The part that I find most humorous about this fact is that our DNA doesn't care what we do for a living or how big our houses are. It doesn't care how intelligent we are either. The goal of our DNA is procreation. So if the rich have fewer children than the poor, then the rich are, by definition, genetically inferior to the poor, and it is natural selection that makes them a minority.

Funnier yet, it is the rich who can afford to have the most children, so the poor are beating them despite having a severe handicap.

Technically only 7 notes, as the 8th note is the first note an octave higher.

The other thing the person you replied to neglected to take into account in addition to what you have already mentioned is that over several thousand years, music theory has worked out pretty well what sounds good and what doesn't. As such, the computer wouldn't have to crunch all combinations. It would simply focus on melodies based on only a couple of scales played over the few basic chord progressions that make up most popular music.

If I were Bill Gates rich, I would make it irrelevant myself.

I would create two monstrous supercomputers. The first would create musical melodies based on the number of notes required by copyright statutes to qualify as unique; the idea being to try and copyright all possibilities of note/time combinations for that level of uniqueness through brute force computing over time.

The second supercomputer would analyze as much new music on the market as possible using the data from the first to determine infringement and automatically send out subpoenas to cease and desist.

The eventual goal would be to crash the copyright system by eventually making it difficult and eventually impossible for anyone to create non-infringing music.

With copyright no longer tenable, piracy would no longer exist and music, a performance art, would go back to being just that; a PERFORMANCE art.

The answer is to do nothing at all. They serve the market, not the other way around. If the market no longer thinks the product they sell is worth paying for, then they have to develop a new product that the market DOES find valuable or they die.

Their attempts to coerce the market to support their incompetence and unwillingness to adapt is despicable.

These are animated polygons. There are no soldiers, there are no civilians, there is no killing, no one has been harmed. If you think otherwise, you need psychiatric help. It isn't real. I don't care if you get to decapitate children and make soup bowls out of their skulls with which to drink the blood of vivisected virgins. It doesn't matter. I repeat, it isn't real. Until we create an AI that becomes self-aware, these polygonal representations have no rights and our treatment of them is irrelevant.

Slap a rating on it and treat it like you would any other piece of media.

I'm always amazed at how evil and brutal human beings are to each other and yet we sit around and get outraged over things that aren't real, while generally sitting on our collective asses when it comes to doing the same in the real world. People need to just STFU when it comes to fiction. Get upset about real life and do something about it.

Time to break out the popcorn and watch the private sector fascists go to war with the government fascists.

Competition in the fascism market benefits everyone. I think we can pretty much all agree we don't want any monopolies here...

And the iconoclastic tree of RMS bears another fruit. You can bet that without the pressure exerted by free and/or open source software and its advocates this would never have happened...

(I now await moderation punishment for having mentioned the name of him is not to be named...)

Considering my only statement WAS the quote, what point exactly are you implying that the quote doesn't help? You clearly have no idea what point I was actually making at all.

Who are you to tell me that what I value is foolish? Obviously I value different things than you do. Ever heard of hypocrisy?

Nowhere did I say I was against downloading. In fact, I am vehemently against the physical production of goods that can be created and distributed digitally. I will NOT buy movies, games, software or music on physical discs and wish for the complete death of manufacturers that produce such environmentally destructive and unnecessary junk.

Those who would give up essential property rights to purchase a little temporary convenience deserve neither property nor convenience.

If the market is unwilling to financially support a work and would rather pirate it instead, then said work is not a viable product and has no real value. NO ONE has any inherent right to make money doing whatever they want, no matter how much effort they put into it.

If you can't make a living making something as trivial as games, get a new career or find some rich eccentric to bankroll your so-called “art”.

Where developers/artists get such a sense of entitlement from is beyond me. The only thing piracy stats prove is how completely out of touch they are with the market; a market that is currently in a huge recession with massive unemployment, I might add...

I hate to state the obvious, but there is no such thing as a secure device. If you can track little Johnny with GPS, then I can hack into the system and track Johnny as well.

No longer will I have to suspiciously sit near the playground in a dirty van scoping out Johnny's cute little derriere with my binoculars waiting for the perfect opportunity to nab him. I'll be miles away on someone's open wireless network tracking his every movement. I'll know every aspect of his daily patterns; the route he walks to school, what houses he frequents and at what times, all without ever risking capture until the very moment I grab him.

And if I'm a violent criminal, I might just take him by force right from your house. The house whose layout I know perfectly from all the pictures you've posted on your Facebook/MySpace page. The house I know doesn't have any guns in it, because you blabbed on and on about how anti-gun you are there as well. I also know YOU from your pictures, and you obviously couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag.

Oh, and BTW? I downloaded the schematics for that watch off of usenet. It really isn't too hard to defeat. I'll get a chuckle when the police find it on the stray cat I released as a diversion.

Then won't you feel like a complete idiot when the very thing you used to protect him is what costs him his life...

Is this an unrealistic scenario? Perhaps. But no less realistic than the idea that something similar will happen if you don't GPS your child.