The CIA is murdering people for leaving Islam? Cites, please....
The CIA helped destroy democracy and put a tyrant into power. Who gets murdered by said tyrant or another tyrant who succeeded him and why is details and not very relevant..
Why is it that we are so willing to jump down the throats of Christians in power (or essentially any other religion), even though they are largely benign, but so willing to excuse any level of butchery, depravity, or despotism when it comes to fudamentalist Islam?
Christians are unlikely to kill you for criticizing their religion, while Muslims will likely put a price on your head. It is a religion of love, peace, and killing all infidels.
Riddle me this: Does a civilized country allow harm to come to their citizens through inaction? I wonder how many killers, people that we are 100% certain are murderers, leach tax payer dollars in prisons, while others can only afford the most basic of health care? It seems to me a civilized society would know who's care should come first. (Hint: It's not the homicidal danger to society.)
If people can't afford healthcare, the most likely reason is that the society in question has succumbed to free-market fundamentalism and consequently doesn't have socialized healthcare. I know of no society where feeding the prison population takes a large enough percentage of GNP to affect healthcare one way or another. In the hypothetical situation where it does, perhaps you should look into reducing prison population by being less eager to imprison people for non-violent offences - such as drug use - rather than killing them.
So no, a civilized country doesn't allow harm to come to its citizens through inaction (within reason), nor does it actively kill its citizens to save money. The latter is even worse than the first as far as barbarism goes.
Seperation of Church and State is a Secular ideology.
Actually, I'd argue that it is a good idea even from purely religious point of view. Power corrupts, and having the Catholic Church wield political power led to some pretty heinous corruption in Europe during the Middle Ages; so heinous, in fact, that it eventually led to Reformation and splintering of the church. Even the rise of anti-religious proselyting atheism (as opposed to simply not having religion yourself and not caring what others believe) can largely be traced to church's abuses, real or imagined.
Basically, having Church and State separate makes both work better, while having them joined will pervert both.
Even if governments used free software, they would still have to pay for support (which is the majority of software costs) and this wouldn't go away.
They could, however, buy that support from local firms and consultants, keeping the money in local economy and simultaneously creating an incentive for education in computer science, helping said economy in both short and long term. And of course they'd eventually get every penny back from taxes.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
Really ? I seem to recall this thing called the Commodore 64, which pre-dates IBM PC, and was in turn pre-dated by MSX, Sinclair and others. And the PC was made by IBM and not Microsoft.
The FSF didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without Linus' blind and aggressive campaign to write a great kernel for some strange reason.
Which not only doesn't have anything to do with your previous statement, but is also false: most Linux distros nowadays are based on GNU software developed by the FSF. Linus made the kernel, FSF made pretty much everything else; and if Linus had not made Linux, then either the Hurd or some other kernel would likely had received the attention and effort which went to it.
Linus got lucky, by making his kernel when there happened to be a need for one. The success of Linux, as opposed to some other FOSS kernel, was mainly caused by a coincidence of timing.
In other words, it's not about unix, it's about the PC- and the PC begins with Microsoft.
PC began with IBM and their decision to make the PC an open, expandable and well-documented architecture, making it easy to clone, which led to competition and falling prices. But personal computers affordable by Joe Regular pre-date the PC.
Microsoft helped drop these cheap little computers into peoples' laps and stick them on the internet. The universities were never going to create anything usable without all those dedicated DOS hackers. The world without Microsoft and Linux is a world of extremely expensive corporate unices and obscure free software projects furnished like plan9.
You do realize that Microsoft was not the only supplier of DOS, do you ? There were PC-DOS and DR-DOS besides MS-DOS. Microsoft didn't really become dominant before Windows, and if it hadn't been there, we'd simply gone with OS/2.
Microsoft got lucky, because IBM picked them to supply their new computer with an operating system, and Gates was smart and ruthless enough to milk everything possible from it. That's all.
Even Firefox comes from Mozilla which comes from Netscape which was quite popular on Windows.
Netscape would had been just as popular in any other OS, such as OS/2. Heck, at the time DOS extenders - which allowed 32-bit code to be run on DOS - were widespread, so it could had been made for DOS. Windows simply happened to be the dominant OS by the time Web became widespread, so Netscape Navigator was mostly used on Windows. However, in no way does it owe its success to Windows, but simply for the growth of Web.
When you remember that hatred of Windows ME and IE 5-6 has driven so many developers to work on alternatives, doesn't it seem unlikely that a software counter-culture like F/OSS would ever be at its strength without a culture to counter?
FOSS isn't a counter-culture. Punk is (or was) a counter-culture; FOSS is a software development and distribution model, and is outcompeting the competing proprietary model of Microsoft and its ilk.
You see, there's this thing called economics.
Yes, and you seem to not understand them, constantly mixing cause, effect and coincidence.
Because we all know that once people are trained, then accidents never happen...
By the same logic it is pointless to consider the safety of the car at all, because no amount of safety can save you in all conceivable accidents.
And, BTW, there's a small but greater than zero probability that your keyboard will give you a lethal electric shock when you touch it. Consider that before you post your next inane reply, coward.
Careful, a similar argument was once used (and occasionally still is) to claim that communism with its central planning was superior economically because the competition of capitalism involved wasteful duplication of effort. The claim proved a bit flawed when put to the test.
Actually, I'd say that the two main examples of communism - Russia and China - showed it to be a raging success. Let's not forget that, when communists came to power, Russia was a backwards agrarian society which had just lost World War I and had it's government collapse, and China was little more than a bad joke, having been a partially occupied and economically abused puppet of both West and Japan for years, not to mention having gone through several civil wars and in fact being in the middle of one.
Both states became superpowers under communist rule. Of course they were also dictatorships with a habit of disappearing anyone opposing the rulers, but that had always been true for both; neither China nor Russia had ever been democracies nor even moderately free societies in their histories, and arguably still aren't.
So no, communism hasn't been the unmitigated disaster people often think it was for the states which tried it. The problems associated with it come from the social conditions and traditions prior to the revolution, and the process of revolution itself. For countries which adopted left-leaning policies in a peaceful fashion and didn't succumb to dictatorship and personality cults, they have been extremely helpful; see the Nordic countries, for example.
So no, I don't think "sounds like communism" is a valid counterargument to anything.
(note: I am not comparing free or open source software to communism. Just the arguments to arguments supporting communism)
The irony here is that free software, by putting the means of production into the hands of the users, pretty much accomplishes the basic idea of communism (which was that labourers, not factory-owners, should get the profit from their labour).
Careful. Ask that around here and you're bound to get a few hopelessly ignorant responses from people who honestly believe Gates has done more harm than Hitler,
Can you give links to such comments ? Because this is the first time I've ever heard this claim.
his giving away of billions in charity is all a ruse to solidify his ill-gotten position of power.
In all likelihood it is. Simply because someone is helping you doesn't mean they can't have ulterior motives. And Gates has in the past shown himself to be an utter asshole who cares pursues profit and power no matter how much damage is done in the process - see, for example, the Halloween Documents - so I think it is justified to be somewhat suspicious of his motives in this matter.
I've heard RMS when he's come to give talks at my university. I admire his dedication, sure, but anyone who tries to claim that he's done more good in the world than Bill and Melinda Gates is just painfully out of touch. There are more pressing concerns in the world than software, and no, getting rid of proprietary software won't magically fix disease, starvation, etc (cue the "but we empower nations to fix their own problems with free software!!!" responses)
No, cue the speculation about how much of Gates's ill-begotten profits would had gone to charity anyway, only through the original holders. Also the cue speculation about how much more charity could we do had Microsoft not slowed down the development of our economies with its illegal and destructive abuses of monopoly power.
Gates got his property from Microsoft, which got it by illegal - as judged by both US and EU courts - practices, with full knowledge and approval - indeed, leadership - of Gates. He is no more a benefactor to humanity than a Mafia boss who donates a few bucks to the Salvation Army would be. At best he's trying to appease his guilty conscience; at worst he's engaged in yet another dirty scheme.
I guess you probably simplified the process for brevity, but- what's to stop people putting multiple votes in the box?
The box is in plain view - right in front of the election officer, actually - and your name is checked from a list, and stroked out, before you're allowed to put anything there. That's why the ballot needs to be folded, to maintain the secrecy of the vote.
It seems like a simple system? I haven't found any problems with it.
Except the mobster agent who sits in the voting place and watches you will inform the rest of them of your odd behaviour, and since they read Slashdot, they know what it means:).
Here in Finland we just use plain pieces of paper as ballots. You write in the number of the guy you're voting for, fold the paper so it can't be seen, and drop it into the vote box. Since there is no special envelopes or ballots there is no way for anyone to give you pre-sealed ones. They could give you a pre-written paper, but there's no way they can ensure you actually put that into the box, rather than your own.
I guess that shows once again that simplicity is good for security.
But superluminal travel is a different kettle of fish. There are only two possible universes, one where there's an upper limit in the speed of information and another where there is no upper limit. The two universes have very different characteristics and our universe appears to be the smaller.
Actually, "spooky action at distance" common in quantum mechanics seems to imply that information can and regularly does travel faster than light. Whether this can be used for travel by us macrobes is another matter.
It's hard to think of a way where you can transmit matter without also allowing information transfer.
Even if you could, it wouldn't be particularly useful, because I'm kinda attached to my memories and genes:).
Maybe it would be possible to reverse the expansion and shrink the universe so that although the speed of light would still be an upper limit, communication between A and B could occur in less time than light could make the journey in a flat universe.
But I'd wager that faster than light travel in the special relativity sense is, and always will be, impossible.
When most people say "faster than light travel", they mean "I can take a trip to Alfa Centauri and return before lunch". Rearranging spacetime to make bring said star system within walking distance fits that description well enough.
well, with the dancing pigs problem, universal java exploits (i mean JRE exploits not javascript here) it could be you're telling people to move to a platform where sophisticated anti-malware doesn't exist, with the fallacy that 'it's linux, it's not targeted by hackers'
Do you know of any such JVM exploits - which, in order to be write-once run-everywhere, would not only need to allow one to allow the execution of arbitrary Java classes, bypassing possible security monitor, but also depend on a flaw in the JVM specification, rather than a flaw in the implementation, since implementations differ in different platforms - or are you just speculating in the vein of "nothing's really safe" ?
Protip: if you're having to overcome a bunch of objections, it's probably because the person doesn't actually need what you're selling. That's why so many of us think marketing people are scum: they make a living off of conning people into buying things they (or sometimes anyone at all) have no use for.
Since you call marketing people scum, I very much doubt you're one of them, and thus couldn't really give protips on marketing, right ?-)
Anyway, you're wrong. "We can't use Linux, because it has no office applications" is an objection. "Actually, OpenOffice is available for Linux, and Microsoft Office can be made to work through Crossover Office" would be a counterargument to that. Handling objections isn't about conning people, it is about getting them to express their reservations and concerns about the deal and addressing them.
Obviously it's possible to be dishonest in handling objections, but in no way is the process of handling objections in itself evil.
And that we've written apps that simulate what we assume bouncing would look like given our collective lack of experience outside of the pornographic realm?
Why assume, when you can just calculate it using soft-body kinetics ?
If they take my code and put restrictions on it, I still don't care: no matter what happens, I still have my code. Anyone who wants to get my code can still get my code. What they can't get is the *insert corporation here*'s code that they added to my code, and the one very important point the GPL camp misses is that only a communist would lay claim to that code. The corporation wrote it, it's theirs. They can keep it, or sell it, or give it away. But it is immoral for me to force them to give it away.
GPL cannot force anyone to give anything away. How could it ? The recipient hasn't signed anything.
What GPL does is give additional rights to the recipient on certain conditions. Again, the recipient isn't forced to obey; he most certainly isn't forced to give his code away. However, if he doesn't satisfy the conditions of GPL, GPL is no longer in effect, and default copyright law takes force; and that stops you from distributing derived works.
In other words: no one is forcing you to give away your code, but the second you want to give away my code, as-is or combined with your code, I can either refuse outright or give a conditional agreement. GPL is such conditional agreement. It is no more forcing anyone to give away their code than your local food store is robbing you by refusing to give you food without payment.
Just like the apartment renter who knows that in some of his apartments counterfeit items are sold. Do you think that the landlord should just keep cashing the rent without doing anything?
Yes. At most he should give an anonymous tip to the police. It simply isn't his place to enforce the law. If he tries to, he'll end up abusing his position, even if he's actually well-intentioned; he simply doesn't have the expertise to conduct an investigation properly, nor in all likelihood the time; and even if he gets it right, he's taking unto himself the power to punish, which rightfully belongs to the legal system, not individuals on a crusade who happen to have power over others.
But eBay actually did nothing (of course not, why should they?). Hopfully after being sued they start doing something about it.
Yes; namely, remove any auction where anyone complains, allowing companies a de facto power to prevent sales in second-hand market. That's what happens when people who have no responsibility for false positives and no way of actually conducting an investigation start playing the police: you get evicted from your apartment just because someone told your landlord you're up to something bad.
That's why I think law enforcement should be left to the professionals, who actually can conduct investigations and have a responsibility to get it right. Someone sells counterfeits on eBay, and this bothers you, don't call eBay, call the cops.
It's more like renting a room to some criminals for them to sell their counterfeit goods and holding the renter accountable for what happens.
Or holding knife-sellers responsible for Jack the Ripper.
Do you really think a landlord should spy on his customers to make sure they aren't criminals ?
Anyway, my point is still valid: eBay has to actually spend some real cash to at least *try* to avoid scammers selling rip-offs, and I hope this court ruling will make that happen.
Why ? EBay is not the police, nor any other kind of law enforcement agency. Your statement is similar to requiring ISPs to monitor their user's actions to make sure they aren't violating copyrights, or requiring the landlords to install surveillance cameras to their resident's apartments to make sure no one is doing anything criminal there.
Yet these foreigners have more access to "your" representatives than you do. WTF is the point of even going to the polls when our legislators are OWNED lock stock and barrel by foreigners?
As a foreigner I assure you that I have no access whatsoever to your legislators, nor to my own for that matter. In fact it seems that the situation is essentially identical in all countries. That suggests to me that the RIAA are actually the covert intelligence operation of an invading alien force, sent here to cripple our culture and make it possible to shutdown our technology remotely.
Indeed, it is the most plausible explanation: RIAA and its ilk are actually slime creatures from outer space, and not very nice to the human race. They'll suck your brain out through a straw, you just can't trust those guys. So hide the children, lock the doors, and always watch the skies.
Firearms allow you to challenge jack-booted thugs that are smashing down your front door to take you away to a concentration camp.
Actually no, they simply give the thugs an excuse to shoot first, or possibly just blow up your house with you in it. You can't outfight an army by yourself, because they have more and better (read: more expensive) weapons than you do.
If you can't defend against it with a firearm, then it can't really be a threat, right?
A firearm is pretty much useless against a tank rolling towards you, yet I'd consider that pretty threatening.
My first thought was of more efficient ball bearings. Such perfect ball bearings alone could reduce world-wide energy usage by a large percentage. Technology like this is the truly "green" tech that we need to proliferate in addition to the other forms we are currently working on.
Would it actually matter ? How much energy is wasted because of roughness of ball bearing balls, rather than their malformation under pressure due to elasticity ? In other words, could you get higher savings by making the balls harder, rather than smoother ? And let's not forget the chamber they're supposed to fit into - can that be made perfectly round ?
You know, this is one of those conservations where it probably wasn't such a good idea to post "as a married man" on the top;)...
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The CIA helped destroy democracy and put a tyrant into power. Who gets murdered by said tyrant or another tyrant who succeeded him and why is details and not very relevant..
Christians are unlikely to kill you for criticizing their religion, while Muslims will likely put a price on your head. It is a religion of love, peace, and killing all infidels.
If people can't afford healthcare, the most likely reason is that the society in question has succumbed to free-market fundamentalism and consequently doesn't have socialized healthcare. I know of no society where feeding the prison population takes a large enough percentage of GNP to affect healthcare one way or another. In the hypothetical situation where it does, perhaps you should look into reducing prison population by being less eager to imprison people for non-violent offences - such as drug use - rather than killing them.
So no, a civilized country doesn't allow harm to come to its citizens through inaction (within reason), nor does it actively kill its citizens to save money. The latter is even worse than the first as far as barbarism goes.
Actually, I'd argue that it is a good idea even from purely religious point of view. Power corrupts, and having the Catholic Church wield political power led to some pretty heinous corruption in Europe during the Middle Ages; so heinous, in fact, that it eventually led to Reformation and splintering of the church. Even the rise of anti-religious proselyting atheism (as opposed to simply not having religion yourself and not caring what others believe) can largely be traced to church's abuses, real or imagined.
Basically, having Church and State separate makes both work better, while having them joined will pervert both.
Well, of course: you can get broadband from any ISP you want, no matter who owns the phone line, so there's no monopoly problems like in the US.
They could, however, buy that support from local firms and consultants, keeping the money in local economy and simultaneously creating an incentive for education in computer science, helping said economy in both short and long term. And of course they'd eventually get every penny back from taxes.
Really ? I seem to recall this thing called the Commodore 64, which pre-dates IBM PC, and was in turn pre-dated by MSX, Sinclair and others. And the PC was made by IBM and not Microsoft.
Which not only doesn't have anything to do with your previous statement, but is also false: most Linux distros nowadays are based on GNU software developed by the FSF. Linus made the kernel, FSF made pretty much everything else; and if Linus had not made Linux, then either the Hurd or some other kernel would likely had received the attention and effort which went to it.
Linus got lucky, by making his kernel when there happened to be a need for one. The success of Linux, as opposed to some other FOSS kernel, was mainly caused by a coincidence of timing.
PC began with IBM and their decision to make the PC an open, expandable and well-documented architecture, making it easy to clone, which led to competition and falling prices. But personal computers affordable by Joe Regular pre-date the PC.
You do realize that Microsoft was not the only supplier of DOS, do you ? There were PC-DOS and DR-DOS besides MS-DOS. Microsoft didn't really become dominant before Windows, and if it hadn't been there, we'd simply gone with OS/2.
Microsoft got lucky, because IBM picked them to supply their new computer with an operating system, and Gates was smart and ruthless enough to milk everything possible from it. That's all.
Netscape would had been just as popular in any other OS, such as OS/2. Heck, at the time DOS extenders - which allowed 32-bit code to be run on DOS - were widespread, so it could had been made for DOS. Windows simply happened to be the dominant OS by the time Web became widespread, so Netscape Navigator was mostly used on Windows. However, in no way does it owe its success to Windows, but simply for the growth of Web.
FOSS isn't a counter-culture. Punk is (or was) a counter-culture; FOSS is a software development and distribution model, and is outcompeting the competing proprietary model of Microsoft and its ilk.
Yes, and you seem to not understand them, constantly mixing cause, effect and coincidence.
By the same logic it is pointless to consider the safety of the car at all, because no amount of safety can save you in all conceivable accidents.
And, BTW, there's a small but greater than zero probability that your keyboard will give you a lethal electric shock when you touch it. Consider that before you post your next inane reply, coward.
Actually, I'd say that the two main examples of communism - Russia and China - showed it to be a raging success. Let's not forget that, when communists came to power, Russia was a backwards agrarian society which had just lost World War I and had it's government collapse, and China was little more than a bad joke, having been a partially occupied and economically abused puppet of both West and Japan for years, not to mention having gone through several civil wars and in fact being in the middle of one.
Both states became superpowers under communist rule. Of course they were also dictatorships with a habit of disappearing anyone opposing the rulers, but that had always been true for both; neither China nor Russia had ever been democracies nor even moderately free societies in their histories, and arguably still aren't.
So no, communism hasn't been the unmitigated disaster people often think it was for the states which tried it. The problems associated with it come from the social conditions and traditions prior to the revolution, and the process of revolution itself. For countries which adopted left-leaning policies in a peaceful fashion and didn't succumb to dictatorship and personality cults, they have been extremely helpful; see the Nordic countries, for example.
So no, I don't think "sounds like communism" is a valid counterargument to anything.
The irony here is that free software, by putting the means of production into the hands of the users, pretty much accomplishes the basic idea of communism (which was that labourers, not factory-owners, should get the profit from their labour).
Can you give links to such comments ? Because this is the first time I've ever heard this claim.
In all likelihood it is. Simply because someone is helping you doesn't mean they can't have ulterior motives. And Gates has in the past shown himself to be an utter asshole who cares pursues profit and power no matter how much damage is done in the process - see, for example, the Halloween Documents - so I think it is justified to be somewhat suspicious of his motives in this matter.
No, cue the speculation about how much of Gates's ill-begotten profits would had gone to charity anyway, only through the original holders. Also the cue speculation about how much more charity could we do had Microsoft not slowed down the development of our economies with its illegal and destructive abuses of monopoly power.
Gates got his property from Microsoft, which got it by illegal - as judged by both US and EU courts - practices, with full knowledge and approval - indeed, leadership - of Gates. He is no more a benefactor to humanity than a Mafia boss who donates a few bucks to the Salvation Army would be. At best he's trying to appease his guilty conscience; at worst he's engaged in yet another dirty scheme.
How about making the skill requirements for a driving license strict enough that you don't need to drive a tank to be safe on public roads ?
The box is in plain view - right in front of the election officer, actually - and your name is checked from a list, and stroked out, before you're allowed to put anything there. That's why the ballot needs to be folded, to maintain the secrecy of the vote.
Except the mobster agent who sits in the voting place and watches you will inform the rest of them of your odd behaviour, and since they read Slashdot, they know what it means :).
Here in Finland we just use plain pieces of paper as ballots. You write in the number of the guy you're voting for, fold the paper so it can't be seen, and drop it into the vote box. Since there is no special envelopes or ballots there is no way for anyone to give you pre-sealed ones. They could give you a pre-written paper, but there's no way they can ensure you actually put that into the box, rather than your own.
I guess that shows once again that simplicity is good for security.
Actually, "spooky action at distance" common in quantum mechanics seems to imply that information can and regularly does travel faster than light. Whether this can be used for travel by us macrobes is another matter.
Even if you could, it wouldn't be particularly useful, because I'm kinda attached to my memories and genes :).
When most people say "faster than light travel", they mean "I can take a trip to Alfa Centauri and return before lunch". Rearranging spacetime to make bring said star system within walking distance fits that description well enough.
BTW. This has been proposed before.
Yeah. Some of them don't even know the difference between median and average :).
Do you know of any such JVM exploits - which, in order to be write-once run-everywhere, would not only need to allow one to allow the execution of arbitrary Java classes, bypassing possible security monitor, but also depend on a flaw in the JVM specification, rather than a flaw in the implementation, since implementations differ in different platforms - or are you just speculating in the vein of "nothing's really safe" ?
If it has a lithium-ion battery, it'll likely disinfect itself sooner or later, although the method of disinfection isn't that different...
Since you call marketing people scum, I very much doubt you're one of them, and thus couldn't really give protips on marketing, right ?-)
Anyway, you're wrong. "We can't use Linux, because it has no office applications" is an objection. "Actually, OpenOffice is available for Linux, and Microsoft Office can be made to work through Crossover Office" would be a counterargument to that. Handling objections isn't about conning people, it is about getting them to express their reservations and concerns about the deal and addressing them.
Obviously it's possible to be dishonest in handling objections, but in no way is the process of handling objections in itself evil.
Why assume, when you can just calculate it using soft-body kinetics ?
Or maybe it's just that with thin enough gas, the chances that any of the particles in the passing wave happens to hit you is pretty low.
GPL cannot force anyone to give anything away. How could it ? The recipient hasn't signed anything.
What GPL does is give additional rights to the recipient on certain conditions. Again, the recipient isn't forced to obey; he most certainly isn't forced to give his code away. However, if he doesn't satisfy the conditions of GPL, GPL is no longer in effect, and default copyright law takes force; and that stops you from distributing derived works.
In other words: no one is forcing you to give away your code, but the second you want to give away my code, as-is or combined with your code, I can either refuse outright or give a conditional agreement. GPL is such conditional agreement. It is no more forcing anyone to give away their code than your local food store is robbing you by refusing to give you food without payment.
Yes. At most he should give an anonymous tip to the police. It simply isn't his place to enforce the law. If he tries to, he'll end up abusing his position, even if he's actually well-intentioned; he simply doesn't have the expertise to conduct an investigation properly, nor in all likelihood the time; and even if he gets it right, he's taking unto himself the power to punish, which rightfully belongs to the legal system, not individuals on a crusade who happen to have power over others.
Yes; namely, remove any auction where anyone complains, allowing companies a de facto power to prevent sales in second-hand market. That's what happens when people who have no responsibility for false positives and no way of actually conducting an investigation start playing the police: you get evicted from your apartment just because someone told your landlord you're up to something bad.
That's why I think law enforcement should be left to the professionals, who actually can conduct investigations and have a responsibility to get it right. Someone sells counterfeits on eBay, and this bothers you, don't call eBay, call the cops.
Or holding knife-sellers responsible for Jack the Ripper.
Do you really think a landlord should spy on his customers to make sure they aren't criminals ?
Why ? EBay is not the police, nor any other kind of law enforcement agency. Your statement is similar to requiring ISPs to monitor their user's actions to make sure they aren't violating copyrights, or requiring the landlords to install surveillance cameras to their resident's apartments to make sure no one is doing anything criminal there.
As a foreigner I assure you that I have no access whatsoever to your legislators, nor to my own for that matter. In fact it seems that the situation is essentially identical in all countries. That suggests to me that the RIAA are actually the covert intelligence operation of an invading alien force, sent here to cripple our culture and make it possible to shutdown our technology remotely.
Indeed, it is the most plausible explanation: RIAA and its ilk are actually slime creatures from outer space, and not very nice to the human race. They'll suck your brain out through a straw, you just can't trust those guys. So hide the children, lock the doors, and always watch the skies.
Actually no, they simply give the thugs an excuse to shoot first, or possibly just blow up your house with you in it. You can't outfight an army by yourself, because they have more and better (read: more expensive) weapons than you do.
A firearm is pretty much useless against a tank rolling towards you, yet I'd consider that pretty threatening.
Would it actually matter ? How much energy is wasted because of roughness of ball bearing balls, rather than their malformation under pressure due to elasticity ? In other words, could you get higher savings by making the balls harder, rather than smoother ? And let's not forget the chamber they're supposed to fit into - can that be made perfectly round ?
You know, this is one of those conservations where it probably wasn't such a good idea to post "as a married man" on the top ;)...