Actually Rayner's ring along with Stewart's were just the same old tried-and-true ring technology as the Corps had already had for 10 billion years, but the reason it had no yellow weakness is because the yellow impurity was actually the immortal yellow alien being named Parallax who corrupted Hal Jordan and took over his mind. Parallax was living fear itself in some sense and so the Green Lantern power was corrupted over that spectrum of visible light. So you see in the graphic novel, Green Lantern : Rebirth, that the yellow weakness 'has a name' and that name is Parallax. Jordan/Spectre managed to purge Parallax from Jordan and then Jordan (resurrected), Rayner, Gardner, Stewart and Kilowog with the help of the Guardians cast Parallax back into the Green Lantern battery 'prison cell'.
So the end result is all the power rings (excluding of course Alan Scott's magic-based ring) are once again susceptible to a yellow weakness, but it caused by fear generated by the Parallax Fear Anomoly. So any powerful Green Lantern can overcome the yellow weakness now, but it is considered a mark of a novice Lantern to still have their constructs blocked by yellow.
Yeah, it is best to find a SIP provider within your same continent so you don't add any more latency/lag to the VOIP experience... Lag on VOIP is already as bad if not worse as it is on cell phones. There are many major SIP providers in the US and in Europe, so you can easily find one close to you with good prices. I am in Canada, and I pay $7.95 US for a local phone number, unlimited local calling, 2.1 cents/minute (usd) long distance and callerID/voice mail/etc. with http://www.internationalnumber.com/index.html , which runs out of Denver, CO. Then I use Voxee (http://www.voxee.com/) as a backup provider for outbound local calling, and as my main provider for long distance (1.1 cents/minute (usd) to North America).
It is not worth it to blow money on a device just to use such quirky proprietary software to set up VOIP-to-PSTN communications. Skype uses the compressed (lossy) iLBC codec, which is lower quality than the G.711u codec most of the mainstream SIP VOIP providers use for their phone calls. Skype also requires you (or your girlfriend rather) to either talk to the person on the phone using a mike and headphones or some kludge like a "phone" that hijacks the audio in and audio out from your soundcard. Finally, SkypeOut is actually more expensive per minute to North America than the better SIP providers.
I suggest checking out the comments found on voxilla.com and its very active forum community for advice on setting up her (and no doubt eventually yours too) VOIP connection, and work out all the details like whether you just want outbound-to-PSTN calling or if she needs a DID number as well for being called at, whether you need an IP phone or an ATA, what providers suit your needs and what is the best way to configure your software or hardware.
Takei:....You see, the show was banned after the Star Trek wars.
Zapp: You mean after the vast migration of Star Wars fans?
Nichols: No, that was the Star Wars trek. [Some mechanical hands come out of her jar, pick up a video tape and put it in the VCR.] By the 23rd century, Star Trek fandom had evolved from a loose association of nerds with skin problems into a full-blown religion.
[On the screen, a service is held at the Church of Trek.]
Priest: [on TV] And Scotty beamed them to the Klingon ship where they would be no Tribble at all.
Congregation: [chanting; on TV] All power to the engines.
Nichols: As country after country fell under its influence, world leaders became threatened by the movements power. [In Berlin a sign is unveiled saying "Welcome To Nazi Planet Episode Land. Formerly Germany".] And so the Trekkies were executed in the manner most befitting virgins.
[On the rim of a volcano two men throw Trekkies into the flames.]
Takei: The last copies of the 79 episodes and six movies were dumped on the forbidden world, Omega 3, along with that blooper reel where the door doesn't close all the way.
[As he speaks, a ship that looks like an Eagle from Space: 1999 fires the torpedo. It hits the planet like Spock's coffin in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan. The video ends.]
Nimoy: Thus, Star Trek was forever scoured from human memory.
Bender: Another classic science-fiction show cancelled before its time.
Joshua: Shall we play a game? David Lightman: Oh! Jennifer: I think it missed him. David Lightman: Yeah. Weird isn't it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War. Joshua: Wouldn't you perfer a nice game of chess? David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War. Joshua: Fine.
For me, the most important aspect in deciding whether to favour BluRay or HD-DVD is when will burners and cheap blank discs be available for them. I certainly can't afford the HDCP setup on my TV or DVD Players at any time in the near future, and the only place where I could even come close to playing these discs at their full resolution is going to be on my desktop computer, assuming I either have compliant hardware and software to let me do it or that a crack becomes available to play it on XP with a common opensource media player app.
Since to me high definition applies only to my computer monitor, and I haven't got the monitor or OS to support the new DRM, I basically couldn't care less about this announcement. What will perk my ears is when I hear the local Best Buy is selling cheap burners for one of these formats and has cheap media to use it with. (Confession: I still never have bought a DVD+R DL disc because they are something like 6-8 times the price of a single layer DVD+R disc. If blank bluray or HD discs cost as much as current DVD+R DL discs, I still would probably use cheapo DVD-+R discs ahead of them. What can I say, I'm cheap! And I am betting I am not alone.)
The only places where you can get anything close to 200 CD-Rs for $40.00 Cdn is at small computer stores who import the CDs from abroad and then (illegally) sell them without the added 21 cent per disc tax. However most people do not have convenient access to small-time computer stores that do not add the levy to the final price, and instead must buy them from Future Shop (or worse, Wal-Mart or Loblaws) which the article accurately reports. Future Shop could never get away with selling these discs at the "American" prices, since some busy body would report them to the government and they would be fined millions of dollars.
My advice to fellow Canadians who plan to on doing a lot of CD burning is try to find a computer store that will sell you generic CD-R discs at what is obviously a levy-free price. Otherwise the lowest price Future Shop seems to ever go is something like $17.99 per 50-pack, which ultimately sucks compared to what the Americans pay for their discs.
I understand why a government might illegalize casinos, lotteries, and betting, since it is a pernicious vice that many men are drawn into, wasting incalculable amounts of their personal savings in a futile effort to beat the house advantage. So that's fine with me. However this US law is written by the casino special interests and does not have as its end the illegalization of gambling en toto, but merely the prevention of foreign competition in the 'industry'. What outstanding hypocrisy. The world trade body is right to condemn this blatant protectionism by the Americans.
Yeah but saying the Conservatives are furthest to the right of the four parties (the other three being as left or lefter than their their brothers in the U.S. Democratic Party) is not saying much. While visions of socialism or social democracy dance around the heads of the NDP, Bloc, and Liberals, it is visions of mercantilism, in one form or another, that dance about the Conservatives heads.
The NDP is probably the party that cares most about consumer's interests in laws being passed, but as usual, it is caring in a loopy hardcore leftist sort of way, which always tends towards solutions that disregard the voluntary and free choices of the property owners and tends to assume that the government is the real owner of everything in the country.
Well actually, there was no year 0. It went directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, passing over year zero entirely. So your year blocks are actually one year off from the generally accepted view of the first, second, and third millennium. Hence:
First Millennium: 1-1000 AD Second Millennium: 1001-2000 AD Third Millennium: 2001-3000 AD
Not that the media is full of left-liberals are uniform across the board, they just are the majority presence. Fox News is the mainstream exception to that, they are Ronald Regan/neoconservative in ideology (which we could laughably called right-wing according to contemporary debased standards of naming, considering neocons are ex-Trotskites and the New Right is simply the Old Left).
But your main point, about journalists fundamental educational background, is dead on, and one reason why I hate newspapers. The newspaper articles are written by journalism majors (a discipline in university known for attracting only mediocre students) who are unthinkingly left-liberal in social and economic views and heavily biased in favour of left-of-centre positions. These journalism majors are completely ignorant about engineering, natural science, psychology, economics, philosophy, theology, history, the military, the police, and every other discipline under the sun.
A journalist is fundamentally a grade 12 public school graduate trained to "report" on things (sort of like how public school teachers are not math or physics or chemistry experts but instead are mediocre high school graduates who were taught how to "teach"), so on any topic of significance found in the news, you are given the esteemed nuanced presentation of a high school graduate who probably averaged C+/B-, and who doesn't know a heck of a lot more about technical matters of any sort than he did when he was 17. How encouraging.
Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code
Chapter 10 Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media
1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
1001. Definitions (4)(A) A "digital audio recording medium" is any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.
I disagree. It is only a FUD that under laissez-faire, one needs to dispense with human empathy. It is not that one needs to dispense with empathy when they become a conservative, but that one changes the method or procedure for dealing with the poor and needy. Under statism, it would be the government, operating a welfare state, that would deal with the needy. But under capitalism, it would primarily be three other entities that would deal with them; these three being the family, voluntary associations, and the 'church' (through its deacons).
Capitalists have arguments that purport to show that not only are the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy worse than the intended consequence, but at a more fundamental level of who is the true owner of private property and who has the rights of disposing of it, that the state has no right to steal from one person in order to give to another... even if the consequences of that are straightforwardly positive.
From what I've read, it seems like capitalists emphasize equality of liberty (from the state!) while socialists emphasize equality of opportunity (in life). I suppose which one someone prefers as more important has more to do with one's worldview and ethical system than the clear-cut factual 'brute' economic consequences of one or the other.
As for your saying that a free market is a myth, I also don't really agree. From what I have read about economic calculation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation _problem), Mises' criticism about the impossibility of economic calculation under a socialist commonwealth seems basically to be the strongest single argument against socialism. It is not a question of capitalism vs. socialism, because if you believe Mises' argument, socialism is actually completely impossible in its pure form, and it becomes more a question about what degree of a hampered market (or no degree at all) is optimal.
I think, from what I've read, that Rothbard's definition of a monopoly seems to be right. He defines it as an exclusive grant of trading priveleges, and as such, is fundamentally incompatible with a true free market. If an owner wants to withhold his goods from the market in order to raise prices, then in most cases competitors will appear who will drive down the price of goods as the rate of profit is temporarily, artificially higher than other sectors of the economy. And if the owner is the sole owner of the property in question, and competitors can't arise due to sheer logistics, then is that really not in the owner's legal rights? I can't think of any item in the world (if we ignore so-called intellectual property, which seems a very phony form of alleged 'ownership') that we rely on so much that really could be manipulated so easily.
Anyway, good points you raised, but from where I am coming from and what I've read I at this point disagree with your criticisms.
It is sad to see that the 'defenders' of capitalism, such as what seems like most economics teachers in the government schools, are adherents "in theory" of socialism and don't believe a free market is sound at a fundamental abstract level. Small wonder that social democracy, the third way, the welfare state, the New Deal, the Fair Deal etc. are now supported by majorities of the population in all the great nations. With friends like these...
"There cannot be too much of a correct theory." --economist Ludwig Von Mises www.mises.org
The economist Friedrich A. Hayek wrote a book entitled _The Road To Serfdom_, specifically written to the New Deal American public with the case examples of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in mind, describing how a generally civilized free society with some degree of free market capitalism can by its own ineluctable inner political workings become tyrannical socialist totalitarian states.
Hayek has a chapter in his book called "Why the Worst Get on Top" that basically makes your point meringuoid, except that he says it is inevitable with a statist form of government that the very worst (i.e. most evil) will get on top while with a capitalist/laissez-faire system, unless it becomes co-opted by communistic or fascistic forces from within, there would never be the system of rewards and power present to make the job worthwhile for the evil-minded man.
Why not just use Shareaza or Limewire at that point, and get the music for free rather than pay this band of Russians to be your intermediary? I don't see the point. If you run a program like PeerGuardian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian) with the normal filterlists applied when using P2P software, the chances of the RIAA accumulating enough legally damaging evidence is virtually nil.
Yeah, I gotta admit,/. sway me to this perspective. Lossless is the most prudent way to rip audio CDs, so you can have archival quality backups on your drive. Even if takes up a fair amount of space. And even if I can't tell the difference between an original WAV/FLAC and a lossless MP3/AAC/Vorbis.
Data storage capicity will continue to increase in the next decade, while your FLAC rip of an album will continue to remain a lowly 350MB. And you could always buy higher-fidelity equipment (if that gets cheaper too one day) and potentially be able to tell the difference between a FLAC original and a a.p.m. LAME file that you can't do now with your crummy headphones or cheap Labtec PC speakers.
Actually I am being more autobiographical than informative, I fear.
I wonder if there will be localized versions of this program for countries like Canada or France with private copying taxation schemes that allow you to legally copy music well beyond what one's fair use rights would normally be.
But heck, I wonder if the US-localized build which will probably be the only build will even remember that the US already has somewhat similar private copying laws on the books.
It is a sad world when a program like this is marketed to parents to install on their teenagers computer with greater publicity than a program that will find and alert them to any pr0n that might be on there.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually Rayner's ring along with Stewart's were just the same old tried-and-true ring technology as the Corps had already had for 10 billion years, but the reason it had no yellow weakness is because the yellow impurity was actually the immortal yellow alien being named Parallax who corrupted Hal Jordan and took over his mind. Parallax was living fear itself in some sense and so the Green Lantern power was corrupted over that spectrum of visible light. So you see in the graphic novel, Green Lantern : Rebirth, that the yellow weakness 'has a name' and that name is Parallax. Jordan/Spectre managed to purge Parallax from Jordan and then Jordan (resurrected), Rayner, Gardner, Stewart and Kilowog with the help of the Guardians cast Parallax back into the Green Lantern battery 'prison cell'.
So the end result is all the power rings (excluding of course Alan Scott's magic-based ring) are once again susceptible to a yellow weakness, but it caused by fear generated by the Parallax Fear Anomoly. So any powerful Green Lantern can overcome the yellow weakness now, but it is considered a mark of a novice Lantern to still have their constructs blocked by yellow.
Phew!
Yeah, it is best to find a SIP provider within your same continent so you don't add any more latency/lag to the VOIP experience... Lag on VOIP is already as bad if not worse as it is on cell phones. There are many major SIP providers in the US and in Europe, so you can easily find one close to you with good prices. I am in Canada, and I pay $7.95 US for a local phone number, unlimited local calling, 2.1 cents/minute (usd) long distance and callerID/voice mail/etc. with http://www.internationalnumber.com/index.html , which runs out of Denver, CO. Then I use Voxee (http://www.voxee.com/) as a backup provider for outbound local calling, and as my main provider for long distance (1.1 cents/minute (usd) to North America).
VOIP is a great way to cut your monthly bills.
It is not worth it to blow money on a device just to use such quirky proprietary software to set up VOIP-to-PSTN communications. Skype uses the compressed (lossy) iLBC codec, which is lower quality than the G.711u codec most of the mainstream SIP VOIP providers use for their phone calls. Skype also requires you (or your girlfriend rather) to either talk to the person on the phone using a mike and headphones or some kludge like a "phone" that hijacks the audio in and audio out from your soundcard. Finally, SkypeOut is actually more expensive per minute to North America than the better SIP providers.
I suggest checking out the comments found on voxilla.com and its very active forum community for advice on setting up her (and no doubt eventually yours too) VOIP connection, and work out all the details like whether you just want outbound-to-PSTN calling or if she needs a DID number as well for being called at, whether you need an IP phone or an ATA, what providers suit your needs and what is the best way to configure your software or hardware.
Takei: ....You see, the show was banned after the Star Trek wars.
Zapp: You mean after the vast migration of Star Wars fans?
Nichols: No, that was the Star Wars trek. [Some mechanical hands come out of her jar, pick up a video tape and put it in the VCR.] By the 23rd century, Star Trek fandom had evolved from a loose association of nerds with skin problems into a full-blown religion.
[On the screen, a service is held at the Church of Trek.]
Priest: [on TV] And Scotty beamed them to the Klingon ship where they would be no Tribble at all.
Congregation: [chanting; on TV] All power to the engines.
Nichols: As country after country fell under its influence, world leaders became threatened by the movements power. [In Berlin a sign is unveiled saying "Welcome To Nazi Planet Episode Land. Formerly Germany".] And so the Trekkies were executed in the manner most befitting virgins.
[On the rim of a volcano two men throw Trekkies into the flames.]
Man: [on TV] He's dead, Jim! [They throw another in.] He's dead, Jim! [Another.] He's dead, Jim!
Nichols: Finally, the sacred texts were banned.
[The episodes are put inside a torpedo casing.]
Takei: The last copies of the 79 episodes and six movies were dumped on the forbidden world, Omega 3, along with that blooper reel where the door doesn't close all the way.
[As he speaks, a ship that looks like an Eagle from Space: 1999 fires the torpedo. It hits the planet like Spock's coffin in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan. The video ends.]
Nimoy: Thus, Star Trek was forever scoured from human memory.
Bender: Another classic science-fiction show cancelled before its time.
Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman: Oh!
Jennifer: I think it missed him.
David Lightman: Yeah. Weird isn't it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn't you perfer a nice game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
I have exactly this feature with my voice mail and you just scared me enough to get me to finally enable a passnumber on the account.
For me, the most important aspect in deciding whether to favour BluRay or HD-DVD is when will burners and cheap blank discs be available for them. I certainly can't afford the HDCP setup on my TV or DVD Players at any time in the near future, and the only place where I could even come close to playing these discs at their full resolution is going to be on my desktop computer, assuming I either have compliant hardware and software to let me do it or that a crack becomes available to play it on XP with a common opensource media player app.
Since to me high definition applies only to my computer monitor, and I haven't got the monitor or OS to support the new DRM, I basically couldn't care less about this announcement. What will perk my ears is when I hear the local Best Buy is selling cheap burners for one of these formats and has cheap media to use it with. (Confession: I still never have bought a DVD+R DL disc because they are something like 6-8 times the price of a single layer DVD+R disc. If blank bluray or HD discs cost as much as current DVD+R DL discs, I still would probably use cheapo DVD-+R discs ahead of them. What can I say, I'm cheap! And I am betting I am not alone.)
The only places where you can get anything close to 200 CD-Rs for $40.00 Cdn is at small computer stores who import the CDs from abroad and then (illegally) sell them without the added 21 cent per disc tax. However most people do not have convenient access to small-time computer stores that do not add the levy to the final price, and instead must buy them from Future Shop (or worse, Wal-Mart or Loblaws) which the article accurately reports. Future Shop could never get away with selling these discs at the "American" prices, since some busy body would report them to the government and they would be fined millions of dollars.
My advice to fellow Canadians who plan to on doing a lot of CD burning is try to find a computer store that will sell you generic CD-R discs at what is obviously a levy-free price. Otherwise the lowest price Future Shop seems to ever go is something like $17.99 per 50-pack, which ultimately sucks compared to what the Americans pay for their discs.
I understand why a government might illegalize casinos, lotteries, and betting, since it is a pernicious vice that many men are drawn into, wasting incalculable amounts of their personal savings in a futile effort to beat the house advantage. So that's fine with me. However this US law is written by the casino special interests and does not have as its end the illegalization of gambling en toto, but merely the prevention of foreign competition in the 'industry'. What outstanding hypocrisy. The world trade body is right to condemn this blatant protectionism by the Americans.
Obligatory Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Trade
You must be new here.
That spell must have a steep learning curve. Not bad for a level 1 spell.
Yeah but saying the Conservatives are furthest to the right of the four parties (the other three being as left or lefter than their their brothers in the U.S. Democratic Party) is not saying much. While visions of socialism or social democracy dance around the heads of the NDP, Bloc, and Liberals, it is visions of mercantilism, in one form or another, that dance about the Conservatives heads.
The NDP is probably the party that cares most about consumer's interests in laws being passed, but as usual, it is caring in a loopy hardcore leftist sort of way, which always tends towards solutions that disregard the voluntary and free choices of the property owners and tends to assume that the government is the real owner of everything in the country.
Well actually, there was no year 0. It went directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, passing over year zero entirely. So your year blocks are actually one year off from the generally accepted view of the first, second, and third millennium. Hence:
First Millennium: 1-1000 AD
Second Millennium: 1001-2000 AD
Third Millennium: 2001-3000 AD
Well, basically you're right.
Not that the media is full of left-liberals are uniform across the board, they just are the majority presence. Fox News is the mainstream exception to that, they are Ronald Regan/neoconservative in ideology (which we could laughably called right-wing according to contemporary debased standards of naming, considering neocons are ex-Trotskites and the New Right is simply the Old Left).
But your main point, about journalists fundamental educational background, is dead on, and one reason why I hate newspapers. The newspaper articles are written by journalism majors (a discipline in university known for attracting only mediocre students) who are unthinkingly left-liberal in social and economic views and heavily biased in favour of left-of-centre positions. These journalism majors are completely ignorant about engineering, natural science, psychology, economics, philosophy, theology, history, the military, the police, and every other discipline under the sun.
A journalist is fundamentally a grade 12 public school graduate trained to "report" on things (sort of like how public school teachers are not math or physics or chemistry experts but instead are mediocre high school graduates who were taught how to "teach"), so on any topic of significance found in the news, you are given the esteemed nuanced presentation of a high school graduate who probably averaged C+/B-, and who doesn't know a heck of a lot more about technical matters of any sort than he did when he was 17. How encouraging.
I don't read the local newspaper anymore.
Copyright Law of the United States of America
0 8
and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code
Chapter 10
Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media
1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
1001. Definitions
(4)(A) A "digital audio recording medium" is any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html#10
I disagree. It is only a FUD that under laissez-faire, one needs to dispense with human empathy. It is not that one needs to dispense with empathy when they become a conservative, but that one changes the method or procedure for dealing with the poor and needy. Under statism, it would be the government, operating a welfare state, that would deal with the needy. But under capitalism, it would primarily be three other entities that would deal with them; these three being the family, voluntary associations, and the 'church' (through its deacons).
n _problem), Mises' criticism about the impossibility of economic calculation under a socialist commonwealth seems basically to be the strongest single argument against socialism. It is not a question of capitalism vs. socialism, because if you believe Mises' argument, socialism is actually completely impossible in its pure form, and it becomes more a question about what degree of a hampered market (or no degree at all) is optimal.
Capitalists have arguments that purport to show that not only are the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy worse than the intended consequence, but at a more fundamental level of who is the true owner of private property and who has the rights of disposing of it, that the state has no right to steal from one person in order to give to another... even if the consequences of that are straightforwardly positive.
From what I've read, it seems like capitalists emphasize equality of liberty (from the state!) while socialists emphasize equality of opportunity (in life). I suppose which one someone prefers as more important has more to do with one's worldview and ethical system than the clear-cut factual 'brute' economic consequences of one or the other.
As for your saying that a free market is a myth, I also don't really agree. From what I have read about economic calculation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculatio
I think, from what I've read, that Rothbard's definition of a monopoly seems to be right. He defines it as an exclusive grant of trading priveleges, and as such, is fundamentally incompatible with a true free market. If an owner wants to withhold his goods from the market in order to raise prices, then in most cases competitors will appear who will drive down the price of goods as the rate of profit is temporarily, artificially higher than other sectors of the economy. And if the owner is the sole owner of the property in question, and competitors can't arise due to sheer logistics, then is that really not in the owner's legal rights? I can't think of any item in the world (if we ignore so-called intellectual property, which seems a very phony form of alleged 'ownership') that we rely on so much that really could be manipulated so easily.
Anyway, good points you raised, but from where I am coming from and what I've read I at this point disagree with your criticisms.
It is sad to see that the 'defenders' of capitalism, such as what seems like most economics teachers in the government schools, are adherents "in theory" of socialism and don't believe a free market is sound at a fundamental abstract level. Small wonder that social democracy, the third way, the welfare state, the New Deal, the Fair Deal etc. are now supported by majorities of the population in all the great nations. With friends like these...
"There cannot be too much of a correct theory." --economist Ludwig Von Mises
www.mises.org
The economist Friedrich A. Hayek wrote a book entitled _The Road To Serfdom_, specifically written to the New Deal American public with the case examples of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in mind, describing how a generally civilized free society with some degree of free market capitalism can by its own ineluctable inner political workings become tyrannical socialist totalitarian states.
Hayek has a chapter in his book called "Why the Worst Get on Top" that basically makes your point meringuoid, except that he says it is inevitable with a statist form of government that the very worst (i.e. most evil) will get on top while with a capitalist/laissez-faire system, unless it becomes co-opted by communistic or fascistic forces from within, there would never be the system of rewards and power present to make the job worthwhile for the evil-minded man.
Target is doing something praiseworthy there.
Why not just use Shareaza or Limewire at that point, and get the music for free rather than pay this band of Russians to be your intermediary? I don't see the point. If you run a program like PeerGuardian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian) with the normal filterlists applied when using P2P software, the chances of the RIAA accumulating enough legally damaging evidence is virtually nil.
LOL, nice flamebait and fast resort to Godwin's law.
Seriously, your point about humans laws not being identical to eternal verities of morality & ethics is sound, but what an obnoxious way to put it.
Data storage capicity will continue to increase in the next decade, while your FLAC rip of an album will continue to remain a lowly 350MB. And you could always buy higher-fidelity equipment (if that gets cheaper too one day) and potentially be able to tell the difference between a FLAC original and a a.p.m. LAME file that you can't do now with your crummy headphones or cheap Labtec PC speakers.
Actually I am being more autobiographical than informative, I fear.
But heck, I wonder if the US-localized build which will probably be the only build will even remember that the US already has somewhat similar private copying laws on the books.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html#100 8
It is a sad world when a program like this is marketed to parents to install on their teenagers computer with greater publicity than a program that will find and alert them to any pr0n that might be on there.
I had a problem like that once from some spyware on my computer. So I just bought a new computer, like any normal person would do.