what? becoming a parent means you have to look over your children's shoulders 24/7 until they're 18 (and heaven help you if you have more than 1 child, they'll just have to share a bedroom so you can deny them both privacy at once) because you have absolute responsibility until they turn 18?
It seems to me that that is what you're proposing, and it's the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time.
You send a pretty poor message about personal responsibility to kids by punishing their parents until they turn 18.
The Damilola Taylor case was tragic, but can I point something else out. The people convicted were aged 12 and 13 at the time. If they had been convicted when they were still 12 & 13 would you be calling for blood so much? They may have been vicious thugs at that time, but they were still children.
I don't think anyone ever said it was fair. The justice system isn't supposed to be 'fair' if your definition of that word is 'criminals get the same or worse meted out to them'. If courts acted like that we wouldn't have a civilised society. "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Ghandi.
since when is refusing to take even a cursory glance at the plantiff's evidence (which would result in it being thrown out), making a default ruling against a party who you don't have juristiction over, ordering big-number-picked-out-of-the-air damages (because it's a default judgement and that's what the plaintiff said would be fair) and then trying to screw up the rest of the world's usage of the internet when said damages aren't paid, "the right thing"?
Following the law is not "the right thing" when the law is clearly not right. (Yeah, that's very subjective and I can't think of a workable implementation of that model, but it's still the ideal way for things to work).
I would agree with you that deciding on what's good for the public is not more important than protecting the individual, but we're not talking about individuals here. This is a spat between two organisations, and as such, ruling in a way which is really a ruling against every internet-using individual in the world for the benefit of one organisation is not good.
In practice, we have an authoritarian government pushing for ever greater use of "summary justice" -- a quaint euphemism for letting the police officer be judge, jury and if he wants, executioner, where the only way to avail yourself of due process is usually to give up any possibility of taking a "procedural penalty" like a formal caution or fixed penalty.
I've found that amusing (and worrying at the same time). The General British policy is to solve something that many people do that Daily Mail sees as a problem:
1) Declare it illegal 2) Institute a fine 3) Realise that you're now having to prosecute thousands of extra people per day 4) Decide to skip the court system and due process and just hand out the power to fine people to policeman (who seem to be wearing more and more black) under threat of a larger fine & court costs if you want it done by the book 5) Profit! (and instant criminals)
No-one ever considers 4b) repeal law declaring it illegal because it is clearly not the will of the people.
In other news, world renowned military strategist, The Ghost of Sir Basil Liddel-Hart has commented that the bug made a major strategic flaw. "He, and we are assuming this bug to be a 'he' made a serious error." Sir Basil's Ghost, said. "Making his initial landfall target in one of the most millitarily keen nations the world has ever seen was a very poor idea. Because of this mistake the bug has triggered the full mobilisation of the german armed forces and a full scale search and destroy mission has been initiated by the Luftwaffer. My own strategic analysis of the situation leads me to conclude that the bug would have done better to land across the border in France where he would have been almost immediately surrendered to and would have been able to demand any surrender terms he so desired. My advice to the bug now would be to make for France with all haste and use the freshly-surrendered French army to fight the Germans." When queried about how long the French army could be expected to hold out against the most dedicated military machine in the world Sir Basil's Ghost spluttered into his tea and continued: "Oh good gracious me no. The plan wasn't for the French to FIGHT the germans, no-one would expect that and if the French actually tried firing back the Germans would just laugh anyway. No the idea is that the French will immediately surrender again (as is to be expected) and dealing with all the PoW's will hinder the panzer divisions persuing the bug. This should give him the time necessary to hop across the channel and claim asylum in Britain. I hear the benefits are very good".
In a further development, Russia has started to mobilise its troops onto it's western border in anticipation of a German attack. President Putin said: "Germany has a history of doing this, they did it in the first world war and they also have a history of ripping off old first world war battle plans for use again."
Asked to step in and resolve the situation by bombing the lot of them back to the stone-age, President George W. Bush said "It is not the policy of the US Government to interfere in the internal issues of sovereign states. We also don't bomb places that don't end in -stan or start with an 'I'" he said, "It's apples and grapefruits really. None of our turtlewax."
No. European countries have banded together to make each others laws effectively apply to people in all European countries. If you're found against in a European country that you don't have a prescence in, but do have a prescence in another European country, they'll just get the country you do have a prescence in to enforce the judgement against you. These countries will even do it against their own citiziens. Case in point: A british couple bought some land in the turkish bit of Cyprus and built a holiday villa on it. The (Greek cypriot) people who used to own that land before cyprus was invaded still say that it's theirs. The Greek Cypriot government still lays claim to the whole of the island. A Greek Cypriot court found against the British government (because it still recognises the claim of the original owners). Not actually being in a position to enforce anything in the Turkish Cypriot part of the island, the court's decision actually meant nothing. The Greek Cypriots who owned the land then simply went to the high court in London to get the judgement enforced against the British couple (effectively a fine of ~ £150,000) and the high court, last I heard, played ball. The British government (by agreeing to enforce foreign civil judgements against domestic assets) has sold its citizens down the river.
So, the simple fact is, if you run a website and have a prescence in any European country, you are actually subject to the laws of all (since virtually all countries believe themselves to have juristiction over any website anywhere)
The traditional CS weapon buying system didn't add any realism. Counter Terrorist Soldiers do not have to buy their weapons out of a budget that comes from their own pocket. Their budget is also not defined by wether they got shot last time or not. Any good CT unit will be armed to the teeth (with armour and grenades and anything else they may happen to need) and will probably be all (or mostly) using the same type of gun - interchangeable ammunition clips are good as you can use 'your' gun all the time and get used to its little foibles rather than having to switch to a completely different gun when the one clip (which is all you could afford) runs out. The entire premise behind buying your weapons is broken and it heavily breaks the game - winning the first round gives you a very real advantage in your quest to win the second round (and conversely, losing the first round ties your hands behind your back for the next round).
yeah, but in a situation where we're their customers for essentials (like clothes, cooking utensils, basic tools) they HAVE got us over a barrel because we need those things, we can't wait for them to be produced slowly and can't ramp up domestic production (in any short timescale) to meet supply. We've probably lost a lot of the skills workforce to make them too.
They only actually need our cash to buy our stuff from us - they could choose to do without computers (CPU's are still mostly made in the USA & EU AFAIK), we can't do without clothes. What else to nations spend large quantities of cash abroad on? weapons. How many western countrues sell weapons to the chinese? very few. Can the chinese make fairly decent weapons themselves? yes (If you make homegrown fighter jets, you have a weapons industry of note).
So, er, who's gonna make stuff? Oh, wait, that means that all the western nations who's economies are moving ever closer to being entirely reliant on intellectual property with a real value of nil and are banking on the force of law and international treaties to bouy their economies up whilst shifting the manufacture of real goods to China will have to start making stuff themselves again. Right now China has got us all over a barrel because they're where we get the majority of our goods, why would they fritter it all away moving to an economic model like ours?
I wasn't referring to hitting someone, that's assault and we have laws to deal with that already (which does make it shocking that there's special-case ones which in effect imply that someone people have a greater right to not be assaulted than others) I was simply referring to shouting at people. I presume that the sign doesn't say that it's a federal offence to shout at the BART station agent or to tell them in no uncertain terms what worthless scum they are.
Have a scream at the A&E reception desk and we can prosecute.
What? seriously? I've seen those posters up and just thought it was something from the home office or department of health that you had to put up. You'd really prosecute someone for doing nothing more than getting angry and shouting about it? Sadly, if you will choose to be the front person for an organisation that isn't satisfying someone you do have to take the flak from that person - that's somewhat the point of the right to complain to an organisation. Here's a hit to try and put a stop to it; if someone starts to get angry DON'T tell them that you can have them arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned or fined, that will just make them more angry and then you will have as good as incited them to commit that 'crime' - I'd bring a private prosecution for that.
Just out of interest, what is the complaints proceedure for acquiring immediate remedy (which is what you need when you've been waiting in a waiting room for several hours) and the person who is the point of contact is just fobbing you off whilst smugly pointing to the poster which tells them that you're not allowed to try and get through to them?
You can't hold shouting at someone to try and get through their thick skull against people - they're taught that as the primary method of getting through to smug gits who have nothing but contempt for them in school.
it's a sad reflection on society that bad laws (or lack of good laws) often only get rectified when someone dies, usually horribly or by their own hand
[commentary on an election in a borough with only one voter] Vincent Hanna: "...And our exclusive exit poll revealed a 100% result for; 'mind your own business you nosey bastard'... "
it's not so bad for the customers. If you can prove that you bought the copy in good faith as legitimate (i.e. with a receipt) M$ will give you a legitimate CD-Key for free. At least, that was the scheme about a year ago, I assume that it's still running.
...and the Belgian law is an affront to justice and the rule of law, the UK government played along with these extraterritorial laws because it was stupid enough to agree to enforce practically any arrest warrant that crosses its path from a European country and is too spineless to refuse to arrest Pinochet on principle. I don't know how old the spanish law is, but it sounds like an attempt to maintain itself an empire. The present Iranian government is a theocracy which means that it sees it's juristiction over people of a given religion not inside national borders, you notice that the 'crimes' that it gives itself authority to try people for are 'religious crimes', having trials for religious crimes is the root cause of that.
The anti-(real)piracy law is slightly different, nations declare their authority to deal with a menace to the high seas, but they're not extending their authority over the rest of the world (including into other people's territory) they're expanding it into territory that belongs to no-one and as for ships in-port, they only declare that authority when the ship is in their territorial waters or when it's sailing from one of their ports (up until it enters someone else's territorial waters) and I think most people who sail the high seas would appreciate some rule of law. It's also a well-established principle, a ship is under the juristiction of the nation from which it last made port-call, or the nation who's territorial waters it's in, whatever that nation happens to be (in the end, the juristiction of who's territorial waters you're in trumps all the others). If one nation declared that all ships in the world were under its juristicion for the ban on celery-eating, there'd be uproar.
I'll admit, I opened this one badly to talking about terrorism, because all of these actions (war crimes, crimes against humanity, piracy) and seen by every nation in the world with a system of law to be illegal, so whichever nation happens to apprehend the perpetrators first is really acting as a 'world court' on behalf of all the others, since there is no actual world court (yet) - I'm not saying that it makes a particularly good system, but you should at least be able to see that it makes some sense. On the other hand, apprehending people for actions that you see as a crime which most of the rest of the world doesn't see as a crime which weren't commited inside your natural juristiction (i.e. what the rest of the world respects as your juristiction, rather than what you declare it as) is rather dubious.
Ok, I'm having difficult expressing my argument at this point, but that doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Declaring worldwide juristiction over war crimes may be bad, but declaring worldwide juristiction over online gambling is a lot worse (because online gambling is not universally recognised as illegal).
Actually it's a federal offence to kill a US citizen through a terrorist act anywhere in the world (punishable by death Reference). Yes, you heard right, US federal law declares it's juristiction to cover the entire world.
The problem is that with national sovereingty, a nation can declare it's juristiction to be anything that it wants and because there's no higher law to trump it, the only option for the rest of the world is to wield national sovereignty back at them (i.e. acts of war). Unfortunately, it would take an alliance of most of the rest of the world to effectively do that to the USA so the US government can arbitrarilly declare juristication over anything for any action and everyone else just has to sit back and watch.
However, your assertion that because that's 'de facto' the way the world works is justification for the world to work that way is total nonsense. Right now the USA could declare eating celery a capital offence anywhere in the world and legalising extraordinary rendition to bring suspects into US juristiction to be 'brought to justice', that doesn't mean that it would be just or right (or legal under any other interpretation of the way relationships between countries work).
SCO seem to be irritating the judge in Utah. IBM could try playing this card and get the North Carolina court (and judge) found in contempt of the Utah court for trying to alter the proceedings of the original case with this new nonsense of a case
You can do that, right?
Alternatively, he could just alternate between "I can't hear you", "I don't understand you", "I don't understand the question", "do you mean this or that?", answering something other than 'yes' or 'no' to a yes/no question, "sorry, pardon? I was distracted by that fly/laybird/pigeon", "I don't remember" and having his own lawyer shout 'objection' a lot. Mix that up with a good dose of verbal acrobatics, a unscheduled power cut, dozens of toilet breaks, a quick dose of flu/chicken pox/bubonic plague, myriad bomb/fire alarms, the whole case getting lost due to a mysterious computer error, the electrical frequency in the building being increasing - making the clocks go 50% faster, a convenient paper cut and the SCO lawyers going down with food poisoning. The four hours will fly by!
"Privacy? I think not, the information was "voluntarily" provided to these companies."
emphasis mine. Volunteered to the corporation, not to the government. I should be able to control where information about me that I volunteer goes - if the people I volunteer it to can pass it on to their hearts content, I might as well assume that if I give anyone information, within 6 months it will be known by everyone. Considering that there is information about me that I would rather that some people did not have, should I not give that information to anyone? Should I not tell my health insurer about my health because they would be free to pass it on with impunity?
Actually, the King James Version of the bible has perpetual crown copyright, although that may be in the UK only, I'm not sure how the Bern convention treats crown copyright. You need the permission of the monarch, their representative or the university printers of Oxford or Cambridge (the monarch's 'official' printers) to print it.
Repackage the complete works of Dickens and start suing people who teach English literature.
bah, they shouldn't sue the Swedish government for this, any compensation will be coming from the public purse, which gets it's money from Swedish taxpayers. They should be suing everyone up the chain of command who authorised/ordered it (which I understand goes up to the justice minister) as individuals. When scumbag prosecutors realise that using the law to persecute innocent people because the MPAA ask them to will result in them being personally bankrupted, they might think twice (or it might cost the MPAA a lot more to get them onboard). However, there are, no doubt, laws protecting those in power from being personally accountable.
You don't see the police arresting people who use these, unless they use them to commit (or attempt to commit) a crime,
Yeah you do, or with guns at least. There was a story about a year ago about someone who kept a Luger handgun which his grandfather had yoinked from a German officer during WWII. It had been in the family for ~ 60 years and was kept in a safe (although it still worked & he had ~ 20 rounds of ammo for it as well). His house was robbed. He reported it to the police and made sure to mention that a working WWII gun had been stolen with some ammo and so they might like to look into finding that. He was arrested, charged and convicted of possesion of an illegal firearm:
here
You have 3 choices: accept selective enforcement, accept people occasionally being screwed over by unreasonable laws which it's someones "duty" to enforce, even when innappropriate, or get rid of the unreasonable laws, which may make it harder to deal with real criminals.
Slashdot Mirror
what? becoming a parent means you have to look over your children's shoulders 24/7 until they're 18 (and heaven help you if you have more than 1 child, they'll just have to share a bedroom so you can deny them both privacy at once) because you have absolute responsibility until they turn 18?
It seems to me that that is what you're proposing, and it's the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time.
You send a pretty poor message about personal responsibility to kids by punishing their parents until they turn 18.
The Damilola Taylor case was tragic, but can I point something else out. The people convicted were aged 12 and 13 at the time. If they had been convicted when they were still 12 & 13 would you be calling for blood so much? They may have been vicious thugs at that time, but they were still children.
I don't think anyone ever said it was fair. The justice system isn't supposed to be 'fair' if your definition of that word is 'criminals get the same or worse meted out to them'. If courts acted like that we wouldn't have a civilised society. "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Ghandi.
since when is refusing to take even a cursory glance at the plantiff's evidence (which would result in it being thrown out), making a default ruling against a party who you don't have juristiction over, ordering big-number-picked-out-of-the-air damages (because it's a default judgement and that's what the plaintiff said would be fair) and then trying to screw up the rest of the world's usage of the internet when said damages aren't paid, "the right thing"?
Following the law is not "the right thing" when the law is clearly not right. (Yeah, that's very subjective and I can't think of a workable implementation of that model, but it's still the ideal way for things to work).
I would agree with you that deciding on what's good for the public is not more important than protecting the individual, but we're not talking about individuals here. This is a spat between two organisations, and as such, ruling in a way which is really a ruling against every internet-using individual in the world for the benefit of one organisation is not good.
In practice, we have an authoritarian government pushing for ever greater use of "summary justice" -- a quaint euphemism for letting the police officer be judge, jury and if he wants, executioner, where the only way to avail yourself of due process is usually to give up any possibility of taking a "procedural penalty" like a formal caution or fixed penalty.
I've found that amusing (and worrying at the same time). The General British policy is to solve something that many people do that Daily Mail sees as a problem:
1) Declare it illegal
2) Institute a fine
3) Realise that you're now having to prosecute thousands of extra people per day
4) Decide to skip the court system and due process and just hand out the power to fine people to policeman (who seem to be wearing more and more black) under threat of a larger fine & court costs if you want it done by the book
5) Profit! (and instant criminals)
No-one ever considers 4b) repeal law declaring it illegal because it is clearly not the will of the people.
In other news, world renowned military strategist, The Ghost of Sir Basil Liddel-Hart has commented that the bug made a major strategic flaw. "He, and we are assuming this bug to be a 'he' made a serious error." Sir Basil's Ghost, said. "Making his initial landfall target in one of the most millitarily keen nations the world has ever seen was a very poor idea. Because of this mistake the bug has triggered the full mobilisation of the german armed forces and a full scale search and destroy mission has been initiated by the Luftwaffer. My own strategic analysis of the situation leads me to conclude that the bug would have done better to land across the border in France where he would have been almost immediately surrendered to and would have been able to demand any surrender terms he so desired. My advice to the bug now would be to make for France with all haste and use the freshly-surrendered French army to fight the Germans." When queried about how long the French army could be expected to hold out against the most dedicated military machine in the world Sir Basil's Ghost spluttered into his tea and continued: "Oh good gracious me no. The plan wasn't for the French to FIGHT the germans, no-one would expect that and if the French actually tried firing back the Germans would just laugh anyway. No the idea is that the French will immediately surrender again (as is to be expected) and dealing with all the PoW's will hinder the panzer divisions persuing the bug. This should give him the time necessary to hop across the channel and claim asylum in Britain. I hear the benefits are very good".
In a further development, Russia has started to mobilise its troops onto it's western border in anticipation of a German attack. President Putin said: "Germany has a history of doing this, they did it in the first world war and they also have a history of ripping off old first world war battle plans for use again."
Asked to step in and resolve the situation by bombing the lot of them back to the stone-age, President George W. Bush said "It is not the policy of the US Government to interfere in the internal issues of sovereign states. We also don't bomb places that don't end in -stan or start with an 'I'" he said, "It's apples and grapefruits really. None of our turtlewax."
No. European countries have banded together to make each others laws effectively apply to people in all European countries. If you're found against in a European country that you don't have a prescence in, but do have a prescence in another European country, they'll just get the country you do have a prescence in to enforce the judgement against you. These countries will even do it against their own citiziens.
Case in point: A british couple bought some land in the turkish bit of Cyprus and built a holiday villa on it. The (Greek cypriot) people who used to own that land before cyprus was invaded still say that it's theirs. The Greek Cypriot government still lays claim to the whole of the island. A Greek Cypriot court found against the British government (because it still recognises the claim of the original owners). Not actually being in a position to enforce anything in the Turkish Cypriot part of the island, the court's decision actually meant nothing. The Greek Cypriots who owned the land then simply went to the high court in London to get the judgement enforced against the British couple (effectively a fine of ~ £150,000) and the high court, last I heard, played ball. The British government (by agreeing to enforce foreign civil judgements against domestic assets) has sold its citizens down the river.
So, the simple fact is, if you run a website and have a prescence in any European country, you are actually subject to the laws of all (since virtually all countries believe themselves to have juristiction over any website anywhere)
The traditional CS weapon buying system didn't add any realism. Counter Terrorist Soldiers do not have to buy their weapons out of a budget that comes from their own pocket. Their budget is also not defined by wether they got shot last time or not. Any good CT unit will be armed to the teeth (with armour and grenades and anything else they may happen to need) and will probably be all (or mostly) using the same type of gun - interchangeable ammunition clips are good as you can use 'your' gun all the time and get used to its little foibles rather than having to switch to a completely different gun when the one clip (which is all you could afford) runs out.
The entire premise behind buying your weapons is broken and it heavily breaks the game - winning the first round gives you a very real advantage in your quest to win the second round (and conversely, losing the first round ties your hands behind your back for the next round).
yeah, but in a situation where we're their customers for essentials (like clothes, cooking utensils, basic tools) they HAVE got us over a barrel because we need those things, we can't wait for them to be produced slowly and can't ramp up domestic production (in any short timescale) to meet supply. We've probably lost a lot of the skills workforce to make them too.
They only actually need our cash to buy our stuff from us - they could choose to do without computers (CPU's are still mostly made in the USA & EU AFAIK), we can't do without clothes. What else to nations spend large quantities of cash abroad on? weapons. How many western countrues sell weapons to the chinese? very few. Can the chinese make fairly decent weapons themselves? yes (If you make homegrown fighter jets, you have a weapons industry of note).
So, er, who's gonna make stuff? Oh, wait, that means that all the western nations who's economies are moving ever closer to being entirely reliant on intellectual property with a real value of nil and are banking on the force of law and international treaties to bouy their economies up whilst shifting the manufacture of real goods to China will have to start making stuff themselves again.
Right now China has got us all over a barrel because they're where we get the majority of our goods, why would they fritter it all away moving to an economic model like ours?
Which was the hold-out state?
Why does "harmonization" always mean bringing everyones laws into line with the one which provides for the most disadvantage to the most people?
I wasn't referring to hitting someone, that's assault and we have laws to deal with that already (which does make it shocking that there's special-case ones which in effect imply that someone people have a greater right to not be assaulted than others) I was simply referring to shouting at people. I presume that the sign doesn't say that it's a federal offence to shout at the BART station agent or to tell them in no uncertain terms what worthless scum they are.
Have a scream at the A&E reception desk and we can prosecute.
What? seriously? I've seen those posters up and just thought it was something from the home office or department of health that you had to put up. You'd really prosecute someone for doing nothing more than getting angry and shouting about it? Sadly, if you will choose to be the front person for an organisation that isn't satisfying someone you do have to take the flak from that person - that's somewhat the point of the right to complain to an organisation. Here's a hit to try and put a stop to it; if someone starts to get angry DON'T tell them that you can have them arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned or fined, that will just make them more angry and then you will have as good as incited them to commit that 'crime' - I'd bring a private prosecution for that.
Just out of interest, what is the complaints proceedure for acquiring immediate remedy (which is what you need when you've been waiting in a waiting room for several hours) and the person who is the point of contact is just fobbing you off whilst smugly pointing to the poster which tells them that you're not allowed to try and get through to them?
You can't hold shouting at someone to try and get through their thick skull against people - they're taught that as the primary method of getting through to smug gits who have nothing but contempt for them in school.
it's a sad reflection on society that bad laws (or lack of good laws) often only get rectified when someone dies, usually horribly or by their own hand
Blackadder 3, episode 1, Dish & Dishonesty:
[commentary on an election in a borough with only one voter]
Vincent Hanna: "...And our exclusive exit poll revealed a 100% result for; 'mind your own business you nosey bastard'... "
it's not so bad for the customers. If you can prove that you bought the copy in good faith as legitimate (i.e. with a receipt) M$ will give you a legitimate CD-Key for free. At least, that was the scheme about a year ago, I assume that it's still running.
...and the Belgian law is an affront to justice and the rule of law, the UK government played along with these extraterritorial laws because it was stupid enough to agree to enforce practically any arrest warrant that crosses its path from a European country and is too spineless to refuse to arrest Pinochet on principle. I don't know how old the spanish law is, but it sounds like an attempt to maintain itself an empire. The present Iranian government is a theocracy which means that it sees it's juristiction over people of a given religion not inside national borders, you notice that the 'crimes' that it gives itself authority to try people for are 'religious crimes', having trials for religious crimes is the root cause of that.
The anti-(real)piracy law is slightly different, nations declare their authority to deal with a menace to the high seas, but they're not extending their authority over the rest of the world (including into other people's territory) they're expanding it into territory that belongs to no-one and as for ships in-port, they only declare that authority when the ship is in their territorial waters or when it's sailing from one of their ports (up until it enters someone else's territorial waters) and I think most people who sail the high seas would appreciate some rule of law. It's also a well-established principle, a ship is under the juristiction of the nation from which it last made port-call, or the nation who's territorial waters it's in, whatever that nation happens to be (in the end, the juristiction of who's territorial waters you're in trumps all the others). If one nation declared that all ships in the world were under its juristicion for the ban on celery-eating, there'd be uproar.
I'll admit, I opened this one badly to talking about terrorism, because all of these actions (war crimes, crimes against humanity, piracy) and seen by every nation in the world with a system of law to be illegal, so whichever nation happens to apprehend the perpetrators first is really acting as a 'world court' on behalf of all the others, since there is no actual world court (yet) - I'm not saying that it makes a particularly good system, but you should at least be able to see that it makes some sense. On the other hand, apprehending people for actions that you see as a crime which most of the rest of the world doesn't see as a crime which weren't commited inside your natural juristiction (i.e. what the rest of the world respects as your juristiction, rather than what you declare it as) is rather dubious.
Ok, I'm having difficult expressing my argument at this point, but that doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Declaring worldwide juristiction over war crimes may be bad, but declaring worldwide juristiction over online gambling is a lot worse (because online gambling is not universally recognised as illegal).
Actually it's a federal offence to kill a US citizen through a terrorist act anywhere in the world (punishable by death Reference). Yes, you heard right, US federal law declares it's juristiction to cover the entire world.
The problem is that with national sovereingty, a nation can declare it's juristiction to be anything that it wants and because there's no higher law to trump it, the only option for the rest of the world is to wield national sovereignty back at them (i.e. acts of war). Unfortunately, it would take an alliance of most of the rest of the world to effectively do that to the USA so the US government can arbitrarilly declare juristication over anything for any action and everyone else just has to sit back and watch.
However, your assertion that because that's 'de facto' the way the world works is justification for the world to work that way is total nonsense. Right now the USA could declare eating celery a capital offence anywhere in the world and legalising extraordinary rendition to bring suspects into US juristiction to be 'brought to justice', that doesn't mean that it would be just or right (or legal under any other interpretation of the way relationships between countries work).
like these? What's it for? if you want to build your own terminator or something?
SCO seem to be irritating the judge in Utah. IBM could try playing this card and get the North Carolina court (and judge) found in contempt of the Utah court for trying to alter the proceedings of the original case with this new nonsense of a case
You can do that, right?
Alternatively, he could just alternate between "I can't hear you", "I don't understand you", "I don't understand the question", "do you mean this or that?", answering something other than 'yes' or 'no' to a yes/no question, "sorry, pardon? I was distracted by that fly/laybird/pigeon", "I don't remember" and having his own lawyer shout 'objection' a lot.
Mix that up with a good dose of verbal acrobatics, a unscheduled power cut, dozens of toilet breaks, a quick dose of flu/chicken pox/bubonic plague, myriad bomb/fire alarms, the whole case getting lost due to a mysterious computer error, the electrical frequency in the building being increasing - making the clocks go 50% faster, a convenient paper cut and the SCO lawyers going down with food poisoning. The four hours will fly by!
IANAL, can you tell?
...I resorted to reading the instructions!
See, I was building my current box and it wasn't booting. Turns out ATX2.0 has a SECOND power connecter for the CPU. A magic, voodoo, connector.
...and, if it happens enough times they'll lose their merchant account. w00t.
"Privacy? I think not, the information was "voluntarily" provided to these companies."
emphasis mine. Volunteered to the corporation, not to the government. I should be able to control where information about me that I volunteer goes - if the people I volunteer it to can pass it on to their hearts content, I might as well assume that if I give anyone information, within 6 months it will be known by everyone. Considering that there is information about me that I would rather that some people did not have, should I not give that information to anyone? Should I not tell my health insurer about my health because they would be free to pass it on with impunity?
Actually, the King James Version of the bible has perpetual crown copyright, although that may be in the UK only, I'm not sure how the Bern convention treats crown copyright. You need the permission of the monarch, their representative or the university printers of Oxford or Cambridge (the monarch's 'official' printers) to print it.
Repackage the complete works of Dickens and start suing people who teach English literature.
bah, they shouldn't sue the Swedish government for this, any compensation will be coming from the public purse, which gets it's money from Swedish taxpayers. They should be suing everyone up the chain of command who authorised/ordered it (which I understand goes up to the justice minister) as individuals. When scumbag prosecutors realise that using the law to persecute innocent people because the MPAA ask them to will result in them being personally bankrupted, they might think twice (or it might cost the MPAA a lot more to get them onboard). However, there are, no doubt, laws protecting those in power from being personally accountable.
You don't see the police arresting people who use these, unless they use them to commit (or attempt to commit) a crime,
Yeah you do, or with guns at least. There was a story about a year ago about someone who kept a Luger handgun which his grandfather had yoinked from a German officer during WWII. It had been in the family for ~ 60 years and was kept in a safe (although it still worked & he had ~ 20 rounds of ammo for it as well). His house was robbed. He reported it to the police and made sure to mention that a working WWII gun had been stolen with some ammo and so they might like to look into finding that. He was arrested, charged and convicted of possesion of an illegal firearm: here
You have 3 choices: accept selective enforcement, accept people occasionally being screwed over by unreasonable laws which it's someones "duty" to enforce, even when innappropriate, or get rid of the unreasonable laws, which may make it harder to deal with real criminals.