And you're a product of sociopathy and idiocy. You're selfish, wvul and vile, and yet clearly enjoy the benefits or the society you revile. Worse than a moron, you are a hypocrite.

Well then you're fucked, because no society like that has ever existed, or ever will exist.

Can you cite anywhere where the Founding Fathers didn't believe in taxes? They're point want that taxes shouldn't be levied, but rather that there should be no taxation without representation.

It's not a problem to use big data to try to figure out where to focus. But you have to subject the results to some sanity checking, and before you actually impact someone's life, perhaps even some common sense. Shocking idea, I know, and the reason why it's still a problem.

A tax code which permits corporations to hide profits while taxing citizens normally is dishonest.

You're assuming it didn't.

Well, yes and no. The script embedded in the html or whatever is already in your system, but any linked script files hosted on a dodgy domain don't actually get downloaded at all, at least on Firefox. In the past this was impossible on chrome by design, but I'm told it works properly now. The flash and most of the script is never in fact downloaded to your PC at all.

Actually essential liberty is not having your property and earnings stolen from you by any government.

As long as you don't expect said government to back your claim to said property or earnings, fair enough. And are willing to build and maintain your private financial system, of course - anti-counterfeiting efforts aren't free, after all. As well as your own road system, your own communication system, your own military defence...

No, having all your living expenses paid for by others so you can have more disposable income is not an essential liberty. Pay your taxes and pull your weight.

If its not a law its not against the law. I hate terms of propaganda like "tax loophole" are thrown about as to make someone not breaking the law a bad person.

Fair enough, as long as you're okay with the result: a legal system that grows without bound as it tries to enumerate badness.

Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?

What you do get with Nexus devices is unlockability. But you also get that with Motorola and even Sony devices. You void your warranty in the process, which probably isn't strictly legal for them to do to you. You can relock your phone so that it can get OTAs again, though... at least in the case of Motorola. Dunno about others. What you just can't assume you get is quality.

So if you care, then you use a tool. But being forced to use a tool is still bullshit, and you are still a useful idiot apologist.

Actually, all that stuff can still happen to iPods.

I actually independently came up with the 10% figure today as well, and mentioned to my project manager that unless he wants to invest real money chasing the long tail of data, he was going to have 10% of the records with bogus values in some fields. I will certainly adopt the rest of your quote!

Here you lost me. Why were you even in this business if you didn't love the challenge? Don't take other peoples' bad data personally. Take it as an opportunity.

It contains inaccuracies and is a clear troll. The poster knows enough terminology to sound smart, and deliberately twists it.

Oh, and the username begins with the word "Troll". Whoever went on to moderate that post as "Insightful" (as it now stands) does not understand cosmology, and additionally does not know how to identify an obvious troll.

While I would like to agree with you, and while you're responding to an argument that makes no sense, I think you need to work on those arguments a bit.

First, comparing artificially scarce goods to any kind of real scarce goods is something you should avoid doing at all. Arguments like spoilage aren't particularly relevant, and spoilage is usually (throughout the history of mankind) fought as much as possible. With the advent of preserves and freezing we can do a lot, but you still don't see the world overflowing with century old preserves; instead, variety increases and everyone can afford more fruit. Preventing spoilage means scarcity decreases.

With media it's the other way around. The more you prevent 'spoilage' in the form of piracy, the more scarcity you get. Fewer people can afford what they wish, and artificially scarce goods aren't as fungible as apples.

A more valid comparison would be to compare it to a non-scarce physical commodity like air; theoretically an industry could be constructed by forbidding everyone to breathe without a measuring mask. We could hand money paid for every breath to owners of oxygen producing woodland or other means of production. That would create a huge industry wherein people would feel the right to get paid, yet it's quite obvious that such an artificial scarcity would probably be harmful to humanity as a whole. Much like copyright can be considered harmful and arguments can be made that incremental improvements of art would be as productive even in its absence, although focus might be somewhat different.

And yes, economically piracy is a good thing, but not because of the somewhat flawed broken window fallacy, but because it is responsible for a large pareto improvement (the economic value of the gain made by those who obtain the product who would otherwise not have bought the product (ie, zero-loss for the producer)). Basically it reduces the deadweight loss damage caused by monopoly pricing and restores a modicum of competition when competition is illegal.

About the ethics; I consider monopoly rights inherently unethical and any upstanding citizen should ignore them if they can. There are a multitude of ways that we could promote work in the production of arts that would result in higher rates of production, better pay to (most, and in particularly to the specifically deserving, ie, artists and creators rather than lawyers or financiers) involved parties and without the damaging artificial scarcity.