Sure, but then again, in this situation when he would be completely emotional about the subject you can't really expect him to be reasonable. It is like saying lets institute death penalty for anyone who shoplifts because a couple of them killed my son when he caught them.
It is both. Yes, it has several clauses that restrict citizens' rights, but it is also a list of restrictions to the laws bellow them, and as such it is a list of a citizen's inalienably rights.
Lately these amendments are used to restrict more and more our rights, though, and to give more and more power to the government and those who finance it.
I know about Miller Test, but it is far from being an objective test and basically gives ground for a judges to consider whatever he wishes as obscene.
And although no one person holds all the power in US, you are ridiculously deluded if you think that in US or in any country there aren't very small groups of people who do hold all the power. Usually those "people" are called corporations.
Bullshit. Obscene is defined by whatever the person that holds political power and is willing to define it want it to be. That is the problem with creating loopholes in constitutional principles that should be absolute.
You are either talking about a very specific luxury train or somewhere where prices are inflated, because actual costs of maintaining and operating trains are much lower than those of maintaining and operating airplanes. Fuel consumption, maintenance needs, terminal taxes, everything is much more more expensive for planes.
The choice is not between the train and your destination. the choice is between the train and a mix of a few hours in your destination and an hour being triple checked and body scanned by air port security after waiting another few hours for your delayed flight and finally a few hours inside a cramped space of a seat being served fake food if that much.
Unless I am in an unavoidable tight schedule I would much rather prefer to spend 21 hours in the comfort of a good train, than spend 7-8 hours in hell between airport, security and flight just to get to my destination 13 hours or so earlier.
If vast distances without stops were a valid deterrent to a mean of transportation there would be no planes. Trains are an actually much cheaper and cost effective way to achieve the same goal as planes as long as you dont have to cross a lot of rough terrains or big water bodies.
And that is perfect for the said train, because it could easily do its maximum speed. Regarding the economic argument, trains are always more cost effective than planes unless the terrain is very rough, which is not the case for most of US. If you can get enough people to make plane trips viable you can have most of them replaced by modern trains.
And pay their employees, and pay the maintenance of the plane, and all other fixed costs. Additionally fuel consumption is not directly proportional to weight.
It does matter, but it matters little. As you admitted yourself the the percentage of the weight due to passengers is less than a forth of the total weight and the fuel consumption is not linearly proportional to weight. Additionally the cost of personal, maintenance and vessel storage are not proportional to passenger weight at all.
In the end the difference in costs of transporting a 200 lb person and a 100 lb person is very small.
By holding the patent they prevent others to find such an improvement and provide it for reasonable prices for 20 years, many times keeping the lives of millions of sick people miserable, people who could be benefited by the improvement they locked.
This kind of High risk, high cost endeavor is better served if sustained by public money and result in public domain results. Making drug development a business was a bad idea in the start and keep getting a worse idea as time goes, especially in our current mixed system, where a lot of public money is injected in the research and the results are still patented to private companies.
In the more strict sense of the word invest you are right. It is in not a financial investment, but you are in a sense investing your money to get something you want, and you do get rewards that more often than not would cost you more than what you donate if the product was ready. You can buy AAA games for 20 dollars for example.
Nah, hacking is more a passing annoyance than anything else, and central control is largely irrelevant regarding hacking. The Internet actually worked without central control for decades, hacking or no hacking.
The truth is, there is nothing in the virtual world that can compare with prison, torture and death, and consequently the virtual world has absolutely zero control over individuals. What you point is not an equivalent by any stretch of logic. You are trying to simplify things and making parallels where they don't exist. Your oversimplified notions may be reassuring in their homogeneity but ultimately they are just false.
No it is NOT. That is the difference between the real World and the Internet, and the why anarachy does not work in the Real World. Anarchy in the real World breaks down not because people have power over their properties, but because people can inflict violence upon others, and can get together and form groups and kill each other, and in the end become governments and force everybody else to submission.
There is no such thing in the internet. The worse a person or a group can do to you is forbid you access. They can't arrest you, or take your freedom to go somewhere else. They can't inflict violence upon you, or force you to do anything.
The Internet without a central regulation is a truly anarchic system, no matter how stubbornningly you insist in denying it.
You are insane. Isohunt never took orders of anything, and it is actually heavily used by independent artists to divulge their work, and for free. It is no more guilty of anything than any search engine and less than some. Isohunt always obeyed the ridiculous DCMA take down notices it received, but the judge, quite contrarily to any sane interpretation of the current law, decided to consider it guilty.
Nope, you may be talking about the law not applying to the Internet, maybe with yourself. What we are talking about is that any illegal behavior you do through the Internet or through a Phone line is already covered by the law and you will answer for it, if caught. My point is that the fact that people can use the phone or the Internet to do illegal stuff is not reason enough to grab control over the phone lines or the Internet and start spying on everybody. Or disabling a search service because people may use it to do illegal stuff.
Let a judge, with reasonable cause, order it whenever there is enough evidence for it and in a case by case basis. That is the sane approach for criminal law, which used to be the one used in US. Unfortunately the government and prosecutors decided that it is not enough. Now everybody is suspect. Always.
The point is the same I just explained to our stubborn GGP. Feudal lords had power over their vassals. They could arrest, or kill them, actually preventing them from doing anything. They had complete sovereignty over their territory and everyone inside it. That was not the case with private networks. The owners hold no power over individuals, they can only control their property. So, the closest description for the system is indeed anarchy.
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Sure, but then again, in this situation when he would be completely emotional about the subject you can't really expect him to be reasonable. It is like saying lets institute death penalty for anyone who shoplifts because a couple of them killed my son when he caught them.
It is both. Yes, it has several clauses that restrict citizens' rights, but it is also a list of restrictions to the laws bellow them, and as such it is a list of a citizen's inalienably rights.
Lately these amendments are used to restrict more and more our rights, though, and to give more and more power to the government and those who finance it.
I know about Miller Test, but it is far from being an objective test and basically gives ground for a judges to consider whatever he wishes as obscene.
And although no one person holds all the power in US, you are ridiculously deluded if you think that in US or in any country there aren't very small groups of people who do hold all the power. Usually those "people" are called corporations.
Bullshit. Obscene is defined by whatever the person that holds political power and is willing to define it want it to be. That is the problem with creating loopholes in constitutional principles that should be absolute.
You are either talking about a very specific luxury train or somewhere where prices are inflated, because actual costs of maintaining and operating trains are much lower than those of maintaining and operating airplanes. Fuel consumption, maintenance needs, terminal taxes, everything is much more more expensive for planes.
The choice is not between the train and your destination. the choice is between the train and a mix of a few hours in your destination and an hour being triple checked and body scanned by air port security after waiting another few hours for your delayed flight and finally a few hours inside a cramped space of a seat being served fake food if that much.
Unless I am in an unavoidable tight schedule I would much rather prefer to spend 21 hours in the comfort of a good train, than spend 7-8 hours in hell between airport, security and flight just to get to my destination 13 hours or so earlier.
Trains are a lot cheaper to run than planes, and in the long run transport trains are a lot cheaper than trucks too.
Privatization only works when there is real space for competition, which is not the case for most infrastructure services.
If vast distances without stops were a valid deterrent to a mean of transportation there would be no planes. Trains are an actually much cheaper and cost effective way to achieve the same goal as planes as long as you dont have to cross a lot of rough terrains or big water bodies.
And that is perfect for the said train, because it could easily do its maximum speed. Regarding the economic argument, trains are always more cost effective than planes unless the terrain is very rough, which is not the case for most of US. If you can get enough people to make plane trips viable you can have most of them replaced by modern trains.
And pay their employees, and pay the maintenance of the plane, and all other fixed costs. Additionally fuel consumption is not directly proportional to weight.
It does matter, but it matters little. As you admitted yourself the the percentage of the weight due to passengers is less than a forth of the total weight and the fuel consumption is not linearly proportional to weight. Additionally the cost of personal, maintenance and vessel storage are not proportional to passenger weight at all.
In the end the difference in costs of transporting a 200 lb person and a 100 lb person is very small.
By holding the patent they prevent others to find such an improvement and provide it for reasonable prices for 20 years, many times keeping the lives of millions of sick people miserable, people who could be benefited by the improvement they locked.
This kind of High risk, high cost endeavor is better served if sustained by public money and result in public domain results. Making drug development a business was a bad idea in the start and keep getting a worse idea as time goes, especially in our current mixed system, where a lot of public money is injected in the research and the results are still patented to private companies.
Drug research should be a public endeavor. Drug production can be a private endeavor, without silly protections, as patents.
Correction: the price of testing drugs is mostly due to the bribes that need to be applied for them to be approved and the patents granted.
In my opinion drug development is one of the few things that should never be delegated to private companies.
Maybe that is why you are trying your very best to be one?
In the more strict sense of the word invest you are right. It is in not a financial investment, but you are in a sense investing your money to get something you want, and you do get rewards that more often than not would cost you more than what you donate if the product was ready. You can buy AAA games for 20 dollars for example.
Nah, hacking is more a passing annoyance than anything else, and central control is largely irrelevant regarding hacking. The Internet actually worked without central control for decades, hacking or no hacking.
The truth is, there is nothing in the virtual world that can compare with prison, torture and death, and consequently the virtual world has absolutely zero control over individuals. What you point is not an equivalent by any stretch of logic. You are trying to simplify things and making parallels where they don't exist. Your oversimplified notions may be reassuring in their homogeneity but ultimately they are just false.
In this case you can just "impose" what people choose to accept. It is still a matter of personal choice.
No it is NOT. That is the difference between the real World and the Internet, and the why anarachy does not work in the Real World. Anarchy in the real World breaks down not because people have power over their properties, but because people can inflict violence upon others, and can get together and form groups and kill each other, and in the end become governments and force everybody else to submission.
There is no such thing in the internet. The worse a person or a group can do to you is forbid you access. They can't arrest you, or take your freedom to go somewhere else. They can't inflict violence upon you, or force you to do anything.
The Internet without a central regulation is a truly anarchic system, no matter how stubbornningly you insist in denying it.
You are insane. Isohunt never took orders of anything, and it is actually heavily used by independent artists to divulge their work, and for free. It is no more guilty of anything than any search engine and less than some. Isohunt always obeyed the ridiculous DCMA take down notices it received, but the judge, quite contrarily to any sane interpretation of the current law, decided to consider it guilty.
Nope, you may be talking about the law not applying to the Internet, maybe with yourself. What we are talking about is that any illegal behavior you do through the Internet or through a Phone line is already covered by the law and you will answer for it, if caught. My point is that the fact that people can use the phone or the Internet to do illegal stuff is not reason enough to grab control over the phone lines or the Internet and start spying on everybody. Or disabling a search service because people may use it to do illegal stuff.
Let a judge, with reasonable cause, order it whenever there is enough evidence for it and in a case by case basis. That is the sane approach for criminal law, which used to be the one used in US. Unfortunately the government and prosecutors decided that it is not enough. Now everybody is suspect. Always.
The point is the same I just explained to our stubborn GGP. Feudal lords had power over their vassals. They could arrest, or kill them, actually preventing them from doing anything. They had complete sovereignty over their territory and everyone inside it. That was not the case with private networks. The owners hold no power over individuals, they can only control their property. So, the closest description for the system is indeed anarchy.