I'm sorry, but it's a Wi-Fi hotspot, it's there for anonymous people to access it. It wasn't a private network.
I would say it was implicit that everyone within range of the Wi-Fi was free to use it, unless the store owner specifically states "You may only use this Wi-Fi from inside the store. Violators will be prosecuted."
If you set up a Wi-Fi hotspot and don't specify who can and can't use it, it makes no sense going after people who used it in a way that you "didn't intend".
If anything, he should have gone off with a warning, really, no one even knew he was breaking a law, it makes no sense. This Milanowski guy is just an idiot with a lot of time on his hands, how is prosecuting random citizens "protecting and serving"?
I remember seeing that "Brazil blocks Youtube" thing on slashdot, but seriously, I tested it back then, and there was no block, I talked to everyone I know, and they also noted no block. Not that one wasn't issued though, it probably was never enforced.
It was a BS case anyway, it was a public beach, everyone was there to see them having sex. If anyone was breaking the law, they were. Of course, with the justice system here as corrupt and moronic as it is, those kinds of rulings aren't surprising. Believe me though, 100% of the Brazilian people would be against any sort of ban.
Sure, they might kill sometimes, but they won't get more kills than deaths, specially with all the good players around trying to get money from the system. I never seen a real noob do well playing against experts...
Even in UT or Quake, you can be a noob, get quad damage and somehow manage to kill a good player who had his back on you. Every game has a *bit* of luck involved, but the chances of a noob getting lucky every single round is astronomical.
In gambling "you can keep the less skilled players playing since they know there is a lucky chance that they might win." You have no chance to win against a fps player that's way more skilled than you.
It won't work, I'll tell you why: People who lose money more than they make, will stop playing after a while. There will be some kind of Darwinian selection where only the most skilled players will be left playing. Then of course, the less skilled of the more skilled players will stop playing until only the top notch, professional "fatality-like" players will be left.
When that happens, even the top players will on average lose more money than they make, since the playing field should be somewhat balanced (With Kill/Death ratios approaching 1:1). The playing fee would, therefore, be higher than the profit.
If one player is so good that he makes heaps of profit every time, people will just start logging off as soon as he logs in, because for him to make profit, someone else has to lose money, and people aren't going to stick around to see that happen. I already see it happen in regular games, no doubt it will happen in payed ones.
There is a reason those things only work with gambling, because you can keep the less skilled players playing since they know there is a lucky chance that they might win. When it comes to games that are 100% skill, you will notice that 99.9% of the time the prize money comes from sponsors and not the competitors own pockets.
Would you play Quake against Fatality or Starcraft against Boxer if your own money was the line?
To all you people who say that "$50,000 is nothing compared to the $19 million he raised!", you are wrong. If you knew anyone who worked in a movie, they would know. I once worked in a relatively low budget movie, at around $6 million. Every single dollar counted. Every single dollar they saved was money that could be invested in paying for better equipment or more experienced professionals.
You don't have a dollar to waste or give away in good faith, the budget is already super tight as it is. It's tough, sometimes you would love to raise the salary of the people who you're working with, but you just can't afford it. It's not about being evil, its about being realistic.
Ok, one Asian kid being arrested for *not* making a threating call to his school, other for writing a disturbing essay, now this. Are there no limits for Paranoia? Do you know how RARE it is for something like Virgina Tech to happen? More kids die in the street in gang fights every month, but of course, those kids you don't care about.
I guess what I am asking, as a member of the rest of the world, is: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, AMERICA?
I never said I'm happy about it (I'm not), I am just exposing the truth as it is.
People here don't feel like they aren't free, on the contrary, they think those laws protect the freedoms and rights of the minorities. It's just a matter of perspective, they probably have a slightly different definition of freedom, and draw the line a little further.
Not that the U.S isn't doing just the same with the Patriot Act and etc...
I live in Brazil, and here, any form of hate speech is not only banned (Against Gays, Blacks, Indians, Jews, Muslims or any other minority group), but its a criminal act, meaning that you are going to face up to 5 years in jail with no right to bail.
Recently, there has been a case of a man who was considered guilty for saying that "even an animal would make a better mascot than an indian", and some time ago an Argentinian soccer player was arrested for calling another player a "Black piece of sh*t" or something of the sort. (He didn't know the law)
Not only can you not say those things in the media, but you can't say them in any circumstance, even walking down the street. If you say something racist, and someone near you is offended, they can sue you, and provided they have witnesses, you *WILL* very probably be facing some kind of punishment.
Right now, the government checks message boards for hate speech, chat rooms, and it's probably not long before they start checking your e-mails. Google, who controls the social-networking site Orkut (The number 1 site in Brazil), has been forced to reveal real identities and the IP addresses for literally hundreds of people with similar charges, and while they were reluctant to hand them in at first, now they do it with relative ease, all the police/federal agents have to do is ask.
To Americans, this law may seem like a huge violation of one's civil liberties, but here in Brazil, most people support the law, (Well, they could be sued for hate speech if they said they didn't) but anyway, so far it has been working as intended. (If that Imus thing happened in Brazil, he'd be in real trouble). Unlike in the US, hate speech here is relatively rare, specially after those new laws were passed.
Before you say "how long until politicians start censuring whatever they don't like", the anti-hate laws are very clear, they only apply to hate speech, and any attempt to increase the scope of the law would be met with fierce resistance from civil liberties groups.
However, one thing that *does* happen very often here is that politicians/etc. can sue newspapers for defamation and slander with relative ease, even if what the paper is reporting is 100% true. As a matter of fact, usually if anything "damaging" is printed on the newspaper, they will get sued, and unless it's some sort of huge scandal, it's not unheard of for the newspaper to lose.
If you have a hard time imagining what this means to Thai people, just think of what burning an American Flag means to conservatives in the US. Try going in into a bar at night in a small American town, standing on the counter and burning an American flag, I doubt you will come out alive.
All this law does is make copyright infringement for commercial purposes a crime. Non-commercial copyright infringement isn't in it's scope.
What that means is that, it is NOT saying that "if you pirate a CD for personal, non-profit use, you didn't commit a crime", what its saying is: "if you make a profit from it, you are DEFINITELY committing a crime, no matter what EU country you are in".
If pirating something for personal use is a crime in your country, it probably will still be a crime after this law passes. And if it isn't a crime, this law doesn't prevent legislation that criminalizes it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but it's a Wi-Fi hotspot, it's there for anonymous people to access it. It wasn't a private network.
I would say it was implicit that everyone within range of the Wi-Fi was free to use it, unless the store owner specifically states "You may only use this Wi-Fi from inside the store. Violators will be prosecuted."
If you set up a Wi-Fi hotspot and don't specify who can and can't use it, it makes no sense going after people who used it in a way that you "didn't intend".
If anything, he should have gone off with a warning, really, no one even knew he was breaking a law, it makes no sense. This Milanowski guy is just an idiot with a lot of time on his hands, how is prosecuting random citizens "protecting and serving"?
Never mind, I gotta learn to read beyond the subject title.... *sigh*
http://edubuntu.org/
I remember seeing that "Brazil blocks Youtube" thing on slashdot, but seriously, I tested it back then, and there was no block, I talked to everyone I know, and they also noted no block. Not that one wasn't issued though, it probably was never enforced.
It was a BS case anyway, it was a public beach, everyone was there to see them having sex. If anyone was breaking the law, they were. Of course, with the justice system here as corrupt and moronic as it is, those kinds of rulings aren't surprising. Believe me though, 100% of the Brazilian people would be against any sort of ban.
Sure, they might kill sometimes, but they won't get more kills than deaths, specially with all the good players around trying to get money from the system. I never seen a real noob do well playing against experts...
Even in UT or Quake, you can be a noob, get quad damage and somehow manage to kill a good player who had his back on you. Every game has a *bit* of luck involved, but the chances of a noob getting lucky every single round is astronomical.
In gambling "you can keep the less skilled players playing since they know there is a lucky chance that they might win." You have no chance to win against a fps player that's way more skilled than you.
It won't work, I'll tell you why: People who lose money more than they make, will stop playing after a while. There will be some kind of Darwinian selection where only the most skilled players will be left playing. Then of course, the less skilled of the more skilled players will stop playing until only the top notch, professional "fatality-like" players will be left.
When that happens, even the top players will on average lose more money than they make, since the playing field should be somewhat balanced (With Kill/Death ratios approaching 1:1). The playing fee would, therefore, be higher than the profit.
If one player is so good that he makes heaps of profit every time, people will just start logging off as soon as he logs in, because for him to make profit, someone else has to lose money, and people aren't going to stick around to see that happen. I already see it happen in regular games, no doubt it will happen in payed ones.
There is a reason those things only work with gambling, because you can keep the less skilled players playing since they know there is a lucky chance that they might win. When it comes to games that are 100% skill, you will notice that 99.9% of the time the prize money comes from sponsors and not the competitors own pockets.
Would you play Quake against Fatality or Starcraft against Boxer if your own money was the line?
To all you people who say that "$50,000 is nothing compared to the $19 million he raised!", you are wrong. If you knew anyone who worked in a movie, they would know. I once worked in a relatively low budget movie, at around $6 million. Every single dollar counted. Every single dollar they saved was money that could be invested in paying for better equipment or more experienced professionals.
You don't have a dollar to waste or give away in good faith, the budget is already super tight as it is. It's tough, sometimes you would love to raise the salary of the people who you're working with, but you just can't afford it. It's not about being evil, its about being realistic.
Ok, one Asian kid being arrested for *not* making a threating call to his school, other for writing a disturbing essay, now this. Are there no limits for Paranoia? Do you know how RARE it is for something like Virgina Tech to happen? More kids die in the street in gang fights every month, but of course, those kids you don't care about.
I guess what I am asking, as a member of the rest of the world, is: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, AMERICA?
I've never seen anything like this before, it's probably unprecedented. (I know I've been digging HD-DVD stories all day long)
I wonder if it's the end of Digg...
I never said I'm happy about it (I'm not), I am just exposing the truth as it is.
People here don't feel like they aren't free, on the contrary, they think those laws protect the freedoms and rights of the minorities. It's just a matter of perspective, they probably have a slightly different definition of freedom, and draw the line a little further.
Not that the U.S isn't doing just the same with the Patriot Act and etc...
I live in Brazil, and here, any form of hate speech is not only banned (Against Gays, Blacks, Indians, Jews, Muslims or any other minority group), but its a criminal act, meaning that you are going to face up to 5 years in jail with no right to bail.
Recently, there has been a case of a man who was considered guilty for saying that "even an animal would make a better mascot than an indian", and some time ago an Argentinian soccer player was arrested for calling another player a "Black piece of sh*t" or something of the sort. (He didn't know the law)
Not only can you not say those things in the media, but you can't say them in any circumstance, even walking down the street. If you say something racist, and someone near you is offended, they can sue you, and provided they have witnesses, you *WILL* very probably be facing some kind of punishment.
Right now, the government checks message boards for hate speech, chat rooms, and it's probably not long before they start checking your e-mails. Google, who controls the social-networking site Orkut (The number 1 site in Brazil), has been forced to reveal real identities and the IP addresses for literally hundreds of people with similar charges, and while they were reluctant to hand them in at first, now they do it with relative ease, all the police/federal agents have to do is ask.
To Americans, this law may seem like a huge violation of one's civil liberties, but here in Brazil, most people support the law, (Well, they could be sued for hate speech if they said they didn't) but anyway, so far it has been working as intended. (If that Imus thing happened in Brazil, he'd be in real trouble). Unlike in the US, hate speech here is relatively rare, specially after those new laws were passed.
Before you say "how long until politicians start censuring whatever they don't like", the anti-hate laws are very clear, they only apply to hate speech, and any attempt to increase the scope of the law would be met with fierce resistance from civil liberties groups.
However, one thing that *does* happen very often here is that politicians/etc. can sue newspapers for defamation and slander with relative ease, even if what the paper is reporting is 100% true. As a matter of fact, usually if anything "damaging" is printed on the newspaper, they will get sued, and unless it's some sort of huge scandal, it's not unheard of for the newspaper to lose.
This is BS, because no one searches for Internet Explorer, people already have it in their computers.
I wonder if it recognizes "Escort Services".
*sigh* who am I kidding?
If you have a hard time imagining what this means to Thai people, just think of what burning an American Flag means to conservatives in the US. Try going in into a bar at night in a small American town, standing on the counter and burning an American flag, I doubt you will come out alive.
All this law does is make copyright infringement for commercial purposes a crime. Non-commercial copyright infringement isn't in it's scope.
What that means is that, it is NOT saying that "if you pirate a CD for personal, non-profit use, you didn't commit a crime", what its saying is: "if you make a profit from it, you are DEFINITELY committing a crime, no matter what EU country you are in".
If pirating something for personal use is a crime in your country, it probably will still be a crime after this law passes. And if it isn't a crime, this law doesn't prevent legislation that criminalizes it.
For a second there I thought: "What the hell did Howard Stern do now?"
That's like me and my twin, if not for the Evil gene, we'd be identical!
genius.
At least they are not "north pole" probing Uranus
Sheep Create Humans That Are Only 15 Percent Scientist.
I still use version 2.3, I refuse to run an OS that has a blowfish as its mascot.
Run from side to side?
Hmmm... Why is it that every single article that has a question for a headline is always tagged for: "No, Yes, Maybe"?
Seems kinda counter-productive...
Hah, in Soviet Russia, humans are 100% sheep.