Where I live (south america), it's a monopoly for the state owned telecom.

I pay 26 dollars, and get 30/2, fiber. Phone service is 10 extra.
Most people in urban areas have fiber, also.

Market forces can help you only so much. In other small countries, multinationals own markets, and they set prices at their will.

Telecom is strategic infrastructure, and there's a lot of money, if the state can be trusted to build and maintain roads, why not internet?

Luckily, Uruguay's financial markets no longer rely heavily on dirty Argentinian money. There is still a lot of that money around here, but not as much as it used to be, so less financial risk for us.
Anyway, a major financial meltdown in Argentina would most definitely affect us, and that's why I care.

The one in Plaza Independencia?
They have a neon sign for bicoin safe deposit boxes, but they don't look that secure, I think you can even see them from the street.
Also, their windows are lined with weird posters, like 9/11 conspiracy stuff.

I'm betting that''s just some guy, slightly nuts, with a bit of money to rent a place, not a real business.
 

I live across the river from them, you insensitive clod!

Overweight person here, but not from McD.

When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.

In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories. Not a diet meal, but not that excessive. It even has a lot of lettuce, which is good against blood sugar spikes, esp. a good thing for most fat people. A diet coke is zero cal,, but a large coke in the US add 300 calories, reaching 1000 which is too much for a single meal. You are right that large fries, at 500, are not a good idea, though.

Easy.
You take an old copy from the public domain, invest time and money, make it beautiful, and republish it.
Now, your work is copyrighted.

Some other guy can take an old copy and make it beautiful, but not yours. That's protected by copyright. He would have to invest again. And then compete against you.

So it's even better than in the case of books. With books, after they are in the public domain, it's a free for all, very low barriers to entry. With stuff that needs to be restored, it's even more lucrative for the republisher, because they get a new copyright, less competition.

Also, note that this only covers the 70-90 years of undigitized stuff. Todays works won't need _that_ kind of work done to be republished.

Very interesting point, in theory. Luckily, that kind of thing has been studied, and it=s the other way around. Copyrights hinder availability, and entering public domain is an incentive for publishing.
Look at this, it was a study on Amazon availability of books : http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/copyright-stagnation.html.
This shows that books seem to get republished as soon as they enter the public domain, and for a long time after that too.

Is killing an American hostage worse than killing a non American hostage? For practical purposes, we know it is, and even the Italian guy is from another NATO country, so not an American but an ally.
But I just would like to know if there's any difference on paper in your responsibility, when you kill non hostile local civilians vs your own civilians / allies .

Also, about the title, drones don't kill people. Some force did, or some guy behind the controls, but the drone itself, no matter how autonomous it might be, doesn't kill people.

You are right. No sane foreign government would, but there are lots of the other kind.

OK, I get that, I'm not sure that's more prevalent, and I was just providing a counter example. In Uruguay, spending on technology for education is a lot wiser at the government level, than it is at the private level.

I think that the market and the private interests are overrated. There are lots of cases where markets just don't work, and private interests add up against the common good. In those cases, people spending other people's money can end up with a better result, even accounting for corruption or lack of accountability.

And about our education system...
In Uruguay, it's not really better than the US system. It's more egalitarian, but not that good.
Public Universities are free, but poor kids can't really use them. If you are poor, chances are you will drop out of uni after one or two years, because you are unprepared in the first place.
There are some student aids, but they don't meet demand. Also, high school results are worse in poor neighborhoods. Private schools are popular because of this, but they don't achieve better results, if you compare within the same economic bracket of population.