Amen, brother. :D

I guess the problem is too many people conflate "law" with "morality". They just lack the brainpower to realize there is a difference. A policy being law does not guarantee the policy is moral. Does not guarantee that following that policy and every consequence of doing so will profit the community more than defying that policy and every consequence of that will.

Knowing that law fails to be congruent with justice does not mean that you and I agree on every thing, so do not think I am saying you actually endorse my cause, but it so happens that I believe that copyright is completely immoral and that infringing upon copyright varies from amoral to very positively moral. Ideas cannot be owned save by the person who entertains the idea, no more than a person's flesh can be owned by any other person. Any idea (from narrative to song to art to design) which you share with another person, you instill in them their unique understanding of your idea and you no longer own what they now understand. You cannot force them to keep your idea a secret, save by lien of some other arrangement you have with them, without doing them and the community at large the same harm as you would by claiming ownership over their bodies entire, for the mind is a component of the body.

This is the basic reason that abolitionists draw so many parallels between contemporary copyright and 18th century slavery. It is not because of the shock value, it is not because of the broad consensus against slavery today, it is because the comparison is apt. Cotton farmers once claimed property rights over the bodies of their slaves and whinged that cotton could not be farmed or processed elsewise, and media producers today claim property rights over our minds and whinge that art cannot be produced elsewise. It is true that the magnitude of injustice was greater in the elder case, but the form of injustice is congruent, and it is equally unacceptable at any magnitude. Reducing the number of slaves a plantation owner abuses from one thousand to one does not transform his case into one that is acceptable, and neither would reducing the manner of slavery from direct physical abuse to indirect thought enforcement.

Equally apt is the comparison of complaints that some commodity cannot be created without the abuse. A century and a half after slavery was entirely divorced from cotton production I am not only wearing a cotton shirt but impoverished people the world over who cannot afford food are also wearing cotton shirts. Now media producers claim that if they cannot control my freedom to redistribute or re-incorporate their work that they cannot produce media any more.

Put simply, if cotton stopped existing without slavery I would wear wool or nylon or any of a number of materials. If media stops existing without copyright, I would rather hum to myself than give up my right to hum in public. The arts are about people expressing themselves and sharing those expressions amongst their culture. Copyright does not enable art, it prevents it. If you can't express your ideas unless you pull down full time wages as compensation for doing so, then you're ideas literally aren't worth expressing. That's what "worth" means. I'm not being compensated to argue my case here, but I still do. It's worth my time to do so. If I got paid as well, then that's a double KO. But my ideas have to stand on their own or they're literally not worth the funding -- Especially not worth gimping the rights of others to continue spreading your word.

Bah, screw what people think the word Conservative or Republican means. Both words have been successfully poached by religious anti-progressive warmongers to mean "religious, anti-progressive warmongers".

It's time for self-identified "true conservatives" to toss the word out and chose another one, or they will never be properly understood by their peers. Once you've done that please clarify where you stand on each polarizing issue too, since I don't see a lot of people agreeing on anything. You're for smaller government and lower taxes, that sounds clear enough. Are you pro-capitalism? Some guy up-thread said no. Are you pro-war? pro-religion? anti-progress? (I think that is the dictionary definition of "conservative", right?) pro-guns? pro-censorship? anti-gay-marriage? anti-marijuana? pro-prison-expansion? I mean, the gamut is pretty wide for divergent ideas here.

You are assuming "the problem" is the two-party system. While the Two Party system is Bad, I do not believe a Three or Ten party system would put a dent in the real problem.

The real problem, and the reason I don't vote, is because my vote doesn't count. Neither does yours. There is no hyperbole at all to the supposition that our votes are just drops in the bucket, in fact that analogy is quite conservative. It would be quite a large bucket to hold anything on the scale of one hundred million drops. Dividing those drops into 3 or 10 gargantuan buckets won't change that trouble one iota.

The real problem is that we're being divided into buckets at all. The real problem is the Representative aspect of our Representative Democracy. We're not voting on issues, we're voting on a tiny cast of people and they in turn reliably ignore the reasons we voted for them to begin with. If we had a deferal democracy instead of representative, then I would not only vote, I would campaign.

I'm sorry but, Capitalists do not "indulge their natural selfish urges by definition". Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit. Maximizing private profit does not imply indulging selfish urges. Any kind of urge is too primordial to succeed in spearheading as complex a campaign as maximizing private profit; you require planning and discipline to properly acheive that goal. Anything more foolish and you will fail and be replaced.

It is presumed by Capitalist doctrine that the most successful strategies for pursuit of private profit will also profit and enrich the community as a whole, and that this will occur with greater efficacy than every other competing resource allocation method we have thus far explored. It's certainly more effective than government controlled or centralized resource allocation, as the massive calculations required to determine the fair price of goods in various markets and various municipalities must be decentralized and pushed to the edges of the network.

Even if you take that supposition as a given, it's still not relevant to the O'Donnell debate. She was trying to argue in favor of public schools (funded by the government .. not sure which level of government, but let's assume federal funding is involved until someone corrects me ;3) espousing Christian doctrine, which would represent Congressional law made to fund the establishment of religion.

Saying that religion can influence government is pretty meaningless. Of course religious people can vote and religions get to lobby so long as anyone with an agenda is allowed to lobby, however that in turn cannot lead to laws favoring any religion so long as we have a superior law preventing it.

Quick, name over 100 artists (I'm not even that mean, just name one ;D) who do live solely on the proceeds from selling their art, and then describe how they leverage copyright law (without also going bankrupt) to successfully prevent anyone who chooses to from releasing their entire catalog on TPB which would, according to you, end their career in a nanosecond.

Is the book valueless? No. Is a specific copy of the book in PDF format valueless? Yes. Why? Backups cost nothing and if you have a backup losing the live copy also costs nothing. QED

If abolishing copyright "destroys the value of human labor on a massive scale" then it must have already been destroyed before you got here. Anyone who wishes to pirate any content from games to video to music already does. You ask if consumers could get the content for free why don't they, why ask me? They already can get the content for free. Why don't they? Simple convenience, gaybabe. It's worth a buck per track for most people to just hook their iCrap to the apple store and press "get". They are, as they should be, literally paying for the convenient distribution. Otherwise, song prices would vary quite a lot more depending upon popularity.

Artificial scarcity is by definition a global economic detriment. Anyone who purpotrates it doesn't give a damn about the economy or about actually scarce resources, they just want to profit from other people's injury.

I'm sorry, resisting what hackel wants is not what makes them dinosaurs. Resisting what the market wants is what makes them dinosaurs. The market is waning for broadcast, timeslotted, shut-up-and-eat-your-spam programming now that new technology allows time shifting and format shifting. That's what people want, what they'll spend their time on and what they'll pay to have. Why do we need a "try before you buy" of something we don't want to buy? Oh wait, it's not about what we want. It's about what you want. You still want us (eg, everyone else) to bleed in order to finance your pork barrel programming. I remember this conversation! We're still weeping for the impending demise of the $300 million blockbuster. :D

Wasn't the point recently discussed that the shows are not products, our eyeballs are? We don't show demand, the advertisers do? We're not being sold cheese it's just baiting the mousetrap. How is sneaking the cheese off the mousetrap the "worst thing that we can do, yes worse than walking into the trap" when most every natural food source was paved over long ago by the powers that be?

When you find independant programming that you like, rejoice! Involve yourself in the communities. Buy the merchandise. Support the cause! But to this date, there's not a lot of independant material to choose from. In any event, "not watching" material just because it's commercial and someone is hoping to extort you is precisely as disingenuous as deciding you must plug your ears when walking past a street musician you have no intention of tipping. You'd better close your eyes too, or you might see an expensively produced billboard advertisement for a product you don't intend to purchase. You can't keep "showing demand" for things you don't like, or you'll be waist deep in street musicians! Except .. oh yeah. You can't quantify non-transactional demand for creative work. The Media industry completely fabricates their piracy loss figures already (amount of $ we wish we made minus amount we made = ....), those numbers won't go down if you cross your heart and close your eyes to their content. So if we're already freely painted as pirates, even if you have payed for christ sakes, then why urge us to decline the spoils?

Except, sorry, I keep forgetting that VFB isn't here to negotiate an intellectual accord. His very nickname belies his preoccupation with discord, and his sig clarifies his belief that any argument can be won with persistence and repetitive use of a "NO, U!" image macro. ;3

Yeah but it doesn't actually need to explode. Just use a subsystem not directly controlled by the CPU which remotely bricks the device (blows a fuse to the power relay, whatev) when it receives the appropriate RF code on the appropriate band. Lose access to your coms? Detect coms from the satellite which infer it's talking to someone who isn't you, encrypted channel or no? Either send the kill code to brick it, or broadcast a blanket message to whomever might have it that you'll brick it unless they pay you a ransom. *shrug*

Incorrect; when the Pepper's Ghost illusion is done properly (with a live, offstage ghost and props) the effect is completely stereographic. If you move your POV then your line of sight to any given point on the reflective surface changes, that line of sight reflects into a new part of the reflected room offstage in perfect step with the parts of the main stage. So your left and right eyes see stereovision, continue to do so if you tilt your head, and you can get up and walk about in the designated audience area to look around "virtual" objects to your heart's content.

I don't actually see how Pepper's Ghost could be altered to suit projectors or computer generated imagery at all. Unless the audience is somehow forced to view the stage from a given angle, or unless the live actors always approach the translucency directly to interact. *shrug*

You're kidding, right?

Gravity wells do not simply waste energy to leave. It is also possible (though possibly tricky) to reclaim much of that lost energy on return.

Presently we use rockets to get off the ground here and then rockets to slow our approach again there. But with the right infrastructure, one could capture incoming space vessels in a device (for simplicity if not reliability, let's say a slingshot) which absorbs the energy of their approach. Then when they wish to lift off again, let loose their slingshot with a moderate rocket assist to make up for lost momentum.

I guess that strategy makes sense if you actually vote. Do people still do that? Who are these people, and why would you want to associate with them if they put Bush in power twice in a row?

Put simply, no matter who you vote for you're voting for wealth and incumbent power. Only they can afford to purchase the mind share required to woo millions of JoeThePlumbers at a time. I view this as a flaw in the purely democratic (and democratic republic) system: requiring too much specialized education from the layman.

The layman is fleeced every election, whether he votes or not, because the basic outcome (wealthy, well connected servant of incumbent power) represents every one of the only viable options.

The layman needs his voice represented. The problem is the voice of the layman is "taxes are too high" and "we need more school teachers" and "why are we dicking around in the middle east?" which cannot be expressed by voting elephant or donkey. Involving another handful of parties would not help to directly address this problem.

I think the ideal solution would be to build a governmental system which, instead of democratic-republic, is democratic-deferred. This is honestly an idea I got from another slashdot commenter, some years back. :D

Everyone gets to vote. On every issue. At every level of government they participate in. From municipal to state to federal to international, both NATO and treaty. That's the basis of Pure Democracy, and one of it's major failures is because no one but a professional politician (even then, a staff of professional politicians) can even hope to remain educated on literally every political decision in the world. That's where the "deferred" part comes in.

It's simple. You may cast your vote on an issue or a law directly, but very few people will almost ever. Instead, most people will "defer" each of their votes by proxy voting through any other voter. You can easily defer all of your votes through another (one would expect trusted and more well informed) person, or choose rafts of votes to defer in different directions. The person you defer to may in turn choose to defer again. You can set your votes on autopilot, "Just defer to my parents until I check in again". And that's it.

Doing this replaces an installed representative with a fluid field of experts who must work hard to maintain their trust with the electorate. People and organizations will work hard to achieve their political ends, and the easiest way to do so will be to win the deferrals of the common people to add clout to their aggregate votes. One wrong move will lose you supporters instantly. INSTANTLY. No waiting for another term, no impeachment hassle, just a "LOL FAIL" and the public moves on to someone more competent or more honest.

This puts Joe the Plumber in a position where he doesn't need to understand every issue, he just needs to identify someone more educated in politics than he is who shares his values. Official "political parties" would no longer be needed, though they may help people identify causes in an unofficial capacity.

Put me in that system or something comparable and I'll vote. I'm not wasting effort casting votes into an antiquated, broken system.

TBH these qualities you list sound more Libertarian than Republican or conservative. Are you sure the Republican Party is best representing your interests? It's hard to find authoritative definitions on this subject, but my reading is that the American Republican Party is a Conservative party who's goals are to retard cultural and scientific progress, make war and consolidate power amongst large business and the church.

I mean, I know that sounds harsh and all, but I honestly can't determine what other goals they have from their track record.

I am a Libertarian, and my belief is that the greatest common good can be found by maximizing personal liberty. This implies repealing the Patriot Act, shrinking governmental responsibility to the level mandated by the constitution (the people's contract with the federal government), repealing the prohibition of recreational drugs, erasing the sexist boundaries around the definition of marriage, etc etc.

It's really not that hard to grok, "new tech" is not always "good tech". "Expensive and complex" does not always mean "worthwhile or interesting". 3D (but I'm on board with the more accurate term Stereovision) as it is sold today is really just the tech industry selectively forgetting the lessons learned from Virtual Boy/VR32, and really the whole VR hype train from the 90's.

We want our TV's to have good brightness at an angle because we're not always sitting right in front of them. We want our game controllers wireless and our laptops and tablets to have wireless internet and good battery life because we want to pick them up and take them places. We want to lay down or sit or sprawl in odd positions.

We want our electronics to accommodate how we feel comfortable using them.

The current generation of Stereovision fails on that point. It makes us strap shit to our heads. Many geeks already wear glasses, and those almost never stack comfortably. It makes us sit at a certain angle from the screen, and we cannot tilt our head more than a few degrees. Our eyes are forced to refocus on the binocular (cross, uncross) while remaining at a fixed focus on the monocular (depth of field) which induces the same headaches as stereograms do.

So as far as "new tech" goes, it's barely even a novelty. The basics of Stereovision are nearly a hundred years old, and we've all ridden this train before. It's expensive and inconvenient. And probably the worst bit for geek involvement is, it's not really hackable or malleable in any way.

Part of the goal for media's stereovision push it to create a content walled garden. 3d is expensive to produce, more difficult to pirate, and gives them an excuse to charge for another premium. Independents can't compete. Geeks have no easy way to generate or record their own 3d content to display on these devices.

But if tech only has to be complex or new to turn you on, then there is this great inmate ankle band you've got to hear about. Delivers shocks on par with a tazer when the inmate leaves their itinerary. It's all proprietary so I can't really tell you how it works this magic, and it costs a mint, but I can certainly put one on you and charge it to your nerd card! :D