Read what I wrote. I already addressed that any attack would come from a bot net. For any sustained attack though you can't just leave your bot net on autopilot. You would need hundreds of people to control such a bot net. The point is not to take down the bot net, but to take down the controllers. Wiping out a nations power and telecommunications infrastructure would be an effective way of doing this if all else failed.
Yeah, the US should just get out of Iraq. Once the Americans are gone the Iraq civilians will be safe! Iraq will become a fairytale land of peace an harmony. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds will hold hands and sing in the streets... well, until some ass hole driving a truck with a few tons of TNT detonates in the middle of the crowd.
Dumbing down into a war Vs peace situation is stupid. Iraq is going to be a killing field for at least the next few years. The only question is who is going to do the killing, who is going to do the dying, and how many people are going to be dead. It is going to be a blood bath regardless of what decision is going to be made. That isn't to say that the US should or should not go, just that it isn't a simple choice between peace and harmony and war and death.
I may not agree with his stance on every single issue, but I have to say, I don't think I've ever felt genuinely excited about the prospect of any particular candidate becoming president before this election. I would strongly advise you to ignore such warm and fuzzy feelings about someone you know jack and shit about.
Obama is an excellent speaker and is very charismatic. On top of that, there is a media love fest that is just oozing over the fellow. This is where the warm and fuzzy feelings for him come from.
While the ability to speak is a big bonus (though apparently not required - see GWB), it doesn't make a good president on its own. Obama has done an excellent job saying nothing other then warm fuzzy shit that people want to hear.
He talks endlessly about compromise and understanding, but he has yet to spit out an actual innovative proposal on an issue that puts his 'philosophy' into practice. As far as I can tell from few things he actually has a REAL position on, they are straight across the board moderate democratic party line proposals.
Obama is a great speaker, but I don't trust someone who speaks of warm and fuzzy things yet refuses to take an actual stand. It is still early though. I don't discount Obama. He still has plenty of time to make some actual proposals with meat on them. I just think that the big media orgy and public love festival surrounding Obama is horrifically premature. See if you still like the guy after he actually takes a stand on an issue.
You joke, but I think people are missing the fact that bombs can stop many attacks. If for instance a nation was able to launch some massive attack that was crippling the Internet, in this world of zombied computers can't simply block everything. A true Internet crashing attack would take hundreds (thousands?) of people to pull off and you likely might be able to at least localize them to a single nation. If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.
The level of destruction on a nations infrastructure you would have to inflict would be horrific, but it might very well be justified. Taking out the Internet for the US, Europe, and some of Asia is just as bad as physically blowing up their power plants and cutting power. Such nations would be entirely justified to respond as if a foreign air force was bombing their infrastructure and respond in kind.
All of that said, I am a skeptic that anyone could do more then make the Internet hiccup for a few minutes before proper defenses got things running relatively smoothly again. The Internet is a pretty robust system. It will take more then a Windows Vista upgrade to make the Internet unsecured enough to be taken down.
You saw through my evil plan. I knew that I was going to fire this employee then threaten to sue him. I knew that he would post to Slashdot asking for legal advice,so I started posting on Slashdot years ago for this very day... and I would have gotten away from it if it wasn't for you rascally kids and that damn dog!
Am I the only one that finds it a LITTLE suspicious that this article links to two wikipedia articles, the "evil" hosting company, and is posted by an AC? Can we say smear campaign or disgruntle employee? People, this is a completely transparent ploy to smear the poor bastards who are being accused. It is a travesty that this crap was even posted in the first place. It would have been one thing if the hosting company hand not been named, or if the accuser had named themselves. The fact that only the 'evil' hosting company in question is named and there is absolutely zero evidence that they did anything wrong, not even an angry blog, should be causing all of your bullshit detectors to go off.
Personally, I am deeply disappointed that this blatant smear was even posted in the first place.
Now what if someone wants to create something for public consumption, but doesn't want paid for it -- eg an Apache developer? (Slashdot runs on Apache, doesn't it?) Why should he have to pay to ensure that it gets protected by the GPL and prevent unscrupulous software vendors rebranding it as their own product for unfair profit?
Uh, if Apache can't scrounge up 5 dollars to copyright their code, they have much bigger worries then someone stealing it and selling it for profit. Apache wouldn't have to change a single thing about how they operate. They would simply shell up a bank breaking 5 dollars and retain their merry GPL protections. In fact, not only would they have the same protection as now, but it would actually be registered with the government so that people could look it up and see that it is under GPL.
Yeah, they should be able to. It isn't like you thought enough to drop a couple of bucks to protect it. If someone with more motivation turns around and actually CREATES something for public consumption, society is bettered. If you write a story and no one ever bothers to make anything out of it and it is never heard from again, no one has gained anything.
The point of copyright is not to ensure that artist get money. The point of copyright, and this is written in black and white in the constitution, is to promote the useful arts. Giving artist money is a good way to promote the useful arts a lot of the time. Hence, why artist should be able to copyright their creative work. That said, if they have no intention promoting the useful arts with their work, they no longer are entitled to lumps of money. If someone else can take the content that and make something worth while out of it, more power to them.
Umm, nope. Implicit copyright is what's keeping me from taking everything you just wrote, sticking my name on it, and reposting it. That said, the duration of implicit copyrights is far too long. I never saw the problem with an implicit 14 year copyright, then the option to explicitly extend that protection repeatedly for another seven years for a small fee.
Uh, no, implicate copyright does not keep you from claiming my post as your own. You can still copy my post in the current system and claim it as your own. I could still sue you copyright violation. We would then go to court and have to compare time/date stamps. Under my proposed system, you would need to 1) pay money to copyright my ranting and 2) would make a public record for when it was copyrighted. As a result, it would be an easy matter to show that the time/date stamp on my post comes before your copyright rendering it invalid.
One issue can mean a lot. One issue can expose core principles, or in Hillary's case, a lack of them. The fact that she will merrily and blatantly violate the first fucking amendment which IMO is first for a reason, says a lot. What makes it even more nauseating is that she is happy to violate the first amendment not based upon any higher principle, but because it looks good to the voting public who is terrified that video games will turn children into serial murdering zombies. You don't see Hillary calling for book censorship despite the graphic and unregulated nature of some books, but she will merrily dither along preaching a government censor board for video games.
I don't want a president that acts as an instant polling machine that spews back whatever the masses think is a good idea at the moment. We have a constitution SPECIFICALLY to keep the masses from castrating their own freedoms. I don't trust Hillary in the slightest fulfill her role as guardian of the US constitution. Hillary is a power hungry politician who will do and put up with anything (even her husband) to fulfill dreams of scoring the title of first women president. That title can wait a few more years for a candidate actually worthy of the role.
Simply adjust prices so that it is 'fair'. What if you can register a 100 photos at once, 10 works under 1000 words at once, so and so forth. If you can't cover a $5 (or $10 or $2 or whatever is decided is fair) charge for some piece of creative work, it probably has no business being copyrighted. That is the problem with our current fucked up system. This post should NOT be automatically copyrighted because there is not a slim chance in hell that I am going to try and profit from it. You should merrily be able to take this work and post it into your blog without fear that I will sue you. If I really think that this post is a gem, then I should have to pay a trivial fee to register it as copyrighted. Once I do this, you could easily find it in a government database, find my contact information, contact me about using my copyrighted work. Under the current system, you could NEVER use my post in your blog because my e-mail address if hidden and I have offered up no contact information. You couldn't ask to use my work even if you wanted to pay me for it.
Spoken like someone who uses copyrighted material, but certainly not like someone who creates it.
There are advantages to something automatically being considered copyrighted once it is created. Granted, those advantages are only for the creator, but without help like that, there is less motivation to create. There is also an advantage to being able to create content with worry that you are stepping on someone's copyright claims. If I wanted to publish a best of Slashdot quote series, it would be utterly impossible to do so short of stealing Slashdot's server. All of the posts are automatically copyrighted and there is absolutely no way to get in contact with the authors of most of the posts. You could NEVER EVER legally make such a book in our current fucked up and broken system because at any time someone could sue you into the ground for using their copyrighted material.
Under my proposed system, it would be a trivial matter run a search of a database to see if any of the posts I want to use were registered as copyrighted. If a post was registered and I still wanted to use it, the database would include contact information so that I could actually get in contact with the author, pay him, and use his material. Under our current fucked up and broken system, this is completely and utterly impossible. There is content not being created (legally at least) because under our current copyright system there is absolutely no way humanly possible to shield yourself from a potential lawsuit or find original content owners BEFORE they start trying to sue you into the ground.
So... what if I cut and paste what you just posted into the copyright site, pay $2, and register it as mine? Suddenly it doesn't seem so simple. You have to consider:
What happens when I sue you for posting my copyrighted material on slashdot? How do you prove that you originally wrote it in the first place, and that you didn't copy it from me? (I put it on my web site and modified the datestamps to make it look like it predated yours by a few days)
This alone would make a system where $2 is nowhere near enough to cover costs. And in fact if I didn't like something you'd said on slashdot, for $2 I could trivially register it as mine and issue slashdot with a cease-and-desist letter.
What happens? The exact same thing that happens now. Today, under the broken system, you could post my stuff on your website and sue me for using copyrighted material.
The key difference in my proposed system is that if I decided that my post was pure gold, I could register it as copyrighted before posting it publicly. At that point, you would not only know my post was copyrighted with a quick search, but you would also know how to contact and pay me for using my content. Under the current system, you can do neither. Under the current system, nothing short of getting a warrant to search the Slashdot servers and my ISPs servers is going to show who has made this post.
Further, in my proposed system, if you copyrighted my post, it would be a simple matter to show that the time/date stamp on my post is BEFORE your copyright registration. Just make it a simple rule that anything released to the public must be copyrighted before it is released. So, if I want to copyright my post, I need to cut and past it into a submission form before posting it publicly. Under the current system, both your server and Slashdot would need to be to offer up proof of when posted what and when.
If you decide you want to buy a piece of land, or think that a piece of land is public property and would like to perform some activity on it, what do you do? You got to the local town office and find out who owns the land, what restrictions there on that land, and who you must contact to ask permission to use or buy the land. This is a good system that has been in place in the US since its foundation.
The copyright system is like private property's evil twin. It is still a form of "property", but the "system" designed to deal with questions of use and ownership is utterly non-existent. For instance, this post I am writing is protected by copyright. True, there is no indication in this post that shows it is under copyright, and the fact that I have my e-mail address hidden means that you can't ask permission to use it. This post will NOT be recorded in any government database so you can never look up who owns it and what the rules of using it are. Our current copyright system is a default "everything is copyrighted" and there is absolutely NO record of who owns what. You can't even find out when a copyright expires because there is no record of when it was first created.
We desperately need a new copyright system.
The new system should REQUIRE the registration of copyrighted content. There MUST be a public record of who owns what and for how long they have had it under copyright. Further, there is not a damn reason in the world why we need copyrights that span centuries as the current system does. Anything that is not registered as copyrighted should be considered public domain. Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content, throw up an Internet site to register such copyrights, and we would have a workable system.
The current system as about as far away from good as you can possibly get. To answer the articles original question, there is absolutely nothing you can do. There are no records of what is under copyright and no way of finding out if that copyright changes. The current system sucks balls and no politician gives a shit because voters don't realize such issues exist, much less care about such issues.
Sucks to be someone who uses creative content. Sorry.
Russia doesn't own the worlds gas market. It certainly doesn't even come close to owning Britian's gas market. The worst Russia could do is cut off the pipe line that runs through the Ukraine and thereby cutting off not only the Ukraine, but ALL of Europe. If Russia is really stupid enough to cut off all of Europe to cause a slight blip in the price to a nation that doesn't get much gas from Russia, well we have more serious problems. Russia would have apparently not only managed to REALLY piss off Europe but also manage to single handedly throw its own government off the tracks by cutting off the only thing funding Russia at this point.
Russia doesn't have any leverage over Britain. The roles are very much reversed. Britain has leverage over the EU, and by extension the worlds seconds largest market. To top it off, they also happen to be best buddies with the worlds largest market (the US). The only 'weapon' they have is that they can commit financial suicide by embargoing themselves and cutting off there gas/oil supplies which is their only source of revenue at the moment.
Russia has absolutely no economic hold on the EU or the US. Fucking with either the EU or the US economically is a good way to get crushed. Either one alone could crush Russia. The two of them working together could make half of the worlds economy disappear over night.
For those keeping score on GDPs, it is 12,980,000,000,000 for the US, 12,820,000,000,000 for the EU, and a paltry 1,723,000,000,000 for Russia. Russia can do lots of things to be a pain in the ass but threatening any sort of economic pain is not one of them.
That's the thing about leverage. You get to apply a disproportionate amount of force if you use it wisely.
That isn't even a little bit true. Unless Russia has found a magical way of keeping THEIR oil from mixing with the international markets oil, there is nothing they can possibly do to cut off Britain's oil supplies or even cause a rise in their prices short of a military blockade or denying their oil to everyone. The first option is clearly not viable, and the second option does a hell of a lot more harm to Russia's economy then it does to anyone else's.
That said, I doubt that Russia will hand over the fellow in question. It is against Russian law to extradite its citizens. Now, it isn't exactly like "Russia law" normally means anything, but in this case it is clear cover. At best, this guy is going to get a Russian trial. If he was working for the Kremlin, he will get a short and sweet Russian trial where he will get a couple of years of 'hard time' in a Russian resort and a pile of money. Russia can say they got "justice" for the Brits and their assassin spends a couple of years sleeping on satin and leaves the ordeal a richer fellow.
You can, but you would need to make 10,000 orders of it to get the amount that was used to kill this poor bastard. 10,000 orders to a private address is a tad suspicious.
That is why YOU DON'T QUIT YOUR JOB UNTIL YOU SIGN THE CONTRACT. For fucks sake people. Do not do stupid shit like quit your job until you have signed the contract. Once you have a signed contract and they refuse to do what the contract states you need to do two things.
1) Sue the piss out of them for breach of contract. Not only can you collect your couple extra thousand for relocation, but you should also get a merry amount of money for lost wages. Go have a vacation on them.
2) Quit. You are fucking stupid if you work for a corporation that burns orphanages, is fueled by baby flesh, and by some stroke of utter legal and managerial insanity breaks its own employment contracts. Seriously, if they flatly refuse to honor signed contracts, I can promise you have not found a fun place to work with high moral.
You left out "and a hire a good lawyer after getting sued for defamation".
Not in the US. If there is one thing that rocks about the US legal system, it is that defamation is almost completely impossible to prove. In Canada or Britain you might have to worry a little, but in the US the deck is so completely stacked against such claims that it won't even make it to court.
I am not sure what 3v1L corporations you are working for, but I have never ever had such an experience. In fact, all of the companies I have dealt with were more then happy to modify small points to suit me. If a company is not willing to make such changes, especially when you are taking about a relocation package worth a few thousand dollars, that should be a big old clue mallet whacking you across the head.
Tell them that you need the agreed upon relocation package in writing. If they tell you that they won't do it, then you need to decide for yourself if you are willing to make the move without the relocation package. If you are not willing to make the move without the relocation package, don't be a dumb ass and sign anyways. Tell them that you can't move without a guaranteed relocation package, and if they still will not offer it up, then they clearly had no intention to give you one in the first place in which case you should look for another job. It is idiocy beyond words to join a corporation that is malevolently trying to swindle their employees out of a few thousand dollars before even stepping into work while management sits in a dark room cackling with laughter as they feast on baby flesh. Personally, I don't buy that such silliness exists in the US, but if you happen to run across it, don't be a complete dumb ass and just find something else.
Just follow two simple rules of accepting a job and you won't get burned.
1) If it is not in writing, it doesn't exist. If they promise you something, GET IT IN WRITING. Do not budge from this position. If there is something missing from your contract, make them add it. It is a quick and painless process to add stuff. If they refuse to add something in writing, assume that you are not going to get it and become deeply suspicious. Don't be a dumbass and work on promises. Don't be a dumbass and cave into pressure. The fact that they are pressuring you should send off a dozen warning bells that you are stupid to ignore.
2) Never, never, never, never, NEVER, EVER quit your current job until you have signed your name on the dotted line. Don't tell anyone you got a job until you have a signed contract that says you do. This not only gives you the ability to back out without becoming homeless, but means that you will not be screwed if they back out - AND IT DOES HAPPEN.
This is just silly talk. There will be no economic embargo on China because it developed a new weapon. No one is talking about economic sanctions other then crazy Slashdot posters.
It is a provocation in the same way any new weapon is a provocation, but the response won't be military or economic. The response will be that the US starts upgrading their own anti-satellite weapon if they have not already done so and building in more stealth features to their old satellites. This starts a potential arms race, but that is it. Even then, I doubt it is going to be much of a race. The US has had known anti-satellite weapons for decades. It probably has other still classified anti-satellite weapons waiting in the wings as well.
The real 'provocation' in this is what it means for Taiwan. The US has been quietly backing away from its promise to defend the democracy of Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion. Even now, the prospect of fighting over Taiwan makes the US uneasy. The US could certainly win today, but it would be far more bloody and dramatically more costly then Iraq. Such a war would have both nations getting itchy nuclear weapon trigger fingers. Now, to top it all off, China has the capacity to knock down US satellites making the military game much more dangerous while at the same time offering up a way to put a real hurt on American economic interests.
It is a good old fashion Mexican standoff. A war between the US and China is a war that both sides could lose (read that as going nuclear). Even if both sides agreed to take nuclear weapons off the table, the economic damage done to the US would only be matched by the massive economic destruction wrought on China. The whole issue is messy and ugly, and it is coming to a head. China WILL make a move again Taiwan in the next 10 years.
The problem with any sort of state run industry is that it tends to murder off private competition. State run monopolies always have two advantages over any private corporation. State run monopolies can easier push through legislation to make it harder to compete with them, and state run monopolies can always make up for inefficiency, poor planning, and higher operational costs with tax money.
Some times we accept this sort of inefficiency that state run industries bring for higher values. The cutting edge of technology really is not one of the places where we should accept such inefficiency. We need private corporations to literally murder each other to provide the best product and drive innovation forward. I am not against rules to help poke and prod competition forward, but setting up state run and tax subsidized networks is not the answer.
As "inintelligent" as you might find my opinion, I see you have not bothered to respond to any of my arguments. Show me some proof that "The World" knew that Iraq was going to explode in ethnic genocide. There were a lot of good arguments against the war before the war. Ethnic genocide was not one of them.
Seriously, go back and look at newspapers before the war. Not just American or British newspapers, but ANY newspaper. Find me politicians arguing that this was going to happen or a think tank with policy paper warning against ethnic genocide. It simply didn't happen. Only a small handful of voices spoke up this danger and they were dully ignored by everyone, "The World" included.
All arguments against the Iraq war rested on respecting nation sovereignty, international law, and humanitarian grounds. Fear the Iraq people turning in on themselves and killing each other was never used as an argument by the vast majority of people both in the US and Britain and "The World". Again, if you think I am full of shit and that my argument is "inintelligent", show my evidence to prove me wrong.
Various US militias that the US government occasionally whacks down could be called insurgents. A large criminal gang could even be called an insurgent group if it tried to take and hold a section of city and implement their own law. "Taking up arms against the government" implies more then just a shootout with police because they caught you breaking the law. The US does have insurgents, they are just generally short lived or ignored because they are not causing trouble.
That said, Iraq has lots of non-insurgent violence. Iraq is rife with criminal gangs that inflict violence upon the population and would not technically be considered 'insurgent' activity.
I can say with absolute certainty that if tomorrow the Shiites and the Sunnis stopped slaughtering each other, Bush and Blair wouldn't be able to get the troops out of Iraq fast enough and declare victory. No one wants foreign soldiers in Iraq, Bush, Blair, and the populations they represent are not exception. The problem is that Bush and Blair want a Rwanda genocide on their hands even less then they want to get the fuck out of Iraq.
If it is any indication of how ugly things could get, the Sunni political block changed their tune and have been asking/begging to KEEP the soldiers in Iraq. They are rightfully scared shit less about what is going to happen if the US goes Vietnam on them and leaves them to the Shiites.
That said, it is all about to become a moot point. Bush has the conviction / thick headedness to stay in Iraq regardless of how badly it pisses the electorate off. He is in the process of blowing his load the the troop 'surge'. The Iraq government, Shiites, Sunnis, and Bush have less then two years to get their shit together and figure out a way to not murder each other without US soldiers standing around with guns. There is not a slim chance in hell that the next president of the US is going to keep US troops in Iraq.
Judging by the way things are going, if I was a Sunni, I would be getting the fuck out now.
Slashdot Mirror
Read what I wrote. I already addressed that any attack would come from a bot net. For any sustained attack though you can't just leave your bot net on autopilot. You would need hundreds of people to control such a bot net. The point is not to take down the bot net, but to take down the controllers. Wiping out a nations power and telecommunications infrastructure would be an effective way of doing this if all else failed.
Yeah, the US should just get out of Iraq. Once the Americans are gone the Iraq civilians will be safe! Iraq will become a fairytale land of peace an harmony. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds will hold hands and sing in the streets... well, until some ass hole driving a truck with a few tons of TNT detonates in the middle of the crowd.
Dumbing down into a war Vs peace situation is stupid. Iraq is going to be a killing field for at least the next few years. The only question is who is going to do the killing, who is going to do the dying, and how many people are going to be dead. It is going to be a blood bath regardless of what decision is going to be made. That isn't to say that the US should or should not go, just that it isn't a simple choice between peace and harmony and war and death.
Obama is an excellent speaker and is very charismatic. On top of that, there is a media love fest that is just oozing over the fellow. This is where the warm and fuzzy feelings for him come from.
While the ability to speak is a big bonus (though apparently not required - see GWB), it doesn't make a good president on its own. Obama has done an excellent job saying nothing other then warm fuzzy shit that people want to hear.
He talks endlessly about compromise and understanding, but he has yet to spit out an actual innovative proposal on an issue that puts his 'philosophy' into practice. As far as I can tell from few things he actually has a REAL position on, they are straight across the board moderate democratic party line proposals.
Obama is a great speaker, but I don't trust someone who speaks of warm and fuzzy things yet refuses to take an actual stand. It is still early though. I don't discount Obama. He still has plenty of time to make some actual proposals with meat on them. I just think that the big media orgy and public love festival surrounding Obama is horrifically premature. See if you still like the guy after he actually takes a stand on an issue.
You joke, but I think people are missing the fact that bombs can stop many attacks. If for instance a nation was able to launch some massive attack that was crippling the Internet, in this world of zombied computers can't simply block everything. A true Internet crashing attack would take hundreds (thousands?) of people to pull off and you likely might be able to at least localize them to a single nation. If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.
The level of destruction on a nations infrastructure you would have to inflict would be horrific, but it might very well be justified. Taking out the Internet for the US, Europe, and some of Asia is just as bad as physically blowing up their power plants and cutting power. Such nations would be entirely justified to respond as if a foreign air force was bombing their infrastructure and respond in kind.
All of that said, I am a skeptic that anyone could do more then make the Internet hiccup for a few minutes before proper defenses got things running relatively smoothly again. The Internet is a pretty robust system. It will take more then a Windows Vista upgrade to make the Internet unsecured enough to be taken down.
You saw through my evil plan. I knew that I was going to fire this employee then threaten to sue him. I knew that he would post to Slashdot asking for legal advice,so I started posting on Slashdot years ago for this very day... and I would have gotten away from it if it wasn't for you rascally kids and that damn dog!
Am I the only one that finds it a LITTLE suspicious that this article links to two wikipedia articles, the "evil" hosting company, and is posted by an AC? Can we say smear campaign or disgruntle employee? People, this is a completely transparent ploy to smear the poor bastards who are being accused. It is a travesty that this crap was even posted in the first place. It would have been one thing if the hosting company hand not been named, or if the accuser had named themselves. The fact that only the 'evil' hosting company in question is named and there is absolutely zero evidence that they did anything wrong, not even an angry blog, should be causing all of your bullshit detectors to go off.
Personally, I am deeply disappointed that this blatant smear was even posted in the first place.
Now what if someone wants to create something for public consumption, but doesn't want paid for it -- eg an Apache developer? (Slashdot runs on Apache, doesn't it?) Why should he have to pay to ensure that it gets protected by the GPL and prevent unscrupulous software vendors rebranding it as their own product for unfair profit?
Uh, if Apache can't scrounge up 5 dollars to copyright their code, they have much bigger worries then someone stealing it and selling it for profit. Apache wouldn't have to change a single thing about how they operate. They would simply shell up a bank breaking 5 dollars and retain their merry GPL protections. In fact, not only would they have the same protection as now, but it would actually be registered with the government so that people could look it up and see that it is under GPL.
Yeah, they should be able to. It isn't like you thought enough to drop a couple of bucks to protect it. If someone with more motivation turns around and actually CREATES something for public consumption, society is bettered. If you write a story and no one ever bothers to make anything out of it and it is never heard from again, no one has gained anything.
The point of copyright is not to ensure that artist get money. The point of copyright, and this is written in black and white in the constitution, is to promote the useful arts. Giving artist money is a good way to promote the useful arts a lot of the time. Hence, why artist should be able to copyright their creative work. That said, if they have no intention promoting the useful arts with their work, they no longer are entitled to lumps of money. If someone else can take the content that and make something worth while out of it, more power to them.
Umm, nope. Implicit copyright is what's keeping me from taking everything you just wrote, sticking my name on it, and reposting it. That said, the duration of implicit copyrights is far too long. I never saw the problem with an implicit 14 year copyright, then the option to explicitly extend that protection repeatedly for another seven years for a small fee.
Uh, no, implicate copyright does not keep you from claiming my post as your own. You can still copy my post in the current system and claim it as your own. I could still sue you copyright violation. We would then go to court and have to compare time/date stamps. Under my proposed system, you would need to 1) pay money to copyright my ranting and 2) would make a public record for when it was copyrighted. As a result, it would be an easy matter to show that the time/date stamp on my post comes before your copyright rendering it invalid.
One issue can mean a lot. One issue can expose core principles, or in Hillary's case, a lack of them. The fact that she will merrily and blatantly violate the first fucking amendment which IMO is first for a reason, says a lot. What makes it even more nauseating is that she is happy to violate the first amendment not based upon any higher principle, but because it looks good to the voting public who is terrified that video games will turn children into serial murdering zombies. You don't see Hillary calling for book censorship despite the graphic and unregulated nature of some books, but she will merrily dither along preaching a government censor board for video games.
I don't want a president that acts as an instant polling machine that spews back whatever the masses think is a good idea at the moment. We have a constitution SPECIFICALLY to keep the masses from castrating their own freedoms. I don't trust Hillary in the slightest fulfill her role as guardian of the US constitution. Hillary is a power hungry politician who will do and put up with anything (even her husband) to fulfill dreams of scoring the title of first women president. That title can wait a few more years for a candidate actually worthy of the role.
Simply adjust prices so that it is 'fair'. What if you can register a 100 photos at once, 10 works under 1000 words at once, so and so forth. If you can't cover a $5 (or $10 or $2 or whatever is decided is fair) charge for some piece of creative work, it probably has no business being copyrighted. That is the problem with our current fucked up system. This post should NOT be automatically copyrighted because there is not a slim chance in hell that I am going to try and profit from it. You should merrily be able to take this work and post it into your blog without fear that I will sue you. If I really think that this post is a gem, then I should have to pay a trivial fee to register it as copyrighted. Once I do this, you could easily find it in a government database, find my contact information, contact me about using my copyrighted work. Under the current system, you could NEVER use my post in your blog because my e-mail address if hidden and I have offered up no contact information. You couldn't ask to use my work even if you wanted to pay me for it.
There are advantages to something automatically being considered copyrighted once it is created. Granted, those advantages are only for the creator, but without help like that, there is less motivation to create. There is also an advantage to being able to create content with worry that you are stepping on someone's copyright claims. If I wanted to publish a best of Slashdot quote series, it would be utterly impossible to do so short of stealing Slashdot's server. All of the posts are automatically copyrighted and there is absolutely no way to get in contact with the authors of most of the posts. You could NEVER EVER legally make such a book in our current fucked up and broken system because at any time someone could sue you into the ground for using their copyrighted material.
Under my proposed system, it would be a trivial matter run a search of a database to see if any of the posts I want to use were registered as copyrighted. If a post was registered and I still wanted to use it, the database would include contact information so that I could actually get in contact with the author, pay him, and use his material. Under our current fucked up and broken system, this is completely and utterly impossible. There is content not being created (legally at least) because under our current copyright system there is absolutely no way humanly possible to shield yourself from a potential lawsuit or find original content owners BEFORE they start trying to sue you into the ground.
So... what if I cut and paste what you just posted into the copyright site, pay $2, and register it as mine? Suddenly it doesn't seem so simple. You have to consider:
What happens when I sue you for posting my copyrighted material on slashdot? How do you prove that you originally wrote it in the first place, and that you didn't copy it from me? (I put it on my web site and modified the datestamps to make it look like it predated yours by a few days)
This alone would make a system where $2 is nowhere near enough to cover costs. And in fact if I didn't like something you'd said on slashdot, for $2 I could trivially register it as mine and issue slashdot with a cease-and-desist letter.
What happens? The exact same thing that happens now. Today, under the broken system, you could post my stuff on your website and sue me for using copyrighted material.
The key difference in my proposed system is that if I decided that my post was pure gold, I could register it as copyrighted before posting it publicly. At that point, you would not only know my post was copyrighted with a quick search, but you would also know how to contact and pay me for using my content. Under the current system, you can do neither. Under the current system, nothing short of getting a warrant to search the Slashdot servers and my ISPs servers is going to show who has made this post.
Further, in my proposed system, if you copyrighted my post, it would be a simple matter to show that the time/date stamp on my post is BEFORE your copyright registration. Just make it a simple rule that anything released to the public must be copyrighted before it is released. So, if I want to copyright my post, I need to cut and past it into a submission form before posting it publicly. Under the current system, both your server and Slashdot would need to be to offer up proof of when posted what and when.
If you decide you want to buy a piece of land, or think that a piece of land is public property and would like to perform some activity on it, what do you do? You got to the local town office and find out who owns the land, what restrictions there on that land, and who you must contact to ask permission to use or buy the land. This is a good system that has been in place in the US since its foundation.
The copyright system is like private property's evil twin. It is still a form of "property", but the "system" designed to deal with questions of use and ownership is utterly non-existent. For instance, this post I am writing is protected by copyright. True, there is no indication in this post that shows it is under copyright, and the fact that I have my e-mail address hidden means that you can't ask permission to use it. This post will NOT be recorded in any government database so you can never look up who owns it and what the rules of using it are. Our current copyright system is a default "everything is copyrighted" and there is absolutely NO record of who owns what. You can't even find out when a copyright expires because there is no record of when it was first created.
We desperately need a new copyright system.
The new system should REQUIRE the registration of copyrighted content. There MUST be a public record of who owns what and for how long they have had it under copyright. Further, there is not a damn reason in the world why we need copyrights that span centuries as the current system does. Anything that is not registered as copyrighted should be considered public domain. Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content, throw up an Internet site to register such copyrights, and we would have a workable system.
The current system as about as far away from good as you can possibly get. To answer the articles original question, there is absolutely nothing you can do. There are no records of what is under copyright and no way of finding out if that copyright changes. The current system sucks balls and no politician gives a shit because voters don't realize such issues exist, much less care about such issues.
Sucks to be someone who uses creative content. Sorry.
Russia doesn't own the worlds gas market. It certainly doesn't even come close to owning Britian's gas market. The worst Russia could do is cut off the pipe line that runs through the Ukraine and thereby cutting off not only the Ukraine, but ALL of Europe. If Russia is really stupid enough to cut off all of Europe to cause a slight blip in the price to a nation that doesn't get much gas from Russia, well we have more serious problems. Russia would have apparently not only managed to REALLY piss off Europe but also manage to single handedly throw its own government off the tracks by cutting off the only thing funding Russia at this point.
Russia doesn't have any leverage over Britain. The roles are very much reversed. Britain has leverage over the EU, and by extension the worlds seconds largest market. To top it off, they also happen to be best buddies with the worlds largest market (the US). The only 'weapon' they have is that they can commit financial suicide by embargoing themselves and cutting off there gas/oil supplies which is their only source of revenue at the moment.
Russia has absolutely no economic hold on the EU or the US. Fucking with either the EU or the US economically is a good way to get crushed. Either one alone could crush Russia. The two of them working together could make half of the worlds economy disappear over night.
For those keeping score on GDPs, it is 12,980,000,000,000 for the US, 12,820,000,000,000 for the EU, and a paltry 1,723,000,000,000 for Russia. Russia can do lots of things to be a pain in the ass but threatening any sort of economic pain is not one of them.
One word for you. Gas.
UK economy, very big. Russian leverage. Immense!!
That's the thing about leverage. You get to apply a disproportionate amount of force if you use it wisely.
That isn't even a little bit true. Unless Russia has found a magical way of keeping THEIR oil from mixing with the international markets oil, there is nothing they can possibly do to cut off Britain's oil supplies or even cause a rise in their prices short of a military blockade or denying their oil to everyone. The first option is clearly not viable, and the second option does a hell of a lot more harm to Russia's economy then it does to anyone else's.
That said, I doubt that Russia will hand over the fellow in question. It is against Russian law to extradite its citizens. Now, it isn't exactly like "Russia law" normally means anything, but in this case it is clear cover. At best, this guy is going to get a Russian trial. If he was working for the Kremlin, he will get a short and sweet Russian trial where he will get a couple of years of 'hard time' in a Russian resort and a pile of money. Russia can say they got "justice" for the Brits and their assassin spends a couple of years sleeping on satin and leaves the ordeal a richer fellow.
You can, but you would need to make 10,000 orders of it to get the amount that was used to kill this poor bastard. 10,000 orders to a private address is a tad suspicious.
That is why YOU DON'T QUIT YOUR JOB UNTIL YOU SIGN THE CONTRACT. For fucks sake people. Do not do stupid shit like quit your job until you have signed the contract. Once you have a signed contract and they refuse to do what the contract states you need to do two things.
1) Sue the piss out of them for breach of contract. Not only can you collect your couple extra thousand for relocation, but you should also get a merry amount of money for lost wages. Go have a vacation on them.
2) Quit. You are fucking stupid if you work for a corporation that burns orphanages, is fueled by baby flesh, and by some stroke of utter legal and managerial insanity breaks its own employment contracts. Seriously, if they flatly refuse to honor signed contracts, I can promise you have not found a fun place to work with high moral.
You left out "and a hire a good lawyer after getting sued for defamation".
Not in the US. If there is one thing that rocks about the US legal system, it is that defamation is almost completely impossible to prove. In Canada or Britain you might have to worry a little, but in the US the deck is so completely stacked against such claims that it won't even make it to court.
I am not sure what 3v1L corporations you are working for, but I have never ever had such an experience. In fact, all of the companies I have dealt with were more then happy to modify small points to suit me. If a company is not willing to make such changes, especially when you are taking about a relocation package worth a few thousand dollars, that should be a big old clue mallet whacking you across the head.
Tell them that you need the agreed upon relocation package in writing. If they tell you that they won't do it, then you need to decide for yourself if you are willing to make the move without the relocation package. If you are not willing to make the move without the relocation package, don't be a dumb ass and sign anyways. Tell them that you can't move without a guaranteed relocation package, and if they still will not offer it up, then they clearly had no intention to give you one in the first place in which case you should look for another job. It is idiocy beyond words to join a corporation that is malevolently trying to swindle their employees out of a few thousand dollars before even stepping into work while management sits in a dark room cackling with laughter as they feast on baby flesh. Personally, I don't buy that such silliness exists in the US, but if you happen to run across it, don't be a complete dumb ass and just find something else.
Just follow two simple rules of accepting a job and you won't get burned.
1) If it is not in writing, it doesn't exist. If they promise you something, GET IT IN WRITING. Do not budge from this position. If there is something missing from your contract, make them add it. It is a quick and painless process to add stuff. If they refuse to add something in writing, assume that you are not going to get it and become deeply suspicious. Don't be a dumbass and work on promises. Don't be a dumbass and cave into pressure. The fact that they are pressuring you should send off a dozen warning bells that you are stupid to ignore.
2) Never, never, never, never, NEVER, EVER quit your current job until you have signed your name on the dotted line. Don't tell anyone you got a job until you have a signed contract that says you do. This not only gives you the ability to back out without becoming homeless, but means that you will not be screwed if they back out - AND IT DOES HAPPEN.
It is a provocation in the same way any new weapon is a provocation, but the response won't be military or economic. The response will be that the US starts upgrading their own anti-satellite weapon if they have not already done so and building in more stealth features to their old satellites. This starts a potential arms race, but that is it. Even then, I doubt it is going to be much of a race. The US has had known anti-satellite weapons for decades. It probably has other still classified anti-satellite weapons waiting in the wings as well.
The real 'provocation' in this is what it means for Taiwan. The US has been quietly backing away from its promise to defend the democracy of Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion. Even now, the prospect of fighting over Taiwan makes the US uneasy. The US could certainly win today, but it would be far more bloody and dramatically more costly then Iraq. Such a war would have both nations getting itchy nuclear weapon trigger fingers. Now, to top it all off, China has the capacity to knock down US satellites making the military game much more dangerous while at the same time offering up a way to put a real hurt on American economic interests.
It is a good old fashion Mexican standoff. A war between the US and China is a war that both sides could lose (read that as going nuclear). Even if both sides agreed to take nuclear weapons off the table, the economic damage done to the US would only be matched by the massive economic destruction wrought on China. The whole issue is messy and ugly, and it is coming to a head. China WILL make a move again Taiwan in the next 10 years.
The problem with any sort of state run industry is that it tends to murder off private competition. State run monopolies always have two advantages over any private corporation. State run monopolies can easier push through legislation to make it harder to compete with them, and state run monopolies can always make up for inefficiency, poor planning, and higher operational costs with tax money.
Some times we accept this sort of inefficiency that state run industries bring for higher values. The cutting edge of technology really is not one of the places where we should accept such inefficiency. We need private corporations to literally murder each other to provide the best product and drive innovation forward. I am not against rules to help poke and prod competition forward, but setting up state run and tax subsidized networks is not the answer.
As "inintelligent" as you might find my opinion, I see you have not bothered to respond to any of my arguments. Show me some proof that "The World" knew that Iraq was going to explode in ethnic genocide. There were a lot of good arguments against the war before the war. Ethnic genocide was not one of them.
Seriously, go back and look at newspapers before the war. Not just American or British newspapers, but ANY newspaper. Find me politicians arguing that this was going to happen or a think tank with policy paper warning against ethnic genocide. It simply didn't happen. Only a small handful of voices spoke up this danger and they were dully ignored by everyone, "The World" included.
All arguments against the Iraq war rested on respecting nation sovereignty, international law, and humanitarian grounds. Fear the Iraq people turning in on themselves and killing each other was never used as an argument by the vast majority of people both in the US and Britain and "The World". Again, if you think I am full of shit and that my argument is "inintelligent", show my evidence to prove me wrong.
Various US militias that the US government occasionally whacks down could be called insurgents. A large criminal gang could even be called an insurgent group if it tried to take and hold a section of city and implement their own law. "Taking up arms against the government" implies more then just a shootout with police because they caught you breaking the law. The US does have insurgents, they are just generally short lived or ignored because they are not causing trouble.
That said, Iraq has lots of non-insurgent violence. Iraq is rife with criminal gangs that inflict violence upon the population and would not technically be considered 'insurgent' activity.
I can say with absolute certainty that if tomorrow the Shiites and the Sunnis stopped slaughtering each other, Bush and Blair wouldn't be able to get the troops out of Iraq fast enough and declare victory. No one wants foreign soldiers in Iraq, Bush, Blair, and the populations they represent are not exception. The problem is that Bush and Blair want a Rwanda genocide on their hands even less then they want to get the fuck out of Iraq.
If it is any indication of how ugly things could get, the Sunni political block changed their tune and have been asking/begging to KEEP the soldiers in Iraq. They are rightfully scared shit less about what is going to happen if the US goes Vietnam on them and leaves them to the Shiites.
That said, it is all about to become a moot point. Bush has the conviction / thick headedness to stay in Iraq regardless of how badly it pisses the electorate off. He is in the process of blowing his load the the troop 'surge'. The Iraq government, Shiites, Sunnis, and Bush have less then two years to get their shit together and figure out a way to not murder each other without US soldiers standing around with guns. There is not a slim chance in hell that the next president of the US is going to keep US troops in Iraq.
Judging by the way things are going, if I was a Sunni, I would be getting the fuck out now.