You can be expected to understand the laws in the 'areas' in which you live your life.

Don't own a farm? Not expected to know and understand the laws related to that.

Don't run a newspaper? Editorial laws and other regulations are not a required reading for you.

Plan on driving a car? Better brush up on those chapters.

Of course this is a slight oversimplification and I agree that in some areas it has gone to extremes. What I'm trying to show is that the somewhat witty and often heard responce that you gave is not as clear-cut as it can easily sound.

I suppose that the point is -- if there was no copyright, there would be no need for the GPL because you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

From my, admittedly limited, knowledge of the GPL it stems from copyright law and not contract law; i.e. given the limits imposed on you due to a copyright claim on a certain software you are granted ADDITONAL rights. Thus, no copyright, no need for the GPL.

On a slightly less legal and more philosophical plane, the GPL is there to prevent something once free from turning non-free and thus limit people from using it as they want. Without copyright you could just 'liberate' it again. Disassemble and rewrite if need be. The focus on 'contributing back' takes a back seat to this.

I am way to lazy to even point you to an url that describes the 'time value of money' and explain what you did wrong in your calculations. I'll just ask you this highly theoretical question: Would you rather have $1000 in your hand today or next month? The rest is left as an exercise to the reader. I swear, people on slashdot sometimes make me actually regret getting a degree in economics. It's the same feeling as when you watch computer programing/hackers in Hollywood movies. Makes you slap your forehead and go 'doh'!

For all intents and purposes, the flow of time from my perspective was different than normal.

More likely, your memory of the event as you look back at it makes it seem like time was slower. As I understand it, the brain has something very much like a short buffer memory that it can use for instant replays. You notice this in situations like when someone at the table next to you say your name. It's not like you react to every word starting with 'b' or 'be'. Instead, the brain is playing it back to you (and in your case probably with a slower speed than the actual event).

Thus, the memory you now think you have of the event is more likely a memory of the instant replay that your brain did for you. Some childhood memories are like this too. You don't actually remember the even itself but you have a memory of a memory. The brain is a strange place.

Yeah. Like huge oil production for a country with a small population. Rumor has it, if every Norwegian were given their "fair share" of the oil production when they hit 18, every single one of them would be a millionaire. If this is true or not, I don't know. But just comparing GDP from two so different economies is almost as pointless as comparing net output.

As a Swede though, I ask myself, what would their GDP be if it wasn't for the oil (and, erm, cod) and would they again be 'little brother'? =)

Let me preface this by saying I dislike the whole 'web OS' crap that Starforce, among others, represent. Useless. At least for me. Maybe there is a target group out there for this stuff too. I would like to get hold of the underlying software though to run on my own server. Does anyone know if this is possible/available?

There is every now and again a moment when it could be useful. I have my own documents saved on my server (mostly) and I could certainly set up rsync'ish capabilities (or something similar) to have it mirrored completely. All this stuff, useless as it is living on someone elses hardware could actually sometimes be useful living on your own. Also it could be amusing to experiment with.

I seem to remember some vnc java applet that I guess could technically do something similar, but handled correctly I think this could be better (as in not completely suck as the VNC sollution did when I last tried it).

Shouldn't that be Chanandler Bong?

Yes, speeds are survivable. Now try to actually find some torrents... What is needed is not a better client (though it wouldn't hurt) but they need to reach a 'critical mass' of users.

They might not be "paying supporters", but if I don't remember it completely wrong, parties large enough are entitled to state funds and these contributions are calculated on the numbers of members. I know their youth party section receives quite a large ammount due to this. They are in fact the largest political youth section in the country.

So, for all intents and purpouses, they might as well be called 'paying' members.

If there is, I better make sure I get the AF achievement... O:-)

How does anyone know Apple doesn't do it the other way arround? Pay 70% of the sales of gift-cards? Doing this, they would completely get arround the problem you describe. This way, the downloading and use of the card would simply be an accounting change on the apple servers.

Sure, they would not get the money they would get if you actually payed for the stuff in the first place, but there won't be the real currency transfer error that you describe.

The only reason I could see for Apple not doing this is that they get free interest on the money people pay for the card before they actually use them. I guess it's left as an exercise to the reader, or the people running Apple, to actually figure out which one is the better move.

I think you already have that one. ;)

Again, nice calculations. I haven't bothered to look into them as such. Perhaps that sounds presumptuous.

I'd just like to warn you slightly. Odds are you have not considered the time-value of money in your calculations. It's a common enough error and I won't try to go into detail too much here. I'm just noting it for your own (and others) benefit. Suffice it to say that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. By paying off a loan faster you are paying it off with more expensive dollars (the earliest the most so).

If you were to delve into the banks calculations and look at things, you would most likely find that there is not that great a difference as to if you pay it of in 15 or 30 years. Of course they make a profit from you if they have you as a customer for longer, but the difference will be smaler than you would be led to believe from your calculations.

My philosophy with them is to look for companies that I think are undervalued, preferably ones that have a long history of paying dividends. The dividends go into reinvestment (i.e: more shares) and give me a better rate of return than I'd get with most cash investments.

There are several points to touch on in your post, but I'll just bring this one to light. If you are re-investing the dividends then clearly you are of the opinion that the company in question is more capable of (would do a better job) than you of earning an interest on your money (which you later on are planing on taking advantage of).

This means that it would be more efficient for them to simply keep the money to start with. Why put the money through a carousel of dividends-to-reinvestment if they could just sit tight? Why pay taxes on dividends (which I assume you do) when it's not needed?

Again, I'm not saying that your investments are bad. A lot of people like dividends. It should be noted though that a company that doesn't pay dividends doesn't just 'hang on' to the money. They think that they can make them grow at a rate equal to, or higher than, the demands made by the investors. (Or rather, the weighted demands of the equity investors and the 'lenders'.)

A better sollution for you would be to look for companies that are undervalued (though who looks for anything else?) that have a policy of stock re-purchases. This would have the same positive effects that you are looking for without the negative tax effects.