Or how "Old" Europe (which is what you call Germany, for some reason) was battled against by Britain and the French Underground (along with countless other allies, such as CANADA) for 2 full years before the Americans graced us with their own contribution. Just because France fell under the might of the German army quickly doesn't mean the French citizens fell with them. Without the French Underground, the war effort would have never advanced as quickly as it did.
No doubt the Germans considered these French fighters "terrorists" (any who were caught were dealt with brutally, no doubt with little German concern for "collateral damage") and the likes of SOE "terror support agencies".
If we do what we've said we plan to do, and allow the Iraqi people to choose their own government, then Iraq will become an Iran-style theocracy; watch for the American controllers to influence the process to make sure that doesn't happen. The last time the West played the regime change game in Iraq, we got the Ba'ath party.
The situation in Iran is also the result of "the West" specifically the US and Britain playing "regime change". When are these people going to learn that this just dosn't work?
What you don't seem to get is that the affairs of other countries aren't our fucking business. The U.S. has no right to enforce democracy at the point of a gun on other nations, nor to spread 'liberty' across the planet like some goddamn venereal disease.
Anyway whatever you might get from that enforcement certainly won't be democratic. Might be "US friendly", at least short term.
You talk as if we have some sort of religious calling to enforce our way of life and government on others. As an American I say "bullshit". I don't want an empire,
Not that most people in an American Empire would have the way of life or rights of US Citizens. Given the what's happened in just about every empire in recorded history.
and I don't want my taxes being used for this purpose.
The alternative would be that either they be spent within the USA or even lower taxation. Proping up questionable governments and sending armies half way around the world can't come cheap.
In fact, I pretty much want a 'live and let live' sort of government
IIRC that is not dissimilar from the position of many of the "Founding Fathers".
There is nothing at all naive about this desire. I don't swallow the Bush propaganda about pre-emptive strikes, nor do I think we're in Iraq for anything but the oil (and perhaps the ability to tell Israel to go fuck itself).
Unlikely to be the latter, considering Israel was all for Iraq being invaded. Especially if it leads to the reactivation of the oil pipeline to Haifa. It would be a very brave US leader to tell Israel they were on their own.
You can spout the party line all you like, but in the end it's just another word for 'imperialism'.
Do Democrats and Republicans differ that much here?
The problem is that most Americans assume that since America is such a great place to live, our foreign policy must also be great, bighearted, generous, unselfish, etc.
You probably can't even say that about US domestic policy. Especially with some of the repressive legislation the US Congress has been pushing out recently.
I genuinely believe that if Americans could have the magical ability to suddenly see American foreign policy from the perspective of non-U.S. citizens, most of them would be horrified and embarrassed about many things.
The last time anything like this happened would be with the Vietnam war...
But if anybody, including Americans like myself, try to point out the excesses of U.S. behavior in the world - in the interests of improving the country we love so much - our patriotism is called into question and we're immediately discredited.
An intersting deefinition of patriot is "someone who supports their country always and their government when it deserves it." Somewhere along the a definition more along the lines of "My government, right or wrong" appears to have become more common in the US.
Would the nuking of say, Washington DC, be such a bad thing?
Yes since it would kill a lot of innocent people and probably not kill that many of the US government. Those of the US government left, especially the current bunch, might well start tossing nukes at any country they didn't happen to like at the time.
If you ask around (I mean OUTSIDE the USA), you'll probably find a majority of people thinking it would, actually, be a positive thing.
Many of those who dislike the US government and it's policies, including Arabs, don't have much malice towards the US people...
Ever since Israel was created, large parts of the Arab world have wanted to destroy it. They just don't like the concept of a Jewish state on their land, no matter what it's doing.
How many people do you think would want an aggressive, expansionist state, made up of people who a different part of the world, imposed on them by colonial powers? How do you think the average American would react if the UN declared that half of Florida was a Tibetan state? As for the Jewish issue there have been Jews in Arab populations since before these people called themselves "Arabs" on the whole far better treated and integrated than in many parts of Christian Europe. Most notably Spain...
Thats because (Surprise!) thats not the real reason the terrorists hate us. They hate us frot he same reason the canadian wrote this article. Because we try to interfere in other countries buisness very aggressively.
This isn't just something the US has done in the past, it's been a continuing part of US foreign policy for a long time, with Iraq just the latest episode.
Second reason is that we support israel, which is anathema in the arab world.
But probably not for the popularly believed religious reasons. More that the Israelis are mostly European and that many of them are aggressive.
The israeli army uses US abrams tanks, US apache helicopters, and US f-15 fighters. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Israel uses them to kill palestinians (justified or not).
Also Israel frequently flys warplanes over Lebanon and continues to occupy parts of Syria and Lebanon. Thus that's two more groups of Arabs who have every reason not to like Israel.
Canada may support israel, but its not a canadian tank that palestinians see rolling down the street
Nor does Canada give vast amounts of money to Israel, effectivly bailing out the Israeli economy.
and its not a canadian army invading iraq.
Most likely after Afghanistan Canadians didn't want to get shot at by Americans again.
War hasn't actually seen American shores since bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and even then, how can we compare an attack on a navel base thousands of miles away to the bombing of London?
Calling Pearl Harbor in 1941 "American shores" is stretching the definition considerably in the first place. The British equivalent would be some Royal Naval installation in some remote part of the British empire.
The Russians turned Hitler back in Stalingrad all by himself, and the British managed to prevent being overrun by Hitler's forces and keep a bridge to the mainland intact. The fact that US was able to come in and make the final push to topple Germany is a great credit, but saying stuff like "we saved Europe from Germany" (which I've heard far too often of late) minimizes the contribution of the European resistance
Remember also that Canada was involved in the war long before the US and Canadian soldiers took part in Operation Overlord.
When rich American businesses go into a country to compete with fledling local businesses, is there really a fair competition at play? People have to choose between supporting an immature native industry or choosing a mature foreign industry. By the time the native industry could have built up, it has already been marginalized by the foreign industry.
Consider that if the local industry can compete or the government attempts to pass legislation to protect their local industry then the US is quite likely to impose some sort of tarrifs or trade sanctions. In the worst case senario a CIA backed "popular uprising".
We have tried to impose American styles of government on countries for decades.
Actually it's more "American friendly" than "American style. e.g. the Hawaiian Kingdom Constitution is very similar to the US Constitution. Many of the differences being relevent to the difference between a consitutional monarchy and a federal republic.
Every other time (ahem, Vietnam...) it has failed miserably.
IIRC Ho Chi Minh drafted a declaration of independence and constitution modeled on those of the US.
We supported the Shah in Iran, we gave weapons to the Muhajideen in Afghanistan, we gave weapons to Saddam against Iran, the list just goes on. The funny thing is that all of these intrusions have come back to bite us in the ass, and we still haven't learnt a lesson. The Shah in Iran fell, and now the conservative theocracy in the country hates the US. The Muhajideen in Afghanistan became the Taliban, and used our weapons to take over the country.
Others of them became Al Quada, making use of the terrorism techniques taught by the CIA.
And we know how the Saddam thing went.
There's actually a specific term to describe this "blowback" The other way in which the US interferes in the region is unconditional military and financial support of Israel, even at a time when the money could probably be better spent in the US itself. Were Israel to lose its powerful patron and have to negotiate with the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians the result might well be less dead people in that part of the world. Even the ability to make money from all the potential religious tourists who stay away now because they don't want to get shot at or blown up.
The thing is, that all of this would go away relatively quickly after we stopped interfering. The people in the Middle East and in other places are really too busy with their own problems to keep rallying against a non-active issue.
They might have fewer problems or more easily sortable problems. Depending which problems are directly or indirectly the results of foreign interfering.
Oddly enough, you know, the people who're presently bitterly resenting our foreign policy are decrying exactly such a culture. And I'm not just talking about in Iraq, or Syria, or Egypt -- I'm talking about in France and in our closest ally, the UK, too.
The response to the French not doing exactly what the US wanted was all sorts of infantile French bashing. Anyway Canada is also usually considered to be a strong ally of the US.
Gee, how do you explain the Shias in Iraq right now? They were cheering when the tanks went into Baghdad; why are they now telling us to go home, if they're gravitating toward more satisfaction as you say?
It really is very simple, just because they didn't like Saddam Hussein does not mean they want a foreign army in their country.
Why is the Shiite reaction so similar to their reaction to the British in 1919?
Lebanese Shiites cheered when Israel invaded Lebanon. Then when these soldiers overstayed their welcome they formed themselves into "The Party of God" to get rid of them.
More to the point: supply us with one clear case in which this has motivated a specific terrorist act. We know a fair amount about the 9/11 hijackers.
But also plenty we don't know about these people. Especially given that at least a third of them were using identities stolen from innocent Arabs.
Please, please, look into how the educated Arab world feels about US foreign policy. There are many, many people out there whose desperate desire is to bring secular, democratized states to the Arab world,
In order to have a stable democratic state any such government, its structure, powers and constitution must be decided by people who live there. It simply cannot be done by foreigners or ex-pats who havn't set foot in the country for decades. The best outsiders can do is advise, but this is a job for political historians rather than soldiers.
They do understand the despotic regimes out there -- they seem particularly aware of ones like Egypt, and of the Shah in Iran.
The Shah being especially relevent as a tyrant installed by the US and Britain at the request of the oil industry. Which didn't like the idea of a democratic Iranian government acting in the interests of the Iranian people. The only people in Iran capable of opposing the Shah were the Shiite clerics (Iran having been the home of Shia Islam for several hundred years.)
They're saying things about how US foreign policy is counterproductive.
It rarely appears to be counterproductive towards the corporate lobby who appear to be in the driving seat. Also when it is counterproductive this tends to be long term, long enough that the current US executive can say "we didn't do it".
It is not the US standard of living alone which attracts terrorism,
If it were this simple then there would be a lot more places being subject to terrorism.
it is what it does to sustain that quality of life.
Quite likely more the quality of life of US based corporate interests, rather than the average US citizen.
The US cares about civil liberties (at least nominally) within its own shores, but those from other countries are not afforded the same rights (wasn't someone shipped to an american court rather than camp X-Ray due to their being a US citizen, the non americans were illegally imprisoned with the rest of them)
US authorities have arrested US citizens and tossed them in jail without any sign of a trial. e.g. the Intel employee who is supposedly a witness to something or other. The sequel to "US PATRIOT" allows arbitary stripping of US citizens of their citizenship. Which would put them in an even worst situation than the people kidnapped and taken to Cuba.
Americans with an interest in the civil liberties of all people, not just those americans with the power and money to defend their own (and to take those of others), many of whom I'm sure read slashdot should fight terrorism in their own way.
Hopefully some of them might survive to see things through.
By making America the state it was founded to be, by scrutinising businessmen, politicians (and anyone else in a position of power and influence)
There is a disinction between a politican being a "leader" (somehow above the populace) and being a "public servant"
by using the power of their wallet, their vote and whatever else it takes to make america a state and a symbol that is not viewed by the rest of the world with contempt.
What people around the world especially don't like is hypocracy. The principles on which the US was founded and the US constitution are a matter of public record. Yet people around the world see the US government behaving (sometimes even towards its own citizens) in ways totally against these principles.
A perception of america as a greedy, self interested, intefering, imperialist power is what attracts terrorism.
Consider the situation in Iraq. The US hand picking which Iraqis will be in any new Iraqi government. This is the way imperial powers have operated for thousands of years.
Not yet, anyway. But just wait until we finish off Syria and North Korea and a few other small countries. After all, if Iraq looked easy, imagine how trivial invading across an undefended border would be....What makes you think that the US-Canadian border won't be defended by that time. Assuming the US hasn't exhausted it's military might by fighting wars all over the planet and hasn't made the mistake of attacking some "small country" capable of either defending itself or launching a counter attack.
Secondly, cyber-terrorism is a crime far more serious than copyright infringement. A man guilty of the former can get life imprisonment. A man guilty of the latter can get some hefty fines and up to 5 years in prison(IIRC). For an organization this big to be willfully taking part in such a crime, especially on the massive scale they seem to indicate, is a major breach, and in my eyes, cause enough to have such a criminal organization, no matter how big, shut down.
The issue is if courts will actually apply these laws against the likes of the RIAA or their member corporations? Especially as we see selective enforcement right now even against individuals.
When will naive conservatives learn a bit about the history of the CIA and it's recurring tendancy to support brutal dictators, guerillas and terrorists.
They even coined the term "blowback" for when something turns around and bites them (or more likely the nearest American target).
No, history has proven that outside the domain of your insular totalitarian society it's impossible to reign in that kind of control.
you knock down one foriegn terrorist, you piss off all his friends and people.
If you do have that kind of society it is also quite good at generating home grown "terrorists" anyway.
I'm just waiting for the first 'strategic' nukes (the briefcase 1 killoton bomb etc) to end up in terrorist hands,
Someone trying to lug a very heavy suitcase around will attract attention. Any terrorist with 2 brain cells to rub together will use a truck.
the briefcase bomb isn't a city destroyer btw -- but the pentagon or cheyane mountain could easilly be wiped out with them.
A small nuke isn't much use against a hardened and well defended structure. Whilst setting one off in a city would not destroy everything it would still kill and seriously injure many people straight away, produce lots of fallout and create widespread panic.
The GPL does not prohibet selling code, just modifing it and not releasing it.
The GPL allows you to modify code and not release it. The GPL takes effect when you distribute code, selling is a type of distribution. What it prevents you from doing is distributing binaries without the source being available, to whoever you distribute the binaries to, or attempting to place restrictions not in the GPL to anyone you supply the software to.
I completely agree but it's strange how the desktop projects themselves seem to dislike this. Look at all the complaining about how Red Hat had 'broken' KDE in the 8.0 release by theming it and changing the default browser to Mozilla. Some of the KDE developers seem to think that _they_ should decide the user interface experience, and that a common look and feel between KDE on different platforms (Linux, BSD, Solaris etc) is more important than a common look and feel within a distribution.
Best summed up as "what makes a good desktop appears to be quite subjective"...
Perhaps that should be "LibraNet will be nothing special, after Debian gets their new installer working".
To use the overworked car analogy "Should a driver be concerned the tools their mechanic has or even the tools used on the production line where the car was made?"
And some of my systems don't have *ANY* internet connection, much less a high speed one, so this is important to me. More and more of the distributions seem to assume that you will have a high speed internet connection, but this is only occasionally true.
You also get distributions which assume that you always need ppp related tools if you have a network connection. It's all down to the assumptions the people putting it together make.
In my opinion, usability also is a measure of how hard it is to install a package, recompile a kernel, etc.
Only where you have a situation where a machine is used and administered by the same person. This list (including installing the system in the first place) just isn't relevent where there is a user (or users) who simply use the machine.
Not just the menus. Libranet's Adminmenu tool allows any newbie to setup a personal firewall, install packages, recompile a kernel, install Flash, install Microsoft Truetype Fonts, or even RealPlayer.
Good if you are trying to emulate Windows 9x/XP home for someone who actually needs to be able to mess around. In reality there are quite a number of home users who 's ideal machine would be one which can be set up by an expert and they couldn't acidentally break anything. Because if they do they don't have the first clue about how to fix it. Of course for corporate networks separation between user and sysadmin is the norm.
But, when scale is considered, the protections afforded O'Reilly by the 1790 length of time is probably longer than those provided to Disney under current copyright protections. Assuming the real entertainment value of a movie is over in... say 50 years (personally, I enjoy movies some Disney flics from the 50s... it's probably longer), then the equivalent protection for Disney media should be 250 years.
Is every Disney movie still profitable after 50 years. (Even if it it still entertaining). Maybe some multiple of the mode, median or mean of the time movies make a profit would make more sense. (If a lot of movies don't make any profit then the longest of these is likely to be the median.)
You are making a very common mistake in assuming that because there is no economic incentive to print a work, that there is no economic incentive to prevent others from doing so. If all of the novels currently mothballed and unavailable to the public were freely available, publishers would have to compete with all of them,
If there is money to be made printing these works why are they "out of print"? Anyway works being in an out of print limbo is exactly the sort of thing the US Constitution is there to prevent.
I don't think the authors of those two books are making much money from those great books, on account of them being dead.
If an author becomes popular/well know he or she can probably easily sell any new work (so long as it's not awful) since they have a "fanbase". Even if their older works are in the public domain publishers are still likely to want their latest books because they are likely to sell.
The vast majority of publications have always had a short (or even non-existant) profitable life-span. Most either turn a profit in the first year, or never.
In plenty of cases the timespan for a publisher considering something a "hit" or "miss" even the total amount of time in which something can be expected to be profitable is even less. Very often if something dosn't make a profit PDQ it will wind up out of "print".
However, there are certain copyrighted works that have either held their value, or steadily increased in value, over the years. A number of Disney properties spring to mind as examples. The owners of those properties obviously have a strong economic interest in extending the duration of their copyrights.
The problem is that this results in hugely long copyright terms for everything. Including works which can be outlived by their copyright. The most sensible solution is a renewel system with an exponential fee. Which ensures that nothing will be copyright for ever (but an exceptionally profitable work can be hung onto by the likes of Disney for a longish period) and most works will become public domain within a fairly short time.
Slashdot Mirror
Or how "Old" Europe (which is what you call Germany, for some reason) was battled against by Britain and the French Underground (along with countless other allies, such as CANADA) for 2 full years before the Americans graced us with their own contribution. Just because France fell under the might of the German army quickly doesn't mean the French citizens fell with them. Without the French Underground, the war effort would have never advanced as quickly as it did.
No doubt the Germans considered these French fighters "terrorists" (any who were caught were dealt with brutally, no doubt with little German concern for "collateral damage") and the likes of SOE "terror support agencies".
If we do what we've said we plan to do, and allow the Iraqi people to choose their own government, then Iraq will become an Iran-style theocracy; watch for the American controllers to influence the process to make sure that doesn't happen. The last time the West played the regime change game in Iraq, we got the Ba'ath party.
The situation in Iran is also the result of "the West" specifically the US and Britain playing "regime change". When are these people going to learn that this just dosn't work?
What you don't seem to get is that the affairs of other countries aren't our fucking business. The U.S. has no right to enforce democracy at the point of a gun on other nations, nor to spread 'liberty' across the planet like some goddamn venereal disease.
Anyway whatever you might get from that enforcement certainly won't be democratic. Might be "US friendly", at least short term.
You talk as if we have some sort of religious calling to enforce our way of life and government on others. As an American I say "bullshit". I don't want an empire,
Not that most people in an American Empire would have the way of life or rights of US Citizens. Given the what's happened in just about every empire in recorded history.
and I don't want my taxes being used for this purpose.
The alternative would be that either they be spent within the USA or even lower taxation. Proping up questionable governments and sending armies half way around the world can't come cheap.
In fact, I pretty much want a 'live and let live' sort of government
IIRC that is not dissimilar from the position of many of the "Founding Fathers".
There is nothing at all naive about this desire. I don't swallow the Bush propaganda about pre-emptive strikes, nor do I think we're in Iraq for anything but the oil (and perhaps the ability to tell Israel to go fuck itself).
Unlikely to be the latter, considering Israel was all for Iraq being invaded. Especially if it leads to the reactivation of the oil pipeline to Haifa. It would be a very brave US leader to tell Israel they were on their own.
You can spout the party line all you like, but in the end it's just another word for 'imperialism'.
Do Democrats and Republicans differ that much here?
The problem is that most Americans assume that since America is such a great place to live, our foreign policy must also be great, bighearted, generous, unselfish, etc.
You probably can't even say that about US domestic policy. Especially with some of the repressive legislation the US Congress has been pushing out recently.
I genuinely believe that if Americans could have the magical ability to suddenly see American foreign policy from the perspective of non-U.S. citizens, most of them would be horrified and embarrassed about many things.
The last time anything like this happened would be with the Vietnam war...
But if anybody, including Americans like myself, try to point out the excesses of U.S. behavior in the world - in the interests of improving the country we love so much - our patriotism is called into question and we're immediately discredited.
An intersting deefinition of patriot is "someone who supports their country always and their government when it deserves it." Somewhere along the a definition more along the lines of "My government, right or wrong" appears to have become more common in the US.
Would the nuking of say, Washington DC, be such a bad thing?
Yes since it would kill a lot of innocent people and probably not kill that many of the US government. Those of the US government left, especially the current bunch, might well start tossing nukes at any country they didn't happen to like at the time.
If you ask around (I mean OUTSIDE the USA), you'll probably find a majority of people thinking it would, actually, be a positive thing.
Many of those who dislike the US government and it's policies, including Arabs, don't have much malice towards the US people...
Ever since Israel was created, large parts of the Arab world have wanted to destroy it. They just don't like the concept of a Jewish state on their land, no matter what it's doing.
How many people do you think would want an aggressive, expansionist state, made up of people who a different part of the world, imposed on them by colonial powers?
How do you think the average American would react if the UN declared that half of Florida was a Tibetan state?
As for the Jewish issue there have been Jews in Arab populations since before these people called themselves "Arabs" on the whole far better treated and integrated than in many parts of Christian Europe. Most notably Spain...
Thats because (Surprise!) thats not the real reason the terrorists hate us. They hate us frot he same reason the canadian wrote this article. Because we try to interfere in other countries buisness very aggressively.
This isn't just something the US has done in the past, it's been a continuing part of US foreign policy for a long time, with Iraq just the latest episode.
Second reason is that we support israel, which is anathema in the arab world.
But probably not for the popularly believed religious reasons. More that the Israelis are mostly European and that many of them are aggressive.
The israeli army uses US abrams tanks, US apache helicopters, and US f-15 fighters. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Israel uses them to kill palestinians (justified or not).
Also Israel frequently flys warplanes over Lebanon and continues to occupy parts of Syria and Lebanon. Thus that's two more groups of Arabs who have every reason not to like Israel.
Canada may support israel, but its not a canadian tank that palestinians see rolling down the street
Nor does Canada give vast amounts of money to Israel, effectivly bailing out the Israeli economy.
and its not a canadian army invading iraq.
Most likely after Afghanistan Canadians didn't want to get shot at by Americans again.
War hasn't actually seen American shores since bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and even then, how can we compare an attack on a navel base thousands of miles away to the bombing of London?
Calling Pearl Harbor in 1941 "American shores" is stretching the definition considerably in the first place. The British equivalent would be some Royal Naval installation in some remote part of the British empire.
The Russians turned Hitler back in Stalingrad all by himself, and the British managed to prevent being overrun by Hitler's forces and keep a bridge to the mainland intact. The fact that US was able to come in and make the final push to topple Germany is a great credit, but saying stuff like "we saved Europe from Germany" (which I've heard far too often of late) minimizes the contribution of the European resistance
Remember also that Canada was involved in the war long before the US and Canadian soldiers took part in Operation Overlord.
When rich American businesses go into a country to compete with fledling local businesses, is there really a fair competition at play? People have to choose between supporting an immature native industry or choosing a mature foreign industry. By the time the native industry could have built up, it has already been marginalized by the foreign industry.
Consider that if the local industry can compete or the government attempts to pass legislation to protect their local industry then the US is quite likely to impose some sort of tarrifs or trade sanctions. In the worst case senario a CIA backed "popular uprising".
We have tried to impose American styles of government on countries for decades.
Actually it's more "American friendly" than "American style. e.g. the Hawaiian Kingdom Constitution is very similar to the US Constitution. Many of the differences being relevent to the difference between a consitutional monarchy and a federal republic.
Every other time (ahem, Vietnam...) it has failed miserably.
IIRC Ho Chi Minh drafted a declaration of independence and constitution modeled on those of the US.
We supported the Shah in Iran, we gave weapons to the Muhajideen in Afghanistan, we gave weapons to Saddam against Iran, the list just goes on. The funny thing is that all of these intrusions have come back to bite us in the ass, and we still haven't learnt a lesson. The Shah in Iran fell, and now the conservative theocracy in the country hates the US. The Muhajideen in Afghanistan became the Taliban, and used our weapons to take over the country.
Others of them became Al Quada, making use of the terrorism techniques taught by the CIA.
And we know how the Saddam thing went.
There's actually a specific term to describe this "blowback"
The other way in which the US interferes in the region is unconditional military and financial support of Israel, even at a time when the money could probably be better spent in the US itself. Were Israel to lose its powerful patron and have to negotiate with the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians the result might well be less dead people in that part of the world. Even the ability to make money from all the potential religious tourists who stay away now because they don't want to get shot at or blown up.
The thing is, that all of this would go away relatively quickly after we stopped interfering. The people in the Middle East and in other places are really too busy with their own problems to keep rallying against a non-active issue.
They might have fewer problems or more easily sortable problems. Depending which problems are directly or indirectly the results of foreign interfering.
Oddly enough, you know, the people who're presently bitterly resenting our foreign policy are decrying exactly such a culture. And I'm not just talking about in Iraq, or Syria, or Egypt -- I'm talking about in France and in our closest ally, the UK, too.
The response to the French not doing exactly what the US wanted was all sorts of infantile French bashing. Anyway Canada is also usually considered to be a strong ally of the US.
Gee, how do you explain the Shias in Iraq right now? They were cheering when the tanks went into Baghdad; why are they now telling us to go home, if they're gravitating toward more satisfaction as you say?
It really is very simple, just because they didn't like Saddam Hussein does not mean they want a foreign army in their country.
Why is the Shiite reaction so similar to their reaction to the British in 1919?
Lebanese Shiites cheered when Israel invaded Lebanon. Then when these soldiers overstayed their welcome they formed themselves into "The Party of God" to get rid of them.
More to the point: supply us with one clear case in which this has motivated a specific terrorist act. We know a fair amount about the 9/11 hijackers.
But also plenty we don't know about these people. Especially given that at least a third of them were using identities stolen from innocent Arabs.
Please, please, look into how the educated Arab world feels about US foreign policy. There are many, many people out there whose desperate desire is to bring secular, democratized states to the Arab world,
In order to have a stable democratic state any such government, its structure, powers and constitution must be decided by people who live there. It simply cannot be done by foreigners or ex-pats who havn't set foot in the country for decades. The best outsiders can do is advise, but this is a job for political historians rather than soldiers.
They do understand the despotic regimes out there -- they seem particularly aware of ones like Egypt, and of the Shah in Iran.
The Shah being especially relevent as a tyrant installed by the US and Britain at the request of the oil industry. Which didn't like the idea of a democratic Iranian government acting in the interests of the Iranian people. The only people in Iran capable of opposing the Shah were the Shiite clerics (Iran having been the home of Shia Islam for several hundred years.)
They're saying things about how US foreign policy is counterproductive.
It rarely appears to be counterproductive towards the corporate lobby who appear to be in the driving seat. Also when it is counterproductive this tends to be long term, long enough that the current US executive can say "we didn't do it".
It is not the US standard of living alone which attracts terrorism,
If it were this simple then there would be a lot more places being subject to terrorism.
it is what it does to sustain that quality of life.
Quite likely more the quality of life of US based corporate interests, rather than the average US citizen.
The US cares about civil liberties (at least nominally) within its own shores, but those from other countries are not afforded the same rights (wasn't someone shipped to an american court rather than camp X-Ray due to their being a US citizen, the non americans were illegally imprisoned with the rest of them)
US authorities have arrested US citizens and tossed them in jail without any sign of a trial. e.g. the Intel employee who is supposedly a witness to something or other.
The sequel to "US PATRIOT" allows arbitary stripping of US citizens of their citizenship. Which would put them in an even worst situation than the people kidnapped and taken to Cuba.
Americans with an interest in the civil liberties of all people, not just those americans with the power and money to defend their own (and to take those of others), many of whom I'm sure read slashdot should fight terrorism in their own way.
Hopefully some of them might survive to see things through.
By making America the state it was founded to be, by scrutinising businessmen, politicians (and anyone else in a position of power and influence)
There is a disinction between a politican being a "leader" (somehow above the populace) and being a "public servant"
by using the power of their wallet, their vote and whatever else it takes to make america a state and a symbol that is not viewed by the rest of the world with contempt.
What people around the world especially don't like is hypocracy. The principles on which the US was founded and the US constitution are a matter of public record. Yet people around the world see the US government behaving (sometimes even towards its own citizens) in ways totally against these principles.
A perception of america as a greedy, self interested, intefering, imperialist power is what attracts terrorism.
Consider the situation in Iraq. The US hand picking which Iraqis will be in any new Iraqi government. This is the way imperial powers have operated for thousands of years.
Not yet, anyway. But just wait until we finish off Syria and North Korea and a few other small countries. After all, if Iraq looked easy, imagine how trivial invading across an undefended border would be....What makes you think that the US-Canadian border won't be defended by that time. Assuming the US hasn't exhausted it's military might by fighting wars all over the planet and hasn't made the mistake of attacking some "small country" capable of either defending itself or launching a counter attack.
Secondly, cyber-terrorism is a crime far more serious than copyright infringement. A man guilty of the former can get life imprisonment. A man guilty of the latter can get some hefty fines and up to 5 years in prison(IIRC). For an organization this big to be willfully taking part in such a crime, especially on the massive scale they seem to indicate, is a major breach, and in my eyes, cause enough to have such a criminal organization, no matter how big, shut down.
The issue is if courts will actually apply these laws against the likes of the RIAA or their member corporations? Especially as we see selective enforcement right now even against individuals.
When will naive conservatives learn a bit about the history of the CIA and it's recurring tendancy to support brutal dictators, guerillas and terrorists.
They even coined the term "blowback" for when something turns around and bites them (or more likely the nearest American target).
No, history has proven that outside the domain of your insular totalitarian society it's impossible to reign in that kind of control. you knock down one foriegn terrorist, you piss off all his friends and people.
If you do have that kind of society it is also quite good at generating home grown "terrorists" anyway.
I'm just waiting for the first 'strategic' nukes (the briefcase 1 killoton bomb etc) to end up in terrorist hands,
Someone trying to lug a very heavy suitcase around will attract attention. Any terrorist with 2 brain cells to rub together will use a truck.
the briefcase bomb isn't a city destroyer btw -- but the pentagon or cheyane mountain could easilly be wiped out with them.
A small nuke isn't much use against a hardened and well defended structure. Whilst setting one off in a city would not destroy everything it would still kill and seriously injure many people straight away, produce lots of fallout and create widespread panic.
The GPL does not prohibet selling code, just modifing it and not releasing it.
The GPL allows you to modify code and not release it.
The GPL takes effect when you distribute code, selling is a type of distribution. What it prevents you from doing is distributing binaries without the source being available, to whoever you distribute the binaries to, or attempting to place restrictions not in the GPL to anyone you supply the software to.
I completely agree but it's strange how the desktop projects themselves seem to dislike this. Look at all the complaining about how Red Hat had 'broken' KDE in the 8.0 release by theming it and changing the default browser to Mozilla. Some of the KDE developers seem to think that _they_ should decide the user interface experience, and that a common look and feel between KDE on different platforms (Linux, BSD, Solaris etc) is more important than a common look and feel within a distribution.
Best summed up as "what makes a good desktop appears to be quite subjective"...
Perhaps that should be "LibraNet will be nothing special, after Debian gets their new installer working".
To use the overworked car analogy "Should a driver be concerned the tools their mechanic has or even the tools used on the production line where the car was made?"
And some of my systems don't have *ANY* internet connection, much less a high speed one, so this is important to me. More and more of the distributions seem to assume that you will have a high speed internet connection, but this is only occasionally true.
You also get distributions which assume that you always need ppp related tools if you have a network connection. It's all down to the assumptions the people putting it together make.
In my opinion, usability also is a measure of how hard it is to install a package, recompile a kernel, etc.
Only where you have a situation where a machine is used and administered by the same person. This list (including installing the system in the first place) just isn't relevent where there is a user (or users) who simply use the machine.
Not just the menus. Libranet's Adminmenu tool allows any newbie to setup a personal firewall, install packages, recompile a kernel, install Flash, install Microsoft Truetype Fonts, or even RealPlayer.
Good if you are trying to emulate Windows 9x/XP home for someone who actually needs to be able to mess around. In reality there are quite a number of home users who 's ideal machine would be one which can be set up by an expert and they couldn't acidentally break anything. Because if they do they don't have the first clue about how to fix it.
Of course for corporate networks separation between user and sysadmin is the norm.
First off 30 year bonds (including zeros) are still selling quite well so at least some business can wait for payback.
A bond is a considerably safer long term investment than a movie.
Second, Disney is an exception since their movies are "classics" and make tons of money on video sales.
Is this all Disney movies or just some of them?
But, when scale is considered, the protections afforded O'Reilly by the 1790 length of time is probably longer than those provided to Disney under current copyright protections. Assuming the real entertainment value of a movie is over in ... say 50 years (personally, I enjoy movies some Disney flics from the 50s ... it's probably longer), then the equivalent protection for Disney media should be 250 years.
Is every Disney movie still profitable after 50 years. (Even if it it still entertaining). Maybe some multiple of the mode, median or mean of the time movies make a profit would make more sense. (If a lot of movies don't make any profit then the longest of these is likely to be the median.)
You are making a very common mistake in assuming that because there is no economic incentive to print a work, that there is no economic incentive to prevent others from doing so. If all of the novels currently mothballed and unavailable to the public were freely available, publishers would have to compete with all of them,
If there is money to be made printing these works why are they "out of print"? Anyway works being in an out of print limbo is exactly the sort of thing the US Constitution is there to prevent.
I don't think the authors of those two books are making much money from those great books, on account of them being dead.
If an author becomes popular/well know he or she can probably easily sell any new work (so long as it's not awful) since they have a "fanbase".
Even if their older works are in the public domain publishers are still likely to want their latest books because they are likely to sell.
The vast majority of publications have always had a short (or even non-existant) profitable life-span. Most either turn a profit in the first year, or never.
In plenty of cases the timespan for a publisher considering something a "hit" or "miss" even the total amount of time in which something can be expected to be profitable is even less. Very often if something dosn't make a profit PDQ it will wind up out of "print".
However, there are certain copyrighted works that have either held their value, or steadily increased in value, over the years. A number of Disney properties spring to mind as examples. The owners of those properties obviously have a strong economic interest in extending the duration of their copyrights.
The problem is that this results in hugely long copyright terms for everything. Including works which can be outlived by their copyright.
The most sensible solution is a renewel system with an exponential fee. Which ensures that nothing will be copyright for ever (but an exceptionally profitable work can be hung onto by the likes of Disney for a longish period) and most works will become public domain within a fairly short time.
Two points: 1) Berne [cornell.edu] requires at least 50 years of copyright automatically.
When has a treaty stopped the US government? Arguably global warming and nuclear weapons are far more danger to humanity than shorter copyright terms.