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User: buntsai

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  1. Lets excommunicate the Inquisition on The Pope Criminalizes Leaks · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Kings of Spain were threatened with excommunication on multiple occasions.

    There was a huge tussle between the various catholic monarchs of Europe, including the English, French and Spanish Kings and the Holy Roman Emperor over who should decide things in the Catholic Church. There was a power grab at the time, and much of the particular viciousness of the Spanish Inquisition can be attributed to the pride, paranoia and desire for independence of the Spanish King.

    Parallels can perhaps be drawn with the USA where the scale of slaughter of the native populations also increased rapidly with independence.
    At one point, for example, even the Primate (head bishop) of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo, fell out with Philip the II (King of Spain) and was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition in 1558. He was accused of heresy mainly on the basis of his book (Commentary on the Christian Catechism). However, this same book had been presented to and approved by the (counter-reformation / anti-Protestant) Council of Trent to which he had been the official Spanish envoy... The pope sent an ambassador ("nuncio extraordinary") with powers of excommunication for everyone involved and orders to physically extract the Archbishop. This didn't work. The king demanded a trial in Spain so the pope sent four bishops as the judges (each of whom later became popes themselves), but they were not accepted. The Spanish Inquisition were desperate for the bishop of Toledo to die, and he only survived because he was accompanied night and day by at least two members of his loyal staff (i.e different ones went at different times, on rotation).

    After 7 years, the pope managed to extricate him following more threats, this time to excommunicate the whole of Spain. His trial was reconvened in Rome with the pope expecting a quick exoneration. However, important papers kept getting lost in Spain. Eventually Philip outlasted the trial, with the suspicious death of Pope Paul IV. There is no proof as such that the Spaniards killed the pope only conjecture: i.e. letters have been found in the historical archives in Valladolid, Spain explaining the great dishonour the pope had brought upon the Spanish Inquisition and how convenient it would be for the pope to die, etc...

    Unfortunately for the Spanish Inquisition, the next pope lost patience and the Spanish Primate won his case.

    Dubious justice but still better than Guantanamo...

  2. Re:It's all tied together on Teen Suicide Tormentor Outed By Anonymous · · Score: 1

    Even in Australia, it is not clear that this would be prosecutable offense under felony murder. The link between the felony and the suicide may not be strong enough. Though felony murder has been abolished by statute in the UK, the Mens rea in murder requires only intent to injure. Thus, in practice, the law has not diverged from other common law jurisdictions as much as you would have thought.

  3. Re:"All"? on Ask Slashdot: Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US? · · Score: 1

    And Roman Empire once counted for 1/2 of the word`s economy before barabrians came.

    The Roman Empire accounted for around 10% not 50% of the world's economy, even before the "barabrians" came. Most of the world's economy was in India and China...

  4. Re:Well-researched piece in a mass market tabloid on Chinese Spying Devices Installed On Hong Kong Cars · · Score: 1

    Epoch times is dodgy but the original is from Apple Daily, the second highest circulation (300,000 in a city of 7 million) newspaper in Hong Kong. It is not particularly pro-Falun Gong. It has strongly pro-democracy (HK doesn't have much of that), pro-free market, pro working class, with the usual Hong Kong mix of high minded analysis, original poetry and literature, lurid celebrity coverage, and serialized softcore porn!

  5. Let the bosses taste their own medicine on Recourse For Draconian Encryption Requirements? · · Score: 1

    We also had encryption rammed down our throats. For months, our computers would slow down or die and management just told us that we had no choice. It was bad enough that we were hiding our laptops from IT staff so that it would not be encrypted.

    Then over one weekend and entirely by coincidence, the laptops of our three senior managers all died in separate incidents when they were giving public, high profile presentations.

    They were horribly embarrassed and we had to pretend to be sympathetic. No "I told you so"s. At 10 a.m., on the Monday, after a hurried ultimatum to the IT department, all encryption efforts were suspended indefinitely "until further review"...

    Encryption should be confined to the lowest level, at the hard disk, where it runs invisibly and seamlessly.

  6. Re:Pascal on Good Language Choice For School Programming Test? · · Score: 1

    Most people miss the point that python has strong (dynamic) typing.

    As for c++, modern (i.e. good!) c++ code should look very much like python, except that it is statically typed, of course: Pointers should be avoided. No char*, definitely no manual memory management. No "delete"s. Only strings and vectors. Segmentation faults usual indicate that programming skills need to be updated...

    Having said that, I would still recommend python: clean and elegant.

    I started off with Pascal but it is a strait jacket of a language. Too old fashioned for this day and age. It is curious that Pascal has aged so much more badly than Lisp.

  7. No mistaking between "could" and "would" on MPAA Asks Again For Control Of TV Analog Ports · · Score: 1

    The The MPAA is arguing that if they could directly turn those plugs on and off, they could offer more goods to consumers.

    I agree with you that the "could" is not being used by mistake. "Would" (conditional tense) implies intent, a promise that they are going to offer more goods, if the ability to turn plugs on and off were provided first.

    The use of "could" means that the MPAA are going to be in a position to offer more goods to consumers. If they decide not to offer more goods after all, should they gain the ability to turn plugs on and off, they would not have reneged on any implicit commitments.

    In English, the MPAA phrasing also implies that one ("more goods to consumers") follows so naturally and logically from the premise ("give me the power to turn plugs on and off") that no explicit additional promise needs to be made. These sneaky subtleties are what make English fun and infuriating in equal measure.