I've waited long enough. Now, after years of silence, it's time to reveal that I own the patent:
"Use something to do something"
Your invention seems to be obviously derivative of the previously established "use nothing to do something" (12) and "use something to do nothing" (1) patents.
I think that if the company owns the phone, and the employee (by paying them) then all communications are fair game for monitoring.
Now if they were snooping on customers, that would be a WHOLE different story...
According to the article linked to in TFA, they were snooping on customers:
The goal of the "Clipper" and "Rheingold" surveillance programs, as well as other "secondary projects," the fax makes clear, was to "analyze several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts."
Other spying campaigns had already been "specifically planned and assigned," including "the surveillance of one of your shareholders, a company headquartered in New York."
Moreover, the letter continues, the office of an "important business journalist," had been infiltrated by a mole who had reported "directly to corporate security" at Telekom for several months.
The mp3s ripped from my CDs don't have a purchase date. Exactly. This would help identify you as a thief. You might also want to read the RIAA's letter to the US Copyright office in 2006. For those PDF-averse, here are some highlights:
The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use.... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.
and
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.
Look at Jesus, he asks you to sell everything you have in order to gain entrance to heaven. You have to hate your family and only love God. (No really, you can even quote the bible on that) You mean like this? Actually, I believe he was going for something more like this.
People decided to go off and kill each other in the name of Christianity...Christ would not have condoned such actions seeing as how he preached peace, love and forgiveness...Most people forget that the central tenant of Christianity is forgiveness. A religion does not exist on its own; it is nothing more than the system of beliefs and political organization of a group of people. Regardless of what you think about a person who lived 2,000 years ago, Christianity is the expression of those who call themselves Christians. The sheer number of Christian sects with differing beliefs makes it tough to consider much of anything as clearly Christian.
Things can be interesting, even if not correct or pleasant. Sure, but this isn't mythology or science fiction - it is everyday common ignorance and prejudice. Further, I would wager that the mods found the original post in agreement with their own ignorance, not simply interesting.
You need to understand that you cannot rule countries like Syria in the same way as US. It's also pretty true about, for example, Russia. If you don't have strong government there they will descend into anarchy and civil war...Whole middle east is like that. Grotesque racism and ignorance is modded Interesting?
Oh, but of course. The Baathists were being such good boys and never tried to antagonize. The US DoD news release to which you linked discussed supposed Iraqi anti-aircraft attacks on US aircraft over Iraqi airspace. The no-fly zones were created by the US, Britain, and France, not the UN. They were created under the pretense of protecting Iraqi's Shiite and Kurdish minorities, yet the implementation demonstrates otherwise - they were setup on straight boundaries that did not overlap well with the minority populations, the US attacks on Iraqi installments had no relation to threats to the Shiites or Kurds, and the US even allowed Turkey to bomb the Kurds.
Try, just for a few seconds, to put yourself in Iraqi shoes and lets talk about someone antagonizing. Imagine that Egypt, Iran, and Syria decided to take serious issue with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and declared that the Israeli military could no longer enter Gaza or the West Bank. Do you believe that Israel wouldn't fight back? Do you believe that the US wouldn't assist?
It sure would be nice to live in a world as black and white as yours. It sure would be terrible to live in a world so devoid of empathy and rationalization as yours.
There are guns designed for hunting - killing animals. The fact that you are killing a varied selection of animals does not change the fact that guns are designed to kill. In fact, you simply reinforced the statement you appeared to be trying to contradict.
And then you get into the Christian policeman thing. Is it immoral for a Christian to be a policeman? Should he kill to stop a murder? Yes - It would be immoral for him NOT to. So says you. Unfortunately for you, others do not agree with your classifications of moral and immoral. Some would say that a preemptive murder crosses the line regardless of what you think you may be preventing, while others would argue it is immoral for anyone to kill another human regardless of the reason.
A soldier is much like a policeman. His purpose is to fight to end a war. Wrong. A soldier attempts to achieve the goals of his or her leadership. Sure, you can make the argument that the overall goal usually is to end the war, whether to defend your country or to eradicate opposition to your invasion. Yet, soldiers are expected to kill who they are told to kill. Both sides are showered with propaganda about the bad guys in order to get the average soldier past their socially-ingrained aversion to murdering fellow humans.
BTW, many people's confusion about Christian theology on this point comes from a poor translation of the 10 commandments. It's NOT, "Thou shalt not kill." It IS, "Thou Shalt Not Murder." (If you disagree, read ahead in the book - commands expressing society's duties to execute muderers.) BTW, many people's confusion about Christian theology on this point comes from a poor understanding of the message of Jesus as presented in the Christian New Testament. It's not about the semantics of murder versus simple killing. It is about "But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (If you disagree, read the New Testament, or get a Cliff Notes version from a Mennonite church at http://www.plowcreek.org/bible_pacifism.htm.)
I didn't say that my system would be easy, or practical, or even possible - I note that in my "perfect" world, none of these would be issues. Keep practical implementation out of my hypothetical pipe-dream, mm-kay? Probably the easiest way would be to have a private key/security certificate system that would "identify" you between ISPs. Think of it as keeping your phone number. If you're going to play in magic world, why not just pretend that everyone agrees with you and there's no need to kick out the bad guys? That seems easier and just as unlikely.
I'm guessing that your university buys access from a telco, that Starbucks buys access from AT&T, that your company also has a deal with a telco, and that the library is a government institution. Especially at work and at the library, they try to exercise "total and complete control" of what you can and cannot do. You missed the point - it doesn't matter who the university or Starbucks uses for Internet service as long as I have mostly-anonymous access. I didn't register my name and SSN with Verisign for a universal Internet user name, nor am I even paying Verizon a monthly bill with my name on it. This is contrary to your earlier claim that the Internet is already controlled by the government and corporations. Your Orwellian universal registration would be immensely different that the status quo.
Any "access to the network without necessarily directly participating," whatever that means, is going to be subject to filtering when it pleases your ISP, bandwidth caps, and DMCA takedown notices. Everything you do is already completely and totally controlled, because nobody needs to know who you are to do that. Then remind me again why we need to implement a nationwide registration and real life tracking of all Internet users?
Now, what freedom do we give up by making the internet more public? If you had said something like "data mining," then I would absolutely have to agree with you - but the "freedoms" you worry about losing are ones you have already lost, and never had. First, giving complete control of who can and can't access the Internet to Verisign, Homeland Security, Dr. Phil, or whomever you pick, is not making it more public. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. As for freedom, I have the ability right now to walk to a Starbucks and download a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook with a reasonable chance of no one knowing who I was. I can post to Slashdot from a public library's lab and say that the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes without much concern. Without that anonymity I can no longer read what I want. Without the ability to speak anonymously, I can no longer say what I want. Perhaps this doesn't make sense to you because you can't imagine reading something or saying something out of the mainstream. Some people would rather read about 9/11 conspiracies instead of watching American Idol. You want to eliminate that freedom. Perhaps that isn't your primary goal, but your plan assures it.
But, knowing you as "CowTipperGore" elsewhere on the tubes, (and likewise you knowing me as "Z34107") does nothing to eliminate anonymity, free thought, rudeness, hurt feelings, scraped knees, etc. etc. And, as has been pointed out repeatedly, there is absolutely no way to enforce this without the loss of anonymity. We might as well be debating the flavor of unicorn shit.
I can't decide if you're not thinking this through at all or are just that naive.
The internet is already under "government and corporate control." ICANN hands out domain names and IP addresses - it's a non-profit corporation that operates on behalf of the government. (Both of 'em right there!) You buy access from private telephone, cable, and satellite companies. The other ends are mostly private networks, and much of it is ad supported. Of course, I can use the university's access if I am a student or faculty member, I can use free wireless access at Starbucks, I can use my company's Internet access, or I can use the Internet access at the local public library. Despite the fact that the backbone of the Internet is an amalgamation of corporate and government systems, there remain ways to access the network without necessarily directly participating. Further, this is a long shot from saying these same groups have total and complete control of what you do and don't do with that access. The current arguments about 'Net Neutrality are the tip of the iceberg you are cheering for our ship to hit.
In fact, much of the "control" exerted on the tubes would be unnecessary - spammers could be definitively and permanently banned, for example. Absolutely, because identity theft and fraud doesn't happen outside of the Internet - there's no reason to expect that it would happen online.
Pwned boxes could have their internet access permanently revoked - think of what would happen to people repeatedly failing internet security if there would eventually be consequences. Ignorance and ubiqitous faulty software should result in millions of people permanently banned from a major medium? Seriously?
Having one and only one (but still anonymous) internet persona does little to give any nebulous government or corporation any more control than they already have. The wrinkle is how to keep real-life personally identifiable stuff from being associated with your online persona, and to keep that online persona from being forged by others. In my perfect world, both are easy. The problem is that there is no way to have one and only one identity, to have this system enforced, to keep it anonymous, and to ensure that such information is never abused. It is 100% impossible. This should be obvious if you've given this more than 2 seconds of thought, and it has been proven empirically over and over.
If you believe otherwise, perhaps you could explain how? Thus far you've presented nothing but a desire to eliminate freedom in exchange for your right to avoid being insulted online. As another poster suggested, if free thought scares you and rudeness hurts your feelings, perhaps you should stick to network television.
I sincerely doubt there was 1288TB of data. Thats 284GB per article. If significant numbers of them were CDs or flash storage the numbers start looking fishey very fast. Not to suggest that the FBI would never lie about details, but I fail to see your mathematical concerns here. How exactly did you come up with your numbers? The summary says that 76,581 digital devices were examined, including 37,424 CDs, over 17,000 hard drives, and 4,300 DVDs. That averages out to only 16 to 17 GB per device. CDs account for almost 30 TB of the data. Taking them out leaves you at about 32 GB per device, which seems reasonable considering that over half of the remaining devices are hard drives.
They shared it with anyone who payed attention. Now it's my turn to be misunderstood. I meant that those in right positions of power didn't really hold those goals, not that the didn't tell us about them.
They pushed the security angle because as soon as you mention geopolitics most people's eyes glaze over in boredom. They pushed the security angle (and the democracy angle, and the terrorism angle, and the nuclear weapons angle, and the freedom for Iraqis angle, etc, etc) because they needed propaganda that would get support from the masses. The American public would never get whipped into a frenzy and buy lots of Chinese-made American flags over a war to stabilize the Middle East, nor one to ensure that the international market continued using American dollars instead of Euros (which is a very likely large part of the legitimate underpinnings for the war).
Check out PNAC if you are interested. A good number of high ranking officials were members of PNAC at the time, most notably Donald Rumsfeld. I'm familiar with PNAC and their drivel. I'm also aware that they didn't push for democracy in Iraq - simply regime change. The American public was lulled into support by talk of DEMOCRACY!, but a democracy in Iraq is not a model for stability. When a region with lots of good reasons to hate the US and lots of Muslims is given a Democracy, do you really imagine that the result would a government favorable to the US? Of course not, which is why the US has been very careful in controlling who gets in charge in their new quasi-democracy.
If you want to read about groups with much more actual involvement, spend some time on the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergs. Both the Trilateral and CFR is heavily represented by members of both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
You seem to have misunderstood what I said, but that's understandable because I didn't say it clearly. Let me clarify what I meant:
The is some of that motivation inside every American to help where we can, to not stand by and do nothing. There is that good in everyone. Yup. That is not how I understand it.
The main idea was to create stability in the middle east, which is a strategically important region. Then you must decide that those running the show were either incredibly inept and ignorant, or they didn't truly share these goals.
While I don't know that I believe it, there's also plenty of evidence that the administration is full of Evangelical nut jobs who believe that a war in the Middle East is the precursor to the return of Jesus.
We help where we can. There is so much suffering in the world, how can we stand by and do nothing? And you continue to ignore my questions about why you aren't doing something about the suffering so much closer to home. Why not help the kids living in Appalachia with no heat? Why not help the kids living in Washington D.C. without a future that doesn't involve drugs and violence? Why not help the minorities everywhere in the US who still suffer from racism? Why not help the homosexuals who suffer from persecution and lack of legal protection? Why not help the single mothers left behind when their husbands were killed in Iraq?
When the US federal government and many state governments are dealing with budget deficits (particularly at the federal level), how does one justify spending trillions of dollars around the world while destroying the national economy for America's children? How does one justify sacrificing American lives in hopes of improving life for strangers the Middle East, when the gap between the poor and the wealthy is unconsciously spectacular at home?
Ha now we have gotten far from what motivated the US to attack Iraq, but the truth is there is something of that motivation inside every American, indeed inside every human being That's blatantly false and continues to point out the craziness of you calling yourself a pacifist. A true pacifist works for peace, not perpetual war. A true pacifist sees violence (and particularly war) as unacceptable failure. You, instead, see a war of aggression as easily justified if any humanistic goals may be potentially realized.
Polls and in depth research has clearly shown (as expected) that most Americans were motivated by the Bush administration's and the media's propaganda storm. Once the veneer has been pulled back, a majority of Americans now disagree with you. Out of curiosity, what do imagine was the US administration's actual motivation for the invasion and overthrow of Iraq?
No one has asked you to go fight. It is up to you to go if you want to, and that's absolutely how it should be. Tell that to the multitudes of American soldiers who want out but can't go home, even after their tours have ended. Between the lies told by recruiters and the stop-loss programs, many have been sent to fight (and to die) under false pretenses and under duress.
The middle east still has one foot in the dark ages (beheadings, mutilation, discimination against women), and if we can help them out of that, then at least some good has come from the war. Oil isn't a reason to fight. Cultural differences is much less a reason for war than oil. At least a war for oil has legitimate economic groundings. Unfortunately, the US invasion was not about securing oil for the American people and it certainly was not about bringing equality to women.
Have Americans become so selfish that we only think of ourselves? Have Americans become so inflated in their self-worth to believe that via simplistic strong-arming and more bloodshed they can fix the world's problems? Have Americans become so blind to their own problems that they can't see the sty in their own eye? When America has eliminated her own poverty, racism, rampant violence, police brutality, drug abuse, religious persecution, etc, then we can talk about spending the money of American taxpayers and the lives of America's youth in your bid to save the world.
No, I was busy helping people in El Salvador. There is no sacrifice I would ask others to make that I would not be willing to make myself. If so, I certainly respect that and congratulate you. Yet, that still doesn't give you the right to make that decision for others.
They are the ones who were willing to trade "blood for oil." They are the ones who were in favor of invading Iraq. They? Who is this mysterious they?
If the suffering of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world is "trivial" then we are indeed in trouble. Who are your brothers and sisters? Why do you consider the citizens of Lebanon worth more than American citizens, or Iraqi citizens for that matter? Why are you in El Salvador helping those brothers and sisters when you have millions of American brothers and sisters in real need much closer to you?
Don't get me wrong - I do respect those who want to help others and try to dedicate their life to doing so. I'm confused by your need to go far away from home to do your good deeds. And, I have much higher standard for when a foreign intervention is required and what type of situation is worth sacrificing the lives of my neighbors.
That is a bunch of hogwash and even the article that you link to doesn't say that. Some speculators lost their shirts as they unwound their positions...big deal, it happens every day. Whether the oil is bought by the refiner to make gasoline for your automobile or the speculator hold for later resale is irrelevant to the issue of supply and demand.
You pretending otherwise doesn't change the facts. If you are indeed an investor in oil, as you claim, I would think you would understand the market a bit better.
After the oil embargo of the 70's - plus the Iranian Revolution and the Iran/Iraq War - pushed oil to staggering new highs (close to $70 a barrel), it dropped back to around $20 a barrel by the mid-80's. Bush's first Gulf War caused a temporary spike but the 90's actually saw prices drop down to levels not seen in decades, bottoming out around $15 a barrel. The last year or two of Clinton's second term saw prices slowly start creeping up again, and they rapidly spiked as soon as Bush Jr came into office. Prices actually had started to decline a bit when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Prices skyrocketed immediately and the only turnaround since was the brief period referenced in the article I linked in my last post. That rapid (but temporary) drop at the end of 2006 managed to keep prices from breaking the all-time high set back in the early part of Reagan's first term. Yet, it was a brief reprieve.
Keep in mind that the article I linked was written during that brief price downturn and written by someone who believed that the prices were going to stabilize at a somewhat rational point. Instead, prices again took off not long after. That column was really nothing but economic gloating by supply and demand folks who now felt vindicated; in retrospect we know that they spoke way too soon. Even with that backdrop, I found several telling comments, for example: "This is a commodity. There is no physical reason for it to have gone to $80." Gheit and others say the true supply-demand equilibrium for oil is closer to $45 a barrel. Yet, it had been above that level for over a year, and quickly shot way past it again (where it has remained for more than a year).
Oil's recent run above $100 a barrel has been largely attributed to a steadily depreciating U.S. currency because a weakening dollar prompts investors to seek a safe haven in hard commodities such as oil and gold.
Energy analyst and trader Stephen Schork described the rush into oil on the falling dollar as an automatic reflex. "Traders on the Nymex saw the dollar take another tumble, so they did what they have been conditioned to do when the dollar falls, i.e. they bought crude oil," he wrote in his daily Schork Report.
"It's not that we don't have enough oil," [Artyom Konchin, an analyst with Aton Capital] said. "We just don't have enough capital going into developing the fields."
People buy and sell goods and services for any number of reasons, including speculation on future prices, but that does not change the fact that the ONLY way to determine price is supply and demand.
I'm not trying to be mean, but statements like this really illustrate your ignorance. In an open market, price is determined by what the seller believes a buyer is willing pay for a product and nothing more. Pressures from either the supply side or the demand side can, and usually do, exert influence on the perceived value of a product. The more true competition in the market, the more effect you will see.
Speculation may yield short term spikes (and drops), but if speculators are not going to use the oil themselves then they have to sell it at some point in order to get cash for profits or to fund alternative investments. When
Then what would you do in Sudan, let them die? We were talking about Syria and Lebanon. What outcome there justified you sacrificing thousands of young Americans?
Yes, my passivity has limits, and it is limited when I see other people dying senselessly because of hate, and there is something I can do. You mean like the US soldiers who are being killed in Iraq because the insurgents hate the US occupation? Perhaps sending those Americans back to their families would be a good option.
I note that you aren't in Sudan trying to save people, you're just willing to sacrifice the lives of other Americans for what you see as a lofty goal.
Is there a better way? what would you do? Perhaps the US could worry about her own problems and stop screwing with the rest of the world. Perhaps those soldiers could raise families and hold down jobs in the US, rather than trying to use a machine gun to solve centuries old feuds on the other side of the world. I'm not suggesting that the ethnic fighting/cleansing in Dafur is okay. I'm not suggesting that Syria ought not to have left Lebanon. I'm only saying that perhaps you ought not be so willing to sacrifice the lives of many other people, especially for a goal so trivial to the US population. I'm also saying that someone with the attitude you've expressed in this thread is not a passivist, nor even close to understanding the meaning of the word.
Well, since you asked, I have a passivist side that would prefer to stay out of all war...However, if you ask me if it is worth the lives of thousands of Americans to get Syria out of Lebanon, I say yes, absolutely. I'm guessing that you don't understand what passivist means.
It has helped somewhat indirectly by increasing the value of other oil reserves around the world due to the "uncertainty premium" that surrounds war. However, most of the price increases can be more credibly associated with lots of new demand in China and India and not a whole bunch more new oil discoveries in recent decades, even apart from the Iraq War (although the war certainly did not help matters for the consumers). Except that supply and demand have been nearly disconnected from oil prices for a long time. See http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_06/b4020055.htm, which was written back in early 2007 when oil prices unexpectedly dropped temporarily. Despite China (and India) consuming oil like crazy during that period, prices dropped because speculators pulled out of the market for a few weeks. Price is now over $112 per barrel, up from $50 in January of last year. Do you honestly believe that China has cranked up its demand that much in a year? Economists were arguing last year that even $50 a barrel was more than the true supply-demand equilibrium price.
Instead, prices are controlled by futures traders. Any potential disruption of oil supplies drive the prices up. When Bush threatens to crap on Venezuela, oil prices go up. The invasion of Iraq significantly destabilized the geographical center of the world's oil production, which has been a huge contributing factor to the artificial rise in oil prices.
The majority of the world's oil is now under the control of nationalized companies (i.e. governments) and the American and European oil companies earn more from their extraction knowledge and field management expertise as partners with these nationalized firms then they do from controlling the actual reserves directly. That it is a silly suggestion. They provide extraction knowledge and field management expertise because that's all the governments allow them to do. The rulers of these nations believe that the natural resources belong to the people, not a multinational corporation. Unfortunately, they often interpret people to mean themselves, but it still is a different concept than the corporate-owned US.
As for the profits, so what? Should I not expect some profit if I invest my savings? I never even suggested otherwise. I simply took issue with your claim that the Iraq invasion and occupation have been tough on the oil companies' bottom lines. Unfortunately for small investors, the companies have generally declared the same dividend despite record setting profits every quarter.
You are a conspiracy theorist Thanks. And you are clueless.
...and you are saying I lack 'historical understanding?' Yes. You clearly understand very little about this topic yet you are eager to discuss it like an expert. You know just enough to look silly when you start tossing around arguments.
I mean, what news are you reading that would actually lead you to believe that there could reasonably be an overthrow of the government? I'm sorry to interrupt your peacefully ignorant life. Everything is grand. Go back to American Idol.
The Nazis had their own army. What political party today has its own army? To what politician or person is the US army today loyal? Go read up on the SA and SS in Germany, and tell me which political party is roughing up its opponents like they did. None. That is the answer. Wake up and smell reality. Around the world, political parties with their own military wings are pretty common. Such isn't necessary in the US, which was really the original point. When you have private bankers running the national treasury, mercenaries making up a noticeable portion of your military forces, and private corporations counting your votes, the hard work's already done. Hitler had to fight to eradicate democracy.
Also I think you are way off-base if you think Monsanto developed the terminator gene as a safety protocol or that their continuing work in this area is intended to be beneficial to mankind. It's only intended to be beneficial to Monsanto. The point isn't to make sure that the genes don't get out, but to make sure that you have to purchase seed from them every year. If you really think it's about anything else, you are sadly deluded. While I agree with your sentiments, I wanted to point out that Monsanto did not develop the terminator gene technology. This was a long-term research project between the US Department of Agriculture and Delta & Pine Land, a company in Little Rock, Arkansas. Monsanto bought this company recently, after nine years of trying. The patent was owned jointly by D&PL and the USDA. Back in 1998 (when Monsanto first began trying to buy D&PL and their half of the patent), the USDA said they wanted the terminator technology to be "widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies." Thanks to the significant public outrage, Monsanto has backed away from any commercial use of the technology for now.
If you want to go down the rabbit hole, do some digging about the D&PL and their connections to the Clintons, the Bushes, and BCCI (a London-based bank mired in corruption through the 80s and early 90s).
If Monsanto is so concerned about their unnatural crops cross-pollinating other corn and beans, then they should GM it to keep it from doing that. It's not the fault of people trying to avoid it that the wind blows. They've been working on it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/465222.stm. Of course, this technology means that cross pollination might not just introduce an unwanted trait to your heirloom strain - it could completely kill it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Use something to do something"
Your invention seems to be obviously derivative of the previously established "use nothing to do something" (1 2) and "use something to do nothing" (1) patents.Now if they were snooping on customers, that would be a WHOLE different story...
According to the article linked to in TFA, they were snooping on customers:The goal of the "Clipper" and "Rheingold" surveillance programs, as well as other "secondary projects," the fax makes clear, was to "analyze several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts."
Other spying campaigns had already been "specifically planned and assigned," including "the surveillance of one of your shareholders, a company headquartered in New York."
Moreover, the letter continues, the office of an "important business journalist," had been infiltrated by a mole who had reported "directly to corporate security" at Telekom for several months.
The Register was right in 2003 to be "skeptical" of the merits of any fair use analysis that asserts that space-shifting or format-shifting is a noninfringing use. ... This is particularly the case in today's market, where inexpensive legitimate digital copies of most types of works are readily available, and increasingly can be obtained through online download services. Where a market is functioning to serve the demand otherwise being fulfilled by unauthorized copying, the likelihood that the unauthorized copying is fair use is diminished.
and
Similarly, creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use.
Try, just for a few seconds, to put yourself in Iraqi shoes and lets talk about someone antagonizing. Imagine that Egypt, Iran, and Syria decided to take serious issue with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and declared that the Israeli military could no longer enter Gaza or the West Bank. Do you believe that Israel wouldn't fight back? Do you believe that the US wouldn't assist?
It sure would be nice to live in a world as black and white as yours. It sure would be terrible to live in a world so devoid of empathy and rationalization as yours.If you believe otherwise, perhaps you could explain how? Thus far you've presented nothing but a desire to eliminate freedom in exchange for your right to avoid being insulted online. As another poster suggested, if free thought scares you and rudeness hurts your feelings, perhaps you should stick to network television.
If you want to read about groups with much more actual involvement, spend some time on the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergs. Both the Trilateral and CFR is heavily represented by members of both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
While I don't know that I believe it, there's also plenty of evidence that the administration is full of Evangelical nut jobs who believe that a war in the Middle East is the precursor to the return of Jesus.
When the US federal government and many state governments are dealing with budget deficits (particularly at the federal level), how does one justify spending trillions of dollars around the world while destroying the national economy for America's children? How does one justify sacrificing American lives in hopes of improving life for strangers the Middle East, when the gap between the poor and the wealthy is unconsciously spectacular at home?
Ha now we have gotten far from what motivated the US to attack Iraq, but the truth is there is something of that motivation inside every American, indeed inside every human being That's blatantly false and continues to point out the craziness of you calling yourself a pacifist. A true pacifist works for peace, not perpetual war. A true pacifist sees violence (and particularly war) as unacceptable failure. You, instead, see a war of aggression as easily justified if any humanistic goals may be potentially realized.Polls and in depth research has clearly shown (as expected) that most Americans were motivated by the Bush administration's and the media's propaganda storm. Once the veneer has been pulled back, a majority of Americans now disagree with you. Out of curiosity, what do imagine was the US administration's actual motivation for the invasion and overthrow of Iraq?
No one has asked you to go fight. It is up to you to go if you want to, and that's absolutely how it should be. Tell that to the multitudes of American soldiers who want out but can't go home, even after their tours have ended. Between the lies told by recruiters and the stop-loss programs, many have been sent to fight (and to die) under false pretenses and under duress. The middle east still has one foot in the dark ages (beheadings, mutilation, discimination against women), and if we can help them out of that, then at least some good has come from the war. Oil isn't a reason to fight. Cultural differences is much less a reason for war than oil. At least a war for oil has legitimate economic groundings. Unfortunately, the US invasion was not about securing oil for the American people and it certainly was not about bringing equality to women.Don't get me wrong - I do respect those who want to help others and try to dedicate their life to doing so. I'm confused by your need to go far away from home to do your good deeds. And, I have much higher standard for when a foreign intervention is required and what type of situation is worth sacrificing the lives of my neighbors.
That is a bunch of hogwash and even the article that you link to doesn't say that. Some speculators lost their shirts as they unwound their positions...big deal, it happens every day. Whether the oil is bought by the refiner to make gasoline for your automobile or the speculator hold for later resale is irrelevant to the issue of supply and demand.
You pretending otherwise doesn't change the facts. If you are indeed an investor in oil, as you claim, I would think you would understand the market a bit better.
After the oil embargo of the 70's - plus the Iranian Revolution and the Iran/Iraq War - pushed oil to staggering new highs (close to $70 a barrel), it dropped back to around $20 a barrel by the mid-80's. Bush's first Gulf War caused a temporary spike but the 90's actually saw prices drop down to levels not seen in decades, bottoming out around $15 a barrel. The last year or two of Clinton's second term saw prices slowly start creeping up again, and they rapidly spiked as soon as Bush Jr came into office. Prices actually had started to decline a bit when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Prices skyrocketed immediately and the only turnaround since was the brief period referenced in the article I linked in my last post. That rapid (but temporary) drop at the end of 2006 managed to keep prices from breaking the all-time high set back in the early part of Reagan's first term. Yet, it was a brief reprieve.
Keep in mind that the article I linked was written during that brief price downturn and written by someone who believed that the prices were going to stabilize at a somewhat rational point. Instead, prices again took off not long after. That column was really nothing but economic gloating by supply and demand folks who now felt vindicated; in retrospect we know that they spoke way too soon. Even with that backdrop, I found several telling comments, for example: "This is a commodity. There is no physical reason for it to have gone to $80." Gheit and others say the true supply-demand equilibrium for oil is closer to $45 a barrel. Yet, it had been above that level for over a year, and quickly shot way past it again (where it has remained for more than a year).
You might also consider today's report (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080415/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices) that has gems like:
Oil's recent run above $100 a barrel has been largely attributed to a steadily depreciating U.S. currency because a weakening dollar prompts investors to seek a safe haven in hard commodities such as oil and gold.
Energy analyst and trader Stephen Schork described the rush into oil on the falling dollar as an automatic reflex. "Traders on the Nymex saw the dollar take another tumble, so they did what they have been conditioned to do when the dollar falls, i.e. they bought crude oil," he wrote in his daily Schork Report.
"It's not that we don't have enough oil," [Artyom Konchin, an analyst with Aton Capital] said. "We just don't have enough capital going into developing the fields."
People buy and sell goods and services for any number of reasons, including speculation on future prices, but that does not change the fact that the ONLY way to determine price is supply and demand.
I'm not trying to be mean, but statements like this really illustrate your ignorance. In an open market, price is determined by what the seller believes a buyer is willing pay for a product and nothing more. Pressures from either the supply side or the demand side can, and usually do, exert influence on the perceived value of a product. The more true competition in the market, the more effect you will see.
Speculation may yield short term spikes (and drops), but if speculators are not going to use the oil themselves then they have to sell it at some point in order to get cash for profits or to fund alternative investments. When
I note that you aren't in Sudan trying to save people, you're just willing to sacrifice the lives of other Americans for what you see as a lofty goal.
Is there a better way? what would you do? Perhaps the US could worry about her own problems and stop screwing with the rest of the world. Perhaps those soldiers could raise families and hold down jobs in the US, rather than trying to use a machine gun to solve centuries old feuds on the other side of the world. I'm not suggesting that the ethnic fighting/cleansing in Dafur is okay. I'm not suggesting that Syria ought not to have left Lebanon. I'm only saying that perhaps you ought not be so willing to sacrifice the lives of many other people, especially for a goal so trivial to the US population. I'm also saying that someone with the attitude you've expressed in this thread is not a passivist, nor even close to understanding the meaning of the word.w00t! Where do I sign up for my Medal of Honor?
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3413872/Medal_of_HonorInstead, prices are controlled by futures traders. Any potential disruption of oil supplies drive the prices up. When Bush threatens to crap on Venezuela, oil prices go up. The invasion of Iraq significantly destabilized the geographical center of the world's oil production, which has been a huge contributing factor to the artificial rise in oil prices.
The majority of the world's oil is now under the control of nationalized companies (i.e. governments) and the American and European oil companies earn more from their extraction knowledge and field management expertise as partners with these nationalized firms then they do from controlling the actual reserves directly. That it is a silly suggestion. They provide extraction knowledge and field management expertise because that's all the governments allow them to do. The rulers of these nations believe that the natural resources belong to the people, not a multinational corporation. Unfortunately, they often interpret people to mean themselves, but it still is a different concept than the corporate-owned US. As for the profits, so what? Should I not expect some profit if I invest my savings? I never even suggested otherwise. I simply took issue with your claim that the Iraq invasion and occupation have been tough on the oil companies' bottom lines. Unfortunately for small investors, the companies have generally declared the same dividend despite record setting profits every quarter.
...and you are saying I lack 'historical understanding?' Yes. You clearly understand very little about this topic yet you are eager to discuss it like an expert. You know just enough to look silly when you start tossing around arguments. I mean, what news are you reading that would actually lead you to believe that there could reasonably be an overthrow of the government? I'm sorry to interrupt your peacefully ignorant life. Everything is grand. Go back to American Idol. The Nazis had their own army. What political party today has its own army? To what politician or person is the US army today loyal? Go read up on the SA and SS in Germany, and tell me which political party is roughing up its opponents like they did. None. That is the answer. Wake up and smell reality. Around the world, political parties with their own military wings are pretty common. Such isn't necessary in the US, which was really the original point. When you have private bankers running the national treasury, mercenaries making up a noticeable portion of your military forces, and private corporations counting your votes, the hard work's already done. Hitler had to fight to eradicate democracy.If you want to go down the rabbit hole, do some digging about the D&PL and their connections to the Clintons, the Bushes, and BCCI (a London-based bank mired in corruption through the 80s and early 90s).