The iPhone's success is due to a rabid Apple fanbase, and a very nice interface (graphically and with the capacitive touchscreen, both of which are coming to Android phones within the next quarter).
This is true. I think the real reason for iPhone's success, is Apple understood the importance of having a huge supply of Applications to sell on its iTunes App Store. So during the initial launch of the iPhone, Apple announced that a venture capitalist was offering venture funding for new iPhone cottage industry.
I know the venture funding was a major factor, since I know several software developers who applied and purchased an iPhone solely to develop on.
I love my myTouch. I'm surprise to find myself saying that, but I'm currently TDY (working far away from office) and the 850 MHz (voice) roaming works so much better than both the Nokia and Motorola quad-band phones that I retired. My GSM phone is working better than my coworkers CDMA phones here. I believe it's from the way GSM bands were originally auctioned off by the FCC which allowed local telcos in ultra rural areas to get into the wireless industry.
The Wi-Fi access, outside of the edge network isn't bad either...
On my way to the middle of nowhere, T-Mobile had 3G networks at my airports so that was nice. Of course as with all wireless carriers, your mileage may vary.
BTW, I disabled data roaming and depend solely on Wi-Fi at the moment. Between the hotel and the hangar, I haven't missed the mobile network.
The article totally misses the point that the iPhone has been out for quite a while, and Apple has dumped a lot of money into marketing. As for Google branding, the android phones I have have "with Google" printed on the phone.
Oh I don't work for T-Mobile, but I've been a customer of theirs since they bought out my local GSM provider many years ago. As with all long term relationships I had some bad moments and some good moments..
Let me start off by saying, brandishing a weapon of any kind is usually a very bad idea. Most encounters can be defused, but once a weapon is introduced the instinctual "fight or flight (flee)" behavior kicks in and it usually doesn't end well...
Actually firing that weapon at someone in much of anything other than the defense of your life = murder or attempted murder. You haven't the right to respond to misdemeanors with deadly force.
I did not disparage or mean to disparage any of the heroic work performed by the US Coast Guard and the Army medical staff. In fact, I really like the guys that operate just down the road from me (They're the base the helicopters operated from).
While the Coast Guard did an excellent job responding to the emergency including setting up the field hospital at the airport with the help of the Louisiana Hospital Association and the Army, it doesn't excuse the poor management of the recovery efforts performed by the agencies that I mentioned in my previous post.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The first amendment protects our ability to speak out against the government, practice any religion we desire since there can't be an official religion sanctioned by the government, make public any misgivings or objectionable findings about our government in the press, our ability to assemble to protest any injustices performed by our government, and petition the government to correct any injustice.
The founding fathers didn't say anything to prevent the state governments from doing it, luckily the Virginia constitution states:
Section 12. Freedom of speech and of the press; right peaceably to assemble, and to petition.
That the freedoms of speech and of the press are among the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained except by despotic governments; that any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; that the General Assembly shall not pass any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, nor the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.
Please notice the "that any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right" part of the state constitution.
IANAL but it appears that if the intent of her blog was to stalk or harass a police officer (or anybody else for that matter), she enjoys no constitutional protection from any legal ramifications of her speech. In addition, if her blog endangers a life of another individual she definitely doesn't enjoy any constitutional protection.
As someone who served on the disaster committee of a regional American Red Cross chapter and worked along side two county EMA directors as well as the state EMA, I would politely disagree with you.
You will find a VHF and HF amateur radio station at most county EMA offices and the state EMA office. You will also find them at all three weather service offices that serves my state. Why? Because most amateur radio operators that volunteer to help us out are willing to attend a class on how we expected them to help us. They are courteous and professional, and most importantly they are already "out in the field" and FREE labor. The fact that they have the equipment capable of providing reliable long distance communications is a bonus.
I don't know how wealthy your local government is, but ours prefer to use the professional emergency responders to handle law enforcement, curfews, medical emergencies, and leave the "health and welfare" communications (which include status updates from shelters and staging areas) to the amateur radio operators. During a large scale disaster, the professional labor pool quickly becomes inadequate and we are always looking for trained volunteers in addition to the radio operators.
Amateur radio operators also help the national weather service by participating in SKYWARN. During the 90's they helped confirm weather warnings issued while nexrad (next generation radar) was being deploy. Today, they still serve a purpose by being the eyes and ears of the national weather service.
And I would MUCH rather trust the organization of a relief effort to trained professionals -- like state, federal, and military emergency staff -- to a bunch of "volunteers."
Wow. I mean wow what a very ignorant statement.
Obviously you don't know that most first responders during a disaster are volunteers. I will just briefly mention how ineffective FEMA, the state of Louisiana, the Orleans parish, and the city of New Orleans were during the recovery efforts of Katrina. Thank God there were church groups, American Red Cross, Amateur Radio operators, and other voluntary relief agencies or the disaster could have been much worse.
Usually there are more falaties after the disaster strikes than during. Thankfully we have a community of volunteers willing to help mitigate the danger. May I add at their own expense and peril.
A friend of mine owns a fabric store. You wouldn't believe the number of people who would use a credit card to purchase items less than $1.50. She actually loses money on these transactions, but comes out ahead when she sells fabric by the yard (or better yet by the spool). She has no choice on the matter, since her bank agreement forbids any minimum purchases or additional fees. She doesn't want to raise the prices because it penalizes the people who uses cash.
She likes checks from her regular customers. She seldom has a NSF (non-sufficient funds) and when it happens the customer usually takes care of the bank fees. Best of all, she doesn't have to share the proceeds with some financial network.
Besides I see nothing wrong with "Cash only" establishments. I think it's ridiculous for it to become acceptable that VISA or Mastercard get a cut of every monetary transaction.
To be fair, it could be your ego that makes you think otherwise.
All kidding aside, the fact that more harm than good comes from being promiscuous seems to indicate that the reproductive pool would benefit if people would be a little more selective with who they fool around with.
Also I think the phrase "STOP FUCKING PEOPLE WHO AREN'T YOUR WIFE/GIRLFRIED/SIGNIFIGANT OTHER!" doesn't rule out polygamy. More like stop having one-night-stands with anonymous women (or men). I didn't see any quantity qualifier in the statement.
I would be careful on calling another person's culture stupid... While you shared your opinion on the matter, I know you would not like to know my opinion on societies that subjugate women.
Nobody likes hurricanes. They cause massive destruction and they kill people. But they are part of nature.
I agree. I also worry about the amount of rainfall that would be lost if Bill Gates plan actually works. Believe it or not there are some useful aspects to a hurricane and more importantly tropical storms.
I think a better solution would be to act a little smarter about where we build our population centers,
Here I sort of agree. We should be smarter about where we build our population centers, but more importantly HOW we build our population centers near the gulf.
and do not offer insurance to people who choose to build in a location where hurricanes are known to strike on a somewhat regular basis.
I totally disagree. Most of the hurricane's damage is from storm surge not wind. So we should limit the amount of construction on shores and surrounding low elevation areas. However your insurance idea, which by the way is already being implemented, penalizes people who live in the same area (county) but built smartly and rarely have catastrophic damage done on their property.
I did not file any insurance claims for hurricane Katrina. Most of the damage from Katrina was FLOOD damage which isn't covered by regular home insurance anyway. But I pay 4 times the state average for insurance, and have a storm deductible based on a percentage of my home's market value. So not only do I pay more, I am less likely to be able to even file a claim. Basically the existence of hurricanes has given insurance companies political cover to rip me off.
There are folks in northern Alabama who have hail damage on their roofs almost every year from the spring storm season, and yet I hear no calls to raise their insurance nor limit the coverage from wind or hail damage. They have a history of tornadoes touching down and wiping out neighborhoods and commercial property, yet their insurance remains unaffected. There are areas in this country where people are susceptible to lose their homes from fires, mudslides, or tornadoes on a yearly basis and yet I hear no calls to relocate them.
Pardon me but you can take that "offer no insurance" idea and shove it up your arse...
You have it backwards. He wants to reduce nuclear weapons, not missiles.
Please read the actual article. Here's an excerpt:
"Under Monday's agreement, the Start successor treaty would reduce the ceiling on strategic warheads to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads within seven years, down from the current ceiling of 2,200 warheads by 2012.
Here's the relevant part:
The limit on delivery vehicles -- land-based intercontinental missiles, submarines-based missiles and bombers -- would be somewhere from 500 to 1,100, down from the 1,600 currently allowed.
This means there's a possibility of 500 to 1,100 missiles that need to be disposed (Coincidentally 1,600 minus the range given in the article equals the range given in the article).
And since they are a large percentage of our grad students, that's a major problem. It subsequently makes the US a less enticing place for the skilled students we'd like to immigrate here.
Actually, I work with a lot of foreign nationals and ITAR has been an issue, but not a terribly big one.
The most interesting work I'm involved in is multinational and attracts a lot of interest. The ITAR restricted work is really mundane in comparison and usually the people who get stuck with those projects are not that happy about being on the project to begin with...
He doesn't work in "defense", he's a retired University professor who works for a company doing work with plasma. Comparing him to yourself is disingenuous at best.
Okay. I work for a university and the government working in a similar field as the professor in question. I'm familiar with the ITAR regulations, and I sign agreements to not disclose this kind of information. I'm strictly science, yet I still have to use aircraft and spacecraft that are dual purposed. I know exactly the rules he had to follow...
Universities (especially physics) works very differently than a company with regard to "classified" information.
Nope. I'm held to the same standards as my civil servant colleagues. I even have to take the same training sessions. We don't call it FIOS, or SECRET but the acronyms we use have same meanings associated with them.
Yah, there's some kind of nonsense restriction on what you can do with it, but remember it never really had defense implications in the first place.
The trouble with your argument is that the UAV in question is a UAV that is similar to the one used in defense, but assigned a civilian task. The information that he provided did compromise security.
So, if we're talking about environments here, that's quite a different environment than the one you're describing.
Different? Yes. Different enough? No. I have projects that allow non-US grad students and I have projects that don't...
I agree that our patent system has its problems (to put it mildly), and I'm against software and business method patents. However, there some problems with your analysis:
tomtom implements a file system using FAT because it is the only file system they can use to communicate with home PCs. there is no other choice and without this implementation their products would be worthless.
Obviously there are choices, since TomTom was reported as agreeing to remove the FAT code from their devices. Also, FAT is not a file transfer protocol. FTP, NFS, and Samba are protocols that can be used to move files from PC to device.
The only issue I see is if flash cards are used, since most of them come formatted with FAT from the manufacturer. TomTom could make a utility to convert the card to ext2 or whatever.
microsoft steals the most important technology tomtom has so they can create a direct competitor
The claims that TomTom had patented aren't that unique and have been implemented elsewhere. The thing that surprises me is that when I think of map software, I think of Delorme and they weren't a party in this dispute.
tomtom asks microsoft to stop
I don't think so. Microsoft isn't currently in the stand alone GPS market. Microsoft does have a mapping program that interfaces with a GPS. This may have been TomTom poorly executing an attempt to coerce Microsoft into making their mapping software take advantage of any extra features of the TomTom (or at least advertise that it does).
microsoft responds by threatening to destroy tomtom's business
Dial down the hyperbole. Microsoft responded by filing a counter suit that claimed the TomTom was also using Microsoft patents without paying a royalty. Basically, this is a case of Microsoft saying "Sue me and I'll sue you".
tomtom and microsoft decide to settle out of court
TomTom came to its senses and asked to settle, and Microsoft agreed. The point being that if Microsoft was trying to enforce some monopoly through patents, they would not have settled and basically allow TomTom to drown in legal fees.
If I recall correctly Microsoft successfully sued TomTom for violating FAT patents in the Linux kernel on their devices.
Actually, Microsoft did NOT successfully sue TomTom for violating FAT patents on their devices.
Microsoft threatened to sue TomTom, and TomTom decided to settle out of court.
This was after TomTom threaten Microsoft with patent infringements on Microsoft Streets. Microsoft even said that they usually don't enforce the FAT patents, but felt compelled to do so in this case as a defensive measure.
just sounds like a simple "we should aid our own people rather than foreigners."
That's exactly what it sounded like to me too. However, you said the OP
appears to be totally ignorant of current events.
My point being that he was totally aware of the situation in Iran (hence the story we're commenting on), however he made his argument despite the situation.
As for aiding foreigners versus citizens, it's true that a government aids it's citizen to garner votes and aids foreigners to garner international influence.
Personally, I think we have an obligation to take care of our own before providing more aid to foreigners. We are the biggest debtor nation and the one of the biggest (if not the biggest) donor nation. It would be different if we had cash to give, but we are borrowing from China to donate money to others.
..but the OP's argument was "we should do this for our people first" (similar to an AC post down below), and appears to be totally ignorant of current events.
That's a little unfair. I think the OP's argument was made despite current events. I also agree with the OP that if the US government had the capability to provide broadband connectivity to its citizens as easily as "beaming" it over an area then we should ask why can't the government provide us with that now?
Stealing requires you to be taking something away from someone else. "Stealing" code doesn't take it away from the programmer.
If you copy someone's work and call it your own, you are stealing the deserved recognition of the original author. The plagiarists takes advantage of someone else's hard work to build an undeserved reputation for themselves.
If you make digital copies of a program and hand it out for free, you are stealing someone's livelihood. It's hard to sell something when someone else is giving away your work for free.
I just wanted to point out that the problem with your premise is that you assume nothing is being stolen if it's just a digital copy... It's not the digital copy that's harmful, it's what you do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true. I think the real reason for iPhone's success, is Apple understood the importance of having a huge supply of Applications to sell on its iTunes App Store. So during the initial launch of the iPhone, Apple announced that a venture capitalist was offering venture funding for new iPhone cottage industry.
I know the venture funding was a major factor, since I know several software developers who applied and purchased an iPhone solely to develop on.
I love my myTouch. I'm surprise to find myself saying that, but I'm currently TDY (working far away from office) and the 850 MHz (voice) roaming works so much better than both the Nokia and Motorola quad-band phones that I retired. My GSM phone is working better than my coworkers CDMA phones here. I believe it's from the way GSM bands were originally auctioned off by the FCC which allowed local telcos in ultra rural areas to get into the wireless industry.
The Wi-Fi access, outside of the edge network isn't bad either...
On my way to the middle of nowhere, T-Mobile had 3G networks at my airports so that was nice. Of course as with all wireless carriers, your mileage may vary.
BTW, I disabled data roaming and depend solely on Wi-Fi at the moment. Between the hotel and the hangar, I haven't missed the mobile network.
The article totally misses the point that the iPhone has been out for quite a while, and Apple has dumped a lot of money into marketing. As for Google branding, the android phones I have have "with Google" printed on the phone.
Oh I don't work for T-Mobile, but I've been a customer of theirs since they bought out my local GSM provider many years ago. As with all long term relationships I had some bad moments and some good moments..
My local BestBuy is advertising the T-Mobile myTouch inside its stores...
Let me start off by saying, brandishing a weapon of any kind is usually a very bad idea. Most encounters can be defused, but once a weapon is introduced the instinctual "fight or flight (flee)" behavior kicks in and it usually doesn't end well...
You'd be surprised. Check this page out for Alabama http://www.legislature.state.al.us/CodeofAlabama/1975/13A-3-23.htm.
I did not disparage or mean to disparage any of the heroic work performed by the US Coast Guard and the Army medical staff. In fact, I really like the guys that operate just down the road from me (They're the base the helicopters operated from).
While the Coast Guard did an excellent job responding to the emergency including setting up the field hospital at the airport with the help of the Louisiana Hospital Association and the Army, it doesn't excuse the poor management of the recovery efforts performed by the agencies that I mentioned in my previous post.
I'm going to play the opposition's advocate here:
The first amendment protects our ability to speak out against the government, practice any religion we desire since there can't be an official religion sanctioned by the government, make public any misgivings or objectionable findings about our government in the press, our ability to assemble to protest any injustices performed by our government, and petition the government to correct any injustice.
The founding fathers didn't say anything to prevent the state governments from doing it, luckily the Virginia constitution states:
Please notice the "that any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right" part of the state constitution.
IANAL but it appears that if the intent of her blog was to stalk or harass a police officer (or anybody else for that matter), she enjoys no constitutional protection from any legal ramifications of her speech. In addition, if her blog endangers a life of another individual she definitely doesn't enjoy any constitutional protection.
As someone who served on the disaster committee of a regional American Red Cross chapter and worked along side two county EMA directors as well as the state EMA, I would politely disagree with you.
You will find a VHF and HF amateur radio station at most county EMA offices and the state EMA office. You will also find them at all three weather service offices that serves my state. Why? Because most amateur radio operators that volunteer to help us out are willing to attend a class on how we expected them to help us. They are courteous and professional, and most importantly they are already "out in the field" and FREE labor. The fact that they have the equipment capable of providing reliable long distance communications is a bonus.
I don't know how wealthy your local government is, but ours prefer to use the professional emergency responders to handle law enforcement, curfews, medical emergencies, and leave the "health and welfare" communications (which include status updates from shelters and staging areas) to the amateur radio operators. During a large scale disaster, the professional labor pool quickly becomes inadequate and we are always looking for trained volunteers in addition to the radio operators.
Amateur radio operators also help the national weather service by participating in SKYWARN. During the 90's they helped confirm weather warnings issued while nexrad (next generation radar) was being deploy. Today, they still serve a purpose by being the eyes and ears of the national weather service.
Wow. I mean wow what a very ignorant statement.
Obviously you don't know that most first responders during a disaster are volunteers. I will just briefly mention how ineffective FEMA, the state of Louisiana, the Orleans parish, and the city of New Orleans were during the recovery efforts of Katrina. Thank God there were church groups, American Red Cross, Amateur Radio operators, and other voluntary relief agencies or the disaster could have been much worse.
Usually there are more falaties after the disaster strikes than during. Thankfully we have a community of volunteers willing to help mitigate the danger. May I add at their own expense and peril.
Bill
A friend of mine owns a fabric store. You wouldn't believe the number of people who would use a credit card to purchase items less than $1.50. She actually loses money on these transactions, but comes out ahead when she sells fabric by the yard (or better yet by the spool). She has no choice on the matter, since her bank agreement forbids any minimum purchases or additional fees. She doesn't want to raise the prices because it penalizes the people who uses cash.
She likes checks from her regular customers. She seldom has a NSF (non-sufficient funds) and when it happens the customer usually takes care of the bank fees. Best of all, she doesn't have to share the proceeds with some financial network.
Besides I see nothing wrong with "Cash only" establishments. I think it's ridiculous for it to become acceptable that VISA or Mastercard get a cut of every monetary transaction.
To be fair, it could be your ego that makes you think otherwise.
All kidding aside, the fact that more harm than good comes from being promiscuous seems to indicate that the reproductive pool would benefit if people would be a little more selective with who they fool around with.
Also I think the phrase "STOP FUCKING PEOPLE WHO AREN'T YOUR WIFE/GIRLFRIED/SIGNIFIGANT OTHER!" doesn't rule out polygamy. More like stop having one-night-stands with anonymous women (or men). I didn't see any quantity qualifier in the statement.
I would be careful on calling another person's culture stupid... While you shared your opinion on the matter, I know you would not like to know my opinion on societies that subjugate women.
Okay, so I need to start building the Nebuchadnezzar.
You're teaching Java and need pair programming...
Sounds like you need netbeans... http://collab.netbeans.org/http://collab.netbeans.org
I think it sounds tedious, but you did ask...
I agree. I also worry about the amount of rainfall that would be lost if Bill Gates plan actually works. Believe it or not there are some useful aspects to a hurricane and more importantly tropical storms.
Here I sort of agree. We should be smarter about where we build our population centers, but more importantly HOW we build our population centers near the gulf.
I totally disagree. Most of the hurricane's damage is from storm surge not wind. So we should limit the amount of construction on shores and surrounding low elevation areas. However your insurance idea, which by the way is already being implemented, penalizes people who live in the same area (county) but built smartly and rarely have catastrophic damage done on their property.
I did not file any insurance claims for hurricane Katrina. Most of the damage from Katrina was FLOOD damage which isn't covered by regular home insurance anyway. But I pay 4 times the state average for insurance, and have a storm deductible based on a percentage of my home's market value. So not only do I pay more, I am less likely to be able to even file a claim. Basically the existence of hurricanes has given insurance companies political cover to rip me off.
There are folks in northern Alabama who have hail damage on their roofs almost every year from the spring storm season, and yet I hear no calls to raise their insurance nor limit the coverage from wind or hail damage. They have a history of tornadoes touching down and wiping out neighborhoods and commercial property, yet their insurance remains unaffected. There are areas in this country where people are susceptible to lose their homes from fires, mudslides, or tornadoes on a yearly basis and yet I hear no calls to relocate them.
Pardon me but you can take that "offer no insurance" idea and shove it up your arse...
Please read the actual article. Here's an excerpt:
"Under Monday's agreement, the Start successor treaty would reduce the ceiling on strategic warheads to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads within seven years, down from the current ceiling of 2,200 warheads by 2012.
Here's the relevant part:
The limit on delivery vehicles -- land-based intercontinental missiles, submarines-based missiles and bombers -- would be somewhere from 500 to 1,100, down from the 1,600 currently allowed.
This means there's a possibility of 500 to 1,100 missiles that need to be disposed (Coincidentally 1,600 minus the range given in the article equals the range given in the article).
I meant cheap for science, not for the government in general...
BTW, it involves a little more than just cleaning up a minuteman...
This could mean even more cheap launch vehicles for satellites, since launching missiles is a good way of reducing their numbers...
Actually, I work with a lot of foreign nationals and ITAR has been an issue, but not a terribly big one.
The most interesting work I'm involved in is multinational and attracts a lot of interest. The ITAR restricted work is really mundane in comparison and usually the people who get stuck with those projects are not that happy about being on the project to begin with...
Okay. I work for a university and the government working in a similar field as the professor in question. I'm familiar with the ITAR regulations, and I sign agreements to not disclose this kind of information. I'm strictly science, yet I still have to use aircraft and spacecraft that are dual purposed. I know exactly the rules he had to follow...
Nope. I'm held to the same standards as my civil servant colleagues. I even have to take the same training sessions. We don't call it FIOS, or SECRET but the acronyms we use have same meanings associated with them.
The trouble with your argument is that the UAV in question is a UAV that is similar to the one used in defense, but assigned a civilian task. The information that he provided did compromise security.
Different? Yes. Different enough? No. I have projects that allow non-US grad students and I have projects that don't...
It doesn't have to be a USB file device either. Regardless of the underlying protocol, nothing dictates that the FAT file system must be used.
Nothing prevents the GPS from appearing as a high speed serial port or even a USB based network adapter.
I agree that our patent system has its problems (to put it mildly), and I'm against software and business method patents. However, there some problems with your analysis:
Obviously there are choices, since TomTom was reported as agreeing to remove the FAT code from their devices. Also, FAT is not a file transfer protocol. FTP, NFS, and Samba are protocols that can be used to move files from PC to device.
The only issue I see is if flash cards are used, since most of them come formatted with FAT from the manufacturer. TomTom could make a utility to convert the card to ext2 or whatever.
The claims that TomTom had patented aren't that unique and have been implemented elsewhere. The thing that surprises me is that when I think of map software, I think of Delorme and they weren't a party in this dispute.
I don't think so. Microsoft isn't currently in the stand alone GPS market. Microsoft does have a mapping program that interfaces with a GPS. This may have been TomTom poorly executing an attempt to coerce Microsoft into making their mapping software take advantage of any extra features of the TomTom (or at least advertise that it does).
Dial down the hyperbole. Microsoft responded by filing a counter suit that claimed the TomTom was also using Microsoft patents without paying a royalty. Basically, this is a case of Microsoft saying "Sue me and I'll sue you".
TomTom came to its senses and asked to settle, and Microsoft agreed. The point being that if Microsoft was trying to enforce some monopoly through patents, they would not have settled and basically allow TomTom to drown in legal fees.
Actually, Microsoft did NOT successfully sue TomTom for violating FAT patents on their devices.
Microsoft threatened to sue TomTom, and TomTom decided to settle out of court.
This was after TomTom threaten Microsoft with patent infringements on Microsoft Streets. Microsoft even said that they usually don't enforce the FAT patents, but felt compelled to do so in this case as a defensive measure.
That's exactly what it sounded like to me too. However, you said the OP
My point being that he was totally aware of the situation in Iran (hence the story we're commenting on), however he made his argument despite the situation.
As for aiding foreigners versus citizens, it's true that a government aids it's citizen to garner votes and aids foreigners to garner international influence.
Personally, I think we have an obligation to take care of our own before providing more aid to foreigners. We are the biggest debtor nation and the one of the biggest (if not the biggest) donor nation. It would be different if we had cash to give, but we are borrowing from China to donate money to others.
Really? So how does the "have nots" get the government to pay the bill?
That's a little unfair. I think the OP's argument was made despite current events. I also agree with the OP that if the US government had the capability to provide broadband connectivity to its citizens as easily as "beaming" it over an area then we should ask why can't the government provide us with that now?
If you copy someone's work and call it your own, you are stealing the deserved recognition of the original author. The plagiarists takes advantage of someone else's hard work to build an undeserved reputation for themselves.
If you make digital copies of a program and hand it out for free, you are stealing someone's livelihood. It's hard to sell something when someone else is giving away your work for free.
I just wanted to point out that the problem with your premise is that you assume nothing is being stolen if it's just a digital copy... It's not the digital copy that's harmful, it's what you do with it.