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Ask Slashdot: Best Copyright Terms For a Thesis?
plopez gets in his first Slashdot submission with this question, writing: "I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me. I know the joke is 'No one will ever read your thesis,' but in the slim chance it is useful to others I don't want them to be required to hunt me down for a release. Basically I want to say: 'Copyright is released as long as this work or excerpts is properly attributed. Also, any published excerpts cannot be copyrighted by other parties, nor can the original work in its entirety.' Is this good enough? I don't want to encumber legitimate uses of the work but I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain. Is public domain good enough? Or does it allow the work to be restricted by commercial interests? I know of copyleft, but copyleft is a family of copyright notices and I am unsure which one is right for my intent. Please help."
One of the lesser brands of the military industrial complex, I'll admit, but the fact that I'm a cheap and hard-working slob with no degree is the reason why I have a job.
Degrees are overrated anyway. There are the grunts with the tribal knowledge and experience who actually get shit done, and then there are the civilian equivalents of second-lieutenants who start with 40-50K a year to walk around with a clipboard and play World of Warcraft all day long*. The latter escape the axe justifying their salaries with meaningless charts and graphs while the troops are laid off. Then the executives scratch their heads wondering why the hell their stock is dropping ( "We laid off 5 expensive veteran techs and hired 10 more even more expensive and redundant middle-managers - so why are we losing so much money? ).
People with degrees are smarter in the sense that the majority of Slashdot readership is supposed to be smarter - they can slave their way through the drudgery of calculus 5 and differential geometry, but they still can't tie their own shoes or use an apostrophe properly.
* True story.