Some "asian" stereotypes (and I use the term in the way that is used in the US, mainly referring to folks whose ethnic origins are in eastern, north-eastern, or south-eastern asian, but not including South Asians, as is the case in other English-predominant countries) are strangely objected to in modern society. The one that always gets me is that "asians are cunning" or "asians are sly". I, personally, would love to be considered cunning or sly. I've even heard of folks objecting to the stereotype that "asians" are intelligent and diligent workers.

I've come to conclude that, at least in much of US popular culture, people feel they need a certain amount of oppression to publicly object to, in order to feel a real part of the "success in the face of hardship" ethos that the "American Dream" represents.

And that people are weird, regardless of where they come from or what they look like.

You're essentially right. As far as I can tell, this ruling states that is okay to sign a treaty that restores the copyright in an official manner for both US works and works from *one specific country* that were *already copyrighted under the Berne Convention* and had not had their terms expire.

Its got nothing to do with much else. The article summaries are full of whargarbl and devoid of meaningful analysis.

In reading the actual text of the decision, it looks like the only works with restored copyrights were not those that were expired, but basically those foreign works works (from one specific country) that were not under explicit US copyright protection due to technicalities, but would have been under the Berne Convention anyway.

In other words, the treaty that specified the restoration basically set the record straight in terms of US copyright what was already copyrighted due to the Berne Convention.

Sorry, this is Slashdot, I forgot. "Zomg RIAAMPAAEVVILLLL!#@!(#!"

Have a 401k or any investment vehicle that has DJIA or S&P400 indexes in it? Then you do, as well.

I have no problem with this ruling, seeing as the agency concerned has no evidence to show that what happened with the problematic rig is likely to happen, with any sort of likelihood, on any other rig.

... engineers set in their ways find new tool not all that useful for themselves.

Later, we explain why 8-core CPUs are stupid because you can't use them as protection against ballistas.

Fuck yeah joe, I mean, Wordstar.

(I used "joe" instead of vi, emacs, or pico for years and years on Linux)