Actually, as a matter of private international law, that's not necessarily true. You refer to the common assumption of laypeople that the only applicable law is that of the country where the server is located. This is often, though not always, incorrect. For example, a United States plaintiff could plead an infringement of United States copyright under the United States Copyright Act. If an exclusive right has been exercised within the territorial scope of that Act (eg, by unauthorised distribution or reproduction within the USA), there will, subject to any applicable defences, be actionable copyright in a United States forum having appropriate jurisdiction. The 'but it's legal where I come from' argument is not a defence -- it's a procedural argument appealing to a choice of law rule that would see the lex causae, rather than the lex situs, applied. While this might get up in a tort or contract case, it is almost certainly going to be rejected in an immovable property case (eg, intellectual property rights such as copyright). So, in short, the law of the server country is irrelevant unless the private international law of the forum where the action is brought actually determines that foreign law applies to the action, and that law is pleaded and proved by the plaintiff. For practical purposes, this is almost impossible, as foreign copyright cannot be enforced extraterritorially in the USA/UK/Australia/NZ/Singapore/Canada.
In Australia it is illegal to commit, or attempt to commit suicide.
This is incorrect. In the statutes governing criminal offences in each of the six states and two territories of Australia, it is - to my knowledge - not illegal to commit or attempt to commit suicide. Though it was once illegal in some jurisdictions, such laws were repealed well over half a century ago (mostly on the basis of policy roughly informed by the libertarian doctrines other users here seem to be espousing).
See, for example, the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic), which provides, inter alia:
6A. Suicide no longer a crime
The rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit or to attempt to commit suicide is hereby abrogated.
So while it might be fun to poke fun at the frequently conservative and sometimes ridiculous legislators of our respective countries, please do some basic fact-checking first. (For reference, all Australian Commonwealth [ie, Federal] and State legislation can be found at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/). Then again, this is Slashdot...:-)
Each year the amount of glitz and frivolous (ie, non-gaming related) material seem to increase quite significantly. Between Army antics and PR fluff, fewer and fewer titles of substance are actually playable, and the attention of the gaming press has become less focused on the games than their promotion.
Is this to compensate for the decreasing number and quality of the games that are showcased, or does it simply reflect the fact that the Western games industry is increasingly mainstream?
You should try running it at 640x480 with the lowest quality textures and filtering. Menu items turn into an unreadable sea of grey sludge, and the frame rate is still unplayable! Bring back the days of UT, I say.
I was actually about half way through watching this (via MeFi), then the next chapter mysteriously timed out... '/.!', I cursed under my breath; and, sure enough, here it is.
Slashdot Effect aside, the documentary gives a moderately interesting overview of the players and issues in contemporary theoretical physics, but is just repetitive enough to be irritating - like most physics documentaries (flying neon spaghetti anyone?).
At least back now all those/. cliches we know and love do not exist yet. Gentlemen, our task was clear. I, for one, welcomed our new +%Y-%h-%d@%H:%M:%S overlords. Kindly ignore the date of this post.
But the probability of a file containing an identical pattern of size n bytes is so low that there would be little difficulty satisfying the burden of proof required in a civil case. 'On the balance of probabilities' isn't particularly onerous.
Perhaps more difficult would be to identify the source of a given byte sequence, given the huge number of ways to encode a track.
Downloading each image file and comparing its contents against potentially tens of thousands of sources is likely to be very expensive (computationally). In typical RIAA fashion, they're more likely to simply supoena users sharing several hundred image files > 3MB in size. ("Satellite images? Aren't they illegal?"):-)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, as a matter of private international law, that's not necessarily true. You refer to the common assumption of laypeople that the only applicable law is that of the country where the server is located. This is often, though not always, incorrect. For example, a United States plaintiff could plead an infringement of United States copyright under the United States Copyright Act. If an exclusive right has been exercised within the territorial scope of that Act (eg, by unauthorised distribution or reproduction within the USA), there will, subject to any applicable defences, be actionable copyright in a United States forum having appropriate jurisdiction. The 'but it's legal where I come from' argument is not a defence -- it's a procedural argument appealing to a choice of law rule that would see the lex causae, rather than the lex situs, applied. While this might get up in a tort or contract case, it is almost certainly going to be rejected in an immovable property case (eg, intellectual property rights such as copyright). So, in short, the law of the server country is irrelevant unless the private international law of the forum where the action is brought actually determines that foreign law applies to the action, and that law is pleaded and proved by the plaintiff. For practical purposes, this is almost impossible, as foreign copyright cannot be enforced extraterritorially in the USA/UK/Australia/NZ/Singapore/Canada.
Each year the amount of glitz and frivolous (ie, non-gaming related) material seem to increase quite significantly. Between Army antics and PR fluff, fewer and fewer titles of substance are actually playable, and the attention of the gaming press has become less focused on the games than their promotion.
Is this to compensate for the decreasing number and quality of the games that are showcased, or does it simply reflect the fact that the Western games industry is increasingly mainstream?
You should try running it at 640x480 with the lowest quality textures and filtering. Menu items turn into an unreadable sea of grey sludge, and the frame rate is still unplayable! Bring back the days of UT, I say.
I was actually about half way through watching this (via MeFi), then the next chapter mysteriously timed out... '/.!', I cursed under my breath; and, sure enough, here it is.
Slashdot Effect aside, the documentary gives a moderately interesting overview of the players and issues in contemporary theoretical physics, but is just repetitive enough to be irritating - like most physics documentaries (flying neon spaghetti anyone?).
Act now, before it's too late: wget -m -A=mp3 -D=mp3.com -L now. Independent music shall live on, free from its corporate shackles!
At least back now all those /. cliches we know and love do not exist yet. Gentlemen, our task was clear. I, for one, welcomed our new +%Y-%h-%d@%H:%M:%S overlords. Kindly ignore the date of this post.
But the probability of a file containing an identical pattern of size n bytes is so low that there would be little difficulty satisfying the burden of proof required in a civil case. 'On the balance of probabilities' isn't particularly onerous. Perhaps more difficult would be to identify the source of a given byte sequence, given the huge number of ways to encode a track. Downloading each image file and comparing its contents against potentially tens of thousands of sources is likely to be very expensive (computationally). In typical RIAA fashion, they're more likely to simply supoena users sharing several hundred image files > 3MB in size. ("Satellite images? Aren't they illegal?") :-)
No doubt they'll see a spike in their referrer logs from people Googling for 'hl2 source code'.
All this talk of .com brings back fond memories of Zombo.
"THIS is Zombocom!" The sad part is they had more content on their website than most of the dotCom era folks.
I suppose if there's one thing CNet is good at, it's heaps of content. Not necessarily that memorable, but it's there in droves.