Sealed means that the document is not released to the public. All court documents are ordinarily released to the public, as a matter of public policy. But secrets that you don't want revealed can be placed under seal, in which case they are either kept out of the public record completely, or redacted.
Both sides (plaintiff and defendant) and the judge in any suit ordinarily see the sealed documents. They're just not allowed to talk publically about what's in them, and the public doesn't get to see them.
For REALLY sensitive information, you can get a protective order, so that only certain people on one side are allowed to see the information - a protective order might allow an attorney to see the document, but not the attorney's client. In a case where one company sued a competitor for industrial espionage, for example, a company would not want to disclose to its competitors the information it's trying to keep secret. Yet it can't sue without revealing that information.
In this case, yes, the plaintiff does have to prove they have the right to sue. And they wanted to keep that document under seal - they didn't want the public to see it. Of course, the defendant gets to see it (for the reasons you outline). Justice requires that you be informed of the nature of the charges against you.
All schools are set to accept those who meet very specific requirements. School entrance requirements are very heavily a product of their time; what was considered important once upon a time, simply isn't anymore oftentimes.
Even aside from the Latin and Greek, and the historical emphasis on Classics - the math section's emphasis on complex rote arithmetic by hand has been archaic for decades. Calculators mean it has been a very long time since anyone had to manually divide by.007253, or use logarithms as a shortcut for multiplication/division.
Look at what is commonly tested now: English and Math. At some point in the future, it seems quite likely to me that some element of computer use testing will be added. Far enough in the future, computer literacy will probably be a core skill, required knowledge by just about anybody. Many people today would fail any such test; let alone 50 years ago.
Sure, pollution is directly proportional to population size. I'm sorry, but so what? We shouldn't take steps to minimize the impact of our actions because it's difficult, or because there's a large impact? A large population means there's going to be inherently more pollution than a much smaller one, but that isn't the proper comparison. The proper comparison is between the large population and the environmental interactions we have now, and alternative ways that this large population could interact with its environment.
Mod parent up. People dont' realize just how tilted things were before the introduction of modern banking. There's a reason you still find caches of money that someone's great-grandmother stashed because they didn't trust the banks. They had good reason not to trust the banks!
Remember all the talk about how the most recent crisis has been - if you look at the numbers - just as bad as the Great Depression? Why haven't you seen the side effects that the Great Depression had? Because of modern inventions like unemployment insurance, and bank account balances being insured.
You do not, and never did, have the right to use your property as you see fit with 100% zero restrictions of any kind. Anything you own is subject to restriction, and always has been. You're not allowed, for example, to run people over with your car. You're not allowed to point laser pointers at planes flying overhead. You're not even allowed to crank the volume on your sound system up to 11 at 2 in the morning.
In the case of your computers and hard drives, you most certainly do not have the inalienable right to download, store, and copy any information you please whatsoever; you have no right to use it to issue death threats, or to store embarrasing videos of other people that you're blackmailing them with.
And in the specific case at issue, just because you claim to have an inalienable right to download pirated material, doesn't make it so. The vast majority of the US population feels that copyright is a good idea (even if many of us do feel it is skewed), and that is reflected in the Constitution and in the copyright laws. If you disagree, you're free to argue that they should be abolished. But simply talking about your (alleged) rights isn't an argument. You have to explain why what you propose to do isn't a violation of anyone else's rights.
You say Crytek has the right to use their property to do as they please. This is an implicit acknowledgement that the code is their property. But then you say that if you don't like what they're doing with it, you have to right to take it.
Yes it does. It's apparently rarely used, but it's called adverse inference. If you improperly destroy evidence that's relevant to a court case you're involved in, and you do it in such a way that it convinces the court you specifically did it to affect the outcome of that particular case, they absolutely can.
Is it 100% fair? No, but the idea is the hardship caused is the fault of the person who tried to cheat. The rules say you have to turn over evidence when the court comes knocking. (The 5th amendment only protects against testimony, not evidence. The state can compel you to let them look at evidence.)
Oh, please. Don't you think you're missing the big picture a bit perhaps? They have an informant willing to wear a wire. How much do you want to bet this informant is willing to testify as to the other illegal things that were going on (the alleged insider trading)? How many hours of tape do you think they have? How many documents did this informant pass to them?
If this small snippet was all they have, I might be inclined to agree that it stinks, but by itself isn't enough to convict. But that's why this isn't all they have. Given what's in this article, I presume the feds have more evidence than just the snippet in the summary. They have a lot of allegations of specific wrongdoing. The article doesn't disclose what evidence the feds say they have, but you can't put things in an indictment without at least SOME evidence to back it up.
You're posting on Slashdot, and you actually think asking people not to reply telling you the giant hole in your plan will work?
Re:Didn't know there was a Comic Code
on
Comics Code Dead
·
· Score: 1
The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did not apply to movies. The decision was unanimous. This decision directly led to the creation of the Movie Code in question, and another ruling in the 50's where the Supreme Court overruled itself undermined the old system and eventually led to the creation of the rating system we have today.
Yes, the Supreme Court really did unanimously declare that movies were "just a business" (as if the publication of books were somehow not a business) and remark that the theater and the circus was equally devoid of protection. It then went on to say that such things "could be used for evil" - just another way of saying they could convey ideas people might find objectionable (the purview of the First Amendment).
So you're more or less correct. This is the kind of thing that happens when you ignore the Constitution; it was just that the ones doing the ignoring were the Supreme Court.
1).9999... is clearly not greater than 1.000.... Therefore 1.000... -.999... is clearly non-negative
2) What IS.999...? Well, it's greater than.9, and it's also greater than.99, and it's also greater than.999. More generally, for any finite sequence of nines S9 after the decimal,.999... is strictly greater than S9.
3) If a > b, then c-b > c-a. Thus, given 2), for ANY finite sequence of nines S9, we see that 1.0 - S9 > 1.0 -.999...
4) What do we know about 1.0 - S9? Well, as the number of 9's after the decimal approaches infinity, S9 converges to 1. This means that 1.0 - S9 converges to 0. Among other things, one of the things that this means is that given any positive number epsilon, no matter how small it is, we can force 1.0 - S9 to be smaller than epsilon.
5) By 3) and 4), we conclude that 1.0 -.999... is less than ANY positive real number. By 1), we conclude 1.0 -.999... is nonnegative. Therefore, 1.0 -.999... is equal to zero -- another way of saying.999... is equal to 1.
"As designed?" We're clearly dicussing an exploit. Nobody designs slot machines and deliberately inserts autowin codes. He used the device "as is" in a way that clearly violated the anticipated design of the machine.
What makes it a forgery is this: The machine claimed he won. He did, in fact, not win. He forced the machine to incorrectly indicate that the casino owed him money. This is not exactly a "written" instrument, but it's close enough: The machine's "you have won!" display functions equivalently to a document purporting to entitle him to a large amount of cash. But it was not produced as a result of a legitimate game of chance, which is what the machine is supposed to do. Instead it was produced as a result of deliberately triggering a malfunction, which was then misrepresented as legitimate.
When he claimed the jackpot, he presented the printout, the winning screen on the slot machine, whatever as proof that he had won the game of chance. Playing the slots at the casino is effectively entering into a contract with the casino: Play this game of chance according to the rules, and if you win, we will pay you according to the reward schedule. He didn't play according to the rules, instead, he misused casino property to made it appear as if he had. As I see it, that definitely falls under 'the fraudulent making and alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right.'
As you say, the only question is whether exploiting this flaw is illegal. And I think it has to be illegal. This is very similar to the classic bar code alteration scam (wherein the crook goes to a store, swaps an expensive item's barcode for one that costs a lot less, then pays "normally" and hopes the cashier doesn't notice). The fraud, in this case, isn't exploiting the software error by itself, but rather, a combination of exploiting the error and claiming it's a legitimate win in order to induce the casino to give the man money he's not entitled to. He cheated at slots, by deliberately forging and then misrepresenting (as legit) the results of his play. This is ultimately no different than altering a lottery ticket or playing poker with a few aces up your sleeve.
That is the key fact that makes this a crime. If someone happened to be playing the machine, then unknowingly triggered this error, they might forfeit the (erroneous) winnings - which would suck - but they wouldn't be on the hook criminally. But this man allegedly knew the details of the bug, then deliberately set out to trigger it as much as possible.
I'm sorry, but specifically which part of the War on Drugs are you referring to? While there are parts of the War on Drugs I disagree with, broadly I would argue it's legally permissible.
If you agree that the FDA is constitutional, then the government clearly must have the power to regulate harmful substances. Illegal drugs are illegal because they've been judged to be harmful. (Some, like marijuana, arguably incorrectly - doesn't matter; there's a difference between overstepping your authority, and making a mistake.) I believe the FDA is a good thing, that it's something the government should be in the business of doing, so therefore I believe it has the authority to regulate abusable drugs.
Given that the government has this power, and given that it has chosen to exercise it by banning certain substances... How is the War on Drugs an abuse of the Commerce Clause? It is essentially tantamount to an enormous anti-smuggling operation, and it clearly involves interstate and foreign commerce. That seems to me to be clearly within the purview of the Commerce Clause.
Furthermore, how can you possibly call the score 2-0 for the hackers? Sony closed the first hole! If the hackers score a point when they poke a hole in Sony's defenses, shouldn't Sony score for closing said hole? And shouldn't Sony ALSO score points for preventing the holes from being found in the first place? A game where you can only ever tie your opponent is no fun, after all. Although I suppose that would be an interesting metaphor for the war they're waging now; you can never win, all you can hope to do is not lose.
There are simply too many legitimate uses for cell phones in cars for a blanket ban to be a good idea. Jamming devices in people's cars would prevent even calls to 911. People use cell phones to call 911 all the time, in between traffic accidents, and people witnessing crimes. Both situations are extremely time-critical: reporting them immediately may mean the difference between life and death. I believe there have been studies showing an improved response time to incidents, and a corresponding drop in crime rates and accident fatalities, due to cell phones.
But even aside from this, cell phones are simply too useful a tool. Are you lost? Is your car having trouble? Does someone need to reach you because your house is on fire? Merely because a tool can be abused does not mean the proper response is to completely ban the tool. Look at drunken driving. Drunken driving fatalities have been dramatically reduced in the past ten years, and alcohol wasn't banned. In fact, even though similar technology to what's proposed in the article already exists for alcohol (ignition locks hooked up to a breathalyzer), we have not mandated these be installed in every vehicle. In fact, I believe there have been cases where people convicted of drunken driving have successfully fought to get the ignition lock removed because it was not working properly and prevented them from going to work.
Instead, after someone gets in trouble for drunken driving, the penalties they face are significantly enhanced compared to the same offense committed while sober. Driving priviliges are revoked more readily. Ignition lock technology can be installed after the specific driver has demonstrated that a problem exists. I don't deny talking on the phone while driving can be the cause of much mayhem, but surely jamming devices are not the answer of first resort.
I'm sorry, but that's wishful thinking at best. Pirate groups are in heavy competition with one another to make sure they get the highest number of downloads. They place a high priority on getting pre-release leaks (which would be actionable even if copyright was only one day) and on high-quality same-day rips of commercial releases. And studies have shown that the most pirated material is the most popular and recent material.
No matter how short the copyright term is, this material will always be infringing. Even if the term of copyright was only two months, sites like The Pirate Bay and Rapidshare* would still be loaded with media under copyright.
(* -- You say Rapidshare is legal? So do I; but don't even try to tell me the content industry doesn't want this law aimed at Rapidshare and its ilk.)
How about the fact that it is not illegal to let a minor into an R-rated movie? Many people think it is, but in fact it is not. If a movie theatre lets someone under 17 into an R-rated movie, nobody is fined or imprisoned. Someone might get fired, but getting fired is a far cry from being subject to prosecution. Instead, the theatre chains all have agreed to voluntarily impose policies enforcing the ratings. Note that exactly the same is true of all the major game retailer - and modern game consoles come with parental controls, which when enabled won't allow games of certain ratings to be played.
This law would create an entirely new kind of legal trouble just for violent video games that doesn't exist for any other medium. In my book, that's reason enough to oppose it.
You refuse to stock the game. If no one wanted the game anyway, you've already failed, right? So you plan on the soldiers wanting the game. Then you wait for the soldiers to complain that they can't buy the game on-base. After which you issue a big press release announcing that the soldiers requested - nay, demanded - that the game be put back into stores, so you're bowing to their wishes.
This is a win for you, because most of the criticism comes from people outraged on behalf of the soldiers. But now you can point out that the soldiers FORCED you to make the game available to them, so obviously it must not be a problem.
Valve will eventually go broke, for a sufficiently distant value of "eventually". Much bigger and older firms have gone under; in their heyday, talk of such companies as Woolworth's going under were met with similar scoffing.
Right now, Valve may have the golden touch with their games. Eventually that will pass. The core team that's so excellent will either move on, or retire, or be forced out. The new blood won't be as good. They'll still be good, for awhile, but eventually they'll hit a slump. Even then they won't die right away, people will still buy their stuff for awhile after it starts sucking. But eventually they won't be able to go back to their wells anymore, they will have poisoned them so heavily. (Star Trek, for example, was fairly effectively run into the ground to the point they had to reboot the whole franchise.)
Similarly, Steam may be awesome now. In time, something better will come along. Valve's management will (sooner or later) push to "monetize" Steam heavily, and degrade its usability significantly. Or they will decide that they're a game company, and Steam supports the competition, so they'll spin it off, and without Valve, Steam becomes just another content delivery service. Or Steam will simply eventually become too big and heavy to easily make changes to it, and it will coast along on its inertia, until it gets passed by.
The question is how far into the future this will be. If it is eight decades from now, well, by that time, only archivists and historians will probably care about (say) the original Half-Life. And they will have a legitimate beef, but they also will be few in number, and thus, this is a small problem. If Valve disintegrates five years from now, then it's a big problem, because millions of people will have Steam accounts that disappear.
And make no mistake: If Steam collapses because Valve goes under, there won't be anyone left to sue. Instead, people who owned games via Steam will be creditors, along with the banks and the mortgage holders, etc. in the bankruptcy liquidation. Unfortunately, bankruptcy law puts the general public at the end of the line in such situations. So most likely, your games will simply disappear forever; you get in line for your share of the refund money, and by the time the line rolls down to you, there isn't any left. (Otherwise they wouldn't be broke.)
Yes, we care about the hookers. Not because they're hookers, but because when an Attorney General is involved with an organized ring of anything illegal, then he's a hypocrite and has huge conflict of interest problems. And when a hypocrite gets to make the rules, he isn't affected by them - so he has no motivation to make sure they're just and practicable. He got caught by a money laundering law that he had passed so he could catch other people doing the same thing. He demanded very high standards from everybody else, it's why he was elected Governor in the first place. So now he gets to pay the piper.
You honestly don't see a problem with the Attorney General of a state being involved with a madam? Because it was going on while he was the Attorney General - the person in charge of prosecutions across the state. The conflict of interest posed by a state's top prosecutor being involved in an organized criminal enterprise is simply unacceptable, even if you think that the particular crime in question ought not be a crime at all. Was Spitzer protecting his call girls from prosecution while prosecuting others? What would have happened if the criminal enterprise in question started to blackmail Spitzer? Things can go seriously south in all kinds of unpleasant ways from here. Supposing the outfit he got the call girls from hired thugs to shake people down. How is Spitzer supposed to put a stop to that?
It would mean the government lacked the authority to regulate almost ANY kind of activity. There's a meme on Slashdot that people ought to be able to do anything they want with property they own, that pops up in copyright stories. This guy has essentially made the same argument, only in a different context. They're both mistaken for the same reason.
The government puts all kinds of restrictions on what people can do with property they own, most of which aren't controvertial at all. There are a handful of civilian-legal miniguns in the US (which predate the ban passed in the '80's). Nobody is going to argue that the Fifth Amendment prevents the government from "taking" your right to use that minigun to shoot up a mall, or rob a bank. A few years ago, someone found out how to make devices that could manipulate traffic signals by impersonating emergency vehicles; they were banned. Was that an unconstitutional "taking" of people's rights to be assholes in traffic?
As for Net Neutrality, the article mentions at the end a regulatory regime - Title II - that has antidicrimination clauses in it. His argument is that applying them to the Internet is an unconstitutional taking - but that would mean the already-existing industries under Title II regulation could argue the same for themselves. That's the telecommunications industry.
And as far as I know, it's already the law that the phone companies can't play these kind of games. Businesses can't pay the phone company to give themselves better-quality connections to customers (or worse, pay the phone company to give rivals lousy ones). But this lawyer's argument seems to imply that this regulation is unconstitutional whenever applied, to any industry. That sounds very similar to "freedom of contract" interpretations of the Constitution from the early 1900's to 1937 under which the Supreme Court struck down child labor laws and limits on the number of hours per work week. That idea was rejected seventy years ago.
If you are the defendant, in a criminal trial, then the prosecution cannot force you to testify (because of the 5th). However, if you choose to testify in your own defense, then the prosecution is allowed to cross-examine you; you are considered to have waived your right by voluntarily taking the stand.
If you take the fifth amendment when the prosecutor cross-examines you, I'm not sure what happens; either a mistrial, or your entire testimony is stricken from the record (and the jury told to disregard everything you said). Or maybe contempt of court. But once you give evidence in the case, you have to be cross-examined by the prosecutor. (This is what tanked Hans Reiser's defense; he fell apart under cross-examination.)
It's not quite that simple. The PS3 demonstrated quite effectively that there's a certain price point that causes sticker shock, and drives away customers. If they didn't subsidize the initial price of the console with expected future profits from game sales, they'd have to either charge a higher price, or make a weaker system. Either choice would lower the sales of the platform, and nobody makes games for consoles that haven't sold a ton of units.
The industry is basically dependent on this gimmick. Even though it would work out about the same amount of money if the games were cheaper, but the system more expensive up front - that would drive down total sales, and thus, the console manufacturer that tried it would probably lose in the marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
Sealed means that the document is not released to the public. All court documents are ordinarily released to the public, as a matter of public policy. But secrets that you don't want revealed can be placed under seal, in which case they are either kept out of the public record completely, or redacted.
Both sides (plaintiff and defendant) and the judge in any suit ordinarily see the sealed documents. They're just not allowed to talk publically about what's in them, and the public doesn't get to see them.
For REALLY sensitive information, you can get a protective order, so that only certain people on one side are allowed to see the information - a protective order might allow an attorney to see the document, but not the attorney's client. In a case where one company sued a competitor for industrial espionage, for example, a company would not want to disclose to its competitors the information it's trying to keep secret. Yet it can't sue without revealing that information.
In this case, yes, the plaintiff does have to prove they have the right to sue. And they wanted to keep that document under seal - they didn't want the public to see it. Of course, the defendant gets to see it (for the reasons you outline). Justice requires that you be informed of the nature of the charges against you.
All schools are set to accept those who meet very specific requirements. School entrance requirements are very heavily a product of their time; what was considered important once upon a time, simply isn't anymore oftentimes.
.007253, or use logarithms as a shortcut for multiplication/division.
Even aside from the Latin and Greek, and the historical emphasis on Classics - the math section's emphasis on complex rote arithmetic by hand has been archaic for decades. Calculators mean it has been a very long time since anyone had to manually divide by
Look at what is commonly tested now: English and Math. At some point in the future, it seems quite likely to me that some element of computer use testing will be added. Far enough in the future, computer literacy will probably be a core skill, required knowledge by just about anybody. Many people today would fail any such test; let alone 50 years ago.
Sure, pollution is directly proportional to population size. I'm sorry, but so what? We shouldn't take steps to minimize the impact of our actions because it's difficult, or because there's a large impact? A large population means there's going to be inherently more pollution than a much smaller one, but that isn't the proper comparison. The proper comparison is between the large population and the environmental interactions we have now, and alternative ways that this large population could interact with its environment.
So you're of the opinion that a Star Wars game wasn't massively hyped? I don't think those words mean what you think they mean ...
Mod parent up. People dont' realize just how tilted things were before the introduction of modern banking. There's a reason you still find caches of money that someone's great-grandmother stashed because they didn't trust the banks. They had good reason not to trust the banks!
Remember all the talk about how the most recent crisis has been - if you look at the numbers - just as bad as the Great Depression? Why haven't you seen the side effects that the Great Depression had? Because of modern inventions like unemployment insurance, and bank account balances being insured.
You do not, and never did, have the right to use your property as you see fit with 100% zero restrictions of any kind. Anything you own is subject to restriction, and always has been. You're not allowed, for example, to run people over with your car. You're not allowed to point laser pointers at planes flying overhead. You're not even allowed to crank the volume on your sound system up to 11 at 2 in the morning.
In the case of your computers and hard drives, you most certainly do not have the inalienable right to download, store, and copy any information you please whatsoever; you have no right to use it to issue death threats, or to store embarrasing videos of other people that you're blackmailing them with.
And in the specific case at issue, just because you claim to have an inalienable right to download pirated material, doesn't make it so. The vast majority of the US population feels that copyright is a good idea (even if many of us do feel it is skewed), and that is reflected in the Constitution and in the copyright laws. If you disagree, you're free to argue that they should be abolished. But simply talking about your (alleged) rights isn't an argument. You have to explain why what you propose to do isn't a violation of anyone else's rights.
You say Crytek has the right to use their property to do as they please. This is an implicit acknowledgement that the code is their property. But then you say that if you don't like what they're doing with it, you have to right to take it.
Yes it does. It's apparently rarely used, but it's called adverse inference. If you improperly destroy evidence that's relevant to a court case you're involved in, and you do it in such a way that it convinces the court you specifically did it to affect the outcome of that particular case, they absolutely can.
Is it 100% fair? No, but the idea is the hardship caused is the fault of the person who tried to cheat. The rules say you have to turn over evidence when the court comes knocking. (The 5th amendment only protects against testimony, not evidence. The state can compel you to let them look at evidence.)
Oh, please. Don't you think you're missing the big picture a bit perhaps? They have an informant willing to wear a wire. How much do you want to bet this informant is willing to testify as to the other illegal things that were going on (the alleged insider trading)? How many hours of tape do you think they have? How many documents did this informant pass to them?
If this small snippet was all they have, I might be inclined to agree that it stinks, but by itself isn't enough to convict. But that's why this isn't all they have. Given what's in this article, I presume the feds have more evidence than just the snippet in the summary. They have a lot of allegations of specific wrongdoing. The article doesn't disclose what evidence the feds say they have, but you can't put things in an indictment without at least SOME evidence to back it up.
You're posting on Slashdot, and you actually think asking people not to reply telling you the giant hole in your plan will work?
The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did not apply to movies. The decision was unanimous. This decision directly led to the creation of the Movie Code in question, and another ruling in the 50's where the Supreme Court overruled itself undermined the old system and eventually led to the creation of the rating system we have today.
Yes, the Supreme Court really did unanimously declare that movies were "just a business" (as if the publication of books were somehow not a business) and remark that the theater and the circus was equally devoid of protection. It then went on to say that such things "could be used for evil" - just another way of saying they could convey ideas people might find objectionable (the purview of the First Amendment).
So you're more or less correct. This is the kind of thing that happens when you ignore the Constitution; it was just that the ones doing the ignoring were the Supreme Court.
Alright, see if you find this proof convincing.
.9999... is clearly not greater than 1.000.... Therefore 1.000... - .999... is clearly non-negative
.999...? Well, it's greater than .9, and it's also greater than .99, and it's also greater than .999. More generally, for any finite sequence of nines S9 after the decimal, .999... is strictly greater than S9.
.999...
.999... is less than ANY positive real number. By 1), we conclude 1.0 - .999... is nonnegative. Therefore, 1.0 - .999... is equal to zero -- another way of saying .999... is equal to 1.
1)
2) What IS
3) If a > b, then c-b > c-a. Thus, given 2), for ANY finite sequence of nines S9, we see that 1.0 - S9 > 1.0 -
4) What do we know about 1.0 - S9? Well, as the number of 9's after the decimal approaches infinity, S9 converges to 1. This means that 1.0 - S9 converges to 0. Among other things, one of the things that this means is that given any positive number epsilon, no matter how small it is, we can force 1.0 - S9 to be smaller than epsilon.
5) By 3) and 4), we conclude that 1.0 -
"As designed?" We're clearly dicussing an exploit. Nobody designs slot machines and deliberately inserts autowin codes. He used the device "as is" in a way that clearly violated the anticipated design of the machine.
What makes it a forgery is this: The machine claimed he won. He did, in fact, not win. He forced the machine to incorrectly indicate that the casino owed him money. This is not exactly a "written" instrument, but it's close enough: The machine's "you have won!" display functions equivalently to a document purporting to entitle him to a large amount of cash. But it was not produced as a result of a legitimate game of chance, which is what the machine is supposed to do. Instead it was produced as a result of deliberately triggering a malfunction, which was then misrepresented as legitimate.
When he claimed the jackpot, he presented the printout, the winning screen on the slot machine, whatever as proof that he had won the game of chance. Playing the slots at the casino is effectively entering into a contract with the casino: Play this game of chance according to the rules, and if you win, we will pay you according to the reward schedule. He didn't play according to the rules, instead, he misused casino property to made it appear as if he had. As I see it, that definitely falls under 'the fraudulent making and alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right.'
As you say, the only question is whether exploiting this flaw is illegal. And I think it has to be illegal. This is very similar to the classic bar code alteration scam (wherein the crook goes to a store, swaps an expensive item's barcode for one that costs a lot less, then pays "normally" and hopes the cashier doesn't notice). The fraud, in this case, isn't exploiting the software error by itself, but rather, a combination of exploiting the error and claiming it's a legitimate win in order to induce the casino to give the man money he's not entitled to. He cheated at slots, by deliberately forging and then misrepresenting (as legit) the results of his play. This is ultimately no different than altering a lottery ticket or playing poker with a few aces up your sleeve.
That is the key fact that makes this a crime. If someone happened to be playing the machine, then unknowingly triggered this error, they might forfeit the (erroneous) winnings - which would suck - but they wouldn't be on the hook criminally. But this man allegedly knew the details of the bug, then deliberately set out to trigger it as much as possible.
I'm sorry, but specifically which part of the War on Drugs are you referring to? While there are parts of the War on Drugs I disagree with, broadly I would argue it's legally permissible.
... How is the War on Drugs an abuse of the Commerce Clause? It is essentially tantamount to an enormous anti-smuggling operation, and it clearly involves interstate and foreign commerce. That seems to me to be clearly within the purview of the Commerce Clause.
If you agree that the FDA is constitutional, then the government clearly must have the power to regulate harmful substances. Illegal drugs are illegal because they've been judged to be harmful. (Some, like marijuana, arguably incorrectly - doesn't matter; there's a difference between overstepping your authority, and making a mistake.) I believe the FDA is a good thing, that it's something the government should be in the business of doing, so therefore I believe it has the authority to regulate abusable drugs.
Given that the government has this power, and given that it has chosen to exercise it by banning certain substances
So you're saying there should be no regulation of any kind in the (quite substantial) market demand for hit men?
Furthermore, how can you possibly call the score 2-0 for the hackers? Sony closed the first hole! If the hackers score a point when they poke a hole in Sony's defenses, shouldn't Sony score for closing said hole? And shouldn't Sony ALSO score points for preventing the holes from being found in the first place? A game where you can only ever tie your opponent is no fun, after all. Although I suppose that would be an interesting metaphor for the war they're waging now; you can never win, all you can hope to do is not lose.
There are simply too many legitimate uses for cell phones in cars for a blanket ban to be a good idea. Jamming devices in people's cars would prevent even calls to 911. People use cell phones to call 911 all the time, in between traffic accidents, and people witnessing crimes. Both situations are extremely time-critical: reporting them immediately may mean the difference between life and death. I believe there have been studies showing an improved response time to incidents, and a corresponding drop in crime rates and accident fatalities, due to cell phones.
But even aside from this, cell phones are simply too useful a tool. Are you lost? Is your car having trouble? Does someone need to reach you because your house is on fire? Merely because a tool can be abused does not mean the proper response is to completely ban the tool. Look at drunken driving. Drunken driving fatalities have been dramatically reduced in the past ten years, and alcohol wasn't banned. In fact, even though similar technology to what's proposed in the article already exists for alcohol (ignition locks hooked up to a breathalyzer), we have not mandated these be installed in every vehicle. In fact, I believe there have been cases where people convicted of drunken driving have successfully fought to get the ignition lock removed because it was not working properly and prevented them from going to work.
Instead, after someone gets in trouble for drunken driving, the penalties they face are significantly enhanced compared to the same offense committed while sober. Driving priviliges are revoked more readily. Ignition lock technology can be installed after the specific driver has demonstrated that a problem exists. I don't deny talking on the phone while driving can be the cause of much mayhem, but surely jamming devices are not the answer of first resort.
I'm sorry, but that's wishful thinking at best. Pirate groups are in heavy competition with one another to make sure they get the highest number of downloads. They place a high priority on getting pre-release leaks (which would be actionable even if copyright was only one day) and on high-quality same-day rips of commercial releases. And studies have shown that the most pirated material is the most popular and recent material.
No matter how short the copyright term is, this material will always be infringing. Even if the term of copyright was only two months, sites like The Pirate Bay and Rapidshare* would still be loaded with media under copyright.
(* -- You say Rapidshare is legal? So do I; but don't even try to tell me the content industry doesn't want this law aimed at Rapidshare and its ilk.)
How about the fact that it is not illegal to let a minor into an R-rated movie? Many people think it is, but in fact it is not. If a movie theatre lets someone under 17 into an R-rated movie, nobody is fined or imprisoned. Someone might get fired, but getting fired is a far cry from being subject to prosecution. Instead, the theatre chains all have agreed to voluntarily impose policies enforcing the ratings. Note that exactly the same is true of all the major game retailer - and modern game consoles come with parental controls, which when enabled won't allow games of certain ratings to be played.
This law would create an entirely new kind of legal trouble just for violent video games that doesn't exist for any other medium. In my book, that's reason enough to oppose it.
You refuse to stock the game. If no one wanted the game anyway, you've already failed, right? So you plan on the soldiers wanting the game. Then you wait for the soldiers to complain that they can't buy the game on-base. After which you issue a big press release announcing that the soldiers requested - nay, demanded - that the game be put back into stores, so you're bowing to their wishes.
This is a win for you, because most of the criticism comes from people outraged on behalf of the soldiers. But now you can point out that the soldiers FORCED you to make the game available to them, so obviously it must not be a problem.
Valve will eventually go broke, for a sufficiently distant value of "eventually". Much bigger and older firms have gone under; in their heyday, talk of such companies as Woolworth's going under were met with similar scoffing.
Right now, Valve may have the golden touch with their games. Eventually that will pass. The core team that's so excellent will either move on, or retire, or be forced out. The new blood won't be as good. They'll still be good, for awhile, but eventually they'll hit a slump. Even then they won't die right away, people will still buy their stuff for awhile after it starts sucking. But eventually they won't be able to go back to their wells anymore, they will have poisoned them so heavily. (Star Trek, for example, was fairly effectively run into the ground to the point they had to reboot the whole franchise.)
Similarly, Steam may be awesome now. In time, something better will come along. Valve's management will (sooner or later) push to "monetize" Steam heavily, and degrade its usability significantly. Or they will decide that they're a game company, and Steam supports the competition, so they'll spin it off, and without Valve, Steam becomes just another content delivery service. Or Steam will simply eventually become too big and heavy to easily make changes to it, and it will coast along on its inertia, until it gets passed by.
The question is how far into the future this will be. If it is eight decades from now, well, by that time, only archivists and historians will probably care about (say) the original Half-Life. And they will have a legitimate beef, but they also will be few in number, and thus, this is a small problem. If Valve disintegrates five years from now, then it's a big problem, because millions of people will have Steam accounts that disappear.
And make no mistake: If Steam collapses because Valve goes under, there won't be anyone left to sue. Instead, people who owned games via Steam will be creditors, along with the banks and the mortgage holders, etc. in the bankruptcy liquidation. Unfortunately, bankruptcy law puts the general public at the end of the line in such situations. So most likely, your games will simply disappear forever; you get in line for your share of the refund money, and by the time the line rolls down to you, there isn't any left. (Otherwise they wouldn't be broke.)
Yes, we care about the hookers. Not because they're hookers, but because when an Attorney General is involved with an organized ring of anything illegal, then he's a hypocrite and has huge conflict of interest problems. And when a hypocrite gets to make the rules, he isn't affected by them - so he has no motivation to make sure they're just and practicable. He got caught by a money laundering law that he had passed so he could catch other people doing the same thing. He demanded very high standards from everybody else, it's why he was elected Governor in the first place. So now he gets to pay the piper.
You honestly don't see a problem with the Attorney General of a state being involved with a madam? Because it was going on while he was the Attorney General - the person in charge of prosecutions across the state. The conflict of interest posed by a state's top prosecutor being involved in an organized criminal enterprise is simply unacceptable, even if you think that the particular crime in question ought not be a crime at all. Was Spitzer protecting his call girls from prosecution while prosecuting others? What would have happened if the criminal enterprise in question started to blackmail Spitzer? Things can go seriously south in all kinds of unpleasant ways from here. Supposing the outfit he got the call girls from hired thugs to shake people down. How is Spitzer supposed to put a stop to that?
It would mean the government lacked the authority to regulate almost ANY kind of activity. There's a meme on Slashdot that people ought to be able to do anything they want with property they own, that pops up in copyright stories. This guy has essentially made the same argument, only in a different context. They're both mistaken for the same reason.
The government puts all kinds of restrictions on what people can do with property they own, most of which aren't controvertial at all. There are a handful of civilian-legal miniguns in the US (which predate the ban passed in the '80's). Nobody is going to argue that the Fifth Amendment prevents the government from "taking" your right to use that minigun to shoot up a mall, or rob a bank. A few years ago, someone found out how to make devices that could manipulate traffic signals by impersonating emergency vehicles; they were banned. Was that an unconstitutional "taking" of people's rights to be assholes in traffic?
As for Net Neutrality, the article mentions at the end a regulatory regime - Title II - that has antidicrimination clauses in it. His argument is that applying them to the Internet is an unconstitutional taking - but that would mean the already-existing industries under Title II regulation could argue the same for themselves. That's the telecommunications industry.
And as far as I know, it's already the law that the phone companies can't play these kind of games. Businesses can't pay the phone company to give themselves better-quality connections to customers (or worse, pay the phone company to give rivals lousy ones). But this lawyer's argument seems to imply that this regulation is unconstitutional whenever applied, to any industry. That sounds very similar to "freedom of contract" interpretations of the Constitution from the early 1900's to 1937 under which the Supreme Court struck down child labor laws and limits on the number of hours per work week. That idea was rejected seventy years ago.
If you are the defendant, in a criminal trial, then the prosecution cannot force you to testify (because of the 5th). However, if you choose to testify in your own defense, then the prosecution is allowed to cross-examine you; you are considered to have waived your right by voluntarily taking the stand.
If you take the fifth amendment when the prosecutor cross-examines you, I'm not sure what happens; either a mistrial, or your entire testimony is stricken from the record (and the jury told to disregard everything you said). Or maybe contempt of court. But once you give evidence in the case, you have to be cross-examined by the prosecutor. (This is what tanked Hans Reiser's defense; he fell apart under cross-examination.)
It's not quite that simple. The PS3 demonstrated quite effectively that there's a certain price point that causes sticker shock, and drives away customers. If they didn't subsidize the initial price of the console with expected future profits from game sales, they'd have to either charge a higher price, or make a weaker system. Either choice would lower the sales of the platform, and nobody makes games for consoles that haven't sold a ton of units.
The industry is basically dependent on this gimmick. Even though it would work out about the same amount of money if the games were cheaper, but the system more expensive up front - that would drive down total sales, and thus, the console manufacturer that tried it would probably lose in the marketplace.