Except we could reach a critical point where the market has expectations about music being "free" (ad supported or whatever) , and the revenue stream isn't interesting enough for a small number of plays, because people won't pay for CDs, not necessarily because they don't have the will, but because it's come out of the social norm. You end up getting providers who are only willing to push out things for the biggest audience possible, even if it might not be the greatest quality.

It's like when you think about HBO, where people pay a monthly fee to watch. They don't have to pander to the largest audience because they have already secured a nice enough revenue stream.They can care about ... well maybe about pandering to their current audience , but they can afford to try and do their own thing. Compare that to broadcast networks that have to constantly cancel things because if they don't get humongous ratings, it's simply not affordable for them to produce.

There was some article a while back about the same thing happening in app stores. Because of the existence of free apps, people's willingness to pay is greatly lowered, and you end up getting worse quality software across the board ( a couple steps are in between mind you).

So in some "broadcast" world, everyone ends up in a worse situation. The quality is worse, and the smaller artists do even worse. The reason free markets don't magically fix things is that free market theory is based around people being perfectly informed , capable of thinking "rationally", and there being a good amount of providers. That isn't happening.

Granted I've made the assumption that the general trend is towards ad-supported free networks. We might be heading more to a subscription based model, since it seems people are becoming more and more willing to pay for good things in the digital space.

The previous government about a year and a half ago published a memo pretty much saying that foreign students should be given a hard time if they express interest in staying to work after their studies.

This was published, completely unwarranted by the government. Granted Gueant isn't known for his openness, but still, literally no-one was asking for this.

French unis and grandes écoles want foreign students, french companies are more than willing to hire foreign students (when they're highly skilled and seem to be willing to work hard). Like I said, no one asked for this.

intent is important you know

The problem I have with the second point is that people don't necessarily want unlimited children. Talking about it being unmaintanable in the long run treats this as a one-dimensional supply/demand problem, which it isn't (look at the japanese gov't's attempt to spur baby-making...).

I think you underestimate the quality of javascript (which is not the worst thing you could use as a scripting language, def better than using java of all things), and overestimate the role of Java in the "slowness" of the game. Just because the graphics look like they're from quake 2 doesn't mean that's all there is to it.

take Dwarf Fotress and try to play it on a P3. You might think it's running normally because it's hard to gauge speed in a text-based interface but... it's running really slowly. World simulation is computation heavy(probably a lot of cache issues too), no matter what way you cut it. Fun anecdote: my first experiences with DF were on a Pentium 3, and I played it like that for maybe a month before trying it on a fast computer. Boy was I in for a ride.

but if we're aware of this we can work on the cause (poverty) rather than the effect (poor education results)

A while ago there was a whole thing about how this wasn't the case. I think it was maybe for Picasa, among other things, where related terms were making it show up in the top non-advertised slot despite the fact that related websites were much more in use, leading to allegations of google manipulating the results. As said in other threads, this seems to be a fraud issue, since google presents their system as working one way yet manipulates it in a completely different way in some cases.

Thank you for pointing this out. The thing that matters in these cases is the point of sale, not the point of creation. If this passes, we could see things like car companies forcing dealerships to buy from overseas, however. That would be worrying for actual distribution outlets. Imagine your entire business being at the whim of manufacturers desires, even after you paid them.

because you've become de facto on call 24/7. Granted, a solution is just to not pick up , but that choice doesn't even have to be made with a desk phone.

please check the definition of treason in the US:

why are passwords not DRM? I mean most DRM is isomorphic to password right?

health insurance is a lot more expensive than 100 euros/month. Dunno exact prices but I think thousands might be more correct (for family plans at least).

let's add a new one!

Have extremely bad documentation, making it more or less impossible to compile it yourself (this is what a lot of business GPL sofrware does).

There's a difference between a free ride and a less expensive ride. Most people don't have the luxury of having their parents helping to pay, and just saying " take a loan " is what caused prices to rise as much as they have : Schools know the gov't is giving out the loans, so they raise prices without fear. Pretty much handing money over to the schools. It's hard for prices to stabilize if the consumers are given infinite buying power.