I read Dragon's Egg when I was... 14 or 15 I think. It was a good book. It was a bit slow in spots but I still recall the story from time to time even now. I have no idea if he wrote anything else, your neutron star reference is what triggered my memory.
Did you read the emails in question? If not, why do you believe the characterizations of the emails made by people who intend to prosecute him?
Assuming the characterizations are accurate, were any of them written by the owner? Do they mention him in such as a way as to indicate that he knew what this "group of people" who worked for him knew? Why aren't the people who actually wrote the emails being charged?
From my point of view, it looks like he is probably guilty. He needs to convicted on proof though, not on what it looks like. Are we really going to convict this guy before he has his day in court? If he gets out of having to face his day in court, it is only due to incompetence on the part of the people prosecuting the supposed crime.
My gut feeling is the same as yours... but PROVE that is what he did.
For myself, I have NEVER used his services or any similar services for copyright infringement. How did people find the copyrighted material there? All the URLs that I saw were encoded and showed no interesting information. No megaupload results were ever returned in ANY of my searches... at least not on any the pages of results that I viewed.
So seriously, is this man to be convicted on gut feelings? Where is the justice in that? Let's see proof.
Ummm, why would they (FBI and media cartels) agree to this? The punishment of frozen assets is much better than risking not being able to punish at all.
I wish there were more comments in stories like these. I always get a sense of child-like wonder when I see new things like this and I always find myself wondering how/why/what is going on. With the physics stories, we usually see some experts or at least some clued-in non-arrogant people having discussions that REALLY enlighten me. Stuff like this, not so much. It makes me feel kind of sad.
I wish I knew more about this subject or at least enough to know where to go look. I will probably have to start with cloud formations and vortex mechanics and work my way out from there, but by the time I finally have a general idea, the wonder will be lost... but at least the information will still reside in my brain and I can apply it to Jupiter or somesuch. I am getting too old and the universe is too big for me to do original research on everything. That is the only reason I wish I could live forever.:)
Winning a race is not done by focusing on your competition; although, keeping tabs on what they do is probably wise. Winning a race is done by being better/faster/stronger than your competitors. You can only do that if your focus is on your own performance.
If your performance is not good enough, you have lost. Stop crying and learn to be better. If you can't be better, lie, cheat, steal your way to the win (not recommended). Focusing on your competitor just detracts from your efforts to win.
which to be honest is everything that's actually important on your computer; non-userland stuff can just be re-installed from scratch if needed.
I keep seeing this meme which seems to be promoting the idea that userland infection >= system level infection by claiming (mostly correctly) that the only important files to the user are in the users own directory.
You have backups of/home right? So what is the problem with restoring it. Losing/home is NOT the worst thing that can happen to you. Having a virus that you can not detect is. Let's see how happy you are when your files start getting corrupted and keep getting corrupted and you have no idea why. System level infection is far worse than userland so can we let this meme die now please?
This will really get your knickers in a twist. I say, "I could care less" and have it mean even worse than, "I couldn't care less.", but it requires a bit of thought and understanding to comprehend:
I could care less but I do not... but only because it is not on my radar at all. It has not even reached the level of judging whether or not I should care.
Yeah, I only use it with friends who understand or with anal retentive people to piss them off.
While you have a point, I have spoken to the police a few times recently and there is indeed a sense of distance that is not explainable through what you describe. No, my interactions with them were not adversarial. LOL. I have a perfectly clean police record.:)
The average person will gladly lie, cheat, and steal (or worse), and is only stopped by immediate negative consequences for those actions. The average person should not be trusted - they'd take everything you had if they reasonably believed they could get away with it forever.
Hm. I saw your post and knew immediately something was wrong but it took a bit of reflection to really nail it.
The average person would do what you claim to "outsiders" but the numbers change dramatically when talking about "insiders". Insiders are friends, family, other people in a group that they belong to (such as a city, state, or country). An outsider is someone who is specifically excluded from at least one group. Your perceptions demonstrate how many groups you are included and excluded in/from.
Outside of group mechanics and psychology, I still suspect your numbers are off. I suspect less than 10% of the population would intentionally cause serious harm to you without provocation even if they thought they could get away with it. For more minor infractions (saw you drop a $20 and do not return it) the number may indeed be high enough to say things like, "the average person".
Ultimately, I do not think your post should be modded down. The perception you have appears to be growing and people need to be aware of it and address it so it does not become a divisive force. Ultimately friendliness is the only thing that will keep this world a pleasant place to live.
Okay. I obviously have to do some research on this. What is the difference between "authorized" and "declared"? Please be aware, I am not arguing with you nor was my prior remark facetious. The world is apparently not like I thought it was. This would not be the first time and will not likely be the last time that my understanding is not quite as correct as I thought it was.
So I wonder where the anti-UN sentiment in the US comes from?
LOL. I am not Anit-U.N. but I can easily see where the comments come from. Look at the headlines in the news recently. Does Syria ring a bell? Are civilians dying? Are kids being murdered for political ends? What is the U.N. proposing? Is it stopping any of the people from dying? Is there ANY FUCKING CHANCE whatsoever that the U.N. will make the slightest bit of difference there?
It seems clear the U.N. is utterly pointless in effecting any sort of change. Something is going on in Syria and NOBODY is revealing what exactly it is other than people are dying. Why are they dying? Why does the government feel the need to shell civilians? Why do Russian and China approve of what the Syrian government is doing? Why aren't we being told the truth about why the Syrian government is doing what they are doing? Why are we just being told about the civilians and children dying but not about... what? The "rebels" are actually an armed faction for another power that wants to take over the country and is backed by Western powers?
Seriously, the U.N. is about the stupidest idea ever as it is utterly powerless when it comes to sincere power struggles. Innocent people are dying and suffering! Make it stop NOW... or at least arm the civilians to give them a fighting chance.
Thank you for being sensible. I agree that many innocuous things can be, and are, blown way out of proportion or misrepresented.
I still disagree with needing to be more on their guard merely because of video recording being present. They should always act professional and the police that I have interacted with in the past, even when they clearly did not have my best interests at heart, always (except once) acted professionally. Thankfully, I do not live in NYC. Just wow.
He did not understand the sad truth of corporate salaries today: It no longer matters how long you have been with the company, or how long it has been since you last had a raise - the only thing that matters is what is on your job description and what other companies are willing to pay for that role in your area.
Weird. I do not think I would run a business like that... but that may be why I am not a wealthy business owner. Why would a person's salary at YOUR company depend on what other companies are paying? What if they were overpaying? I guess you would be forced to overpay too or else do without help.
I guess what I am saying is that a business should offer what it is worth to them. The only time they should be looking at what other companies pay is when they can not figure out why they are not getting the help they need. If that means my network admin is making $100k MORE than what everyone else is, then fine. I am getting my money's worth out of the person and I have someone I can trust when things are going badly.
Meh. The only businesses that I can think of that would need to plan directly around a presidential election are companies that contract with the government. To all other businesses not involved in any type of corruption, republican or democrat makes zero difference.
Agreed about not knowing for sure. That is why I am VERY unlikely to be in such a situation. My comment is about if it were absolutely clear which is a virtual impossibility in reality.
I do not care if they made it a "law" to not interfere with a law enforcement officer. If it is CLEAR that the officer is violating the law, it is our duty to stop them. Let's end this discussion now: If you were a German soldier and knew clearly what was going to happen to unarmed Jews, Gypsys, etc. I would argue that is was your duty to try and stop it regardless of whether or not it was authorized and legal.
I do not think the policy came about to pick on black people. To give the benefit of the doubt, I would say that some people are very scared and choose to harass anyone who looks scary. Due to history, a lot of it probably centers around black people but I would bet puerto ricans, mexicans, iranians, etc are all being targeted too. As a matter of fact, if I were to say it were profiling, it would be profiling YOUNG people. People under 30.
I am sure there are some police officers in New York who are prejudiced against a particular race and this law is a godsend for them and a nightmare for the people of the race that the officer hates. I think we should be VERY careful about dragging race into this as I suspect it is much much bigger than race.
None of this makes me feel any safer. Is there any reason to believe these types of things reduce crime? Has anyone done a honest evaluation to see if things are changing positively in NYC because of this? I am honestly getting very bad feelings from this. It is like pouring gasoline on to a pile of kindling. What will be the match that lights it? Someone dying in one of these stops?
Hm. You seem to be under the impression that I think dcwg.org IS untrustworthy. That is not what I am arguing at all. What I am saying is that it APPEARS to be untrustworthy to people who do not know already what dcwg.org is.
What is even funnier is that one of my friends just sent me a link on Yahoo about this whole mess and this is the content of the email: "http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/blackout-monday-dns-changer-know-155840354.html
Maybe they are the ones scamming and getting people to click on their links to "diagnose" if they have an issue. hehe"
I laughed really hard considering our current discussion. He sent it after my first reply to you and before any subsequent replies.
It does not matter if dcwg.org actually IS trustworthy. What matters is that it does appear to be untrustworthy to anyone with an ounce of paranoia and who is not familiar with this whole mess.
Look Mr. Anonymous Coward, I am NOT looking for causes to fight for/against. I honestly do not believe that this stop and frisk bullshit is racially motivated anyways.
When I see something wrong, I call it out as being wrong. This "policy" of stop and frisk is wrong regardless of whether or not blacks are mostly being targeted (got any data to back up that blacks are being targeted, rather than just poor people or people who are dressed wrong?). If I were to witness such an event, I would make a citizens arrest on the police officer even though it would mean spending the rest of my life in jail. It is even possible that the situation might require me to shoot the officer because he would not submit to an arrest and try to shoot me.
Again, nothing to do with race but with law and order. How do they expect us to respect law and order if they do not?
Nobody is going to respect an Anonymous Coward saying what you are saying. Create an account and log in. Put _something_ behind your words. Nobody is going to execute you for it... yet.;)
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I read Dragon's Egg when I was... 14 or 15 I think. It was a good book. It was a bit slow in spots but I still recall the story from time to time even now. I have no idea if he wrote anything else, your neutron star reference is what triggered my memory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg
Did you read the emails in question? If not, why do you believe the characterizations of the emails made by people who intend to prosecute him?
Assuming the characterizations are accurate, were any of them written by the owner? Do they mention him in such as a way as to indicate that he knew what this "group of people" who worked for him knew? Why aren't the people who actually wrote the emails being charged?
From my point of view, it looks like he is probably guilty. He needs to convicted on proof though, not on what it looks like. Are we really going to convict this guy before he has his day in court? If he gets out of having to face his day in court, it is only due to incompetence on the part of the people prosecuting the supposed crime.
He's a middleman and this money was ill-gotten
My gut feeling is the same as yours... but PROVE that is what he did.
For myself, I have NEVER used his services or any similar services for copyright infringement. How did people find the copyrighted material there? All the URLs that I saw were encoded and showed no interesting information. No megaupload results were ever returned in ANY of my searches... at least not on any the pages of results that I viewed.
So seriously, is this man to be convicted on gut feelings? Where is the justice in that? Let's see proof.
Ummm, why would they (FBI and media cartels) agree to this? The punishment of frozen assets is much better than risking not being able to punish at all.
I wish there were more comments in stories like these. I always get a sense of child-like wonder when I see new things like this and I always find myself wondering how/why/what is going on. With the physics stories, we usually see some experts or at least some clued-in non-arrogant people having discussions that REALLY enlighten me. Stuff like this, not so much. It makes me feel kind of sad.
I wish I knew more about this subject or at least enough to know where to go look. I will probably have to start with cloud formations and vortex mechanics and work my way out from there, but by the time I finally have a general idea, the wonder will be lost... but at least the information will still reside in my brain and I can apply it to Jupiter or somesuch. I am getting too old and the universe is too big for me to do original research on everything. That is the only reason I wish I could live forever. :)
Winning a race is not done by focusing on your competition; although, keeping tabs on what they do is probably wise. Winning a race is done by being better/faster/stronger than your competitors. You can only do that if your focus is on your own performance.
If your performance is not good enough, you have lost. Stop crying and learn to be better. If you can't be better, lie, cheat, steal your way to the win (not recommended). Focusing on your competitor just detracts from your efforts to win.
which to be honest is everything that's actually important on your computer; non-userland stuff can just be re-installed from scratch if needed.
I keep seeing this meme which seems to be promoting the idea that userland infection >= system level infection by claiming (mostly correctly) that the only important files to the user are in the users own directory.
You have backups of /home right? So what is the problem with restoring it. Losing /home is NOT the worst thing that can happen to you. Having a virus that you can not detect is. Let's see how happy you are when your files start getting corrupted and keep getting corrupted and you have no idea why. System level infection is far worse than userland so can we let this meme die now please?
[Nelson] Ha Ha [/Nelson]
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
This will really get your knickers in a twist. I say, "I could care less" and have it mean even worse than, "I couldn't care less.", but it requires a bit of thought and understanding to comprehend:
I could care less but I do not... but only because it is not on my radar at all. It has not even reached the level of judging whether or not I should care.
Yeah, I only use it with friends who understand or with anal retentive people to piss them off.
While you have a point, I have spoken to the police a few times recently and there is indeed a sense of distance that is not explainable through what you describe. No, my interactions with them were not adversarial. LOL. I have a perfectly clean police record. :)
The average person will gladly lie, cheat, and steal (or worse), and is only stopped by immediate negative consequences for those actions. The average person should not be trusted - they'd take everything you had if they reasonably believed they could get away with it forever.
Hm. I saw your post and knew immediately something was wrong but it took a bit of reflection to really nail it.
The average person would do what you claim to "outsiders" but the numbers change dramatically when talking about "insiders". Insiders are friends, family, other people in a group that they belong to (such as a city, state, or country). An outsider is someone who is specifically excluded from at least one group. Your perceptions demonstrate how many groups you are included and excluded in/from.
Outside of group mechanics and psychology, I still suspect your numbers are off. I suspect less than 10% of the population would intentionally cause serious harm to you without provocation even if they thought they could get away with it. For more minor infractions (saw you drop a $20 and do not return it) the number may indeed be high enough to say things like, "the average person".
Ultimately, I do not think your post should be modded down. The perception you have appears to be growing and people need to be aware of it and address it so it does not become a divisive force. Ultimately friendliness is the only thing that will keep this world a pleasant place to live.
Okay. I obviously have to do some research on this. What is the difference between "authorized" and "declared"? Please be aware, I am not arguing with you nor was my prior remark facetious. The world is apparently not like I thought it was. This would not be the first time and will not likely be the last time that my understanding is not quite as correct as I thought it was.
So I wonder where the anti-UN sentiment in the US comes from?
LOL. I am not Anit-U.N. but I can easily see where the comments come from. Look at the headlines in the news recently. Does Syria ring a bell? Are civilians dying? Are kids being murdered for political ends? What is the U.N. proposing? Is it stopping any of the people from dying? Is there ANY FUCKING CHANCE whatsoever that the U.N. will make the slightest bit of difference there?
It seems clear the U.N. is utterly pointless in effecting any sort of change. Something is going on in Syria and NOBODY is revealing what exactly it is other than people are dying. Why are they dying? Why does the government feel the need to shell civilians? Why do Russian and China approve of what the Syrian government is doing? Why aren't we being told the truth about why the Syrian government is doing what they are doing? Why are we just being told about the civilians and children dying but not about... what? The "rebels" are actually an armed faction for another power that wants to take over the country and is backed by Western powers?
Seriously, the U.N. is about the stupidest idea ever as it is utterly powerless when it comes to sincere power struggles. Innocent people are dying and suffering! Make it stop NOW... or at least arm the civilians to give them a fighting chance.
Hm? I thought Afghanistan was an officially declared war. I guess I was wrong. The more you know eh?
Thank you for being sensible. I agree that many innocuous things can be, and are, blown way out of proportion or misrepresented.
I still disagree with needing to be more on their guard merely because of video recording being present. They should always act professional and the police that I have interacted with in the past, even when they clearly did not have my best interests at heart, always (except once) acted professionally. Thankfully, I do not live in NYC. Just wow.
He did not understand the sad truth of corporate salaries today: It no longer matters how long you have been with the company, or how long it has been since you last had a raise - the only thing that matters is what is on your job description and what other companies are willing to pay for that role in your area.
Weird. I do not think I would run a business like that... but that may be why I am not a wealthy business owner. Why would a person's salary at YOUR company depend on what other companies are paying? What if they were overpaying? I guess you would be forced to overpay too or else do without help.
I guess what I am saying is that a business should offer what it is worth to them. The only time they should be looking at what other companies pay is when they can not figure out why they are not getting the help they need. If that means my network admin is making $100k MORE than what everyone else is, then fine. I am getting my money's worth out of the person and I have someone I can trust when things are going badly.
Meh. The only businesses that I can think of that would need to plan directly around a presidential election are companies that contract with the government. To all other businesses not involved in any type of corruption, republican or democrat makes zero difference.
Agreed about not knowing for sure. That is why I am VERY unlikely to be in such a situation. My comment is about if it were absolutely clear which is a virtual impossibility in reality.
I do not care if they made it a "law" to not interfere with a law enforcement officer. If it is CLEAR that the officer is violating the law, it is our duty to stop them. Let's end this discussion now: If you were a German soldier and knew clearly what was going to happen to unarmed Jews, Gypsys, etc. I would argue that is was your duty to try and stop it regardless of whether or not it was authorized and legal.
I do not think the policy came about to pick on black people. To give the benefit of the doubt, I would say that some people are very scared and choose to harass anyone who looks scary. Due to history, a lot of it probably centers around black people but I would bet puerto ricans, mexicans, iranians, etc are all being targeted too. As a matter of fact, if I were to say it were profiling, it would be profiling YOUNG people. People under 30.
I am sure there are some police officers in New York who are prejudiced against a particular race and this law is a godsend for them and a nightmare for the people of the race that the officer hates. I think we should be VERY careful about dragging race into this as I suspect it is much much bigger than race.
Nasty :(
None of this makes me feel any safer. Is there any reason to believe these types of things reduce crime? Has anyone done a honest evaluation to see if things are changing positively in NYC because of this? I am honestly getting very bad feelings from this. It is like pouring gasoline on to a pile of kindling. What will be the match that lights it? Someone dying in one of these stops?
LOL, no. I was wondering why there were so many Anonymous Coward replies. I was just tossing around possible ideas no matter how outrageous.
Hm. You seem to be under the impression that I think dcwg.org IS untrustworthy. That is not what I am arguing at all. What I am saying is that it APPEARS to be untrustworthy to people who do not know already what dcwg.org is.
What is even funnier is that one of my friends just sent me a link on Yahoo about this whole mess and this is the content of the email: "http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/blackout-monday-dns-changer-know-155840354.html
Maybe they are the ones scamming and getting people to click on their links to "diagnose" if they have an issue. hehe"
I laughed really hard considering our current discussion. He sent it after my first reply to you and before any subsequent replies.
It does not matter if dcwg.org actually IS trustworthy. What matters is that it does appear to be untrustworthy to anyone with an ounce of paranoia and who is not familiar with this whole mess.
"Duh, I can not read" lol. Read that quote again and I will bold the part that matters:
"Nobody is going to respect an Anonymous Coward saying what you are saying."
Sometimes, being anonymous is important. Attach importance to the words, not the messenger. I get all of that.
What I was responding to was NOT one of those cases.
Look Mr. Anonymous Coward, I am NOT looking for causes to fight for/against. I honestly do not believe that this stop and frisk bullshit is racially motivated anyways.
When I see something wrong, I call it out as being wrong. This "policy" of stop and frisk is wrong regardless of whether or not blacks are mostly being targeted (got any data to back up that blacks are being targeted, rather than just poor people or people who are dressed wrong?). If I were to witness such an event, I would make a citizens arrest on the police officer even though it would mean spending the rest of my life in jail. It is even possible that the situation might require me to shoot the officer because he would not submit to an arrest and try to shoot me.
Again, nothing to do with race but with law and order. How do they expect us to respect law and order if they do not?
Nobody is going to respect an Anonymous Coward saying what you are saying. Create an account and log in. Put _something_ behind your words. Nobody is going to execute you for it... yet. ;)