Slashdot Mirror
Man Tracked Down and Arrested Via WoW
kabome writes with this excerpt from a story about an alleged drug dealer who was located by law enforcement thanks to World of Warcraft:
"Roberson’s subpoena was nothing more than a politely worded request, considering the limits of his law enforcement jurisdiction and the ambiguity of the online world. 'They don’t have to respond to us, and I was under the assumption that they wouldn’t,' said Roberson. ... Blizzard did more than cooperate. It gave Roberson everything he needed to track down Hightower, including his IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server. From there it was a simple matter to zero in on the suspect's location."
My son spent the last two weeks pleading for me to pay for an account on club penguin for him. Of course he won in the end. Now he is getting up early so he can log on through is mothers PC before we are awake...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The majority of people in this country are against gay marriage as well: does this mean that gay marriage should be illegal?
I don't personally care if it is legal or not. I'll vote to let them get married, because I have no reason to stop them, but I don't care if they can't. But this is the thing about democracy: if the gays want to change the law, they have to convince the rest of the country (enough of them) that it is a good idea. If they can't, they won't be able to change the law. It really is that simple.
All you have to do is look at segregation, Japanese internment camps, and the Salem Witch Trials to realize that majority rule is not always the right way
People like to bring up the example of segregation, but by the time segregation was overturned, the majority of the country was actually opposed to it. I am not going to say that bad things don't happen in democracy, but they happen in every other type of government too, usually worse. We are living in a society with a bunch of other people, and living with other people is never easy.
In the words of Alexander Hamilton - the masses are asses. Irrational fears often overcome rational deduction.
Of course he felt that way: the masses disagreed with him. It is the old logical fallacy of, "those who disagree with me are wrong." That doesn't mean a minority can rule any more competently than the majority: for an example of this look at Iran right now.
There is a reason that the United States is a Republic and not a pure democracy.
It is, but that does little more than slow down the speed of the implementation of the public's will. If the public feels strongly about an issue, and their representatives go against their will, the representative will be gone quickly. The best example of that recently is perhaps Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Qxe4
they are not our enemies, they do the job we give them.
Really... You give them the job of tazering a 16 year old boy 19 times, for not standing up when ordered by police, because he is too busy screaming that his back is broken... source
And you give them the job of dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair when he comes to the police station to ask for help... source
And you give them the job of murdering tens of thousands of innocent people whos only crime was living in the same apartment complex as as drug user or dealer. source
And you give them the job of destroying peoples laptops for having the audacity of knowing what the law says.. source, hell just scroll up to the TSA article on slashdot...
You sir are a bad horrible person, and represent a major problem in our country.
In Nazi Germany suicide was punished by death.
Exactly. I was once dragged out of a club by two giant bouncers, fully patted down and insulted by seven cops, because some new idiot bouncer who was a colleague of a bouncer friend of mine saw us exchange little pieces of paper (drink coupons) which he thought were drugs!
One cop even, after he told be to turn my back pockets inside-out (not possible with jeans), himself grabbed in there, and came out with a small bag of drugs! The pockets were empty when I had the hands inside, about 5 seconds earlier!! So he must have had it in his hand when doing this!!
If it weren’t for all the bouncers being embarrassed because of their colleague fucking up, them being my friends, and them getting very angry because of this obvious dick move of that cop, basically chasing them out of the venue, I would perhaps now sit in jail for dealing drugs and/or have my life ruined!
Needless to say, the bouncers were not very friendly to that new guy afterwards. ;)
We later got a official, written excuse from the police headquarter. It was the Cologne police by the way. (Yeah Google, index this!) Cops here basically behave like criminals with a badge (except from some lone exceptions). I would not be surprised, if their reason for the theater was, that they smelled a competition to them controlling the drug market...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Have you ever had to blow in a breathalyzer for picking up trash? Have you ever spent a night in jail when someone else attacked you? Have you ever had to fly 3,000 miles to defend yourself because some cop lied on a citation in hopes you wouldn't show? Have you ever been help up to a wall and searched for retrieving your own bicycle in a public space?
Not all police are my enemies, but some go out of their way to make themselves exactly that.
Laws are not simple reflections of the feelings of the public majority. Drugs are not illegal because people want them to be, and changing the law is not as simple as getting majority public support.