Another reason that compiled code may be safer than interpreted code is the size and complexity issue. Big software programs, such as shell and Perl interpreters, are likely to contain bugs. Some of these bugs may be security holes. They're there, but we just don't know about them.
Major Perl vulnerabilities still crop up on a regular basis - on average, one or two a year. When was the last time you heard of a major vulnerability in the C programming language? And what "experienced developer" can't be bothered to guard against buffer overflow exploits?
The simpler the runtime environment, the more easily it can be controlled and problems can be avoided. Simple C has one of the simplest runtime environments of any programming language, making it perfect for use in high-reliability situations.
However, the Google cache of that page has been cleared within the last few hours, although most other pages on "CrossMediaGlobal.com" have snapshots from 11 days ago. As of first posting, the Emperor believes that there was no reference to the original drupal sources. Furthermore, a single linkback is insufficient to fully comply with the GPL.
If your software were a compiled language (eg c/c++/java etc.) then if they didn't provide the original source OR didn't provide it on request by you AS A CUSTOMER (the license is granting rights to the people they distribute to - ie customer), then they violate. If they have put the php through some code obfuscator and don't provide the original source before obfuscation, then this would come under the "compiled" category i'd say. What they are doing is perfectly legal under the GPL.
The code was stripped of its existing GPL and redistributed under a new license. Even though the source code is available (because PHP is distributed in source form), it's no longer clear that the code is still covered by the GPL - someone purchasing this package wouldn't know that they were entitled to redistribute or modify the code. That's the crux of the violation:
I'm no lawyer, but my perspective is this violates both the spirit and law of GPLv2, most specifically clause 2-b: 'You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.'
Even though copyright law is one of the most widely-discussed topics on Slashdot, almost no one here can bother getting their facts correct in even the broadest details. To wit: several posters have already claimed that, "unless copyright notices were attached to the headers of each and every source file," the source code may have been "public domain." In fact, the Berne Convention states that copyright protection is granted automatically to all eligible works at the time of their creation, and the United States is a signatory of the Berne Convention. Our Imperial Subject "cultiv8" claims that his source code was copied without following the terms of any license he offered; the GPL describes what happens in this situation explicitly:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
Only by following the terms of a valid license does one gain the legal right to redistribute copyrighted code. In this case, the only valid license available was the GPLv2. The license has not been followed, therefore the redistribution is copyright infringement. This interpretation was confirmed in Jacobsen v. Katzer, a case of such critical importance that every educated Subject of the Emperor who professes an interest in copyright law is obligated to become familiar with it.
Unfortunately, the infringing party described in the summary claims to be located in Pakistan. If this is true, Our Subject "cultiv8" will not be able to pursue a legal claim against the offender; copyright enforcement in Pakistan is notoriously lax, with many vendors openly selling "bootleg" videos, music and software. The ordinary remedies that would be applicable in US copyright infringement cases (DMCA takedown notices, Cease-and-Desist letter, or copyright infringement claims filed in a US court) are unlikely to succeed.
Our Subject may consider speaking with a free legal advocacy group (such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Software Freedom Law Center), or consulting a "law clinic" (freely available at many US courthouses on a regular schedule); however they will be unlikely to provide any effective recourse through legal channels. NEVERTHELESS, a solution is available that is so simple and so elegant that only a genius or a master of the obvious would suggest it:
"CrossMediaGlobal" uses PayPal as their payment processor. So contact PayPal's abuse department. Then wait while they (probably) do nothing.
The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
The four links provided supporting evidence for this claim, but apparently you were unable to read through to the second sentence.
I don't even know what most of these people stand for, or even want.
Well that's clearly a failure of your own research, isn't it? The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
This information exists, and is readily acquired, but you have failed to even look for it. Instead you have enthusiastically swallowed a series of unsupportable right-wing talking points and then dutifully repeated them, thereby proving to the world that you are an outrageous tool.
Everything else you wrote is a similar display of lies and misinformation. You have not provided enough substance to be worthy of a complete response. Please try harder.
The amount of incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation is approximately in balance at all times. In the absence of a greenhouse effect, the Earth would need to be about 255K to produce enough outgoing longwave radiation to remain in balance. Due to the greenhouse effect, not all of the outgoing radiation makes it to space. To maintain the balance, the Earth must be warmer than 255K so that enough outgoing longwave radiation makes it through the atmosphere and into space. That's why average temperature on Earth is actually around 288K. All other things equal, if the greenhouse effect is increased, the Earth must warm to reach a new balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation. This is as close to fact as science can get, and isn't really up for debate.
The only legitimate argument against warming caused by increased greenhouse gases is that negative feedbacks will decrease the incoming solar radiation. That can primarily be accomplished by clouds and aerosols, neither of which are well understood or predicted by models. However, even with the uncertainty about negative feedbacks, it is very likely that increasing greenhouse gases is resulting in a warming of the Earth.
Just because there is poor agreement on the regional impacts of a warmer Earth does not mean the Earth isn't warming. The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is largely due to human activities. It's a fact that the model human lifestyle produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. The increase in greenhouse gases is very highly correlated to industrialization.
This is an environmental issue. The preponderance of evidence is very strongly favors that humans are mostly responsible for the warming of the Earth that has already occurred in the past decades and that the Earth will warm at a faster pace in the future if current trends continue.
We should be very concerned. The regional climate changes will likely place greater strain in some areas on the availability of essential resources to support the human population. It is not out of the question that the overall impacts of such a warming could place enough strain on resources that the Earth would be unable to support a human population of seven billion people and growing. Nobody really knows what the impacts would be, but those concerns are hardly unfounded.
This is a sober and factual description of the actual state of the science. It also appears that this answer was not plagiarized from any source on the Internet. Well done.
You don't have a lot of real-world experience, do you?
Incidentally, everything you said about "$3000 laptops" and "$400 smartphones" and "$5 cups of coffee" is both false and irrelevant.
although this depends entirely on how the term "third world" is defined. Unfortunately, you provided no citation for your claim, and the term "third world" is so ludicrously imprecise as to be meaningless, so there is no basis to even evaluate your statement.
Methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.
http://www.epa.gov/methane/
Even assuming the methane originates from a "carbon neutral" source (such as grass), most animal feed lots produce a large amount of excess methane which increases the effect of global warming. That is why preexisting farms, such as this one in Brazil, are eligible to receive "carbon credits" by capturing the methane from their animal waste and burning it before returning it to the atmosphere. (As a side effect, this "methane capture" system produces a significant amount of electrical power, it nearly eliminates the risk of environmental pollution due to animal waste run-off, the "digested" animal waste can be used as high-quality and environmentally-friendly fertilizer, and the rancid stench that usually permeates and surrounds an animal feed lot is greatly reduced. The system is also financially solvent and according to the workers at Preto farm, it actually reduces the amount of labor required to run the farm.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fFIg5WLnm0
Move some bases down there and do boot camp on the border.
No, it isn't feasible to move thousands of military bases. There are way too many cities that depend on those bases for their economies, and way too many politicians who depend on the votes from those communities.
Tunnels can be detected (to a point where they'd have to dig too deep to be practical)
You're making this up; you don't actually have any special knowledge about tunnel detection. The rude way of describing this is "talking out of your ass."
if anyone bothers to put the devices and manpower in and flights over the border would make for cheap gunnery practice.
You want the military to shoot down any plane they see crossing the border that they can't identify. You have no idea how insane, impractical, and dangerous this proposal is. You are utterly indifferent to the possibility of innocent people being killed. You are completely unfamiliar with existing FAA rules and you probably couldn't give a coherent definition of what a "flight plan" is. And for some reason you believe this would be "cheap."
You have also never heard of a "narco-sub," and for some reason you think drug smugglers don't already use small aircraft. In other words, it is immediately obvious that you are ignorant of the topic at hand.
We won't ask you to stop posting on Slashdot, but please, from now on, try to follow these simple rules:
* Do not make unsupportable assertions of fact. Do not present your personal opinions as though they were facts. Do not try to speak authoritatively about subjects you have obviously never researched.
* When you violate the above rule, and do accidentally post something asinine, do not dig in your heels and defend your position. Admit that you have not done your research, and let the matter go. You can discuss the topic again, but only after you have done adequate research.
* Do not abuse the word "probably." The word is supposed to mean "statistically likely," not "I am making shit up now."
It means "to serve God passionately." The word [i]jihadi[i], "one who struggles," can apply to any number of people, such as a doctor offering his services for free to poor people.
The idea that the word jihad is a synonym for "terrorism" is a racist scaremongering myth perpetuated by bootlickers and the severely ignorant... which are you?
Even right now, after several days of decreasing demand and increasing supply, Amazon is currently selling the 16GB model for ~$240 and you'll be hard-pressed to get one off eBay for less than $200.
As a matter of fact I think it would actually benefit consumers if HP raised the price on the Touchpads somewhat. At $100 there's too much incentive for third-parties to buy all the available stock and resell at a higher price; this not only increases the price for consumers, but it also makes the devices more difficult and time-consuming to acquire, increases the length of time it takes for a consumer to actually acquire a device, and significantly increases the opportunity for fraud. In toto, middlemen and conmen benefit while consumers suffer.
If HP sold the tablets at closer to their true market price (say, $175), there would be significantly less reseller demand, consumers would be able to acquire the devices cheaper, faster and easier, and there would be fewer scumbags defrauding people with the offer of cheap TouchPads.
The Emperor knows well the heart of Slashdot, for We predicted that racism and ignorance would be perpetuated in this discussion.
Oh yes, because that's always an excuse. "Oh, he has ADHD. He's bipolar." Letting that fly = special treatment. Treatment that minority kids and parents will bring up when their kids are the ones in court. Then the cries of racism start...
In your own words, you say that "minority kids" are demanding "special treatment." You decry those who speak against the racism of the educational establishment. We have seen fit to teach you that your position is founded in ignorance.
The study also showed significant differences in disciplinary outcomes by race, even when controlling for other factors such as type of offense and socioeconomic status. âoeMinority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study saidâ¦A disproportionate number of minority students also ended up in alternative classrooms, where some have complained that teachers are often less qualified.â 70% of black girls had been suspended, compared to only 37% of white girls, despite often committing the same offenses.
Let it be known. Minority students are indeed subject to "special treatment" in the form of more severe and more frequent punishments even when accused of the same offenses. Rumors that minorities receive preferential treatment from government institutions are sheer ignorance perpetuated by those who advocate racism and authoritarianism.
In fact, it's exactly what the court's decision was. No individual or group of individuals who are the victims of a crime can sue the police for failing to prevent the crime. Even if the police have a "duty" to protect the public, they still face no legal liability for failing to do so - even if the failure is the result of gross incompetence.
There is no judicial remedy against the police if they fail to take reasonable steps to prevent a crime.
hjf is an inarticulate moron, however you are still technically incorrect.
I added the word "deadly" after the fact, without re-reading the whole sentence. But the police are required to respond and defend themselves and the public when threatened.
Actually, numerous court decisions have upheld that the police and government have no legal or Constitutional obligation to provide protection to the public. An example of this would be Warren v. District of Columbia:
Warren v. District of Columbia[1] (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is a U.S. Court of Appeals case in which three rape victims sued the District of Columbia because of negligence on the part of the police. Two of three female roommates were upstairs when they heard men break in and attack the third. After repeated calls to the police over half an hour, the roommate's screams stopped, and they assumed the police had arrived. They went downstairs and were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, and forced to commit sexual acts upon one another and to submit to the attackers' sexual demands for 14 hours. The police had lost track of the repeated calls for assistance. DC's highest court ruled that the police do not have a legal responsibility to provide personal protection to individuals, and absolved the police and the city of any liability.[2]
The police could have simply retreated or ignored the threat if they chose to do so, and there would be no judicial means of recourse against them. Even in cases of gross negligence, the police cannot be found liable for injuries which are caused by other people.
Slashdot Mirror
Another reason that compiled code may be safer than interpreted code is the size and complexity issue. Big software programs, such as shell and Perl interpreters, are likely to contain bugs. Some of these bugs may be security holes. They're there, but we just don't know about them.
Major Perl vulnerabilities still crop up on a regular basis - on average, one or two a year. When was the last time you heard of a major vulnerability in the C programming language? And what "experienced developer" can't be bothered to guard against buffer overflow exploits?
The simpler the runtime environment, the more easily it can be controlled and problems can be avoided. Simple C has one of the simplest runtime environments of any programming language, making it perfect for use in high-reliability situations.
http://www.w3.org/Security/faq/wwwsf4.html
Once you understand the things they recommend and WHY they recommend them, you won't need to ask this question anymore.
The reference occurs on a different page.
However, the Google cache of that page has been cleared within the last few hours, although most other pages on "CrossMediaGlobal.com" have snapshots from 11 days ago. As of first posting, the Emperor believes that there was no reference to the original drupal sources. Furthermore, a single linkback is insufficient to fully comply with the GPL.
This is a Google webcache link that, as of this writing, contains no link back to the original drupal module.
This is a screencapture of the cache.
This might indicate that the redistributor is making good faith efforts to comply with the GPL, now that they are aware of the violation.
Your insight and knowledge is appreciated.
17 USC 506 (d)
The code was stripped of its existing GPL and redistributed under a new license. Even though the source code is available (because PHP is distributed in source form), it's no longer clear that the code is still covered by the GPL - someone purchasing this package wouldn't know that they were entitled to redistribute or modify the code. That's the crux of the violation:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
Only by following the terms of a valid license does one gain the legal right to redistribute copyrighted code. In this case, the only valid license available was the GPLv2. The license has not been followed, therefore the redistribution is copyright infringement. This interpretation was confirmed in Jacobsen v. Katzer, a case of such critical importance that every educated Subject of the Emperor who professes an interest in copyright law is obligated to become familiar with it.
Unfortunately, the infringing party described in the summary claims to be located in Pakistan. If this is true, Our Subject "cultiv8" will not be able to pursue a legal claim against the offender; copyright enforcement in Pakistan is notoriously lax, with many vendors openly selling "bootleg" videos, music and software. The ordinary remedies that would be applicable in US copyright infringement cases (DMCA takedown notices, Cease-and-Desist letter, or copyright infringement claims filed in a US court) are unlikely to succeed.
Our Subject may consider speaking with a free legal advocacy group (such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Software Freedom Law Center), or consulting a "law clinic" (freely available at many US courthouses on a regular schedule); however they will be unlikely to provide any effective recourse through legal channels. NEVERTHELESS, a solution is available that is so simple and so elegant that only a genius or a master of the obvious would suggest it:
"CrossMediaGlobal" uses PayPal as their payment processor. So contact PayPal's abuse department. Then wait while they (probably) do nothing.
As Emperor, We are glad to serve Our Subjects.
You are being intentionally stupid. Despite your weak intellect, you are more than capable of understanding that you are being asinine.
The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
The four links provided supporting evidence for this claim, but apparently you were unable to read through to the second sentence.
Do not brazenly display your ignorance, child.
I don't even know what most of these people stand for, or even want.
Well that's clearly a failure of your own research, isn't it? The UC Davis demonstrations were a protest against both the ~80% tuition increases they are facing, and the brutality used by the UCPD in suppressing other demonstrations.
Color Lines
Patch
People's World
Oh, and here's the UC Davis faculty association page
This information exists, and is readily acquired, but you have failed to even look for it. Instead you have enthusiastically swallowed a series of unsupportable right-wing talking points and then dutifully repeated them, thereby proving to the world that you are an outrageous tool.
Everything else you wrote is a similar display of lies and misinformation. You have not provided enough substance to be worthy of a complete response. Please try harder.
The amount of incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation is approximately in balance at all times. In the absence of a greenhouse effect, the Earth would need to be about 255K to produce enough outgoing longwave radiation to remain in balance. Due to the greenhouse effect, not all of the outgoing radiation makes it to space. To maintain the balance, the Earth must be warmer than 255K so that enough outgoing longwave radiation makes it through the atmosphere and into space. That's why average temperature on Earth is actually around 288K. All other things equal, if the greenhouse effect is increased, the Earth must warm to reach a new balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation. This is as close to fact as science can get, and isn't really up for debate.
The only legitimate argument against warming caused by increased greenhouse gases is that negative feedbacks will decrease the incoming solar radiation. That can primarily be accomplished by clouds and aerosols, neither of which are well understood or predicted by models. However, even with the uncertainty about negative feedbacks, it is very likely that increasing greenhouse gases is resulting in a warming of the Earth.
Just because there is poor agreement on the regional impacts of a warmer Earth does not mean the Earth isn't warming. The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is largely due to human activities. It's a fact that the model human lifestyle produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. The increase in greenhouse gases is very highly correlated to industrialization.
This is an environmental issue. The preponderance of evidence is very strongly favors that humans are mostly responsible for the warming of the Earth that has already occurred in the past decades and that the Earth will warm at a faster pace in the future if current trends continue.
We should be very concerned. The regional climate changes will likely place greater strain in some areas on the availability of essential resources to support the human population. It is not out of the question that the overall impacts of such a warming could place enough strain on resources that the Earth would be unable to support a human population of seven billion people and growing. Nobody really knows what the impacts would be, but those concerns are hardly unfounded.
This is a sober and factual description of the actual state of the science. It also appears that this answer was not plagiarized from any source on the Internet. Well done.
You don't have a lot of real-world experience, do you? Incidentally, everything you said about "$3000 laptops" and "$400 smartphones" and "$5 cups of coffee" is both false and irrelevant.
although this depends entirely on how the term "third world" is defined. Unfortunately, you provided no citation for your claim, and the term "third world" is so ludicrously imprecise as to be meaningless, so there is no basis to even evaluate your statement.
Incidentally, this TED talk by Hans Rosling may enlighten your view of the world and its countries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
Methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.
http://www.epa.gov/methane/
Even assuming the methane originates from a "carbon neutral" source (such as grass), most animal feed lots produce a large amount of excess methane which increases the effect of global warming. That is why preexisting farms, such as this one in Brazil, are eligible to receive "carbon credits" by capturing the methane from their animal waste and burning it before returning it to the atmosphere. (As a side effect, this "methane capture" system produces a significant amount of electrical power, it nearly eliminates the risk of environmental pollution due to animal waste run-off, the "digested" animal waste can be used as high-quality and environmentally-friendly fertilizer, and the rancid stench that usually permeates and surrounds an animal feed lot is greatly reduced. The system is also financially solvent and according to the workers at Preto farm, it actually reduces the amount of labor required to run the farm.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fFIg5WLnm0
At least this time you managed to obey the third rule.
Move some bases down there and do boot camp on the border.
No, it isn't feasible to move thousands of military bases. There are way too many cities that depend on those bases for their economies, and way too many politicians who depend on the votes from those communities.
Tunnels can be detected (to a point where they'd have to dig too deep to be practical)
You're making this up; you don't actually have any special knowledge about tunnel detection. The rude way of describing this is "talking out of your ass."
if anyone bothers to put the devices and manpower in and flights over the border would make for cheap gunnery practice.
You want the military to shoot down any plane they see crossing the border that they can't identify. You have no idea how insane, impractical, and dangerous this proposal is. You are utterly indifferent to the possibility of innocent people being killed. You are completely unfamiliar with existing FAA rules and you probably couldn't give a coherent definition of what a "flight plan" is. And for some reason you believe this would be "cheap."
You have also never heard of a "narco-sub," and for some reason you think drug smugglers don't already use small aircraft. In other words, it is immediately obvious that you are ignorant of the topic at hand.
We won't ask you to stop posting on Slashdot, but please, from now on, try to follow these simple rules:
* Do not make unsupportable assertions of fact. Do not present your personal opinions as though they were facts. Do not try to speak authoritatively about subjects you have obviously never researched.
* When you violate the above rule, and do accidentally post something asinine, do not dig in your heels and defend your position. Admit that you have not done your research, and let the matter go. You can discuss the topic again, but only after you have done adequate research.
* Do not abuse the word "probably." The word is supposed to mean "statistically likely," not "I am making shit up now."
It means "to serve God passionately." The word [i]jihadi[i], "one who struggles," can apply to any number of people, such as a doctor offering his services for free to poor people.
The idea that the word jihad is a synonym for "terrorism" is a racist scaremongering myth perpetuated by bootlickers and the severely ignorant... which are you?
Even right now, after several days of decreasing demand and increasing supply, Amazon is currently selling the 16GB model for ~$240 and you'll be hard-pressed to get one off eBay for less than $200.
As a matter of fact I think it would actually benefit consumers if HP raised the price on the Touchpads somewhat. At $100 there's too much incentive for third-parties to buy all the available stock and resell at a higher price; this not only increases the price for consumers, but it also makes the devices more difficult and time-consuming to acquire, increases the length of time it takes for a consumer to actually acquire a device, and significantly increases the opportunity for fraud. In toto, middlemen and conmen benefit while consumers suffer.
If HP sold the tablets at closer to their true market price (say, $175), there would be significantly less reseller demand, consumers would be able to acquire the devices cheaper, faster and easier, and there would be fewer scumbags defrauding people with the offer of cheap TouchPads.
Oh yes, because that's always an excuse. "Oh, he has ADHD. He's bipolar." Letting that fly = special treatment. Treatment that minority kids and parents will bring up when their kids are the ones in court. Then the cries of racism start...
In your own words, you say that "minority kids" are demanding "special treatment." You decry those who speak against the racism of the educational establishment. We have seen fit to teach you that your position is founded in ignorance.
On the 19th of July, 2011, great scholars in service to His Excellency the Emperor completed and published a report on the disciplinary practices of Texas secondary schools. Among many troubling revelations and insights, one particular excess of the Texas educational system was brought to light:
The study also showed significant differences in disciplinary outcomes by race, even when controlling for other factors such as type of offense and socioeconomic status. âoeMinority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study saidâ¦A disproportionate number of minority students also ended up in alternative classrooms, where some have complained that teachers are often less qualified.â 70% of black girls had been suspended, compared to only 37% of white girls, despite often committing the same offenses.
Let it be known. Minority students are indeed subject to "special treatment" in the form of more severe and more frequent punishments even when accused of the same offenses. Rumors that minorities receive preferential treatment from government institutions are sheer ignorance perpetuated by those who advocate racism and authoritarianism.
We have enlightened you. Spread your lie no more.
No... that's not what the court's decision was.
In fact, it's exactly what the court's decision was. No individual or group of individuals who are the victims of a crime can sue the police for failing to prevent the crime. Even if the police have a "duty" to protect the public, they still face no legal liability for failing to do so - even if the failure is the result of gross incompetence.
There is no judicial remedy against the police if they fail to take reasonable steps to prevent a crime.
I added the word "deadly" after the fact, without re-reading the whole sentence. But the police are required to respond and defend themselves and the public when threatened.
Actually, numerous court decisions have upheld that the police and government have no legal or Constitutional obligation to provide protection to the public. An example of this would be Warren v. District of Columbia:
Warren v. District of Columbia[1] (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is a U.S. Court of Appeals case in which three rape victims sued the District of Columbia because of negligence on the part of the police. Two of three female roommates were upstairs when they heard men break in and attack the third. After repeated calls to the police over half an hour, the roommate's screams stopped, and they assumed the police had arrived. They went downstairs and were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, and forced to commit sexual acts upon one another and to submit to the attackers' sexual demands for 14 hours. The police had lost track of the repeated calls for assistance. DC's highest court ruled that the police do not have a legal responsibility to provide personal protection to individuals, and absolved the police and the city of any liability.[2]
The police could have simply retreated or ignored the threat if they chose to do so, and there would be no judicial means of recourse against them. Even in cases of gross negligence, the police cannot be found liable for injuries which are caused by other people.
THE EMPEROR HAS SPOKEN.