I have to disagree.

Without copyright law, the GPL cannot be enforced, which would lead to rampant plagiarism by big corporations, without any benefit to society.
These big corporations won't release their own modified versions, thus closing the source.

What is needed is a reform in patent law and the reduction of time the copyright can be upheld.

It is tempting to throw the baby with the water, but let's be more humane about this please.

There are indeed.
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_randi.html

You can be gay and a Republican.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Lover

That's only half funny to me (no offense intended here), because, as Cringely put it - it's very logical and it is very likely that it could happen.

See here: http://www.cringely.com/2010/04/why-twitter-is-worth-more-than-facebook-at-least-to-me/

Well, throwing windows out of your laptop seems more fitting to the general spirit of slashdot.

Google pulls out of China - China not pregnant.

Come now, to be honest, have you ever heard of these sort of problems in Draconia?

(get away, you zombies! it's not food!)

Actually, that's very hard to do here in Israel.
There's a disagreement between the doctors and the rabbis about the determination of death - some of the organ donations are made impossible by it because the body is kept too long after the (from the medical point of view, for it to be useful in a transplant) moments of death. But we have pretty damn doctors here (though grossly overworked) so guess it balances it a bit.
 

Subcontracting/off-shoring doesn't say anything about something being open or not.
They may cause leaks, but they can also be made to comply with arbitrary corporate bylaws.

Well, that's a lot better than the military regime of General Failure and his 3 unruly options.

Good luck, agent Calavera. Viva la RevoluciÃn!

But in the end, it is the brain that translates the state into a "feeling". It is in the brain where the feeling occurs.
For example - people who had their arms severed may still feel pain in their phantom arm.
Also, various drugs may contract or expand our feeling of the body itself, deny any feeling or make us hyper-sensitive.

What I'm saying is that consciousness is within the brain and the brain alone. The sensory inputs are very important to its upkeep but this is because OUR brain is "designed" (by evolution, I mean) to be that way - but it wouldn't make -sense- otherwise :)

Well yeah, everybody knows that the plural of anecdotes is bullshit. DUH.

According to a broadcast I've watched by Prof. Spitzer*, it seems that observing the law being broken in some place, makes people break it too.
Say someone see a sign saying "no graffiti allowed" and behind it a wall with graffiti on it, and say someone else has put an advert on the first's windshield - he will more likely throw it on the ground right away than dispose of it in a trashcan. I suppose it is something to do with "Status-Quo", it signals that the law is a joke around that area and so you will act accordingly.
Now, back to the topic - when your peers misbehave, you will more likely misbehave. This seems to be in direct relation to the graffiti example.
I have also read, in a book by Steven Pinker (The Black Slate), that youngsters learn to behave from their environment and not their parents.
What their parents are able to do however is to be careful about who they let their children hang out with.
Yes, it seems that bad behavior is contagious - this is another expression of what seems to be in the human nature; When in Rome...

*link, in German: http://www.br-online.de/br-alpha/geist-und-gehirn/geist-und-gehirn-manfred-spitzer-gehirnforschung-ID1240404245825.xml