arg01

While I don't disagree The correlation between a higher income and having a more flexible schedule to allow you to keep to the night-owl schedule is easily explained on the job traits front rather than the personal traits front.

The expanded analogy, can Microsoft create a virus that installs MS PowerPoint then sue those who purposefully don't install an antivirus in the hopes of catching MS Powerpoint.

I don't find it odd. I'd assume it's the same attitude plenty of parents have towards sex/parties. Assuming their child will be doing that even though it's not a given doesn't seem outrageous to me and seems like a fair analogy.

Mincome (a trial of basic income in Canada) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome would likely be relevant. Though I haven't read anything with regards to improved creativity, the effect on the labour force was minimal with positive social effects.

I understand you were not being definitive and I doubt very much that people would disagree that Cheney is a better person than that rapist given the same ability to effect the world.

Having said that Cheney had a lot of power and a lot of impact. In relative terms the alternative to Cheney in power does not need to be much better to result in an absolute impact greater than the 4 lives affected by that rapist.

My statement was meant to point out that the absolute rather than the relative "evilness" of him is a viable reason for some to hate him.

Well that guys actions resulted in only 3 women and a child being locked up and tortured for a length of time that is now over...

If they picked 32 words in a book and gave them an alternative word to swap with they can uniquely identify about 4 billion books. That's not much work/not very difficult to uniquely identify and control for quality.

Of course the only payoff is that pirates now need 2+ copies of the book so that they can't be identified. You can push it harder and identify more words to get the pirate to buy more books but the return (in books bought) becomes much much worse and identifying them becomes more infeasible.

"If anything, it may give a much needed boost to an existing sector of internet industry, privacy and security. I see several companies springing up (some already have) that delivery end-to-end encrypted communication and storage over different media (of course, there would be plenty of Snake Oil as well)."

I think it's worth pointing out that this sector growing as a result of this will mean that those 195 people who responded "I'd like to do something but it's too difficult to avoid using cloud services" will find it easier and easier to make the switch.

Couple that opinion in the tech community with consumer protection laws that may technically forbid a business from storing customer data on these services and you do have a drive for foreign business to move away from US services.

When your talking about a principle such as a right to privacy that's not something that will disappear from society quicker than the time it takes for businesses competing on this principle can be set up.

He'd love to use it as he has had an excellent experience running it on gentoo/debian/ubuntu linux, however as he's unsure of its support on suse and prefers ZFS now anyway he won't.

I'd see it as also being that all night is a lot more conducive to no interruptions.

I'd assume you apply the same policy to the fact that the cost/productivity of machinery, process development, software means that for the same input share holders should be getting the value of a similar business of equivalent market share back in the day as well. If the money is not staying in the business you have a few choices if productivity increases, spread it around, funnel it up, or funnel it down. Since I buy into the idea that extreme wealth inequality negatively impacts society I pick spreading it around.

It hasn't really worked though, when it comes to reducing piracy. It appears to have just shook up who the players are and where they are located. http://www.itworld.com/security/247998/megaupload-takedown-d...

So you change your argument from monopolies are fine to monopolies are fine unless they're corrupt, that's fine I'm happy with that clarification, but you must realise that these regulations are there to stop abuse by the corrupt monopolies. So guess what a judge found that google had a monopolistic grip and in this particular instance were abusing it. It's fine to disagree with the judge or even these specific regulations but you obviously believe large enterties(such as the US government) should have restrictions placed on them to stop abuse yet seem to say a little later that large entities (businesses) should not have restrictions on them to stop abuse. I can't understand how this is logically coherent.

I'm also confused by your highlighting of the definition of the word monopoly, are you saying that equating governments to regional monopolies is a flawed analogy or are you just highlighting that one form of monopoly relies on legal enforcement and therefore pointing out that governments are monopolies. Maybe you are saying that google is not a monopoly in this instance, I'd be inclined to agree but would point out that "exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action" as far as geographic data and infrastructure in place would be an arguable position. If you argue against that on the grounds that others could sink in capital to create there own method of supplying data, then I'd argue that the government is about equally removable in that the customers can vote for change (I to believe that's a joke just like your statement on how reliant the monopoly is to any given customer).

The governments are (local) monopolies that supply a product(customers) to businesses on the governemnts terms. So, using your logic businesses can choose on moral or pragmatic grounds not to buy from these monopolies (i.e. set up in another country). Please continue to argue how a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a good thing while arguing a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a bad thing.

I know at least in my country release dates for movies have come much closer to there American release dates over this period. I only mention this because one of the reasons someone is likely to watch a telesync rather than waiting for a better copy is because they don't want to wait to watch it. This lends some more credence to the piracy is a service problem argument. Though of course you could argue that downloading 4gb to 16gb files is more reasonable now days so the change comes from there.

I keep wanting to see some one fight extradition to the US on the grounds that water boarding is torture and that the country can't legally extradite to countries that use torture.