Wal-mart is so damned evil, but it's the last place people expect it, so it takes a while to catch on. Companies like Halliburton and Monsanto's misdeeds are headline-grabbing events; Wal-mart just has cheap socks and asshole management.
Just how, exactly, does an inquiry into a land deal end up with questions about sexual tendencies?
So you have a problem with him lying about something that the trial in question had absolutely nothing to do with? Even though you would have done EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING AND SO WOULD EVERY OTHER MAN ON EARTH?
I've fucking had it with you hypocritical, uneducated Republican shitheels hamming it up on Slashdot, as if you had one fucking ounce of moral fiber in your being.
Who modded this insightful? It's just a half-assed retard attempting to take a pot-shot at personal freedoms. So now sexual liberty is equivalent to some nutjob fucking a watermelon? Eat shit and die, you conservative prick.
Don't like personal freedom, cocksucker? Go to China. Stop fucking up the civilized world.
It needs a ranking system that seperates hobbyists and dabblers and amateurs from specialists, doctors, and professionals, and gives them voting power on articles in their field accordingly.
I'd count the number way higher than that. I'm surprised there still aren't any games more targeted towards particular cultural groups; so far we have tons for Chinese, Japanese, European, and American cultures, and a few with Russian elements and the one Godfather game (Italian...ish), but none for anyone else, and only ONE based out of the poverty faced by so many black families in the US. Where are the games with disctinctly Chicano roots? Or Hindi? Arabic? Central or South American? I'm particularly surprised there aren't games made especially for the Latino people living in the US; they've been a large part of our heritage for a long time and are continuously playing a more and more important role in the ongoing growth of America. I want to see a historical game about the Mexican fight for independence, or a Jade-Empire style RPG about the growth of the Arabic empire during it's height or the legends of Vishnu. It's about time a game developer got serious and started looking really close at the art and drama experienced inside of the ethnic communities here.
I think it'd be a great way for the game developing community to counter-act the recent explosion of xenophobia in America to publish some games aimed at helping the children of immigrants learn about the US and academic subjects and their homeland's traditions in an interesting manner and preserving their cultural heritage in the way the game is presented. It'd take some serious research and alot of money and effort spent on artistic direction, but would be very, very well worth it.
I'm not quite sure I read you correctly, as the man in Turkey is the one who sent the FBI the information leading to the capture of the alleged pedophile. Being that Turkey has a large muslim population and we seem well on our way to becoming a staple feature in the curses of the arabic language, and that we'd have to get him over here to prosecute him... and he has committed the single crime which will immediately win over any of the hearts of the masses in general, breaking the law to catch those that prey on kids... not gonna happen. If it wasn't publicized and we wanted to know more about how blackhats over in that part of the world operate, then there'd be a 1% chance.
But, the more I think about my position, the more it seems to sway. I'm tenuously staying my ground on this case, because the hacker in question never gained root access to the criminal's machine, but rather laced the child pornography he found on, as the article even names the damned spot, "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen" with malicious code to report back what was found on the machines. Nevertheless, with the current administration's keen knack to employ good ideas in ways the mock the logic behind them (namely God and justice), what seems like a noble endeavor (and that's fading fast in my head too, and may have been there just because of all the damn super hero movies coming out) quickly snowballs into a monument of fucking up.
"Pederasty" is defined explicitly as a man having sexual relations with a boy, and if you want to go by a reference for pederast, they get even more explicit and define it as "A man who has sexual relations, especially anal intercourse, with a boy". The term is often found juxtaposed with the term pedophilia in modern lexicon (well, when one is around those keen enough to absorb and use terms like "pederast" or "lexicon" in a sentence, of course).
Secondly, a comparison between physically reprimanding one's child, even with a belt, and sexually molesting/raping one's child is fucking ludicrous. Of course, we can't compare right now because the article is talking about someone seeking to molest someone else's children (in most cases), and there is a damned ocean between what it's like for a child to be molested by their parents and someone else. Strictly speaking, the developemental mind can readily cope with physical pain, it's part of how we learn about the world and grow; lo and behold, the reason most ignorant parents smack their kids is to simply trigger the most base instinct of "If something bad happens after you do something, try not to do it again. Rinse and repeat until memorized." Sometimes people do need the firmest of reprimands, particularly with the trend of modern society to romanticize drug use and criminal activity. This can get out of hand, but not too often, and usually the victims just have to take anger management courses later on in life. I'm running of no sleep right now, so I'm having difficulty putting the difference between physical abuse and sexual abuse into words, so let me put it as simply as I can: Physical abuse causes rage and anger in a child, an evolutionary "Fuck off!" response to something causing undue harm to you. Sexual abuse, particularly in the fragile state of a kid and particularly when it's the parents doing the molesting, quite simply makes something snap. Let's see... you know that fear that men have of ticking off the wrong person in jail and being raped? Right, take that, take away all of the mental toughness and emotional durability you've built up since you hit puberty and transplant yourself back to the days of Thunder Cats and then seeing your father disrobe you and decide it's time you learned damned fucking well the meaning of "pederasty".
Sexual molestation absolutely annihilates most every chance for that child to grow up and lead a normal, mentally healthy life. Will most of them go on living and get past it? Yes, of course. That doesn't mean they aren't completely fucked in the head, which rather neatly explains why the difficulty of going through life with broken set of circuitry calls many of them to simply not live; the exact phenomenon occurs when someone is slowly dying of an incredibly painful disease and they want to be euthanized.
As far as I can tell, all the FBI did was say that they can't prosecute someone in another country; whether or not that's the truth, I'm unsure, as I'm not up to date on the current gumbo of international policing of crimes that cross borders mixed with various countries' governing old men trying to each come up with the completely wrong way of dealing with the internet. I suspect that they could have pressured Turkey into giving him up for extradition if they really wanted to be pricks about it, but Turkey would've told them to piss off and every news outlet would murder the public image of the agency in full public view.
Besides, I think turning a blind eye to someone hunting for pedophiles is the least illegal thing the FBI has done in a while.
And the police can use agents in the form of paid informants who are involved in drugs to find drug-dealers or somesuch, and yes, that informant will use the money paid to him by the police to probably shoot up again.
Pederasty is a unique crime in that its motives don't fit in with the majority of causes that drive people to commit crimes. Not only is it a mental disease, but one that can spread from the perpetrator to the victim over time, as most child molestors were once victims themselves. I'm not trying to argue away their humanity or imply they should be summarily round up and shot, or anything else along those lines. I should've clarified my point a little better, as when most people refer to "culling the abomination of pedophilia", their intentions are probably going to lean towards the more vicious and vengeful.
Anyway, back on point: I meant that only pedophilia should be treated in a different way because of the magnitude of damage it causes society. I don't mean to lock them up forever, just that we need to find a much more effective method of stopping them from acting out on that behavior. I realize that I may very well sound like some bleeding-heart, bleary-eyed soccer mom at a PTA meeting, but I'm quite serious. Terrorism and organized crime do very little damage relative to pedophilia (yes, I am of the opinion that terrorism is, in actuality, one of the smallest threats one faces in day to day life as an American; 9/11 was an incredibly lucky sucker punch from terrorist groups and a fairly suicidal move in terms of not having their movement blasted off the face of the earth with artillery), with terrorism a distant third behind a fairly distant second of gangs. This is simply because I know maybe one or two people that have been affected by terrorism, a small handful of people that have been robbed or are involved in gangs, but I couldn't possibly count all of the people I've talked to that have been molested as kids, and developed suicidal tendencies/depressive/bipolar/obsessive-compulsive /etc as a result.
Proxy groups are always a giant pain in the ass, shit, just look at the giant headache Hizbollah is causing the world at the moment. However, we usually can avoid them here (well, not avoid per se, but rather find out about whether or not they are sponsored by a government agency) pretty well. The paper trail and incredible ease of information to be passed around makes running a front difficult in the US, particularly for the public image of any agency that tries it. I don't mean advocate groups, lobbyists, or viral marketing whatever-the-fuck, but actual fronts; like ones the CIA sets up.
On the other hand, Congress is making it damn hard for anyone to leak information out right now, which puts corruption in a safe and moist place to grow wild... It's a thin line, and with the way the government's heading, well, I will probably end up switching my opinion to the other side out of circumstance.
Well, shit, now that I think about it, the more respect and renown these vigilante types get, the more others will want to grab their 15 minutes of fame, by whatever means they have, even if it involves framing an innocent citizen.
I still currently lean towards my original stance, but obviously, I'll have to think about it a bit more and come up with something that works a bit better.
Normally I'd agree that taking the law into your own hands is not only illegal but a very bad idea; however, there are always exceptions. 99% of vigilanteism is a bad idea, as it does not entail people taking the law into their own hands to help others in a non-violent way, but usually runs from personal matters gone awry to the militant folks that "help patrol" the U.S.-Mexico border or other groups that believe it their duty to create a mob mentality when handling real or perceived threats (I can't help but add my favorite quote, from Men in Black of all movies: "A person is smart and intuitive; people are dumb, panicky, and dangerous animals").
The difference is, when it comes to pederasty, I can't really think of many methods I wouldn't condone to cull the abomination. However, many people make a great logical fault in believing that they need to make the rules based on the exception (people that try and use pedophilia as the means to creating whatever laws they want) or in believing that the exception must fall under the same rules as all other crimes in being found and prosecuted, lest authorities create abusive legislature on the pretense of catching child molesters. There is a middle road in all things, and vigilanteism makes a fine one for this. You don't want to give police the rights to do what a blackhat does to find a pedophile, but you want the pedophile caught.
However, the case in point is an exception. The man lives in another country and the FBI, of course, won't and couldn't file charges, but I don't believe that this constitutes "tacit approval"... although the FBI may simply be trying to send a signal to the blackhat community that reads something like "Sweet Christ, we have no fucking idea how to use computers (Database? The fuck is that?), if any of you guys wants to give us a hand in catching these guys, by all means, go ahead. Do whatever you can." The feds can't approve of someone breaking the law, obviously, or acknowledge that someone without warrants or CARNIVORE can do the job better than the ol' FBI. But they can turn a blind eye to it, if only for the crime of pedophilia and nothing else.
If I recall correctly, wasn't there a hacker group in the U.S. that did this in the late 90's or are still doing this? I distinctly remember seeing a few adverts and hearing a few inquiries about people who wanted to join up in the old hidden IRC rooms way back when. Ah, sweet nostalgia... days of linux shell accounts, little sleep, and keeping an extra machine running only OS/2 Warp, if only out of spite, back when code came so easily. Christ, my mind has addled.
Perelman did not leave his position at the Steklov Institute as the article suggests, but rather, he was not allowed to return to his position. I believe that he already had a fairly reclusive and modest personality, and as was pointed out by the Sydney Morning Herald, the extremity of this nature was prompted when the faculty of the Steklov Institute declined to re-elect him as a member; his peers and close colleagues rejected him, the paper quotes a friend as saying that Perelman was made to feel as an "absolutely ungifted and untalented person". Wikipedia has more, saying that this stemmed "apparently in part out of continuing doubt over his claims regarding the geometrization conjecture".
There are few things more bitter than being betrayed by one, let alone a majority or all of your associates. I know all too well how that kind of utterly profound pain can easily turn one of your greatest passions in life (be it a pursuit or a person) into a source for nothing other than misery.
So, should the board in charge of zoning for a particular city be able to charge certain people more for licenses because of the name of their companies? I'm pretty damn sure we'd see every corporation active today screaming fire if something like that came up. Seems to me that we're heading in completely the wrong direction when it comes to regulation and business interacting with technology; everyone with money and power is trying to exploit the inexperience of various legislative bodies when it comes to newfangled things like software patents and the internet.
The two examples are so vastly different that a comparison is has no logical meaning. By the same road, you could've named cars or candles or whatever; shit, you could've picked the pharmacy inventory systems with robotic controls.
However, there are rules of simplicity that the courts are required to follow before granting a patent. A program which any first-year CS student can write, and often will, to sort various items is the essence of simplicity.
It could be that Texas judges are simply operating from an inferior moral standard (throwing the death penalty left and right; I'm not flame-baiting here, I'm stating the obvious: Texas abuses the death penalty and its courts seem to operate from a primitive ethical standard as compared to other states -and whereas most every other civilized nation has outlawed the damn thing- this qualifies simply in a comparative sense as morally inferior to the standards of modern society)... I was under the wistfully hopeful impression that the government was moving away from destroying the lives of a few random minor offenders to "make examples", as the IRS used to do to middle class folks who fudged their taxes a bit, as it is egregiously immoral. Or it could be that the judge owns stock in major record labels and wanted to make some extra cash this week.
Just creatively articulating, of course, far be it from me to imply that there is a huge trend of corruption amongst the government officials with voting or deciding powers and using it to further their gains in the stock market. No, that would be outrageous...
Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh on the Honorable whatever-the-fuck, but I've had a rash inside my head due to irritation of the abudance of cruelty, corruption, and outright stupidity in the government I pay for. I need to switch to a better product, it seems.
My brother's studying to be a patent lawyer, and all he has to say for shit like this is that the system just isn't used to software patents yet, whereas every other kind of patent's been around for decades and all people involved in the patent system finally figured out how to fucking do things. But honestly, every time I hear that from him, I can't help but think in the back of my head "Uh, so, that still doesn't account for common fucking sense. Where'd all that go?"
I guess the judge is just one of those retarded fuckers that has his wife organize every last fucking thing for him. That's the only way I can possibly think of to explain it, that he's never, every used a file cabinet, a computer, or even organized his own fucking sock drawer. I can imagine other patents coming up on slashdot having more too them, and that knee-jerk reactions don't do them justice, that there might be more to the story.... but on this one, that is fucking impossible. There is absolutely nothing about the iPod's interface that anyone should have ever been able to patent, and that should be fucking obvious to anyone working in the patent system. Anyone who approved this patent and the judge in the case should be fired.
Regain implies they might've gone so far as to earn it on equal terms of competition. I don't see MS dropping their monopolistic practices anytime soon, and by all means they seem to be getting worse. Whether or not IE7 is standards-compliant, I'm sure they'll make it a big part of Vista (whenever that thing does come out).
I guess I made a logical fault in most web sites being universal in the english-speaking world, so I didn't consider UK-specific or euro-specific possibilities. Honest to god, I'd only seen an ad for the reunion thing amongst the plethora of other reunion sites, and I'd never heard the name EasyJet once till now.
Maybe I've just missed the boat on that one, but it doesn't seem to have more of an impact than any of the sites listed below it... and EasyJet? First time I've heard of them, but again, could've just been out to lunch for that one, but both seem more like advertising plugs than deserving of being on the list. If anything, those modding group websites that release patches like good old Hot Coffee for GTA seem to have made a much larger impact. Shit, if you're going to put up Napster as a website, then you might as well add iTunes.com too. I do wish Cryptome was up there, but... not too surprised it isn't.
Oh well. I suppose most irk-worthy point is that artists haven't found a large, well-organized central hub on the web to gather around. I suppose Deviantart counts, but... not really. Friends that are far more talented than I can't find any good groups (and technically, the site discourages forming groups. Brilliant.) to organize projects with or easily find people of the same caliber, or just the same level of dedication (hobbyist vs. career artist).
That, and as it was noted before, the job-finding/headhunting websites are ridiculously inept in comparison to what they could achieve and help others achieve.
Was that they were (are?) kissing ass in China by actively exposing democracy and freedom advocates, as in doing the police's job for them, just to get a leg up with the government. That's a big no-no; abide by the rules, but playing along and becoming rights-crushing chums with the likes of the Chinese government (Fuck off chinese communism advocates, until you apologize to the Tibetans and make reparations, you are not a civilized country).
If you take a step back from the whole shebang, one can't help but be astounded at how badly the RIAA has screwed itself over in this particular situation. How do you take a situation where any other party would be completely and absolutely in the right if they said they didn't want you stealing their labor/product and turn nearly every sensible person aquainted with the matters at hand against you? It's like a rape victim taking the rapist to court and proving to be so vile and vicious as to turn the public in favor of the rapist (real mass pirates, not individuals, in terms of metaphor), and get pro bono law groups to back up the sonofabitch too! Astounding, I say. Well, that's what happens when you screw over everyone you come into contact with and try to crucify the innocent instead of behaving civilly about the matter and going after real pirating rings. Silly suits, instant gratification in greed and money will mean your doom... particularly when you have nothing to do with music itself, aside from litigating and controlling it for profit.
I tell you what, if I were in charge of any company with a product line that could be easily pirated, I'd be suing the RIAA for making piracy more publicly acceptable through their corporate grotesqueries of lawsuits and such. I'm sure you could find a lawyer with a sharp enough tongue and wit to word it quite well.
Slashdot Mirror
heavy-handed laws that attempt to usurp the inalienable rights of users to download content for free off the internet.
Feeling a little over-entitled, perhaps?
Wal-mart is so damned evil, but it's the last place people expect it, so it takes a while to catch on. Companies like Halliburton and Monsanto's misdeeds are headline-grabbing events; Wal-mart just has cheap socks and asshole management.
My bloody RSS feed had an ad for HD DVD right below this article.
Ha.
Just how, exactly, does an inquiry into a land deal end up with questions about sexual tendencies?
So you have a problem with him lying about something that the trial in question had absolutely nothing to do with? Even though you would have done EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING AND SO WOULD EVERY OTHER MAN ON EARTH?
I've fucking had it with you hypocritical, uneducated Republican shitheels hamming it up on Slashdot, as if you had one fucking ounce of moral fiber in your being.
Who modded this insightful? It's just a half-assed retard attempting to take a pot-shot at personal freedoms. So now sexual liberty is equivalent to some nutjob fucking a watermelon? Eat shit and die, you conservative prick.
Don't like personal freedom, cocksucker? Go to China. Stop fucking up the civilized world.
You heard me. GET OUT.
Those are exceptions to what happens 99.99999% of time. To build a policy on it is stupidity.
It needs a ranking system that seperates hobbyists and dabblers and amateurs from specialists, doctors, and professionals, and gives them voting power on articles in their field accordingly.
I'd count the number way higher than that. I'm surprised there still aren't any games more targeted towards particular cultural groups; so far we have tons for Chinese, Japanese, European, and American cultures, and a few with Russian elements and the one Godfather game (Italian...ish), but none for anyone else, and only ONE based out of the poverty faced by so many black families in the US. Where are the games with disctinctly Chicano roots? Or Hindi? Arabic? Central or South American? I'm particularly surprised there aren't games made especially for the Latino people living in the US; they've been a large part of our heritage for a long time and are continuously playing a more and more important role in the ongoing growth of America. I want to see a historical game about the Mexican fight for independence, or a Jade-Empire style RPG about the growth of the Arabic empire during it's height or the legends of Vishnu. It's about time a game developer got serious and started looking really close at the art and drama experienced inside of the ethnic communities here.
I think it'd be a great way for the game developing community to counter-act the recent explosion of xenophobia in America to publish some games aimed at helping the children of immigrants learn about the US and academic subjects and their homeland's traditions in an interesting manner and preserving their cultural heritage in the way the game is presented. It'd take some serious research and alot of money and effort spent on artistic direction, but would be very, very well worth it.
I'm not quite sure I read you correctly, as the man in Turkey is the one who sent the FBI the information leading to the capture of the alleged pedophile. Being that Turkey has a large muslim population and we seem well on our way to becoming a staple feature in the curses of the arabic language, and that we'd have to get him over here to prosecute him... and he has committed the single crime which will immediately win over any of the hearts of the masses in general, breaking the law to catch those that prey on kids... not gonna happen. If it wasn't publicized and we wanted to know more about how blackhats over in that part of the world operate, then there'd be a 1% chance.
But, the more I think about my position, the more it seems to sway. I'm tenuously staying my ground on this case, because the hacker in question never gained root access to the criminal's machine, but rather laced the child pornography he found on, as the article even names the damned spot, "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen" with malicious code to report back what was found on the machines. Nevertheless, with the current administration's keen knack to employ good ideas in ways the mock the logic behind them (namely God and justice), what seems like a noble endeavor (and that's fading fast in my head too, and may have been there just because of all the damn super hero movies coming out) quickly snowballs into a monument of fucking up.
"Pederasty" is defined explicitly as a man having sexual relations with a boy, and if you want to go by a reference for pederast, they get even more explicit and define it as "A man who has sexual relations, especially anal intercourse, with a boy". The term is often found juxtaposed with the term pedophilia in modern lexicon (well, when one is around those keen enough to absorb and use terms like "pederast" or "lexicon" in a sentence, of course).
Secondly, a comparison between physically reprimanding one's child, even with a belt, and sexually molesting/raping one's child is fucking ludicrous. Of course, we can't compare right now because the article is talking about someone seeking to molest someone else's children (in most cases), and there is a damned ocean between what it's like for a child to be molested by their parents and someone else. Strictly speaking, the developemental mind can readily cope with physical pain, it's part of how we learn about the world and grow; lo and behold, the reason most ignorant parents smack their kids is to simply trigger the most base instinct of "If something bad happens after you do something, try not to do it again. Rinse and repeat until memorized." Sometimes people do need the firmest of reprimands, particularly with the trend of modern society to romanticize drug use and criminal activity. This can get out of hand, but not too often, and usually the victims just have to take anger management courses later on in life.
I'm running of no sleep right now, so I'm having difficulty putting the difference between physical abuse and sexual abuse into words, so let me put it as simply as I can: Physical abuse causes rage and anger in a child, an evolutionary "Fuck off!" response to something causing undue harm to you. Sexual abuse, particularly in the fragile state of a kid and particularly when it's the parents doing the molesting, quite simply makes something snap. Let's see... you know that fear that men have of ticking off the wrong person in jail and being raped? Right, take that, take away all of the mental toughness and emotional durability you've built up since you hit puberty and transplant yourself back to the days of Thunder Cats and then seeing your father disrobe you and decide it's time you learned damned fucking well the meaning of "pederasty".
Sexual molestation absolutely annihilates most every chance for that child to grow up and lead a normal, mentally healthy life. Will most of them go on living and get past it? Yes, of course. That doesn't mean they aren't completely fucked in the head, which rather neatly explains why the difficulty of going through life with broken set of circuitry calls many of them to simply not live; the exact phenomenon occurs when someone is slowly dying of an incredibly painful disease and they want to be euthanized.
As far as I can tell, all the FBI did was say that they can't prosecute someone in another country; whether or not that's the truth, I'm unsure, as I'm not up to date on the current gumbo of international policing of crimes that cross borders mixed with various countries' governing old men trying to each come up with the completely wrong way of dealing with the internet. I suspect that they could have pressured Turkey into giving him up for extradition if they really wanted to be pricks about it, but Turkey would've told them to piss off and every news outlet would murder the public image of the agency in full public view.
Besides, I think turning a blind eye to someone hunting for pedophiles is the least illegal thing the FBI has done in a while.
And the police can use agents in the form of paid informants who are involved in drugs to find drug-dealers or somesuch, and yes, that informant will use the money paid to him by the police to probably shoot up again.
Pederasty is a unique crime in that its motives don't fit in with the majority of causes that drive people to commit crimes. Not only is it a mental disease, but one that can spread from the perpetrator to the victim over time, as most child molestors were once victims themselves. I'm not trying to argue away their humanity or imply they should be summarily round up and shot, or anything else along those lines. I should've clarified my point a little better, as when most people refer to "culling the abomination of pedophilia", their intentions are probably going to lean towards the more vicious and vengeful.
e /etc as a result.
Anyway, back on point: I meant that only pedophilia should be treated in a different way because of the magnitude of damage it causes society. I don't mean to lock them up forever, just that we need to find a much more effective method of stopping them from acting out on that behavior. I realize that I may very well sound like some bleeding-heart, bleary-eyed soccer mom at a PTA meeting, but I'm quite serious.
Terrorism and organized crime do very little damage relative to pedophilia (yes, I am of the opinion that terrorism is, in actuality, one of the smallest threats one faces in day to day life as an American; 9/11 was an incredibly lucky sucker punch from terrorist groups and a fairly suicidal move in terms of not having their movement blasted off the face of the earth with artillery), with terrorism a distant third behind a fairly distant second of gangs. This is simply because I know maybe one or two people that have been affected by terrorism, a small handful of people that have been robbed or are involved in gangs, but I couldn't possibly count all of the people I've talked to that have been molested as kids, and developed suicidal tendencies/depressive/bipolar/obsessive-compulsiv
Proxy groups are always a giant pain in the ass, shit, just look at the giant headache Hizbollah is causing the world at the moment. However, we usually can avoid them here (well, not avoid per se, but rather find out about whether or not they are sponsored by a government agency) pretty well. The paper trail and incredible ease of information to be passed around makes running a front difficult in the US, particularly for the public image of any agency that tries it. I don't mean advocate groups, lobbyists, or viral marketing whatever-the-fuck, but actual fronts; like ones the CIA sets up.
On the other hand, Congress is making it damn hard for anyone to leak information out right now, which puts corruption in a safe and moist place to grow wild... It's a thin line, and with the way the government's heading, well, I will probably end up switching my opinion to the other side out of circumstance.
Well, shit, now that I think about it, the more respect and renown these vigilante types get, the more others will want to grab their 15 minutes of fame, by whatever means they have, even if it involves framing an innocent citizen.
I still currently lean towards my original stance, but obviously, I'll have to think about it a bit more and come up with something that works a bit better.
Normally I'd agree that taking the law into your own hands is not only illegal but a very bad idea; however, there are always exceptions. 99% of vigilanteism is a bad idea, as it does not entail people taking the law into their own hands to help others in a non-violent way, but usually runs from personal matters gone awry to the militant folks that "help patrol" the U.S.-Mexico border or other groups that believe it their duty to create a mob mentality when handling real or perceived threats (I can't help but add my favorite quote, from Men in Black of all movies: "A person is smart and intuitive; people are dumb, panicky, and dangerous animals").
The difference is, when it comes to pederasty, I can't really think of many methods I wouldn't condone to cull the abomination. However, many people make a great logical fault in believing that they need to make the rules based on the exception (people that try and use pedophilia as the means to creating whatever laws they want) or in believing that the exception must fall under the same rules as all other crimes in being found and prosecuted, lest authorities create abusive legislature on the pretense of catching child molesters.
There is a middle road in all things, and vigilanteism makes a fine one for this. You don't want to give police the rights to do what a blackhat does to find a pedophile, but you want the pedophile caught.
However, the case in point is an exception. The man lives in another country and the FBI, of course, won't and couldn't file charges, but I don't believe that this constitutes "tacit approval"... although the FBI may simply be trying to send a signal to the blackhat community that reads something like "Sweet Christ, we have no fucking idea how to use computers (Database? The fuck is that?), if any of you guys wants to give us a hand in catching these guys, by all means, go ahead. Do whatever you can."
The feds can't approve of someone breaking the law, obviously, or acknowledge that someone without warrants or CARNIVORE can do the job better than the ol' FBI. But they can turn a blind eye to it, if only for the crime of pedophilia and nothing else.
If I recall correctly, wasn't there a hacker group in the U.S. that did this in the late 90's or are still doing this? I distinctly remember seeing a few adverts and hearing a few inquiries about people who wanted to join up in the old hidden IRC rooms way back when. Ah, sweet nostalgia... days of linux shell accounts, little sleep, and keeping an extra machine running only OS/2 Warp, if only out of spite, back when code came so easily. Christ, my mind has addled.
Apologies... I believe I become a might bit dyslexic when faced with less than adequate sleep.
Perelman did not leave his position at the Steklov Institute as the article suggests, but rather, he was not allowed to return to his position. I believe that he already had a fairly reclusive and modest personality, and as was pointed out by the Sydney Morning Herald, the extremity of this nature was prompted when the faculty of the Steklov Institute declined to re-elect him as a member; his peers and close colleagues rejected him, the paper quotes a friend as saying that Perelman was made to feel as an "absolutely ungifted and untalented person". Wikipedia has more, saying that this stemmed "apparently in part out of continuing doubt over his claims regarding the geometrization conjecture".
There are few things more bitter than being betrayed by one, let alone a majority or all of your associates. I know all too well how that kind of utterly profound pain can easily turn one of your greatest passions in life (be it a pursuit or a person) into a source for nothing other than misery.
So, should the board in charge of zoning for a particular city be able to charge certain people more for licenses because of the name of their companies? I'm pretty damn sure we'd see every corporation active today screaming fire if something like that came up. Seems to me that we're heading in completely the wrong direction when it comes to regulation and business interacting with technology; everyone with money and power is trying to exploit the inexperience of various legislative bodies when it comes to newfangled things like software patents and the internet.
The two examples are so vastly different that a comparison is has no logical meaning. By the same road, you could've named cars or candles or whatever; shit, you could've picked the pharmacy inventory systems with robotic controls.
However, there are rules of simplicity that the courts are required to follow before granting a patent. A program which any first-year CS student can write, and often will, to sort various items is the essence of simplicity.
It could be that Texas judges are simply operating from an inferior moral standard (throwing the death penalty left and right; I'm not flame-baiting here, I'm stating the obvious: Texas abuses the death penalty and its courts seem to operate from a primitive ethical standard as compared to other states -and whereas most every other civilized nation has outlawed the damn thing- this qualifies simply in a comparative sense as morally inferior to the standards of modern society)... I was under the wistfully hopeful impression that the government was moving away from destroying the lives of a few random minor offenders to "make examples", as the IRS used to do to middle class folks who fudged their taxes a bit, as it is egregiously immoral.
Or it could be that the judge owns stock in major record labels and wanted to make some extra cash this week.
Just creatively articulating, of course, far be it from me to imply that there is a huge trend of corruption amongst the government officials with voting or deciding powers and using it to further their gains in the stock market. No, that would be outrageous...
Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh on the Honorable whatever-the-fuck, but I've had a rash inside my head due to irritation of the abudance of cruelty, corruption, and outright stupidity in the government I pay for. I need to switch to a better product, it seems.
My brother's studying to be a patent lawyer, and all he has to say for shit like this is that the system just isn't used to software patents yet, whereas every other kind of patent's been around for decades and all people involved in the patent system finally figured out how to fucking do things. But honestly, every time I hear that from him, I can't help but think in the back of my head "Uh, so, that still doesn't account for common fucking sense. Where'd all that go?"
I guess the judge is just one of those retarded fuckers that has his wife organize every last fucking thing for him. That's the only way I can possibly think of to explain it, that he's never, every used a file cabinet, a computer, or even organized his own fucking sock drawer. I can imagine other patents coming up on slashdot having more too them, and that knee-jerk reactions don't do them justice, that there might be more to the story.... but on this one, that is fucking impossible. There is absolutely nothing about the iPod's interface that anyone should have ever been able to patent, and that should be fucking obvious to anyone working in the patent system. Anyone who approved this patent and the judge in the case should be fired.
Regain implies they might've gone so far as to earn it on equal terms of competition. I don't see MS dropping their monopolistic practices anytime soon, and by all means they seem to be getting worse. Whether or not IE7 is standards-compliant, I'm sure they'll make it a big part of Vista (whenever that thing does come out).
I guess I made a logical fault in most web sites being universal in the english-speaking world, so I didn't consider UK-specific or euro-specific possibilities. Honest to god, I'd only seen an ad for the reunion thing amongst the plethora of other reunion sites, and I'd never heard the name EasyJet once till now.
Learn something new every day.
Maybe I've just missed the boat on that one, but it doesn't seem to have more of an impact than any of the sites listed below it... and EasyJet? First time I've heard of them, but again, could've just been out to lunch for that one, but both seem more like advertising plugs than deserving of being on the list. If anything, those modding group websites that release patches like good old Hot Coffee for GTA seem to have made a much larger impact. Shit, if you're going to put up Napster as a website, then you might as well add iTunes.com too. I do wish Cryptome was up there, but... not too surprised it isn't.
Oh well. I suppose most irk-worthy point is that artists haven't found a large, well-organized central hub on the web to gather around. I suppose Deviantart counts, but... not really. Friends that are far more talented than I can't find any good groups (and technically, the site discourages forming groups. Brilliant.) to organize projects with or easily find people of the same caliber, or just the same level of dedication (hobbyist vs. career artist).
That, and as it was noted before, the job-finding/headhunting websites are ridiculously inept in comparison to what they could achieve and help others achieve.
Was that they were (are?) kissing ass in China by actively exposing democracy and freedom advocates, as in doing the police's job for them, just to get a leg up with the government. That's a big no-no; abide by the rules, but playing along and becoming rights-crushing chums with the likes of the Chinese government (Fuck off chinese communism advocates, until you apologize to the Tibetans and make reparations, you are not a civilized country).
If you take a step back from the whole shebang, one can't help but be astounded at how badly the RIAA has screwed itself over in this particular situation. How do you take a situation where any other party would be completely and absolutely in the right if they said they didn't want you stealing their labor/product and turn nearly every sensible person aquainted with the matters at hand against you?
It's like a rape victim taking the rapist to court and proving to be so vile and vicious as to turn the public in favor of the rapist (real mass pirates, not individuals, in terms of metaphor), and get pro bono law groups to back up the sonofabitch too! Astounding, I say. Well, that's what happens when you screw over everyone you come into contact with and try to crucify the innocent instead of behaving civilly about the matter and going after real pirating rings. Silly suits, instant gratification in greed and money will mean your doom... particularly when you have nothing to do with music itself, aside from litigating and controlling it for profit.
I tell you what, if I were in charge of any company with a product line that could be easily pirated, I'd be suing the RIAA for making piracy more publicly acceptable through their corporate grotesqueries of lawsuits and such. I'm sure you could find a lawyer with a sharp enough tongue and wit to word it quite well.