"Loss of revenue" is not a recognized crime and for good reason, if it were, you could charge a reviewer with "theft" if he didn't give you a "good enough" review. You could charge your competitors for "stealing" your customers with their lower prices. You could charge window shoppers with "theft" for not buying what they're looking at... I could go on, but if you've got half a brain you should already understand the problem.

Neither of us said anything of the sort. You are creating strawmen. What we said is that copyright infringement is not theft, because nothing has been taken. Copyright infringement is violating the copyright holder's right to restrict who can make copies of the protected work. Notably, in most juridisction, copyright applies regardless of whether you are selling copies of the work or not. So for instance, a diary is no less protected simply because the author had no intention of publishing it, and copyright can be infringed in other ways that just copying. For instance, the copyright owner's moral rights prevent unathorized modifications to the work.

The original point was that the loss of bitcoins at Mt. Gox could actually theft because the bitcoins have been taken from the owner without permission, as long as we consider bitcoins to actually be property. Adn yes, theft is a more serious crime than copyright infringement because in theft the owner has been deprived of their actual property, where as copyright infringement may potentially deprive the copyright owner of hypothetical profits that they might have otherwise earned.

Neither of us have said anything about whether "not paying for IP is okay" because that is a completely different and multi-faceted issue. Effectively you're like the guy who's yelling that his computer doesn't work because "the CPU is full of RAMs and Gigs", you have very effectively demonstrated that you know next to nothing about what you're writing about.

Those charges are reasonable, though I'm not sure that I'd agree. I seem to remember quite a few self-proclaimed libertarians talking about the glorious benefits of an absence of regulation... This episode seems to indicate some of the often overlooked benefits of regulation...

On the other hand, I do not know what contracts they had, or thought they had with Mt. Gox, or what the "system they would have used to address their grievances" would actually be.

That would be good, because it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. That's why we call it copyright infringement, because unauthorized copying infriges on the copyright owner's right to restrict who can make copies of the copyrighted work.

No more than murder not being called "life theft" makes it legal to murder someone.

It could be a strawman, if he were debating you. However, I'm inclined to believe he's just mocking those outraged libertarians who are reaping what they've sown.

Not everything is a debate.

It's pretty simple, Bill Gates built two things: Microsoft and the Gate Foundation. Most of the innovative things that Microsoft has done have come from company's that Microsoft bought. Furthermore, Microsoft's (and Gate's) money comes mostly comes from anti-competitive and illegal agreements that shut competitors out of the PC marketplace and the monopoly rents those agreements enabled. The money came from overchanging PC manufacturers for an operating system, and those manufacturers, in turn, passed that cost onto computer purchasers. Microsoft skimmed money from the entire computer industry for over a decade by hiding the cost in the price of a new computer. They required every computer to have Windows on it. If a distributor didn't put Windows on every computer or at least charge for it on every computer, then Microsoft would prevent them from putting Windows on any computer. Ditto if they promoted any computer that didn't have Windows on it.

So because Gate's wealth was won mostly through deception and illegal practices, and Microsoft has a habit of buying new and interesting things and then letting them die, Bill Gates simple does not seem praiseworthy as a visionary. Jobs, on the other hand, was an asshole but it's reasonable to credit to his obsession and micromanagement as being integral to the success of the iPod and iPhone, which earns him the visionary credit (even if we ignore his role in the original idea that personal computers could actually be a thing).

So Bill Gates can be legitimately viewed as a con man because most of his wealth was earned through anti-competitive practices and extortion. Furthermore, as Bill Gates has been moving into charitable work, there have been disturbing indications that he's been repeating the boot stomping that Microsoft did while it was trying to be "the only company in computers". The rumours of NDAs or other agreements requiring research exclusivity with the Gates Foundation, for example, seem to indicate a greater concern for control and credit than results.

I suppose it comes down to the simple question: Can you actually name anything revolutionary that Gates has done? If you can't (and I can't), it's very difficult to justify calling him a visionary.

Personally, I tend to view Bill Gates as a very successful parasite, more than a con man.

It means there is a large and growing body of research that has collected diverse and disparate lines of evidence that support the major governing theory on the topic. In particular, it's enough that we can say with a high degree of confidence that the fundamental aspects of the theory of global warming are well founded and reasonably accurate.

That's what some pendants would like you to think. They want you to ignore the fact that science is both a process and the body of knowledge collected (and verified) through that process.

Apparently we can't do that either because somdumass opposes anything that would "artificially increase costs". Oh wait. You appear to already be opposed to your own solution for the same reason you oppose tariffs. Or maybe you think magic fairies are going to pay for carbon sequestration? The carbon is already sequestered, it's far cheaper to stop burning it than it is to try and re-sequester it after we burn it.

Somehow I doubt the veracity of that claim. After searching for a bit I only found one reference to what that amount actually is, and according to the chart that I found on the ICCT site, it's about to $200-400 per gasoline vehicle which is simply not going to be 1/3 of purchase price of any new car.

I actually sort of agree, in principle, that a private conversation should not be grounds for forcing an owner out of the league. However, this case is more than that. The NBA isn't actually penalising him for his racist views, they're penalising him for being publicly caught and therefore costing them money (if they don't punish him). If they tolerated his racism, they'd possibly face a player and/or fan boycott of the team, and potentially a larger one against the league for tolerating him. To make matters worse he said he didn't want black people in his arena or seeing his team. I suspect if he hadn't said that, and then gone on National TV and attacked one of the most famous basketball players ever instead of apologising and making nice, he would have gotten away with some token sanctions.

But he did what he did, and now the other owners have to choose between their money and a senile old guy they probably never liked in the first place. Is it any surprise they chose public acclaim and money over the angry old senile man? Particularly, when keeping him around would virtually guarantee a repeat performance and more lost money?

So you would say that there is no real competition between restaurants in most cities? They are fairly heavily regulated to provide for the safety of their customers.

A cynic might point out that the only three things you think the government should do could be easily turned against you. The Coyote said "A libertarian is an anarchist who wants the government to police his slaves". I wonder if you understand what that means.

It wasn't a phone call. He was just yelling at his girlfriend because she was seen in public with her non-white friends.

I don't understand why you included the words "seems to" in that sentence. Virtually all of the American media is owned by corporations, and the news (tv, radio, newspaper, and web) are mostly paid for by commercial advertisers. So the media very explicitly only cares about the money. Some of the reporters might care about morality or justice, but nobody above the level of editor does. They're paid not to.

You misunderstand entirely. He has been caught doing racist things. Caught many, many times, actually. There have been numerous complaints from his players and others about his racism (I remember one saying he treated the players like they were field workers at a plantation). He wasn't forced out because he said something racist or did something racist. He was forced out because he made the entire league look bad. At this point it doesn't matter whether the tape should or should not have been released. It was released and the NBA either had to take a collective write-down on their expected profits to defend a senile old man's racism*, or kick him out of the club. It's really simple, he was forced to sell because he was a liability to the league and to the other owners. He sealed his fate when he attacked one of the most famous Basketball players even for being a poor role model when he was supposed to be apologising and pretending he didn't mean what he said.

* The senile part is important, because if they've got half a brain they know this wouldn't have been the last time "Stirling the Racist NBA Owner" made the news as his dementia advanced and he became less able to control his racist outbursts. They also know that it would cost each of them millions every time Stirling made the headlines unless they made a clean and clear break from him.

Because "the huge deviations" do not actually exist?

Often the claims that the models don't match reality are based on incompetence or worse.

As a bonus here are some simpe trend comparison graphs.

Would that be the Richard Lindzen who has been funded by Exxon and OPEC, who actually does accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming, but disagrees with exactly how high the earth's climate sensistivity is (ie the amount of temperature increase you'll see from a doubling of CO2 levels). The man who been a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute, who writes opinion pieces for the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Stree Journal, and who recently joined the Cato Institute?

Not so much, no.