.....If I want to run OSX on my homebuilt box, I should be able to.......
Why? Apple is a hardware maker. They make OSX to run on their hardware. Microsoft is a software maker. They make their software to run on any hardware, even on Macs. By Apple making software that will only run on their own hardware, they don't have to worry what kind of junk or fancy capabilities yours or everyone else's hardware has, only their own. That approach will ALWAYS result in a superior overall product than having two manufacturers make a complete computing system. It's also a lot cheaper for them to do it that way. Why should they change their business model just to please the miniscule number of people like you who care to or are able to kluge together their own working computer from an assortment of bits and pieces?
We were on the receiving end of a frivolous lawsuit and the opposing lawyer was a scumbag and MUCH worse and AFAIK still is. For a while he was under the impression we had a tree growing $100 bills and was working hard for his client. When he learned that there was no money tree and none in the till either that he could grab, he told his client, (hapless victim) whom he ad already fleeced for a considerable sum, that they really didn't have a case and dropped the suit. Already in Biblical times, lawyers, tax collectors and sinners were lumped together into one stinky pot. So even in the computer age, nothing is REALLY new here. But we also know a nice lawyer, so those, a minority, do exist also.
(....Being on the receiving end of a subpoena is scary, stressful,.....)
Only true if the opposition is right and you are wrong. Law is complex solely because it made by lawyers.
......sweeping judgments about complex legal issues.......
Complex legal issues are only complex because lawyers have made them complex. Most issues could come down to common sense, but then 99% of all lawyers would be unemployed. Laws are complex only because they are made that way by lawyers and their friends.
Here is an example that illustrates this:
If you go to the US Government Printing Office ( www.gpo.gov ), you can order a complete set of Title 26 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (that's the part written by the IRS), all twenty volumes of it, at the bargain price of $974, shipping included.
According to the US Government Printing Office, it's 13,458 pages in total. The full text of Title 26 of the United States Code (the part written by Congress--available for an additional $179) is a mere 3,387 printed pages, bringing the adjusted gross page count to 16,845. The Bible checks in at 1,291 pages.
In this case, lawyers have gotten the idea that they can make an end run around the liberty that people have always had throughout human history to sell or resell *any* property in their possession. Finally someone is fighting fire with fire (lawyers with lawyers) to ascertain whether that ancient right is still available in regards to certain kinds of possessions.
Why don't they go a bona-fide charitable organization, such as the Red Cross, for example? Of course, after the courts and lawyers are paid off, there isn't all that much money left over in most settlements.
This might also be a good idea for traffic and other fines. That way improving safety would be more than an activity for police rather than tax gatherers in uniform.
......That creates a "copy" in the eyes of the law........
Where did you find that to be true? I did not have time to research that a lot. A quick Google came up with just the opposite. However the reference I found was the High Court in Australia. Did a US court or is there a phrase in US copyright law that says that a copy into RAM constitutes violation of copyright and as such needs permission from the copyright holder?
I believe that a copy needs to be "fixed" in order to be copyrighted. Data in RAM is ephemeral, fleeting and is NOT fixed by any stretch of the imagination. The whole purpose of copyright is to prevent copying and distribution to others, not to restrict use of legitimately paid for material. A copy on a HD remains there unless the user of the HD takes steps to transmit that to others, thereby violating copyright.
If I play a copyrighted song loud enough so all my neighbors can hear it and they enjoy it, is that a copyright violation?
(.....you don't need to copy a book to read it.......)
By the reasoning that copying into RAM is a copyright violation, reading a book then could be construed as copying the pages into your brain, which is sort of a computer, at least in a sense.
.....after all, a kid can also forge your signature on paper......
Yes, but it is much easier to prove a signature was forged than to determine who clicked a mouse. Some people's computer's get used by many other's. Unlike determining who drove a car, it's nearly impossible to determine who did what, when to a computer. A log file may tell when the software or whatever first appeared on a computer, but says nothing about WHO put it there. Computers are also bought and sold. Very few people erase the HD completely. If I buy such a computer, am I bound by the so called "license" terms that the original owner supposedly has agreed to? I wonder what the court would have decided if Mr. Zeidenberg had bought that computer from some other person and then used that software he found thereon in the manner the originators of said software objected to? After all he never clicked a so called agreement.
.....and still, neither of those options grants you any form of ownership of the software........
When I or even a ten year old go to the store and BUY a copy of *anything*, including software, they own THAT COPY to do with whatever they want. No law and no judge can say otherwise. What makes these software and other content makers think that their crap is to be treated differently than ALL other goods we buy every day? Potato growers don't try to manufacture "agreements" that tell people how to cook their potatoes do they? So WHAT body of law gives software makers the right to manufacture out of thin air such nonsense for their garbage they foist on consumers. How is it they get away with long lists of disclaimers about their products and then call these "agreements" or "licenses"? If I buy a loaf of bread do I have to agree to a "license" as to what I may put on my sandwiches? Where is there a LAW, passed by a legislature that says that software is only "licensed". Copyright laws basically says my rights to make copies are limited in certain specific ways, for a specific length of time. Is the word "license" ever mentioned in copyright law in connection of how I may use each legally obtained copy of a book, program or other copyrightable stuff?
.......If software was sold instead of licensed then the copyrights should transfer also........
Software is no different than any other commodity. When you go into a store you can BUY one or more copies of Windows or whatever. Copyright law says basically that you are not allowed to copy of distribute each of these BOUGHT copies. Other than that LAW, you are permitted to do anything you want with with THOSE legally bought copies. You can flush them, burn them or install them on one computer for each copy you bought. Whatever else is printed in or on the package, or what happens after you open it, is no more binding on you than what it says on a package of breakfast cereal. The difference is ONLY that copyright law applies to software. Software, music movies are all commodities no different than any other stuff you buy and use. Software is like a book. You can read it, loan it, burn it, tear pages out of it and wipe your rear end with them, whatever. The publisher of the book has no right to restrict you in how you use their book, other than what copyright laws says. Period. Software, music and CDs are no different.
Now two or more parties may at times sign a MUTUAL agreement where they may agree to certain things about that book or any other item of commerce. That means each party is qualified, willingly and knowingly promising to abide by whatever is mutually decided. Each party is identified by NAME and gets a signed copy of the agreement, to prove if necessary, that there indeed exists a set of promises that all parties mentioned therein will honor.
When anyone walks into a store and buys an item, the ONLY agreement is that the store keeper agrees to hand over a given piece of merchandise for an agreed upon sum of money. It makes NO difference what the particular item may be.
.....You entered into an agreement with the dealer and you are bound by it.........
Where is there a LAW that says that a mouse click or ripping some plastic wrapping constitutes an agreement? If I SIGN an agreement on PAPER with the car dealer, then that is a PROVABLE agreement.
The court never clarified, nor is there a law that says clicking a mouse constitutes an agreement. For one thing, a ten year old kid can click a mouse, but cannot enter into an agreement. How can anyone tell whether it was NOT a ten year old that clicked the mouse or ripped the plastic? All REAL contracts MUST be according to LAW. And the law says that not everybody is qualified to enter into legally enforceable agreements. There fore all the EULA's are wishful thinking on the part of the corporate lawyers.
.....They better have an Internetconnection then......
Requiring and Internet connection in order to use or install software is a singularly bad idea. We bought some software for the controlling of some equipment. The worst thing that can be done to a control computer is for it to even get within shouting distance of an Internet connection.
If your software will not run or install COMPLETELY stand alone, you better rethink that. It should come on CD/downlaod image, and the Install Code, if any, be printed on the CD or emailed to the customer. If the customer is a business, they will likely order as many copies as they need. Consider a Site licensing scheme. A consumer is less likely to order several copies and may install that one on several computers. Allowing for two, one at home and one for travel may work for you.
True pirates are the ones that try to make money with what you create. If enough money is to be made, ALL your gyrations to protect your software by technical means are mostly futile against those kinds of crooks. (Microsoft are you listening?) All these technical shenanigans only are a burden on the paying customers. The only way to fight that kind of wholesale crookedness is to have a good legal department. Even then, it may not be worth it.
......Sure your opinion is valid. It's also completely and demostratably wrong........
Opinions or beliefs will always be only opinions or beliefs. They cannot ever be either right or wrong, only opinions forever. Only facts (so called) can be shown to be correct or not. Now many try to sell their opinions as fact.
The fact is that we and other life forms exists. That can be demonstrated. People have different opinions and beliefs on how we and life got here. Just because someone is labeled a scientist or priest, doesn't validate their opinions as known facts than can be demonstrated right or wrong.
Mao was right. Power in THIS world does come from the barrel of a gun. The purpose of a gun is always the same. It is to kill someone or at least threaten to kill someone if that person doesn't do the will of the one who has the gun. Anytime anyone decides to force another person to do or not do something, the one with the greater force will always win. As long as a large number of people have guns, rather than only a few, the few with guns cannot impose their will on the many. Therefore, for a democracy to remain one, the many have to be able to have enough guns to resist the few who would want to impose their will. A dictator can never come to power, unless he first disarms those he wants power over.
I would keep data I did not want looked at by others on a small bootable HD that could not be found and the existence of which would not be known. Nobody would even come looking for it. The computer they confiscated would only contain innocuous or perhaps decoy erroneous information.
..... when you see the FBI at your door going after all your pirated MP3s, I'd just say don't bet on it to work...........
I think a disk drive tossed into our hot wood stove the moment an unknown knock came to the door, would be useless to the FBI/KGB/CIA/NSA or anyone else of equal expertise. The stove works well on old papers and credit cards also. Everybody with deep dark secrets needs a good wood stove. As a side benefit, it'll keep the house nice and warm for cheap.
.....Also impractical: How do you plan to applic that "quick and strong electrical charge"?.......
I'd treat such a chip the same way as I do with old credit cards and other information I need to get rid of. A wood stove with a good hot fire inside does it every time. It's very quick and will get rid of stuff, before anyone can smash the door down. Better yet of course is to have nothing incriminating by always being a good boy.
I'd suggest two computers. One for all the innocent stuff that the spooks know about and another secret computer that is ONLY used for things that they are not supposed to know about. They'll find and confiscate the "innocent" computer, spend a lot of time on it and only learn that it doesn't contain any data they can use. Meanwhile, the "guilty" computer is disposed of where no human can ever find it.
There are also some pretty solid encryption techniques that even those with near infinite resources (governments?) have a hard time deciphering. Being able to read a bunch of ones and zeros with an electron microscope is useless if the meaning thereof cannot be figured out.
.....Invent one that will survive cold and snoplows......
It exists already. It's called reflecting paint. We get snow here in the mountains and they use special paint that works at least after the snow melts off the roads. They also have breakaway, 4 ft tall plastic reflector sticks on the shoulders of many roads.
.....You can't imagine what it's like until you've seen it for yourself......
You can still see that, or at least something close, in a planetarium. The next best thing, if you have a computer, you can download some software for free at:
www.stellarium.org
Besides viewing the computer screen, this software will also allow you you to set up a planetarium if you have a projector and can rig up a dome shaped screen. It will also control certain telescope mounts.
It's not likely that the skies over any large city will ever be the way Galileo saw them, long before the invention of electric power generators and electric lights.
We live in southern Oregon, near the coast and do get to see a full starry sky. The Milky Way and all the stars stand out against a black sky. The glow from Medford, about 45 miles away is mostly blocked by the Mountains.
The eclipse of the moon on August 28 was also a special treat for which we got up at 2AM. Living in the city has its benefits and drawbacks and so does living in the countryside. Most people are not able to earn a living in the country and must live in brightly lit cities.
......because copyright is not a natural right........
If someone writes and records a song and you then sell that song to others, do you think it is your natural right? Should you be allowed to make copies and then sell that same song, even though you did not have anything to do with bringing that song into existence?
If you copy that song to play on separate playback devices, you are not getting an income or other benefit from someone else's work. That action should be allowed. It doesn't deprive the originator of a sale. Someone claiming that their copyright was infringed upon should have to prove that the alleged activity deprived them of income they would have had, if the alleged infringement had not taken place. Somebody putting the copyrighted work on the Internet, certainly deprives the copyright owner of benefit. Someone ripping the songs onto an iPod does not.
So if a ten year old kid clicks a mouse in order to install and play some dumb game on his computer he enters into an agreement with somebody? That is BS, since minors are not permitted to enter into any LEGAL contracts. How does a mouse click differentiate whether a mouse was clicked by someone over 18 or not? Nobody is bound by something they never agreed to.
......There's nothing wrong with being dependent on other people though - we're a social species.......
True enough, as long as I get to choose who I am dependent on and who on me. Dependence on the state is a forced, one way relationship. I can no longer choose.
(....it's politically difficult to convince people.....)
The biggest fallacious assumption made by public transit advocates is that many, if not most people's time isn't worth much. We used to live in the SF Bay area, and even there, what was a 25 min car trip would be a two hour ride on a bus. With transit, I had to adjust my schedule to travel when the buses did, but not with the cars. It has little to do with politics, other than convincing people to trade their time for benefits not readily apparent to them. A bicycle served me much better.
In the small town setting where we live today, we know the people we depend on for goods and services as neighbors. Even miles away know one another. Dishonest merchants and lazy workers soon are found out and don't last long around here. We know who has what equipment and expertise and depend on each other. We don't have to look in the Yellow Pages for a doctor or a plumber, we just ask our neighbors, they know. Much of the town knows that I can get most recalcitrant computers going again.
.....given that driving is in most areas a harmful vanity (compare with public transit) and society is better served when people don't drive.....
That's why many who feel like that, would like nothing better than to herd EVERYONE as much as possible into the large, crowded ghettos otherwise known as big cities. There it is much easier to make people utterly dependent on Government. Try having a decent vegetable garden when living in a high rise of a large city. Of course, there it is also possible to force people to be dependent on public transit, which is cost effective in such places.
....Make the post office responsible for mail fraud.....
Actually they do. It's one of the jobs of Postal Inspectors. There's a whole body of law specifically dealing with crimes involving the postal system and their enforcement. In some counties, the communications infrastructure, as well as roads and railroads are owned and run by the government. In the US, the Post Office is mandated in the Constitution and was a cabinet level department of the US Government.
.....Seems rather absurd way to deal with the problem to me........
It's not really new nor absurd. Governments have been using business to enforce all sorts of laws. Tax laws, such as withholding, immigration laws, such as requiring businesses to verify the identity of job applicants and employees, all sorts of anti-terrorism regulations for transportation businesses. So big deal, what's one more kind of business getting forced into being a policer of government edicts, in this case, for enforcing specially purchased laws? We are all getting moved towards iron fisted, universal, eventually, world wide, control of even the minutest details of our lives. Forcing all businesses to participate in law enforcement has been going on for a long time. The bigger business are either glad to participate in this, or don't really care, since they are easily able to and always do pass the costs onto the customers. The smaller mom and pop businesses, which cannot pass their costs on as readily, either die or bought up wholesale for cheap by the big boys. The end result is higher costs for everybody and less choice in the marketplace. No laws are ever passed anywhere that in the sum total, DON'T cost the population as a whole more money.
...... each statement about the truth-status of Biblical content is spoken by human lips.......
If you are accused of crime, say murder, you and the prosecution are dependent on witnesses. If there are say four witnesses whose testimony matches quite well, saying they saw you strangle the victim, and this testimony of ordinary people is generally BELIEVED by the jury, you get punished, as the law decrees. There is no absolute PROOF you did it, but the jury believed the witnesses. In court, it is assumed that witnesses are truthful. Peter, one of the 12 disciples, writes in 2Peter 1:16 that he and the other disciples are eyewitnesses, not some kind of hearsay.
Now if you come up with four witnesses that say the saw you far away from the scene of the crime, then the witnesses on both sides face cross examination. The object thereof is to determine the credibility of the witnesses and their testimony. Dr. Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of the Harvard Law School, wrote THE book on the rules of evidence, as it relates to courts of law. Every law student must still study it today. You might want to read a little treatise about evidence he wrote called "Testimony of the Evangelists". It is in the public domain or you can buy it from Amazon. There is a summary of it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_the_Evan gelist
His original goal for doing this was to try to discredit the Gospels and especially the Resurrection, by showing that the testimony of these four witnesses is not likely to hold up in court. He became convinced that the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as given in a written deposition about Jesus and His claim to being God was truthful and sincere. He also found them to be of sound mind. As a result He too came to believe their testimony in the same way that a judge or jury might in a court of law.
So, if you are willing, and that's the key, willing, to examine the written evidence of God's human witnesses as any court of law accepts witnesses, you too may come to a different conclusion. As in any court, you must ONLY use the evidence presented, not what you may have heard elsewhere.
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.....If I want to run OSX on my homebuilt box, I should be able to.......
Why? Apple is a hardware maker. They make OSX to run on their hardware. Microsoft is a software maker. They make their software to run on any hardware, even on Macs. By Apple making software that will only run on their own hardware, they don't have to worry what kind of junk or fancy capabilities yours or everyone else's hardware has, only their own. That approach will ALWAYS result in a superior overall product than having two manufacturers make a complete computing system. It's also a lot cheaper for them to do it that way. Why should they change their business model just to please the miniscule number of people like you who care to or are able to kluge together their own working computer from an assortment of bits and pieces?
.....Not all lawyers are greedy scumbags........
We were on the receiving end of a frivolous lawsuit and the opposing lawyer was a scumbag and MUCH worse and AFAIK still is. For a while he was under the impression we had a tree growing $100 bills and was working hard for his client. When he learned that there was no money tree and none in the till either that he could grab, he told his client, (hapless victim) whom he ad already fleeced for a considerable sum, that they really didn't have a case and dropped the suit. Already in Biblical times, lawyers, tax collectors and sinners were lumped together into one stinky pot. So even in the computer age, nothing is REALLY new here. But we also know a nice lawyer, so those, a minority, do exist also.
(....Being on the receiving end of a subpoena is scary, stressful,.....)
Only true if the opposition is right and you are wrong. Law is complex solely because it made by lawyers.
......sweeping judgments about complex legal issues.......
Complex legal issues are only complex because lawyers have made them complex. Most issues could come down to common sense, but then 99% of all lawyers would be unemployed. Laws are complex only because they are made that way by lawyers and their friends.
Here is an example that illustrates this:
If you go to the US Government Printing Office ( www.gpo.gov ), you can order a complete set of Title 26 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (that's the part written by the IRS), all twenty volumes of it, at the bargain price of $974, shipping included.
According to the US Government Printing Office, it's 13,458 pages in total. The full text of Title 26 of the United States Code (the part written by Congress--available for an additional $179) is a mere 3,387 printed pages, bringing the adjusted gross page count to 16,845. The Bible checks in at 1,291 pages.
In this case, lawyers have gotten the idea that they can make an end run around the liberty that people have always had throughout human history to sell or resell *any* property in their possession. Finally someone is fighting fire with fire (lawyers with lawyers) to ascertain whether that ancient right is still available in regards to certain kinds of possessions.
.....why don't they go to the government?......
Why don't they go a bona-fide charitable organization, such as the Red Cross, for example? Of course, after the courts and lawyers are paid off, there isn't all that much money left over in most settlements.
This might also be a good idea for traffic and other fines. That way improving safety would be more than an activity for police rather than tax gatherers in uniform.
......That creates a "copy" in the eyes of the law........
Where did you find that to be true? I did not have time to research that a lot. A quick Google came up with just the opposite. However the reference I found was the High Court in Australia. Did a US court or is there a phrase in US copyright law that says that a copy into RAM constitutes violation of copyright and as such needs permission from the copyright holder?
I believe that a copy needs to be "fixed" in order to be copyrighted. Data in RAM is ephemeral, fleeting and is NOT fixed by any stretch of the imagination. The whole purpose of copyright is to prevent copying and distribution to others, not to restrict use of legitimately paid for material. A copy on a HD remains there unless the user of the HD takes steps to transmit that to others, thereby violating copyright.
If I play a copyrighted song loud enough so all my neighbors can hear it and they enjoy it, is that a copyright violation?
(.....you don't need to copy a book to read it.......)
By the reasoning that copying into RAM is a copyright violation, reading a book then could be construed as copying the pages into your brain, which is sort of a computer, at least in a sense.
.....after all, a kid can also forge your signature on paper......
Yes, but it is much easier to prove a signature was forged than to determine who clicked a mouse. Some people's computer's get used by many other's. Unlike determining who drove a car, it's nearly impossible to determine who did what, when to a computer. A log file may tell when the software or whatever first appeared on a computer, but says nothing about WHO put it there. Computers are also bought and sold. Very few people erase the HD completely. If I buy such a computer, am I bound by the so called "license" terms that the original owner supposedly has agreed to? I wonder what the court would have decided if Mr. Zeidenberg had bought that computer from some other person and then used that software he found thereon in the manner the originators of said software objected to? After all he never clicked a so called agreement.
.....and still, neither of those options grants you any form of ownership of the software........
When I or even a ten year old go to the store and BUY a copy of *anything*, including software, they own THAT COPY to do with whatever they want. No law and no judge can say otherwise. What makes these software and other content makers think that their crap is to be treated differently than ALL other goods we buy every day? Potato growers don't try to manufacture "agreements" that tell people how to cook their potatoes do they? So WHAT body of law gives software makers the right to manufacture out of thin air such nonsense for their garbage they foist on consumers. How is it they get away with long lists of disclaimers about their products and then call these "agreements" or "licenses"? If I buy a loaf of bread do I have to agree to a "license" as to what I may put on my sandwiches? Where is there a LAW, passed by a legislature that says that software is only "licensed". Copyright laws basically says my rights to make copies are limited in certain specific ways, for a specific length of time. Is the word "license" ever mentioned in copyright law in connection of how I may use each legally obtained copy of a book, program or other copyrightable stuff?
.......If software was sold instead of licensed then the copyrights should transfer also........
Software is no different than any other commodity. When you go into a store you can BUY one or more copies of Windows or whatever. Copyright law says basically that you are not allowed to copy of distribute each of these BOUGHT copies. Other than that LAW, you are permitted to do anything you want with with THOSE legally bought copies. You can flush them, burn them or install them on one computer for each copy you bought. Whatever else is printed in or on the package, or what happens after you open it, is no more binding on you than what it says on a package of breakfast cereal. The difference is ONLY that copyright law applies to software. Software, music movies are all commodities no different than any other stuff you buy and use. Software is like a book. You can read it, loan it, burn it, tear pages out of it and wipe your rear end with them, whatever. The publisher of the book has no right to restrict you in how you use their book, other than what copyright laws says. Period. Software, music and CDs are no different.
Now two or more parties may at times sign a MUTUAL agreement where they may agree to certain things about that book or any other item of commerce. That means each party is qualified, willingly and knowingly promising to abide by whatever is mutually decided. Each party is identified by NAME and gets a signed copy of the agreement, to prove if necessary, that there indeed exists a set of promises that all parties mentioned therein will honor.
When anyone walks into a store and buys an item, the ONLY agreement is that the store keeper agrees to hand over a given piece of merchandise for an agreed upon sum of money. It makes NO difference what the particular item may be.
.....You entered into an agreement with the dealer and you are bound by it. ........
Where is there a LAW that says that a mouse click or ripping some plastic wrapping constitutes an agreement? If I SIGN an agreement on PAPER with the car dealer, then that is a PROVABLE agreement.
The court never clarified, nor is there a law that says clicking a mouse constitutes an agreement. For one thing, a ten year old kid can click a mouse, but cannot enter into an agreement. How can anyone tell whether it was NOT a ten year old that clicked the mouse or ripped the plastic? All REAL contracts MUST be according to LAW. And the law says that not everybody is qualified to enter into legally enforceable agreements. There fore all the EULA's are wishful thinking on the part of the corporate lawyers.
.....They better have an Internetconnection then......
Requiring and Internet connection in order to use or install software is a singularly bad idea. We bought some software for the controlling of some equipment. The worst thing that can be done to a control computer is for it to even get within shouting distance of an Internet connection.
If your software will not run or install COMPLETELY stand alone, you better rethink that. It should come on CD/downlaod image, and the Install Code, if any, be printed on the CD or emailed to the customer. If the customer is a business, they will likely order as many copies as they need. Consider a Site licensing scheme. A consumer is less likely to order several copies and may install that one on several computers. Allowing for two, one at home and one for travel may work for you.
True pirates are the ones that try to make money with what you create. If enough money is to be made, ALL your gyrations to protect your software by technical means are mostly futile against those kinds of crooks. (Microsoft are you listening?) All these technical shenanigans only are a burden on the paying customers. The only way to fight that kind of wholesale crookedness is to have a good legal department. Even then, it may not be worth it.
......Sure your opinion is valid. It's also completely and demostratably wrong........
Opinions or beliefs will always be only opinions or beliefs. They cannot ever be either right or wrong, only opinions forever. Only facts (so called) can be shown to be correct or not. Now many try to sell their opinions as fact.
The fact is that we and other life forms exists. That can be demonstrated. People have different opinions and beliefs on how we and life got here. Just because someone is labeled a scientist or priest, doesn't validate their opinions as known facts than can be demonstrated right or wrong.
.....victims can never be criminals.......
Mao was right. Power in THIS world does come from the barrel of a gun. The purpose of a gun is always the same. It is to kill someone or at least threaten to kill someone if that person doesn't do the will of the one who has the gun. Anytime anyone decides to force another person to do or not do something, the one with the greater force will always win. As long as a large number of people have guns, rather than only a few, the few with guns cannot impose their will on the many. Therefore, for a democracy to remain one, the many have to be able to have enough guns to resist the few who would want to impose their will. A dictator can never come to power, unless he first disarms those he wants power over.
...... If I were a über-paranoid,......
I would keep data I did not want looked at by others on a small bootable HD that could not be found and the existence of which would not be known. Nobody would even come looking for it. The computer they confiscated would only contain innocuous or perhaps decoy erroneous information.
..... when you see the FBI at your door going after all your pirated MP3s, I'd just say don't bet on it to work...........
I think a disk drive tossed into our hot wood stove the moment an unknown knock came to the door, would be useless to the FBI/KGB/CIA/NSA or anyone else of equal expertise. The stove works well on old papers and credit cards also. Everybody with deep dark secrets needs a good wood stove. As a side benefit, it'll keep the house nice and warm for cheap.
.....Also impractical: How do you plan to applic that "quick and strong electrical charge"?.......
I'd treat such a chip the same way as I do with old credit cards and other information I need to get rid of. A wood stove with a good hot fire inside does it every time. It's very quick and will get rid of stuff, before anyone can smash the door down. Better yet of course is to have nothing incriminating by always being a good boy.
......I'd suggest Flash disks.......
I'd suggest two computers. One for all the innocent stuff that the spooks know about and another secret computer that is ONLY used for things that they are not supposed to know about. They'll find and confiscate the "innocent" computer, spend a lot of time on it and only learn that it doesn't contain any data they can use. Meanwhile, the "guilty" computer is disposed of where no human can ever find it.
There are also some pretty solid encryption techniques that even those with near infinite resources (governments?) have a hard time deciphering. Being able to read a bunch of ones and zeros with an electron microscope is useless if the meaning thereof cannot be figured out.
.....Invent one that will survive cold and snoplows......
It exists already. It's called reflecting paint. We get snow here in the mountains and they use special paint that works at least after the snow melts off the roads. They also have breakaway, 4 ft tall plastic reflector sticks on the shoulders of many roads.
.....You can't imagine what it's like until you've seen it for yourself......
You can still see that, or at least something close, in a planetarium. The next best thing, if you have a computer, you can download some software for free at:
www.stellarium.org
Besides viewing the computer screen, this software will also allow you you to set up a planetarium if you have a projector and can rig up a dome shaped screen. It will also control certain telescope mounts.
It's not likely that the skies over any large city will ever be the way Galileo saw them, long before the invention of electric power generators and electric lights.
We live in southern Oregon, near the coast and do get to see a full starry sky. The Milky Way and all the stars stand out against a black sky. The glow from Medford, about 45 miles away is mostly blocked by the Mountains.
The eclipse of the moon on August 28 was also a special treat for which we got up at 2AM. Living in the city has its benefits and drawbacks and so does living in the countryside. Most people are not able to earn a living in the country and must live in brightly lit cities.
......because copyright is not a natural right........
If someone writes and records a song and you then sell that song to others, do you think it is your natural right? Should you be allowed to make copies and then sell that same song, even though you did not have anything to do with bringing that song into existence?
If you copy that song to play on separate playback devices, you are not getting an income or other benefit from someone else's work. That action should be allowed. It doesn't deprive the originator of a sale. Someone claiming that their copyright was infringed upon should have to prove that the alleged activity deprived them of income they would have had, if the alleged infringement had not taken place. Somebody putting the copyrighted work on the Internet, certainly deprives the copyright owner of benefit. Someone ripping the songs onto an iPod does not.
....If the license you've agreed to.....
So if a ten year old kid clicks a mouse in order to install and play some dumb game on his computer he enters into an agreement with somebody? That is BS, since minors are not permitted to enter into any LEGAL contracts. How does a mouse click differentiate whether a mouse was clicked by someone over 18 or not? Nobody is bound by something they never agreed to.
......There's nothing wrong with being dependent on other people though - we're a social species.......
.....)
True enough, as long as I get to choose who I am dependent on and who on me. Dependence on the state is a forced, one way relationship. I can no longer choose.
(....it's politically difficult to convince people
The biggest fallacious assumption made by public transit advocates is that many, if not most people's time isn't worth much. We used to live in the SF Bay area, and even there, what was a 25 min car trip would be a two hour ride on a bus. With transit, I had to adjust my schedule to travel when the buses did, but not with the cars. It has little to do with politics, other than convincing people to trade their time for benefits not readily apparent to them. A bicycle served me much better.
In the small town setting where we live today, we know the people we depend on for goods and services as neighbors. Even miles away know one another. Dishonest merchants and lazy workers soon are found out and don't last long around here. We know who has what equipment and expertise and depend on each other. We don't have to look in the Yellow Pages for a doctor or a plumber, we just ask our neighbors, they know. Much of the town knows that I can get most recalcitrant computers going again.
.....given that driving is in most areas a harmful vanity (compare with public transit) and society is better served when people don't drive.....
That's why many who feel like that, would like nothing better than to herd EVERYONE as much as possible into the large, crowded ghettos otherwise known as big cities. There it is much easier to make people utterly dependent on Government. Try having a decent vegetable garden when living in a high rise of a large city. Of course, there it is also possible to force people to be dependent on public transit, which is cost effective in such places.
....Make the post office responsible for mail fraud.....
Actually they do. It's one of the jobs of Postal Inspectors. There's a whole body of law specifically dealing with crimes involving the postal system and their enforcement. In some counties, the communications infrastructure, as well as roads and railroads are owned and run by the government. In the US, the Post Office is mandated in the Constitution and was a cabinet level department of the US Government.
.....Seems rather absurd way to deal with the problem to me. .......
It's not really new nor absurd. Governments have been using business to enforce all sorts of laws. Tax laws, such as withholding, immigration laws, such as requiring businesses to verify the identity of job applicants and employees, all sorts of anti-terrorism regulations for transportation businesses. So big deal, what's one more kind of business getting forced into being a policer of government edicts, in this case, for enforcing specially purchased laws? We are all getting moved towards iron fisted, universal, eventually, world wide, control of even the minutest details of our lives. Forcing all businesses to participate in law enforcement has been going on for a long time. The bigger business are either glad to participate in this, or don't really care, since they are easily able to and always do pass the costs onto the customers. The smaller mom and pop businesses, which cannot pass their costs on as readily, either die or bought up wholesale for cheap by the big boys. The end result is higher costs for everybody and less choice in the marketplace. No laws are ever passed anywhere that in the sum total, DON'T cost the population as a whole more money.
...... each statement about the truth-status of Biblical content is spoken by human lips.......
n gelist
If you are accused of crime, say murder, you and the prosecution are dependent on witnesses. If there are say four witnesses whose testimony matches quite well, saying they saw you strangle the victim, and this testimony of ordinary people is generally BELIEVED by the jury, you get punished, as the law decrees. There is no absolute PROOF you did it, but the jury believed the witnesses. In court, it is assumed that witnesses are truthful. Peter, one of the 12 disciples, writes in 2Peter 1:16 that he and the other disciples are eyewitnesses, not some kind of hearsay.
Now if you come up with four witnesses that say the saw you far away from the scene of the crime, then the witnesses on both sides face cross examination. The object thereof is to determine the credibility of the witnesses and their testimony. Dr. Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of the Harvard Law School, wrote THE book on the rules of evidence, as it relates to courts of law. Every law student must still study it today. You might want to read a little treatise about evidence he wrote called "Testimony of the Evangelists". It is in the public domain or you can buy it from Amazon. There is a summary of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_the_Eva
His original goal for doing this was to try to discredit the Gospels and especially the Resurrection, by showing that the testimony of these four witnesses is not likely to hold up in court. He became convinced that the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as given in a written deposition about Jesus and His claim to being God was truthful and sincere. He also found them to be of sound mind. As a result He too came to believe their testimony in the same way that a judge or jury might in a court of law.
So, if you are willing, and that's the key, willing, to examine the written evidence of God's human witnesses as any court of law accepts witnesses, you too may come to a different conclusion. As in any court, you must ONLY use the evidence presented, not what you may have heard elsewhere.