It is not necessarily corruption, it is a natural result of people being tasked with spending other people's money. They don't have to be actually receiving bribes, they just don't have an incentive to be super careful with it. This is why a congressman will casually vote for spending say $500 million of public money, usually without even reading the bill, whereas there is no way in hell he would spend even $5 of his own money without being convinced that he is getting a good deal for it.

I don't know better than Musk but I know enough to see that the way he presented this was pure hype. A brand new technology for which even the science is not clear enough, let alone being fully developed even on paper, let alone prototyped, tried on a smaller scale, made economically feasible in comparison to other options, millions of safety and other problems that will come up resolved etc etc. Not saying it cannot work but give a decade to each of those stages and then you can talk about LA to San Francisco.

Not worth it, even for free.

It isn't stealing. When I steal, you don't have what I took from you.
 
Boring nitpicking. Stealing is just a shorthand way of saying you are taking something for free against the wishes of the rightful owner who has put a price on it.

The copyright contract has been broken. It is specifically mandated to be for a LIMITED TIME. Since copyrights are now unlimited, there is no longer an obligation to follow copyright.
 
Copyrights are not unlimited in any major country that I know of. Can you specify contract are you talking about that makes it ok for you to break the law if, in your opinion, the duration of copyright is too long?

The people actually producing the art work don't get much compensation for their work.
 
There is nothing stopping any artist to sell their art by themselves and keep ALL the money. The reason they sign up with labels (to take music as an example) is because making 5% of the millions of dollars is better than 100% of zero dollars . The share of the profits that they get reflects the reality that it is not the quality of music that sells it but marketing that the label provides.

And your flippant dismissal of calling politicians corrupt flies in the face of extremely extensive and well-documented history.
 
Absolutely agree with that one. Assuming you are consistent in believing that such corrupt politicians should have much less power in areas other than copyright (such as taxation/welfare, industry regulation, healthcare etc etc) then we are in perfect agreement on this one.

I don't know what corporate executives personal preferences are but I know that majority of the worst behaving corporations (wall street, media, entertainment) disproportionately donate to Democratic party.

And no I'm not aware that corporations "control the government" except to the extent that excessive regulation of the industry naturally invites corruption among government officials.

There is no reason why we won't have a functioning colony on Mars within 2-3 decades from now, which is no time at all. In fact I think it is very likely to happen. Now, a self-sustaining colony that can keep the human race going should Earth be wiped out is a little bit further off but it can be done. If your time frame is a few decades, perhaps 100 years, rather than right now, it is not nuts at all.

Democrats have more of a history of abuse of power by the government than Republicans, so I don't know why you would call him a closed Republican.

The only long term solution for human race is colonizing other planets. Having all our eggs in one basket is a bad idea regardless of who is right about the severity of the impact of global warming.

The winning poem sucks but what do you expect. Instead of celebrating human achievement we are sending a poem bitching about how horrible Earth is and that at a time it is the most peaceful it has ever been (at least since human civilizations took off). Talk about a lack of imagination and perspective.

I doubt there is any cost involved. The mission is going up there anyway, not just to carry poems.

Given that humans routinely swim in close proximity with captive Orcas multiple times a day, not to mention ride on their back and stick their head in Orcas mouth for a show, while any human contact with wild Orcas is extremely rare, I agree with your point that Orcas not in captivity are statistically far more dangerous.

Policy is always separate from presentation, that's what people don't understand. For all I know, Iraq, Vietnam etc were based on perfectly sound foreign policy decisions, but the problem is they couldn't be sold to the people that way. 'We need to control areas with strategic energy resources' doesn't get support the same way as 'they have nukes and we are running out of time'.

I don't know about shills and all that, but you are right in the first part of your post. Prosecution is there to get a conviction and they will use whatever legal means they have, just like I'm sure his defense tries to minimize his guilt in any way they can. Its called adversarial legal system.

There is a big difference. Almost nobody knows how to make a gun. Put all the professional gunsmiths and all the amateur gun-makers that you mention together and they make a tiny fraction of 1% of the population.

With 3D printing, everybody knows how to make a gun. Download the plan, load it up in your 3D printer and press a button and you got a gun. Its a game changer, especially in areas where buying/selling guns is illegal or difficult.

The slight delay is caused by the need to reroute his laptops through a Russian code breaking facility.