Your country is circling the drain now. It won't be anarchists that implode it, it will be the bankers.

You will need the anarchists to reboot from the ashes, for those same bankers, lawyers and bureaucrats will be swinging from the lampposts.

Unless they run a memory dedupe automatically. Every object is not instantly decoherant to its former, ah, object, multiplied by infinity. Perhaps they merge back over "a time" as a single object, rejecting the "unfavourable" outcomes and all keep coming back to a single "most favourable" object that we see as reality.

Perhaps what we see as reality and the weirdness of QED is the Big FAT32 pre-defrag by the Magic Sky Santa.

You do realize that you're failing to disagree with me, right? I said that the rate of suicide is low enough to be carried by the gene pool, and your following statement "if it doesn't have any effect on the gene pool, there is no evolution going on" doesn't contradict my statement. Death in any form affects a gene pool, be it slight or immeasurable; populations in which a small percentage die from a particular disease may develop immunity to the disease... not because the disease was going to wipe out the population, but the individuals in the population which more successfully resisted the disease were overall healthier and produced more offspring, thus affecting the gene pool. Individuals that have a strong tendency toward suicide edge themselves out of the gene pool, whereas those whose genome make them more resistant to suicide have a better chance at propagating their genes. This process happens over several generations. Evolution functions in a way that mitigates suicide, which is my original statement and I stand by it. Yes, suicide, still happens--it's just limited, but you are apparently the one who has no grasp of evolution to insist that it's an all-or-nothing situation (either everyone must commit suicide or nobody).

Now let's say for some reason suicide increases the chance of reproduction. For example, spiders who get eaten after mating--to reproduce means to die, but then they have a better chance at having offspring. Because it helps in successful reproduction, evolution has made this behavior common and ubiquitous among the species (in this species nearly all males get eaten after mating). Among human beings, the rate of suicide is actually very low--we're talking a fraction of a percent. Why isn't it more common? Why not 10%? 50%? 80%? Evolution. Learn how it works.

But isn't it technically possible for people to set up a free DNS or functionally equivalent service of their own, without any government or private regulations, and without necessarily charging [exorbitant] fees to use it? Everything else related to the web is open source...

It's because the rate of suicide is low enough to be carried by the gene pool--it's not high enough to threaten the population as a whole. Yes, evolution does stipulate that that life be able to survive somehow--suicide is no exception to this rule. All I'm saying is that evolutionary theory gives us an actual reason to believe that mass suicide will not happen. I mean, sure there are always some people killing themselves, but I think the notion of copycat suicides going epidemic because of online videos is a load of nonsense and is contrary to what we know about biology.

Personally I think you're over-philosophizing this.

Humerous that here on /. we are concerned with physical piracy :)

Two thoughts.

If a hemisphere is wiped out by a meteor I doubt that his data will be a great concern.

Second, that the fact that customs starts and scans your computer sounds like an excellent vector to insert a virus into them. Make it supicious enough that theyll WANT to keep a copy of the HDD. Either that, don't pay the fee then wait till some schmoe buys it at a recovery auction and target the new user with a root kit.

Just feeling evil today ;)

What about the electrons? If he crosses the equator he'll need to reverse the polarity of a few things. ;)

The people are represented by a person like this.

He must therefore be a representation of the people.

Not a good look for the USA.

Perhaps, but it must seriously burn your jocks that none of your comments are moderated above 1.

I am hardly anonymous, quite the opposite.

I took a little time to read you other comments after i posted mine. It was a knee jerk post, and i apologise for that. But i do feel your worldview is overly sarcastic, deply negative and well, rejected.

Would not calling a space probe "her" then bring all new meaning to the victims who have been anally probed? Would that not mean that "she" was hermaphroditic??

I don't think we have ever been really free, at least in a modern sense.

I suspect the early Picts, Vikings and other tribes had significantly more freedom than we have today.

We live in a pervasive information society, one where the government is the biggest customer and companies are all too happy to sell our data to it.

Our grandchildren will piss on our graves for what we have allowed.

In all seriousness, though, while people do kill themselves sometimes, evolution does play a role here. People who are resistant to suicide are more likely to reproduce and spread their genes, so the problem of suicide is not likely to ever be a serious problem on a mass social scale, or even a threat to the survival of our species.

Maybe they know there is more dirty laundry. They cant afford for the Good Stuff to be released?

you sir have made an astoundingly good point!