Neither lying, nor (I hope) a complete idiot... In my case, exposing the fact outright to my lists and other sites were enough to retrieve the domain. I didn't even name the fucker who libeled me, from fear of getting a defamation suit on my end. I merely mentioned that a foul creep was out there to spew crap on me and that he ought to be ignored. At the same time I let him know I'd file complaints against him. And I contacted a (pricey, in retrospect) lawyer for advice. He ended up turning the couple of domains he owned, perhaps out of fear of being prosecuted, perhaps out of fear of seeing his name tied to a smear campaign. Whichever it is, I honestly don't care. The smear campaign stopped on the spot, retrieved the domains, and I never heard about him again.
As a temporary action, get the word out -- literally. Build a site or two of your own on her if needed, e.g, her official site, then get in touch with her fans, list, the press, whatever, and serve them a sensationalist "writer gets libeled online by her ex" story... If they bite, the site with her name in the domain won't get to Google's first page of results with a little luck. Even if it does, the many results that mention the smear campaign on the same page will serve as a counterweight and douse it.
In my case, that was enough to get the domain. In case it's not enough for you to do the same, sue...
Sue the ex-husband for libel, defamation, whatever... but also -- and more importantly -- to recover the domain name. If it's a.com or any other US tld, it's under US jurisdiction and can be seized by a US court; period, end of story -- irrespective of where the ex-boyfriend might be based or hosted. If the MAFIAA can shut down.com domains that serve torrents, and big business can grab domains on grounds that they're too similar to their own, you can shut down or retrieve a domain. Her name is her de facto trademark. Don't just sue the ex-boyfriend, either. Also file complaints with the registrar, the hosting business, etc. They'll take pre-emptive action more often than not when contacted. Consult with an attorney specialized in this kind of stuff, and take action under his guidance.
Implying that whatever else we do in our postmodern society isn't? As in political campaigns? TV shows? Movies? Newspapers? Corporate governance? Marketing practices? Advertizing? Mating patterns? And, heck, of all things, education?
Great, so now in order to get a job I have to not only be good at my job but also I have to hope that the HR person doing the online screening is good at doing theirs. (...) So in order to compete for jobs you HAVE to spam as much good stuff with your name on it as possible.
Have you been living in a cave? This has already been the case for at least a decade...
It's hardly difficult to do, you know... and whoever you kicked off of the front page can readily jump back onto it if he or she desires. Methinks it's fair play. If anything, Google should be the target of your disapproval, for clustering results more than they should be, or showing potentially embarrassing results to computers that google full names all day long. (In fact, I'm actually surprised that no US citizen has tried to sue Google over it yet.)
At any rate, the trick is to simply create a couple of profiles using your real name on high ranking sites: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, github, Timblr, a WordPress blog, whatever else you fancy. Basically, any high ranking site that will host a space for you, with your full name into the page title, the url, or (better) both.
From there, link these pages together here and there ("About myself"), populate each one with minute amounts of content, and you're very much done. These pages will then quickly hike to Google's front page whenever people search for your full name. No tricks needed other than merely being there.
The only real issue in the longer term, imho, is photo/video tagging done by friends (yours or another's) who maintain far too public a presence. I haven't used FB for years, but I don't recollect there was much you could do about those back when I did. And for better or worse, the monkeys who work in HR are far more competent at find embarrassing photos when they scratch the surface, than they are at shortlisting people for interviews.
What exactly was the problem? She was convinced that nobody would want to hire her if they could tell that someone with the same name had been a "bad girl"? This seems a bit far fetched.
TFA suggests that a third of the HR folks surveyed admitted to dismissing a candidate in light of the results that came out of researching the candidate on the web. So not so far fetched.
France got a small fine against the bookstore after years of prosecution at huge public cost. There's no way a professional fraud examiner would pursue such a case without regard for the public treasury. To give you an example - in America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
In other words, you're saying the professional fraud examiner has no interest whatsoever in potential future losses or in the victims of the fraud, and only goes after big fish?
I find this hard to believe. I can imagine this being the rational thing to do when the primary victim is the State itself, even in light of that not chasing small or mid-sized fish ultimately encourages more fraud in complete impunity. If so, it's no wonder that Wall Street is so screwed up.
When the victims are private citizens that go through the trouble of filing complaints, however, I cannot fathom this being the case. Especially considering how these victims' lives are typically shattered -- depression, etc.
Picture: "Sorry Sir, eat your loss and go cry a river. You're too small for us to go after whoever defrauded you."
Uh huh? Keep in mind that, well, to the west and south of those, some people came up with the steam engine, circumnavigated Africa a couple of years before the Portugese eventually did, identified that earth was round, and said pretty much everything that needed to be said about democracy and politics.
It is a damn shame that the European people do not realise how much power the Parliament really has and therefore do not participate at its election nearly as enthusiastically as they should, participation hovering around the 30% mark and if you ask me, such detachment from the matters of the continent is borderline autistic.
+1. It is, though note that there's an interesting side effect: minority groups such as ecologists, extreme right- and left-wing groups, and regionalist or independentist groups (e.g. the UKIP and their ever-so-colorful Nigel Farage) have a lot more clout at the EP than they typically do in national parliaments. They're under-represented at the national level; they're over-represented at the EU level. For better or worse, they end up having a say on things that they otherwise wouldn't. In a sort-of weird manner, it's democracy at work.
I realise that there is no direct counterpart for the Commission in any of the member states for a direct comparison, but I liken them to the technical and unelected staff at the ministries who nowadays provide most of the legislation in most countries according to the guidelines from elected officials. You don't elect all the administrators and the various specialists and the lawyers who work at ministries. Likewise, you don't elect the Commission. It should remain an independent technical tool to provide legislative proposals that the elected officials could then shoot down if necessary.
+1 too. It would arguably be better if, in the future, the EU president were directly elected and presented his EC to the EP for approval. But it's not a given whether such a thing would be accepted anytime soon.
All very good but you forget about the Directives that can be issued by the Commission without the oversight of the Parliament. Said directives MUST be enacted by the member states. End of.
Methinks you've no idea of what you're talking about. Only the most uninformed American, British and Continental European could possibly have anything to say about EU democracy -- and that would be if, and only if, they followed Anglo-Saxon news.
Get real. Seriously.
The parliament is elected in very much the same way as the US congress is. The EC officials are suggested by elected heads of state, and must be approved by the EU parliament.
When new directives and regulations are in the pipe, the entire process is entirely transparent. They publish pretty much everything they do in no less than 23 languages. Consider that for a moment. 23 languages. If you've got anything to say about whatever the EC and the EP are working on, you merely need to read up and participate. And you can. And some do. At all levels. It's grass-root stuff, really. And grass-root movements actually get their way every now and then (e.g. ACTA), contrary to what occurs in the US congress.
The EU's key issue, if any, is this: When local parliaments transcribe a directive into local law that relates to improving air quality, they'll readily take credit for it. But when heads of States agree to pass a tough but much needed reform as an EU treaty, directive or regulation, they'll instantly blame the EU for it.
A case in point would be France's latest president, Hollande. He campaigned saying he'd renegotiate the stability pact. Anyone with an ounce of clue knew that he was full of shit. But even his key opponent, Sarkozy, didn't call him out on it, because the EU is far too convenient a scapegoat to lay bare. Hollande went on to lick Merkel's feet and promptly enact the actual treaty. And he'll need it, to pass further legislation down the road to axe the public sector. Want you to bet that he won't place part or all of the blame on the stability pact when he does?
Its other key issue would be the UK press' Euro-skepticism at large. Which, I assume, is your main source of information -- directly or not.
That's a fair point, but... how do you reconcile it with requiring that Apps be signed by an Apple-controlled developer key to prohibit malware from tampering with executable code, that Apps be denied to use private APIs that can potentially change without notice, or -- perhaps even more importantly in the future -- that Apps be denied to be bloated with spyware?
Because I agree with it. I've absolutely nothing to add to it -- you're entirely correct. Printing money to extend new payments to new interest groups is indeed inflationary.:-)
The part I didn't agree with was your dismissal of "specious arguments about how debt repayment [by minting money] won't be inflationary." The case for it is not at all specious.
By the way, if you take the time to delve into Steve Keen's research and watch a couple of his videos (e.g. the one he did for Google) per my suggestion, he makes the interesting case that one way to squeeze the excess debt out of the system would be to perform a modern variation of a mass-debt cancellation. In essence, literally printing a few trillions, and handing it over to the public directly but with strings attached: the money must be used to pay down debt if you have any. It would deleverage indebted households, recapitalize banks in the process, and if the handout is large enough, the spending by non-leveraged households could very well generate enough activity to revive the economy, helping the latter two groups further.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like you forgot to tick the AC checkbox. Or if, consult a shrimp -- fast. :-)
This patent seems a bit pointless. The future lies in digital app stores.
Neither lying, nor (I hope) a complete idiot... In my case, exposing the fact outright to my lists and other sites were enough to retrieve the domain. I didn't even name the fucker who libeled me, from fear of getting a defamation suit on my end. I merely mentioned that a foul creep was out there to spew crap on me and that he ought to be ignored. At the same time I let him know I'd file complaints against him. And I contacted a (pricey, in retrospect) lawyer for advice. He ended up turning the couple of domains he owned, perhaps out of fear of being prosecuted, perhaps out of fear of seeing his name tied to a smear campaign. Whichever it is, I honestly don't care. The smear campaign stopped on the spot, retrieved the domains, and I never heard about him again.
Look at things this way: Americans are sleeping; the few that feel concerned about privacy are losing the war.
Inflight of that, I'd argue that anything that may shock people into reacting is fine.
I've been through this myself...
As a temporary action, get the word out -- literally. Build a site or two of your own on her if needed, e.g, her official site, then get in touch with her fans, list, the press, whatever, and serve them a sensationalist "writer gets libeled online by her ex" story... If they bite, the site with her name in the domain won't get to Google's first page of results with a little luck. Even if it does, the many results that mention the smear campaign on the same page will serve as a counterweight and douse it.
In my case, that was enough to get the domain. In case it's not enough for you to do the same, sue...
Sue the ex-husband for libel, defamation, whatever... but also -- and more importantly -- to recover the domain name. If it's a .com or any other US tld, it's under US jurisdiction and can be seized by a US court; period, end of story -- irrespective of where the ex-boyfriend might be based or hosted. If the MAFIAA can shut down .com domains that serve torrents, and big business can grab domains on grounds that they're too similar to their own, you can shut down or retrieve a domain. Her name is her de facto trademark. Don't just sue the ex-boyfriend, either. Also file complaints with the registrar, the hosting business, etc. They'll take pre-emptive action more often than not when contacted. Consult with an attorney specialized in this kind of stuff, and take action under his guidance.
Fair play says you. Race to the bottom, says I.
Implying that whatever else we do in our postmodern society isn't? As in political campaigns? TV shows? Movies? Newspapers? Corporate governance? Marketing practices? Advertizing? Mating patterns? And, heck, of all things, education?
Great, so now in order to get a job I have to not only be good at my job but also I have to hope that the HR person doing the online screening is good at doing theirs. (...) So in order to compete for jobs you HAVE to spam as much good stuff with your name on it as possible.
Have you been living in a cave? This has already been the case for at least a decade...
It's hardly difficult to do, you know... and whoever you kicked off of the front page can readily jump back onto it if he or she desires. Methinks it's fair play. If anything, Google should be the target of your disapproval, for clustering results more than they should be, or showing potentially embarrassing results to computers that google full names all day long. (In fact, I'm actually surprised that no US citizen has tried to sue Google over it yet.)
At any rate, the trick is to simply create a couple of profiles using your real name on high ranking sites: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, github, Timblr, a WordPress blog, whatever else you fancy. Basically, any high ranking site that will host a space for you, with your full name into the page title, the url, or (better) both.
From there, link these pages together here and there ("About myself"), populate each one with minute amounts of content, and you're very much done. These pages will then quickly hike to Google's front page whenever people search for your full name. No tricks needed other than merely being there.
The only real issue in the longer term, imho, is photo/video tagging done by friends (yours or another's) who maintain far too public a presence. I haven't used FB for years, but I don't recollect there was much you could do about those back when I did. And for better or worse, the monkeys who work in HR are far more competent at find embarrassing photos when they scratch the surface, than they are at shortlisting people for interviews.
What exactly was the problem? She was convinced that nobody would want to hire her if they could tell that someone with the same name had been a "bad girl"? This seems a bit far fetched.
TFA suggests that a third of the HR folks surveyed admitted to dismissing a candidate in light of the results that came out of researching the candidate on the web. So not so far fetched.
Yeah. It works really well, too, when that nickname (Anonymous Coward) is shared by thousands of other users.
You're saying the Ancient Greeks came up with a practical, useful, working steam engine?
I wouldn't call it practical or useful, since they weren't very good metallurgists, but it worked. It looked like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aeolipile_illustration.png
France got a small fine against the bookstore after years of prosecution at huge public cost. There's no way a professional fraud examiner would pursue such a case without regard for the public treasury. To give you an example - in America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
In other words, you're saying the professional fraud examiner has no interest whatsoever in potential future losses or in the victims of the fraud, and only goes after big fish?
I find this hard to believe. I can imagine this being the rational thing to do when the primary victim is the State itself, even in light of that not chasing small or mid-sized fish ultimately encourages more fraud in complete impunity. If so, it's no wonder that Wall Street is so screwed up.
When the victims are private citizens that go through the trouble of filing complaints, however, I cannot fathom this being the case. Especially considering how these victims' lives are typically shattered -- depression, etc.
Picture: "Sorry Sir, eat your loss and go cry a river. You're too small for us to go after whoever defrauded you."
Uh huh? Keep in mind that, well, to the west and south of those, some people came up with the steam engine, circumnavigated Africa a couple of years before the Portugese eventually did, identified that earth was round, and said pretty much everything that needed to be said about democracy and politics.
But yeah, they're all idiots... Maybe.
Then again... they did in France; and they won. And so will they in Belgium if they got their case and evidence right.
Adding to this, the Commission's members must be approved by the European Parliament.
It is a damn shame that the European people do not realise how much power the Parliament really has and therefore do not participate at its election nearly as enthusiastically as they should, participation hovering around the 30% mark and if you ask me, such detachment from the matters of the continent is borderline autistic.
+1. It is, though note that there's an interesting side effect: minority groups such as ecologists, extreme right- and left-wing groups, and regionalist or independentist groups (e.g. the UKIP and their ever-so-colorful Nigel Farage) have a lot more clout at the EP than they typically do in national parliaments. They're under-represented at the national level; they're over-represented at the EU level. For better or worse, they end up having a say on things that they otherwise wouldn't. In a sort-of weird manner, it's democracy at work.
I realise that there is no direct counterpart for the Commission in any of the member states for a direct comparison, but I liken them to the technical and unelected staff at the ministries who nowadays provide most of the legislation in most countries according to the guidelines from elected officials. You don't elect all the administrators and the various specialists and the lawyers who work at ministries. Likewise, you don't elect the Commission. It should remain an independent technical tool to provide legislative proposals that the elected officials could then shoot down if necessary.
+1 too. It would arguably be better if, in the future, the EU president were directly elected and presented his EC to the EP for approval. But it's not a given whether such a thing would be accepted anytime soon.
(see also, decades-if-not-more of kiddie rape with near-total impunity)
Might you be meaning the notorious micromanager who hid pedophiles under the rug and who is currently pope?
All very good but you forget about the Directives that can be issued by the Commission without the oversight of the Parliament. Said directives MUST be enacted by the member states. End of.
Now how is that Democracy?
Nope. ALL directives must pass through the EP.
Methinks you've no idea of what you're talking about. Only the most uninformed American, British and Continental European could possibly have anything to say about EU democracy -- and that would be if, and only if, they followed Anglo-Saxon news.
Get real. Seriously.
The parliament is elected in very much the same way as the US congress is. The EC officials are suggested by elected heads of state, and must be approved by the EU parliament.
When new directives and regulations are in the pipe, the entire process is entirely transparent. They publish pretty much everything they do in no less than 23 languages. Consider that for a moment. 23 languages. If you've got anything to say about whatever the EC and the EP are working on, you merely need to read up and participate. And you can. And some do. At all levels. It's grass-root stuff, really. And grass-root movements actually get their way every now and then (e.g. ACTA), contrary to what occurs in the US congress.
The EU's key issue, if any, is this: When local parliaments transcribe a directive into local law that relates to improving air quality, they'll readily take credit for it. But when heads of States agree to pass a tough but much needed reform as an EU treaty, directive or regulation, they'll instantly blame the EU for it.
A case in point would be France's latest president, Hollande. He campaigned saying he'd renegotiate the stability pact. Anyone with an ounce of clue knew that he was full of shit. But even his key opponent, Sarkozy, didn't call him out on it, because the EU is far too convenient a scapegoat to lay bare. Hollande went on to lick Merkel's feet and promptly enact the actual treaty. And he'll need it, to pass further legislation down the road to axe the public sector. Want you to bet that he won't place part or all of the blame on the stability pact when he does?
Its other key issue would be the UK press' Euro-skepticism at large. Which, I assume, is your main source of information -- directly or not.
Wtf are you talking about?!? Leftwing frenchies don't think that way -- the extreme rightwing frenchies do.
That's a fair point, but... how do you reconcile it with requiring that Apps be signed by an Apple-controlled developer key to prohibit malware from tampering with executable code, that Apps be denied to use private APIs that can potentially change without notice, or -- perhaps even more importantly in the future -- that Apps be denied to be bloated with spyware?
But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and any other religion or cult?
FTFY.
France has already convicted several senior officials a few years back for crimes such as embezzlement, and contribution to suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_France
Because I agree with it. I've absolutely nothing to add to it -- you're entirely correct. Printing money to extend new payments to new interest groups is indeed inflationary. :-)
The part I didn't agree with was your dismissal of "specious arguments about how debt repayment [by minting money] won't be inflationary." The case for it is not at all specious.
By the way, if you take the time to delve into Steve Keen's research and watch a couple of his videos (e.g. the one he did for Google) per my suggestion, he makes the interesting case that one way to squeeze the excess debt out of the system would be to perform a modern variation of a mass-debt cancellation. In essence, literally printing a few trillions, and handing it over to the public directly but with strings attached: the money must be used to pay down debt if you have any. It would deleverage indebted households, recapitalize banks in the process, and if the handout is large enough, the spending by non-leveraged households could very well generate enough activity to revive the economy, helping the latter two groups further.
There's a bit more to programming than bogosorting a string of zeros and ones