Maybe Amazon should consider moving to the cloud...

I live in a rural community that limited DSL through Verizon and cable through TWC. A company called Cinergy Metronet, now just Metronet, came in and started offering fiber-to-the-home. The day they went live, TWC doubled their advertised speeds and dropped their prices to match Metronet.

I think the argument is what you define as "per infringement".

It is just as easy to share a whole library as it is to share a single song. Does that mean each sharing of a song is a single act of infringement? If so, someone's kid could still create a life-destroying event quite quickly. (5,000 songs x $120, plus other fees.)

However, if that is a single act of infringement, it's $120 plus other fees, which would still be double the cost of all the songs according to this panel.

One is a stiff fee and one is life-destroying amount for most people. Both results can come from a kid messing around on my computer for 10 minutes.

Maybe if you don't think $120 is enough of a deterrent, you could raise it to $500 or something, but I have a hard time believing each shared song should be considered a separate act. They certainly don't need a separate physical action to do, and if I steal a CD from the store it's a single act of shoplifting and not a separate act for each song on the CD. Even if I steal 2 boxed sets and 6 video games it's still one act, just one of higher value.

I don't know where you work, but in my experience C level management is continuously expanding, but it's not related to supply and demand. For the supply and demand system to work, you have to assume a level of intelligence - that these people are paid based upon the value they bring to the company. Once you reach a level where you "are" the company, I can't believe that's true.

I don't totally agree with this statement, because I think immigration can be quite valuable to an economy, regardless of it's current condition.

However, these visas aren't immigration. It allows a company to bring in workers, tie them to said company as a condition of being in the states, and then eventually ships them home.

This program is good for immersive training so these workers can continue to work for said company through outsourcing when they go home and work for a lot less money, but have US living experience.

Immigrants, on the other hand, have a vested interested in their future here (since they don't plan on going home) so they will invest more money, time, and effort into making their new country a nice place to live.

I certainly agree, but I don't think it's that black and white. I think skilled labor should be able to leave their home country and go somewhere else where they have a better shot at making it. America is pretty awesome, and it used to be a lot easier to have the dream of coming to America to make it big.

I've had a number of highly educated foreign friends (coming out of US universities) that found it staggeringly difficult to stay and work here. Most of them would have been great assets, and at least one would have started his own company here, but it's frustrating and hard, so they leave. I don't think we should make it this easy for companies to hire cheap workers using a complex system that the average person can't navigate. I think we should make it easier for these people to setup shop and actually become Americans.

If you tell an Indian guy he can live here for a few years and work, but then he'll have to go home, he will work for cheap and think he's doing pretty well compared to the same job back there. If you tell him he can work and live here forever, he might work cheap for a while, but the American sense of entitlement, rights, and equality appear quite quickly.

Didn't dogpile just aggregate Google, Yahoo, and Excite or something like that?

Sounds like he would be happy at 10 up, but he's 10 down, probably on the lowest rung cable connection, and probably only has 768k or 1 up.

I think people should be allowed to put anything forward, and they still can, the threshold is just bigger before the White House will recognize it.

Given how these have taken off, I don't feel like this is unreasonable or in any way undemocratic. If it only takes about a week to get 25k, it seems like 100k should be in reach if its a half decent petition.

I mean, isn't that around 0.03% of the population? Up from around 0.008%?

I would gladly give back about a dozen violent video games for $25 each. If they drove a hard bargain, I'd probably sell them the lot for $25.

It reminded me of that group that bought cases and cases of the Harry Potter books so they could burn them. A publisher's dream...

I sincerely doubt the founding congress considered the impact of what they were writing on what would have been insane nonsensical ideas like tanks, nukes, or the Air Force.

The second amendment says

You seem to make the mistake that the writers of the constitution were concerned with unlimited gun rights, when they were really concerned about having a well regulated militia to protect the state

In a different time the same amendment was used to tell people that they were required to buy guns and supplies to arm themselves so they could protect the State if it were threatened, without the State contributing financially to anything.

I hear this a lot, and I have all my life, but I still don't know that it's true. The actual text, and the background of how the second amendment was introduced and implemented, it doesn't appear like this is the case.

Minute-men had a huge impact and militias were 100% vital in the USA coming into existence, but the second amendment was written to keep the USA in existence. They wanted a well-regulated milita (a well-trained, armed force) to be able to bear arms to protect the security of a free State (essentially, the ability to train, and be called on, to protect the USA.)

I'm not against the idea that a little rebellion now and again is good for a state, but it doesn't seem to be historically accurate to connect it to the second amendment

I believe early on it was used to justify telling gun manufacturers they had to create weapons of certain sizes and required men of a certain age to own a gun and other equipment, and was sometimes used to justify drafts before we had a true organized national military.

Also interesting that you would consider yourself and the government as two very separate entities. And the idea that, if the government has a weapon you don't, then they will use it against you. I believe our founding father's believed, above all else in government, that this government would be of the people and that the structure setup would ensure that it would stay that way.

Disclaimer: My wife is a mental health nurse for a state-owned mental hospital.

Most states have already, or are in the process, of massively downscaling their state-owned/state-run mental health facilities. Several states have simple closed them all and dumped everyone on the street. On top of that, the process has shifted from being one of "healing" to "management".

Now patients come in by court order, get drugs, maintain their drugs, show some sign of improvement on paper, get discharged, stop taking drugs, re-commit some sort of crime, come in by court order....and the process repeats.

It is very expensive, but there is a decent section of the population that just don't and shouldn't function in normal society. They need help and there is increasingly few places to turn for help if your family member is in that situation. Even if they are, it's hard to get help unless you are either rich, or the court has mandated it. Many places will not accept patients except through court order.

I would consider paying $1,400/class for an online class through UC. It would look better than my community college and would be taken more seriously than a lot of 100% online colleges. However, not for the few crappy classes they offer. The course catalog only has a few courses, and they all are entry level and non-serious.

As a professional, I would be willing to pay $1,400 for an upper level finance course from a respected university, but Pre-Calc, intro psych, and "climate change" are all courses that don't matter where they are from.

What chinese kid with $1,400 hasn't already taken all the courses they offer?