Sensitive Equipment Being Sold

These items are extremely sensitive and are valuable to the military’s mission. From personal experience, I know that when one of these items were not accounted for, my training unit had to get the whole base shut down until they were found. I feel that close investigation needs to be done until the people responsible for this are brought into custody. Items such as the ones mentioned contain information that could potentially harm us.

Republicans Position in Election ’08

For the past few months, the U.S. Presidential Election in 2008 has been the number one current event, but it appears that no matter what- a Democrat will win. It’s Hilary or Obama in ’08. John McCain is the primary candidate in the Republican Party, but Republicans follow in population to Democrats. It appears to be a win win situation for the Democrats in November. If Hilary wins, will Obama supporters vote for the sole Democrat? And same with Obama, if he wins- will Hilary voters feel obligated to vote for a Democrat? Gender and Race seem to have more conflict and issue in this election than the others positions, however John McCain the predictable white middle-aged male running as a Republican may or MAY NOT have the chance to be president when it comes to popularity. Let’s face it, there are more Democrats in the United States than any other party. It’s a working class. But will the working class bend to its Democratic Party whether their favorite candidate wins? It just seems as thought McCain’s position in the election will either surprise us in result, or be and expected loss to the Democratic Party. Seven Months to go.

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

Throughout the article, it seems that those that feel that the copying or burning of copyrighted materials is immoral are the aging populations. There is a strong generational divide, apparently, between those who feel that this action is immoral or not. It seems as though the younger population, those that grew up with this technology, feel that this is acceptable and okay. However, those from a different time seem to think differently. Whichever way you slice it, there will always be exceptions and differences in opinion. These shades of grey is where this debate rages on, and this keeps the issue of illegal copying at the forefront of our moral dilemmas.
The fact is, many bands do not mind that their music is being downloaded. In fact, many love the exposure. I was recently reading a magazine with a director talking about his new movie, and in the interview he said “You can buy it in any store.. or just YouTube it, who would buy something when you can get it for free?”. These were the direct words of a man in the industry. In another personal opinion, I recently tried to buy a CD of a band I heard at a concert. When I asked the musician if they had CD’s to buy, he said that they didn’t but that I could “just download them”. He was completely fine with me downloading his music, in fact he seemed impressed that I would think that highly of them to do it.
When broken down, the problems we are facing now are simply magnified versions of the problems that occurred when VHS recorders came out: even then people were “stealing” movies or television shows without permission. This, however, has since become a non-issue. The entertainment industry is still holding strong, despite the availability of these illegal recordings in the 1980’s. I feel that soon the music and film industry will also grow and adapt to this new form of “theft”, and that the results will be a more consumer friendly, technologically advanced system. By forcing the industry to advance, we are in turn making everything better for ourselves.

Ryan O’Shea