AFAIK he haven't ever been in US. How could he commit crimes there?
He made himself vulnerable to extradition by obtaining illegal access to computer hardware at an American university, and using that property to perform activity that is illegal both in the USA, and in his home coutry.
I suspect that if he had never made use of an American server, he would probably never have had a real problem. Even then - it sounds like it was a damn close thing and the Australian courts were not in complete agreement on the matter.
To use an example that is the closest parallel I can think of..there are certain medicines that are legal in the USA with a perscription - but illegal to use in Canada.
If I am a US citizen and I willingly and knowingly sell these medicines to Canadian citizens, then I have broken a law in Canada, and likely a trade agreement or treaty between the two countries. There are trade agreements and treaties between Canada and the US that cover how these issues are handled when they arise. Thats what diplomats do dfor a living.
In the interests of protecting trading interests with a foriegn country - you can bet that the US would seriously consider an extradition attempt by Canada in such a case as I have just described. It can be a fine line between medicine and traffiking.
Medium answer to a short question. I hope you found that informative.
A message to Microsoft: please understand that open source is the key to your long term survival. Embrace it, or die. Open source is the cornucopia of software technology: it will create a hundred million new software consumers, and most of these will be potential new clients.
With keen business insights like this, you must be worth millions.
There are event programmers, for starters - and what about the guy who figures out the schedule for your local TV station - thats a Television programmer.
Though the word modern use of the word programming almost always refers to software, is not exclusively limited to that narrow meaning.
We did something similar. This was about 15 years ago in Northern Ontario. During a heat wave, myself and several of the other male students came to school wearing shorts. This was strictly against dress code - but the temperature was 32 celsuis at 9:00 am and the school had no A/C. I was damned if I was going to wear long pants to class in that weather.
The bunch of use got sent home on a 1 day suspension 30 minutes after we arrived in homeroom. We were told not to even bother trying to come back in shorts.
The group of us got together that evening to discuss our options. We had requested hard copy of the dress code, and examined it closely. That's when we realized. The exact line was "Skirts and dresses are permitted provided they do not rise higher than 1" above the knee, and that they are not revealing in an unsatisfactory manner.
There was nothing in the dress code that said we couldn't wear a dress. It didn't even specify women.
So we came back in dresses, and skirts. On day 1 there were 7 of us, and every single last one of us were sent home again, this time with a 3 day suspension.
We showed up the next day anyway, to protest from the sidewalk, and it turned out that we were not alone. Another 15 students wore dresses or skirts. Maybe another 5 wore kilts.
Over the next week it grew from there - we were not allowed on school property - but as the police informed the principal, since we already suspended, we were not truant, and therefore there was no law that could prevent us from protesting from the sidewalk if our parents didn't object.
They most certainly didn't.
The media didn't take long to get thier hands on the story of 100+ male students in dresses protesting outside a major downtown highschool. The third day was a circus - CBC, MCTV and all the local papers had shown up to cover the protest.
It still took the principal and school board almost a week and half to capitulate. At this point students from other schools had taken to wearing dresses as a sign of support, parents were writing letters by the dozens (for and against) to the school board, and our numbers had swollen to more than 200 men, plus a few girls who wore shorts to get themselves expelled as well.
It was one of the most effective forms of protest I have ever been involved in. It worked because we used a spectacle to obtain attention (men in dresses) - because we were non-violent and polite, and because we were able to highlight a particularily absurd aspect of the dress code.
3 hours. Thats three hours from realizing I needed to see a doctor, to making my appointment, showing up, and getting treated.
Thats in Toronto, a major Canadian city. It tends to be well serviced. Now some of the Northern areas have it worse. In Sudbury, Ontario I used to have to wait three or four days before I could schedule an appointment with a GP.
Remember the media is biased, though not the way most people think. It isn't biased to the left or the right. No, the media is biased towards sensation. So when grandma spends 17 hours in the emergency room - thats news. But the other 99 percent of people who were serviced by the health system are not, and you won't hear about them.
I am not saying the Canadian Health care system does not have its problems, but overall, I prefer what we have in Canada.
I do a fair bit of QA and testing of our software product - and If i could have a nickel for the number of times its been apparent that a developer has checked in code they clearly NEVER tested.
A developer has some responsibility to ensure thier code at least functions in the context of the overall application before making it my problem. Just because it compiles does not mean it is done.
Are you insane? My reaction was "Only 7,000 dollars?". It can cost a lot more than that to do a proper recording session.
A LOT more.
There is a huge difference between a G5 in your basement, and a studio stocked with pro gear, low S/N ratios, in a properly baffled acousticly sound room.
I have spent 750 getting the right MICROPHONE for a recording session with a particular instrument.
I hear your complaint. Years ago, I was working at a place in Vancouver, supplying game companies and visual effects facilities with computers and software (3D Studio, Softimage, and computers to run them). Often we would also build personal computers for artists at these places.
One day I get a personal visit from an art director with one of the movies filming locally. He explains that he wants a computer with a custom case - one that will match the decor. At first I thought he was talking about a prop for the show, but eventually it became clear, he wanted a working computer that he could put in his office at home.
This was almost 10 years ago - No home computer was pretty, and most were just butt-ugly. If you could get a case in a color (other than beige), it was a shiny primary color.
This guy had dropped almost 1,000,000 dollars on his new home, and the office alone had seen over 40,000 in renovations. As he described it, he would be damned if he was then going to put feature a very ugly computer in this very attractive office.
I spent about a week looking for a source of attractive cases. There were none to be be found anywhere. So I called him back, and explained that we could do what he wanted, but the case would have to be custom fabricated, and it would be expensive as hell.
To my shock, his answer was "If it comes in under 2,000 (Can) and you can work with my designer to ensure a perfect match, that would be fine with me."
2000 Canadian for a case? SOLD. I got a deposit, and called his decorator/designer. The result of our discussions was an absolutely beautiful wooden cabinet for the computer hardware, made from the same oak that formed the desk, and the tables next to the couch he kept for clients. Total cost to my client, 1750, and I made GOOD profit.
I made 7 more variations on cases like this, mostly with the same designer but different clients. There were a couple other word of mouths too. Some were wood, and one was made from bryushed aluminium. One was built into a console radio from the late 1930's (that was my favorite)
I seriously considered going into this as a full time business. If a job had not appeared at the same time, doing something I had been dreaming of doing for years, I would have done it too.
The moral of this long tale - there is a market for well designed computer gear, but its a very small one. The vast majority of the population would be unwilling to spend the kind of money it takes to build one of these, and even the rich don't tend to see computers as furniture yet.
True custom manufactured computer cases are a novelty for people with plenty of disposable income.
i.e. a lane for truckers on long stretches of highway.
This is probably the most insightful thing said in this discussion. In fact, in most discussion of automated driving/traffic, people seem to fixate on how this will affect them driving thier car.
You won't be first. Commercial traffic will be. Congested highways will start seeing automated lanes for transport traffic on major highways transcontinental highways. Truckers will not be required to handle the roads except when entering/exiting such highways.
You might eventually even see completely automated robot trucks that go from central depot to depot. Local drivers would then deliver within the more complex city traffic. The same model currently feeds just about every metropolitan convenience center.
I could see some highways modified so that cars with similar navigation systems to the trucks can enter these lanes. (probably on a subscription, like a Electronic Toll Road) If there are enough benefits, more lanes will be devoted to automated traffic on major highways.
Eventually it would be the manual traffic that would become the minority.
Thats one way I see automated traffic unfolding, anyway.
In fact, soon you won't even be able to wait for something to happen even once. You'll have to declare something to be a tradition before it's happened at all...
The most valuable thing my parents ever did was enforced reading time. They didn't force my sister and I to read - they forced themselves to read in front of us.
Ever since I can remember, we would have dinner, talk around the table for about half an hour, then my parents would go into the living room for an hour to read - dad would read the paper, and mom would burn through books.
TV? Not until reading hour was over. Naturally my sister and I started reading alongside them.
Years later I learned that my dad was pretty much illiterate when we were born, and that he and my mother decided that we would see them reading, even if he had to pretend.
The truth is, he wasn't pretending for long. He still is the slowest reader I have ever met - but what he lacks in speed in he makes up for in quality - the books he reads make my head ache. His absorbtion rate is phenomenal, every word he reads matters.
My wife and I are expecting our first child this year, and I can assure you - the lesson my parents taught me won't be forgotten with my child.
If you want to get people reading, you surround them with books they will enjoy, and you make an example they can follow.
Get a clue. It's called a trend. Just because Britney Spears isn't doing it doesn't mean its not important.
This band is well known, and you may not like them, but enough people do that they have been around for well over a decade. TMBG have been pioneers in bizarre modes of distribution. Check out thier dial-a-song service for an example.
Perhaps another artist will see them succeed with this model, and will consider it for thier own purposes. Thats called leading by example.
They don't need Pepsi of some other 'big business' backing them to be a success, they just need to make enough money to make a profit for themselves, and show that you can make money without DRM.
I am not familiar with the Simpsons reference, but I was in London, England recently, and in my wanders I saw a shop dedicated to products designed for left handed people. I can't recall the name of the place now, but it was in the area of Soho, Piccadilly Circus, I think.
I hear this a lot. And yet the vast vast majority of the spyware I remove from peoples systems comes from programs and applications they conciously installed, like Kazaa, meteor cursor, and so forth.
Even the spyware installed as part of a virus has been installed because the user explicitly ran the virus. I doubt highly that changing browsers is going to prevent people from running crap. The browser is not even involved in these cases - its the mail client.
I don't doubt that examples of exploits of bugs are available. I just wonder why I don't tend to see them in the wild.
Can anyone provide proof beyond the anecdotal that the spyware comes from exploiting bugs in IE, rather than social engineering? Has anyone studied this phenomenon?
IE is buggy to the point of being dangerous; inaccessible; and almost devoid of useful features.
Really? And yet it works reliably for me (and hundreds of thousands of others) during marathon surfing sessions. With the exception of tabbing, I never find myself thinking "If only IE had this feature..."
You need to pull your head out of the dark place, and look around at this strange thing called reality.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK he haven't ever been in US. How could he commit crimes there?
He made himself vulnerable to extradition by obtaining illegal access to computer hardware at an American university, and using that property to perform activity that is illegal both in the USA, and in his home coutry.
I suspect that if he had never made use of an American server, he would probably never have had a real problem. Even then - it sounds like it was a damn close thing and the Australian courts were not in complete agreement on the matter.
To use an example that is the closest parallel I can think of..there are certain medicines that are legal in the USA with a perscription - but illegal to use in Canada.
If I am a US citizen and I willingly and knowingly sell these medicines to Canadian citizens, then I have broken a law in Canada, and likely a trade agreement or treaty between the two countries. There are trade agreements and treaties between Canada and the US that cover how these issues are handled when they arise. Thats what diplomats do dfor a living.
In the interests of protecting trading interests with a foriegn country - you can bet that the US would seriously consider an extradition attempt by Canada in such a case as I have just described. It can be a fine line between medicine and traffiking.
Medium answer to a short question. I hope you found that informative.
Only the successful ones.
A message to Microsoft: please understand that open source is the key to your long term survival. Embrace it, or die. Open source is the cornucopia of software technology: it will create a hundred million new software consumers, and most of these will be potential new clients.
With keen business insights like this, you must be worth millions.
There are event programmers, for starters - and what about the guy who figures out the schedule for your local TV station - thats a Television programmer.
Though the word modern use of the word programming almost always refers to software, is not exclusively limited to that narrow meaning.
God I wish I had mod points. Yay to the parent post. It's nice to see a post with some rational thought in it.
We did something similar. This was about 15 years ago in Northern Ontario. During a heat wave, myself and several of the other male students came to school wearing shorts. This was strictly against dress code - but the temperature was 32 celsuis at 9:00 am and the school had no A/C. I was damned if I was going to wear long pants to class in that weather.
The bunch of use got sent home on a 1 day suspension 30 minutes after we arrived in homeroom. We were told not to even bother trying to come back in shorts.
The group of us got together that evening to discuss our options. We had requested hard copy of the dress code, and examined it closely. That's when we realized. The exact line was "Skirts and dresses are permitted provided they do not rise higher than 1" above the knee, and that they are not revealing in an unsatisfactory manner.
There was nothing in the dress code that said we couldn't wear a dress. It didn't even specify women.
So we came back in dresses, and skirts. On day 1 there were 7 of us, and every single last one of us were sent home again, this time with a 3 day suspension.
We showed up the next day anyway, to protest from the sidewalk, and it turned out that we were not alone. Another 15 students wore dresses or skirts. Maybe another 5 wore kilts.
Over the next week it grew from there - we were not allowed on school property - but as the police informed the principal, since we already suspended, we were not truant, and therefore there was no law that could prevent us from protesting from the sidewalk if our parents didn't object.
They most certainly didn't.
The media didn't take long to get thier hands on the story of 100+ male students in dresses protesting outside a major downtown highschool. The third day was a circus - CBC, MCTV and all the local papers had shown up to cover the protest.
It still took the principal and school board almost a week and half to capitulate. At this point students from other schools had taken to wearing dresses as a sign of support, parents were writing letters by the dozens (for and against) to the school board, and our numbers had swollen to more than 200 men, plus a few girls who wore shorts to get themselves expelled as well.
It was one of the most effective forms of protest I have ever been involved in. It worked because we used a spectacle to obtain attention (men in dresses) - because we were non-violent and polite, and because we were able to highlight a particularily absurd aspect of the dress code.
Just a story I thought I would share.
Today?
3 hours. Thats three hours from realizing I needed to see a doctor, to making my appointment, showing up, and getting treated.
Thats in Toronto, a major Canadian city. It tends to be well serviced. Now some of the Northern areas have it worse. In Sudbury, Ontario I used to have to wait three or four days before I could schedule an appointment with a GP.
Remember the media is biased, though not the way most people think. It isn't biased to the left or the right. No, the media is biased towards sensation. So when grandma spends 17 hours in the emergency room - thats news. But the other 99 percent of people who were serviced by the health system are not, and you won't hear about them.
I am not saying the Canadian Health care system does not have its problems, but overall, I prefer what we have in Canada.
Now that Adobe no longer seems interested in supporting multiple platforms, we are migrating away.
To what?
He lived near the near the top of the hill, in west van. Damn nice view of the city. Plenty of multimillion dollar homes up that way.
:->
Kits is trendy, and the houses go for plenty, but the really pricy homes are on that mountain, looking down on the rest of us
I do a fair bit of QA and testing of our software product - and If i could have a nickel for the number of times its been apparent that a developer has checked in code they clearly NEVER tested.
A developer has some responsibility to ensure thier code at least functions in the context of the overall application before making it my problem. Just because it compiles does not mean it is done.
Are you insane? My reaction was "Only 7,000 dollars?". It can cost a lot more than that to do a proper recording session.
A LOT more.
There is a huge difference between a G5 in your basement, and a studio stocked with pro gear, low S/N ratios, in a properly baffled acousticly sound room.
I have spent 750 getting the right MICROPHONE for a recording session with a particular instrument.
7,000 is peanuts.
I hear your complaint. Years ago, I was working at a place in Vancouver, supplying game companies and visual effects facilities with computers and software (3D Studio, Softimage, and computers to run them). Often we would also build personal computers for artists at these places.
One day I get a personal visit from an art director with one of the movies filming locally. He explains that he wants a computer with a custom case - one that will match the decor. At first I thought he was talking about a prop for the show, but eventually it became clear, he wanted a working computer that he could put in his office at home.
This was almost 10 years ago - No home computer was pretty, and most were just butt-ugly. If you could get a case in a color (other than beige), it was a shiny primary color.
This guy had dropped almost 1,000,000 dollars on his new home, and the office alone had seen over 40,000 in renovations. As he described it, he would be damned if he was then going to put feature a very ugly computer in this very attractive office.
I spent about a week looking for a source of attractive cases. There were none to be be found anywhere. So I called him back, and explained that we could do what he wanted, but the case would have to be custom fabricated, and it would be expensive as hell.
To my shock, his answer was "If it comes in under 2,000 (Can) and you can work with my designer to ensure a perfect match, that would be fine with me."
2000 Canadian for a case? SOLD. I got a deposit, and called his decorator/designer. The result of our discussions was an absolutely beautiful wooden cabinet for the computer hardware, made from the same oak that formed the desk, and the tables next to the couch he kept for clients. Total cost to my client, 1750, and I made GOOD profit.
I made 7 more variations on cases like this, mostly with the same designer but different clients. There were a couple other word of mouths too. Some were wood, and one was made from bryushed aluminium. One was built into a console radio from the late 1930's (that was my favorite)
I seriously considered going into this as a full time business. If a job had not appeared at the same time, doing something I had been dreaming of doing for years, I would have done it too.
The moral of this long tale - there is a market for well designed computer gear, but its a very small one. The vast majority of the population would be unwilling to spend the kind of money it takes to build one of these, and even the rich don't tend to see computers as furniture yet.
True custom manufactured computer cases are a novelty for people with plenty of disposable income.
i.e. a lane for truckers on long stretches of highway.
This is probably the most insightful thing said in this discussion. In fact, in most discussion of automated driving/traffic, people seem to fixate on how this will affect them driving thier car.
You won't be first. Commercial traffic will be. Congested highways will start seeing automated lanes for transport traffic on major highways transcontinental highways. Truckers will not be required to handle the roads except when entering/exiting such highways.
You might eventually even see completely automated robot trucks that go from central depot to depot. Local drivers would then deliver within the more complex city traffic. The same model currently feeds just about every metropolitan convenience center.
I could see some highways modified so that cars with similar navigation systems to the trucks can enter these lanes. (probably on a subscription, like a Electronic Toll Road) If there are enough benefits, more lanes will be devoted to automated traffic on major highways.
Eventually it would be the manual traffic that would become the minority.
Thats one way I see automated traffic unfolding, anyway.
I just stopped drinking coke, even more effective, and less expensive.
In fact, soon you won't even be able to wait for something to happen even once. You'll have to declare something to be a tradition before it's happened at all...
Thats called marketing.
The most valuable thing my parents ever did was enforced reading time. They didn't force my sister and I to read - they forced themselves to read in front of us.
Ever since I can remember, we would have dinner, talk around the table for about half an hour, then my parents would go into the living room for an hour to read - dad would read the paper, and mom would burn through books.
TV? Not until reading hour was over. Naturally my sister and I started reading alongside them.
Years later I learned that my dad was pretty much illiterate when we were born, and that he and my mother decided that we would see them reading, even if he had to pretend.
The truth is, he wasn't pretending for long. He still is the slowest reader I have ever met - but what he lacks in speed in he makes up for in quality - the books he reads make my head ache. His absorbtion rate is phenomenal, every word he reads matters.
My wife and I are expecting our first child this year, and I can assure you - the lesson my parents taught me won't be forgotten with my child.
If you want to get people reading, you surround them with books they will enjoy, and you make an example they can follow.
Get a clue. It's called a trend. Just because Britney Spears isn't doing it doesn't mean its not important.
This band is well known, and you may not like them, but enough people do that they have been around for well over a decade. TMBG have been pioneers in bizarre modes of distribution. Check out thier dial-a-song service for an example.
Perhaps another artist will see them succeed with this model, and will consider it for thier own purposes. Thats called leading by example.
They don't need Pepsi of some other 'big business' backing them to be a success, they just need to make enough money to make a profit for themselves, and show that you can make money without DRM.
And isn't that the point?
Nice spelling, maybe next time I should read my post over before submitting it.
"LOOK at the nice prison THEY built for her"
sorry about that
Don't apologize. We had to put her somewhere, and lok at the nice prison the built for her in the middle of the desert.
Sometimes preserving the integrity of Canadian culture means you have to sabotage american culture.
Therefore, singing in the shower is infringement. Better not tell my wife - she might turn me in to make it stop.
No wait, I'm safe! I only sing 19th century Italian opera. No infringement there. Phew. (Sorry honey)
Hmm. Its still too inefficient for me. Perhaps they should try XML?
It bothers me that I had no trouble reading that. None at all. And I am about as far from being l33t as you can imagine.
I am not familiar with the Simpsons reference, but I was in London, England recently, and in my wanders I saw a shop dedicated to products designed for left handed people. I can't recall the name of the place now, but it was in the area of Soho, Piccadilly Circus, I think.
I hear this a lot. And yet the vast vast majority of the spyware I remove from peoples systems comes from programs and applications they conciously installed, like Kazaa, meteor cursor, and so forth.
Even the spyware installed as part of a virus has been installed because the user explicitly ran the virus. I doubt highly that changing browsers is going to prevent people from running crap. The browser is not even involved in these cases - its the mail client.
I don't doubt that examples of exploits of bugs are available. I just wonder why I don't tend to see them in the wild.
Can anyone provide proof beyond the anecdotal that the spyware comes from exploiting bugs in IE, rather than social engineering? Has anyone studied this phenomenon?
IE is buggy to the point of being dangerous; inaccessible; and almost devoid of useful features.
Really? And yet it works reliably for me (and hundreds of thousands of others) during marathon surfing sessions. With the exception of tabbing, I never find myself thinking "If only IE had this feature..."
You need to pull your head out of the dark place, and look around at this strange thing called reality.