Or simply say no to parent's trolling. (No infringement vaguely proven, fragmentation, failures!?! Pleeze!)

Russia made their rails incompatible with the rest of the world so that a foreign military could not just rail on into mother Russia.
That means they have a track width (called gauge in rail language) which is 4 foot 11 inches. While the US has 4 foot 8½ inches. Enough difference to instantly derail the train. The good part is that most of Europe and China uses the same gauge as US. I'm curious if they will modify their tracks or make new rail wheels which covers both sizes. Being that this is bound to open up a massive amount of shipments. Imagine if China joins in. Rail would see an amazing comeback. Next we would have Japan make a tunnel to join the Russian rail. I suspect that this would also make foreign countries more accessible and lower the desire to kill the "different" people "way over there".
(Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge)

Exactly. It's not like they still carry my old stereo from yesteryear. As the article says, they spend less since people are not willing to spend as much. I noticed the same decline in electronic shops. Back when microcomputers came out it was easy to find a store to buy quality components and have a good selection.
Now the only one that seem to still be in business is RadioShack. Not exactly what it was a few decades ago either.

I listened to a 5.1 system my daughter had and it was kinda OK when watching a movie. But once you turned on quality music - yikes!

It was very surprising to hear how a 5.1 system could sound so bad. Which was mostly due to the crappy speakers they included. I got spoiled with studio equipment and could never listen to anything less without being disappointed. Of course everyone wanted to know what I thought of Their stereo. About which one has to get very clever on how one answers. My reply ended up being that they sound pretty good for what they paid. Unless they actually wanted to know the truth.

If you don't actually sit and listen to a good system, or live music, it's not that easy to realize what it should sound like. With all the get everything from the comfort of your own home, that becomes harder and harder. Yeah, my 30 old system sounded a lot better (though only with two speakers) than todays average 5/6/7.1 systems.

Quality is not either subjective. How accurately can your equipment reproduce a sound? Your taste is subjective but that's another story.
Marketing does affect what people buy, especially when they can't tell the difference.

Hehe, this is funny. You can also be charged with stealing, even if all you did was make a new copy.

I find the arguments interesting, Speed kills and Guns kills. Neither is actually true. Not that I'm promoting speeding. But it is usually incompetence, poor responsibility and stupidity that kills. Governments, having problems with telling the difference, simply apply a simply rule that applies to idiots and professionals alike.

Of course the fact of him speeding (or not) has nothing to do with Your actions. Or are you arguing that since others are doing something that it's all of a sudden OK?

Yup, unfortunately you are soo right. I have however discovered that there are a number of people who are on the fence and can't quite decide what is right and wrong, and when shown the way, they walk the straight and narrow.

It thought of canceling a few times, but thought oh what the hell, it'll be interesting to see the argument against, it being such a heated subject. And who knows maybe one person will do the right thing as a result.

Haha, I'm sorry but that is funny!

Reality check! The license is intending for you to take it. When we talk about taking things that don't belong to you it does not include things that you are allowed to take.

Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people. Look at what you are doing, your actions. I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing. Theft. Justifying it with the, often false, idea that it did not do any damage, does not make your action any less so.
It is very true that stealing someones car is quite different from stealing a copy of a computer program. Nevertheless, it is the act of taking something which does not belong to you which makes it theft.

How about someone dropping something on the street. You see it falling to the street and the person is oblivious to the fact and keep on walking. Frankly, if you pick it up and keep it it's also theft. The proper thing to do would be to return it to the owner, or at least make it easier for the person to find it.

All these justifications does not make it less so, it only serves to make you not feel so bad about what you have done/are doing.
It is also rather gutless to hide behind justifications instead of simply owning up to ones actions.
The number of people who feel it's not stealing does not either make it less so.

A much better way of life is to stand up for your actions and set a good example. Make it your goal to always be helpful, soon you start feeling better about yourself as well. I'm sure a number of people consider the above weird and unrealistic. It is however totally workable, and usually brings about a much better feeling about self and others. Being unselfish creates something akin to an accounts receivable in life. When you're in need others often come to your aid, etc.

As I've said in the past, BSA and similar organizations, are in themselves trying to make everyone into thieves by calling everyone so in the hope of increasing income for their members. No doubt they are paid more the more they can stack things in their members favor.

Simply observing how certain groups operate around artists you can see that they themselves are raping the artists under the guise of giving them an "opportunity". Meanwhile the artist who is the one creating the art, and clearly the more valuable one, sees only a few pennies on the dollar. While the lesser person who cannot produce art is taking such an advantage of the situation that the artist has a hard time making a living. Regardless of the effects of those actions, it does not however make the act of taking something which strictly speaking does not belong to you any less of a crime.

Again, this disregard for common sense and decency is not an good opportunity to loose your own respect. Ignore what others are doing and do the right thing for yourself!

That's a technicality as to USSR taking Berlin. US troops wanted to take Berlin and were there way before USSR. But were ordered to let the Russians take it. Germany really fell largely to the US forces. The allies did most of the work before USSR came marching. This was an entirely political motivated move.

Haha, not quite so. As the end of the war (WWII) there was the growing concern amongst various war criminals in Germany that they might end up in big trouble. The idea was formed to start an organization that would be looking for criminals, but manned by them, which would hold them above suspicion (plus they had new identities). At least that was the idea. That organization was named Interpol. It certainly was a private organization without any powers which is often given all sorts of powers in movies, but alas that is in movies.

Their current status does not have any war criminals as they are all dead, but one can only wonder what is up with an organization started by war criminals to help them hide.

For all the young ones I'd like to point out the classic PR number that people so easily fell for in the early days of gas stations. Back in the days when you went to fill up your car with gas you were often doing the filling yourself. The criminal would fill up his car partly, turn off the pump and the restart it. Then completing the filling. Of course the meter only showed the last fill and so you got away with paying less than you took. To raise themselves above suspicion they would simply pop in every now and then and announce that they took gas the day before but forgot to pay. Thus making the gas attendant think that the criminal was one honest fella.

There's two ways to hide, one is in the open. In the most obvious place...

As far as TLD, that ship sailed a long time ago as everyone simply stopped verifying the correctness, and the steps in place is easy to sail around. Since most people don't verify much I would be surprised if someone questioned Interpol's status. Which mind you I've not done for some time myself. By now anything is possible, I just don't look at a TLD to determine what they are.

It is interesting how things are accelerated out of proportions. The fact that schools have the idea of pushing kids out of school, which only increases the odds that these kids becomes criminals and a menace to society, I find astonishing. Talk about dropping their hat.
Kids needs positive guidance. School is supposed to redirect their misdirected actions into something positive. Show the proper way, but oh no, instead here we hit whenever we can.
On top of it they like to suppress free speech. In fairness I've not read what they wrote, but I don't care what it was, expulsion is never the right thing to do. Kids need to complete school and have an equal chance to succeed or society will suffer.
Punishment does not work either, as our over filled prisons shows. Simple observations demonstrate that more caring is what's needed, not more force.
I had an incident when my daughter was in school, where another girl stood up in the bus and hit her from behind. The bus driver stopped the bus and called the police. Six patrol cars surrounded the bus when I arrived on the scene.
I was immediately informed by the office in charge that I can press charges. I thanked him but said that it looks like enough force has already been applied, what we need is to figure out what occurred and see how we can handle the situation without any more force.
While i performed my interviews to establish what had occurred, officers kept informing me that I can press charges, probably six times during the 30 minutes it took.
In the end the other girl had realized that her misdirected aggression was potentially a lot more damaging to her than any peer pressure of being seen as "tough" could be. The two girls had shook hands, with proper display of recognizing the errors of her ways with forgiveness from my daughter. Never mind the relief on the other girl and her grandmother who cared for her.
the whole situation was resolved with communication and care. No additional force was applied and the situation was resolved in a way that helped everyone.

What you DO find is how it appears that just about all of the school shootings were done by people on psych drugs.

The billing bible DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) they use is populated by popular vote. Not by any scientific conclusions. No blood work, etc.

If you read the items in it you quickly get the idea they are simply trying to cover everything we do, which then makes it a cinch to say you need our services, which always means drugs. Which for them means a lot more money.

According to the DSM jet lag is a disorder. So is it to be anxious, even bitter over loosing your job.

How about oppositional defiant disorder, caffeine intoxication disorder, mathematics disorder, sibling relational problem, and frotteurism, the "intentional rubbing up against or touching of another, usually unsuspecting, person for the purpose of sexual arousal.

Based on the DSM psychiatrists declare that their drugs and other treatments work to improve mental illness, even though psychiatrists admit that they do not know how or why these drugs “work.”

Which could explain why the side effects are often worse than the symptoms they supposedly handle. Can't fall a sleep -- take this drug! It might give you kidney failure and in rare cases kill you. But we think it's a good idea to sell you dangerous drugs because it won't kill us.

In the end I really doubt that the excitement and joy of overcoming the challenges in a game is a mental disorder. Which is not to say that you could not end up spending more time in front of it than you should. Affecting school work, job, spouse etc. But that's not a disorder, simply wrong priorities in life. Teaching people to strive for balance in life would be far better and it does not have bad side effects.

Hmm... I bought my EVO within an hour of it being released and nothing is breaking on it. I get about a days worth of battery use out of it. Not to say that the battery life is impressive - it is not. I'm sure one can drain it in three hours. Fortunately there is after market battery that is plenty good which I plan to buy.
Breaking the ports by applying force to the plug is probably pretty easy given the leverage. But this is true for just about any plug. I would guess to say that is probably why the larger majority don't have broken phones.

There is little doubt there are misguided efforts to control what others do. On both sides.

On the one end some have navigated into a position of power where they slowly bleed creative people by paying very few well and the rest very meagerly.
Created the idea they were looking out for your best and you are Oh so lucky to be recognized!

On the other hand you have some who disagree with how things are. They hope to slowly bleed those who oppose the idea that you can, or should be able to do anything you want, and the favorite Oh I'm only collecting what's my birthright, but never received!

Both practice criminal activities where the idea is to fully operate on Everything for Nothing. I say criminal because ripping off people is criminal. Ditto knocking out web sites and similar activities.

Both are ignoring the other because they are "unreachable" and don't know how to, or want to talk to the other. Which makes for a beautiful never ending stream of not getting anywhere.

Honestly I find it harder to sympathize with those who have made it their business to rip of creative people and their fans, though they have the law on their side. Which brings us to the most likely to succeed attack angle, law.

The problem with that is when you don't at all understand the battle field you will fail. Law is obviously not an easy to understand battle field, but it is nevertheless where things are being accomplished. The others are 99% of the time not even noticed, maybe talked about by some, or even counter productive.

United Hackers Against the World is pretty much doomed as most hackers (unlike crackers or black hats) are not interested in criminal activities and it's consequences. In the long run I expect that organizations such as RIAA, MPAA and similar, will fail as very few are really happy with their operating basis.

So what does the common man do when he feels the system is against him?

If he wants to increase his odds to succeed, not just wreck havoc on others and use the situation as an excuse to do so, he organizes. Maybe puts up a website, as a group he can now express a very well thought out viewpoint, collect signatures, make press releases. In short use the system to his own advantage.

Civil disobedience must be non destructive and hit on the public nerve well enough that when you end up in front of the judge he will go with the public opinion as much as the law allows him to. Usually this is a really poor path to choose. Only some beaten down minority which has enough public sympathy is likely to have any success. And even then almost never...

However, figuring out how the system works, IS the way to go. It probably means a lot of hard work, long hours, fighting an uphill battle. But then most worthwhile causes are hard won. Most people are preoccupied and not interested in yet another problem.

Going to war to handle things such as slavery is not quite the same as fighting the RIAA and MPAA for their right to make money. (However unethical their business model might be.) They still have the law on their side. Public opinion is however not all for them. Their "think" is outmoded and was never about giving a good service, only how to line their own pockets, at the expense of the artist and customers. (Which makes it rather humorous when they pretend to stand up for the artist against the pirates, as they surely are the Mother of all pirates themselves.)