Eh, for manned landing missions, I'd rather that the historical preservation zone extend to the horizon (inclusive of the skyline). The desolation they encountered is important, IMO. Otherwise you'd have something like the Eagle descent stage surrounded by the Tranquility Mall food court someday. The moon is big, and they never went very far, so this isn't a big deal.

Let the rule apply to anyone's first manned landing site (unless they waive it), and all manned landings prior to the beginning of real industrial development. Unmanned probes need only a small area around them, though, I think.

There is still a market for creative labor. There is still a market for some goods which happen to embody creativity, eg original works of art (as distinguished from copies; the original Mona Lisa is worth more than a poster of it). But it seems that the market for many creative goods that was enabled by copyright and certain technological advances in mass reproduction and transmission, is dying.

So be it. For most of human history that last market didn't exist, and yet there was art, and we got by. Copyright as we knew it may have been an aberration. I think we can save some of it, but we must remember that copyright isn't worthwhile on its own; rather, it's a means to an end. If our priorities change, so must copyright.

(You'd better get the reference :)

It wasn't MT management that decided to launch "under pressure" in the face of clear evidence of the risk coming from their engineers. It was NASA management. MT did not tell NASA what to do. NASA management made its own decision.

I would also hardly call MT "private industry" in the sense of SpaceX.

That is all.

What about an orange drink made out of Cheeto powder mixed with water?

I use BT, chat, email, FG and even play WoW and flash games. So I guess I'm in trouble:

Come see the symptoms inherent in the system, Help Help, I'm being depressed!

Well, I don't think that they owe anyone anything. It would be immoral to compel an author to create a work, or distribute or perform a work. If HBO decided to cancel the series, we should not force them to resume it. (We can ask, we can put forth arguments that might convince them to reconsider, but we can't force them)

But that's not the situation here. Here, HBO has created and performed the work of their own volition. No one could rightly force them to put it on the Internet as a freely downloadable file. But if some third party did that without HBO's involvement, then it would be wrong for HBO to take action to prevent this. At least, insofar as we care about morality here, as opposed to utility, which is a lot better suited to this issue, I think.

And yes, if a creative work is created, everyone does have rights to it. This is an inherent part of free speech: the right to repeat verbatim what someone else has already said. Now, again, there is no right to force someone to create a work or to share it with you in some fashion. So if the work is kept secret, your right is moot; you don't have knowledge of the work or access to it. But once the author willingly grants you a look, you have the right to share it with anyone else, and you can see how it snowballs from there.

We put legal constraints on this for utilitarian -- not moral -- reasons. But they're artificial and ultimately optional. There is no right of an author to force none else to grant and respect copyrights. If we do so, it's because it suits us, and only to the extent that it suits us. (At least assuming the laws are not corrupt) In the absence of these laws, one may do as he pleases.

That's why there is a law that summons copyrights into being, and a law that dismisses them back again, but no law that grants rights in uncopyrighted works to the public, because there is no need for such a law; that is what happens automatically.

In this context, you are describing a legal right, not a moral right. Don't confuse legality with morality; there are plenty of immoral things which are legal, moral things which are illegal, and laws -- such as copyright -- which are meant to follow other principles, and are merely expected to be amoral.

The reason, at least the alleged reason, why copyrights are granted (at least in the US, though it's the only sensible reason, anyway) is that it promotes the public interest. Not because authors are entitled to it, or because it's the right thing to do. Copyright is supposed to promote the progress of science by encouraging the creation and publication of certain creative works while minimizing the harm it necessarily causes the public, so as to produce a net public benefit. Nothing to do with morals; just utility.

Is HBO acting morally by denying people access to a what is effectively a published, creative work, unless they pay for it? It might be necessary for their business model, it might even be a reasonable and generally unobjectionable practice, but restricting the availability of culture for mere money doesn't strike me as being affirmatively moral.

Generally I regard copyright as an amoral field, governed mainly by utility. But if I had to look for a moral dimension, surely it would be on the side of the subset of pirates who, whatever their other failings, at least disseminate published creative works to anyone who wants them, for free, and often in a more useful form than the legitimate publisher. (This would exclude commercial pirates, ad-supported or ratio-supported pirates, etc., but it still leaves plenty)

Remember, just because HBO has the right, i.e. the legal authority, to control the distribution of the work, that doesn't make them right, i.e. morally justified, to do so.

if you have that level of engineering expertise, just skip the whole "steal nuke" part and build your own with stolen enriched Plutonium.

I assume defeating the security component would be easier and less costly for a bad actor to accomplish than to design and construct the whole thing from raw materials.

Yes that was considered all the way back in 1945, which is why nukes back then had multiple interlocks to prevent such a thing.

You mean before the mass production of many nukes became a priority, and some brilliant manager probably decided that eliminating redundancy would let them produce more nukes on their budget, and software automation of ICBM launch would reduce the amount of manpower required to maintain readiness?

Now, point out to me where the possibility exists that a faulty electrical component in the unit's electronics could detonate the bomb?

Undetected non-simultaneous failures of multiple different electronic components.

Not really. The starter switch in the ignition key switch, on my car at least, has separate wires going to power the ignition, fuel pump, and the starter solenoid.

There are a lot of cars nowadays, you can start with a push of a button in the car, or on a keyfob remote. "Starting when in gear" is not mechanically prevented, it is electrically prevented.

There are Electric-Unleaded Hybrids now that have a continuously varying transmission, so there's no such thing as "In gear"; Drive-by-wire systems, where Brakes, Throttle, and all the settings are controlled by computer.

Just like not all cars have the same design, not all nukes have the same design.