Since I know, personally, the descendants of the younger brother... welcome to the land where he with the money (e.g. Charles) was able to rewrite history to his favor.
If you want to conserve power, wireless is not the way to go - it is always going to be inherently lossy, because (a) air will never be an ideal medium (not that current wiring is, but we're getting better and better with low-resistance conductor material) and (b) if you have to distribute it from an antenna, you necessarily waste a vast amount of your energy that will not be picked up by the receiving antenna.
The only way to get around (b) is to have a perfectly tuned, ideal directional antenna and a perfectly tuned, ideal receiving antenna pointed exactly at each other for the entire time you are functioning. Any deviation from these will result in power loss.
You have your choice: energy efficiency OR omnidirectional transmission. The two are mutually exclusive. Plus, I along with many, many others would not like to have my reproductive organs anywhere near such a device.
Actually it's more interesting than that.
The other thing Dickens did was ship his brother off to America in order to cut him out of the family inheritance. Charles Dickens WAS the template for Scrooge.
It's not that the games don't interest me, it's (a) the fact that I'm exposing my machine to their kill-switch and (b) the fact that I should never, EVER have to go through "activation" bullshit to play a single-player game.
Steam carries DRM. I do everything in my power to (a) remove DRM from the things I purchase where it cannot be avoided and (b) avoid it the rest of the time.
Sorry, Valve. You get in bed with DRM, you lose business. THAT is how DRM really works.
Congress gives you the right, legally speaking, to control commercial production of your intellectual property. That is, if you write a screenplay or theater play, or a book, or produce some other piece of art, you have the right to stop others from reproducing it unless you give them permission (possibly, but not always, in exchange for some form of restitution).
What you do NOT have the right to do is block the public's fair-use privileges, such as quoting a limited portion of the work, space-shifting it (digitizing the book into a private archive for example), posting a screenshot of a video game, etc.
A further problem is this is the ridiculous theft that has gone on with changing copyright so that works no longer need registration. Registration's key point is that it ensures a copy is retained for when the work eventually enters the public domain. Think seriously now: how many computer programs, how many books, how many movies are now simply lost to us because someone technically "owns" the copyright and has sat failing to distribute the work, but the only available copies are either (a) degraded to uselessnes due to bad storage or (b) nearly unrecoverable due to DRM implementations tied to nearly-nonexistent hardware.
Consider the number of supposedly "copyrighted" TV show serials for which no known copy of certain episodes exist. Like the absolute ton of BBC productions. This is why not mandating copyright registration, with the provision of a copy to a national repository, is a BAD idea.
Copyright is a temporary monopoly given to artists with the contract that their work enter the public domain. Ever since big corporations got involved, they've done everything they could to rape the shit out of the public domain and not put a single bit back into it, and they've even gone to the extreme of trying to prevent people from doing things like time-shifting and space-shifting. Hell, the NFL has harassed churches for holding super bowl parties (consisting of members of the church) and watching the game on a projected screen, claiming it was a "public reproduction" of a "Copyrighted performance", yet it's something they freely put on the airwaves.
If I put up a sign next to a shitty restaurant saying "Do not patronize restaurant X, the food is crap", that's my free speech right.
If a city puts in a new highway that means less people drive down a service road that was previously the highway, and a number of businesses don't get as much impulse "I think I'll stop there" business, they either adapt or move or die, they don't get recompense.
Nothing should be different with DRM. DRM is a method by which the companies try to infringe on the CONSUMER'S right to fair-use activities like space-shifting, nothing more. DRM itself should be illegal.
Turns out EA is a member of the EMA. Who else is involved? Probably other companies that want to kill the right of first sale and destroy the used-games/used-DVD market.
After all, your "activation" will probably only work once...
Perhaps they should rename it "Project Assfuck" - after all, that's what it's doing to the consumer.
The initiative is similar to security tags used in clothing retail that spill ink on garments if they're forcibly removed, thereby destroying the item.
Uhm... those tags come off if you get a rare earth magnet (say, from an old hard drive or something) anywhere near them.
Not that we're supposed to know how things work... after all, knowledge is evil, the almighty corporations want us to be dumb and stupid and drink Brawndo.
Seriously, now. This will not only be cracked damn quick, but it'll fail the first time someone has a non-'net-connected home box (dvd player, console, etc) and they'll get up in arms about it. Plus, it's already been tried once, remember Circuit City and Divx?
But with a political post, for example, if you write a pro-Bush or anti-Bush essay, it's quite likely that among a random sample of users, there will be people who are biased to vote up (or vote down) any post that has anything good to say about the President. The essays voted to the top may not be the best-written ones, but simply the ones that pander to the most popularly held opinions.
Right in the article.
And yet the post submitter scuttlemonkey and whoever approved it, decided that an undeserved cheap-shot against someone was a-OK to put in.
And also why slashdot doesn't have "-1 because I disagree" moderation, despite slashtrolls regularly abusing it and modding "troll" when someone gives them an uncomfortable truth or two to chew on.
You do not like the quote by H.L. Mencken? This is why I had originally put my sig on hiatus till after the election, too many wingnuts like yourself attacking me for even having one.
If you want to get a rise out of the soft-spoken Moss, ask him something like, "Isn't Godzilla just an overgrown Tyrannosaurus rex?"
"He's erect-standing. He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow," Moss says, repeating arguments Toho often makes in its lawsuits. "He's got an anthropomorphic torso. The T. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle."
Actually, at the time he was conceived, about every image on the planet including a T-Rex showed it: - Standing erect (they had to break the tailbone structure to do this, but they were convinced they were right because "it's a lizard, it has to drag its tail." - With significantly larger arms (though not quite as big as Gojira's).
Take a look and compare Gojira to the T-Rex from the 1933 version of King Kong, or to any other movie featuring dinosaurs up until the late '80s. What do you get? You get a "Rex" standing upright on its hind legs, walking forward, dragging its tail.
The only reason Gojira has human-ish arms is that they were putting a rubber suit on a fucking human to get the effects.
This is a joke. Gojira is, in fact, just a mutated oversized Rex. They gave him fire breath because the Japanese, like most Asian cultures, have a dragon obsession and fire breath is cool.
Also it should be noted that unfortunately being a signatory to the Convention does not necessarily mean that the Conventions are observed fully by a nation's forces in the field.
Did I not just say the following? You should be aware that at NO time has any Islamic force, least of all the terrorist forces, ever followed ANY portion of the Geneva Conventions.
My point stands. Seeing as how the GC's directly contradict the Koran's own exhortations to kill prisoners and hold them for ransom...
wouldn't you consider overly restrictive ROEs to be a part of that?
I would. And if the Democrats had put up a remotely decent candidate in 2004 or 2008, I'd probably have voted their way.
Unfortunately, they fielded weenie-bob Kerry in 2004 and Marxist Mac-Daddy Obama in 2008, and both of them have less respect for the military than Bush (I say this especially after seeing Obama's own Obama-SS-Stasi "civilian security force" plans).
#1 - how many years did the reconstruction of the following countries/localities take following wars? A) Germany (Post-WWI) A2) Germany (Post-WWII) B) Japan C) The American South (Post-Civil War) D) Austria E) Poland F) Europe (in general, pick a period - Napoleonic, WWI, WWII, or Eastern Europe after the various Balkan blow-ups)
#2 - What countries are currently financing a large portion of the Taliban and Iraqi terrorists, and where else are they getting their money?
And now, the answers.
To all of #1, in rough terms: multiple decades. Reconstruction after a war always happens slowly. It happens even more slowly when certain idiots try to claim the war is "over" when there is still a large amount of fighting and cleanup of enemy forces to do in the areas where serious fighting occurred.
To #2, the answers are Iran and China, and further financing coming from the trade of illicit drugs. The reasoning being twofold: First, that Iran wishes to see its particular sect of Islam overtake Iraq, and second, that China sees an opportunity to make an alliance in a region that hasn't been held by a communist government since the USSR was driven out.
The true idiocy in this whole thing is the assumptions (both on the left and the right, because both sides are chock-full of morons) that (a) a war could be won quickly in an area dominated by 7th-century tribalism, (b) that a country like Iraq which looks a lot like the former Yugoslavia could be "held together" by anything other than a power-mad nutjob dictator like Hussein, and (c) that "reconstructing" anyplace after a war could be done in a short (5 year) time.
We'd be better off if the Kurds were allowed their own nation, the Shi'a theirs, and the Sunni theirs. They all mostly self-segregate anyways and the worst we'd have in that case is border skirmishes. As it is, within about 4 years after the US leaves you can expect the same old tribalist crap as the Kurds declare independence (and try to take a piece of Turkey with them too) and the Iranians make another annexation push while the Saudis and Kuwaitis scream bloody murder worrying about having the Iranians on their doorstep.
Are you working with classic ethics, or the "whatever makes more money for $cientology is obviously more ethical" idea of the "world's most ethical" Cult?
#2 - The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. - George Smith Patton
#3 - Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof. - Geneva Conventions. You should be aware that at NO time has any Islamic force, least of all the terrorist forces, ever followed ANY portion of the Geneva Conventions. You should also pay very close attention to this clause, which does NOT require that one party to a conflict fight with both hands tied behind their back (e.g. within the Geneva Conventions) while the other side doesn't.
#4 - The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. - GC IV, Section 28
#5 - The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred. - GC IV, Section 29
Why are these two sentences placed here, and in this way? To make it perfectly clear that the blame for problems caused by "armies" that refuse to carry their arms openly, that hide behind civilians and use them as shields, is on the head of the party using the human shields.
You want to know why the armed forces see civilians as complicit? Because the Geneva Conventions (IV,Article 35) specifically gives civilians the right to vacate, and be protected while vacating, any place where hostilities are occurring. The problem is, there are way too many supposed "civilians" who are actually members of terrorist groups or supporting/housing them in violation of the Geneva Convention prohibitions on doing so (not, again, that any Islamic group has ever been moral enough to follow the Geneva Conventions anyways).
What is absurd is that our armed forces are being told today that they are supposed to win wars while both hands are tied behind their backs (ridiculously fucking stupid "rules of engagement" that presume the other side is following the GC when we know damn well they don't) and blindfolded (all sorts of nasty restrictions on intelligence-gathering). And what's even worse is that whether we fight to win or not, we will be falsely accused of breaking the Geneva Conventions even as we stupidly try to follow them and the other side isn't being held accountable for their daily war crimes.
In addition, soldiers are trained not to think, they're trained to follow orders.
If you have clear, concise orders, that's one thing. The list of "rules of engagement" for Iraq is a fucking NOVEL. It's amazing as few of our men and women have died as they have, trying to fight while thinking of fucking chapter and verse before pulling the goddamn trigger to return fire on asshats who wear women's clothing and fire from behind small children.
Oh, and here's a homework assignment for the left wingnuts who are going to post "waah bush lied people died" or some other fucking nonsense: READ the whole Geneva Conventions, and a good analysis of it, first. Educate yourself before spouting your ignorant nonsense.
Then I create one more copy, put that for sale for say US$ 1 billion. Happy now?
Raw silliness.
The whole rest of your argumentation is moot as the work will eventually end up in the public domain anyway: as soon as the copyright period expires.
And how would that work for your bullshit "argument" below?
Or imagine I'm in a band, write some cool songs, but don't record them. Only play them live. Those songs are copyrighted by me.
If you play them live with no recording and no other record (sheet music perhaps) then they vanish, poof, into the ether. They are no more meaningful to society than the mad ravings of a street-corner doomsayer. Why should I care about the "copyright" of something that, for all practical intents and purposes, does not exist and has all the societal significance of the random twiddlings done by real musicians who are tuning their instruments?
Why registering? And do I have to do that in every single country in this world?
Why registering? Because the difference between a finished and unfinished work is large. The difference between something that should immediately pass into the public domain, and something that someone actually intends to produce and make money off of (what copyright was designed to encourage, again for only a limited time so that content creators would have to keep creating, is different enough that you ought to be able to spare the few minutes to register it just like anyone with an invention ought to be willing to patent it if they think it's significant enough.
Plus, registering it allows us to check-and-balance the system, like the patent system (prior to the patent-slamming abuse by big companies) was supposed to do.
I'm not an USAian, mind you. My world is bigger.
No, your head and/or ego is bigger and undeservedly so. Our "worlds" are the same size, unless you're an extraterrestrial.
I have the copyright on the song, and have the right to allow you to play it in public as well (or not). Whether or not the song is recorded and sold should not matter.
So, don't record it. Write down the sheet music and register that. And if you have no sheet music and no recording, why do you care if you have the "copyright" on it?
Maybe our band decides against making recordings, doing only live gigs. Live gigs you're also not allowed to record without permission of the artist, even though the gig may be free. The music played at each gig is unique, they are all different, the beauty of live music.
You have fun with that. Why should "copyright" matter to you? You've deliberately decided to try to prevent your work from passing into the commons in any form, which is anathema to the idea of "copyright" (a temporary grant of limited monopoly based upon the assurance that the work will pass to the public domain in repayment later) in the first place.
You are trying to cheat the system by keeping your work from ever entering the public domain. Your argument's pretty much void here, because we are no longer talking about "copyright" at all.
If you set out to record a "Jam Session", a freeform and spontaneous musical session, then why would you need a "copyright" on it? If on the other hand you had sheet music or other musical notation you were working off of, then even if your particular "performance" was not supposed to be recorded, you still have something to register and you should be required to do so.
Should you register them all?
Again: if you have a one-time "jam session", why would "copyright" need to even be involved? If you have musical notation, yes, you SHOULD be required to register it to assert your "copyright" and other performance rights, partly to protect the limited monopoly you are seeking but also as a protection for society such that when it is time for your music to enter the public domain, a record of it exists.
Now if I were to write a computer program, publish it, and later decide not to publish it anymore within my copyright period: that is my right. Why should I always have to continue to publish and (in effect) distribute a work that I own?
If you decide to no longer publish, the following things are true:
- You have (in effect) given up your agreed-upon "right" to monetary compensation based upon the temporary monopoly (which is what "copyright" is) over the work. If you're not selling, then nobody is buying from you.
- You have therefore given up participating in the system and, under the logic that copyright is designed to enlarge the public domain by encouraging the creation of new works based upon old works, the continuance of your work should necessarily follow in the public domain.
There are two ways to accomplish the goals of copyright. Either requiring registration and renewal to assert copyright, OR requiring that the publication/sale be ongoing, serve the needs of the public from which "copyright"'s temporary monopoly is granted. Either (a) you have to take affirmative action (in the form of easily verifiable publication/sale) or (b) you have to take affirmative action (in the form of renewal), or (c) by failing to take one of these actions you are allowing your work to pass into the public domain.
The goal is not to grant monopolies to people. The goal is twofold, first that people are encouraged to create new works and second that every work enters the public domain in a timely manner. Assuming that everything is public domain, unless registered otherwise, is the first step in getting the balance back.
And if you don't believe me that an enlarged public domain increases the likelihood of new works being made, consider the following: Walt Disney Corporation basically made their fortune by raping the public domain. They stole music, they stole characters, they stole stories wholesale, they pretty much never had an original idea in their lives.
Even for studios you might consider "original", like Pixar, they will freely admit (and insert homages to) their inspirations - for example, the lightning-flash background rat in the beginning of Ratatouille is ripped straight out of The Secret of Nimh. And oh so much more could be done in the commons if we weren't waiting another 80 years for NIMH to become public domain... or Animal Farm... or The Inspector General... and so on and so forth.
Final point: This is the free choice of the artists: either keep your copyrights and remain poor or have a minuscule chance of actually getting money for it. That's basically how it now stands.
Which is one of the major things that needs changing in copyright contract law (along with the disallowance of "indentured servitude" multi-album MafiAA contracts and their "creative accounting" departments that insist multiplatinum albums somehow lost money and try to bill the artist for "losses"), but that would definitely change if copyright were shortened - the idea of "works for hire" where a big, faceless corporation builds up a portfolio of zillions upon zillions of works that never see the light of day except for what pops up in the occasional "best of" or "Sounds of the XXXX's" compilations, with the other 90% of the music/videos/books vanishing away to nothingness. Make it so that things expire, and you change the dynamic - companies can't just sit on a bunch of old works, they have to seek out, promote, and work with the artists on a fairer basis in order to keep new works coming in.
Imagine actual competition for the works. Wouldn't that be something?
I'm serious. It takes a Lessig point and brings it to where it really needed to be: the basis of copyright is supposed to be the preservation and innovation of works, not stifling and killing them off in a vault somewhere.
Why, if they did that they'd never have a case and even the most dimwitted of judges would laugh them out of court. Their entire strategy revolves around either (a) bribing judges or (b) confusing them by throwing around meaningless technobabble designed to convince people that 1 is 0, red is blue, black is white, and that therefore they should go off and get themselves killed at the next zebra crossing.
Really, you think "wireless broadband" will be the savior? It's got more problems than wired (latency issues, distortion/signal strength issues, materials penetration issues, interference issues).
And if that weren't enough, if anything "Wireless Broadband" is already MORE restricted than wired (DSL/Cable/FiOS) offerings. For example, both Verizon and AT&T cap you at FIVE GB. Your own example (Wi-Max) sneakily enters into underlying "service provider" agreements to pull the same stunts.
Again: a FIVE GB cap, even when advertising their service as "unlimited." Use anything over that, and they cut your account instantly (while insisting, of course, that if you want to get out you have to pay them severance charges).
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it effectively rewards those who failed in the marketplace, punishes those who innovated and sets up a huge, inefficient and unnecessary bureaucracy
Well, that explains why Warner and the MafiAA are wanting it. They failed in the marketplace because they refuse to innovate and adapt with the times.
Meanwhile, plenty of musicians who are experimenting with new business models are finding that they can make more money and appeal to more fans.
And of course, that's the other thing that scares the shit out of the MafiAA - the new business models make them obsolete.
Or any part of your body. Or a pigeon. Or a kite. Or... well, you get the idea.
I can just see it now, suddenly the tinfoil hat guys will seem sane since they're marginally protected from being grazed by one of these things!
Since I know, personally, the descendants of the younger brother... welcome to the land where he with the money (e.g. Charles) was able to rewrite history to his favor.
If you want to conserve power, wireless is not the way to go - it is always going to be inherently lossy, because (a) air will never be an ideal medium (not that current wiring is, but we're getting better and better with low-resistance conductor material) and (b) if you have to distribute it from an antenna, you necessarily waste a vast amount of your energy that will not be picked up by the receiving antenna.
The only way to get around (b) is to have a perfectly tuned, ideal directional antenna and a perfectly tuned, ideal receiving antenna pointed exactly at each other for the entire time you are functioning. Any deviation from these will result in power loss.
You have your choice: energy efficiency OR omnidirectional transmission. The two are mutually exclusive. Plus, I along with many, many others would not like to have my reproductive organs anywhere near such a device.
Actually it's more interesting than that. The other thing Dickens did was ship his brother off to America in order to cut him out of the family inheritance. Charles Dickens WAS the template for Scrooge.
So you knew my ex-wife too, eh? Possibly even in the biblical sense!
I won't touch Steam.
It's not that the games don't interest me, it's (a) the fact that I'm exposing my machine to their kill-switch and (b) the fact that I should never, EVER have to go through "activation" bullshit to play a single-player game.
Steam carries DRM. I do everything in my power to (a) remove DRM from the things I purchase where it cannot be avoided and (b) avoid it the rest of the time.
Sorry, Valve. You get in bed with DRM, you lose business. THAT is how DRM really works.
Uhm, no.
Congress gives you the right, legally speaking, to control commercial production of your intellectual property. That is, if you write a screenplay or theater play, or a book, or produce some other piece of art, you have the right to stop others from reproducing it unless you give them permission (possibly, but not always, in exchange for some form of restitution).
What you do NOT have the right to do is block the public's fair-use privileges, such as quoting a limited portion of the work, space-shifting it (digitizing the book into a private archive for example), posting a screenshot of a video game, etc.
A further problem is this is the ridiculous theft that has gone on with changing copyright so that works no longer need registration. Registration's key point is that it ensures a copy is retained for when the work eventually enters the public domain. Think seriously now: how many computer programs, how many books, how many movies are now simply lost to us because someone technically "owns" the copyright and has sat failing to distribute the work, but the only available copies are either (a) degraded to uselessnes due to bad storage or (b) nearly unrecoverable due to DRM implementations tied to nearly-nonexistent hardware.
Consider the number of supposedly "copyrighted" TV show serials for which no known copy of certain episodes exist. Like the absolute ton of BBC productions. This is why not mandating copyright registration, with the provision of a copy to a national repository, is a BAD idea.
Copyright is a temporary monopoly given to artists with the contract that their work enter the public domain. Ever since big corporations got involved, they've done everything they could to rape the shit out of the public domain and not put a single bit back into it, and they've even gone to the extreme of trying to prevent people from doing things like time-shifting and space-shifting. Hell, the NFL has harassed churches for holding super bowl parties (consisting of members of the church) and watching the game on a projected screen, claiming it was a "public reproduction" of a "Copyrighted performance", yet it's something they freely put on the airwaves.
Enough is enough. Time to stop the madness.
If I put up a sign next to a shitty restaurant saying "Do not patronize restaurant X, the food is crap", that's my free speech right.
If a city puts in a new highway that means less people drive down a service road that was previously the highway, and a number of businesses don't get as much impulse "I think I'll stop there" business, they either adapt or move or die, they don't get recompense.
Nothing should be different with DRM. DRM is a method by which the companies try to infringe on the CONSUMER'S right to fair-use activities like space-shifting, nothing more. DRM itself should be illegal.
Turns out EA is a member of the EMA. Who else is involved? Probably other companies that want to kill the right of first sale and destroy the used-games/used-DVD market.
After all, your "activation" will probably only work once...
Perhaps they should rename it "Project Assfuck" - after all, that's what it's doing to the consumer.
The initiative is similar to security tags used in clothing retail that spill ink on garments if they're forcibly removed, thereby destroying the item.
Uhm... those tags come off if you get a rare earth magnet (say, from an old hard drive or something) anywhere near them.
Not that we're supposed to know how things work... after all, knowledge is evil, the almighty corporations want us to be dumb and stupid and drink Brawndo.
Seriously, now. This will not only be cracked damn quick, but it'll fail the first time someone has a non-'net-connected home box (dvd player, console, etc) and they'll get up in arms about it. Plus, it's already been tried once, remember Circuit City and Divx?
But with a political post, for example, if you write a pro-Bush or anti-Bush essay, it's quite likely that among a random sample of users, there will be people who are biased to vote up (or vote down) any post that has anything good to say about the President. The essays voted to the top may not be the best-written ones, but simply the ones that pander to the most popularly held opinions.
Right in the article.
And yet the post submitter scuttlemonkey and whoever approved it, decided that an undeserved cheap-shot against someone was a-OK to put in.
And also why slashdot doesn't have "-1 because I disagree" moderation, despite slashtrolls regularly abusing it and modding "troll" when someone gives them an uncomfortable truth or two to chew on.
You do not like the quote by H.L. Mencken? This is why I had originally put my sig on hiatus till after the election, too many wingnuts like yourself attacking me for even having one.
Equally stupid is the following "argument":
If you want to get a rise out of the soft-spoken Moss, ask him something like, "Isn't Godzilla just an overgrown Tyrannosaurus rex?"
"He's erect-standing. He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow," Moss says, repeating arguments Toho often makes in its lawsuits. "He's got an anthropomorphic torso. The T. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle."
Actually, at the time he was conceived, about every image on the planet including a T-Rex showed it:
- Standing erect (they had to break the tailbone structure to do this, but they were convinced they were right because "it's a lizard, it has to drag its tail."
- With significantly larger arms (though not quite as big as Gojira's).
Take a look and compare Gojira to the T-Rex from the 1933 version of King Kong , or to any other movie featuring dinosaurs up until the late '80s. What do you get? You get a "Rex" standing upright on its hind legs, walking forward, dragging its tail.
The only reason Gojira has human-ish arms is that they were putting a rubber suit on a fucking human to get the effects.
This is a joke. Gojira is, in fact, just a mutated oversized Rex. They gave him fire breath because the Japanese, like most Asian cultures, have a dragon obsession and fire breath is cool.
Also it should be noted that unfortunately being a signatory to the Convention does not necessarily mean that the Conventions are observed fully by a nation's forces in the field.
Did I not just say the following?
You should be aware that at NO time has any Islamic force, least of all the terrorist forces, ever followed ANY portion of the Geneva Conventions.
My point stands. Seeing as how the GC's directly contradict the Koran's own exhortations to kill prisoners and hold them for ransom...
wouldn't you consider overly restrictive ROEs to be a part of that?
I would. And if the Democrats had put up a remotely decent candidate in 2004 or 2008, I'd probably have voted their way.
Unfortunately, they fielded weenie-bob Kerry in 2004 and Marxist Mac-Daddy Obama in 2008, and both of them have less respect for the military than Bush (I say this especially after seeing Obama's own Obama-SS-Stasi "civilian security force" plans).
Quick Quiz Time:
#1 - how many years did the reconstruction of the following countries/localities take following wars?
A) Germany (Post-WWI)
A2) Germany (Post-WWII)
B) Japan
C) The American South (Post-Civil War)
D) Austria
E) Poland
F) Europe (in general, pick a period - Napoleonic, WWI, WWII, or Eastern Europe after the various Balkan blow-ups)
#2 - What countries are currently financing a large portion of the Taliban and Iraqi terrorists, and where else are they getting their money?
And now, the answers.
To all of #1, in rough terms: multiple decades. Reconstruction after a war always happens slowly. It happens even more slowly when certain idiots try to claim the war is "over" when there is still a large amount of fighting and cleanup of enemy forces to do in the areas where serious fighting occurred.
To #2, the answers are Iran and China, and further financing coming from the trade of illicit drugs. The reasoning being twofold: First, that Iran wishes to see its particular sect of Islam overtake Iraq, and second, that China sees an opportunity to make an alliance in a region that hasn't been held by a communist government since the USSR was driven out.
The true idiocy in this whole thing is the assumptions (both on the left and the right, because both sides are chock-full of morons) that (a) a war could be won quickly in an area dominated by 7th-century tribalism, (b) that a country like Iraq which looks a lot like the former Yugoslavia could be "held together" by anything other than a power-mad nutjob dictator like Hussein, and (c) that "reconstructing" anyplace after a war could be done in a short (5 year) time.
We'd be better off if the Kurds were allowed their own nation, the Shi'a theirs, and the Sunni theirs. They all mostly self-segregate anyways and the worst we'd have in that case is border skirmishes. As it is, within about 4 years after the US leaves you can expect the same old tribalist crap as the Kurds declare independence (and try to take a piece of Turkey with them too) and the Iranians make another annexation push while the Saudis and Kuwaitis scream bloody murder worrying about having the Iranians on their doorstep.
Are you working with classic ethics, or the "whatever makes more money for $cientology is obviously more ethical" idea of the "world's most ethical" Cult?
Here's a few things you should be aware of:
#1 - War Is Hell - William Tecumseh Sherman
#2 - The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. - George Smith Patton
#3 - Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof. - Geneva Conventions. You should be aware that at NO time has any Islamic force, least of all the terrorist forces, ever followed ANY portion of the Geneva Conventions. You should also pay very close attention to this clause, which does NOT require that one party to a conflict fight with both hands tied behind their back (e.g. within the Geneva Conventions) while the other side doesn't.
#4 - The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. - GC IV, Section 28
#5 - The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred. - GC IV, Section 29
Why are these two sentences placed here, and in this way? To make it perfectly clear that the blame for problems caused by "armies" that refuse to carry their arms openly, that hide behind civilians and use them as shields, is on the head of the party using the human shields.
You want to know why the armed forces see civilians as complicit? Because the Geneva Conventions (IV,Article 35) specifically gives civilians the right to vacate, and be protected while vacating, any place where hostilities are occurring. The problem is, there are way too many supposed "civilians" who are actually members of terrorist groups or supporting/housing them in violation of the Geneva Convention prohibitions on doing so (not, again, that any Islamic group has ever been moral enough to follow the Geneva Conventions anyways).
What is absurd is that our armed forces are being told today that they are supposed to win wars while both hands are tied behind their backs (ridiculously fucking stupid "rules of engagement" that presume the other side is following the GC when we know damn well they don't) and blindfolded (all sorts of nasty restrictions on intelligence-gathering). And what's even worse is that whether we fight to win or not, we will be falsely accused of breaking the Geneva Conventions even as we stupidly try to follow them and the other side isn't being held accountable for their daily war crimes.
In addition, soldiers are trained not to think, they're trained to follow orders.
If you have clear, concise orders, that's one thing. The list of "rules of engagement" for Iraq is a fucking NOVEL. It's amazing as few of our men and women have died as they have, trying to fight while thinking of fucking chapter and verse before pulling the goddamn trigger to return fire on asshats who wear women's clothing and fire from behind small children.
Oh, and here's a homework assignment for the left wingnuts who are going to post "waah bush lied people died" or some other fucking nonsense: READ the whole Geneva Conventions, and a good analysis of it, first. Educate yourself before spouting your ignorant nonsense.
Then I create one more copy, put that for sale for say US$ 1 billion. Happy now?
Raw silliness.
The whole rest of your argumentation is moot as the work will eventually end up in the public domain anyway: as soon as the copyright period expires.
And how would that work for your bullshit "argument" below?
Or imagine I'm in a band, write some cool songs, but don't record them. Only play them live. Those songs are copyrighted by me.
If you play them live with no recording and no other record (sheet music perhaps) then they vanish, poof, into the ether. They are no more meaningful to society than the mad ravings of a street-corner doomsayer. Why should I care about the "copyright" of something that, for all practical intents and purposes, does not exist and has all the societal significance of the random twiddlings done by real musicians who are tuning their instruments?
Why registering? And do I have to do that in every single country in this world?
Why registering? Because the difference between a finished and unfinished work is large. The difference between something that should immediately pass into the public domain, and something that someone actually intends to produce and make money off of (what copyright was designed to encourage, again for only a limited time so that content creators would have to keep creating, is different enough that you ought to be able to spare the few minutes to register it just like anyone with an invention ought to be willing to patent it if they think it's significant enough.
Plus, registering it allows us to check-and-balance the system, like the patent system (prior to the patent-slamming abuse by big companies) was supposed to do.
I'm not an USAian, mind you. My world is bigger.
No, your head and/or ego is bigger and undeservedly so. Our "worlds" are the same size, unless you're an extraterrestrial.
I have the copyright on the song, and have the right to allow you to play it in public as well (or not). Whether or not the song is recorded and sold should not matter.
So, don't record it. Write down the sheet music and register that. And if you have no sheet music and no recording, why do you care if you have the "copyright" on it?
Maybe our band decides against making recordings, doing only live gigs. Live gigs you're also not allowed to record without permission of the artist, even though the gig may be free. The music played at each gig is unique, they are all different, the beauty of live music.
You have fun with that. Why should "copyright" matter to you? You've deliberately decided to try to prevent your work from passing into the commons in any form, which is anathema to the idea of "copyright" (a temporary grant of limited monopoly based upon the assurance that the work will pass to the public domain in repayment later) in the first place.
You are trying to cheat the system by keeping your work from ever entering the public domain. Your argument's pretty much void here, because we are no longer talking about "copyright" at all.
If you set out to record a "Jam Session", a freeform and spontaneous musical session, then why would you need a "copyright" on it? If on the other hand you had sheet music or other musical notation you were working off of, then even if your particular "performance" was not supposed to be recorded, you still have something to register and you should be required to do so.
Should you register them all?
Again: if you have a one-time "jam session", why would "copyright" need to even be involved? If you have musical notation, yes, you SHOULD be required to register it to assert your "copyright" and other performance rights, partly to protect the limited monopoly you are seeking but also as a protection for society such that when it is time for your music to enter the public domain, a record of it exists.
There should not be recordings in
Now if I were to write a computer program, publish it, and later decide not to publish it anymore within my copyright period: that is my right. Why should I always have to continue to publish and (in effect) distribute a work that I own?
If you decide to no longer publish, the following things are true:
- You have (in effect) given up your agreed-upon "right" to monetary compensation based upon the temporary monopoly (which is what "copyright" is) over the work. If you're not selling, then nobody is buying from you.
- You have therefore given up participating in the system and, under the logic that copyright is designed to enlarge the public domain by encouraging the creation of new works based upon old works, the continuance of your work should necessarily follow in the public domain.
There are two ways to accomplish the goals of copyright. Either requiring registration and renewal to assert copyright, OR requiring that the publication/sale be ongoing, serve the needs of the public from which "copyright"'s temporary monopoly is granted. Either (a) you have to take affirmative action (in the form of easily verifiable publication/sale) or (b) you have to take affirmative action (in the form of renewal), or (c) by failing to take one of these actions you are allowing your work to pass into the public domain.
The goal is not to grant monopolies to people. The goal is twofold, first that people are encouraged to create new works and second that every work enters the public domain in a timely manner. Assuming that everything is public domain, unless registered otherwise, is the first step in getting the balance back.
And if you don't believe me that an enlarged public domain increases the likelihood of new works being made, consider the following: Walt Disney Corporation basically made their fortune by raping the public domain. They stole music, they stole characters, they stole stories wholesale, they pretty much never had an original idea in their lives.
Even for studios you might consider "original", like Pixar, they will freely admit (and insert homages to) their inspirations - for example, the lightning-flash background rat in the beginning of Ratatouille is ripped straight out of The Secret of Nimh. And oh so much more could be done in the commons if we weren't waiting another 80 years for NIMH to become public domain... or Animal Farm... or The Inspector General... and so on and so forth.
Final point:
This is the free choice of the artists: either keep your copyrights and remain poor or have a minuscule chance of actually getting money for it. That's basically how it now stands.
Which is one of the major things that needs changing in copyright contract law (along with the disallowance of "indentured servitude" multi-album MafiAA contracts and their "creative accounting" departments that insist multiplatinum albums somehow lost money and try to bill the artist for "losses"), but that would definitely change if copyright were shortened - the idea of "works for hire" where a big, faceless corporation builds up a portfolio of zillions upon zillions of works that never see the light of day except for what pops up in the occasional "best of" or "Sounds of the XXXX's" compilations, with the other 90% of the music/videos/books vanishing away to nothingness. Make it so that things expire, and you change the dynamic - companies can't just sit on a bunch of old works, they have to seek out, promote, and work with the artists on a fairer basis in order to keep new works coming in.
Imagine actual competition for the works. Wouldn't that be something?
I'm serious. It takes a Lessig point and brings it to where it really needed to be: the basis of copyright is supposed to be the preservation and innovation of works, not stifling and killing them off in a vault somewhere.
What, a MafiAA plant get their facts straight?
Why, if they did that they'd never have a case and even the most dimwitted of judges would laugh them out of court. Their entire strategy revolves around either (a) bribing judges or (b) confusing them by throwing around meaningless technobabble designed to convince people that 1 is 0, red is blue, black is white, and that therefore they should go off and get themselves killed at the next zebra crossing.
The MafiAA and their illegal, unlicensed thugs do that
Fixed it for you. Gotta make sure you use the right terms. An "unlicensed investigative agency" is an oxymoron, call them what they are.
Really, you think "wireless broadband" will be the savior? It's got more problems than wired (latency issues, distortion/signal strength issues, materials penetration issues, interference issues).
And if that weren't enough, if anything "Wireless Broadband" is already MORE restricted than wired (DSL/Cable/FiOS) offerings. For example, both Verizon and AT&T cap you at FIVE GB. Your own example (Wi-Max) sneakily enters into underlying "service provider" agreements to pull the same stunts.
Again: a FIVE GB cap, even when advertising their service as "unlimited." Use anything over that, and they cut your account instantly (while insisting, of course, that if you want to get out you have to pay them severance charges).
"Wireless broadband" is not your savior.