if you were so bright you might have realized that the President has the right to preemptive strike
Not under international law that the US has agreed to follow. According to your reasoning I can call Pearl Harbor a preemtive strike. Or 9/11 for that matter.
This causes the said sanctions, and future ones, to be worthless.
Hunderds of thousands of civilians starved and died due to lack of medicine due to sanctions. They were effective, but the regime was too brutal to care. You might say that this is reason enough to invade, but it wasn't. Rememeber, the UN did not OK an invasion of Iraq.
I can understand the temptation to use military force for good, but has, to my knowledge, not ever worked well. The American solution for Iraq was very simple: kill everybody that makes a stand, set up a puppet regime, train a new army, make same army fight the rebels, leave lot's of Marines to protect the oil. Doesn't sound very altruistic.
The biggest problem with the UN is the veto in the security council, which the US and Russia use all the time. There can, for example, never be sanctions against the US, since it has a permanent seat in the Security Council and can veto. It can't be thrown out of the Security Council unless it doesn't use it's veto against that, too, which it will.
many of the members of the army of Iraq didn't want to fight for Saddam and they quickly surrendered
I think it would be more accurate to say that they didn't want to be slaughtered by American gunships, which happened to a lot of them.
I think that creating a strong army should be our primary goal before leaving Iraq.
Iraq had a strong army before you invaded. Many of those soldiers are now dead or out of a job. It was only very recently that veterans were allowed to apply for new recruitment.
As for the personal attacks against me, I could say something back to you, but I am a better person than that.
but should at least respect the work they have done and that one more nation is free of an opressive dictator.
I don't ususally flame like this, but you are an idiot. How about if my country bombed approximately 100 000 American civilians to death and said we aren't even counting civilian casualties? Just because we decided that we didn't like your president?
There is NO excuse for the US invasion of Iraq, none. If the United States get's nuked, you goddamn deserve it. Why? You invaded a sovereign country without provocation under false pretenses. You are a warmongering country bordering on a autocratic empire.
You have the constitutional right to bear arms to protect yourself from or to overthrow your government, a government that is, at the moment, completely out of control. And not only do you do nothing, you re-elect them.
Sure Iraq is not a land of joy right now...but I believe we have given them the potential to be a safe, democratic nation once the insurgents are dealt with. The most important thing that we can do now is train the armies of Iraq to fend for themselves. So far I think Bush has done a good job with this.
You mean armies like the ones the US slaughtered about a year ago? Oh right, but they didn't have weapons sold by US companies, of course they had to be killed or disbanded. So what if the whole country is still in total anarchy due to that. You are so clueless, I just can't believe it.
I don't think America should ever let the opinions of outside nations affect our own morals and sense of what is "right" or "wrong".
Listen, wanker, there are papers signed by your country dictating exactly what is right and wrong concerning a whole lot, but you leadrship doesn't give a shit about that.
I bet you are the smartest at your workplace. Yes, I'll have fries with that.
That (Vietnam) war ended almost 30 years ago and Korea even earlier than that. They were fought against countries that had a lot more backing than North Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. Also, America suffered from incredible protest at home during Vietnam.
If you have any experience with modern weapons, you would know that war with the West is ultimately futile, unless you can create political division on the home front. Dumbfire projectile weapons just don't mean jack shit anymore.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction according to former exiles now running the country.
This is just FUD by South Korea against it's arch enemy, and even if it isn't, so what? How many crackers are employed by the CIA? The Mossad? MI5? Or even the RIAA & MPAA?
It amazes me that the general public of Western countries and their allies are so goddamn afraid that these absolutely piece of shit countries that can't even feed their own populace are any threat to anyone save mentioned populace.
ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea (though not with zero casualities). These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?
They are the human wool pulled over our eyes to keep us from looking at our own corrupted civilzation and political system.
So you mean e-bike riders are dead when they ride and thus need no energy?
Humans need lots of energy just to keep up life-preserving functionality like blood pressure, lung musculature and so forth.
So someone using an e-bike is not only converting a lot of calories to energy with his crappy digestive system, but he also is using the coal-to-electricity-to-bike-miles conversion.
Besides, what do you think the total energy cost of aquiring coal/oil/uranium(!) to turn into heat is? Maybe you think oil squirts right into the barrel? Uranium crawls out of mountains and climbs into reactors? Maybe coal mines dig themselves, too.
And I haven't even talked about environmental issues... you don't hear about environmental toll from people farting, taking a dump or exhaling carbon dioxide.
a) proving the statements you made b) explaining why you seem to equate left-wing and socialist with untrustworthy
The Guardian and the Internation Herald-Tribune are recognized newspapers. If I were to criticize the Fox News Network, would you feel that 'right-wing rag' would be adequate?
So Bush was at home not killing people because of a "call of duty". Bad bad bad.
Kerry was i Vietnam (which is still Vietnam, not North & South) killing people honorably (maybe). Good good good (maybe). For nothing.
Wow. Good issues.
For the record: on Foreign Policy issues, Kerry and Bush are irrelevant. The course of the US seems to be quite set: We the People (excluding everybody who is not eligible to vote, insert American Native Genocide slur here, insert slave trading slur here, insert putting-second-third-fourth-generation-American-Ja panses into concetration camps during WWII slur here) and nobody else.
For (some of) the non-US (God forbid we speak our mind) it doesn't matter who is President 2004 - 2008, but who is President 2008 - 2012... if that election is actually ever held.
US-residents can moderate all they want, it matters not. The US is one of the oldest (if not THE oldest) governments around. Very, very, very many governments that are no logner with us have fit that description.
Yet as an adult I feel i have the right to enter business relationships - there is nothign wrong with selling my email processing labor.
Yes, and people who want spam can ask for it, for those who say nothing, the law should say that you are not allowed to send them spam. The same could easily be applied to snail mail. The problem will be defining what "bad" bulk mail is. I would define it as anything that can be seen as an advertisement.
If someone hates spam so much, they can set their price at $100 per email.
Ridiculous. How can you expect to collect money from a party you have no business agreement with? To get your version to work you need lot's of regulation. You would have to rewrite laws about contracts and who knows what.
Why is opt-in so bad? I never said that people who want spam should be allowed to get it, all I'm saying is that you would have to get the recipients permission before sending, for example in the terms of service of your airline.
Are you serious? Id like to know just when the U.S. Constitution amended the constitution to make speech illegal.
I don't think I have the right to come into your house and speak my mind guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. This is about sending people stuff they didn't ask for because it's cheap for the sender, but (maybe) not for the receiver. If I was a billionare, maybe I would get kicks out of sending you 10 000 lbs of rocks and dumping them on your lawn, each day. Would you consider that freedom of expression?
I'd rather live with SPAM and bulk email than live with state-sponsored censorship.
I don't see how changing the default answer to the question of "do you want bulk mail" from "yes" to "no" for everybody infringes either freedom or security. I said "no bulk mail with out opt-in", not "you should never get bulk mail no matter what".
So what if it would weed out only non-serious marketers? You're implying there is 'legit' spam out there, that there actually should be a market for this shit.
People here should know that putting a pricetag on something doesn't make everything kosher.
Bulk mail without opt-in should be criminalized regardless if the envelope is paper, SMTP or whatever. Bulk mail is just another form of 'I have money, I can send propaganda to anybody, you cannot stop me, muahahaha!".
The problem with biometrics is that if someone compromises your "password" (never mind how), you cannot get a new one, unless you get new irises or thumbs implanted.
Passwords are used in part becuase of history, but mostly because they work and can be changed.
"Sir, your bio-passport is invalid due it being compromised. No, I'm sorry, sir, you cannot get a new one. No, not ever."
I don't care if this helps Kazaa in court, common sense should be enough.
Why would rising sales of obsolete technology and non-biodegradable plastic discs be good news for anyone?
In other news:
Bio-energy research increases fossil fuel consumption! Everybody wins!!
The sooner CD:s, DVD:s and all other tangible intangibles fall into the Eternal Pit Of Ridicule and Oblivion, the better.... or what are YOU planning to do with all those no-longer-so-high-tech VHS-cassettes? Floppy disks? Most are going to the landfill, probably, the same will happen with those $20 CDs and DVDs...
Well, with "the stuff" I meant something you could buy, not just the product, but the product at a price. I guess I could have made it a bit clearer.
Still, it's a big argument. If I make a copy, I did it with my time and with my resources. Should I really be forced to pay someone for that? Maybe, maybe not. Should society as a whole be forced to change so that payment could be guaranteed? Not in my opinion.
PS: I happen to live in a country where you don't pay for education, so I guess no refunds for me.
The real question is, can you get people to pay any amount at all for it, when there's a "free" option on the Internet?
No, that is not the question. The question is, can you make enough money to save the CURRENT publishers from bankrupcy. Heard of iTunes? Hello?
You mean, your freedom to use their copyrighted material without compensating them?
No, my personal freedom to own a P2P-application. Or to read newsgroups. Or to chat on IRC. I'm not expecting a free lunch at all. What I AM demanding is that the people that cannot continue to make money due to a broadband connection in every home to get another job and start doing something useful instead griping about how unfair all this new tech is.
Why should this one facet of human life and industry be the single one ever to be saved by laws that will as a byproduct destroy some of the very pillars on which our civilization stands (freedom of expression and freedom of choice)?
The trick in the next century will be to provide people with a way to pay what they think is fair for artistic creations.
WHAT?? Most artist get jack shit for what they do, they have daytime jobs that barely pay for material, instruments, whatever.
yet you don't seem to realize that if you have a method whereby you can always acquire a product for free, you completely undermine the basis for the system
This is not an issue concering theft or greed in the general public, but about if we are to allow copyright laws to be used as a weapon against ordinary people and their civil rights.
If you think it's a good idea to transport and distribute plastic discs all over the planet instead of using wires that are already there to transmit it digitally, you are completely mad. Do you have any idea of the ecological consequences of the current distribution methods? To outlaw or hobble digital distribution methods to save the current players in the music and movie industry is like outlawing email so that UPS never has to rethink it's business model.
The system will not break if platic discs stop moving around the world, there will just be less platic discs (oh no!).
Someone's current chosen profession and it's ability to feed them or their family should not dictate my personal freedoms.
So what if artists don't get paid? Who the hell promised that they WOULD get paid forever? Will people will stop making music just because they can't sell 10 million CD:s? No. Can I get a job as a professional scribe, doing nothing but copying bibles by hand? No. Can I make a living building sextants? No.
Nobody gives a rat's ass about the people that got laid of in the automotive industry because of robotics. Just think of all the lumbermen we could employ if we outlawed concrete! And tractors, what evil! There used to be millions of hard working people just barely making a living planting crops! Oh, the good old days of Old Industry before all of these horrbile, apocalyptical, communist inventions ruined our society and took away the ability to make a living!
If new thechnology will kill the music INDUSTRY, then let it die, since it is obviously flawed. It's called a market economy, if nobody wants your stuff, your fucked. Laws are not going help.
Most European countries have a constitution that cannot allow this law to come into effect. It will , I'm sure, be an interresting debate (if there is one...).
This is really a desperate attempt, and I have a hard time believing this law will ever fly. There is no turning back the clock and these kind of asenine attempts will only estrange the general public even more from the current law. Fascism and free markets don't mix very well, since people tend to want to decide things for themselves and like to think that they have a right to freedom and prosperity. Take that away and the system breaks down.
I find the frightening part to be that a lot of lawmakers seem to be oblivous of the gravity of going against what people perceive to be "their rights". If just 5% of the public in Europe were to walk out of their place of work or even steal a candy bar, there would be horrible aftermath. This kind of legislation only provoces more civil disobedience (or something worse).
That would have to be quite a powerful missile to turn that rock into gas before it hits the surface.
If the object is travelling at 10km/s (which is first gear for interstellar speed), then the missile would have to be able detonate with somewhere around 3/1000th of a seconds accuracy for the blast to hit. Not to mention it would have to position itself in the exactly right spot.
You also have to consider that anything we can put up there is nothing compared to the blast that the object goes through by simply coming into the atmosphere.
Well, yes, I guess you will die blissfully if you happen to be very near impact. Otherwise you can look forward to drowning in a tsunami, starving in the coming 5-year winter or just die at the looting of the local convenience store once the news breaks (duh, saltwater rain, 4 weeks of darkness, complete failure of all infrastructure, etc.).
It is a totally futile to even discuss what should be done if we are going to get hit, since there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. If the death of 80% of the worlds population and the fall of all governments is nigh, it hardly matters how people die or how the governmenst fall. It only confuses the real issue: how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet.
Is it really illegal to download it? Since when is it illegal to read stuff you find floating around, as long at is isn't classified by the government?
It's not as if you're stealing it when you read it, the people that leaked it are to blame.
Slashdot Mirror
if you were so bright you might have realized that the President has the right to preemptive strike
Not under international law that the US has agreed to follow. According to your reasoning I can call Pearl Harbor a preemtive strike. Or 9/11 for that matter.
This causes the said sanctions, and future ones, to be worthless.
Hunderds of thousands of civilians starved and died due to lack of medicine due to sanctions. They were effective, but the regime was too brutal to care. You might say that this is reason enough to invade, but it wasn't. Rememeber, the UN did not OK an invasion of Iraq.
I can understand the temptation to use military force for good, but has, to my knowledge, not ever worked well. The American solution for Iraq was very simple: kill everybody that makes a stand, set up a puppet regime, train a new army, make same army fight the rebels, leave lot's of Marines to protect the oil. Doesn't sound very altruistic.
The biggest problem with the UN is the veto in the security council, which the US and Russia use all the time. There can, for example, never be sanctions against the US, since it has a permanent seat in the Security Council and can veto. It can't be thrown out of the Security Council unless it doesn't use it's veto against that, too, which it will.
many of the members of the army of Iraq didn't want to fight for Saddam and they quickly surrendered
I think it would be more accurate to say that they didn't want to be slaughtered by American gunships, which happened to a lot of them.
I think that creating a strong army should be our primary goal before leaving Iraq.
Iraq had a strong army before you invaded. Many of those soldiers are now dead or out of a job. It was only very recently that veterans were allowed to apply for new recruitment.
As for the personal attacks against me, I could say something back to you, but I am a better person than that.
That is no excuse for being ignorant.
but should at least respect the work they have done and that one more nation is free of an opressive dictator.
I don't ususally flame like this, but you are an idiot. How about if my country bombed approximately 100 000 American civilians to death and said we aren't even counting civilian casualties? Just because we decided that we didn't like your president?
There is NO excuse for the US invasion of Iraq, none. If the United States get's nuked, you goddamn deserve it. Why? You invaded a sovereign country without provocation under false pretenses. You are a warmongering country bordering on a autocratic empire.
You have the constitutional right to bear arms to protect yourself from or to overthrow your government, a government that is, at the moment, completely out of control. And not only do you do nothing, you re-elect them.
Sure Iraq is not a land of joy right now...but I believe we have given them the potential to be a safe, democratic nation once the insurgents are dealt with. The most important thing that we can do now is train the armies of Iraq to fend for themselves. So far I think Bush has done a good job with this.
You mean armies like the ones the US slaughtered about a year ago? Oh right, but they didn't have weapons sold by US companies, of course they had to be killed or disbanded. So what if the whole country is still in total anarchy due to that. You are so clueless, I just can't believe it.
I don't think America should ever let the opinions of outside nations affect our own morals and sense of what is "right" or "wrong".
Listen, wanker, there are papers signed by your country dictating exactly what is right and wrong concerning a whole lot, but you leadrship doesn't give a shit about that.
I bet you are the smartest at your workplace. Yes, I'll have fries with that.
mixed with lies from the arabs
You mean 'the arabs' like 'the jews' or 'the asians' or 'white people'?
Arabs live all over the place and not all of them are muslims.
Also, the US military has said on record that it doesn't keep count of civilian casualities, so guesswork is all we have.
Roads are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, at least in large and sparsely populated countries.
Flying 'cars' would make multi-laned highways obsolete (in the long run).
That (Vietnam) war ended almost 30 years ago and Korea even earlier than that. They were fought against countries that had a lot more backing than North Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. Also, America suffered from incredible protest at home during Vietnam.
If you have any experience with modern weapons, you would know that war with the West is ultimately futile, unless you can create political division on the home front. Dumbfire projectile weapons just don't mean jack shit anymore.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction according to former exiles now running the country.
This is just FUD by South Korea against it's arch enemy, and even if it isn't, so what? How many crackers are employed by the CIA? The Mossad? MI5? Or even the RIAA & MPAA?
It amazes me that the general public of Western countries and their allies are so goddamn afraid that these absolutely piece of shit countries that can't even feed their own populace are any threat to anyone save mentioned populace.
ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea (though not with zero casualities). These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?
They are the human wool pulled over our eyes to keep us from looking at our own corrupted civilzation and political system.
Rant over.
So you mean e-bike riders are dead when they ride and thus need no energy?
Humans need lots of energy just to keep up life-preserving functionality like blood pressure, lung musculature and so forth.
So someone using an e-bike is not only converting a lot of calories to energy with his crappy digestive system, but he also is using the coal-to-electricity-to-bike-miles conversion.
Besides, what do you think the total energy cost of aquiring coal/oil/uranium(!) to turn into heat is? Maybe you think oil squirts right into the barrel? Uranium crawls out of mountains and climbs into reactors? Maybe coal mines dig themselves, too.
And I haven't even talked about environmental issues... you don't hear about environmental toll from people farting, taking a dump or exhaling carbon dioxide.
Need I say any more?
How about:
a) proving the statements you made
b) explaining why you seem to equate left-wing and socialist with untrustworthy
The Guardian and the Internation Herald-Tribune are recognized newspapers. If I were to criticize the Fox News Network, would you feel that 'right-wing rag' would be adequate?
As a non-American:
a panses into concetration camps during WWII slur here) and nobody else.
So Bush was at home not killing people because of a "call of duty". Bad bad bad.
Kerry was i Vietnam (which is still Vietnam, not North & South) killing people honorably (maybe). Good good good (maybe). For nothing.
Wow. Good issues.
For the record: on Foreign Policy issues, Kerry and Bush are irrelevant. The course of the US seems to be quite set: We the People (excluding everybody who is not eligible to vote, insert American Native Genocide slur here, insert slave trading slur here, insert putting-second-third-fourth-generation-American-J
For (some of) the non-US (God forbid we speak our mind) it doesn't matter who is President 2004 - 2008, but who is President 2008 - 2012... if that election is actually ever held.
US-residents can moderate all they want, it matters not. The US is one of the oldest (if not THE oldest) governments around. Very, very, very many governments that are no logner with us have fit that description.
Burn, karma, burn.
Yet as an adult I feel i have the right to enter business relationships - there is nothign wrong with selling my email processing labor.
Yes, and people who want spam can ask for it, for those who say nothing, the law should say that you are not allowed to send them spam. The same could easily be applied to snail mail. The problem will be defining what "bad" bulk mail is. I would define it as anything that can be seen as an advertisement.
If someone hates spam so much, they can set their price at $100 per email.
Ridiculous. How can you expect to collect money from a party you have no business agreement with? To get your version to work you need lot's of regulation. You would have to rewrite laws about contracts and who knows what.
Why is opt-in so bad? I never said that people who want spam should be allowed to get it, all I'm saying is that you would have to get the recipients permission before sending, for example in the terms of service of your airline.
Are you serious? Id like to know just when the U.S. Constitution amended the constitution to make speech illegal.
I don't think I have the right to come into your house and speak my mind guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. This is about sending people stuff they didn't ask for because it's cheap for the sender, but (maybe) not for the receiver. If I was a billionare, maybe I would get kicks out of sending you 10 000 lbs of rocks and dumping them on your lawn, each day. Would you consider that freedom of expression?
I'd rather live with SPAM and bulk email than live with state-sponsored censorship.
I don't see how changing the default answer to the question of "do you want bulk mail" from "yes" to "no" for everybody infringes either freedom or security. I said "no bulk mail with out opt-in", not "you should never get bulk mail no matter what".
So what if it would weed out only non-serious marketers? You're implying there is 'legit' spam out there, that there actually should be a market for this shit.
People here should know that putting a pricetag on something doesn't make everything kosher.
Bulk mail without opt-in should be criminalized regardless if the envelope is paper, SMTP or whatever. Bulk mail is just another form of 'I have money, I can send propaganda to anybody, you cannot stop me, muahahaha!".
Rant over.
The problem with biometrics is that if someone compromises your "password" (never mind how), you cannot get a new one, unless you get new irises or thumbs implanted.
Passwords are used in part becuase of history, but mostly because they work and can be changed.
"Sir, your bio-passport is invalid due it being compromised. No, I'm sorry, sir, you cannot get a new one. No, not ever."
I don't care if this helps Kazaa in court, common sense should be enough.
... or what are YOU planning to do with all those no-longer-so-high-tech VHS-cassettes? Floppy disks? Most are going to the landfill, probably, the same will happen with those $20 CDs and DVDs...
Why would rising sales of obsolete technology and non-biodegradable plastic discs be good news for anyone?
In other news:
Bio-energy research increases fossil fuel consumption! Everybody wins!!
The sooner CD:s, DVD:s and all other tangible intangibles fall into the Eternal Pit Of Ridicule and Oblivion, the better.
Oops, I missed the last line in your comment, thought it was a sig... you're right, you said it. I guess I'm preachin' to the choir here. :)
Gentoo is hardly a very easy distro. Also, it's not having a gaming kernel that's important, but having the actual games.
I never boot to Windows unless I want to do some gaming.
Well, with "the stuff" I meant something you could buy, not just the product, but the product at a price. I guess I could have made it a bit clearer.
Still, it's a big argument. If I make a copy, I did it with my time and with my resources. Should I really be forced to pay someone for that? Maybe, maybe not. Should society as a whole be forced to change so that payment could be guaranteed? Not in my opinion.
PS: I happen to live in a country where you don't pay for education, so I guess no refunds for me.
The real question is, can you get people to pay any amount at all for it, when there's a "free" option on the Internet?
No, that is not the question. The question is, can you make enough money to save the CURRENT publishers from bankrupcy. Heard of iTunes? Hello?
You mean, your freedom to use their copyrighted material without compensating them?
No, my personal freedom to own a P2P-application. Or to read newsgroups. Or to chat on IRC. I'm not expecting a free lunch at all. What I AM demanding is that the people that cannot continue to make money due to a broadband connection in every home to get another job and start doing something useful instead griping about how unfair all this new tech is.
Why should this one facet of human life and industry be the single one ever to be saved by laws that will as a byproduct destroy some of the very pillars on which our civilization stands (freedom of expression and freedom of choice)?
The trick in the next century will be to provide people with a way to pay what they think is fair for artistic creations.
WHAT?? Most artist get jack shit for what they do, they have daytime jobs that barely pay for material, instruments, whatever.
yet you don't seem to realize that if you have a method whereby you can always acquire a product for free, you completely undermine the basis for the system
This is not an issue concering theft or greed in the general public, but about if we are to allow copyright laws to be used as a weapon against ordinary people and their civil rights.
If you think it's a good idea to transport and distribute plastic discs all over the planet instead of using wires that are already there to transmit it digitally, you are completely mad. Do you have any idea of the ecological consequences of the current distribution methods? To outlaw or hobble digital distribution methods to save the current players in the music and movie industry is like outlawing email so that UPS never has to rethink it's business model.
The system will not break if platic discs stop moving around the world, there will just be less platic discs (oh no!).
Listen, this is the REAL issue:
Someone's current chosen profession and it's ability to feed them or their family should not dictate my personal freedoms.
So what if artists don't get paid? Who the hell promised that they WOULD get paid forever? Will people will stop making music just because they can't sell 10 million CD:s? No. Can I get a job as a professional scribe, doing nothing but copying bibles by hand? No. Can I make a living building sextants? No.
Nobody gives a rat's ass about the people that got laid of in the automotive industry because of robotics. Just think of all the lumbermen we could employ if we outlawed concrete! And tractors, what evil! There used to be millions of hard working people just barely making a living planting crops! Oh, the good old days of Old Industry before all of these horrbile, apocalyptical, communist inventions ruined our society and took away the ability to make a living!
If new thechnology will kill the music INDUSTRY, then let it die, since it is obviously flawed. It's called a market economy, if nobody wants your stuff, your fucked. Laws are not going help.
Yeah, the US has this long history of practicing global equality.
I bet if only governments asked for their nationals detained at Camp X-Ray to be returned, the US would put them on the next plane!
Joe Webmaster, or any other American citizen, will never, ever, not in a million years be extradited anywhere, no matter what they did.
Most European countries have a constitution that cannot allow this law to come into effect. It will , I'm sure, be an interresting debate (if there is one...).
This is really a desperate attempt, and I have a hard time believing this law will ever fly. There is no turning back the clock and these kind of asenine attempts will only estrange the general public even more from the current law. Fascism and free markets don't mix very well, since people tend to want to decide things for themselves and like to think that they have a right to freedom and prosperity. Take that away and the system breaks down.
I find the frightening part to be that a lot of lawmakers seem to be oblivous of the gravity of going against what people perceive to be "their rights". If just 5% of the public in Europe were to walk out of their place of work or even steal a candy bar, there would be horrible aftermath. This kind of legislation only provoces more civil disobedience (or something worse).
That would have to be quite a powerful missile to turn that rock into gas before it hits the surface.
If the object is travelling at 10km/s (which is first gear for interstellar speed), then the missile would have to be able detonate with somewhere around 3/1000th of a seconds accuracy for the blast to hit. Not to mention it would have to position itself in the exactly right spot.
You also have to consider that anything we can put up there is nothing compared to the blast that the object goes through by simply coming into the atmosphere.
LOL, actually I have recently been playing a lot of civ... apparently it's affecting my wording.
Mod me up or face the consequences!
Well, yes, I guess you will die blissfully if you happen to be very near impact. Otherwise you can look forward to drowning in a tsunami, starving in the coming 5-year winter or just die at the looting of the local convenience store once the news breaks (duh, saltwater rain, 4 weeks of darkness, complete failure of all infrastructure, etc.).
It is a totally futile to even discuss what should be done if we are going to get hit, since there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. If the death of 80% of the worlds population and the fall of all governments is nigh, it hardly matters how people die or how the governmenst fall. It only confuses the real issue: how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet.
Is it really illegal to download it? Since when is it illegal to read stuff you find floating around, as long at is isn't classified by the government?
It's not as if you're stealing it when you read it, the people that leaked it are to blame.