Excess capacity summons its own uses.

You assume that your movies and videos cost only their storage space. But what if you switch to a finegrained snapshotting filesystem? That could use up a great deal of space depending on how much you download, modify, and delete.(With space no longer an issue, longevity becomes an issue. I'd rather lose half the space on an oversized hard disk if that means that 20 years from now I will still have my files.)

You assume you'll only store what sort of things you currently do. But what if you scan all your books to save space? High resolution book scans can easily consume hundreds of megabytes a piece. I was thinking of scanning an art book at best resolution, and calculated that its ~500 pages would use up around 20 gigabytes in TIFFs.

And what of new electronic stuff? Lifelogging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelogging) is currently the stuff of experiments and early tentative ventures by the likes of Gordon Bell. But just yesterday the NY Times covered a small camcorder which uses 2GB for 72 minutes of video and costs ~$200; not useful, no, but useful in a few more years/cranks of Moore's law. Lifelogging is easily a gigabyte a day. That's peanuts, of course, and ever cheaper - but the point is that it will soon burst the seams of your 500GB drive.

And so on. Right now you think your needs are met. But there's always something more one could store, and needs change. Maybe, just maybe, you *are* right and 500GB is all you'll ever need; but for the rest of us, that's as sensible as Gates's mythical '540k is enough for anyone'.

Isn't it outrageous? I mean, one could also buy a few books, scan them at leisure and return them!

> Though my idea would be to have the justices only review secrets that specifically pertain to legal cases.

And what is to stop regulatory capture*? Your court is akin to the FISC authorizing wiretaps, and it is famous for rarely ever rejecting requests:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#FISA_warrant

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

"Movable Type is a dead end. In the long run, the utility of all non-Free software approaches zero. All non-Free software is a dead end."

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/14/freedom-0

> Evolution requires that there be variation in individuals, and that there be selection.

That's odd. My vague memories of reading people like Dawkins keep whispering things like 'evolution is changes in allele frequency in a gene pool', which is obviously nonsense because that says nothing about 'individuals'.

Oh ye of little research ability: http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/thread/458a2f4c212e86fb/954ef9456f6e7aca%5C

There are many cases where unilateral movement to a desired equilibrium is worse than useless; it's stupid to suggest that *obviously* copyright is not one of them. It's like saying 'if South Korea really wants peace, why isn't it disbanding its military and kicking out the US?' Because that only helps the other guy, does nothing to bring about the desired outcome, and will screw you the heck up.

> I've occasionally heard people say that if there was no copyright, there'd be no need for the GPL, but I don't buy that -- if you really believe that, why not use BSD or MIT? erm... because I believe that copyright exists? '~C -> ~G' does not imply '~G'.

Healthy old folks may be useful for humans. That would be a great explanation - if humans were the only things to sleep. Why do all sorts of animals which don't even have social groups, much less the ability to learn from each other (or anything to learn), sleep? Further, what sort of incredibly massive advantage are 'we' deriving from old people that in exchange we are willing to piss away at least a third of our life and render ourselves incredibly vulnerable?

The author of the OP article, bos, most certainly does understand the Darcs model, having used it often as he has long been part of the Haskell community (as his bio reveals); his point is that other people may not. (Personally, I think in comparison to Git's model, Darcs is a miracle of clarity. But reasonable hackers may differ.)

The German wikipedia is also small, banned fair-use images, has essentially no pop culture coverage, and is hostile to newbies.

Let's leave aside our reflexive hostility to pop culture and consider; is it *really* a good encyclopedia which, given unlimited space, will only have *5* paragraphs on Darth Vader - and Anakin Skywalker combined? (See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader#Anakin_Skywalker.2FDarth_Vader )

If you don't like this example, we can go through the list of English FAs or even GAs and compare them with their German counterparts. The comparison, I assure you, will not favor de. Why? Because de is a terrible Wikipedia, a shining example of deletionism and exclusivism run amok.

> A successful person currently between jobs (thus no insurance) getting hit by a car driven by a stupid person and being unable to pay the bill to save his life is NOT NATURAL SELECTION. Sure it is. Natural selection depends on a *differential* rate of reproduction between possessors of allele-variants. If successful persons die less/reproduce more even at the tiny rate of 1%, so small that pointless anecdotes and examples like yours are irrelevant, the associated allele variants will still win out in the long run! Evolution simply could not work if an allele had to be 100% perfect at preventing death, in your absurd binary example. (There are even full probabilistic models of how long a run it will take for a 1% or n% variation to reach fixation; but those equations are no doubt too complex for someone who has obviously only a pop science understanding of evolutionary theory.)

The Death Star was the embodiment of Tarkin's Tarkin Doctrine; of course Vader would let Tarkin use it as he saw fit. But nevertheless, the buck stopped at Vader's door. The 'supreme' adjective in his title ain't there for pretty; nor was he Palpatine's right-hand man for nothing. As for the choking thing, that might just be Vader realizing he was acting childishly.

Now, as for construction crew; while you may be channeling _Clerks_ there, we don't see any non-military personnel on the Death Star I, nor is it ever described or appear uncompleted. Whatever was left to do was no doubt being taken care of by the select picked crew of the Death Star I. The original construction was done by Wookiee slaves and Desapyre prisoners - all dead or gone by Yavin.

Finally: since when do rebellions need to declare war? But if you really insist: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Treaty

> Plus, how do you get around the fact that Luke killed way more people by destroying the Death Star I than Vader ever did?

Let's keep in mind that we see very little of Darth Vader; we don't hear about his genocide of the Falleen, for example (I'll assume that you will refuse to accept that Darth Vader is responsible for blowing up Alderaan, even though he was Supreme Military Executor, in charge of all military operations). The EU covers his exploits in much more detail, and gives him a more appropriate bodycount.

Also, the people on the Death Star were military. In war, military personnel are fair game. Luke didn't go after civilians; Darth Vader and the Empire did.

> What would we do without the wiki

Thanks; I always enjoy seeing people find my articles useful!
/article editor