Your story is pretty interesting and an example of how customer service is SUPPOSED to work, but you'd have to agree that a story like yours seems to be the exception and not the rule with Comcast. Gotta say, I've also had great experiences with Comcast, and I'd rate their customer service above any other ISP or tech support line I've called. Maybe it's a regional thing - I live in the Pacific Northwest.
Is that speed really worth the money though? Well, 6M/384 from Comcast is about 20% cheaper than 5M/768 DSL from Qwest, and it bursts up to 12M/1M or so... as for not being able to use the full download speed, I have one word for you: Usenet.
i guess what you are paying for is a unified friends list, achievements, cross game messaging, matchmaking, and honestly, pretty good uptime, from my experiences. Steam has a unified friends list, achievements, and cross game messaging for free. (Whether it has pretty good uptime is debatable.)
Matchmaking is nice, and if it were widely implemented it might be worth paying for, but as far as I can tell, it's only supported in two Xbox Live games: Halo 2 and Halo 3. Gears of War doesn't have it, Team Fortress 2 doesn't have it - they have the same old crappy "host a game" / "join a game" setup you can find on the PS2, where you're at the mercy of whoever wanted to play first for level choices and (more importantly) connection quality.
Tell me, when it comes to the environment and global warming, do you believe we should act immediately, even if our actions end up being meaningless, or wait until it is scientifically proven that we're causing it before we act? The important question is not whether we're causing it, but whether the actions we're about to take will help.
Why is it that the party who calls itself pro-choice is so against it when it comes to everything but abortion? I don't know, maybe it's the same reason that the party which calls itself pro-life favors the death penalty and an endless war, but opposes health care for children. Come on, are we just going to trade bumper sticker slogans here?
You say you're averaging $9500 per student [...] Surely we can cut $5500 for vouchers for each kid if you're operating that much cheaper than us and having better results. Possibly. Or you could just trim $5500 per student out of your budget and have public schools of the same quality that we do here, with no vouchers at all.
You must not be watching the news lately, but the school board of Portland, Maine [nytimes.com] has recently decided to do just that. They're now in the business of prescribing hormones to your kids without notifying you and without you giving them consent to do so (if you give them consent to give your 11 year old kid a tylenol if she's running a fever, they can give her birth control pills without telling you and without your consent to do so). You know, that really doesn't bother me. Maybe it's because I don't look at children as their parents' property.
The article you linked is about an independently operated clinic offering health services to students. They're medical professionals, and presumably they aren't handing pills out like candy - they're following the law and being as diligent as any other clinic would be. If you'd rather your daughter get pregnant in middle school than go on birth control, you shouldn't be making medical decisions on her behalf anyway.
Not a problem. I think forcing kids into secular schools (where every religion but Judeo/Christian is taught) is a violation of 1st Amendment. When kids have to recite Koran, but Bible is nowhere to be found, I have an issue. Where is the ACLU?? Well, it's hard for the ACLU to do anything about those "secular" schools that make kids recite the Koran, since they exist in your imagination. Do you have some kind of portal they could use to enter your imagination and file an imaginary lawsuit?
Selfish that you want people that you love to live? Yes, actually, it is selfish to expect someone else to live in suffering so that you don't have to feel the pain of their loss.
Supply WILL increase. [...] Will it happen overnight? Probably not... it'll take a couple years for it to all shake out.
And during those couple years, we'll just have to deal with a system that combines the worst parts of public and private education?
And again, there is nothing that says a private school HAS to take all students who apply. They could limit the size of each graduating class.
Same difference. The end result is that the vouchers aren't as useful as they first appear, because you have no guarantee that you can actually exchange one for a seat in any school.
And where do you live that public education is only costing $2000-4000 per student? Public education is closer to $15,000 each here (western NY). Spending has already doubled in the last 15 years and there is nothing to show for it except a higher dropout rate and a diploma that no longer means you can make change.
In Washington State, where I live, it's more like $9500 per student. $2000 is a number I just made up. But you can't directly translate per-student spending into voucher amounts unless you want to pretend overhead doesn't exist, which leads to the "drastically underfunded public schools" problem I mentioned: just because the state is spending, say, $10 million for 1000 kids doesn't mean you can cut it down to 500 kids and only spend $5 million to achieve the same results.
The public schools that work are run more like private schools. Limited acceptance, parental involvement, etc.
Not around here, they aren't. Maybe you should look further than your own back yard.
Vouchers will absolutely make private schools more accessible in the same way that college grants make going to college (public or private) more accessible.
The limited availability of grants has a lot to do with their success.
Again, nothing says private schools can't keep minimum standards. You want to get into a private school, well, you have to earn it by showing you value your education.
You still haven't answered the question of what happens to the kids who are rejected by private schools. Do they not get an education at all? Or do they have to stick with their local public school, which now can't even keep the lights on because the other students have left and taken their funding with them?
Public schools can't get much worse than they are. 10% of public schools have a 40% drop out rate.
Well, first off, I don't think the dropout rate is a very good measure of a school's success.
But let's suppose for the moment that your statistic is meaningful... how can you possibly think it couldn't get any worse? 10% is much less than, oh, 90%, isn't it? A 40% dropout rate is much less than 100%, right?
Why do such horrible schools get to stay in existence, [...] If they can't help the students, it's time to get rid of those schools and create ones that will.
Agreed, but that doesn't have to mean privatization.
That's part of the problem... who can get an education when they go to school knowing they're going to get their ass kicked by the guy who doesn't even want to be there to begin with?
Agreed. My solution is to end mandatory schooling, so the guy who doesn't want to be there doesn't have to be there.
I didn't say condoms and sex ed... I said birth control. As in hormones.
I didn't say condoms either, I said contraception, which includes hormonal birth control. I'm not aware of any schools that actually do supply that, but I'll take your word for it.
They can royally screw up your entire body and in some cases, have severe negative side effects (stroke, heart attack, tumors, blood clots, depression, etc).
Indeed, which is why they can't be dispensed without a prescription. Are you suggesting some schools are breaking the law by supplying prescription birth control to students
Lots of private schools give out scholarships and if more students are coming on vouchers, it'll free up more of that scholarship money to let more kids come in. Vouchers would open up private schools to far more kids than who currently have access to them now...
That's an interesting theory, but it flies in the face of basic economics. If you suddenly increase demand (give every family $2000 to spend on tuition) without increasing supply, prices go up to keep the demand under control. Now the education that used to cost $2000 will cost $4000 instead, because the school doesn't have enough space or staff to accept every student who shows up with a voucher in hand.
should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have?
False dichotomy. There's another alternative, which is to study the public schools that work and apply whatever it is they're doing to the ones that don't work.
There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Well, there is one reason: it goes against the principles that are supposedly behind vouchers in the first place. If it's wrong to force people to pay into a school system they aren't using, then what does income have to do with it?
What I'm worried about is not that rich folks will be able to take advantage of vouchers -- it's that (1) vouchers won't actually make private schools much more accessible, (2) to the extent that they do make private schools more accessible, they'll also make them perform worse, because their performance has more to do with exclusivity than efficiency, and (3) "competition" from vouchers will make public schools worse, not better, with dire consequences for the students who still attend public school.
Public schools reject problem students too... they send them to vocational schools for half the day.
Public schools can't turn anyone away. No matter what they spend the day doing, those students still count toward the school's performance statistics and the district still has to spend money on them.
There's also nothing saying that private schools have to change their application requirements to accept just anyone.
So, what happens to the students who aren't accepted by private schools, now that their local public school has lost most of its funding?
We'll have more schools with fewer students in them (a school with 500 kids where the staff knows every kid is far more likely to succeed than a school with 5000 kids) and they'll each be more efficient to boot.
Ah yes, things always turn out so well in theory.
what do you expect when you tell parents that it's the schools job to basically raise their kid for them (right down to giving an 11 year old birth control pills so they don't have to have an uncomfortable talk with their parents)
Off topic, but the point of providing contraception and sex education in school isn't so that parents don't have to have an uncomfortable talk, but to account for the fact that some parents won't have an uncomfortable talk, or won't provide contraception, etc., if it's left up to them, and the voters have decided it's a bad thing to have kids growing up without knowing the first thing about pregnancy. That's another consequence of public schools having to accept everyone - some of the kids don't even get fed at home, let alone taught about the birds and the bees.
As for the "drastically underfunded" public schools, throwing more money at the problem has NEVER, EVER been shown to help it.
Taking money away is guaranteed not to help it. Public schools aren't businesses. If you take away their budgets, they won't get more competitive, they'll just wither away.
Seriously, if you started taking away a police or fire department's budget and giving the money to private
Unfortunately, no one seems to have solved the glaring flaws in these voucher proposals...
1. If the vouchers can be used at religious schools, that obviously raises First Amendment issues.
2. Taking money out of the public school system makes the public schools worse for everyone who chooses to stay in them (or can't afford to switch, or can't get accepted by a private school - see below).
3. The vouchers aren't guaranteed to cover tuition at any private school, which means they may end up as little more than handouts to the rich families who can afford to pay the difference between $voucher and $tuition.
4. Private schools often perform better simply because they can reject "problem" students, or because of factors at home (parents who are involved, proper nutrition, etc.) that vouchers will not address. Requiring private schools to accept all students will drag down their performance; not requiring them to accept all students means the ones who are rejected will have to stay behind in drastically underfunded public schools.
Failure/Success is pretty much defined as whatever the parents think it is. Unfortunately for that idea, We The People have decided that a government funded education must fit certain criteria. It isn't acceptable to most voters or taxpayers to have education funds spent on schools that teach that the earth is only 6000 years old, or that the sun revolves around the earth, or that George W. Bush is a shapeshifting lizard, even if a few hundred parents would consider such a school "successful".
Thats why the voucher system would be good. It would introduce some sort of feedback into the public school system. There already is some sort of feedback: it's called voting. If your school board isn't doing a good job, throw the bums out!
They do advertise it for upstream, you just might not have seen it. I've known for months that my 6 Mbps/384 kbps connection is supposed to burst up to 12 Mbps/2 Mbps or so.
However, the fact that you're getting limited to 384 kbps once PowerBoost kicks off, instead of the 768 kbps you're paying for, is a real problem and you should complain loudly to them.
No, it wasn't malice that caused this to be a mess -- it was incompetence. Close, but not in the way you're thinking. The incompetence started with the initial decision to invade Iraq. A competent leader wouldn't have gotten us into this mess in the first place.
Yeah, but look at the most popular console FPS series, Halo. It takes place on an artificial ring world in distant space which happens to hold the power to eradicate all life in the galaxy, and the player character wears a futuristic high-tech suit of armor which makes him invulnerable to enemy fire (as long as he doesn't take too much fire at once), allows him to fall great distances without a scrape, and keeps him constantly informed of the motion and friend/foe status of everyone nearby. He has an AI living in his head giving him directions.
And yet it still takes him seconds to turn in a circle or look side to side.
It was deliberately created to specifically not be represented in congress. What is your evidence for that?
And why should any citizen of the US be required to obey laws that he has no input into? This country was founded on the idea that laws are only just when they're written by the people's representatives.
If you want representation in congress, you should live in a state. If you don't have representation in congress, you shouldn't be obligated to follow federal laws, since you have no input into them. The government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, no taxation without representation, and all that.
Cop: You wouldn't mind if I verify that? Person: No Cop: Thank you, *begins search* If they ask in a confusing way, just revoke your consent. You can do that. "Sorry, officer, I misunderstood you. Yes, I do mind. No, I do not consent to a search."
Yes, there is. If people didn't get paid relative to popularity, then how do you decide how much a particular thing is worth? It's worth whatever people will pay for it, like anything else. Good authors can charge more for their time than bad authors.
How much is a particular "piece" of "content" worth? $10? $100? $1000? Each copy is worth approximately zero, since copies cost approximately nothing to make. The value is in the original act of writing it.
If JK Rowling had been paid $100 per Harry Potter book max, do you think she'd have written seven of them? You don't think her time is that worthless, do you? Why would you, or anyone else, offer only $100 for writing an entire novel?
The act of writing a Harry Potter book is worth exactly the same no matter how many people end up buying a copy. If one person buys a copy and shares it with a million friends who all enjoy it, why should Rowling get paid any less than if a million people each bought their own copies? She did exactly the same work and used exactly the same amount of talent.
and who would bring that case? a bunch of kids using bit-torrent to download copyrighted movies and apps? yeah, the judge is really going to give a fuck. Nice troll, but there are plenty of legitimate users who are getting blocked: World of Warcraft, Lotus Notes, and Linux ISOs come to mind.
If we had an economic model in which anybody could copy to their hearts content, and the content creators still got paid commensurate to their products popularity - then you wouldn't need DRM. But it's pretty hard to imagine how that'd work. What's that bit about getting "paid commensurate to their products popularity" doing in there? You don't need that. It takes the same amount of work to make the content, no matter how many people eventually end up using it, so there's no natural reason for more popular content to result in bigger payoffs. The obsession with getting paid based on the number of people who use your product, instead of based on the costs you actually incurred to make it, is based on nothing but greed.
Just pay people for making the content in the first place, and then you won't need DRM - they won't need to control copying because they've already been paid for the time they put into the product. For an example of how that can work, look at Sellaband, or the model for some open source projects: set a financial goal and say "here's what we have in mind, we're going to need $X to make it, so click here to contribute as much as you want".
And I can kill you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Doesn't make it right. Of course. What it means, however, is that you have to arrange your world to account for the reality that such things are possible. If you might be killed at any time and you can't effectively prevent it, then you may want to buy life insurance and write a will.
And if you're a musician who realizes that your work might be pirated at any time and you can't effectively prevent it, then you may want to rearrange your business model so you can at least get paid while it happens. If Radiohead made more money selling their album this way than they would've through traditional channels, which seems to be the case, then others would probably be wise to follow suit.
You probably whined when the RIAA won their court case too. So, there is something that can be done. You just don't like it. No, that isn't "something that can be done" to put an end to piracy. Suing one in a million pirates hasn't stopped the rest of them.
Okay...you should know I can't play on more than 16 player servers for BF 2142 with my 3x the price of the 360 laptop. Your point is lost once price is factored in. It's no surprise that laptops are expensive, especially the ones that aren't completely worthless for gaming. My desktop cost under $600, on the other hand, and it runs 24-player games of Team Fortress 2 as smooth as butter.
I wouldn't say that. They're trickier and have more sensitive timing, but I'd say that's wholly different from relying on micron-precise physics when dropping a cube on top of another cube through a portal - you only have so much control over that. And anyway, two cubes still won't block two turrets.
How do you even get near that room? After the wall that's being propped open by two cubes, there are two turrets guarding the hallway... it takes two cubes just to block one turret, and that's if you can drop them exactly right (if you don't, you can't exactly run over and pick them up again, and the hallway is portal-proof).
Of course software copyrights need to be protected. The authors need to have the rights to do whatever they want with their software, and it should not be stolen from them. Um, except you don't need copyright for that. Even without copyright, it's nearly impossible for anyone to prevent you from doing whatever you want with the software you write. What are they going to do, break into your home or office and prevent you from running it? Follow you around and prevent you from selling copies of it on CD? Nonsense.
Copyright isn't about allowing an author to do what he wants, it's about preventing everyone else from doing what they want. And because of the fundamental nature of information, nothing they might do with their copy can interfere with your ability to do whatever you want to do with yours.
Slashdot Mirror
Matchmaking is nice, and if it were widely implemented it might be worth paying for, but as far as I can tell, it's only supported in two Xbox Live games: Halo 2 and Halo 3. Gears of War doesn't have it, Team Fortress 2 doesn't have it - they have the same old crappy "host a game" / "join a game" setup you can find on the PS2, where you're at the mercy of whoever wanted to play first for level choices and (more importantly) connection quality.
The article you linked is about an independently operated clinic offering health services to students. They're medical professionals, and presumably they aren't handing pills out like candy - they're following the law and being as diligent as any other clinic would be. If you'd rather your daughter get pregnant in middle school than go on birth control, you shouldn't be making medical decisions on her behalf anyway.
Supply WILL increase. [...] Will it happen overnight? Probably not... it'll take a couple years for it to all shake out.
And during those couple years, we'll just have to deal with a system that combines the worst parts of public and private education?
And again, there is nothing that says a private school HAS to take all students who apply. They could limit the size of each graduating class.
Same difference. The end result is that the vouchers aren't as useful as they first appear, because you have no guarantee that you can actually exchange one for a seat in any school.
And where do you live that public education is only costing $2000-4000 per student? Public education is closer to $15,000 each here (western NY). Spending has already doubled in the last 15 years and there is nothing to show for it except a higher dropout rate and a diploma that no longer means you can make change.
In Washington State, where I live, it's more like $9500 per student. $2000 is a number I just made up. But you can't directly translate per-student spending into voucher amounts unless you want to pretend overhead doesn't exist, which leads to the "drastically underfunded public schools" problem I mentioned: just because the state is spending, say, $10 million for 1000 kids doesn't mean you can cut it down to 500 kids and only spend $5 million to achieve the same results.
The public schools that work are run more like private schools. Limited acceptance, parental involvement, etc.
Not around here, they aren't. Maybe you should look further than your own back yard.
Vouchers will absolutely make private schools more accessible in the same way that college grants make going to college (public or private) more accessible.
The limited availability of grants has a lot to do with their success.
Again, nothing says private schools can't keep minimum standards. You want to get into a private school, well, you have to earn it by showing you value your education.
You still haven't answered the question of what happens to the kids who are rejected by private schools. Do they not get an education at all? Or do they have to stick with their local public school, which now can't even keep the lights on because the other students have left and taken their funding with them?
Public schools can't get much worse than they are. 10% of public schools have a 40% drop out rate.
Well, first off, I don't think the dropout rate is a very good measure of a school's success.
But let's suppose for the moment that your statistic is meaningful... how can you possibly think it couldn't get any worse? 10% is much less than, oh, 90%, isn't it? A 40% dropout rate is much less than 100%, right?
Why do such horrible schools get to stay in existence, [...] If they can't help the students, it's time to get rid of those schools and create ones that will.
Agreed, but that doesn't have to mean privatization.
That's part of the problem... who can get an education when they go to school knowing they're going to get their ass kicked by the guy who doesn't even want to be there to begin with?
Agreed. My solution is to end mandatory schooling, so the guy who doesn't want to be there doesn't have to be there.
I didn't say condoms and sex ed... I said birth control. As in hormones.
I didn't say condoms either, I said contraception, which includes hormonal birth control. I'm not aware of any schools that actually do supply that, but I'll take your word for it.
They can royally screw up your entire body and in some cases, have severe negative side effects (stroke, heart attack, tumors, blood clots, depression, etc).
Indeed, which is why they can't be dispensed without a prescription. Are you suggesting some schools are breaking the law by supplying prescription birth control to students
Lots of private schools give out scholarships and if more students are coming on vouchers, it'll free up more of that scholarship money to let more kids come in. Vouchers would open up private schools to far more kids than who currently have access to them now...
That's an interesting theory, but it flies in the face of basic economics. If you suddenly increase demand (give every family $2000 to spend on tuition) without increasing supply, prices go up to keep the demand under control. Now the education that used to cost $2000 will cost $4000 instead, because the school doesn't have enough space or staff to accept every student who shows up with a voucher in hand.
should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have?
False dichotomy. There's another alternative, which is to study the public schools that work and apply whatever it is they're doing to the ones that don't work.
There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Well, there is one reason: it goes against the principles that are supposedly behind vouchers in the first place. If it's wrong to force people to pay into a school system they aren't using, then what does income have to do with it?
What I'm worried about is not that rich folks will be able to take advantage of vouchers -- it's that (1) vouchers won't actually make private schools much more accessible, (2) to the extent that they do make private schools more accessible, they'll also make them perform worse, because their performance has more to do with exclusivity than efficiency, and (3) "competition" from vouchers will make public schools worse, not better, with dire consequences for the students who still attend public school.
Public schools reject problem students too... they send them to vocational schools for half the day.
Public schools can't turn anyone away. No matter what they spend the day doing, those students still count toward the school's performance statistics and the district still has to spend money on them.
There's also nothing saying that private schools have to change their application requirements to accept just anyone.
So, what happens to the students who aren't accepted by private schools, now that their local public school has lost most of its funding?
We'll have more schools with fewer students in them (a school with 500 kids where the staff knows every kid is far more likely to succeed than a school with 5000 kids) and they'll each be more efficient to boot.
Ah yes, things always turn out so well in theory.
what do you expect when you tell parents that it's the schools job to basically raise their kid for them (right down to giving an 11 year old birth control pills so they don't have to have an uncomfortable talk with their parents)
Off topic, but the point of providing contraception and sex education in school isn't so that parents don't have to have an uncomfortable talk, but to account for the fact that some parents won't have an uncomfortable talk, or won't provide contraception, etc., if it's left up to them, and the voters have decided it's a bad thing to have kids growing up without knowing the first thing about pregnancy. That's another consequence of public schools having to accept everyone - some of the kids don't even get fed at home, let alone taught about the birds and the bees.
As for the "drastically underfunded" public schools, throwing more money at the problem has NEVER, EVER been shown to help it.
Taking money away is guaranteed not to help it. Public schools aren't businesses. If you take away their budgets, they won't get more competitive, they'll just wither away.
Seriously, if you started taking away a police or fire department's budget and giving the money to private
1. If the vouchers can be used at religious schools, that obviously raises First Amendment issues.
2. Taking money out of the public school system makes the public schools worse for everyone who chooses to stay in them (or can't afford to switch, or can't get accepted by a private school - see below).
3. The vouchers aren't guaranteed to cover tuition at any private school, which means they may end up as little more than handouts to the rich families who can afford to pay the difference between $voucher and $tuition.
4. Private schools often perform better simply because they can reject "problem" students, or because of factors at home (parents who are involved, proper nutrition, etc.) that vouchers will not address. Requiring private schools to accept all students will drag down their performance; not requiring them to accept all students means the ones who are rejected will have to stay behind in drastically underfunded public schools. Failure/Success is pretty much defined as whatever the parents think it is. Unfortunately for that idea, We The People have decided that a government funded education must fit certain criteria. It isn't acceptable to most voters or taxpayers to have education funds spent on schools that teach that the earth is only 6000 years old, or that the sun revolves around the earth, or that George W. Bush is a shapeshifting lizard, even if a few hundred parents would consider such a school "successful". Thats why the voucher system would be good. It would introduce some sort of feedback into the public school system. There already is some sort of feedback: it's called voting. If your school board isn't doing a good job, throw the bums out!
They do advertise it for upstream, you just might not have seen it. I've known for months that my 6 Mbps/384 kbps connection is supposed to burst up to 12 Mbps/2 Mbps or so.
However, the fact that you're getting limited to 384 kbps once PowerBoost kicks off, instead of the 768 kbps you're paying for, is a real problem and you should complain loudly to them.
Yeah, but look at the most popular console FPS series, Halo. It takes place on an artificial ring world in distant space which happens to hold the power to eradicate all life in the galaxy, and the player character wears a futuristic high-tech suit of armor which makes him invulnerable to enemy fire (as long as he doesn't take too much fire at once), allows him to fall great distances without a scrape, and keeps him constantly informed of the motion and friend/foe status of everyone nearby. He has an AI living in his head giving him directions.
And yet it still takes him seconds to turn in a circle or look side to side.
And why should any citizen of the US be required to obey laws that he has no input into? This country was founded on the idea that laws are only just when they're written by the people's representatives.
Person: No
Cop: Thank you, *begins search* If they ask in a confusing way, just revoke your consent. You can do that. "Sorry, officer, I misunderstood you. Yes, I do mind. No, I do not consent to a search."
The act of writing a Harry Potter book is worth exactly the same no matter how many people end up buying a copy. If one person buys a copy and shares it with a million friends who all enjoy it, why should Rowling get paid any less than if a million people each bought their own copies? She did exactly the same work and used exactly the same amount of talent.
Yeah, like Marathon, Snood, Breakout... Super Breakout... Photoshop...
My desktop cost about as much as a PS3, and it runs C&C3 and TF2 as smooth as butter.
Just pay people for making the content in the first place, and then you won't need DRM - they won't need to control copying because they've already been paid for the time they put into the product. For an example of how that can work, look at Sellaband, or the model for some open source projects: set a financial goal and say "here's what we have in mind, we're going to need $X to make it, so click here to contribute as much as you want".
And if you're a musician who realizes that your work might be pirated at any time and you can't effectively prevent it, then you may want to rearrange your business model so you can at least get paid while it happens. If Radiohead made more money selling their album this way than they would've through traditional channels, which seems to be the case, then others would probably be wise to follow suit. You probably whined when the RIAA won their court case too. So, there is something that can be done. You just don't like it. No, that isn't "something that can be done" to put an end to piracy. Suing one in a million pirates hasn't stopped the rest of them.
(25 points to whoever catches that reference...)
I wouldn't say that. They're trickier and have more sensitive timing, but I'd say that's wholly different from relying on micron-precise physics when dropping a cube on top of another cube through a portal - you only have so much control over that. And anyway, two cubes still won't block two turrets.
How do you even get near that room? After the wall that's being propped open by two cubes, there are two turrets guarding the hallway... it takes two cubes just to block one turret, and that's if you can drop them exactly right (if you don't, you can't exactly run over and pick them up again, and the hallway is portal-proof).
Copyright isn't about allowing an author to do what he wants, it's about preventing everyone else from doing what they want. And because of the fundamental nature of information, nothing they might do with their copy can interfere with your ability to do whatever you want to do with yours.