Nor has he shown that books are not fungible. He has only shown that books are not necessarily fungible between titles. (Of course even that is debatable, as it depends on the personal sensibilities of the consumer.) Two copies of the same book are clearly fungible. This is implicit in the fact that Amazon sells "the same book" to two different people in two separate transactions. Presumably the two readers don't care which book rolled off the press first.

This is the most blatant straw-man argument I have ever seen. You don't target the actual study named in the story, but some nebulous cloud of "... majority of [all] criticisms."

You imply this is a criticism of intervention policy generally.

It is not. It is a specific criticism of the current use of drones as a strategy.

And finally I take issue with your assertion that a criticism should be required to suggest an alternative.

I am wearing a dead toad around my neck to ward off the plague. You argue that all available statistical evidence shows that wearing dead toads has no effect on whether or not a person will contract the plague.

The fact that you don't provide an alternative to dead toads doesn't change the fact that my dead toad is completely ineffective.

He's giving it away for free. You don't have to use it.

Maybe they weren't idiots. Maybe the were protecting a lucrative after-Congress job market...

Oh, and the Mein Kampf thing is a desperate attempt by incumbent political parties to discredit him - so he doesn't get in a position to be kingmaker.

It's for exactly that reason that he gets any traction in public opinion in NZ. The first time he came to the attention of most Kiwis at all was when the NZ police raided his house with swat teams, helicopters and the works at the behest of US law enforcement. For ... copyright infringement.

Then it turned out that our intelligence services had been spying on him illegally, (along with 80 or so other foreign-born NZ residents) Some of our politicians had been taking political donations from him and later denying all knowledge, and our Prime Minister claimed to know nothing about the illegal spying despite being briefed on it 12 months earlier

In addition FBI agents in NZ sent copies of his personal files to the US despite the ruling of NZ courts.

In essence, our local politicians and law enforcement acted like such complete and total dickwads that they made even a guy like Kim Dotcom look the good guy by comparison. The let him into the country for his money, despite his convictions. Then when the US law enforcement came knocking they turned on him like a bunch of weasels.

In fact public opinion is starrting to swing against him. Kiwis typically aren't impressed by the kind of excess and showboating he is famous for. I don't think is party will get that many votes, but in a country the size of NZ, and due to the peculiarities of our version of MMP, a small party can sometimes gain a couple of seats and be in a position to act as kingmaker.

It is a restraint of trade. If it was built into a contract it would be unenforceable at the least, probably illegal in many jurisdictions, although some restrictions in employment contracts are enforceable provided they are, "reasonable."

It tells you something that it had to be a gentleman's agreement. I'm sure if they could have legally put it into employment contracts they would have.

What worries me about this sort of knowledge, is that it could make it possible for political leaders to keep the masses working their asses off just above the breadline. But they can avoid pushing it so far that they get the kind of political activism that might result in regime change.

These days only log in to slashdot to read the fuck beta comments.

Oh yeah.

Fuck the beta.

Mod parent +1 fuckbeta

So I see they have deleted all references to the fuckbeta tag. That didn't take long.

P.S. Fuckbeta.