Dunno about LoC's but this is equal to about a single Archos 5.

When these prices come down, I will finally have a reason to retire the old thing (my Archos 5).

One arbitrary roller-coaster is as good as another.

If you accept quantum theory (and just try to disprove it) then the perceptible universe is cannonically isomorphic to a subset of mathematics. If cannonically isomorphic isn't close enough to identity for you, I'd like an explanation of why not. (Well, except that several different things can have aspects that are cannonically isomorphic to the same thing...but perhaps that's just a way of saying that they have certain features that are essentially identical.)

You've been trolled by the GP.

I don't think that's an educated guess. MS took a basically secure operating system and redesigned it by taking out all the secure features. True, this was done before the web was common, but they were the ones that did it. Starting to reimplement them in later versions of MSWind doesn't sufficiently mitigate their creating the problem in the first place.

I've gotten one of them, but I'm afraid I was too impatient to hold him long. Eventually I told him I'd just been reading about them.

If they're cold calling, they're scammers. 90%+ certainty. Some of them may not know it. Perhaps.

I don't think you understand the justification for the existence of copyright. The grant of a temporary monopoly is not the purpose, it's the payment. And the word temporary should be strongly emphasized. Originally it was, IIRC, 17 years, and there are many arguements that this is now too long a period of time.

If people could get a fair trial, then the law wouldn't need to change. But how, pray tell, are you going to accomplish that? One of the purposes of the civil forfeiture laws is to prevent you from being able to hire a decent lawyer. (Mind you, even if you could get a decene lawyer, a fair trial would mean that if you were found not guilty not only would all your expenses be recompensed, but also you would be paid at a fair rate for all the time you were compelled to spend and the personal endangerment that you endured.)

So, yes, the law needs to change. But that is not nearly sufficient. The entire court system needs to be altered so that the accused does not unfairly bear the burden of a corrupt legal system. And somehow this needs to be done without creating a perverse incentive against finding someone innocent.

I think you need to look a bit closer at the history of the US. The persecution of minorities and less powerful is something that has a very long history in the US. They don't tend to cover it in grade school history, but if you read the actual histories, you'll see it.

OTOH, those who romanticize the Indians are equally wrong. They were more done to than doing, but they also weren't innocents. They were, however, less powerful, so they couldn't enforce treaties. You could also investigate how the Chinese and Irish immigrants were treated. Or the Italian, or Spanish, or...well, anyone who wasn't northern European. Also look into the history of child labor (although, to be fair, nobody had decent treatment of poor children near the top of their social concerns...though some claimed to do so, what they meant was religious instruction happened as well as economic bondage).

There is not such thing as "proper DRM".

One benefit of this ruling is that when (if?) a work goes out of copyright, it will still be available, even though the publisher refuses to sell copies.

That said, current copyright law is so irresponsibly excessive that I have my doubts that (in the US, at least) anything will ever go out of copyright that isn't already out of copyright.

> I don't know why any one in Canada would want to visit that cesspool we have what they have only without the suck and with a lot more natural spaces to enjoy.

They seem to like to come down here and play with our guns.

Yes... but you can avoid much of the problem by simply bypassing these communities. The US Interstate Highway system is even designed with this kind of thing in mind.

It's too bad that the Canadians opted for the easy yellow journalism approach. Instead of providing useful information to their own citizens and the rest of us, they just engaged in mindless hysterics.

Kind of like "Germans will take your car for speeding".

Helium exists in the atmosphere not because of the helium reserve, but because the planet constantly outgasses it. It's a product of the radioactive decay chains within the planet.

And if it costs $7 a liter, you better believe people will consume it a *lot* slower. Mainly recapture, but also less frivolous usage.

Being incompatible with Marxism doesn't mean it's not socialism. Fascism isn't necessarily socialistic, but it can be. As defined by Mussolini (who coined the word) Fascism is the state working together with the corporations. "The corporate state" for short. IIRC both the Nazis and the Fascisti claimed to be socialists. They seem, to me, to have had a better claim to the term than Stalin's Russia had to being either communist or Marxist.

Basically a Socialist state is one where the state assumes the role of emergency service provider that was previously held by the village. The village failed in this role when the mobility of the population increased. The Socialist state, however, cannot really fill the role because the village worked by everyone knowing everyone, and so they knew who was suffering ill-fortune, who needed material help, and how much, and who needed emotional support, and what kind. It wasn't perfect, but in many ways it was better than the replacement. But it depended on everyone knowing everyone else, and having known them as they grew up together. This is INDEPENDENT of any other economic axis. You can have capitalist socialist countries, fascist socialist countries, marxist socialist countries, and even free-market socialist countries. (Note that I distinguish between free-market countries and capitalist countries. I don't think the first has ever existed, but it is a logical possibility.)