I don't have a facebook account, mainly because I neither want a potential employer judging me based on it, nor demanding my login. I also don't wish to have my information sold to whoever facebook is making deals with that week, as they change privacy policies.

So start the 5 years when the product is first sold retail, and prohibit them from charging for trial versions of the product.

The folks from Rumblefish are trying to do damage control - which at this point, any reasonable company would do.

It is possible that the "reviews" were done by an automated system on their side, which would be bad.

It is also possible that the "reviews" were done by a lazy human on their side who if there is any justice in the world, is in the process of being fired.

If the former case is true, it was a bad business model by the company which is now coming back to bite them.

If the latter case is true, then the company representatives posting here may just be decent people trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Either way, I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt. If the bogus infringement notices continue after this, we can break out the pitchforks and torches - otherwise it can be counted as a lesson learned.

By all means, give him a fair trial.

Then execute him.

...and his business associates, friends, family, and dog.

Unless you happen to be one of the 70 Afghan civilians nearby when it happened.

Oops. My mistake.

For that day, how about this instead:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/nigeria/articles/20111201.aspx

Or this:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20111201.aspx

Or this:

http://www.criticalthreats.org/gulf-aden-security-review/gulf-aden-security-review-december-1-2011

That took an extra 5 minutes of searching - I can likely find a dozen more if I bother to look.

Only 18 people? Ah, well that's all right then. Funny thing - if someone kills 18 people and they're not a terrorist, they get called a mass-murderer. ...and does it really matter where they are committing the attacks? Its OK because it isn't happening here?

Yep. You probably missed the part at the bottom where it mentions the other recent suicide bombings by the same group at a secondary school, university and hospital.

So terrorist attacks are OK if they don't -actually- manage to kill anyone?

...on the 22nd of July. Five months ago.

The most recent incident of Islamic terrorism was today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8931171/Suicide-bomb-attack-on-Afghan-Nato-base.html

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lebanese-media-idf-bombed-espionage-devices-uncovered-by-hezbollah-1.399257

...and yesterday:

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/343369/bomb-gunmen-kill-18-iraq-marks-us-withdrawal

...and the day before:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/somali-soldiers-killed-suicide-bomb-attack-15054747

...and the day before that:

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=247407

There were probably more, but that was just a cursory search. I could go back further - but the point is the word "common" in my statement. By far the vast majority of attacks are committed by islamic terrorists. Do other terrorists exist? Sure. ...but they're not committing attacks every day.

While there is a certain amount of (justified) paranoia that the government would use digitizing records as an opportunity to engage in revisionist history, I have to say that despite a desire to do so, the odds are against the government being able to pull it off.

In order for something like 1984's Ministry of Truth to function, the government would have to be far, far more competent and efficient than is ever to be likely.

As am I - except I have never had one, and have no plans to change that.

You assume that the terrorists are not willing to kill half the planet to accomplish their goals, even if half their own people die in the process. They've already proven repeatedly that they're willing to sacrifice their own lives and those of their own people to commit terrorist acts.

If half the world population were to die off (in equal percentages everywhere), countries like the US, UK and Germany would be vastly more affected in terms of productivity, influence, and ability to project military power than countries like Afghanistan, Yemen or Pakistan.

The actual deaths would likely vary somewhat from one country to another - but industrialized nations would still be the most affected, and the terrorists could easily see the deaths of half their own people as an acceptable cost.

Islamic terrorists are by far the most common sort in the modern world, and almost uniformly use their religion as the justification for their acts (as opposed to terrorists who happen to be of other faiths, who do so rarely). They also have a history of being willing to sacrifice their own lives to accomplish their goals. Even if they believed that they would themselves die in the process, and that muslims would be killed in equal percentages to westerners, they would still likely use it, on the (correct) theory that 50% casualties would be far more damaging to industrialized nations than to their own.

All that said, it really doesn't matter what sort of terrorists get a contagious, airborne bioweapon if they are willing to use it.

This sort of thing is why I've been saying for the last few years that I am far more concerned about terrorists with bioweapons than terrorists with nukes. The bioweapons are cheaper and easier to make, the raw materials easier to obtain, and the consequences of use potentially far more severe.

Once they've sold their knowledge, they can be identified, sometimes.

Keeping the knowledge from spreading isn't possible - eventually it will become commonplace. The challenge is making the raw materials and weapons grade nuclear material out of the hands of those who would misuse it.

A similar problem exists with bioweapons - eventually the knowledge to make them will become commonly available. The differences there are that raw materials for bioweapons are far easier to obtain, the equipment needed is far less expensive than for nukes, and the potential damage of bioweapons is far worse.

The problem is that the government is made up of people who want to be re-elected - and what they have learned is the best way to do that is to pander to the special interests that finance them, and also to the electorate with handouts, subsidies, grants, kickbacks, loans, credits, bailouts, loans, etc.

All of those things cost money - and the people who write and pass the laws that create them have for decades done so without any consideration for how much they cost. Every year, the government just borrows more money to cover the additional spending. This is not a Republican problem or a Democrat problem - both major parties are equally guilty - they just want to spend the money on different things.

I'm very conservative. Despite that, I'll agree taxes probably need to go up at this point - BUT... with a couple of caveats:

1) Since the federal government has proved that it is incapable of reining in its spending, increased taxes by itself is not a solution - without some sort of enforced fiscal responsibility, they would just treat increased revenue as a license to increase spending. To that end, a balanced budget amendment is an immediate requirement. If necessary, peg spending to income, and pro-rate all budget items - but it has to be done.

2) The income tax needs to be replaced with a flat, federal sales tax that exempts food and clothing below a set dollar amount that is indexed to inflation. This accomplishes several things. First, it closes all the tax loopholes that the ultra-rich use to pay lower tax rates than the middle class. Money does them no good unless they spend it, and when they spend it, they pay taxes. Second, it abolishes corporate income taxes (which are just taxes on the customers of those corporations by proxy, since the corporations simply pass the costs of those taxes on to the consumer). Third, it gives private citizens at all income levels a stake in paying for the services and monies provided by the federal government. Currently almost half the population pays no federal income tax. As a result, they often have no concern for the costs of benefit programs. This change would mean that the "poor" while not taxed on basic necessities, would be paying some tax - and that tax would increase as federal spending increases. "Want national healthcare? No problem. Your taxes will go up X amount next year to pay for it."

If this is part of the stimulus, I wonder if the negative 1100 jobs counts toward the total jobs created by all our money. It would be kind of funny and kind of sad if we spent a trillion dollars to create jobs and the total job creation from that spending ended up being negative.

If I lived in a country that had such a law, the first thing I would do is ensure my children never had internet access - since as their parent, I am financially liable for their behavior.

I would also turn off the wireless on any internet-connected devices and go hard-wired only.

There are certainly other measures one could take to protect oneself from inadvertently becoming a victim of this sort of law - but those are a couple of basic ones.

I wonder if the people who voted for the law will like the consequences of people trying to protect themselves from it.