In the meantime, I will point out that the flaw with this particular analogy is comparing a service (broadband) to a physical object (an acre of land)
That does not alter the validity of parent's analogy. Consider a car mechanic, who being a similar jackass, sells you a coupon for "tire change in 10 minutes - guaranteed!" (clearly a "service"), obviously hoping that all of his customers... err... marks, will not show up at the same time. But if they do, he is in the same boat the ISP is: he sold something he could not deliver, i.e. he lied, cheated, and ripped the consumer off.
Sometimes analogies do work, because Internet is not some new magical, never before experienced thing from the perspective of mercantile trade. It simply fits into the ages old criterion of "service", rules of which have been long established as are all the different ways thieves and con-men have tried to abuse those rules.
I think they are far more likely to ban travel alltogether, or at least for any practical purposes for non-millionaires or other "elites", by demanding Soviet-style internal passports and visas (except this time with biometrics - Soviets eat your hearts out) to travel from city to city. This of course following finally banning all personal freedoms and habeas corpus, all in the name of protecting us from the "grave danger of terrorism", danger so great that the odds of becoming a victim of it might even exceed being struck by lightning... two times in a row.
And this is how freedom ends... not with a bang but with a whine and wimper of idiots curled into fetal positions under their beds, mumbling "Osama is coming to get meeee"...
no one cares. we know diamonds are artificially priced.
I see that you not only know with absolute certainty what everyone thinks (including myself presumably - since a negative of "no one" would be "everyone"), but you also think of yourself as multiple persons, or possibly a member of royalty, hence the use of "we" where other, normal people would have used "I" instead.
Of course, you don't care about the point, you are just looking for a chance to make some vague point about De Beers.
For your next, I am sure as equally successful as this one, telepathic trick I suggest you try connecting to Osama Bin Laden and divining his precise whereabouts from his innermost thoughts. I hear there is good money and fame awaiting someone so exceedingly skilled as yourself in remote rectal projection, which naturally would free you of having to burden yourself with these mundane chores of enlightening such lowly rabble here on Slashdot as to your superior intellect and your astronomical snot.
Explaining to your fiance why she will have a piece of glass vs a real diamond will probably result in you not needing one anyways.
Who is talking about a piece of glass? Artificial diamonds are virtually identical (or superior in most quality respects) then the "natural" ones. DeBeers is spending hundreds of millions dollars desperately trying to come up with ever more convoluted ways of detecting them for the sole purpose to be able to claim that they are "fakes". But science and time are against the troglodytic money-grubbers and soon you will be able to buy the formerly "10k rocks" by the pound. I wonder what will your girlfriend tell you then.
I hate to break it to you, but that "10k rock" is really worth something like $50 (should free markets actually work in real life). Only thanks to DeBeers' amazing ability to mess with people's heads and wallets, would you, or any otherwise intelligent and reasonable person, go simply gaga and part with 10k for it. But then again the world is full of mass delusions and con-artists willing to make a buck on them. Pet rock anyone?
I've been in battles where a group of frigates took down multiple battleships. Hell, I was even in one where about sixty of us went out in the nearly useless default ships you get at the beginning of the game and destroyed a hapless battlecruiser in about ten seconds.With good fleet commanders, a well-coordinated force of weaker ships can take on quite a bit.
Me and a number of other newbs at the time tried this many times only to find that there was no effective way to coordinate our actions and thus we kept ending up being blown up one at a time when we arrived in small 2-3 ship "chunks", either too far or too close, the enemy simply escaped at gates as at that time there was no way to hold him, or our "ambush" was too uncoordinated to proceed correctly. Note that use of Teamspeak or other real-time chat systems is not an option for many and thus we were forced to use the clumsy and wholly useless game chat interface for all the squad command functions, which put as at a severe disadvantage. That is one of my greatest beefs with Eve, the fact that the game looks beautiful and yet sports one of the clumsiest, most useless user interfaces I ever had displeasure of using. I heard that they made significant changes to it many months later, but that was far too late for me.
Eve has also a lot of major flaws. I understand that for some poeple some flaws are more annoying then others, while some things they simply ignore, but I just could not stand some of the Eve's elements. To be honest, the game has probably the most tactically innovative combat system out there, with the rock-paper-scissors type of customization of ship loads available to even most newbish players, etc. But at the same time it suffers from major compromises which were clearly made in favour of the "advanced" players. I found it simply not worthwile to suffer through hours upon hours of chores, boredom and outright abuse to achieve some mythical "good times", 5 months into the game. Games are supposed to be fun for all participants, not just the most tenacious.
Case in point: small, cheap vessels are pretty much incapable of inflicting any meaningful damage on the larger ones, even when operated in a large, coordinated group, thus denying the "newbs" an opportunity to counter-act the power of a single well-off player. Add to this an abysmal (or more precisely, complete lack of any practical one) command/squad control system, lag and jerkiness in major engagements, the inability to engage oponents in any useful way at the gates without a massive expenditure in area warp disabling hardware, etc and so on.
The very long list of these flaws, aggravations, annoyances and outright stupidity has driven me away from Eve, and was in fact a final nail in the coffin of my participation in any more pay-per-play MMORPGs.
Real life provides enough of annoyances for me to pay somene for delivering more.
Last time I checked Ireland was not part of the UK.Northern Ireland is but not Ireland.
You did not mention where you were only that you were shooting a theoretical gun into Northern Ireland, and since the disucssion was revolving around the UK I assumed that was your presumed location.
So, no I committed no crime in the UK since I wasn't in the UK by your logic.
Quite true, you would be commiting a crime in Ireland.
You have stated that you can not commit a held accountable for crime you commit in a country that you are not physically in.
Huh? I think something has gone wrong with that sentence.
You seem to think that you have to step on the soil of a country to commit a crime in that country.
Quite.
That just isn't true in this day and age.
Ah yes, the Internet has changed everything. All of these old notions of "justice" and "representation" and "nationhood" are now quaint and no longer fashionable, right alongside of the other "quaint" pieces of paper like the Geneva Conventions.
Get a grip. Slapping "computers" or "internet" on something does not in any way affect fundamental principles of society, no matter how badly some would-be-usurers are manouvering to override common sense with techno-gobledey-gook.
This gentleman committed a crime in the US. It may have been by remote control but his actions had a physical effect in the US.
Which does not change the fact that the juristiction he was in was the UK and therefore UK laws apply to him
No different than shooting a gun over the boarder would.
Which would result in prosecution in the country he was shooting from as is his right and expectation as a citizen of that country.
If someone committed murder in the UK and then went to the US would you still think that it would wrong for the US to send him back to the UK for trial?
No because he was bodily, physically in the jurisdiction where the crime occured, at the time of the crime which is the only way of determining any sort of culpability abroad and one of the very reasons people have to get things such as passports and visas.
Or do you just believe that extradition is wrong in all cases?
See above.
It doesn't really matter because I would bet that you are totally convinced that you are right and no amount of history, law, or logic will convince you otherwise.
Both history and law happen to be on my side, as I am a traditionalist in these matters, as opposed to these new "internet changed everything", "these old rules do not apply in this day and age" types like you who think that every newest gizmo that comes along changes all the fundamental equations of society.
So, you charge your soldiers with assault if they ever use their weapons?
While it might be illegal for a civilian to fire a missile at a neighboring country, it is seldom, if ever, illegal for a national government (or representative of same) to do the same....
I am sure that you are aware that wartime laws differ markedly from peacetime ones in most counties and while in peacetime shooting someone in uniform of a neighbouring country would be considered murder and punished accordingly, in wartime it is called "heroism" and rewarded with glee. Which of course is a sad testimony to the woeful stupidity of humanity as a whole. But that is quite another discussion alltogether.
So if I was in Ireland and shot someone across the boarder in Northern Ireland then I shouldn't be tried for murder since I committed no crime in Ireland and wasn't in the UK?
How many times do I have to repeat this? I replied to this very point ad-nauseum already. Yes you would be tried for murder in the UK because that is where you were when commiting the crime. What is so hard to understand about this? At no point did I advocate that the UK laws do not apply, only where the trial, and the subsequent punishment is to be. For UK citizens who commit crimes while in the UK, that locality is the UK. Only if they bodily remove themselves out of UK jurisdiction to some foreign nation that nation's laws then take precedence. It is really very, very simple.
That is exactly what you are saying.
Nothing of the sort and you know it.
Or I could build a radio controlled air plane with a bomb on it and fly it into your home as long as I was on ship in international waters?
On intenational waters you would be subject to the maritime international laws, which do cover murder and assignment of jurisdiction in prosecuting thereof.
Or I could scam old folks through your mail system legally.
If the "scam" happens to be legal where the phone calls come from, that is true indeed. However most scams are not legal abroad either and subsequently our Canadian phone scammers get prosecuted in Canada for scams they commited while on the phone to the US. But not extradited (or at least when sanity prevails over politics) for a crime which they commited while in Canada.
What the gentleman in question did was illegal in BOTH countries. The extradition treaties between our countries works both ways.
In which case he should have been tried in the UK. The fact that what he did was illegal both in UK and in US does not remove his privilege to be protected as a UK citizen, by his own government. He has a right to a fair trial in the UK in accordance to the UK version of the law and to be punished with UK version of the punishment prescribed. That is because he commited the crime while in the UK and thus he enjoys all the privileges and rights a UK citzen should in his own country. But what happened instead is that the UK government abandoned him and threw him to the wolves, to be tried by foreigners, using a foreign rendition of foreign laws, and punished by a foreign nation even though he did not leave the borders of the UK. This is nothing short of "cruel and unusual" punishment, solely for political purposes.
If a US citizen did the same thing to a computer system in the UK and your nation asked for him to be sent to the UK for trial the US would send him.
Which would constitute a gross violation of his constitutional rights.
Assuming this is actually the choice they faced, do you think the UK government would be more interested in standing up for the rights of one citizen accused of a crime, or maintaining good relations with the US? I'd be very surprised if it were the former. Now maybe whoever made this decision doesn't see it in the light that I presented it, I don't know.
And this of course is simply abandonment by the UK government of its responsibility to its own citizens. An act of capitulation. If "good relations" trump the most basic rights of even one of UK citizens, the UK just ceased to be a proud, independent nation and became a protectorate of the US, its true master.
So, it's Ok if I mail you an explosive device from a foreign country. Since I'm not physically there when it explodes, killing you and your entire family, I can't be held liable.
Read the other replies I made to the same very inane point made by about 20 posters before you.
And if I call someone on the phone, and threaten to kill them unless they send me money, that is Ok too, since I'm not right there.
Again, if threats by phone happen to be legal in your country, then it is OK indeed. Fortunately they are not legal in most places and so you would get charged by your local authorities, tried and sentenced there. But not extradited.
They do? Could you provide a pointer to the relevant law in your country?
Here in Canada under at least 3 different sections: use of dangerous materials in a dangerous manner, assault with a deadly weapon and (if successful) homicide (or manslaughter). Note that the law does not have to specifically mention a missile by name. All missiles are weapons and thus all the weapon and assault related laws apply.
By the simple common sense. Otherwise you would be a de-facto citizen of all of the countries with extradition treaties and subject to the rule of their most draconian of tyrants, the lowest common denominator of all of the laws accross this whole set of nations. That is if Britain has an extradition treaty with, say, Dubai, you would be automatically subject to their draconian no-alcohol laws. Extradition treaty with Indonesia? Death for possession of 5grams of weed. And so on. In short, you would cease to be a UK citizen and become a subject of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia while at the same time being bound by all the decrees of the Grand Chairman of People's Republic of China. To prevent this very thing is the whole point of you calling yourself a citizen of th UK, so that you are bound only by the UK laws, and subject to rule of Her Majesty government only, and not some Persian Mullah.
Oh, and please remember that the alleged crimes were committed against computer systems physically located on US soil, meaning that a crime was committed on US soil under US law.
And under the Sharia Law of Afghanistan (as understood by the Taliban government) you are a Heathen and should be put to death at the first opportuniy. Newsflash: what the US thinks about what constitutes a crime and where has no bearing on the simple logical fact that accessing something remotely does not magically transport one's ass to that location, no more then making a phone call to Iran makes one a subject to Iranian laws. And since you've brought this up, the US consideres any slight against any of its corporations or military, regardless of actual locality, to be commited directly against the US as a country, on their soil and would demand an extradition. Only fools would oblige. If the US does not get it way, they simply use CIA to kidnap people from abroad to drive the point home that the US is the sole ruler of the world and all citizens of all other nations are also its subjects, but without any representation or rights. By sumbitting voluntarily to such treatment, the UK merely legitimizes that brand of thuggery.
The perpetrator wasn't in a location under the jurisdiction of the US, but that doesn't make it any less a crime
No it does not (something I never claimed) since hacking is also a crime in the UK. But the whole point of this conversation is that it does change where and under whose laws he is supposed to be tried. That is he, if sanity were to prevail, would be charged under the UK hacking laws based on evidence provided by the US and verified by UK courts. Subsequent sentence would also be carried out in the UK, as is his right as a UK citizen. What happened sends a clear message that one can be stripped of all his country's rights and protections at the drop of a hat if the US wants it because.... US rules the world, apparently, and Britain is reduced to licking its master's gonads.
f you were knowingly violating Chinese law by hosting this seditious material on a server in China or a territory under Chinese jurisdiction, then you would be guilty of a crime for which you could be extradited (though I doubt that any western government would allow extradition in those circumstances).
In other words you advocate a complete capitulation to whatever thug wants you for whatever "crime" as long as a government bureaucrat agrees. What happened to "habeas corups" to "trial before your own peers" "under the laws of the land" and all that crap? If China feels that the laws you violated are acceptable in UK, they are free to complain to the UK authorities about it and, if they are right, you would get charged in a UK court. But unless you were killing Chinese while on vacation there, there should be no way in hell to get extradited. Particularly not for crimes commited abroad via mail of phone call. Slapping "Computers" or "internet" on the same old crime-by-phone does not change the basic, fundamental equations of justice and nationhood, no matter how badly various wankers would love to destroy common sense by doing so.
Rubbish. What the man is accused of is illegal in this country as well as in the US - we are not sending an innocent to face trial for actions that we do not recognise as being criminal.
In which case, since the crime was commited while in UK he deserves a trial under the British law, in UK and any sentence to be served also in UK. Any extradition for crimes commited while on UK soil to a foreign power constitutes a plain surrender to that foreign power, no matter if the things the man happened to do are also illegal in the UK. Ergo my assesment stands: the UK has simply acknowledged superiority of US law and precedence of the US courts to try UK citizens, even for crimes commited while on UK soil. Surrender, pure and simple.
Now, I don't think I agree with extradition in this case, but extraditing him is in no way "acknowledg[ing] the supremacy of US law and courts" over ours.
But it is precisely what it was. Note that I did not claim that he should not be tried. Only where such trial should occur. Extradition in this case is nothing short of submissive behaviour.
are you stupid? i have to be physically present to commit a crime? so if i launch a nuclear missile from my backyard here in the US, and it explodes on a different continent, I'm all good?
No you are not "good". That is because unless the country you are in deems it ok to kill people abroad, you would be charged with murder under the local laws and prosecuted with the aid of the foreign nation in question. If the country you are in finds launching nukes at their neighbours peechy, such an activity is then widely recognised under the international law as representing an act of war (i.e. not prank phone calls nor wacko hackers in search of Elvis' hiding place). Check out what happened to Afghanistan when one does that.
stopped reading there
Yet, apparently you stopped thinking well before that point.
Let's say somebody puts a bomb in a shipping container, loads it on a boat bound for your country, and it blows up in your harbor. According to you, no crime was commited in your country.
That would be only so if the country you are in had no laws against bombing people. Otheriwse you would be charged uner these laws, afforded all the locally mandated judicial process (with the assistance of the foreign nation in question) and then likely jailed, also in your country.
If the country you are in instead aided you, or pretended not to care, and if the crime is internationally recognized as such (which prank phone calls and wacko hackers in search of UFOs are not), one can construde it as an act of war. For results see under: Afghanistan.
So if I push this big red button, and it launches a missile across the border...
Then you would be held responsible under the laws of the country you are in, with your local prosecutor being aided by the foreign country representatives. Most countries have laws against launching bombs at their neighbours. If the government of your country was supporting you instead, then it would be an act of war, as an act of launching missiles (as opposed to prank phone calls and hacking in search of UFOs) is internationally understood as such. For results: see Afghanistan.
Don't commit crimes in other countries, and you won't have to answer to their legal system.
The Chinese government hereby requests your extradition for execution and subsequent trial for voicing opinions in direct oposition to the Party's doctrine on the Internet acessible (by mistake) from China. That is if Iranians do not manage to get you first for daring to speak ill of Islam (evidence of which was secretly presented in a secret prioceeding of a secret court). And so on...
Newsflash: the whole point is that one, by definition, cannot be held liable for crimes abroad if he/she was not physically there while commiting them.
An accusation of "computer" or "internet" crime does not magically change the basic logic of this, it would be equally silly if he had made prank calls to the Iranian Mullahs (severely punishable in Iran, I am sure) or sent booze by mail to the Saudi Crown Prince (which would probably get someone from Saudi Arabia beheaded if he had done so). The foreign laws simply do not apply to activities commitied while in UK.
[2] Because the elected government in your own country decided to ship your sorry ass over here to answer for your crime.
Which of course is the apex of the stupidity on the part of the UK government and an extemely dangerous precedent. In essence, the UK has acknowledged supremacy of US law and courts over its own by doing this. It is a stance of a poodle beaten into sulking submition, not a proud, independent nation.
Simply forbid sharing money for political causes. That is: no advertising other then on a special government channel where anyone can debate anyone based simply on the minimum threshold of votes. No thinly-vailed bribing of voters. No "think-tanks". No TV ads. No party newspapers. Etc. Repeat: no money for politicking or campaigning. Strictly.
A political party is an organization of like-minded individuals. Make it illegal to have political parties and those individuals will still co-operate informally.
Like-mindedness is not a problem. Ability to enforce a point of view via an official party apparatus is. In a party system a dissenting voice within can be easily muzzled by simply threatening that the vast financial and organizational party machinery is put to work against the offending member. Just look at the situation in the US. The public has its choices so severely limited that it is not even funny. There is no practical possibility of challenging the wholly corrupt Republican/Democrat duo-poly on power. None whatsoever. And every complex issue is distilled to "They vs Us" football team analogy.
Besides, wasn't the right to peacefully assemble one of the major goals of your secession from Britain ?
Assembly to discuss things or to protest is not a problem. Again, we are talking about financial and authoritarian structures designed to squash dissent, a anathema to "right to assemble" for political purposes.
Actually, in order to oppose a very wealthy person, you need to organize many poor persons. That's a political party right there - lots of people cooperating for a cause.
Only if money has any effect in politics. One of primary, critical objectives of any democratic governance should to be to eliminate or severely limit the influence of money in politics. Otherwise any republic will inevietably turn into a kleptocracy. Like most of the "liberal" democracies are at this point to some degree, with the US leading far ahead. To counter a rich person's money one does the following: no campaign finances under the strictest penalties, that is all political advertising and debating is paid for by a neutral, independent election agency, financed by the state. All news media operate under the strictest of penalites for reporting any opinions not clearly so labeled and instead in their "news" segments. Furthermore, severe penalties for these news media for reporting unverified information without clearly labeling it so. And to top it off, the most severe of penalties for those who report false information while knowing so.
News media are one of the pillars of democracy and when they become shills for one side or another, the whole project falls appart.
And lastly, the whole pretense that political parites "counteract" the influence of rich people is laughable. The rich people run the parties and finance them. Tell me, which last president of the United States was not a millionaire, directly financed by millionaires?
It is an organization meant to promote the goals of its members. Those goals may or may not be good for the public, but simply categorically claiming that they are not is incorrect.
See above. If that organization uses money to diminish and stiffle the influence of other less-moneyed peple, then it is anti-democratic. As is also if this organization has an internal top-down authoritarian structure that is used to make its members "fall in line". Both is true of today's political parties. They are anti-democratic in every sense of the word.
As for criminality, it is a poor indicator of anything, since anything could be a crime. Criminality does not imply immorality, nor does it imply morality, especially when talking about politics.
Good point. Therefore let me rephrase: political parties, at least in their present form, are anti-democratic and immoral.
Ah, I see. Damn those mus-com infiltrators! Or where they agents of Buddha?
Anyway, I believe that Jesus would smite anyone who tried to get him involved in politics right in the taint.
Then everybody gets smitten, surely, as religion, philosophy, economics and politics are all inextricably linked together. One cannot have a religious movement which does not impact politics in some major way and vice versa. In fact, most religions place demands on their followers which are directly political. Even secular governance is by definition impacted by religion as it seeks to be neutral towards multiple religions all at once, thus having to navigate carefuly between these various camps. The only way you could have a complete separation of religion and politics is in a state composed exclusively of atheists (and the definition of atheism here is the "weak" type where the scientific method leads one to believe that the existence of a super-being-creator-of-the-universe, or even the validity of a question of necessity of such a being for the universe to exist, is at this point indeterminate. This to be contrasted with the "strong" type of atheism, i.e. the assumption of a proof-positive non-existence of such a thing in spite of the lack of scientific evidence one way or another, which is in itself a form of religious conviction).
You forgot to mention the part where the government forced them to do that. I'm sure that's in there, right? That's not just something supporting charity that you took out of context to try to support socialism, I'm positive about that.
I am an atheist but I can clearly see that there is a wopper of a contradiction in your position: if they were true Christians, they would not posess any property, as the Bible clearly states: "everything was held in common". Therefore no need for the Christian government to force them to do anything, they do it themselves. Then of course if they did not do it, they were not true Christians, and so they would run afoul of the Christian community. Ergo the only conclusion that can be reached out of this is that anyone who claims to be a Christian and hoards wealth at the same time is a bald-faced liar. But then, of course, this has been obvious to anyone who cared to look for just about two millenia.
My advice to the greedertarians of various stripes: lay off of Christianity, pick some other voodoo religion which is actually compatible with your goals. Worship Mammon or something. But do not pretend to be Christians or believe in any of the Christianity's tenets.
You gotta be kidding. It is much harder to bribe and corrupt 100 individual legislators then one central cabal which controls a party. A pyramidal, top-down structure of all parties causes corruption at the top to be very effective in stiffling all voices of dissent within its ranks. Furthermore, even without outright corruption, the very nature of political parties forces a narrowing down of points of view to conform to a party dogma, thus removing choices from the electorate. Add to this the fact that parties also provide election funding which effectively excludes a large number of independent voices from the election process and ever increase the cost of elections to astronomical level as candidates no longer run against a local opponent but against an opposing national party machine. Etc and so on. Parties play a major part in destruction of representative democracy. They are an equivalent of a gang or a mob in life outside politics.
I have no idea how you could have a genuinely open, fair, multi-party system.
There is your problem right there. Political parties should be illigal on the pain of death. Their existence is essential to disenfranchising the voters and concentrating control in the hands of very few, very wealthy people. It is essentially a form of organized criminal collusion against the public good.
Troll, huh? One fairly major part of the whole Web 2.0 buzz is AJAX. AJAX (at least as it's usually implemented) relies on the XMLHttpRequest object, which was created by MS.
AJAX, like much of the IT technology is yet another brainless wave of hype and fawning over a wheel re-invented for a 1000th time. After massive, convoluted, unmaintainable, sluggish, super-sensitive to smallest browser incompatibilites AJAX applications sweep the web, causing untold havoc and sufferring (just look at AJAX compatibility with various browsers at major sites like DailyKos) there will be a "new", "innovative", "fresh" idea called "server side applications" and "lightweight web client 7.0" and all will be excited at this genius attempt to make user's life easier. Lemmings will follow an masse extrolling the virtues of this new and never before heard approach, talking trash about anyone who is "behind the times" and sticks to the "old" AJAX and.NET nonsense. Following which everyone will find out that there are some things that can be made more "exciting" by giving users "immediate feedback" using JavaIEEEAppleScript 12.6 after which someone will coin a term AJAMAZAX or Web 25.0 to describe the wonderful new idea of putting shit back on the client and the wheel will spin once more, fed by new blood coming to the information industry fresh out of school who have never heard of AJAX, thin-clients, dumb-terminals or server-side transactions ever before. And the only people who will gain are the middle men whose do not give shit about any of this as long as they can make money on change in some form.
Now it's true that noone really used it for a long time, partly because it was only implemented by IE. It's also true that you can simulate asynchronous requests using hidden frames (something my company did back in 99), but that also never really took off (and probably won't now).
The whole point of a web browser is to render static documents. But idiots are desperately atttempting to remake it into an application platform and eventually an OS. With all the baggage, complexity and other nightmares which follow that "logic". Attempts such as ActiveX, AJAX, Java Applets,.NET and other such nonsense will, as they must, cause untold havoc and problems everywhere if deployed widely on the web, or conversly, make no sense whatsoever if deployed on a controlled intranet where a thin client (such as RDP, ICA, VNC or X11) makes way more sense in that context.
But idiots never learn, and thus are doomed to repeating this history over and over and over.
I think it's fair to say that MS were ahead of everyone else.
If leading the lemmings on this merry and utterly futile (although profitable for MS) goose chase is what you mean, then I agree.
Slashdot Mirror
That does not alter the validity of parent's analogy. Consider a car mechanic, who being a similar jackass, sells you a coupon for "tire change in 10 minutes - guaranteed!" (clearly a "service"), obviously hoping that all of his customers ... err ... marks, will not show up at the same time. But if they do, he is in the same boat the ISP is: he sold something he could not deliver, i.e. he lied, cheated, and ripped the consumer off.
Sometimes analogies do work, because Internet is not some new magical, never before experienced thing from the perspective of mercantile trade. It simply fits into the ages old criterion of "service", rules of which have been long established as are all the different ways thieves and con-men have tried to abuse those rules.
I think they are far more likely to ban travel alltogether, or at least for any practical purposes for non-millionaires or other "elites", by demanding Soviet-style internal passports and visas (except this time with biometrics - Soviets eat your hearts out) to travel from city to city. This of course following finally banning all personal freedoms and habeas corpus, all in the name of protecting us from the "grave danger of terrorism", danger so great that the odds of becoming a victim of it might even exceed being struck by lightning ... two times in a row.
And this is how freedom ends ... not with a bang but with a whine and wimper of idiots curled into fetal positions under their beds, mumbling "Osama is coming to get meeee" ...
no one cares. we know diamonds are artificially priced.
I see that you not only know with absolute certainty what everyone thinks (including myself presumably - since a negative of "no one" would be "everyone"), but you also think of yourself as multiple persons, or possibly a member of royalty, hence the use of "we" where other, normal people would have used "I" instead.
Of course, you don't care about the point, you are just looking for a chance to make some vague point about De Beers.
For your next, I am sure as equally successful as this one, telepathic trick I suggest you try connecting to Osama Bin Laden and divining his precise whereabouts from his innermost thoughts. I hear there is good money and fame awaiting someone so exceedingly skilled as yourself in remote rectal projection, which naturally would free you of having to burden yourself with these mundane chores of enlightening such lowly rabble here on Slashdot as to your superior intellect and your astronomical snot.
Explaining to your fiance why she will have a piece of glass vs a real diamond will probably result in you not needing one anyways.
Who is talking about a piece of glass? Artificial diamonds are virtually identical (or superior in most quality respects) then the "natural" ones. DeBeers is spending hundreds of millions dollars desperately trying to come up with ever more convoluted ways of detecting them for the sole purpose to be able to claim that they are "fakes". But science and time are against the troglodytic money-grubbers and soon you will be able to buy the formerly "10k rocks" by the pound. I wonder what will your girlfriend tell you then.
I hate to break it to you, but that "10k rock" is really worth something like $50 (should free markets actually work in real life). Only thanks to DeBeers' amazing ability to mess with people's heads and wallets, would you, or any otherwise intelligent and reasonable person, go simply gaga and part with 10k for it. But then again the world is full of mass delusions and con-artists willing to make a buck on them. Pet rock anyone?
Me and a number of other newbs at the time tried this many times only to find that there was no effective way to coordinate our actions and thus we kept ending up being blown up one at a time when we arrived in small 2-3 ship "chunks", either too far or too close, the enemy simply escaped at gates as at that time there was no way to hold him, or our "ambush" was too uncoordinated to proceed correctly. Note that use of Teamspeak or other real-time chat systems is not an option for many and thus we were forced to use the clumsy and wholly useless game chat interface for all the squad command functions, which put as at a severe disadvantage. That is one of my greatest beefs with Eve, the fact that the game looks beautiful and yet sports one of the clumsiest, most useless user interfaces I ever had displeasure of using. I heard that they made significant changes to it many months later, but that was far too late for me.
Eve has also a lot of major flaws. I understand that for some poeple some flaws are more annoying then others, while some things they simply ignore, but I just could not stand some of the Eve's elements. To be honest, the game has probably the most tactically innovative combat system out there, with the rock-paper-scissors type of customization of ship loads available to even most newbish players, etc. But at the same time it suffers from major compromises which were clearly made in favour of the "advanced" players. I found it simply not worthwile to suffer through hours upon hours of chores, boredom and outright abuse to achieve some mythical "good times", 5 months into the game. Games are supposed to be fun for all participants, not just the most tenacious.
Case in point: small, cheap vessels are pretty much incapable of inflicting any meaningful damage on the larger ones, even when operated in a large, coordinated group, thus denying the "newbs" an opportunity to counter-act the power of a single well-off player. Add to this an abysmal (or more precisely, complete lack of any practical one) command/squad control system, lag and jerkiness in major engagements, the inability to engage oponents in any useful way at the gates without a massive expenditure in area warp disabling hardware, etc and so on.
The very long list of these flaws, aggravations, annoyances and outright stupidity has driven me away from Eve, and was in fact a final nail in the coffin of my participation in any more pay-per-play MMORPGs.
Real life provides enough of annoyances for me to pay somene for delivering more.
Get a grip. Slapping "computers" or "internet" on something does not in any way affect fundamental principles of society, no matter how badly some would-be-usurers are manouvering to override common sense with techno-gobledey-gook.
Which does not change the fact that the juristiction he was in was the UK and therefore UK laws apply to himWhich would result in prosecution in the country he was shooting from as is his right and expectation as a citizen of that country.No because he was bodily, physically in the jurisdiction where the crime occured, at the time of the crime which is the only way of determining any sort of culpability abroad and one of the very reasons people have to get things such as passports and visas.See above.Both history and law happen to be on my side, as I am a traditionalist in these matters, as opposed to these new "internet changed everything", "these old rules do not apply in this day and age" types like you who think that every newest gizmo that comes along changes all the fundamental equations of society.How many times do I have to repeat this? I replied to this very point ad-nauseum already. Yes you would be tried for murder in the UK because that is where you were when commiting the crime. What is so hard to understand about this? At no point did I advocate that the UK laws do not apply, only where the trial, and the subsequent punishment is to be. For UK citizens who commit crimes while in the UK, that locality is the UK. Only if they bodily remove themselves out of UK jurisdiction to some foreign nation that nation's laws then take precedence. It is really very, very simple.
Nothing of the sort and you know it.
On intenational waters you would be subject to the maritime international laws, which do cover murder and assignment of jurisdiction in prosecuting thereof.If the "scam" happens to be legal where the phone calls come from, that is true indeed. However most scams are not legal abroad either and subsequently our Canadian phone scammers get prosecuted in Canada for scams they commited while on the phone to the US. But not extradited (or at least when sanity prevails over politics) for a crime which they commited while in Canada.
In which case he should have been tried in the UK. The fact that what he did was illegal both in UK and in US does not remove his privilege to be protected as a UK citizen, by his own government. He has a right to a fair trial in the UK in accordance to the UK version of the law and to be punished with UK version of the punishment prescribed. That is because he commited the crime while in the UK and thus he enjoys all the privileges and rights a UK citzen should in his own country. But what happened instead is that the UK government abandoned him and threw him to the wolves, to be tried by foreigners, using a foreign rendition of foreign laws, and punished by a foreign nation even though he did not leave the borders of the UK. This is nothing short of "cruel and unusual" punishment, solely for political purposes. Which would constitute a gross violation of his constitutional rights.Here in Canada under at least 3 different sections: use of dangerous materials in a dangerous manner, assault with a deadly weapon and (if successful) homicide (or manslaughter). Note that the law does not have to specifically mention a missile by name. All missiles are weapons and thus all the weapon and assault related laws apply.
And under the Sharia Law of Afghanistan (as understood by the Taliban government) you are a Heathen and should be put to death at the first opportuniy. Newsflash: what the US thinks about what constitutes a crime and where has no bearing on the simple logical fact that accessing something remotely does not magically transport one's ass to that location, no more then making a phone call to Iran makes one a subject to Iranian laws. And since you've brought this up, the US consideres any slight against any of its corporations or military, regardless of actual locality, to be commited directly against the US as a country, on their soil and would demand an extradition. Only fools would oblige. If the US does not get it way, they simply use CIA to kidnap people from abroad to drive the point home that the US is the sole ruler of the world and all citizens of all other nations are also its subjects, but without any representation or rights. By sumbitting voluntarily to such treatment, the UK merely legitimizes that brand of thuggery.
No it does not (something I never claimed) since hacking is also a crime in the UK. But the whole point of this conversation is that it does change where and under whose laws he is supposed to be tried. That is he, if sanity were to prevail, would be charged under the UK hacking laws based on evidence provided by the US and verified by UK courts. Subsequent sentence would also be carried out in the UK, as is his right as a UK citizen. What happened sends a clear message that one can be stripped of all his country's rights and protections at the drop of a hat if the US wants it becauseIn other words you advocate a complete capitulation to whatever thug wants you for whatever "crime" as long as a government bureaucrat agrees. What happened to "habeas corups" to "trial before your own peers" "under the laws of the land" and all that crap? If China feels that the laws you violated are acceptable in UK, they are free to complain to the UK authorities about it and, if they are right, you would get charged in a UK court. But unless you were killing Chinese while on vacation there, there should be no way in hell to get extradited. Particularly not for crimes commited abroad via mail of phone call. Slapping "Computers" or "internet" on the same old crime-by-phone does not change the basic, fundamental equations of justice and nationhood, no matter how badly various wankers would love to destroy common sense by doing so.
In which case, since the crime was commited while in UK he deserves a trial under the British law, in UK and any sentence to be served also in UK. Any extradition for crimes commited while on UK soil to a foreign power constitutes a plain surrender to that foreign power, no matter if the things the man happened to do are also illegal in the UK. Ergo my assesment stands: the UK has simply acknowledged superiority of US law and precedence of the US courts to try UK citizens, even for crimes commited while on UK soil. Surrender, pure and simple.
But it is precisely what it was. Note that I did not claim that he should not be tried. Only where such trial should occur. Extradition in this case is nothing short of submissive behaviour.
If the country you are in instead aided you, or pretended not to care, and if the crime is internationally recognized as such (which prank phone calls and wacko hackers in search of UFOs are not), one can construde it as an act of war. For results see under: Afghanistan.
Then you would be held responsible under the laws of the country you are in, with your local prosecutor being aided by the foreign country representatives. Most countries have laws against launching bombs at their neighbours. If the government of your country was supporting you instead, then it would be an act of war, as an act of launching missiles (as opposed to prank phone calls and hacking in search of UFOs) is internationally understood as such. For results: see Afghanistan.
The Chinese government hereby requests your extradition for execution and subsequent trial for voicing opinions in direct oposition to the Party's doctrine on the Internet acessible (by mistake) from China. That is if Iranians do not manage to get you first for daring to speak ill of Islam (evidence of which was secretly presented in a secret prioceeding of a secret court). And so on...
Newsflash: the whole point is that one, by definition, cannot be held liable for crimes abroad if he/she was not physically there while commiting them.
An accusation of "computer" or "internet" crime does not magically change the basic logic of this, it would be equally silly if he had made prank calls to the Iranian Mullahs (severely punishable in Iran, I am sure) or sent booze by mail to the Saudi Crown Prince (which would probably get someone from Saudi Arabia beheaded if he had done so). The foreign laws simply do not apply to activities commitied while in UK.
Which of course is the apex of the stupidity on the part of the UK government and an extemely dangerous precedent. In essence, the UK has acknowledged supremacy of US law and courts over its own by doing this. It is a stance of a poodle beaten into sulking submition, not a proud, independent nation.
News media are one of the pillars of democracy and when they become shills for one side or another, the whole project falls appart.
And lastly, the whole pretense that political parites "counteract" the influence of rich people is laughable. The rich people run the parties and finance them. Tell me, which last president of the United States was not a millionaire, directly financed by millionaires?
See above. If that organization uses money to diminish and stiffle the influence of other less-moneyed peple, then it is anti-democratic. As is also if this organization has an internal top-down authoritarian structure that is used to make its members "fall in line". Both is true of today's political parties. They are anti-democratic in every sense of the word. Good point. Therefore let me rephrase: political parties, at least in their present form, are anti-democratic and immoral.Ah, I see. Damn those mus-com infiltrators! Or where they agents of Buddha?
Then everybody gets smitten, surely, as religion, philosophy, economics and politics are all inextricably linked together. One cannot have a religious movement which does not impact politics in some major way and vice versa. In fact, most religions place demands on their followers which are directly political. Even secular governance is by definition impacted by religion as it seeks to be neutral towards multiple religions all at once, thus having to navigate carefuly between these various camps. The only way you could have a complete separation of religion and politics is in a state composed exclusively of atheists (and the definition of atheism here is the "weak" type where the scientific method leads one to believe that the existence of a super-being-creator-of-the-universe, or even the validity of a question of necessity of such a being for the universe to exist, is at this point indeterminate. This to be contrasted with the "strong" type of atheism, i.e. the assumption of a proof-positive non-existence of such a thing in spite of the lack of scientific evidence one way or another, which is in itself a form of religious conviction).
I am an atheist but I can clearly see that there is a wopper of a contradiction in your position: if they were true Christians, they would not posess any property, as the Bible clearly states: "everything was held in common". Therefore no need for the Christian government to force them to do anything, they do it themselves. Then of course if they did not do it, they were not true Christians, and so they would run afoul of the Christian community. Ergo the only conclusion that can be reached out of this is that anyone who claims to be a Christian and hoards wealth at the same time is a bald-faced liar. But then, of course, this has been obvious to anyone who cared to look for just about two millenia.
My advice to the greedertarians of various stripes: lay off of Christianity, pick some other voodoo religion which is actually compatible with your goals. Worship Mammon or something. But do not pretend to be Christians or believe in any of the Christianity's tenets.
You gotta be kidding. It is much harder to bribe and corrupt 100 individual legislators then one central cabal which controls a party. A pyramidal, top-down structure of all parties causes corruption at the top to be very effective in stiffling all voices of dissent within its ranks. Furthermore, even without outright corruption, the very nature of political parties forces a narrowing down of points of view to conform to a party dogma, thus removing choices from the electorate. Add to this the fact that parties also provide election funding which effectively excludes a large number of independent voices from the election process and ever increase the cost of elections to astronomical level as candidates no longer run against a local opponent but against an opposing national party machine. Etc and so on. Parties play a major part in destruction of representative democracy. They are an equivalent of a gang or a mob in life outside politics.
There is your problem right there. Political parties should be illigal on the pain of death. Their existence is essential to disenfranchising the voters and concentrating control in the hands of very few, very wealthy people. It is essentially a form of organized criminal collusion against the public good.
AJAX, like much of the IT technology is yet another brainless wave of hype and fawning over a wheel re-invented for a 1000th time. After massive, convoluted, unmaintainable, sluggish, super-sensitive to smallest browser incompatibilites AJAX applications sweep the web, causing untold havoc and sufferring (just look at AJAX compatibility with various browsers at major sites like DailyKos) there will be a "new", "innovative", "fresh" idea called "server side applications" and "lightweight web client 7.0" and all will be excited at this genius attempt to make user's life easier. Lemmings will follow an masse extrolling the virtues of this new and never before heard approach, talking trash about anyone who is "behind the times" and sticks to the "old" AJAX and .NET nonsense. Following which everyone will find out that there are some things that can be made more "exciting" by giving users "immediate feedback" using JavaIEEEAppleScript 12.6 after which someone will coin a term AJAMAZAX or Web 25.0 to describe the wonderful new idea of putting shit back on the client and the wheel will spin once more, fed by new blood coming to the information industry fresh out of school who have never heard of AJAX, thin-clients, dumb-terminals or server-side transactions ever before. And the only people who will gain are the middle men whose do not give shit about any of this as long as they can make money on change in some form.
The whole point of a web browser is to render static documents. But idiots are desperately atttempting to remake it into an application platform and eventually an OS. With all the baggage, complexity and other nightmares which follow that "logic". Attempts such as ActiveX, AJAX, Java Applets,But idiots never learn, and thus are doomed to repeating this history over and over and over.
If leading the lemmings on this merry and utterly futile (although profitable for MS) goose chase is what you mean, then I agree.