I've been thinking about this for a long time, especially after the rash of hostages killed by ISIS. At this point, nobody can really claim to not know the danger. I know nothing about Lo Porto but Weinstein clearly knew the dangers. So we did he stay there? I think there are several reasons why westerners put themselves in deliberate danger in places like Pakistan, Syria, etc.

1) Some people are simply mentally ill. After the first Japanese hostage was killed by ISIS, it came out that he was mentally ill. Not mentally ill enough to need to be locked away, but clearly incapable of making rational decisions regarding his own safety. People like this are simply always going to gravitate towards dangerous places because the internet makes sure that they know where the really dangerous places are.
2) Some people believe that they are special and the bad guys won't go after them because they are "helping". Most of the hostages fall into this category. Weinstein was like this. Alan Henning fell into this category and possibly the first one as well. Reports are that Henning believed to the very end that the fact that he was there to help would save his life. Sometimes these people get away with being in a dangerous location once and they think that they are simply lucky and won't ever be harmed. Henning went into Syria several times and was left alone. The second Japanese hostage executed by ISIS went to help the first one and he went because he'd been to the area before and thought he was special and the bad guys would leave him alone.
3) Some people are so overcome with their desire to help others that they can't rationally assess the danger and while they know if they are captured it's going to end very badly for them, they believe that they will simply beat the odds. Remember many years ago when Americans and Europeans volunteered to be human shields for Saddam Hussein? They were like this. A few months ago it got announced that a young American female hostage was supposedly killed in a bombing raid against ISIS. She had operated in the area previously and had to know the danger, but she believed that because nobody had yet bothered her that she could work there at no risk. She died as a result of being wrong about that.

There's some overlap between those vague 3 reasons I gave for people ignoring the real danger to be in places like Pakistan and Syria and so on, but I don't know how we can ever stop people from willingly becoming victims of their own bad decisions about personal risk.

In the USA, the answer is "no". Unfortunately, some years ago the classical music label Naxos got greedy and put out a CD in the USA of a 1930s classical work, specifically Pablo Casal's recordings of the complete Bach cello suites. In Europe this recording had clearly entered the public domain, but not in the USA. In fact, there was no question that it was still under US copyright at the time Naxos put it out. Not only was it under copyright, but the US copyright owner (Capitol Records) had their own copy in print and sued Naxos for copyright violation. It was really idiotic for Naxos to try to get away this in the US market and they lost the case. But a worst case scenario happened in the case. The court that heard it (in my opinion) basically made up the law and came to the conclusion that every recording every made or sold in the USA, even as far back as Edison's first attempts in the late 1800s, was still under copyright in the USA because they basically claimed that "common law copyright" protected them until the US law covered them. Naxos couldn't really appeal this because they had no way to argue that what they did was legal, so this horrible court decision that all US sound recordings are still under copyright became US law. Short of convincing Congress to pass a law on the subject, we're basically screwed now as there's nothing ever recorded or sold in the USA that is in the public domain at this time. Do note that this crazy legal finding doesn't apply to books, movies or anything else.

While I don't personally agree with this, I get that businesses and musicians and such want copyright to last for a really really long time. There's a way to meet their desires and satisfy the public's desire for things to actually enter the public domain. If these copyrights are so valuable that 50 years is simply too short, then rather than give extensions away for free, make the copyright holder fill out a form, just like they used to have to do, and pay big money for an extension. Offer 20 year extensions, but make the rate they charge go up exponentially with each renewal. Perhaps the first renewal costs $100,000. The 2nd renewal costs $10 million dollars. The 3rd renewal costs $1 billion and so on. I'm pretty sure that even Disney isn't going to pay $1 billion to keep Steamboat Willie out of the public domain or even if they do pay it for that one, there would be plenty of other properties that they simply can't afford to renew and thus they'd have to enter the public domain. If these are so valuable then why isn't the government getting paid for each renewal? And if the copyright holders forget to renew in time, well, tough. In the old days people did forget to renew and nobody cried out that this was just the most unfair thing ever in the history of mankind.

I don't remember the exact wording, but I read somewhere where I think a lawyer said something like this - "You pass a law. I use a hole in your law. You plug the hole. I drill a hole in your plug." This is the real reason why the loopholes can't ever be closed. Lawyers, which is what most politicians are, are simply too good at finding ways around everything.

I think the real problem is that probably about 70-75% of the US electorate votes only on party affiliation and nothing else in a general election and they simply won't ever vote for a candidate of the other party. This is the reason why people keep getting re-elected to Congress once they get in as long as they don't commit outright crimes. The money does help in primaries and in rare general elections that are up for grabs. I've never voted in an election for the US House that was actually competitive. I've lived in both solid Democrat and Republican districts at various times and none of those elections ever had a candidate from the less popular political party have a real chance to win.

Pretty ignorant posting for a post currently modded "5, Insightful". Dude, there's no chance avocados are going to become a "staple diet" of the USA. It would be great from a health perspective if they did because they contain heart healthy fats and they can make you feel full in addition to being good sources of various nutrients but I can tell you that actually it seems to me that most people I know don't like them very much. Is there really all that much cattle grazing and rice growing in California? All the US rice I've seen comes from either Texas, Louisiana or Arkansas. I would think that land is too valuable in California to use it for cattle grazing. And sorry man, but I'm not real crazy about dates and neither are most Americans. Date palms don't tolerate cold weather at all, which is why I assume they only grow them much further south than Los Angeles. You can actually get snow there on rare occasions, which is very bad for date palms.

Many years ago, it was assumed that in order for a computer to beat humans at chess that major advances would have to happen in artificial intelligence. In the end IBM just simply brute forced an approach by basically allowing the computer the equivalent of an open book test against a poor human who could only go by memory. Maybe some improvements got made in searching in order to beat humans, but I think that's about it. I know that arimaa was developed in the hope that it would spur new AI advances in order for a computer to beat humans. I have no idea - did Wu just simply brute force his way to victory? Is arimaa so little played by humans that the best players are far weaker at it than humans are at chess and thus it just wasn't all that hard to eventually write a program that could defeat the best human players? Did Wu actually advance the art any with his winning program?

Democratic supporters in 2004 claimed that Ohio was "stolen" to help Bush win re-election. It seems funny to me that the losing side always claims the winning side cheated. If the Republicans cheated in 2004, then why did they lose Ohio in the two following elections? I know it's always fun to tout conspiracy theories, but the simple truth is that in presidential elections, a significant number of Democratic supporters vote that can't be bothered to go to the polls otherwise. Florida went to Obama in 2008 and 2012 but it will likely be a cold day in Hell before a Democrat can win a state election there in a non-presidential election year. Same with VA and PA.

Liberty Media is another company like those you mentioned. They actually pride themselves on not ever paying US taxes on their earnings and they have an entire accounting department dedicated to finding legal loopholes and deductions that allow them to pay no taxes. They became the owners of the Atlanta Braves baseball team through a complicated transaction with Time Warner that resulted in neither company paying any taxes on the deal. That deal happened in the previous decade so I don't remember if Liberty Media actually wanted the Braves or if they simply acquired them as the best way to avoid taxes on the deal with Time Warner but that deal raised a lot of eyebrows in the US sporting world and provided the first insights into how far Liberty Media will go to legally avoid paying taxes.

Got any of that anger available for Russia and China, who both also consistently do all kinds of nasty things "with virtual impunity"?

No.

Underwriters' Laboratories (UL) certifications for fire are based on not exceeding a specified internal temperature (or humidity level) for a specified period of time. UL Class 350 safes, for instance, will maintain an internal temperature below 350 F, and humidity below 85%. This is fine for paper, but not for digital media. For those, you're looking for a safe (or safe + internal container) rated for Class 150 or Class 125 (150 F or 125 F), depending on your specific application.

An airtight safe that still got hot inside wouldn't protect paper. Pyrolysis still takes place in the absence of oxygen, carbonizing any organic matter--including paper. (Heating wood under oxygen-starved conditions is how charcoal is made.)

The "But my lawyers sucked!" argument very rarely works. If it did work, then a significant amount of defendants would deliberately get bad lawyers, roll the dice, and if they lose ask for a retrial. Even trying this trick by representing yourself as your own lawyer doesn't work. People tried that in the past and then when they lost, they argued that they had incompetence representation, namely themselves. I'm sure that his next set of lawyers will indeed argue that his defense was incompetent, but the odds of a court agreeing are pretty low. That kind of argument really only works when you can prove criminal misconduct or incompetence to the extreme, not just merely being dumb. You're allowed to have bad lawyers in the USA and yes, you often lose when that happens. His lawyers knew that they couldn't run the standard "He didn't do it so you have to prove it" argument so they gambled that maybe sympathy would work. It sounds stupid, but honestly, I don't see how it's worse than defiantly arguing "It was somebody else", especially in sentencing. All it takes is one juror to give him credit for admitting to it in the penalty phase and he can escape the death penalty. Well, I actually don't know the federal rule but most US states have an "all or nothing" rule in the death penalty where one dissenter can stop it.

I can't say this without sounding like an old man, so you kids stay off my lawn. There.

One of the problems I see with younger IT people, like presumably the poster who asked about this, is that there are always the following assumptions.
1) Everybody older than me is an idiot.
2) I've had some kind of genius insight that nobody before has had, because, well, see #1.

Perl is just horrifically bad? Then let's invent Python which is just so much better in every way possible. Oh wait. Python sucks bad, so let's invent Ruby. There's probably something out there now that will replace Ruby because Ruby just sucks too. The people like the original poster never ask these kinds of questions:
1) Has this been tried before and failed for a really good reason? Really good reasons might include it being really difficult to do this, being able to do it but not well, being able to do it well but nobody wants to use it, etc.
2) If there's been no big push in the past to get this done, is there really some kind of true demand for this?

I don't go around insulting people who start topics here, but this does seem rather pointless.

I agree that this sounds reasonable, but I am afraid the reality is that once countries start changing their laws to do this, it won't be enough. If country A says "OK, we'll change the law to get 17%" then country B offers 15% and then later country C offere 12% and so on, businesses will continue to complain about the declining tax rates as still being "excessive" until they reach zero. I can't rule out that some enterprising country might find a way to make a tax rate of 0% work for them if it's done in exchange for the company bringing so many jobs at specified rates there. I just don't believe that cutting the tax rates is really going to solve anything. Here in the USA there may actually be some companies that want the tax code to stay the same. I've read it claimed that Liberty Media prides itself on never paying any US income tax and even has an accounting office dedicated to zeroing out their tax bill every year.

Correct. Hurt Locker cost $15 million to make and almost nobody in the USA watched it when it was in theaters. It barely made $15 million in US box office, so depending on what was spent for advertising and such, it either lost money or was barely profitable when counting foreign receipts (I don't know what it made in foreign box office receipts). This is why those 2 films are singled out. Rather than admit that the films either sucked or nobody was interested in the subjects even if the films were good, Hollywood is trying to sue its way into profitability there.

My experience is that Netflix has a lot more videos with captions than Amazon Prime. Last year I had a girlfriend who spoke English as a second language. Her English was pretty good, but not fluent. She wanted to improve, so sometimes we would stream movies and I would turn on the captions or subtitles (whichever is the right term) if available as she said it helped her. There were several times when both Amazon and Netflix had a movie and only Netflix has the captions. It got so common that basically we only used Amazon in cases where Netflix simply didn't have it available for streaming. I'm sure there are some movies or shows where Amazon has captions and Netflix didn't, but I think that those are exceptions.