if that were true you'd have been able to get a cool name on slashdot. And "were" would actually be spelled the way you spelled it.

You are ignoring the fact that it seems like one highly intelligent and technology-developing species could probably not evolve in coexistence with another one on the same planet, at some point one would win and kill off the other one.

I'm sure it's been proposed/discussed many times before, but I don't know if this concept has an "official" name or not.

They would laugh when they learned that our supposed evidence of the big bang was actually just us picking up their interstellar music streaming service.

Directionality is a mostly irrelevant consideration.

The fact that an antenna is 9db or 30db higher in one direction quickly becomes irrelevant with the vast distances of space. Antennas don't work like flashlights. They are more like a light bulb with a two-way mirror on one side that reflects 50% of the light and lets 50% of it through out the back. At VHF and above, things like mountains act like mirrors that reflect signals straight up (among other directions), as well.

You are somewhat wrong about AM... at least broadcast band AM is mostly only directional in the sense that there's dead zones straight off the ends of the dipole. They are shooting quite a bit of signal upward. Our ionosphere does strongly reflect and attenuate what would make it out to space in those bands though.

This goes toward your comment about the 50s and 60s... we have far more powerful transmitters in operation now (some VHF TV the better part of 1 megawatt!), and in bands that aren't reflected by the ionosphere. If anything we are getting louder and louder.

Unfortunately the first thing they might see of humanity is free-to-air broadcast TV, and just assume that we are all complete idiots.

This is what the 0.01% want us to believe, so they can keep corporate taxes low. It is, however, a very blatant lie.

There are two ways that corporations can compensate higher corporate taxes. One is the way you allude, by passing the burden on to their employees and customers. But it's not the only way. They could also take a hit to their profits, which quite frankly are obscene:

Apple - revenue 170 billion, profit 37 billion = 21%
Google - revenue 60 billion, profit 14 billion = 23%
Microsoft - revenue 78 billion, profit 22 billion = 28% ...and so on...

20-30% of corporate income go to the shareholders. Some of which are your pension fund, but most of which are either other corporations or the super-rich.

Imagine we put a 5% tax on just the profit. Would they hike up prices by 5%? If we assume that the free market still works, they might not. If a competitor only raises prices by 3% and absorbs the rest, you would have effectively taxed 2% away from the super-rich. And once that starts, someone would go to 2.5% then 2% - until a stable level is reached, probably at something like 1%. So the consumers would pay 1% of that tax (but get 5% back in tax money) while the super-rich and corporations pay the rest, and with profits between 17% and 24% would still live comfortably.

The problem is that to change the tax system fundamentally (which is very seriously required), you need the cooperation of those who profit most from the current system, because they've essentially bought our governments.

So basically, it's not going to happen.

That's true to some extent, but to be quite honest, you don't need DRM for that. The most simple copy protection would stop 95% of the casual users.

My point is that for practical purposes in this context, copyright is not very limited, because the limits don't apply to computer games.

Nicely said. :-)

I cannot speak about every European country, but for my native Germany, for example, guns are quite difficult to get. Ownership permissions are manageable if you jump through a ton of hoops, but carrying permissions, for example, are almost impossible.

Compared to the US where many states have open and/or concealed carry right in the law, with no permissions or documents needed, I'd count that as strict.

I'm not talking about someone being polite.

The arson metaphor doesn't really work here, but how about other things people do when they're drunk? Two persons are both heavily drunk, they're on a bridge, joking around, A teases B by taking away something and B tell A to throw it into the river, it'll be fun.

Next day, B says it was theft, because B was non compos mentis when B said it.

Maybe legally it was theft. I would still maintain that it's a different category of action as A robbing B at gunpoint, even though both acts resulted in B losing posession of the item.

You're emotional about a person you don't know. You assume that my behaviour in a theoretical argument on the Internet would be the same as when faced with an actual even in the real world. That's an insane assumption.

I don't know where you got that first part from, but I am quite certain about the second part. In fact, if this weren't an Internet argument, I could point you to the girls in question and tell you to ask them yourself.

I'd like to ask you to make fewer assumptions. You're now at the point where you make assumptions about the feelings of people you not only don't know, but of whose existence you've only just learnt from someone you don't know, on the Internet. That's at least 3 layers of indirection. Even under the best of assumptions, any guesses you make about persons you know so little about is guaranteed to be basically random.

No, you described "unending consent". I did not. Please do not turn assumptions you made around and claim they were words from my mouth.

That is true.
It does not, however, justify incarcerating innocent people or expanding the legal definitions ad infinitum. It asks for better enforcement of the existing laws.

You keep repeating baseless accusations of a very personal nature. I don't think I want to continue an argument where the other part is basically screaming at me half the time. Seriously, if people treated you the same way, would you enjoy it?

If you want to accuse me of something that's a crime in my country, contact my local police: +49-40-4286-50.
If you think this rage is some kind of argument, and you only keep repeating it for dialectic reasons, then I don't think we have enough common ground to continue a discussion.

I thought I answered that question, and quite clearly.

If you're blind drunk and/or unconscious and someone takes advantage of your condition without explicit consent(*), that's rape.

But that is the minority of cases. One report says that in 83% of these so-called rape cases, both parties had been drinking. Another study concludes that about half of so-called "date rapes" are actually morning-after regrets, i.e. both people were drinking, enjoying the night, decided to go somewhere and have a fuck, and after sobering up the next morning one party changed their mind and said "shit, what have I done?".

At which point I would tell them to not drink if they can't handle it, or have a friend who stays sober and can bring them home and/or talk them out of stupid decisions.

I don't feel much pity for people who incapacitate themselves. I'm talking about normal drinking here, not about some scenario where someone got slipped a drug or whatever, just to make that clear.

But more importantly, I don't want to mix people whose perception of attractiveness got drowned in a bunch of drinks they voluntarily had with real victims who were brutally raped, often beaten and sometimes murdered. These two things are not in the same class. And as much as I don't feel pity for drunken girls going home with a guy they don't like anymore in the morning, my thoughts are very much with any victim of an actual rape, which I consider one of the most horrible crimes out there, on par with torture and mutilation. And that is exactly why I'm so opposed to mixing things into it that belong into different categories.

(*) by which I mean proper consent, given while the person was sober and conscious, something like "hey, if I get drunk later, fuck me properly, will you? I love it when you do that."

Actually, only in part. Much of Europe has similar laws, and it's not an island.

Not faces that are easy to punch. Faces that can take a punch. This isn't an attempt at humor, I'm serious. A strong jaw, chiseled features, and a cleft (therefore padded) chin -- these are modifications that help a face receive punching with minimal injury. They have also become preferred characteristics in sexual selection.

I refer to my reply to the other guy. Sure, one-liners always simplify facts, but in this case, it's pretty clear cut.

Google mades a bit over $14 billion revenue. Just under $13 billion of that is from advertisement.

Apple makes the vast majority of its $54 billion revenue on hardware, a small part ($4 billion) on software and iTunes sales and its advertisement revenue is so small it vanishes somewhere under "services" and I couldn't quickly find a number for it.

Ask yourself which company is more likely to sell out your data to advertisers. The one that makes 90% of its money from them and 10% from you, or the one that makes 98% of its profits from you and 2% from them.

Errr... which country do you live in where the 0.01% have not yet bought the government and purchased laws that for all practical purposes give them their own legal system?

If you piss off a billionaire enough, I'm quite sure he can get you arrested or worse. It's amazing what enough money can buy.