I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.
Which will only increase as the incentives to remain safely anonymous continue to increase. The Swedish People in general, and the Pirate Party in particular, were wise to recognize the consequences of more draconian enforcement of online identity checks and content scanning; which tends to lead in the direction of a surveillance society police state (polite or not as the case may be). The British are already much farther along on this road than most and I don't think that anyone, with the possible exception of the vested interests and the authorities (who loving having this kind of power as long as it is not used against them personally), really likes where this is all going or what the results have been thus far. As controls continue to increase, the average citizen will be increasingly forced by necessity to learn much of the techniques and trade craft currently employed by the intelligence agencies of the world simply to protect their individual privacy and freedoms from ever more intrusive encroachments by the state. One wonders how far off the dystopian futures imagined by Gibson, Orwell and others can really be if we continue down this collective path?
Hmmm, that would give him something like a -10 negative reaction adjustment for random encounters right? Does anyone have the encounter table for the CBC handy?
something akin to what Japan has (I live in Japan--it works!).
In the Frontline documentary, Sick Around the World, Japan was one of the featured locations. As is so often the case, every system around the world has problems, some less visible and obvious than others, and Japan is no exception. In Japan the government negotiates a "rate book" with listed fees for all medical procedures offered by doctors and hospitals. These rates govern prices in all medical transactions, even completely private ones. In Japan, hospitals and the doctors who run them are usually quite small operations and almost completely private (think small neighborhood hospitals with 20 or so beds). The problem is that doctors and hospitals barely earn enough money to stay in business in Japan. This works to some extent because the Japanese are culturally very hard working and industrious people who are generally slower to complain than Americans or Europeans and less vociferous when they do. However, even they have their breaking points and the Japanese health care system is probing their limits with these low regulated fees for medical services. When one considers the rapidly aging population in Japan it becomes clear that sooner or later (probably sooner) something is going to have to give; either doctors and hospitals will begin cutting services or going out of business or (more likely) the government negotiated rates will have to rise substantially.
Why do you imagine that somehow there's a problem here?
Well, the problem is that the FSF takes a rather narrow view on what constitutes linking and "derivative work". Not everyone agrees with the FSF interpretation of what constitutes linking and the language in the GPL is not always deterministic on this matter. The GPL does not (and perhaps cannot) offer a precise, exhaustive and unambiguous definition of "linking" because of the tremendous variety of hardware and software currently in use. The FSF interprets the license strictly while others have interpreted the license as less so; The wiki article contains a section dealing with this dispute. The LGPL was introduced with less restrictive language, at least in part, to address just this uncertainty by allowing anyone to "link" to compiled libraries without becoming subject to LGPL. However, many people continue to use GPL for their code, even when LGPL might have been a better choice; perhaps in ignorance of these problems.
And keep the 10's of thousands of people employeed in an already shitty economy. It's not so much about keeping GM alive, as keeping people in a job.
But at what price? Everytime we use the power of government in the form of laws and subsidies to "save" one job we end up losing dozens of others. Why should an union worker getting $30 per hour to put steering wheels on crappy cars be able to use the coercive power of the state to say that his job is worth more than ten or twelve of ours? Do you want the government making those kinds of calls? Remember that the government redistributes through coercion and force; is that really how you would like to see things worked out in our society, through coercion, corruption and force? We are looking at the bigger picture and that is precisely why so many of us are against "saving jobs" in this way. How much should we ask you and the rest of us to sacrifice so that a union job can be "saved"? At what point do you abandon the "ends justify the means" argument with regard to wasteful government spending? after a billion dollars has been spent? Perhaps one-hundred billion or even a trillion?
If you want to blame somebody for this then blame the golden boy of the left, our hopeful President Barak Obama; who in his own words, "feels beholden to the trade unions". Those trade union jobs, or at least as many as possibly could be, were going to be protected no matter what the overall cost was to the American taxpayer. The real losers here, as usual, are the American taxpayers who are once again getting the shaft in the form of lower wages, hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and higher taxes all so that a few thousand union jobs can be "saved". It would have been cheaper and fairer to simply give the union members their pensions and a severance package along with their pink slips. Why should the American taxpayer be compelled to pay such a terribly high price, with hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the general economy, so that a few thousand or even ten thousand union jobs can be saved? I wouldn't invest a single red cent of my own money in GM (new or old) or Chrysler so why the hell should the government take my tax money and invest in those loser companies while telling me that it is a "good investment"? Yeah right, because everyone besides me knows that bearshit really is better than buckwheat? Not bloody likely.
Almost anyone can have a "great idea" in gaming, but unless you have a proven track record with profitable games to your credit or have your own suitcases full of cash (or backers with same), why should they pay you simply for having an idea that probably isn't all that original? Its a bit cheaper when working with homebrew self-published pen and paper games; but competitive computer or console games cost tens of millions of dollars to produce and with credit being tougher to get now than at just about any other time since the modern game industry was founded, nobody wants to pay simply to hear your "great idea" for a game.
If the software development interests are wise then they will learn from the example of the medical profession and what excessive litigation has done to doctors attempting to practice medicine under the weight of crushing malpractice insurance premiums. The attorneys out there would argue that we must be able to sue in order to recover damages, but in reality most of us pay extra for our health care every day on the off chance that we might one day be in a position to win the legal lottery with a favorable malpractice judgment of which the attorney will take 40%+ while the government taxes away most of the rest. Meanwhile, the attorneys continue extracting uncompensated value from society while everyone, with the possible exception of the attorneys, is worse off; and this is better for society how? No, we do not need the attorneys and their associated baggage in the software industry, it just isn't remotely worthwhile.
I feel that I have an unwritten contract with content providers
The whole concept of "unwritten contract" is a ploy by the powerful, who honor no such "contracts", and the masses whom they wish to control. Why observe an "unwritten contract" when you could act selfishly and gain without being exposed? The real world plays hardball so why fight with one arm behind your back?
I don't believe that they will be able to do that, or at least not efficiently. In order to circumvent adblock it would be necessary to have all advertisement requests be run through a proxy server in the domain which would redirect to the ad servers and then serve back the content. Anything less would be easily countered by the ad blockers based upon regular expression filtering of URLs. Naturally, this proxy server would have to be located in the same domain as the content servers to circumvent that filtering. This would place a tremendous IT burden upon the site attempting to do this which would probably not be offset by additional "impression" based advertising fees (assuming that anyone proactive enough to download and use an ad blocking extensions will not click on ads anyway). Could they thwart ad blocking? Yes, they could. Will they? No, they will not because it would cost too much to be worthwhile.
You should read a little history; the US didn't invent the concept of right and left. The distinction is actually of European origin and goes back to the days of the French Revolution where it referred to the seating arrangements in the revolutionary legislative bodies of France and the French National Assembly of 1791 in particular; where the moderate royalist Feuillants were seated on the right side of the chamber and the radical Montagnards were seated on the left. The terms have survived into the present day as a useful distinction even though precisely who and what constitutes right and left has shifted somewhat over time.
That is a good point actually. The WSJ is really a cut above most other papers and one of the few out there that are genuinely worth paying for. However, in the Internet age there is really only room for so many top quality papers at the top; IMHO, basically one each for the right and left per nation. So it remains to be proven that the WSJ model will work for second and third tier papers, but I suspect the answer to that is probably "no".
How is it over there on the left? Seriously, the Wall Street Journal actually spends time and money doing research for their hard news stories. Do you think that financial professionals would pay for subscriptions if the information wasn't accurate or at least accurate enough for them to base trading decisions on? Their opinion page isn't too bad either, although The Economist is often better IMHO. Meanwhile, the flagship paper on the left, the New York Times aka "the Gray Lady", is but a pale shadow of her former self. What would you rather have a paper do, lie to you and kiss your ass or dig up the facts and let things fall where they may?
The phrase "...on his own lands" was consistent with the wording of other laws and official documents of that period which generally restricted rights and privileges, including the right to vote for example, to white male property owners. However, if one wants to interpret the second amendment in that way then it is inconsistent not to interpret the other rights, which where historically worded similarly, the same (i.e. only white men who own land can vote). This is a similar line of reasoning to that taken previously by opponents of the second amendment who held that the term "the people" meant something different in the second amendment (i.e. a "collective" right) than what it meant in every other case where "the people" was used (i.e. the right to free speech). IMHO, the rights were written in plain language and should be interpreted plainly. The drafts probably do contain alternate wordings (they were works in progress after all), but even the engrossed (official) copy of the United States Constitution, which was handwritten and signed on parchment and therefore not truncated for printing convenience, uses the abbreviated wording (i.e. not "...on his own lands").
As for the carrying of weapons and the intent; IMHO, it does NOT follow that simply carrying a weapon in a state which renders it accessible and ready for use can be taken as Res ipsa loquitur or "the matter speaks for itself" evidence that the bearer intends to use it in crime (other than simply carrying it which is not a crime but a right). The utility of weapons, especially when carried for self defense, is largely dependent upon them being ready and accessible for use should the need arise (this is why the Supreme Court struck down the mandatory trigger lock parts of the DC gun laws). So it cannot be said that just because someone is NOT transporting their weapon in a locked case that the only possible explanation is that they intend to use it to commit a crime (other than simply carrying, which in and of itself is NOT a crime according to the United States Constitution).
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers"
Ok, WTF? If I use a mod chipped console then how will that effect my "health and safety"? It seems like whenever the government wants to pull the wool over citizens eyes for ulterior motives they tell us that whatever they are doing is for our own "health and safety". No doubt the MAFIAA would like to have Joe Sixpack believe that using mod chips causes blindness, brain cancer and impotence but why should the public money be spent tracking down console modders? If the MAFIAA wants to bust these guys then they should foot the bill, not the much beleagured American taxpayer who is already reeling from the prospect of paying for ever increasing bailout deficits and a US Government take-over of the health care system.
"In 1960, Robert Menard was a commander aboard the USS Constellation when he was part of a meeting between United States Navy personnel and their counterparts in the Japanese Defense Forces.
Fifteen years had passed since VJ Day, most of those at the meeting were WWII veterans, and men who had fought each other to the death at sea were now comrades in battle who could confide in each other.
Someone at the table asked a Japanese admiral why, with the Pacific Fleet devastated at Pearl Harbor and the mainland U.S. forces in what Japan had to know was a pathetic state of unreadiness, Japan had not simply invaded the West Coast. Commander Menard would never forget the crafty look on the Japanese commander's face as he frankly answered the question.
'You are right,' he told the Americans. 'We did indeed know much about your preparedness. We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand.'"
The above was excerpted from the Wikiquote page on Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet during WWII. The discussion explains how a particular quote concerning a "rifle behind every blade of grass" may have been erroneously attributed to Yamamoto who had indeed expressed reservations about entering into war with the United States in other well-attributed quotes, even if he made no specific mention of private gun ownership.
However, the above quote is good second-hand (i.e. better than hearsay) evidence that private gun ownership was and is a substantial deterrent against foreign invasion. In fact, it is also known that Hitler was deterred from invading Switzerland for similar reasons (i.e. a rifle in every home), comparing Switzerland to a 'porcupine'.
As for the military stripping recruits of everything they know, I cannot speak from first hand experience. However, there is a certain familiarity and practice with ones muscle memory and hand-eye coordination that comes from frequent handling and firing of rifles that would undoubtedly be useful when later qualifying at the rifle range. One might expect that recruits who grew up shooting with proper instruction (NOT gangbangers who shoot sideways and are lucky if they don't shoot their own foot) and were more familiar with guns would have better initial scores than those who did not. Perhaps someone else can confirm this?
for if and when the local government or state called you to arms in defense of self, town, god, and country
Which is becoming an increasing problem these days for military recruitment, especially with urban west coast recruits from states like California. If a recruit has never held or fired a weapon in his or her entire life then it requires substantially more training in order to bring that recruit up to a minimal level of competence with rifles, machine guns, and other modern projectile weapons than someone who grew up around guns and using them for hunting and target shooting. In fact, there is even evidence to suggest that other countries, Japan in WWII for example, were substantially deterred from invading by the large civilian population of gun owners who were at least competent in the use of their weapons.
Net neutrality isn't about guaranteeing a minimum amount of internet bandwidth. Net neutrality is about not discriminating based on type and more importantly source of internet packets
This is similar to a problem which is present in health insurance markets; namely, if the insurance companies (or the ISPs in the net neutrality case) cannot charge some people more and some people less depending upon the amount and type of services used then everyone will have to pay the average amount of the cost of those services spread out evenly over the pool of subscribers. Another example is the old "split the check evenly" dilemma when it is obvious that some people in the group have eaten a way more expensive meal than others. In any case some people will be required to pay more than they otherwise would have had the charge had been based upon relative use instead of split evenly between heavy and light users. If this drives the price up enough then it might squeeze out some people near the margins who cannot afford to pay the higher "average" price.
Yes, but how much is your time worth? Would you be willing to pay for a streaming service that provides interesting selections from the entire body of music ever produced with complete customizable options delivered to any device you own 24/7/365 on demand? There is something to be said for music as a service, even though people can copy the stream, which makes it easier to hear anything at anytime for a reasonable flat periodic fee. The problem, as you put it, is ownership of copyright being perceived by record labels as the ONLY way to make money when offering music to consumers (i.e. they sell you a copy). The record labels should have adapted to the new technologies by changing their business model from "sell you a copy" to "sell you music delivered on demand as a service". Would some people spend lots of their time micro-managing a huge collection of locally copied music? Probably, but many people would rather pay a couple bucks per month to have someone else do that for them and deliver it to them as a nicely packaged service to their iPhone or home audio system or any other personal device(s) capable of playback.
I would argue, as others have done on this thread, that what currently passes for promotion, as done by the record labels, is inefficient and does not make the best use of new technologies to promote a wider range of artists to their respective profitable niches. Instead, what we continue to get is the same crappy mass-market over-promoted McBands that appeal marginally to a broad spectrum of people but don't really fully satisfy anyone. If promotion is the primary objective and CD sales are down then why not spend less on CDs and more on promoting bands where their customers want to hear them like iTunes, Sirius or XM radio and Pandora and other Internet streaming services?
You bring up a good point with the promotion argument, but I would counter with this: the record labels have been too slow in capitalizing on new technologies for the purposes of promotion. They dragged their feet on digital music and the file sharing networks sprung up to meet the demand. They were late to the party with legal pay-per-track and subscription music services and now Steve Jobs has them over a barrel with iTunes and a 90%+ share of the mobile music player market with the iPods and now the iPhone.
The record labels, and especially the big ones, are in trouble precisely because they failed to do what Artists most needed them to do most which was to promote the band and get their music into the hands of listeners how they wanted it (the customer is always right). Instead the record labels responded by buying bad laws and filing lawsuits against their customers. The record labels had their chances and they blew them all.
Now, unless Steve Jobs somehow screws up spectacularly (which doesn't seem likely), they will never be able to properly recover their roles as promoters. People can already get streamed music on XM or Sirius satellite and it is only a matter of time before iPhone offers on demand 24-7 streaming and DJed channels ala Pandora if they don't offer those things already.
IMHO, the record label of the future will be a much smaller business which mostly handles the logistics of getting the band promoted through streaming services operated by others, like Sirius/XM and iTunes, where the labels themselves no longer control distribution as they have in the past; having ceded that role to others through their own ineptness and unwillingness to take necessary risks with new disruptive technologies that changed the music business and dragged them kicking and screaming into the digital age.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't pirate anything, but the methodology for associating individuals with IP addresses is rife with errors and false positives.
Which will only increase as the incentives to remain safely anonymous continue to increase. The Swedish People in general, and the Pirate Party in particular, were wise to recognize the consequences of more draconian enforcement of online identity checks and content scanning; which tends to lead in the direction of a surveillance society police state (polite or not as the case may be). The British are already much farther along on this road than most and I don't think that anyone, with the possible exception of the vested interests and the authorities (who loving having this kind of power as long as it is not used against them personally), really likes where this is all going or what the results have been thus far. As controls continue to increase, the average citizen will be increasingly forced by necessity to learn much of the techniques and trade craft currently employed by the intelligence agencies of the world simply to protect their individual privacy and freedoms from ever more intrusive encroachments by the state. One wonders how far off the dystopian futures imagined by Gibson, Orwell and others can really be if we continue down this collective path?
They arrest him and put him in the van.
That sounds a bit too nice; surely they would administer at least an initial beating before arresting him and putting him in the van?
Hmmm, that would give him something like a -10 negative reaction adjustment for random encounters right? Does anyone have the encounter table for the CBC handy?
something akin to what Japan has (I live in Japan--it works!).
In the Frontline documentary, Sick Around the World, Japan was one of the featured locations. As is so often the case, every system around the world has problems, some less visible and obvious than others, and Japan is no exception. In Japan the government negotiates a "rate book" with listed fees for all medical procedures offered by doctors and hospitals. These rates govern prices in all medical transactions, even completely private ones. In Japan, hospitals and the doctors who run them are usually quite small operations and almost completely private (think small neighborhood hospitals with 20 or so beds). The problem is that doctors and hospitals barely earn enough money to stay in business in Japan. This works to some extent because the Japanese are culturally very hard working and industrious people who are generally slower to complain than Americans or Europeans and less vociferous when they do. However, even they have their breaking points and the Japanese health care system is probing their limits with these low regulated fees for medical services. When one considers the rapidly aging population in Japan it becomes clear that sooner or later (probably sooner) something is going to have to give; either doctors and hospitals will begin cutting services or going out of business or (more likely) the government negotiated rates will have to rise substantially.
Why do you imagine that somehow there's a problem here?
Well, the problem is that the FSF takes a rather narrow view on what constitutes linking and "derivative work". Not everyone agrees with the FSF interpretation of what constitutes linking and the language in the GPL is not always deterministic on this matter. The GPL does not (and perhaps cannot) offer a precise, exhaustive and unambiguous definition of "linking" because of the tremendous variety of hardware and software currently in use. The FSF interprets the license strictly while others have interpreted the license as less so; The wiki article contains a section dealing with this dispute. The LGPL was introduced with less restrictive language, at least in part, to address just this uncertainty by allowing anyone to "link" to compiled libraries without becoming subject to LGPL. However, many people continue to use GPL for their code, even when LGPL might have been a better choice; perhaps in ignorance of these problems.
Why in the hell would I want to search for a number with no context? Who thinks that way?
Politicians?
And keep the 10's of thousands of people employeed in an already shitty economy. It's not so much about keeping GM alive, as keeping people in a job.
But at what price? Everytime we use the power of government in the form of laws and subsidies to "save" one job we end up losing dozens of others. Why should an union worker getting $30 per hour to put steering wheels on crappy cars be able to use the coercive power of the state to say that his job is worth more than ten or twelve of ours? Do you want the government making those kinds of calls? Remember that the government redistributes through coercion and force; is that really how you would like to see things worked out in our society, through coercion, corruption and force? We are looking at the bigger picture and that is precisely why so many of us are against "saving jobs" in this way. How much should we ask you and the rest of us to sacrifice so that a union job can be "saved"? At what point do you abandon the "ends justify the means" argument with regard to wasteful government spending? after a billion dollars has been spent? Perhaps one-hundred billion or even a trillion?
If you want to blame somebody for this then blame the golden boy of the left, our hopeful President Barak Obama; who in his own words, "feels beholden to the trade unions". Those trade union jobs, or at least as many as possibly could be, were going to be protected no matter what the overall cost was to the American taxpayer. The real losers here, as usual, are the American taxpayers who are once again getting the shaft in the form of lower wages, hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and higher taxes all so that a few thousand union jobs can be "saved". It would have been cheaper and fairer to simply give the union members their pensions and a severance package along with their pink slips. Why should the American taxpayer be compelled to pay such a terribly high price, with hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the general economy, so that a few thousand or even ten thousand union jobs can be saved? I wouldn't invest a single red cent of my own money in GM (new or old) or Chrysler so why the hell should the government take my tax money and invest in those loser companies while telling me that it is a "good investment"? Yeah right, because everyone besides me knows that bearshit really is better than buckwheat? Not bloody likely.
Almost anyone can have a "great idea" in gaming, but unless you have a proven track record with profitable games to your credit or have your own suitcases full of cash (or backers with same), why should they pay you simply for having an idea that probably isn't all that original? Its a bit cheaper when working with homebrew self-published pen and paper games; but competitive computer or console games cost tens of millions of dollars to produce and with credit being tougher to get now than at just about any other time since the modern game industry was founded, nobody wants to pay simply to hear your "great idea" for a game.
If the software development interests are wise then they will learn from the example of the medical profession and what excessive litigation has done to doctors attempting to practice medicine under the weight of crushing malpractice insurance premiums. The attorneys out there would argue that we must be able to sue in order to recover damages, but in reality most of us pay extra for our health care every day on the off chance that we might one day be in a position to win the legal lottery with a favorable malpractice judgment of which the attorney will take 40%+ while the government taxes away most of the rest. Meanwhile, the attorneys continue extracting uncompensated value from society while everyone, with the possible exception of the attorneys, is worse off; and this is better for society how? No, we do not need the attorneys and their associated baggage in the software industry, it just isn't remotely worthwhile.
I feel that I have an unwritten contract with content providers
The whole concept of "unwritten contract" is a ploy by the powerful, who honor no such "contracts", and the masses whom they wish to control. Why observe an "unwritten contract" when you could act selfishly and gain without being exposed? The real world plays hardball so why fight with one arm behind your back?
I don't believe that they will be able to do that, or at least not efficiently. In order to circumvent adblock it would be necessary to have all advertisement requests be run through a proxy server in the domain which would redirect to the ad servers and then serve back the content. Anything less would be easily countered by the ad blockers based upon regular expression filtering of URLs. Naturally, this proxy server would have to be located in the same domain as the content servers to circumvent that filtering. This would place a tremendous IT burden upon the site attempting to do this which would probably not be offset by additional "impression" based advertising fees (assuming that anyone proactive enough to download and use an ad blocking extensions will not click on ads anyway). Could they thwart ad blocking? Yes, they could. Will they? No, they will not because it would cost too much to be worthwhile.
You should read a little history; the US didn't invent the concept of right and left. The distinction is actually of European origin and goes back to the days of the French Revolution where it referred to the seating arrangements in the revolutionary legislative bodies of France and the French National Assembly of 1791 in particular; where the moderate royalist Feuillants were seated on the right side of the chamber and the radical Montagnards were seated on the left. The terms have survived into the present day as a useful distinction even though precisely who and what constitutes right and left has shifted somewhat over time.
That is a good point actually. The WSJ is really a cut above most other papers and one of the few out there that are genuinely worth paying for. However, in the Internet age there is really only room for so many top quality papers at the top; IMHO, basically one each for the right and left per nation. So it remains to be proven that the WSJ model will work for second and third tier papers, but I suspect the answer to that is probably "no".
How is it over there on the left? Seriously, the Wall Street Journal actually spends time and money doing research for their hard news stories. Do you think that financial professionals would pay for subscriptions if the information wasn't accurate or at least accurate enough for them to base trading decisions on? Their opinion page isn't too bad either, although The Economist is often better IMHO. Meanwhile, the flagship paper on the left, the New York Times aka "the Gray Lady", is but a pale shadow of her former self. What would you rather have a paper do, lie to you and kiss your ass or dig up the facts and let things fall where they may?
They are so like children.
Your logic is undeniable...
The phrase "...on his own lands" was consistent with the wording of other laws and official documents of that period which generally restricted rights and privileges, including the right to vote for example, to white male property owners. However, if one wants to interpret the second amendment in that way then it is inconsistent not to interpret the other rights, which where historically worded similarly, the same (i.e. only white men who own land can vote). This is a similar line of reasoning to that taken previously by opponents of the second amendment who held that the term "the people" meant something different in the second amendment (i.e. a "collective" right) than what it meant in every other case where "the people" was used (i.e. the right to free speech). IMHO, the rights were written in plain language and should be interpreted plainly. The drafts probably do contain alternate wordings (they were works in progress after all), but even the engrossed (official) copy of the United States Constitution, which was handwritten and signed on parchment and therefore not truncated for printing convenience, uses the abbreviated wording (i.e. not "...on his own lands").
As for the carrying of weapons and the intent; IMHO, it does NOT follow that simply carrying a weapon in a state which renders it accessible and ready for use can be taken as Res ipsa loquitur or "the matter speaks for itself" evidence that the bearer intends to use it in crime (other than simply carrying it which is not a crime but a right). The utility of weapons, especially when carried for self defense, is largely dependent upon them being ready and accessible for use should the need arise (this is why the Supreme Court struck down the mandatory trigger lock parts of the DC gun laws). So it cannot be said that just because someone is NOT transporting their weapon in a locked case that the only possible explanation is that they intend to use it to commit a crime (other than simply carrying, which in and of itself is NOT a crime according to the United States Constitution).
Does this story remind anyone else of that really bad 80s film, The Wizard?
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers"
Ok, WTF? If I use a mod chipped console then how will that effect my "health and safety"? It seems like whenever the government wants to pull the wool over citizens eyes for ulterior motives they tell us that whatever they are doing is for our own "health and safety". No doubt the MAFIAA would like to have Joe Sixpack believe that using mod chips causes blindness, brain cancer and impotence but why should the public money be spent tracking down console modders? If the MAFIAA wants to bust these guys then they should foot the bill, not the much beleagured American taxpayer who is already reeling from the prospect of paying for ever increasing bailout deficits and a US Government take-over of the health care system.
"In 1960, Robert Menard was a commander aboard the USS Constellation when he was part of a meeting between United States Navy personnel and their counterparts in the Japanese Defense Forces. Fifteen years had passed since VJ Day, most of those at the meeting were WWII veterans, and men who had fought each other to the death at sea were now comrades in battle who could confide in each other.
Someone at the table asked a Japanese admiral why, with the Pacific Fleet devastated at Pearl Harbor and the mainland U.S. forces in what Japan had to know was a pathetic state of unreadiness, Japan had not simply invaded the West Coast. Commander Menard would never forget the crafty look on the Japanese commander's face as he frankly answered the question.
'You are right,' he told the Americans. 'We did indeed know much about your preparedness. We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand.'"
The above was excerpted from the Wikiquote page on Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet during WWII. The discussion explains how a particular quote concerning a "rifle behind every blade of grass" may have been erroneously attributed to Yamamoto who had indeed expressed reservations about entering into war with the United States in other well-attributed quotes, even if he made no specific mention of private gun ownership.
However, the above quote is good second-hand (i.e. better than hearsay) evidence that private gun ownership was and is a substantial deterrent against foreign invasion. In fact, it is also known that Hitler was deterred from invading Switzerland for similar reasons (i.e. a rifle in every home), comparing Switzerland to a 'porcupine'.
As for the military stripping recruits of everything they know, I cannot speak from first hand experience. However, there is a certain familiarity and practice with ones muscle memory and hand-eye coordination that comes from frequent handling and firing of rifles that would undoubtedly be useful when later qualifying at the rifle range. One might expect that recruits who grew up shooting with proper instruction (NOT gangbangers who shoot sideways and are lucky if they don't shoot their own foot) and were more familiar with guns would have better initial scores than those who did not. Perhaps someone else can confirm this?
for if and when the local government or state called you to arms in defense of self, town, god, and country
Which is becoming an increasing problem these days for military recruitment, especially with urban west coast recruits from states like California. If a recruit has never held or fired a weapon in his or her entire life then it requires substantially more training in order to bring that recruit up to a minimal level of competence with rifles, machine guns, and other modern projectile weapons than someone who grew up around guns and using them for hunting and target shooting. In fact, there is even evidence to suggest that other countries, Japan in WWII for example, were substantially deterred from invading by the large civilian population of gun owners who were at least competent in the use of their weapons.
Net neutrality isn't about guaranteeing a minimum amount of internet bandwidth. Net neutrality is about not discriminating based on type and more importantly source of internet packets
This is similar to a problem which is present in health insurance markets; namely, if the insurance companies (or the ISPs in the net neutrality case) cannot charge some people more and some people less depending upon the amount and type of services used then everyone will have to pay the average amount of the cost of those services spread out evenly over the pool of subscribers. Another example is the old "split the check evenly" dilemma when it is obvious that some people in the group have eaten a way more expensive meal than others. In any case some people will be required to pay more than they otherwise would have had the charge had been based upon relative use instead of split evenly between heavy and light users. If this drives the price up enough then it might squeeze out some people near the margins who cannot afford to pay the higher "average" price.
If it hits my audio gear or pc, it's MINE.
Yes, but how much is your time worth? Would you be willing to pay for a streaming service that provides interesting selections from the entire body of music ever produced with complete customizable options delivered to any device you own 24/7/365 on demand? There is something to be said for music as a service, even though people can copy the stream, which makes it easier to hear anything at anytime for a reasonable flat periodic fee. The problem, as you put it, is ownership of copyright being perceived by record labels as the ONLY way to make money when offering music to consumers (i.e. they sell you a copy). The record labels should have adapted to the new technologies by changing their business model from "sell you a copy" to "sell you music delivered on demand as a service". Would some people spend lots of their time micro-managing a huge collection of locally copied music? Probably, but many people would rather pay a couple bucks per month to have someone else do that for them and deliver it to them as a nicely packaged service to their iPhone or home audio system or any other personal device(s) capable of playback.
I would argue, as others have done on this thread, that what currently passes for promotion, as done by the record labels, is inefficient and does not make the best use of new technologies to promote a wider range of artists to their respective profitable niches. Instead, what we continue to get is the same crappy mass-market over-promoted McBands that appeal marginally to a broad spectrum of people but don't really fully satisfy anyone. If promotion is the primary objective and CD sales are down then why not spend less on CDs and more on promoting bands where their customers want to hear them like iTunes, Sirius or XM radio and Pandora and other Internet streaming services?
You bring up a good point with the promotion argument, but I would counter with this: the record labels have been too slow in capitalizing on new technologies for the purposes of promotion. They dragged their feet on digital music and the file sharing networks sprung up to meet the demand. They were late to the party with legal pay-per-track and subscription music services and now Steve Jobs has them over a barrel with iTunes and a 90%+ share of the mobile music player market with the iPods and now the iPhone.
The record labels, and especially the big ones, are in trouble precisely because they failed to do what Artists most needed them to do most which was to promote the band and get their music into the hands of listeners how they wanted it (the customer is always right). Instead the record labels responded by buying bad laws and filing lawsuits against their customers. The record labels had their chances and they blew them all.
Now, unless Steve Jobs somehow screws up spectacularly (which doesn't seem likely), they will never be able to properly recover their roles as promoters. People can already get streamed music on XM or Sirius satellite and it is only a matter of time before iPhone offers on demand 24-7 streaming and DJed channels ala Pandora if they don't offer those things already.
IMHO, the record label of the future will be a much smaller business which mostly handles the logistics of getting the band promoted through streaming services operated by others, like Sirius/XM and iTunes, where the labels themselves no longer control distribution as they have in the past; having ceded that role to others through their own ineptness and unwillingness to take necessary risks with new disruptive technologies that changed the music business and dragged them kicking and screaming into the digital age.