What this actually a software or software failure? Or is there a chance that humans (jellyware) were involved in the actual loading of the money?
It would be quite easy for someone to put $20 bills into a $5 bill slot at some point of the loading process. It isn't like the bills are different sizes.
If this is accidental, then it is the fault of the group servicing the ATM. They need to take some responsibility in the losses.
Of course, those who withdrew cash and expected $5 bills need to take some responsibility too. But the level of responsibility is somewhat less because they expected the machine to work properly. I can see instances where they may not look at the actual bills because they wanted $25 and they got two pieces of paper.
Now if there were people who noticed the problem and took advantage of it in some way out of the ordinary, like requesting to be paid in $5 bills as opposed to their normal $10s or $20s, they should be required to pay back what they got. Their actions would indicate foreknowledge of the problem.
I can see an instance where someone notices the discrepancy and tries a second withdrawl to see if it were a freak accident. If the discrepancy happens again, they may try it a third time, just in case. At that point I would hope that the experimentalist would notify the staff at the site as well as any contacts mentioned on the ATM. (I would also hope that the experimentalist would set aside the money to be returned at a later date.)
The media is very good at taking a word and giving their own spin to it. Thus hacker gets a negative connotation.
Do note that 'hack' has a negative connotation in the media industry. Perhaps those of us in the computer world can link that word to various media 'hacks' that need vocabulary training. We do, after all, know how computer based media works.
I seem to recall a sage commenting that one should "Never argue with an organization that buys ink by the barrel."
Perhaps we should update that with "Never argue with geeks whose home computers would make the world's largest computing array."
I suspect that there will be a small number of people who won't buy the book because they can get it for free. Since that group doesn't buy many books anyway, the net impact will be minor, especially since better copies will come out within a week.
I also suspect that the 'loss' will be more than made up in terms of publicity.
Personally, I'll wait until I can get my hands on a book club copy so I can save a little cash and still have it in hardcopy. And, unlike my wife, I'll read the book straight through so I can be 'surprized' by the precise details of what happened.
Wny not skip W4 and go to W5H? The classic 'who, what, when, where, why and how' of information has been around for years longer than the Internet and covers the basics.
This certainly brings back memories. Zork, Planetfall, Infocom, Activision and other 'ancient' gaming related names that remind me of when 640KB was all the RAM one needed.
It is almost tempting to see if my Tandy 1000SX is still functioning so I can run Zork and others off the aftermarket 40MB hard drive.
For the preliminary stages, doing measurements in feet is perfectly fine. You have to get off the ground before you fly.
The space elevator is still in the Wright Brother's level of technology relatively speaking. Getting to 500 feet was equal to the Wright Brother's first successful powered flight. Getting to 100,000 feet would be like the DC3, something that could be useful for such things as wide area communications that are NOT satellite dependent.
Note that a relatively famous flying machine, called SpaceShipOne, had the call letters N328KF. That stands for 328,000 feet, or 328 kilofeet, the edge of space. If measuring in feet is good enough for them, it is good enough for me.
I suspect we will see measurements in kilometers when the measurements hit the hundreds of kilometer range. But for the American audience, and potential American investors, using feet and eventually miles is acceptable.
No, I firmly believe that we should get our act together first before venturing forth into space, and that we should not blindly believe it's gonna fix all or any of our problems!
We really need to get our act together WHILE we venture forth into space.
We already know about the fallacies of keeping our eggs in one basket. It would be one of the universe's biggest ironies if we held off colonizing other planets and even other solar systems because we achieved societal perfection and then got wiped out due to an asteroid, comet or nearby novae.
Do note that many of the problems we have today have been problems for thousands of years. In some instances those problems were temporarily remedied by frontiers that allowed people to flee and begin again. Space can be that frontier.
In other instances, some problems are embedded in our societal makeup and are hard to fix. Having 'social experiments' like those necessary to deal with personnel on things like the Mars Mission could enable people to understand those embedded aspects and figure out ways to make them work to the benefit of people.
Also note that some problems, like energy production and raw material mining, could benefit by looking outward into space. One asteroid of the proper composition could reduce the need to mine thousands of acres and generate megatons of liquid and air based pollution. (Of course, the Earth based miners and related people would need to find jobs. But some could find those jobs in space.)
When you get down to it, blindly believing that any single set of technologies can fix any or all of our problems is foolish. At the same time, blindly ignoring technologies because 'we need to get our act together first' is also foolish.
Do note that other methods like roads are heavily subsidized. For example, before I got my second car, the portion of my property taxes dedicated to transportion were more than I paid out in state and Federal gas taxes.
Remember that when voting for transportation related bond issues. Even if you don't leave your home, you may be paying for the roads.
This alone is a death kneel for the entire concept. The 100's of satellites in low earth orbit don't have the booster fuel to be dodging a big flying guillotine in space, even if it only comes around every 5 years.
Note that with a space elevator, you could put up satellites that have lots of extra fuel for making orbital adjustments. The lower cost of putting them into orbit would allow you to have bigger fuel tanks.
For that matter, if you had a space elevator support fleet of ships that could help satellites make orbital adjustments, you wouldn't have to include that hardware in the original satellites. This support fleet could also be used to safely remove satellites that are obsolete or not working.
I tend to ignore people who resort to SHOUTING to make their point. While the Newman example is a good one, the use of shouting makes the example trivial.
Some of the comments after the example remind me of the tale of an engineer who was also a science fiction (SF) writer. Way back in 1945, long before mankind put anything into orbit, this person wrote about having communications satellites in orbit. While such things were not technically feasible at the time, they have become a reality since then.
That same person, in a 1978 book called "The Fountains of Paradise", proposed the space elevator. While he had to do some finagling with locations, for dramatic effect, his proposal is a lot like what Liftport is trying to do.
Personally I would say that Arthur C. Clarke is NOT a salesman that promises a chicken in every pot. At the same time, I would say that a lot of his visions have turned into reality. (Of course, with any SF writing, a lot other visions have been left by the wayside. But that is a fact of life when dealing with SF.)
When investing time in an engineering project, also remember to research the history of the idea as part of the feasibility study. A ten minute search on Google using "space elevator" as the search term, uncovers several articles referencing Clarke. (I speed read. Your results may vary.)
Just because it can be done, doesn't mean you have to do it... There are alot more important and much more useful projects money could be put into IMHO!
With a space elevator you could get items to and from orbit for a fraction of the price of today's rocket based transport. While the startup costs are high, the long term price per pound would be low.
What you do with that price advantage could help mankind and save a lot of money on useful projects. Plus there would be other advantages to a space elevator.
Imagine putting weather, telecomm, and other satellites into orbit without having to build them to withstand the high G forces of rocket based launch systems. These satellites wouldn't have to conform to the volumetric limits of the rocket based systems so they could be made with an eye to optimizing their performance as opposed to fitting into a smallish box. Better still, they could be tested in their 'native' environment for several weeks before being 'shoved' into their final orbits with low G propulsion systems.
Also imagine being able to put manufacturing equipment into space, with raw materials, and making a whole array of high quality products that can only be made under 'weightless' conditions. Crystals for electronics and pharmaceuticals are items that have long been considered potential product lines IF shipping costs were low. It could be that a vaccine for AIDS or malaria might be manufactured in space in quantities that make it cost effective. That should be important and useful. But without cheap transportation, costs will be too high.
In some science fiction scenarios, the space elevator could generate electricity, reducing the need for fossil fuels. If this is true, Earth benefits. (I seem to recall that the space shuttle did an experiment with a tether to test the electrical generation hypothesis. But there is a book by David Gerrold that popularizes it.)
Of course, there WILL be the entertainment factor. If a space elevator provides a cheap way to orbit, people will want to go there just because they can. Other people, like Disney, Six Flags, Trump, will see this as a business opportunity and create the amusement parks, gambling casinos and related facilities. Thousands of people will have jobs that are literally out of this world.
On a more important note, despite the dangers a space elevator could pose should it fail, it could also be used to save life on Earth. Building and launching a giant fleet of space ships to deflect an asteroid or comet would be much easier to do from a space elevator. (The technology may not exist now, but we're close in many areas.)
The space elevator itself is just a means to these and other ends. Without it, other important and useful projects would be impossible.
Of course, perhaps the real answer is that scientists and engineers, by their nature, are the worst people to be allowed to work on secret weapons systems because it contravenes their tendency to want to cooperate, share knowledge and see their own work published. Let's replace them all with Fortune 500 CEOs. That should result in a real peace dividend.
We could make a 'great' start by putting Haliburton on the list.
I would be worried that they might outsource the research to China though. That might cause a bit of a problem security wise.
This could lead to some interesting complications when dealing with online storage.
For example, if a person has music online and believes that it is secured, would they be liable if someone breaks in and makes it available to others? I could see instances where this other person breaks in, makes the music available and then reports to the RIAA after a number of downloads are done.
Now some people would say that security is your responsibility, but how do you handle environments where someone else is providing a service and you don't control everything?
Uh, no, you can't. First of all, because your friends are not a random sample, so extrapolation from them is invalid ("the plural of anecdote is not data"), and second of all because a download is not a lost sale.
Good point on the statistical side. I'm aware that my friends aren't a random sample, but they would be able to provide a population that could be examined in detail to determine such things as sample versus purchase ratios. With a few dozen examples you could determine min-max ranges for a variety of things. Those ranges could be used to extrapolate 'guestimates' of losses.
I suspect that they would range from zero losses for those that don't download to dozens of times the value of the industry for super heavy downloaders. If you tossed out the extremes, the results might be in the ballpark.
The value of this exercise would be the creation of a protocol that could be used with a random sample. Has any statistically sound research been done in this area?
As far as the 'download is not a lost sale' point is concerned, I agree with that completely. If you counted all the downloads of copyright protected material, and had prices attached, you could determine the maximum possible value of the losses and keep people from claiming higher numbers. But you would need to subtract all of the legal, duplicate and 'out-of-print' downloads to get the 'actual' numbers.
You could crosscheck the 'actual' numbers by the research protocol I mentioned above. If detailed demographics were included, you might even be able to determine how much business is loss AND gained by population group.
Of course, if the 'actual' numbers can't be calculated, this might be an alternative way to get a ball park figure.
Thinking about it, have any of the 'piracy loss estimates' included the statistics behind them? Were their numbers pulled out of the air? Were their numbers generated by simple extrapolations based on historical data? Were their numbers based on rigid research protocols?
I would love to see their source data AND calculation methods.
I would agree with this comment. One download does not equal one lost sale. So you would have to prorate the extrapolation based on a different factor.
That is one of the reasons I mentioned the following:
(Reference from my comment) Now in some instances they claim to be sampling the works before buying, which is fine. I just wonder about the sample vs purchase ratio. Do they actually buy or do they just do lip service?
It sounds like you are one of those people who obeys the unspoken rule of buying what you keep and supporting the artists that you like. I admire you for that. There would be less talk about piracy if everybody kept to that rule set.
I'll defer to your comments that it is the weather when it comes to freeways and interstates in areas that freeze. Of course those tend to be built to specs that allow for heavy tractor trailers and related loads. And freeways/interstates tend to have anything resembling potholes filled VERY quickly. (You did put in the disclaimer about freeways and interstates.)
On so called surface streets, the quality of roadway varies greatly. There you will run into instances where weather, variable soil conditions, overweight vehicles, poor quality paving, utility upgrades, studded tires and a variety of other things all contribute to wear and tear. You can't claim that it is just one thing. You have to look at the whole picture and determine what percent of the wear and tear comes from what source. And that may vary by location, season and load.
If a number of your friends and acquaintances talk about how many thousands of songs and hundreds of movies they have downloaded, you can easily extrapolate the potential loss caused that group of people.
Now in some instances they claim to be sampling the works before buying, which is fine. I just wonder about the sample vs purchase ratio. Do they actually buy or do they just do lip service?
It would be ironic if some of the chronic downloaders ended up creating marketable materials and got filtered out because of problems. They would then have to take AT&T to court and possibly reveal that they are violating various laws concerning copyrighted material.
It could always end up as a prorated odometer tax, based on distance traveled times a 'wear and tear' factor.
If the 'wear and tear' factor considers such things as miles per gallon, tail pipe output, type and severity of accidents, average passenger load, weight per axle/tire, usage and other factors, it could be fine tuned to produce a 'fair' tax that could then be used for the construction/repair of roads as well as transportation related support services like EMTs, fire, police and medical.
Entities like police, fire and public transit might have their prorated odometer tax calculated but 'forgiven' since it would involve moving money from one public pocket to another. Private 'social services' might get a discount on the rate IF it can be shown that they are helping people.
As with any tax, it would be 'unfair' to somebody. But the inequity might be less doing things this way.
This could also address the MPG factor IF low MPGs were penalized.
When my family only had one vehicle, a relatively high mileage compact car, the amount I paid in gas taxes, Federal and state, was less than what I paid in property taxes for transportation related bond issues (i.e. road repairs and enhancements). My house was subsidizing the roads used by cars, trucks, motorycles, busses and bicycles. The bicycles, to the best of my knowledge, generated the least amount of wear and tear per mile traveled. The trash trucks, based on weight, generated the greatest.
For those people that don't have motorized vehicles and that choose to walk or ride bicycles, payment for the roads come from property taxes, even if their usage is minimal. They are subsidizing the drivers.
Then there are second order subsidies. Parking lots, in many places, are required for businesses. Those parking lots have to be maintained by the businesses so the costs of goods and services has parking lot maintenance costs hidden in them. If you happen to be riding the bus or walking to a store, you are paying for the parking lots AND often having to walk a longer distance because the parking lots are NOT transit or walking friendly.
Weather may damage roads more than vehicles do but vehicles still do damage.
In some instances, if you have a pothole or even a crack in the pavement, vehicles AND weather contribute synergistically to the destruction of the surface. That splash you see when a wheel hits the hole on a rainy day can generate a fair amount of pressure that wouldn't be as much if it were simply air.
It would be interesting to prorate wear and tear based on weather, subsurface conditions and vehicles/users, especially with breakdowns by type of vehicle/user.
You do have a point. I suspect that the really big media organizations would like to see the independent labels disappear or be forced to pay high prices for RIAA protection, thus killing the independent labels. Of course, they would never mention that in public.
The comment can also be translated to mean that citizens who own replication machines and use them for illegal purposes, i.e. counterfeiting, are people that should not be owning them. It does not explicitly say that private citizens should not own replication machines.
Knockoff sneakers, as long as they don't claim to be the originals, are fine. Counterfeit sneakers, those claiming to be the original brand, can open the original manufacturers up to lawsuits if somebody get injured wearing them and the injury can be traced to inferior materials or construction. That is one reason for going after counterfeiters.
Then you have the reputation side of things. Even if a counterfeit product doesn't result in a lawsuit, it can generate headlines, which can darken the reputation of a business. I sometimes wonder how many product recalls are due to problems with original products and how many are caused by counterfeits.
Slashdot Mirror
What this actually a software or software failure? Or is there a chance that humans (jellyware) were involved in the actual loading of the money?
It would be quite easy for someone to put $20 bills into a $5 bill slot at some point of the loading process. It isn't like the bills are different sizes.
If this is accidental, then it is the fault of the group servicing the ATM. They need to take some responsibility in the losses.
Of course, those who withdrew cash and expected $5 bills need to take some responsibility too. But the level of responsibility is somewhat less because they expected the machine to work properly. I can see instances where they may not look at the actual bills because they wanted $25 and they got two pieces of paper.
Now if there were people who noticed the problem and took advantage of it in some way out of the ordinary, like requesting to be paid in $5 bills as opposed to their normal $10s or $20s, they should be required to pay back what they got. Their actions would indicate foreknowledge of the problem.
I can see an instance where someone notices the discrepancy and tries a second withdrawl to see if it were a freak accident. If the discrepancy happens again, they may try it a third time, just in case. At that point I would hope that the experimentalist would notify the staff at the site as well as any contacts mentioned on the ATM. (I would also hope that the experimentalist would set aside the money to be returned at a later date.)
A number of years ago Seafirst would dispense $5, $10 and $20 denominations. But they dropped the $5 denominations.
The media is very good at taking a word and giving their own spin to it. Thus hacker gets a negative connotation.
Do note that 'hack' has a negative connotation in the media industry. Perhaps those of us in the computer world can link that word to various media 'hacks' that need vocabulary training. We do, after all, know how computer based media works.
I seem to recall a sage commenting that one should "Never argue with an organization that buys ink by the barrel."
Perhaps we should update that with "Never argue with geeks whose home computers would make the world's largest computing array."
I suspect that there will be a small number of people who won't buy the book because they can get it for free. Since that group doesn't buy many books anyway, the net impact will be minor, especially since better copies will come out within a week.
I also suspect that the 'loss' will be more than made up in terms of publicity.
Personally, I'll wait until I can get my hands on a book club copy so I can save a little cash and still have it in hardcopy. And, unlike my wife, I'll read the book straight through so I can be 'surprized' by the precise details of what happened.
Wny not skip W4 and go to W5H? The classic 'who, what, when, where, why and how' of information has been around for years longer than the Internet and covers the basics.
This certainly brings back memories. Zork, Planetfall, Infocom, Activision and other 'ancient' gaming related names that remind me of when 640KB was all the RAM one needed.
It is almost tempting to see if my Tandy 1000SX is still functioning so I can run Zork and others off the aftermarket 40MB hard drive.
For the preliminary stages, doing measurements in feet is perfectly fine. You have to get off the ground before you fly.
The space elevator is still in the Wright Brother's level of technology relatively speaking. Getting to 500 feet was equal to the Wright Brother's first successful powered flight. Getting to 100,000 feet would be like the DC3, something that could be useful for such things as wide area communications that are NOT satellite dependent.
Note that a relatively famous flying machine, called SpaceShipOne, had the call letters N328KF. That stands for 328,000 feet, or 328 kilofeet, the edge of space. If measuring in feet is good enough for them, it is good enough for me.
I suspect we will see measurements in kilometers when the measurements hit the hundreds of kilometer range. But for the American audience, and potential American investors, using feet and eventually miles is acceptable.
We really need to get our act together WHILE we venture forth into space.
We already know about the fallacies of keeping our eggs in one basket. It would be one of the universe's biggest ironies if we held off colonizing other planets and even other solar systems because we achieved societal perfection and then got wiped out due to an asteroid, comet or nearby novae.
Do note that many of the problems we have today have been problems for thousands of years. In some instances those problems were temporarily remedied by frontiers that allowed people to flee and begin again. Space can be that frontier.
In other instances, some problems are embedded in our societal makeup and are hard to fix. Having 'social experiments' like those necessary to deal with personnel on things like the Mars Mission could enable people to understand those embedded aspects and figure out ways to make them work to the benefit of people.
Also note that some problems, like energy production and raw material mining, could benefit by looking outward into space. One asteroid of the proper composition could reduce the need to mine thousands of acres and generate megatons of liquid and air based pollution. (Of course, the Earth based miners and related people would need to find jobs. But some could find those jobs in space.)
When you get down to it, blindly believing that any single set of technologies can fix any or all of our problems is foolish. At the same time, blindly ignoring technologies because 'we need to get our act together first' is also foolish.
Do note that other methods like roads are heavily subsidized. For example, before I got my second car, the portion of my property taxes dedicated to transportion were more than I paid out in state and Federal gas taxes.
Remember that when voting for transportation related bond issues. Even if you don't leave your home, you may be paying for the roads.
Note that with a space elevator, you could put up satellites that have lots of extra fuel for making orbital adjustments. The lower cost of putting them into orbit would allow you to have bigger fuel tanks.
For that matter, if you had a space elevator support fleet of ships that could help satellites make orbital adjustments, you wouldn't have to include that hardware in the original satellites. This support fleet could also be used to safely remove satellites that are obsolete or not working.
I tend to ignore people who resort to SHOUTING to make their point. While the Newman example is a good one, the use of shouting makes the example trivial.
Some of the comments after the example remind me of the tale of an engineer who was also a science fiction (SF) writer. Way back in 1945, long before mankind put anything into orbit, this person wrote about having communications satellites in orbit. While such things were not technically feasible at the time, they have become a reality since then.
That same person, in a 1978 book called "The Fountains of Paradise", proposed the space elevator. While he had to do some finagling with locations, for dramatic effect, his proposal is a lot like what Liftport is trying to do.
Personally I would say that Arthur C. Clarke is NOT a salesman that promises a chicken in every pot. At the same time, I would say that a lot of his visions have turned into reality. (Of course, with any SF writing, a lot other visions have been left by the wayside. But that is a fact of life when dealing with SF.)
When investing time in an engineering project, also remember to research the history of the idea as part of the feasibility study. A ten minute search on Google using "space elevator" as the search term, uncovers several articles referencing Clarke. (I speed read. Your results may vary.)
With a space elevator you could get items to and from orbit for a fraction of the price of today's rocket based transport. While the startup costs are high, the long term price per pound would be low.
What you do with that price advantage could help mankind and save a lot of money on useful projects. Plus there would be other advantages to a space elevator.
Imagine putting weather, telecomm, and other satellites into orbit without having to build them to withstand the high G forces of rocket based launch systems. These satellites wouldn't have to conform to the volumetric limits of the rocket based systems so they could be made with an eye to optimizing their performance as opposed to fitting into a smallish box. Better still, they could be tested in their 'native' environment for several weeks before being 'shoved' into their final orbits with low G propulsion systems.
Also imagine being able to put manufacturing equipment into space, with raw materials, and making a whole array of high quality products that can only be made under 'weightless' conditions. Crystals for electronics and pharmaceuticals are items that have long been considered potential product lines IF shipping costs were low. It could be that a vaccine for AIDS or malaria might be manufactured in space in quantities that make it cost effective. That should be important and useful. But without cheap transportation, costs will be too high.
In some science fiction scenarios, the space elevator could generate electricity, reducing the need for fossil fuels. If this is true, Earth benefits. (I seem to recall that the space shuttle did an experiment with a tether to test the electrical generation hypothesis. But there is a book by David Gerrold that popularizes it.)
Of course, there WILL be the entertainment factor. If a space elevator provides a cheap way to orbit, people will want to go there just because they can. Other people, like Disney, Six Flags, Trump, will see this as a business opportunity and create the amusement parks, gambling casinos and related facilities. Thousands of people will have jobs that are literally out of this world.
On a more important note, despite the dangers a space elevator could pose should it fail, it could also be used to save life on Earth. Building and launching a giant fleet of space ships to deflect an asteroid or comet would be much easier to do from a space elevator. (The technology may not exist now, but we're close in many areas.)
The space elevator itself is just a means to these and other ends. Without it, other important and useful projects would be impossible.
We could make a 'great' start by putting Haliburton on the list.
I would be worried that they might outsource the research to China though. That might cause a bit of a problem security wise.
Ah, Bloom County revived.
Now how long will it be before this makes the funny pages? Other than in science supplements and Mark Trail. (Is that strip still around?)
This could lead to some interesting complications when dealing with online storage.
For example, if a person has music online and believes that it is secured, would they be liable if someone breaks in and makes it available to others? I could see instances where this other person breaks in, makes the music available and then reports to the RIAA after a number of downloads are done.
Now some people would say that security is your responsibility, but how do you handle environments where someone else is providing a service and you don't control everything?
Good point on the statistical side. I'm aware that my friends aren't a random sample, but they would be able to provide a population that could be examined in detail to determine such things as sample versus purchase ratios. With a few dozen examples you could determine min-max ranges for a variety of things. Those ranges could be used to extrapolate 'guestimates' of losses.
I suspect that they would range from zero losses for those that don't download to dozens of times the value of the industry for super heavy downloaders. If you tossed out the extremes, the results might be in the ballpark.
The value of this exercise would be the creation of a protocol that could be used with a random sample. Has any statistically sound research been done in this area?
As far as the 'download is not a lost sale' point is concerned, I agree with that completely. If you counted all the downloads of copyright protected material, and had prices attached, you could determine the maximum possible value of the losses and keep people from claiming higher numbers. But you would need to subtract all of the legal, duplicate and 'out-of-print' downloads to get the 'actual' numbers.
You could crosscheck the 'actual' numbers by the research protocol I mentioned above. If detailed demographics were included, you might even be able to determine how much business is loss AND gained by population group.
Of course, if the 'actual' numbers can't be calculated, this might be an alternative way to get a ball park figure.
Thinking about it, have any of the 'piracy loss estimates' included the statistics behind them? Were their numbers pulled out of the air? Were their numbers generated by simple extrapolations based on historical data? Were their numbers based on rigid research protocols?
I would love to see their source data AND calculation methods.
I would agree with this comment. One download does not equal one lost sale. So you would have to prorate the extrapolation based on a different factor.
That is one of the reasons I mentioned the following:
It sounds like you are one of those people who obeys the unspoken rule of buying what you keep and supporting the artists that you like. I admire you for that. There would be less talk about piracy if everybody kept to that rule set.
I'll defer to your comments that it is the weather when it comes to freeways and interstates in areas that freeze. Of course those tend to be built to specs that allow for heavy tractor trailers and related loads. And freeways/interstates tend to have anything resembling potholes filled VERY quickly. (You did put in the disclaimer about freeways and interstates.)
On so called surface streets, the quality of roadway varies greatly. There you will run into instances where weather, variable soil conditions, overweight vehicles, poor quality paving, utility upgrades, studded tires and a variety of other things all contribute to wear and tear. You can't claim that it is just one thing. You have to look at the whole picture and determine what percent of the wear and tear comes from what source. And that may vary by location, season and load.
If a number of your friends and acquaintances talk about how many thousands of songs and hundreds of movies they have downloaded, you can easily extrapolate the potential loss caused that group of people.
Now in some instances they claim to be sampling the works before buying, which is fine. I just wonder about the sample vs purchase ratio. Do they actually buy or do they just do lip service?
It would be ironic if some of the chronic downloaders ended up creating marketable materials and got filtered out because of problems. They would then have to take AT&T to court and possibly reveal that they are violating various laws concerning copyrighted material.
It could always end up as a prorated odometer tax, based on distance traveled times a 'wear and tear' factor.
If the 'wear and tear' factor considers such things as miles per gallon, tail pipe output, type and severity of accidents, average passenger load, weight per axle/tire, usage and other factors, it could be fine tuned to produce a 'fair' tax that could then be used for the construction/repair of roads as well as transportation related support services like EMTs, fire, police and medical.
Entities like police, fire and public transit might have their prorated odometer tax calculated but 'forgiven' since it would involve moving money from one public pocket to another. Private 'social services' might get a discount on the rate IF it can be shown that they are helping people.
As with any tax, it would be 'unfair' to somebody. But the inequity might be less doing things this way.
This could also address the MPG factor IF low MPGs were penalized.
When my family only had one vehicle, a relatively high mileage compact car, the amount I paid in gas taxes, Federal and state, was less than what I paid in property taxes for transportation related bond issues (i.e. road repairs and enhancements). My house was subsidizing the roads used by cars, trucks, motorycles, busses and bicycles. The bicycles, to the best of my knowledge, generated the least amount of wear and tear per mile traveled. The trash trucks, based on weight, generated the greatest.
For those people that don't have motorized vehicles and that choose to walk or ride bicycles, payment for the roads come from property taxes, even if their usage is minimal. They are subsidizing the drivers.
Then there are second order subsidies. Parking lots, in many places, are required for businesses. Those parking lots have to be maintained by the businesses so the costs of goods and services has parking lot maintenance costs hidden in them. If you happen to be riding the bus or walking to a store, you are paying for the parking lots AND often having to walk a longer distance because the parking lots are NOT transit or walking friendly.
Weather may damage roads more than vehicles do but vehicles still do damage.
In some instances, if you have a pothole or even a crack in the pavement, vehicles AND weather contribute synergistically to the destruction of the surface. That splash you see when a wheel hits the hole on a rainy day can generate a fair amount of pressure that wouldn't be as much if it were simply air.
It would be interesting to prorate wear and tear based on weather, subsurface conditions and vehicles/users, especially with breakdowns by type of vehicle/user.
You do have a point. I suspect that the really big media organizations would like to see the independent labels disappear or be forced to pay high prices for RIAA protection, thus killing the independent labels. Of course, they would never mention that in public.
The comment can also be translated to mean that citizens who own replication machines and use them for illegal purposes, i.e. counterfeiting, are people that should not be owning them. It does not explicitly say that private citizens should not own replication machines.
Knockoff sneakers, as long as they don't claim to be the originals, are fine. Counterfeit sneakers, those claiming to be the original brand, can open the original manufacturers up to lawsuits if somebody get injured wearing them and the injury can be traced to inferior materials or construction. That is one reason for going after counterfeiters.
Then you have the reputation side of things. Even if a counterfeit product doesn't result in a lawsuit, it can generate headlines, which can darken the reputation of a business. I sometimes wonder how many product recalls are due to problems with original products and how many are caused by counterfeits.