In my opinion the current system, while not perfect, is still better than privately owned police (who would only do stuff for money, therefor, only for people who have (lots of) money).

Sure, however, while Free Market looks good in theory, so does Communism. The problem with both is that they are not achievable in reality, we can only have weird mangled versions of them.

Let's have private companies in charge of everything! That will work great - they will not try to make more profit than they have to and if they still do, we can vote them out in the next election.

So, I am sure that I won't have to pay $100000 in case of a fire, $20000 to have the police find the guy who beat me up (and another $20000 to have the court send him to jail) and $1M to repair a road.

Real buttons is why I am using a Nokia E90 communicator instead of something newer.

A bit better:

ssh your-router-ip

iptables -F FB
iptables -X FB
iptables -N FB
for ip in `whois -h whois.radb.net '!gAS32934' | grep /`
do
iptables -A FB -o eth0 -d $ip -j REJECT
done
iptables -I FORWARD -o eth0 -j FB

A woman can be equal or better (stronger etc) than a man. There probably are a lot of women who could lift more than I can or beat me up. However, on average, women are weaker than men. Also, the strongest woman is most likely weaker than the strongest man. Why else there would be a need for segregation in sports? Have women compete against men in weightlifting, boxing etc.

And yet, there is a difference - even the law recognizes it. The "no item is lost" is not because it's intangible, but also because making a copy does not destroy the original. Compare these two events:

1. I copy a CD borrowed from a friend. The studio still has as many copies of the album as they had before.
2. I break into the studio, grab the master tape, leave a blank tape (the same type) (or copy the tape then erase it) and run away. The studio no longer has the album, but I only stole the music - they did not lose the physical tape.

To me, only the second event would be stealing while leaving all tangible items are in place.

And you cannot steal a "right" - the studio still has the right to copy the album, I cannot take it away from them without getting a new law passed, since the right is just how the law sees it. I can however, infringe on the right, or rather, the exclusivity of it by making my own illegal copies.

And if the cable company did not disconnect the cable after I cancelled the service, then I sure can watch TV without paying.

The difference between real theft and copyright infringement is that if you steal a physical item (say a DVD of a movie), the legit owner of the item no longer has it. He is then out the money he paid for it (paid money, no item). I steal a DVD from you, you can no longer play that DVD.

Copyright infringement is different in that here no item is lost - the studio still has as many copies of the movie as they had before I downloaded it. What the studio considers a loss is the potential profit they would have had if I bought the movie instead, however, that assumes:
1) That I would have bought the movie new for the full price (and not buy used or wait for the price to drop).
2) That the movie is available for sale at all in the store (how do I get the Star Wars Holiday Special legally?)

Remember - if I buy a movie used, the studio gets zero dollars from me.

What if the company sends your report to /dev/null ? If this guy figured it out, so can someone who is less concerned with ethics.

Even so, most of the time the updates come out, there usually is at least one that requires a reboot. Compare that to Linux where only a kernel update requires a reboot (and as I understand, in the latest kernel versions it no longer requires a reboot).

Because most people already have a good desktop or laptop PC at home. PCs do not change as much as they used to, so you do not need to buy a new one (or even upgrade your current one) every year like you used to (unless you play games and really want to have as high FPS as possible). A PC now lasts for many years for common tasks like web browsing.

On the other hand, tablets and phones change a lot, while the hardware may not change as much (or rather, as noticeably), you cannot most of the time upgrade to a newer software version on your old device (like you can upgrade Windows Vista to 7 for example).

Of all people I personally know, the majority have a PC at home (those that don't are usually older than 70 years - didn't need or use a PC all their lives, do not care to start now). Sure, some also have tablets or smartphones.

The measurement of sales for something that most people already have is weird for me. Sure, you can measure sales of some new technology or limited-use things to see how they are doing, but to say that, for example, radio is dead because people are not buying new radios as much as they used to even though most people have a radio and use it (at least in the car) is a bit wrong. Most people already have a radio, a TV and a PC at home, just because sales are dropping may not indicate that the technology is dying, it may be that the devices people already have are still good enough.

Lithuania. Haven't heard of this happening here. However, in some cases, both drivers can be declared guilty. If the insurance company tries to say that the driver in front stopped for no reason to get insurance money, this still does not excuse the driver behind of not keeping a safe distance (well, what if the driver in front had a reason to brake?).

In my country if you hit a car in front of you, you are guilty for the accident because you failed to keep at a safe distance. It does not matter if the driver in front stepped on the brakes for no reason (in some cases you may be both declared guilty). The reasoning is that even if he stepped on the brakes for no reason at that time, what if there was a reason (pothole, someone on the road etc) that you could not see? You would still have hit the car in front of you.

In my country, speed cameras are preceded with a sign announcing the presence of said camera. The signs far enough away that you can slow down without hitting the brakes too hard (unless you were really speeding). The government said that, yes, more fines would be collected without those signs, however, the intended result is not to collect fines, but to make people drive slow, at least in that area. Which the signs do well.

Well, one man in my country had 0.84% BAC. Yea, twice the LD50 level. He was driving but could not find his way out of an (almost) empty parking lot and a bystander called the police.

The record BAC was 1.4%, though that guy was unconscious on the side of a road.

Yea, in my country hitting a car from behind makes you guilty (should have kept the distance), unless the other driver is drunk (drunk driver is always guilty) or he changed lanes too close in front of you and braked immediately.