With the exception of the person-to-person transfer I can do everything you just outlined with the app from my podunk small town community bank. None of what you've discussed is news to people living the States. We've had bill payer services for quite some time. Most venders will be paid electronically and those few that aren't configured for electronic payments will be mailed a physical check by the bill payer service.
Person-to-person transfers aren't quite as seamless in the States but they're not exactly rocket science either. I so choose I can likewise avoid the physical bank; our silly paper checks have been able to be remotely deposited for some time now. I usually choose to walk them down to the bank, since it's an excuse to get out of the house and be sociable, but I can just as easily deposit them with my phone and the funds are available on the same schedule (next business day 99.9% of the time) as they would be if I presented the check in person.
to the banks, overdraft fees are a profit center:(
I've never done business with a bank large or small that didn't offer an overdraft line of credit if you asked for it. Overdraft fees are simply a tax on stupidity. Balance your checking account properly and you'll never have one. Get a LOC for those few circumstances that may lie outside your control, like your employer messing up your payroll deposit or some such.
I've had a checking account for 17 years and I've never paid a single overdraft fee....
Not every bank. Unlike the US, banks in other parts of the world aren't in the dark ages. Sending and receiving money via your bank account can be done instantly, even from your smart phone
Was the "dark ages" slam really necessary? I lived in Finland for a spell so I'm familiar with these payment systems. There was nothing I could do over there that I can't do in the States. ACH payments from my US account are processed within 24-48 business hours. That's good enough for recurring monthly bills. ACH deposits are processed on the same business day. That's good enough for my payroll. My debit card transfers money instantly at point-of-sale. That's good enough for day to day retail transactions.
The only thing I kind of miss from Suomi was the ability to quickly transfer money to/from friends for odd jobs but that happens very infrequently; maybe once or twice a month. In the US we do such transfers with a paper check or (gasp) cash, which may not be as sexy, but it gets the job done. If I choose I can deposit the paper check with my smartphone and don't even need to visit the bank; funds are available the next business day.
If you want to slam the US financial system for something that's actually noteworthy hit us for the fact that chip and pin cards are still the minority. Ripping someone off really needs to be more complicated than cloning a magnetic stripe. If the banks or consumers were on the hook for such losses we would have had chip and pin cards decades ago; for better or worse the practice in the US is to stick the merchant with the loss in the scenario of a stolen or cloned card.
Of course, this story also claims the Red Sea was parted somehow so they could walk across, so it's highly questionable just how accurate this story is....
Tough cookies. A felony conviction also operates as a lifetime prohibition against firearms ownership, even in instances where the felony was not a violent one. I don't see very many people in the mainstream whining about that disability so what's the problem with the loss of the voting franchise?
Consent was given. It was just conditional. Lying to meet those requirements is perfectly legal in the US
Are you sure about that? Here's New York State's law:
S 130.05 Sex offenses; lack of consent.
[snip]
2. Lack of consent results from:
(c) Where the offense charged is sexual abuse or forcible touching, any circumstances, in addition to forcible compulsion or incapacity to consent, in which the victim does not expressly or impliedly acquiesce in the actor's conduct; or
S 130.55 Sexual abuse in the third degree.
A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the third degree when he or she subjects another person to sexual contact without the latter`s consent;
You tell me how that does not constitute Soviet behavior.
Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.
Again, totally nothing factually wrong with that. If it were not for the Americans, all of Europe would either suffer under the Nazis or under the Soviets.
Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?
Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.
Sure, if you live in Greece and need the EU to fund your pension
Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....
That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.
Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...
Who ever made that claim and how is it even relevant?
The grandparent, in the stupid pissing contest EU vs. US thread. I really hate these threads; sure, we have quarrels, but we've also got a shared history, culture, and commitment to freedom. People would do well to remember that. They might also wish to remember that countries that share our values are most definitely in the minority on planet Earth; it's really fucking stupid to root for the EU to drag the US down or vice versa.
These idiots should get a bloody passport and go visit the "other side"; you'll find we're/they're not that much different from you.
The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU.
Devil's advocate, how do you stop Google from operating in the EU? Google does have a physical presence in the EU, data-centers and all that, but strictly speaking they could run the whole operation from outside the EU. What do you do then? Block them at the network edge? Hardly seems compatible with free speech.
"uber-feminist country?" Do you know a damn thing about Sweden or any of her neighbors? Have you ever visited or even bothered to peruse the internet on the subject of Swedish culture, customs, or her legal processes? It's awesome that you're willing to shit all over the criminal justice system of a country that I suspect you know nothing about, a country that Mr. Assange thought was just lovely until he happened to be accused of a crime by some of its citizens.
Frankly I don't know if he is a rapist or not. I do know that he's received due process of law in both Sweden and the United Kingdom and that there appears to be enough evidence to warrant a trial. I also know a thing or two about the judicial systems of the Nordic Countries; were I accused of a crime I didn't commit in one of them I would be willing to surrender myself and believe that I would receive as fair of a shake as I would get in my own country.
If you think that crossing the street, and going into the cloud, is a rebroadcast, then you have a problem with every cloud service. If I upload a song to dropbox, then play it from the cloud, then by this definition it is a rebroadcast.
That's personal use; I do the same thing with my TiVo. What Aereo did would be analogous to you selling access to that dropbox'ed song to anyone willing to pay.
We stupid foreigners actually know a little about the American legal system, and not purely from watching old Perry Mason episodes. One of the glaringly obvious things we know is that it isn't so much the facts of the matter that count, but who has the most money and thus influence. If you have political clout - and anyone rich enough can get it - no prosecutor will even be found to indict you..
This is patently false. Prosecutors love to take down high profile political targets. Have you heard the name Rod Blagojevich? Tom DeLay? Duke Cummingham? Those are just from memory. Want a whole list? Here's a list of Federal politicians. Here's one for State and Local politicians.
The law is so immense and complex that almost anyone can be charged with crimes that would lead to extremely long prison sentences - the main thing that protects the normal, innocent citizen is that the police have no particular reason to want to frame them up. Try reading (for instance) Harvey Silverglate's book "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent".
I've read it; I've also read the US Federal Code and my own State's Penal Law. I don't commit three felonies a day. I don't commit one felony per day. That claim is massively overstated, just like everything else you've rambled about.
The most effective way the Feds have of getting the "innocent" is by jamming them up for obstruction. They ask you an incriminating (or just embarrassing) question that they already know the answer to, you lie to a sworn Federal Law Enforcement Officer, and presto, you're under Federal Indictment. This technique ensnared Martha Stewart, amongst others. Thankfully it's easily avoided by invoking your right to remain silent; alas, many people are too arrogant for that and think they'll get away with lying to the Feds. Repeat after me: "I do not wish to make a statement without consulting with counsel. Am I free to leave now?"
For better or worse Federal Law says you need the broadcaster's permission before you can retransmit their signal. In your examples you would be fine until the final paragraph where you strung a wire across the street. The apartment example is trickier, there are regulations governing shared antennas in such a scenario, meaning the landlord can mount a single antenna that each apartment has access to; you wouldn't need 50 antennas. Most shared antenna systems have fallen into disuse, because of CATV, but the regulations are still on the books.
To answer your last question, I think it became an Aereo rebroadcast when they sent the signal on a trip through the cloud. The single antenna argument was spurious but even if I bought it I would still think they were rebroadcasting. To contrast with TiVo, they charge their service, the guide data and so on; they've got nothing to do with getting the signal to you and what you do with it after that is arguably fair use.
Of course not - do you have a problem with broadcast?
No, it's the only TV I watch; I don't have the room in my budget for an $60/mo-$100/mo cable subscription and wouldn't pay for it even if I did. I can receive broadcast for free by putting up an antenna (this is what I did) or by paying a modest ($4.95/mo) fee to the local cable company. The cable company is required to get permission from the broadcasters to retransmit those signals under Federal Law and is further obligated under New York State law to make the broadcast tier available at cost. In this instance Aereo was taking the signals without agreement from the broadcasters and reselling them for profit. The word 'leech' comes to mind.
Aereo was in the business of being an outsourced antenna provider
Which makes them a cable company, thus subject to the Federal Law that requires them to get permission before they can retransmit a third party broadcast. That law may be poorly thought out but it's a legitimate exercise of Congressional power so why is everybody pissed at SCOTUS for enforcing it? If you don't like the law write your Congressman and United States Senators....
Why should the broadcasters get to say how I process the *over the air* signals they've so graciously provided?
They don't; so long as you're processing them in a manner that's consistent with your own personal use you can do anything you want with them under the Fair Use doctrine. Aereo wasn't doing this; they were piggybacking off those signals and selling them for a profit. I time shift and stream my OTA channels all the time, through a combination of one of these and one of these. Nobody cares. I'm pretty sure they would care if I started distributing my recordings to the masses for a monthly fee....
and he was threatened even by US senate members with retribution
If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats. They can't go after him judicially, that's the job of the Executive Branch (via the Justice Department) with checks and balances from the Judicial Branch. Nor can they go after him extra-judicially (*); intelligence agencies are also under the control of the Executive, with checks and balances from the Legislative Branch (that's the Senate). The Legislative can rein in the intelligence agencies if they so choose, via the oversight and funding process, but they can't issue them marching orders.
(*) They could actually go after him extra-judicially, in the same manner as any citizen could, i.e., walk up to him on the street and put a bullet in his head. I rather doubt any of them have the stomach for that, much less the time they'd get to spend behind bars for such an act....
If the USA had really wanted Assange, the easy way to have gotten him would have been to extradite him from the UK while he was living there freely.
The whole notion that while he was living in the UK, the USA worked to convince Sweden to extradite him to Sweden so we could then extradite him to the USA is ridiculous.
It's not like Sweden is MORE friendly to the USA than the UK is....
The problem here is you're using logic and they're using emotion. He's a hero to them, David standing up to Goliath. It's the techie version of the rabid sports fan who refuses to believe his team's star player might just be capable of rape.
I've tried to explain numerous times in these stories that the judicial precedent in the United States almost certainly precludes charges from being brought against him. The United States has no Official Secrets Act; a normal citizen (i.e., a reporter) who comes into possession of classified material can do whatever the hell they want with it. Only those that have a duty to protect said information (e.g., people with security clearances) can be held accountable for the leaking thereof. So long as Assange simply received the information he is in the clear, just as the New York Times reporters who published the Pentagon Papers were in the clear. If Assange actively encouraged Manning to break the law he could have a problem but I've seen no evidence of that. The chat logs with Manning and Lamo left me with the impression that Manning came up with the idea without any outside influence.
In one of these stories I had the privilege of reading a rather lengthy summary of the Swedish legal system. The author of this post did no editorializing for or against Assange, they simply explained the process of how charges are brought and disposed of in Sweden. In any other context it would have been +5 informative but because it was in an Assange story it was -1 troll. Emotion drives these discussions and facts no longer matter.
They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime. You don't see a problem with this?
but that is still someone who is gone and has to be replaced with someone who needs to be brought up to speed.
Tough shit. That's how it works with at-will employment. I quit a hated job once upon a time via e-mail, on Monday morning, 15 minutes before my shift was due to begin.
Give your employees a contract if you don't want to deal with the possibility of them leaving unexpectedly. Of course a contract usually requires you to offer them something tangible in return, i.e., guaranteed employment for a specified amount of time, which is why employers generally prefer at-will even though it's a PITA to deal with people who leave.
if you are in college and you aren't challenging the real or imagined injustices of the world in some way, you're missing the whole point of being young enough to still be self-absorbed and righteous, but not old enough to be in the real world
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
You paid for WinZip? That bloated piece of crap? When there's only about three dozen different free compression applications? You don't even have to resort to classical freeware, there are FOSS programs that will do the job quite nicely, with a polished GUI for those who don't like CLIs.
Slashdot Mirror
With the exception of the person-to-person transfer I can do everything you just outlined with the app from my podunk small town community bank. None of what you've discussed is news to people living the States. We've had bill payer services for quite some time. Most venders will be paid electronically and those few that aren't configured for electronic payments will be mailed a physical check by the bill payer service.
Person-to-person transfers aren't quite as seamless in the States but they're not exactly rocket science either. I so choose I can likewise avoid the physical bank; our silly paper checks have been able to be remotely deposited for some time now. I usually choose to walk them down to the bank, since it's an excuse to get out of the house and be sociable, but I can just as easily deposit them with my phone and the funds are available on the same schedule (next business day 99.9% of the time) as they would be if I presented the check in person.
to the banks, overdraft fees are a profit center :(
I've never done business with a bank large or small that didn't offer an overdraft line of credit if you asked for it. Overdraft fees are simply a tax on stupidity. Balance your checking account properly and you'll never have one. Get a LOC for those few circumstances that may lie outside your control, like your employer messing up your payroll deposit or some such.
I've had a checking account for 17 years and I've never paid a single overdraft fee....
Not every bank. Unlike the US, banks in other parts of the world aren't in the dark ages. Sending and receiving money via your bank account can be done instantly, even from your smart phone
Was the "dark ages" slam really necessary? I lived in Finland for a spell so I'm familiar with these payment systems. There was nothing I could do over there that I can't do in the States. ACH payments from my US account are processed within 24-48 business hours. That's good enough for recurring monthly bills. ACH deposits are processed on the same business day. That's good enough for my payroll. My debit card transfers money instantly at point-of-sale. That's good enough for day to day retail transactions.
The only thing I kind of miss from Suomi was the ability to quickly transfer money to/from friends for odd jobs but that happens very infrequently; maybe once or twice a month. In the US we do such transfers with a paper check or (gasp) cash, which may not be as sexy, but it gets the job done. If I choose I can deposit the paper check with my smartphone and don't even need to visit the bank; funds are available the next business day.
If you want to slam the US financial system for something that's actually noteworthy hit us for the fact that chip and pin cards are still the minority. Ripping someone off really needs to be more complicated than cloning a magnetic stripe. If the banks or consumers were on the hook for such losses we would have had chip and pin cards decades ago; for better or worse the practice in the US is to stick the merchant with the loss in the scenario of a stolen or cloned card.
Of course, this story also claims the Red Sea was parted somehow so they could walk across, so it's highly questionable just how accurate this story is....
Manbearpig.
Tough cookies. A felony conviction also operates as a lifetime prohibition against firearms ownership, even in instances where the felony was not a violent one. I don't see very many people in the mainstream whining about that disability so what's the problem with the loss of the voting franchise?
Consent was given. It was just conditional. Lying to meet those requirements is perfectly legal in the US
Are you sure about that? Here's New York State's law:
S 130.05 Sex offenses; lack of consent.
[snip]
2. Lack of consent results from:
(c) Where the offense charged is sexual abuse or forcible touching, any circumstances, in addition to forcible compulsion or incapacity to consent, in which the victim does not expressly or impliedly acquiesce in the actor's conduct; or
S 130.55 Sexual abuse in the third degree.
A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the third degree when he or she subjects another person to sexual contact without the latter`s consent;
You tell me how that does not constitute Soviet behavior.
Seriously? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and the EU member states are free to leave any time they wish.
Again, totally nothing factually wrong with that. If it were not for the Americans, all of Europe would either suffer under the Nazis or under the Soviets.
Really? All of Europe you say? Even Great Britain? Finland?
Are you an American? If you are I wish you'd STFU; you're making the rest of us look bad. WW2 was a team effort. Could the Allies have beaten the Germans without the Russians? Possibly; we did in WW1 after the Russians quit. The butcher's bill would have been a lot higher though. The west (particularly the United States and Canada) got off pretty easy. As far as "Europe would have been under the Soviets", that's debatable. The example of Finland suggests there are limits to how far Stalin was willing to go to gain strategic depth. Germany certainly would have gotten a much rawer deal without American involvement, though ironically enough it was the United States that originally proposed turning Germany into a pastoral state after the conflict.
Sure, if you live in Greece and need the EU to fund your pension
Yeah, well, the same problem is brewing in the United States and I haven't heard a single mainstream politician from either party come up with a proactive way of dealing with it. And guess what? There's no provision for a State to file bankruptcy like Detroit did. What happens when one of the 50 can't meet its obligations? Nobody knows but we're apt to find out in the coming decades....
That's because the EU is really an economic concern trying to masquerade as a country. It originally started as the European Coal and Steel Community. It has always been about economics. A handful of rich and powerful countries benefit from a common market and currency. Countries that would probably be better off outside of the Eurozone won't leave it because the rich and powerful therein benefit. Well monied interests calling the shots is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.
Europe won't truly unite absent some sort of external and existential threat. It took such a threat to unify the United States back in the day and the American colonies had a shared culture, language, and no history of going to war with one another. Even at that there was a rather bloody Civil War and regional tensions that still simmer to this day...
Who ever made that claim and how is it even relevant?
The grandparent, in the stupid pissing contest EU vs. US thread. I really hate these threads; sure, we have quarrels, but we've also got a shared history, culture, and commitment to freedom. People would do well to remember that. They might also wish to remember that countries that share our values are most definitely in the minority on planet Earth; it's really fucking stupid to root for the EU to drag the US down or vice versa.
These idiots should get a bloody passport and go visit the "other side"; you'll find we're/they're not that much different from you.
The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU.
Devil's advocate, how do you stop Google from operating in the EU? Google does have a physical presence in the EU, data-centers and all that, but strictly speaking they could run the whole operation from outside the EU. What do you do then? Block them at the network edge? Hardly seems compatible with free speech.
Oh and btw, modding me a troll just because you disagree with my opinion makes you a bad mod.
The troll mods may have had something to do with these gems:
Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists.
They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.
My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.
"uber-feminist country?" Do you know a damn thing about Sweden or any of her neighbors? Have you ever visited or even bothered to peruse the internet on the subject of Swedish culture, customs, or her legal processes? It's awesome that you're willing to shit all over the criminal justice system of a country that I suspect you know nothing about, a country that Mr. Assange thought was just lovely until he happened to be accused of a crime by some of its citizens.
Frankly I don't know if he is a rapist or not. I do know that he's received due process of law in both Sweden and the United Kingdom and that there appears to be enough evidence to warrant a trial. I also know a thing or two about the judicial systems of the Nordic Countries; were I accused of a crime I didn't commit in one of them I would be willing to surrender myself and believe that I would receive as fair of a shake as I would get in my own country.
If you think that crossing the street, and going into the cloud, is a rebroadcast, then you have a problem with every cloud service. If I upload a song to dropbox, then play it from the cloud, then by this definition it is a rebroadcast.
That's personal use; I do the same thing with my TiVo. What Aereo did would be analogous to you selling access to that dropbox'ed song to anyone willing to pay.
We stupid foreigners actually know a little about the American legal system, and not purely from watching old Perry Mason episodes. One of the glaringly obvious things we know is that it isn't so much the facts of the matter that count, but who has the most money and thus influence. If you have political clout - and anyone rich enough can get it - no prosecutor will even be found to indict you..
This is patently false. Prosecutors love to take down high profile political targets. Have you heard the name Rod Blagojevich? Tom DeLay? Duke Cummingham? Those are just from memory. Want a whole list? Here's a list of Federal politicians. Here's one for State and Local politicians.
The law is so immense and complex that almost anyone can be charged with crimes that would lead to extremely long prison sentences - the main thing that protects the normal, innocent citizen is that the police have no particular reason to want to frame them up. Try reading (for instance) Harvey Silverglate's book "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent".
I've read it; I've also read the US Federal Code and my own State's Penal Law. I don't commit three felonies a day. I don't commit one felony per day. That claim is massively overstated, just like everything else you've rambled about.
The most effective way the Feds have of getting the "innocent" is by jamming them up for obstruction. They ask you an incriminating (or just embarrassing) question that they already know the answer to, you lie to a sworn Federal Law Enforcement Officer, and presto, you're under Federal Indictment. This technique ensnared Martha Stewart, amongst others. Thankfully it's easily avoided by invoking your right to remain silent; alas, many people are too arrogant for that and think they'll get away with lying to the Feds. Repeat after me: "I do not wish to make a statement without consulting with counsel. Am I free to leave now?"
For better or worse Federal Law says you need the broadcaster's permission before you can retransmit their signal. In your examples you would be fine until the final paragraph where you strung a wire across the street. The apartment example is trickier, there are regulations governing shared antennas in such a scenario, meaning the landlord can mount a single antenna that each apartment has access to; you wouldn't need 50 antennas. Most shared antenna systems have fallen into disuse, because of CATV, but the regulations are still on the books.
To answer your last question, I think it became an Aereo rebroadcast when they sent the signal on a trip through the cloud. The single antenna argument was spurious but even if I bought it I would still think they were rebroadcasting. To contrast with TiVo, they charge their service, the guide data and so on; they've got nothing to do with getting the signal to you and what you do with it after that is arguably fair use.
Of course not - do you have a problem with broadcast?
No, it's the only TV I watch; I don't have the room in my budget for an $60/mo-$100/mo cable subscription and wouldn't pay for it even if I did. I can receive broadcast for free by putting up an antenna (this is what I did) or by paying a modest ($4.95/mo) fee to the local cable company. The cable company is required to get permission from the broadcasters to retransmit those signals under Federal Law and is further obligated under New York State law to make the broadcast tier available at cost. In this instance Aereo was taking the signals without agreement from the broadcasters and reselling them for profit. The word 'leech' comes to mind.
Aereo was in the business of being an outsourced antenna provider
Which makes them a cable company, thus subject to the Federal Law that requires them to get permission before they can retransmit a third party broadcast. That law may be poorly thought out but it's a legitimate exercise of Congressional power so why is everybody pissed at SCOTUS for enforcing it? If you don't like the law write your Congressman and United States Senators....
Why should the broadcasters get to say how I process the *over the air* signals they've so graciously provided?
They don't; so long as you're processing them in a manner that's consistent with your own personal use you can do anything you want with them under the Fair Use doctrine. Aereo wasn't doing this; they were piggybacking off those signals and selling them for a profit. I time shift and stream my OTA channels all the time, through a combination of one of these and one of these. Nobody cares. I'm pretty sure they would care if I started distributing my recordings to the masses for a monthly fee....
and he was threatened even by US senate members with retribution
If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats. They can't go after him judicially, that's the job of the Executive Branch (via the Justice Department) with checks and balances from the Judicial Branch. Nor can they go after him extra-judicially (*); intelligence agencies are also under the control of the Executive, with checks and balances from the Legislative Branch (that's the Senate). The Legislative can rein in the intelligence agencies if they so choose, via the oversight and funding process, but they can't issue them marching orders.
(*) They could actually go after him extra-judicially, in the same manner as any citizen could, i.e., walk up to him on the street and put a bullet in his head. I rather doubt any of them have the stomach for that, much less the time they'd get to spend behind bars for such an act....
Oh, nonsense!
If the USA had really wanted Assange, the easy way to have gotten him would have been to extradite him from the UK while he was living there freely.
The whole notion that while he was living in the UK, the USA worked to convince Sweden to extradite him to Sweden so we could then extradite him to the USA is ridiculous.
It's not like Sweden is MORE friendly to the USA than the UK is....
The problem here is you're using logic and they're using emotion. He's a hero to them, David standing up to Goliath. It's the techie version of the rabid sports fan who refuses to believe his team's star player might just be capable of rape.
I've tried to explain numerous times in these stories that the judicial precedent in the United States almost certainly precludes charges from being brought against him. The United States has no Official Secrets Act; a normal citizen (i.e., a reporter) who comes into possession of classified material can do whatever the hell they want with it. Only those that have a duty to protect said information (e.g., people with security clearances) can be held accountable for the leaking thereof. So long as Assange simply received the information he is in the clear, just as the New York Times reporters who published the Pentagon Papers were in the clear. If Assange actively encouraged Manning to break the law he could have a problem but I've seen no evidence of that. The chat logs with Manning and Lamo left me with the impression that Manning came up with the idea without any outside influence.
In one of these stories I had the privilege of reading a rather lengthy summary of the Swedish legal system. The author of this post did no editorializing for or against Assange, they simply explained the process of how charges are brought and disposed of in Sweden. In any other context it would have been +5 informative but because it was in an Assange story it was -1 troll. Emotion drives these discussions and facts no longer matter.
No, not really. Not at all actually.
They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime. You don't see a problem with this?
Cut 'em some slack; it's not as though they're attending an Ivy League law school where they'd learn fancy schmancy legal concepts like standing.
i gave up burning fossil fuels (to every extent possible) well over a decade ago.
You stopped eating over a decade ago?
but that is still someone who is gone and has to be replaced with someone who needs to be brought up to speed.
Tough shit. That's how it works with at-will employment. I quit a hated job once upon a time via e-mail, on Monday morning, 15 minutes before my shift was due to begin.
Give your employees a contract if you don't want to deal with the possibility of them leaving unexpectedly. Of course a contract usually requires you to offer them something tangible in return, i.e., guaranteed employment for a specified amount of time, which is why employers generally prefer at-will even though it's a PITA to deal with people who leave.
if you are in college and you aren't challenging the real or imagined injustices of the world in some way, you're missing the whole point of being young enough to still be self-absorbed and righteous, but not old enough to be in the real world
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
You paid for WinZip? That bloated piece of crap? When there's only about three dozen different free compression applications? You don't even have to resort to classical freeware, there are FOSS programs that will do the job quite nicely, with a polished GUI for those who don't like CLIs.