You might want to retake your civics classes -- I don't think you understand what a democracy is.

The USA is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

The UK is a Constitutional Monarchy (with a parliamentary implementation of executive powers). It's essentially a Republic.

Switzerland's referendum process makes it more of a democracy. Their current constitution was only adopted in 1999 with direct democracy (through referendums) being a bit over 120 years old or so...

So, I hardily agree with you. "Lets not confuse pompous pronouncements with facts.".

it is 2010, my old athlon XP i bought in 2003 already has two sata ports, my GFs old Pentium 4 has SATA hard drives. I switched to only getting Sata drives in 2005. I really am curious where you found a 2006 machine with NO sata port...

besides, my fav computershop (actual shop with their own stock), lists 4 different IDE drives on their shelves (and in stock currently, the fifth type isnt), ranging from 80 to 320 GB.

Ram and VGA cards tend to be a bit more difficult, but if you dont mind paying a bit more per performance, AGP cards are still readily available, as is DDR ram.

I still agree with the GP though, restoring old machines (esp. servers) often isnt very economical once you need more then one or two spare parts, but for non-obscure hardware most parts are still available (come to think of it, i can still buy socket A mobo's new....)

Your freedom to walk down the street unharmed restricts me from punching you in the face.

Total, absolute freedom might work in the self-regulating anarchisms Robert A. Heinlein wrote about, but even there, people were restricting themselves. By their own free will, granted; but still.

The moral: There are _always_ restrictions. And that is a good thing. Which particular set you prefer... Now _that_ is open for debate :)

Putting something into the public domain does allow re-licensing. And yes, the public domain _is_ a form of licence.

$40K doesn't go very far when a one bedroom apartment in the Chicago area goes for over $900/month (and when I was paying that, people still broke into my car so that's not even a neighborhood I'd consider fit for raising kids), food, auto financing, auto insurance, clothes, and utilities. That's pretty much break even. You know $4000 is 10% of $40K and the feds take a good chunk of that 40K before you even see it. That's some ugly break even accounting after filing taxes and putting that money away. Heaven forbid someone wants to have money for retirement, or even thinking about Christmas (for their kids), school supplies or if they get into an accident.

The bill being put forward by a member of parliament from the NDP, who are at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the governing Conservative parties. It will not get enought support to make it past first reading - it would need the support of the largest opposition party, the Liberals, and they're likely to just ignore it, because politically, it looks like a tax. Also, because there's finances involved, passing the legislation might be considered a confidence vote which would bring down the government and trigger an election, and this just isn't an issue the Liberals want us going to the polls over. Canada once did have an "ipod tax" of the sort proposed. The "private copying" regime in Canada makes it legal (i.e. not a violation of copyright) to copy music (but not movies, or non-musical audio recordings) for private use onto an "audio recording media". The flip side of the legislation is that a levy (tax) is imposed on "audio recording media" to compensate recording artists for the copies of their music that are copied in this way. For example, there's a levy of about 30 cents per blank CD. However, because the law doesn't model technology very well, there is no levy on blank DVDs, and when they tried to impose a levy on MP3 players several years ago, the Court struck it down, concluding that an MP3 player is not "audio recording media". Hard drives, similarly, are not "audio recording media" because they can hold anything, not just audio. Like I said, the law doesn't model technology very well.

I'm fairly certain that police can't come into my house and take my personal property even with a warrant unless it is something related to the search warrant. So, if they come into my house looking for stolen "statuary" they can't take my paintings or dvds or my Connect4, Five Little Monkeys, Candy Land or Scrabble games, because they in no way could be used to assist in solving a stolen statuary. why would they then be allowed to take my wife's hair from a jar? Now, for example in the above case, it might be possible to want to search the persons photos or computer for incriminating proof (ie surveillance photos of the crime scene, email communications, saved maps, etc.)

The reason for this is, say the police suspect you of a crime, so they get a warrant to search your property, if there were not limits that what they take is related to the crime, there would be nothing to stop them from taking EVERYTHING in the house, because it might lead to a clue. Now this would be a very powerful tool that the "justice" system could use to hammer people into submission. Why there might even be something hidden in the walls. they might just have to tear down the whole house to look for a clue.

I'm not mixing examples. I'm gave three examples.
1: Police without a warrant,
2: Police with a warrant, but unrelated to the object at hand,
3: Ordinary citizens, I've invited into the house.

I'm fairly certain, that inviting someone in your house doesn't give them the right to take your dvds or dvd player. That includes the police. The police can take things from a house they suspect are proof of or involved in a crime, once they have legal entry. That legal entry is by either warrant or by being invited in. If you let a cop into your house he is perfectly within his rights, and the law, to go to your PC and search for illicit child multimedia, provided it is powered on and a user already logged in. My point is hair or any body part IS and MUST be personal property, up to the point of that person discarding it.

I will second that. I used to work for a western canadian gas station chain and by far the hardest part of my managerial duties was finding competent employees to fill the midnight shift. We looked the other way on a LOT of stuff (Drugs, poor service, etc) because finding somene who would consistently show up for work and wouldn't rob you blind was extremely difficult.

That's because programming isn't usually an endurance challenge.

"Making something that works" is more important than "talking about how hard you made your job for yourself"