But you'd better be sure to do this at the primary level; after that it's really too late....

I'm against term limits; I would however, support a bounty.......

Exactly. But of course, how can you have truly loving relatives when it takes multiple incomes to maintain a household? Or worse yet, when you've sacrificed your children (either through abortion or contraception) to build wealth in the first place?

In the US the federal government has no property taxes, usually that is a state tax. States vary but where I live property taxes are for real property which is essentially real estate. We also pay a tangible tax and an intangible tax. The tangible tax is for hard physical assets the company owns such as PC's, copiers, vehicles, etc. We also pay an intagible tax for intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, goodwill, etc. So we pay taxes on patents and copyrights but they aren't called property taxes, they are called intagible taxes. Every state probably has different rules, this is just how it works in Florida.

In essence companies do pay taxes for copyrights and patents, they just aren't called taxes, they are called fees. It can't cost anywhere near what the fees are to obtain and maintain a patent for a patent clerk to review an application.

And contrary to jailbreaking, rooting an Android phone is not illegal. =)

"The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others"

That would be a step in the right direction, but I don't think it is enough.

In addition to all the other factors stated in posts above, we have to consider the massive infrastructure in place to support the status quo.

Without subsidizing alternative energy, it might end up taking 50-100 years to completely replace all the infrastructure that currently supports coal and oil.

If I were to try to compete with series of coal-->electricity plants by building up a series of say, wind farms, I'd face pretty large obstacles that coal does not face.

Where to store the energy for later use or low wind times?
Not being able to build near existing lines if there isn't wind there.
Power grid not designed to handle spikes in power,
etc etc etc

Likewise if I wanted to start an electric car line. No 'recharge stations', no bulk battery makers, battery technology research needs to be furthered, etc..

Subsidize should be used to encourage industry to move in the direction the benefits the public. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be used in that fashion very consistently.

This is a very important point that is often overlooked.

The counter-argument is that many software companies offer student discounts. Very significant student discounts. However, any student studying graphics today needs many different apps from many different vendors, they also need to upgrade each year to the latest and greatest version. So even though software is priced well for students you can easily be talking about a grand or more per year and at the same time the students still need good hardware which you can't pirate.

I pirated a lot of software while in college. I got a job and now I own thousands of dollars in software that I upgrade every 1 - 1 1/2 years. Had I not been able to find all that software for free and invested the vast amounts of time learning it I'd probably be working as an insurance broker and would not have bought any of the software I now own.

Quit paying the BSA for a service that alienates your future clientele and remember, the software that is too difficult to pirate will never be purchased by the "student" because the "student" in question didn't become familiar with it...

Yes, it is legal. It says so right on the site's FAQ page.

Sure, to you and I it doesn't make sense. But to these companies, maybe it does. However, reading the rest of AC's post, it sounds like the government / insurance also thinks it doesn't make sense.

If cars had EULAs similar to the ones software comes with, you would get:

* The Customer buys a license to use (drive) the Car, but does not actually own the Car.
* The Car is provided without any warranty of suitability for any particular use (like going from point A to point B or starting the Car).
* No guarantee is provided as to the safety of the Car. In case the Car explodes, bursts into flames, or otherwise damages or kills people inside, the Company will not be held liable for it, even if the damage was caused by an intentional action from the Company.
* The Customer is not allowed to disassemble, modify, sell, rent or share the Car.

Or something like that :)

Humans survived the Cold War. I'm not convinced that humanity did.

That would require critical thinking. You do see a problem here don't you?

clever, but Adobe has had the same opportunity in this space as elsewhere. A platform is a platform. The trouble is, Adobe has fallen prey to the design philosophies of all giant software companies: don't redesign, just add more features and bloat.. Usually, this works, like with Microsoft and Office, computers get faster and can handle all the extra junk you don't use. But with Mobiles, the platform got slower (relatively speaking), and Adobe just tried to shoehorn Flash on there (Flash did run on desktops in 2003, which is about the power of the best mobiles today). Trouble is, we're all fucking sick of it. By 2006,7 desktops finally got fast enough that Flash could be used with minimal annoyance. No one wants to go back to 2003 in terms of Flash performance. We'd rather go without, and ignore "70%" of the Internet (when mobile).

Oh it's not that. It's the principal "never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity." There are hard limits on the capabilities of any machine. That's physics. What happens when you try to exceed those limits? If the answer is "I don't know" then you are attributing the unknown to a massive conspiracy that would be identified instantly (if not the actors, then the act, and from those profiting from the act, the actors must be members). That makes them the smartest and stupidest conspiracy ever. Or, could it be that there was a limit reached on one of the thousands of machines used to run the exchanges such that a failure affected the exchange? Nope. Simple mechanical failure (or software bugs), though more common (billions if not trillions or more times more common than conspiracies of this size) can't be it. It has to be some group nefariously manipulating the market for their gain.

If that's the case, identify the top 10 people that made money from this (should be easy for the investigators, there's a massive paper trail) and at least one of them has to be involved. Either that, or you are arguing that they pulled off a brilliant manipulation of the market and forgot to buy low and sell high.

No, it's psychology on the consumers: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol119/psychology.htm

What it boils down to is more people look at "$24.99" and think "$24" than think "$25" Round numbers seem larger when presented straight across, as well. Seeing "$24.99" just *looks* smaller than "$25.00" to most people.

Again, this is most people. Your personal mileage will vary.