People aren't evil. The simple fact is if a publisher sells a book at a fair price people would rather pay money than simply download the book.

Case in point against DRM are the musicians and comedians who are offering a "pay what you want" model that is so successful these guys make MORE money than they would through a traditional publisher, with less advertising and less overall effort. Time is money.

So yeah some guy will offer the book for free... and a few people will see the link and realize they can BUY the thing, and they'll do that instead. The people who download it wouldn't have bought it anyway. How many books do you read at Chapters? Do you buy EVERY BOOK?

Nope.

How unfortunate that 3668387 is not a prime number as it can be calculated by 19. 56 isn't prime either. :D

It would be nice if big corporations were self-policing, but it's unlikely they ever will become like that since the quick-buck-patch-job is short term better for investers and investers only tend to care about fast rewards, not long term gains. Google has to consider that stalling their growth will cause a giant swing downward.

You're right. Wherever our information is, Google is there. They have the potential for good or evil, just like any other company. The tendency though in fortune 100s is to rape and pillage the bottom line. That's not just a silly idea.

https://www.fisheadmovie.com/

You can't have it both ways, though. You either support the narrow religious dogma based "trust us" approach of the big corporation or you require proof before believing what these fortune 100 companies say.

Science means we reject everything that is not demonstrable.

You either allow men like Neil Degrasse Tyson lead your mindset or you follow the Ballmers et al.

Don't be fooled. Google did a 180Â on their net neutrality stance.

Unless Google is willing to embrace open scrutiny, we have to assume they will prioritize their bottom line and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous. But by all means let's succumb to group-think while we have our net neutrality stripped away one service at a time.

You are a fool if you believe otherwise.

Okay I'll bite. Google have set themselves up as the front door of the internet. They manage a huge chunk of email, and they index the web to provide access to the web on a search basis. Google is therefore in the business of ad sales because businesses want to be visible on the web and if the majority of people are using Google to find things and send email about things, then Google is in the perfect position to earn money while providing a valuable service.

Nothing says evil like monopoly. Google offering domain registry will lead to Google offering hosting. Now then you have the official position of Google on Net Neutrality in theory but you have an all encompassing reality where it is very easy for Google to fudge the rankings in favour of those companies who pay them money for hosting and domain registry. Those domains will get priority indexing. That's the opposite of net neutrality. There is no way to prove that Google won't give priority indexing to domains it registers.

This is what we call a conflict of interest, and that is evil unless Google is willing to become completely transparent and verifiable, which will never happen because they are a traded company.

Shark attacks typically end in blood loss deaths far more often than someone being eaten. They simply don't like the way humans taste and most times when they attack a human it's because they think we're a seal.

The owner must have known because in order to build they have to survey first and the surveyor would mark the property lines. They are making the guy move or demo his house because he knew and was trying to force a redraw of the property lines, thinking it would go unnoticed. It's also possible the surveyor made a mistake but less likely. I know a lot of people like this, who would try and get more land if they thought they could get away with it. It's kind of the way things are especially with 1%ers.

Microcosm/Macrocosm... you think the home owner didn't know? haha he was trying to annex extra land.

Like that guy who built his house on public property, these islands will just be removed if they aren't part of China. That's kind of sociopathic of them to pull that kind of a stunt unless the dispute is resolved, cooperatively.

I know we don't push the traffic we did in the old days, but so when a site goes down, you think, "Let's Slashdot it too!"

Sharkdotted.

Visiting/emmigrating to a martian colony would be a 'real reason' to go to Mars; so that's what we need to build.

Isn't that self-affirming fallacy?

Read the comment that I have linked to, because it solves this problem in a unique way.

I was mentioning this yesterday as a good source of science fiction. Of course it would be pretty awesome to be able to colonize Mars, but we're not there yet and putting a human being there unless there is a real reason to do so is wasteful and a safety risk. Perhaps there is a reason to learn how to send a person to Mars, but it ultimately seems to be tied to the downward spiral the Earth has entered. Global warming, flooding, another potential ice age, wars... etc. Tesla wanted to try and reverse the situation by getting everyone driving electric cars instead of combustion engines that drive global warming further. The fact Musk is expanding into space travel should tell you something. He sees that Earth is in real jeopardy and he also appears to know when the shit hits the fan. To what extent is our fate reversible? What factors would be irreversible? Human greed? Corruption?

Cool science fiction opportunity here is that when we colonize Mars we get to have a Mars vs Earth civil war. My bet is on Mars winning. Time for a hollywood movie deal!!

Another multiverse version of Elon Musk develops a slew of super-viruses under his manufacturing plants in a deep-core Earth super lab. His 2020-ish journey to Mars assembles a team of top candidates for population of Mars now that he has perfected his global terraforming technology. Musk detonates super-virus technology as soon as his crew is safely on Mars. Earth is utterly destroyed and unable to support any life for 300yrs. Musk's new colony thrives in a totally Utopian society with their own laws where each citizen is given enough food and shelter to survive and they can earn the ability to undertake scientific projects that will benefit the colony.

Colonial Mars expands to other planets with the Utopian political system essentially consisting of a Technocracy. Greed and religion are outlawed punishable by death. No person is in charge. Robots are programmed to rule.

Twenty thousand years later Muskites are still populating the universe and expand into super beings. Eventually they are contacted by the Provost Utermina, a group of billion year old beings, evolved from non-carbon life forms, societally grouped into inhabiting several connected and infinite multiverses, also founded upon unwaivering Technocratic principles of kindness, alleviation of suffering and the expansion of consciousness, knowledge and wisdom.