (fail) to protect against piracy.
Basically, what you're saying is that you want the legislature to legislate itself out of existance. Because there wouldn't be any need for that particular branch of government anymore.
Not really. We don't rely on police to protect the citizenry as it is. Or, at least, if you do then the chances are very good that you're in for a rude awakening should you ever need protection. There aren't enough police to rely on them for protection. The police exist far more for legal retribution than they do for protection. They're a best effort service. Which is why there are court rulings stating that the police are not liable for failing to protect you. Comforting, no?
Not to mention that attack fighter aircraft, bombers, and cool surface ships are all well and good.. but they're not particularly well suited for putting down a civilian rebellion. At least, not if you want to keep from decimating the civilian populace. Which, presumably, you don't want to do because your own supporters would be in the mix. You also can't count on every person in the military going with the government. Which opens the prospect of military vehicles and weapons being in the hands of both sides. And here's the last thing.. not all military personnel are combat personnel. They may have some cool gear, but there really aren't a lot of them. There are a lot more cooks, administrators, mechanics, quartermasters, technicians, and the like. Might be a little different in the Marines, where you're a rifleman first and whatever else second. But not being a Marine, I don't know how rigidly they adhere to that.
Which isn't, in any way, to opine that a rebellion would be easy. It wouldn't. Its just that putting one down wouldn't be as easy as you make it out to be, either.
No.. As I said, I'm annoyed that you didn't bother to read. But.. not surprisingly, you didn't bother to do so, a second time.
You're still going on about the search for black boxes, acting as if you find the black box and go home. Search teams would only spend less time searching if the black box is the last thing found. So.. if thats the case, say so. At this point, though, don't expect me to just take you at your word. You haven't exactly built a lot of credibility with me from the posts on this subject that I've read.
I can tell the difference between what you stated as costs, and what you completely ignored as costs.
Apparently you don't understand that lives can always be saved. If we didn't do thousands of the things that we do, lots of lives could be saved. And yet we do them. Because we make risk and cost assessments. Which was the whole point of saying that not flying would save a lot of lives and a lot of money on replacing downed aircraft and figuring out what went wrong with them. Its all true, and yet we recklessly disregard that fact, because we want to fly. We want to fly so much that we risk crashing and dying to do it. This isn't a difficult concept. It isn't a strawman. Its the real conclusion to your "but lives can be saved!" line. Lives can always be saved. And whether or not you want to admit it, people all over the world put a price on life. Every day. Every time they decide to do something. Saving lives is well and good. But its costly.
If you want to spout that your costs are complete, which they aren't, you can. It doesn't mean that telemetry is worthwhile. Not once have I said that I don't care about lives being saved. Nor have I ever attempted to say that a crashed jet is cheap. But thanks for trying to put words in my mouth.
If you wanted to be believed, you'd be here telling me just how frequently telemetry could prevent a crash. Which I notice you haven't addressed, and neither does your nice pretty brochure link. Said link, I'll note, reads like propaganda from a company trying to sell you something. Not surprising since thats exactly what it is. Crashes that telemetry could prevent are the only benefit. Not all crashes are going to be preventable. Crashes are a cost of aviation. So yes, in order to push your viewpoint, you really do have to state just how many crashes you believe are preventable and why.
You also didn't bother to tell me how, if the instrumentation is faulty, the telemetry is going to be useful. If the pilots have bad data to make decisions with, why does the remote analysis have good data? If both pilots and remote analysis have good data, why is the remote analysis better? Both are real questions that really do need to be answered. In the first case, it would be beneficial to have telemetry. And yet, the problem (pilots with bad data) should be corrected. In doing so, you'd remove the telemetry benefit. If the second case isn't true, then telemetry isn't doing anything for us.
What I'm not bothering to do is to present an alternative method of improving aviation safety. I haven't got one. What I am doing, and have done previously, is state why your posts on the subject are lacking. I have done reading, and I've thought about it. I haven't said anything about the existance of benefits from telemetry, although I have said some about whether it would be worthwhile. I'm not an aeronautical engineer, so I could be wrong. I do, however, know that you can't compare the complete benefits of telemetry against a portion of the costs to come up with a skewed net benefit and make a meaningful decision. All of which, you have done. But yes.. tell me again I haven't read, haven't thought. Attack me (unfounded, even) as a person, rather than defend your position.
I know this is slashdot, and yet it still annoys me that you don't seem to read.
Your data cost seems to keep coming down. First you claim a couple thousand. Now you're down to a couple of hundred.
I'm also supposed to take it on faith that there are savings in not needing to search for hours or days. Why? Those people are going to be out there searching, regardless. It isn't like they find the recorders and go home.
You also want to tell me that telemetry could detect problems before they go critical. But neglect to tell me why we would need telemetry to solve this problem. If the instruments are faulty, the data they transmit is going to be just as faulty as the data being displayed to the pilots. If they aren't faulty, why are the ground staff so much better at diagnosing the problem than the pilots? Not to mention that the number of ground staff that would have to be employed to keep an eye on all the data for flights in the air. Costly. If we're automating that portion, why do we need a ground device to do the analysis?
Throwing "lives could be saved" at me doesn't make it a reasonable suggestion by any means. And I already told you how to save lives, and the costs of planes, and the cost of recovery and investigation. Yet I don't think anybody is ready to go with it. You know.. never fly another plane? Yeah. It works. Has no point of failure. It is even, monetarily speaking, free.
I can see that you don't believe it is expensive to deploy telemetry. I don't necessarily agree. Satellites aren't cheap, and aren't cheap to launch. Ground stations are cheaper, but you need more of them. Which makes that also not cheap. Not to mention that the system would need to be maintained. And no, you can't just displace traffic on already existing systems. For any individual flight, the data requirements may be small. But we don't have a small number of flights in the air and that isn't a trivial amount of data.
I can also see that you believe the costs of failure are huge. But you're looking at the costs of failure as lives lost and plane replacement for each crash, as far as I can tell. Which is a gross overstatement of the failure costs. A crashed plane isn't a cost of not using telemetry. Its a cost of aviation. Telemetry is only of a benefit if the telemetry would've prevented the loss. That is to say that if a crash occurs, and would've even with telemetry, it wasn't of any benefit. You haven't provided a methodology for making the estimate of how frequently it would be useful. If I provide my own, I just don't see that many, perhaps none, of the crashes as being preventable just because the aircraft was transmitting its flight data. Meaning that telemetry is constantly an expense (and larger than you seem to believe) with no guarantee of ever being a benefit.
If I compare all of the benefits of an option, and neglect to include all the costs of that option, against all of the costs and more of not utilizing that option.. I'm sure the analysis comes out in favor. I am also equally sure that it was a pointless exercise.
Right.. because of course we wouldn't have thousands of aircraft in the air at any given time generating traffic against the remote possibility of a problem. And the airlines are rolling in profits with which to pay for your "trivial" thousands of dollars per flight in comm charges.
I also don't see where you'd generate any cost savings by shortening the wait time after a crash. Since the crash already occured. Response teams are going to be in action as soon as possible after the crash regardless. They're going to be collecting debris. The only way I can see any savings from finding the recorder faster or having the streamed data available.. would be if the issue that caused the crash occured frequently enough that we could expect days to make a difference in preventing another crash. Which is possible, I'll grant. But unlikely. So.. your suggestion seems to guard against the rare occurance of an event that can only occur after another rare event.
And all it would cost is millions per day, at least. Assuming, of course, that the current aircraft to ground comm infrastructure could handle the traffic without expansion. If it couldn't, thats an even greater expense.
All of which might be worthwhile if there really are a high percentage of crashes that could've been prevented by staff on the ground correctly diagnosing problems that the pilots are incorrectly diagnosing. So not only would you have to first show me that such a thing would be the case, you'd also have to tell me why the pilots are so poorly trained with respect to inflight emergencies, while the ground staff is so well trained.
And if you want to argue that we could save lives, that may be true. We could also save lives by never putting an aircraft in the sky again. No fliers, no crashes. We don't do this because we, consciously or not, make risk and cost assessments every day, in everything we do.
I notice Shihar has already pointed out the horrendously high suicide rate in Japan.. but I would also like to point out that yes the Japanese really have had a rather high degree of conformism and strict authority.
Unless you believe the warlords, running that near constant civil war you mentioned, embraced diversity. I'm pretty sure they didn't. So each region, while not conforming to the same authority, similarly conformed to an authority.
Actually.. a bootlegger only potentially steals a paying customer. In much the same way that a file sharer only potentially steals a paying customer.
the bootlegger would only steal a paying customer in the instance that the customer was willing to pay the retail price of the CD, but found the bootlegger and paid a lower price instead.
In any other case, a person who finds the CD worth $5, won't pay $15 for it. So if that person pays $3 for a bootleg, it isn't a lost sale to the record company.
All that said, I still find the damages ridiculous. I'd love to make the argument: A) I have utter trash I can sell B) I'm willing to sell it C) No one is buying it Therefore D) Someone is stealing my customers.
And have that argument be believed by someone with the ability to compel payment.
That would require the unemployed replacement to have a similar skill set. Or at least one that is "close enough" so that the cost of training is less than the incremental revenues. It would also require that there be a pretty much large supply of the unemployed with a suitable skill set, which is a dubious proposition at best. And it would require that the unemployed, with the proper skill sets, were interested in working 16 hour days. Which is also dubious.
Not to mention that if an employee is replaceable for cheaper, capitalists out for a profit already have sufficient motivation and opportunity to replace that employee.
Your response is internally coherent, but it does show that you didn't understand the comment.
Freenet is to security as communism is to human liberty.
The comparison is between how much security freenet grants as a benefit and how much human liberty that communism grants as a benefit.
The implication there is that both you and the AC that posted share a common assessment of communism and its effect on human liberty, which may or may not be true.
If you want expedited delivery, pay for the service. If you want it on someone else's dime... then I can't help you.
If you pay for expedited service and don't get it, then you have a valid issue. If you don't pay for expedited service and don't get it, then whats your deal?
Most businesses really do utilize some variant of the idea Amazon patented. Do you bitch about not getting into the Silver/Gold/Platinum/Whatever frequent flyer line when you check in for a flight? Why not? If people in the regular line got shifted over to the expedited line, the regular line would be shorter. Do you complain that those same frequent flyers that checked in faster get free lounge access (sometimes with free drinks / snacks) while you have to wait in crappy seats at the gate and pay for food? No? Why not? If the airline wasn't funding the lounge and its refreshments, it could provide everybody with slightly better service, instead of some people with a lot better service.
Got a regular bar? Do the bartenders take care of you faster than others?
Do you participate in any rewards program, at all? If so, why? Because if you do, your participation comes at the expense of some customer who isn't in the program.
Stuff like that. Any "better" service can only be better by comparison to some "worse" service. So any business that claims to offer better service to a select portion of their customer base is doing the same thing. It just sounds better to offer better service to some rather than to offer worse service to some. But both ways actually mean the same thing.
It what you say is true, then there are some articles out there from Q1 and Q2 of this year that say otherwise. An article from April said that they'd reduced manufacturing costs but still not below the retail price. And the ones from Q2 about the warranty related expenses they made said that the extra expense from the warranty work was partially offset by reduced losses on the hardware.
A profitable quarter doesn't make the division profitable. It just means that for one quarter the division took in more money than it expensed. Previous quarter losses are still losses on the tally sheet. For the division to be profitable over its life it has to have future quarterly profits to offset those previous quarter losses.
All the owners of Xbox360's from all the previous quarters didn't go out and buy new Xbox360s, so Microsoft didn't take new losses on the hardware. But they are continuing to buy games this quarter, generating the revenues. So while it may be that the Xbox division will sometime relatively soon become profitable as a whole, it hasn't happened yet.
The biggest difference in the success of Microsoft and Nintendo.. is in the fact that Nintendo turns a profit on their hardware sales. Microsoft takes a loss on the hardware, trying to make it up on license fees later. Which they have as yet been unable to do.
Just to offer up a word of caution, I've read quite a few times that semi-autos don't cycle properly with Glasers. So if you're going to use them, test them first. (This would actually apply to any loading you plan to use for defense)
It isn't cheap, especially with the price tag on Glasers. But defending your life isn't cheap either, with lost income and legal costs.
Are you kidding me? I know you said in another post that you can't require people to have ID on them. Thats true. Even of 30 year olds. In spite of that, the 30 year olds are likely to have ID on them.
17 year olds are likely to have ID on them for the same reason that anyone else has one on them. Licenses are common, are available, and they're nice to have if you feel like driving around in a legal fashion.
I have a BoA card. when it was an MBNA card, I used it. Now I don't. Fortunately, my Citi card has a better rewards program, a less irritating account management page, and I still have the one use numbers. I do find it curious that Citi would permit some of their cards to use virtual numbers but not others.
It is anecdotal, but for me paying tuition on a credit card would be insane. The best rewards card I have would get me 1.5% of tuition back. It would cost me a 2% "convenience fee" to pay by credit card. I am not at all certain where the convenience is, given that the other payment option is by ACH draft out of my checking account. (Yes, I do actually know why they charge the fee. But it is misnamed)
Avoiding over-limit fees is really the only reason to ever need to make multiple payments per month. I know some people that routinely do it by design. It helps them keep their mind on their expenditures. They're aware it costs them some amount of interest. But they're willing to forego that in order to avoid over spending.
Me, personally, I pay for everything with credit. I can count on one hand the number of times I've paid cash in the last 5 years. With fingers left over. I pay it off every month, collect my rewards, and pay attention to my bill.
So.. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, rated T for Teen with the following descriptors: Blood, Partial Nudity, Violence
Disgaea: Hour of Darkeness, rated T for Teen with Comic Mischief, Mild Language, Mild Violence
Suikoden III rated T for Teen, Mild Violence, Suggestive Themes
and
Soul Reaver 2, rated M for Mature, Blood and Gore, Violence...
Which you'll notice is pretty much what you've outlined, is not rocket science, and allows for more information to be communicated. Notice that Soul Reaver 2 has an M rating, with blood and gore and violence. Also notice that Dragon Quarter also has a violence rating. Your system would communicate that both games are equally violent. The ESRB's makes a distinction.
Granted that infringement is a subset of stealing.
What, however, is being deprived? Keep in mind that the way you are wording your assertion is as an absolute. And as I've already said, infringement does not always (absolutely) cause deprivation. Just that it potentially can, and probably does in many cases. How many, I can't say. How much, I also couldn't say. I do know that not every act of infringement causes deprivation.
I did read the other reply. But in the post I was replying to, you did indeed use the word theft. You said that infringement is to theft as cars are to automobiles. Thats false. You also said that infringement does deprive the creator of earnings. Which, as an absolute, is false. It can potentially do so, but not necessarily so.
It actually is not. Theft will always cause deprivation. If someone steals from a retail location, the store is out the revenue of whatever was stolen, as well as having incurred the cost of acquisition. Stealing from an individual is much the same. The individual may not be out the revenue, but will have paid the cost of acquisition and will be out the utility of the stolen item.
On the other hand, in infringement, there is no requirement of deprivation. The infringer has an object. The legal owner still possesses it. Deprivation would only occur if the infringer would've paid for the object if he couldn't have acquired it infringingly. Somewhat difficult to prove. And yet I'm pretty sure that of all the music in everybody's libraries, there is some portion of which they wouldn't have if they were required to pay the set price. Is there usually deprivation in infringment? Very probably. But it isn't required in nor is it a necessary aftereffect of infringement.
I do like the "If everybody..." arguments. Of course, if everybody who doesn't currently vote, voted for some candidate there'd be an effect.
On the other hand, if everybody who does currently vote, didn't, there'd be another effect. For one, I'd vote. Because it might actually mean something.
But the people who don't vote aren't going to start en masse. And those who do aren't going to stop en masse. So the "if everybody" stuff is a rather pointless assertion to make.
Well.. the problem with your vision of the anarcho-capitlistic future is that 1) the rich aren't likely to be living near the poor. So if one rich person hires mercenaries to take out the neighbors, you can pretty well bet those mercenaries are going to run into defenders. Add on to that fact that the security service companies would be perfectly acceptable targets for reprisal by other security providers and its a situation that could end up in a huge tangled mess or one that, due to reasons similar to mutually assured destruction, don't occur. My bet is actually on the latter.
Which isn't to say that I support anarchocapitalism. I don't think the human race is currently capable of living under any form of government I'd find palatable.
Slashdot Mirror
Where, in all of this, did you get the idea that it would become legal to not pay?
This, as far as I can tell, is merely suggesting that developers stop making the legal customer's experience an annoyance. For game studios, hunting down the pirates probably isn't worth their time. But they're still willing to fail gloriously at keeping gamers from copying the disc, regardless of the negative consequences to actual consumers. If Microsoft did the same, they could, at their discretion, file suit against any corporation without the appropriate license. They just wouldn't annoy users with their various "features" that (fail) to protect against piracy.
Basically, what you're saying is that you want the legislature to legislate itself out of existance. Because there wouldn't be any need for that particular branch of government anymore.
Somehow, I don't think that'll happen. Ever.
Not really. We don't rely on police to protect the citizenry as it is. Or, at least, if you do then the chances are very good that you're in for a rude awakening should you ever need protection. There aren't enough police to rely on them for protection. The police exist far more for legal retribution than they do for protection. They're a best effort service. Which is why there are court rulings stating that the police are not liable for failing to protect you. Comforting, no?
Not to mention that attack fighter aircraft, bombers, and cool surface ships are all well and good.. but they're not particularly well suited for putting down a civilian rebellion. At least, not if you want to keep from decimating the civilian populace. Which, presumably, you don't want to do because your own supporters would be in the mix. You also can't count on every person in the military going with the government. Which opens the prospect of military vehicles and weapons being in the hands of both sides. And here's the last thing.. not all military personnel are combat personnel. They may have some cool gear, but there really aren't a lot of them. There are a lot more cooks, administrators, mechanics, quartermasters, technicians, and the like. Might be a little different in the Marines, where you're a rifleman first and whatever else second. But not being a Marine, I don't know how rigidly they adhere to that.
Which isn't, in any way, to opine that a rebellion would be easy. It wouldn't. Its just that putting one down wouldn't be as easy as you make it out to be, either.
So.. this awakening will occur tomorrow then?
Oh.. no wait. Monday. Even the patent trolls need the weekend to unwind from a long week of blowing hot air in court.
No.. As I said, I'm annoyed that you didn't bother to read. But.. not surprisingly, you didn't bother to do so, a second time.
You're still going on about the search for black boxes, acting as if you find the black box and go home. Search teams would only spend less time searching if the black box is the last thing found. So.. if thats the case, say so. At this point, though, don't expect me to just take you at your word. You haven't exactly built a lot of credibility with me from the posts on this subject that I've read.
I can tell the difference between what you stated as costs, and what you completely ignored as costs.
Apparently you don't understand that lives can always be saved. If we didn't do thousands of the things that we do, lots of lives could be saved. And yet we do them. Because we make risk and cost assessments. Which was the whole point of saying that not flying would save a lot of lives and a lot of money on replacing downed aircraft and figuring out what went wrong with them. Its all true, and yet we recklessly disregard that fact, because we want to fly. We want to fly so much that we risk crashing and dying to do it. This isn't a difficult concept. It isn't a strawman. Its the real conclusion to your "but lives can be saved!" line. Lives can always be saved. And whether or not you want to admit it, people all over the world put a price on life. Every day. Every time they decide to do something. Saving lives is well and good. But its costly.
If you want to spout that your costs are complete, which they aren't, you can. It doesn't mean that telemetry is worthwhile. Not once have I said that I don't care about lives being saved. Nor have I ever attempted to say that a crashed jet is cheap. But thanks for trying to put words in my mouth.
If you wanted to be believed, you'd be here telling me just how frequently telemetry could prevent a crash. Which I notice you haven't addressed, and neither does your nice pretty brochure link. Said link, I'll note, reads like propaganda from a company trying to sell you something. Not surprising since thats exactly what it is. Crashes that telemetry could prevent are the only benefit. Not all crashes are going to be preventable. Crashes are a cost of aviation. So yes, in order to push your viewpoint, you really do have to state just how many crashes you believe are preventable and why.
You also didn't bother to tell me how, if the instrumentation is faulty, the telemetry is going to be useful. If the pilots have bad data to make decisions with, why does the remote analysis have good data? If both pilots and remote analysis have good data, why is the remote analysis better? Both are real questions that really do need to be answered. In the first case, it would be beneficial to have telemetry. And yet, the problem (pilots with bad data) should be corrected. In doing so, you'd remove the telemetry benefit. If the second case isn't true, then telemetry isn't doing anything for us.
What I'm not bothering to do is to present an alternative method of improving aviation safety. I haven't got one. What I am doing, and have done previously, is state why your posts on the subject are lacking. I have done reading, and I've thought about it. I haven't said anything about the existance of benefits from telemetry, although I have said some about whether it would be worthwhile. I'm not an aeronautical engineer, so I could be wrong. I do, however, know that you can't compare the complete benefits of telemetry against a portion of the costs to come up with a skewed net benefit and make a meaningful decision. All of which, you have done. But yes.. tell me again I haven't read, haven't thought. Attack me (unfounded, even) as a person, rather than defend your position.
I know this is slashdot, and yet it still annoys me that you don't seem to read.
Your data cost seems to keep coming down. First you claim a couple thousand. Now you're down to a couple of hundred.
I'm also supposed to take it on faith that there are savings in not needing to search for hours or days. Why? Those people are going to be out there searching, regardless. It isn't like they find the recorders and go home.
You also want to tell me that telemetry could detect problems before they go critical. But neglect to tell me why we would need telemetry to solve this problem. If the instruments are faulty, the data they transmit is going to be just as faulty as the data being displayed to the pilots. If they aren't faulty, why are the ground staff so much better at diagnosing the problem than the pilots? Not to mention that the number of ground staff that would have to be employed to keep an eye on all the data for flights in the air. Costly. If we're automating that portion, why do we need a ground device to do the analysis?
Throwing "lives could be saved" at me doesn't make it a reasonable suggestion by any means. And I already told you how to save lives, and the costs of planes, and the cost of recovery and investigation. Yet I don't think anybody is ready to go with it. You know.. never fly another plane? Yeah. It works. Has no point of failure. It is even, monetarily speaking, free.
I can see that you don't believe it is expensive to deploy telemetry. I don't necessarily agree. Satellites aren't cheap, and aren't cheap to launch. Ground stations are cheaper, but you need more of them. Which makes that also not cheap. Not to mention that the system would need to be maintained. And no, you can't just displace traffic on already existing systems. For any individual flight, the data requirements may be small. But we don't have a small number of flights in the air and that isn't a trivial amount of data.
I can also see that you believe the costs of failure are huge. But you're looking at the costs of failure as lives lost and plane replacement for each crash, as far as I can tell. Which is a gross overstatement of the failure costs. A crashed plane isn't a cost of not using telemetry. Its a cost of aviation. Telemetry is only of a benefit if the telemetry would've prevented the loss. That is to say that if a crash occurs, and would've even with telemetry, it wasn't of any benefit. You haven't provided a methodology for making the estimate of how frequently it would be useful. If I provide my own, I just don't see that many, perhaps none, of the crashes as being preventable just because the aircraft was transmitting its flight data. Meaning that telemetry is constantly an expense (and larger than you seem to believe) with no guarantee of ever being a benefit.
If I compare all of the benefits of an option, and neglect to include all the costs of that option, against all of the costs and more of not utilizing that option.. I'm sure the analysis comes out in favor. I am also equally sure that it was a pointless exercise.
Right.. because of course we wouldn't have thousands of aircraft in the air at any given time generating traffic against the remote possibility of a problem. And the airlines are rolling in profits with which to pay for your "trivial" thousands of dollars per flight in comm charges.
I also don't see where you'd generate any cost savings by shortening the wait time after a crash. Since the crash already occured. Response teams are going to be in action as soon as possible after the crash regardless. They're going to be collecting debris. The only way I can see any savings from finding the recorder faster or having the streamed data available.. would be if the issue that caused the crash occured frequently enough that we could expect days to make a difference in preventing another crash. Which is possible, I'll grant. But unlikely. So.. your suggestion seems to guard against the rare occurance of an event that can only occur after another rare event.
And all it would cost is millions per day, at least. Assuming, of course, that the current aircraft to ground comm infrastructure could handle the traffic without expansion. If it couldn't, thats an even greater expense.
All of which might be worthwhile if there really are a high percentage of crashes that could've been prevented by staff on the ground correctly diagnosing problems that the pilots are incorrectly diagnosing. So not only would you have to first show me that such a thing would be the case, you'd also have to tell me why the pilots are so poorly trained with respect to inflight emergencies, while the ground staff is so well trained.
And if you want to argue that we could save lives, that may be true. We could also save lives by never putting an aircraft in the sky again. No fliers, no crashes. We don't do this because we, consciously or not, make risk and cost assessments every day, in everything we do.
I notice Shihar has already pointed out the horrendously high suicide rate in Japan.. but I would also like to point out that yes the Japanese really have had a rather high degree of conformism and strict authority.
Unless you believe the warlords, running that near constant civil war you mentioned, embraced diversity. I'm pretty sure they didn't. So each region, while not conforming to the same authority, similarly conformed to an authority.
Actually.. a bootlegger only potentially steals a paying customer. In much the same way that a file sharer only potentially steals a paying customer.
the bootlegger would only steal a paying customer in the instance that the customer was willing to pay the retail price of the CD, but found the bootlegger and paid a lower price instead.
In any other case, a person who finds the CD worth $5, won't pay $15 for it. So if that person pays $3 for a bootleg, it isn't a lost sale to the record company.
All that said, I still find the damages ridiculous. I'd love to make the argument:
A) I have utter trash I can sell
B) I'm willing to sell it
C) No one is buying it
Therefore D) Someone is stealing my customers.
And have that argument be believed by someone with the ability to compel payment.
That would require the unemployed replacement to have a similar skill set. Or at least one that is "close enough" so that the cost of training is less than the incremental revenues. It would also require that there be a pretty much large supply of the unemployed with a suitable skill set, which is a dubious proposition at best. And it would require that the unemployed, with the proper skill sets, were interested in working 16 hour days. Which is also dubious.
Not to mention that if an employee is replaceable for cheaper, capitalists out for a profit already have sufficient motivation and opportunity to replace that employee.
Your response is internally coherent, but it does show that you didn't understand the comment.
Freenet is to security as communism is to human liberty.
The comparison is between how much security freenet grants as a benefit and how much human liberty that communism grants as a benefit.
The implication there is that both you and the AC that posted share a common assessment of communism and its effect on human liberty, which may or may not be true.
If you want expedited delivery, pay for the service. If you want it on someone else's dime... then I can't help you.
If you pay for expedited service and don't get it, then you have a valid issue. If you don't pay for expedited service and don't get it, then whats your deal?
Most businesses really do utilize some variant of the idea Amazon patented. Do you bitch about not getting into the Silver/Gold/Platinum/Whatever frequent flyer line when you check in for a flight? Why not? If people in the regular line got shifted over to the expedited line, the regular line would be shorter. Do you complain that those same frequent flyers that checked in faster get free lounge access (sometimes with free drinks / snacks) while you have to wait in crappy seats at the gate and pay for food? No? Why not? If the airline wasn't funding the lounge and its refreshments, it could provide everybody with slightly better service, instead of some people with a lot better service.
Got a regular bar? Do the bartenders take care of you faster than others?
Do you participate in any rewards program, at all? If so, why? Because if you do, your participation comes at the expense of some customer who isn't in the program.
Stuff like that. Any "better" service can only be better by comparison to some "worse" service. So any business that claims to offer better service to a select portion of their customer base is doing the same thing. It just sounds better to offer better service to some rather than to offer worse service to some. But both ways actually mean the same thing.
It what you say is true, then there are some articles out there from Q1 and Q2 of this year that say otherwise. An article from April said that they'd reduced manufacturing costs but still not below the retail price. And the ones from Q2 about the warranty related expenses they made said that the extra expense from the warranty work was partially offset by reduced losses on the hardware.
A profitable quarter doesn't make the division profitable. It just means that for one quarter the division took in more money than it expensed. Previous quarter losses are still losses on the tally sheet. For the division to be profitable over its life it has to have future quarterly profits to offset those previous quarter losses.
All the owners of Xbox360's from all the previous quarters didn't go out and buy new Xbox360s, so Microsoft didn't take new losses on the hardware. But they are continuing to buy games this quarter, generating the revenues. So while it may be that the Xbox division will sometime relatively soon become profitable as a whole, it hasn't happened yet.
The biggest difference in the success of Microsoft and Nintendo.. is in the fact that Nintendo turns a profit on their hardware sales. Microsoft takes a loss on the hardware, trying to make it up on license fees later. Which they have as yet been unable to do.
Just to offer up a word of caution, I've read quite a few times that semi-autos don't cycle properly with Glasers. So if you're going to use them, test them first. (This would actually apply to any loading you plan to use for defense)
It isn't cheap, especially with the price tag on Glasers. But defending your life isn't cheap either, with lost income and legal costs.
Are you kidding me? I know you said in another post that you can't require people to have ID on them. Thats true. Even of 30 year olds. In spite of that, the 30 year olds are likely to have ID on them.
17 year olds are likely to have ID on them for the same reason that anyone else has one on them. Licenses are common, are available, and they're nice to have if you feel like driving around in a legal fashion.
I have a BoA card. when it was an MBNA card, I used it. Now I don't. Fortunately, my Citi card has a better rewards program, a less irritating account management page, and I still have the one use numbers. I do find it curious that Citi would permit some of their cards to use virtual numbers but not others.
It is anecdotal, but for me paying tuition on a credit card would be insane. The best rewards card I have would get me 1.5% of tuition back. It would cost me a 2% "convenience fee" to pay by credit card. I am not at all certain where the convenience is, given that the other payment option is by ACH draft out of my checking account. (Yes, I do actually know why they charge the fee. But it is misnamed)
Avoiding over-limit fees is really the only reason to ever need to make multiple payments per month. I know some people that routinely do it by design. It helps them keep their mind on their expenditures. They're aware it costs them some amount of interest. But they're willing to forego that in order to avoid over spending.
Me, personally, I pay for everything with credit. I can count on one hand the number of times I've paid cash in the last 5 years. With fingers left over. I pay it off every month, collect my rewards, and pay attention to my bill.
So.. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, rated T for Teen with the following descriptors: Blood, Partial Nudity, Violence
Disgaea: Hour of Darkeness, rated T for Teen with Comic Mischief, Mild Language, Mild Violence
Suikoden III rated T for Teen, Mild Violence, Suggestive Themes
and
Soul Reaver 2, rated M for Mature, Blood and Gore, Violence...
Which you'll notice is pretty much what you've outlined, is not rocket science, and allows for more information to be communicated. Notice that Soul Reaver 2 has an M rating, with blood and gore and violence. Also notice that Dragon Quarter also has a violence rating. Your system would communicate that both games are equally violent. The ESRB's makes a distinction.
Granted that infringement is a subset of stealing.
What, however, is being deprived? Keep in mind that the way you are wording your assertion is as an absolute. And as I've already said, infringement does not always (absolutely) cause deprivation. Just that it potentially can, and probably does in many cases. How many, I can't say. How much, I also couldn't say. I do know that not every act of infringement causes deprivation.
I did read the other reply. But in the post I was replying to, you did indeed use the word theft. You said that infringement is to theft as cars are to automobiles. Thats false. You also said that infringement does deprive the creator of earnings. Which, as an absolute, is false. It can potentially do so, but not necessarily so.
It actually is not. Theft will always cause deprivation. If someone steals from a retail location, the store is out the revenue of whatever was stolen, as well as having incurred the cost of acquisition. Stealing from an individual is much the same. The individual may not be out the revenue, but will have paid the cost of acquisition and will be out the utility of the stolen item.
On the other hand, in infringement, there is no requirement of deprivation. The infringer has an object. The legal owner still possesses it. Deprivation would only occur if the infringer would've paid for the object if he couldn't have acquired it infringingly. Somewhat difficult to prove. And yet I'm pretty sure that of all the music in everybody's libraries, there is some portion of which they wouldn't have if they were required to pay the set price. Is there usually deprivation in infringment? Very probably. But it isn't required in nor is it a necessary aftereffect of infringement.
I do like the "If everybody ..." arguments. Of course, if everybody who doesn't currently vote, voted for some candidate there'd be an effect.
On the other hand, if everybody who does currently vote, didn't, there'd be another effect. For one, I'd vote. Because it might actually mean something.
But the people who don't vote aren't going to start en masse. And those who do aren't going to stop en masse. So the "if everybody" stuff is a rather pointless assertion to make.
Well.. the problem with your vision of the anarcho-capitlistic future is that 1) the rich aren't likely to be living near the poor. So if one rich person hires mercenaries to take out the neighbors, you can pretty well bet those mercenaries are going to run into defenders. Add on to that fact that the security service companies would be perfectly acceptable targets for reprisal by other security providers and its a situation that could end up in a huge tangled mess or one that, due to reasons similar to mutually assured destruction, don't occur. My bet is actually on the latter.
Which isn't to say that I support anarchocapitalism. I don't think the human race is currently capable of living under any form of government I'd find palatable.