No Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly in the OS market(where they have considerably more than 1%, it's a lot closer to 91% than to 1%). By preventing booting another OS or dualbooting they are doing exactly the same thing as they were doing(and probably still doing) with PC's. They're trying to sell their tablet by using the fact that it has windows as a selling point and actively preventing others from showing that the tablet (maybe) works better with Android, Linux, OS X or whatever. Hence they are abusing their dominant market share in the OS market to gain market shares elsewhere which is illegal, at least in the EU.
Because Microsoft has a dominant market share by EU standards and therefore this sort of behavior is illegal, Microsoft has been up in the courts over monopoly abuse before so that they have a "dominant market share" has been clearly established, Apple is more of a grey area, whether they have a "dominant market share" has not yet been determined yet by the EU courts so they are free to act as they choose until they are found to be abusing their "dominant market share".
Hence Microsoft is evil and breaking laws, and Apple is not (yet).
Actually people should complain, Microsoft is abusing it's OS monopoly in a way that is at least illegal here in the EU and I hope it is illegal by US antitrust standards too. People need to complain, specifically they need to complain to their EU Commissioner.
Not loading their publisher key is a blatant attempt to try to prevent people from running other OSes on that piece of hardware which is an abuse of their "dominant market share" and they need to be punished for it, preferably harshly
If you have a setup like this working in your environment, getting a "custom" deal with the blacklist admins usually isn't that hard, but you have to take the initiative and prove to them that you do anything reasonably within your power to take care of spammers and zombies, before they will cut you some slack.
Even easier, if you have access to fancier lawyers(which any medium sized ISP and above will have) you tell them to stop or you'll sue them so hard their great great great grandchildren will be selling their kidneys to pay for the debts.
That is outgoing though, which means you have a contract with Comcast permitting them to do that(and pretty much whatever else they want), with the blacklist provider the blocked party has no contract with the list provider and therefore the list provider is out on thin ice when they ban non confirmed spamming addresses and also demand money to be unblocked in a timely manner.
If they didn't demand money for the service they have some protection in that they are not benefiting from overzealous banning but if you start demanding money you are benefiting from erroneously punishing innocents or being overly broad in your bans, $300 per IP piles up pretty quickly.
IANAL
Since you(the ISP) most likely do not have any sort of contract with the blacklist provider then yes you probably have a very good case for blackmail/defamation if the blacklist blocks an entire AS and can't prove that every single IP has been sending spam.
If you take it upon yourself to operate a blacklist and especially if you demand money for a speedy removal then yes it definitely is "your fucking problem" to make sure that the list is accurate and affects as few innocent people as possible. At least in the eyes of pretty much any court, plus the ISP's probably has access to a more expensive/better lawyer to sway the court to see things their way.
The courts will tell you to either provide evidence that every single IP has been blacklisted based on reasonable suspicion or you're liable for damages and the court will tell you to stop and never do it again. Remember that courts are generally the least tech savvy people you can imagine and that this will probably go to a civil court so the accuser doesn't have to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt.
IANAL
I disagree, I find the death sentence just as despicable and I don't think that any first offense deserves life imprisonment without the possibility of parole(that is not to say I think they should be let off easy though but everyone deserves a second chance and most violent crime are crimes of passion, there is a significant chance that the offender wont fall back into serious crime unless society actively goes out of it's way to make sure that that's the only way to have a decent life after getting out) except for for mass murders and maybe for particularly heinous murders. But even if the felony is for a pretty bad crime I don't think that the offender should be further punished once they have served their jail sentence and paid their fines/damages.
Yes you do, the entire point of the EU legal threat was cross platform compatibility, i.e. you should be able to take any charger from any maker and be able to plug it into any phone. You still cannot take the wall charger delivered wikth say a Galaxy SIII and charge an iPhone 5 with it, which was the aim of the threat of legislation.
Actually it was never made into a law, EU merely threatened with legislation on the subject and most major phone makers caved but enlighten me, how exactly is Apple in compliance?
They're still using a different port from everybody else and cross platform compatibility was what the law scare was about, so no they would not have been in compliance.
Of course but manufacturers usually try to shift costs for new "features" onto customers, I'm sure Apple will raise the price of the EU specific iPhone and tell ppl to blame the EU, sadly it will probably work, there are far too many fanboys who never question anything Apple ever says.
If they insist then that would be one way to do it yes but that would probably increase production costs and the iPhone is already expensive enough as it is and an increased price point is probably not the best way to do things, they could also just add a MicroUSB port for charging and keep the lightning port for everything else.
Some time ago EU threatened mobile/smartphone makers to create a unified port standard for charging devices or the EU would do that(in the name of green standards) and enforce it, I think it's about time that the EU told Apple to get on the MicroUSB train or get the fuck out of EU. Considering the size of EU as a market their reply would be predictable.
I think the EU needs to make reality of it's threat to enforce a unified standard port for charging devices and tell apple to either start using MicroUSB or get the fuck out of our market, Apple's response to that would be predictable considering that the entire EU is a pretty sizable market.
Well they're not public records here in Sweden and I think that is preferable, once you have served your punishment society shouldn't penalize you furter, you should be able to put your life back together. If you forever isolate anyone who's ever been convicted that just forces em to sink deeper and deeper into criminality because no one will give them a decent job.
Court proceedings are public records here as well(but your criminal record is not) but it's somewhat of a hassle to get them, you have to go to the specific court that handed down the sentence and you have to request the specific case.
Yes I know about the sex offender registry and I find it despicable, even convicted criminals has a right to privacy and to not be harassed, again making a phariah out of someone only increases their chance of relapsing into serious criminality
Well over here you can't get a firearms license either if you have a conviction which is fine but also firearms is extremely limited, you can pretty much only get one if you're a licensed hunter or a member of a pistol/rifle club.
And I think it's wrong to deprive someone of their right to vote forever just because you made an error of judgement.
Sure but I also think that the government should be forbidden from sharing information about an individuals criminal record after they have served their sentence unless they apply for a job in a school/kindergarten etc or a requiring high security such as working at a nuclear power plant etc. Anyone who gets their hand on such information and uses it to discriminate an individual should face severe fines, jailtime and preferably damages to the discriminated party for many hundreds of thousands or even more depending on the yearly income of the discriminating party.
Any government official who knowingly or through incompetence/negligence shares such information or causes such information to be otherwise known to the public should face a jail sentence for a minimum of 4 years.
At lest within EU "monopoly" legislation doesn't require an actual monopoly, only a "dominant market share" so far the smallest market share that was found by court to be "sominant" was around 37%
The question is would it also be protected free speech to build a large scale LRAD just outside of their property and have it blast messages 24/7 that their God is a lie, that Satan would like to procure their services and anything else you can possibly think of that might enrage them? Dial it up so that the sound levels inside the compound is just short of what is directly harmful.
How do you expose their lies when all their statements are mostly that a fantasy spiritual being they call God hates someone for their sexual orientation.
I don't think quoting lines from their supposed holy book would have very much impact on them, they already discarded that book when they started their hate campaign.
No it is quite different. The burning of any flag is a statement, and if taken to an extreme interpretation it is an aggression against the state whose flag you are burning.
It is NOT a personal attack on specific individuals, what the WBC is doing is attacking specific persons in a vulnerable time and/or place in a way which is truly disgusting.
Personally I think a solution would be that eventually someone they picket will snap and bring a baseball bat(in the case of the liberal gun-law states it would probably be a firearm of some sort) to their picket, yes they have a right to freedom of speech but certain speech will have consequences. The legal system would hopefully see their emotional distress as mitigating circumstances or someone could perhaps make sure that the jury of their peers knows that they have the right to judge the law(something most US judges seems to be doing their best to prevent the jury from knowing)
I wish that the International Warcrimes Tribunal would put that law to the test because I very much doubt that the US would actually invade the Netherlands, as that would be a declaration of war with the European Union which would be well very problematic to say the least.
>Guantanamo Bay, for example, is a violation of numerous Geneva Conventions: The Geneva Conventions apply to the signatories, or to a signatory country when fighting with another force that has agreed to abide by the Conventions. Those in Guantanamo are neither.
However, I don't think you want to go by the Convention. The main complaint is the fact that the detainees are there without trial, and could be there forever. If we classify them as prisoners of war under the Convention, then we can keep them until the end of the conflict, which will probably be forever. No trial, no nothing. And we can put 'em to work in the fields or the coal mines.
The provisions protecting civilians apply as long as you are a signatory regardless of whether the opponent is or has agreed to follow the conventions. Everyone not bearing the uniform of a nation's armed forces is a civilian until it apparent they are not(as in they open fire on you without provocation), civilians have the right to bear arms in times of conflict for personal protection so you cannot just remove the civilian status of someone just because they were found armed and in the wrong place.
ONLY members of a nation's armed forces(which they VERY clearly are not) can become prisoners of war, you cannot just arbitrarily declare so no you cannot just arbitrarily declare someone as a POW and keep them indefinitely, besides classifying them as Prisoners of War would require and actual declaration of war by the US Congress because there cannot be prisoners of war without there being a war.
At the very least Guantanamo Bay violates the Geneva Convention for all prisoners that were not captured during a firefight or directly after, civilians in a war zone has the right to bear arms for personal protection, and as such detaining people for just being in the wrong place and armed is clearly a violation of the protection they are afforded as civilians in a war zone. It gets more muddy if they were taken during or directly after a firefight as the Geneva Conventions assumes that all combatants are members of a nations armed forces, and as such they are assumed to be uniformed and clearly distinct from civilian apparel, there is no provisions covering combatants that are not part of the armed forces of a nation(because the problem didn't exist when the conventions were written)
Despite what it's opponents suggest, the treaties as written only explicitly protect uniform soldiers, and the definition of a "competent tribunal" is not made within the treaty.
No that is simply not true, there are very clear and explicit protections afforded to civilians and everyone who isn't a uniformed member of a nation's armed forces is classified as a civilian, they have the right to bear arms and protect themselves if fired upon, so for example the drone strikes done by the US military are a war crime, those targeted are civilians until it is obvious they're not, aka the second they open fire on your forces.
Have you actually read the Geneva Convention (which one)? You should at least read the first page or two of one of them before you comment. In order to be afforded the protections of the Geneva convention, several things need to happen.
The combatant needs to be a member of the armed forces of a sovereign state that signed the treaty.
No because other parts specifically makes it a war crime to be a combatant without being a member of the armed forces of a sovereign nation.
They need to be in uniform or clearly marked as being in the military.
No because the Geneva Convention specifically makes it a war crime to attempt to not use a uniform or to cover it up.
They need to be carrying their arms openly.
Yes, anyone that is a signatory does but even non-combatants has the right to bear arms for their own protections
They need to be under clear military command and control.
No, if they are part of the military then that command and control is assumed regardless of whether it exists or not.
A state of war needs to exist between the two sovereign states.
No, there are provisions dealing with undeclared wars, the only thing that is required is that there be a military conflict which there clearly is since the US military is invading/occupying parts of another nation.
The terrorists in Gitmo meet none of these conditions.
At the very least they meets the condition of being a civilian in a conflict because the Geneva Convention assumes that there are no combatants that are not part of a military force, therefore they are technically civilians and afforded all the protections civilians are afforded under the Geneva Convention.
If you want to be afforded the protections of a Treaty, you have to follow the rules and meet the conditions of the treaty. Here is a news flash for you: Terrorists don't follow the rules.
No you don't, as long as one nation in the conflict is a signatory of the treaty the manner in which they may behave is regulated by the Geneva Convention regardless of whether the enemy is a signatory or not, some provisions are excluded when the opponent is not a signatory and/or does not follow the Convention but most provisions are still intact and apply with full force to the signatory, especially the parts protecting civilians and governing warfare in areas with a high civilian population, such as cities.
Only the executive government (generally referred to in the US as "the president", in Europe generally "the king") is bound by contracts and treaties. The government as a whole (including the legislative and the judiciary) can do anything it wants, as long as certain procedures are observed.
Aside from some lilliputian states the monarch is definitely not a part of the executive, yes many European nations has monarchs as head of state(out of tradition) but they have been deprived of all political power. The only power they typically wield is through whatever influence they have over public opinion(since they are typically quite popular with the public but most of these nations have laws prohibiting the monarch from attempting to influence politics either directly or indirectly). In nations with monarchs the executive is typically the prime minister(which is democratically elected, comparable to the speaker of the house of representatives in the US), most certainly not the monarch(which is hereditary).
That does not make it any less of a war-crime, if the US armed forces ever acted in such a way I think that the US should be embargoed with twice as severe embargoes as the EU and US is currently leveraging against Iran.
The Geneva Convention did not exist in 1864, it does now and it explicitly forbids this sort of behavior, anyone who violates it is a war-criminal regardless of the reason you violate it.
Slashdot Mirror
No Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly in the OS market(where they have considerably more than 1%, it's a lot closer to 91% than to 1%). By preventing booting another OS or dualbooting they are doing exactly the same thing as they were doing(and probably still doing) with PC's. They're trying to sell their tablet by using the fact that it has windows as a selling point and actively preventing others from showing that the tablet (maybe) works better with Android, Linux, OS X or whatever. Hence they are abusing their dominant market share in the OS market to gain market shares elsewhere which is illegal, at least in the EU.
Because Microsoft has a dominant market share by EU standards and therefore this sort of behavior is illegal, Microsoft has been up in the courts over monopoly abuse before so that they have a "dominant market share" has been clearly established, Apple is more of a grey area, whether they have a "dominant market share" has not yet been determined yet by the EU courts so they are free to act as they choose until they are found to be abusing their "dominant market share".
Hence Microsoft is evil and breaking laws, and Apple is not (yet).
Actually people should complain, Microsoft is abusing it's OS monopoly in a way that is at least illegal here in the EU and I hope it is illegal by US antitrust standards too. People need to complain, specifically they need to complain to their EU Commissioner.
Not loading their publisher key is a blatant attempt to try to prevent people from running other OSes on that piece of hardware which is an abuse of their "dominant market share" and they need to be punished for it, preferably harshly
If you have a setup like this working in your environment, getting a "custom" deal with the blacklist admins usually isn't that hard, but you have to take the initiative and prove to them that you do anything reasonably within your power to take care of spammers and zombies, before they will cut you some slack.
Even easier, if you have access to fancier lawyers(which any medium sized ISP and above will have) you tell them to stop or you'll sue them so hard their great great great grandchildren will be selling their kidneys to pay for the debts.
That is outgoing though, which means you have a contract with Comcast permitting them to do that(and pretty much whatever else they want), with the blacklist provider the blocked party has no contract with the list provider and therefore the list provider is out on thin ice when they ban non confirmed spamming addresses and also demand money to be unblocked in a timely manner.
If they didn't demand money for the service they have some protection in that they are not benefiting from overzealous banning but if you start demanding money you are benefiting from erroneously punishing innocents or being overly broad in your bans, $300 per IP piles up pretty quickly.
IANAL
Since you(the ISP) most likely do not have any sort of contract with the blacklist provider then yes you probably have a very good case for blackmail/defamation if the blacklist blocks an entire AS and can't prove that every single IP has been sending spam.
If you take it upon yourself to operate a blacklist and especially if you demand money for a speedy removal then yes it definitely is "your fucking problem" to make sure that the list is accurate and affects as few innocent people as possible. At least in the eyes of pretty much any court, plus the ISP's probably has access to a more expensive/better lawyer to sway the court to see things their way.
The courts will tell you to either provide evidence that every single IP has been blacklisted based on reasonable suspicion or you're liable for damages and the court will tell you to stop and never do it again. Remember that courts are generally the least tech savvy people you can imagine and that this will probably go to a civil court so the accuser doesn't have to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt.
IANAL
I disagree, I find the death sentence just as despicable and I don't think that any first offense deserves life imprisonment without the possibility of parole(that is not to say I think they should be let off easy though but everyone deserves a second chance and most violent crime are crimes of passion, there is a significant chance that the offender wont fall back into serious crime unless society actively goes out of it's way to make sure that that's the only way to have a decent life after getting out) except for for mass murders and maybe for particularly heinous murders. But even if the felony is for a pretty bad crime I don't think that the offender should be further punished once they have served their jail sentence and paid their fines/damages.
Yes you do, the entire point of the EU legal threat was cross platform compatibility, i.e. you should be able to take any charger from any maker and be able to plug it into any phone. You still cannot take the wall charger delivered wikth say a Galaxy SIII and charge an iPhone 5 with it, which was the aim of the threat of legislation.
Actually it was never made into a law, EU merely threatened with legislation on the subject and most major phone makers caved but enlighten me, how exactly is Apple in compliance?
They're still using a different port from everybody else and cross platform compatibility was what the law scare was about, so no they would not have been in compliance.
Of course but manufacturers usually try to shift costs for new "features" onto customers, I'm sure Apple will raise the price of the EU specific iPhone and tell ppl to blame the EU, sadly it will probably work, there are far too many fanboys who never question anything Apple ever says.
If they insist then that would be one way to do it yes but that would probably increase production costs and the iPhone is already expensive enough as it is and an increased price point is probably not the best way to do things, they could also just add a MicroUSB port for charging and keep the lightning port for everything else.
Some time ago EU threatened mobile/smartphone makers to create a unified port standard for charging devices or the EU would do that(in the name of green standards) and enforce it, I think it's about time that the EU told Apple to get on the MicroUSB train or get the fuck out of EU. Considering the size of EU as a market their reply would be predictable.
I think the EU needs to make reality of it's threat to enforce a unified standard port for charging devices and tell apple to either start using MicroUSB or get the fuck out of our market, Apple's response to that would be predictable considering that the entire EU is a pretty sizable market.
Well they're not public records here in Sweden and I think that is preferable, once you have served your punishment society shouldn't penalize you furter, you should be able to put your life back together. If you forever isolate anyone who's ever been convicted that just forces em to sink deeper and deeper into criminality because no one will give them a decent job.
Court proceedings are public records here as well(but your criminal record is not) but it's somewhat of a hassle to get them, you have to go to the specific court that handed down the sentence and you have to request the specific case.
Yes I know about the sex offender registry and I find it despicable, even convicted criminals has a right to privacy and to not be harassed, again making a phariah out of someone only increases their chance of relapsing into serious criminality
Well over here you can't get a firearms license either if you have a conviction which is fine but also firearms is extremely limited, you can pretty much only get one if you're a licensed hunter or a member of a pistol/rifle club.
And I think it's wrong to deprive someone of their right to vote forever just because you made an error of judgement.
Sure but I also think that the government should be forbidden from sharing information about an individuals criminal record after they have served their sentence unless they apply for a job in a school/kindergarten etc or a requiring high security such as working at a nuclear power plant etc. Anyone who gets their hand on such information and uses it to discriminate an individual should face severe fines, jailtime and preferably damages to the discriminated party for many hundreds of thousands or even more depending on the yearly income of the discriminating party.
Any government official who knowingly or through incompetence/negligence shares such information or causes such information to be otherwise known to the public should face a jail sentence for a minimum of 4 years.
At lest within EU "monopoly" legislation doesn't require an actual monopoly, only a "dominant market share" so far the smallest market share that was found by court to be "sominant" was around 37%
The question is would it also be protected free speech to build a large scale LRAD just outside of their property and have it blast messages 24/7 that their God is a lie, that Satan would like to procure their services and anything else you can possibly think of that might enrage them? Dial it up so that the sound levels inside the compound is just short of what is directly harmful.
How do you expose their lies when all their statements are mostly that a fantasy spiritual being they call God hates someone for their sexual orientation.
I don't think quoting lines from their supposed holy book would have very much impact on them, they already discarded that book when they started their hate campaign.
No it is quite different. The burning of any flag is a statement, and if taken to an extreme interpretation it is an aggression against the state whose flag you are burning.
It is NOT a personal attack on specific individuals, what the WBC is doing is attacking specific persons in a vulnerable time and/or place in a way which is truly disgusting.
Personally I think a solution would be that eventually someone they picket will snap and bring a baseball bat(in the case of the liberal gun-law states it would probably be a firearm of some sort) to their picket, yes they have a right to freedom of speech but certain speech will have consequences. The legal system would hopefully see their emotional distress as mitigating circumstances or someone could perhaps make sure that the jury of their peers knows that they have the right to judge the law(something most US judges seems to be doing their best to prevent the jury from knowing)
I wish that the International Warcrimes Tribunal would put that law to the test because I very much doubt that the US would actually invade the Netherlands, as that would be a declaration of war with the European Union which would be well very problematic to say the least.
>Guantanamo Bay, for example, is a violation of numerous Geneva Conventions: The Geneva Conventions apply to the signatories, or to a signatory country when fighting with another force that has agreed to abide by the Conventions. Those in Guantanamo are neither.
However, I don't think you want to go by the Convention. The main complaint is the fact that the detainees are there without trial, and could be there forever. If we classify them as prisoners of war under the Convention, then we can keep them until the end of the conflict, which will probably be forever. No trial, no nothing. And we can put 'em to work in the fields or the coal mines.
The provisions protecting civilians apply as long as you are a signatory regardless of whether the opponent is or has agreed to follow the conventions. Everyone not bearing the uniform of a nation's armed forces is a civilian until it apparent they are not(as in they open fire on you without provocation), civilians have the right to bear arms in times of conflict for personal protection so you cannot just remove the civilian status of someone just because they were found armed and in the wrong place.
ONLY members of a nation's armed forces(which they VERY clearly are not) can become prisoners of war, you cannot just arbitrarily declare so no you cannot just arbitrarily declare someone as a POW and keep them indefinitely, besides classifying them as Prisoners of War would require and actual declaration of war by the US Congress because there cannot be prisoners of war without there being a war.
Despite what it's opponents suggest, the treaties as written only explicitly protect uniform soldiers, and the definition of a "competent tribunal" is not made within the treaty.
No that is simply not true, there are very clear and explicit protections afforded to civilians and everyone who isn't a uniformed member of a nation's armed forces is classified as a civilian, they have the right to bear arms and protect themselves if fired upon, so for example the drone strikes done by the US military are a war crime, those targeted are civilians until it is obvious they're not, aka the second they open fire on your forces.
Have you actually read the Geneva Convention (which one)? You should at least read the first page or two of one of them before you comment. In order to be afforded the protections of the Geneva convention, several things need to happen.
The combatant needs to be a member of the armed forces of a sovereign state that signed the treaty.
No because other parts specifically makes it a war crime to be a combatant without being a member of the armed forces of a sovereign nation.
They need to be in uniform or clearly marked as being in the military.
No because the Geneva Convention specifically makes it a war crime to attempt to not use a uniform or to cover it up.
They need to be carrying their arms openly.
Yes, anyone that is a signatory does but even non-combatants has the right to bear arms for their own protections
They need to be under clear military command and control.
No, if they are part of the military then that command and control is assumed regardless of whether it exists or not.
A state of war needs to exist between the two sovereign states.
No, there are provisions dealing with undeclared wars, the only thing that is required is that there be a military conflict which there clearly is since the US military is invading/occupying parts of another nation.
The terrorists in Gitmo meet none of these conditions.
At the very least they meets the condition of being a civilian in a conflict because the Geneva Convention assumes that there are no combatants that are not part of a military force, therefore they are technically civilians and afforded all the protections civilians are afforded under the Geneva Convention.
If you want to be afforded the protections of a Treaty, you have to follow the rules and meet the conditions of the treaty. Here is a news flash for you: Terrorists don't follow the rules.
No you don't, as long as one nation in the conflict is a signatory of the treaty the manner in which they may behave is regulated by the Geneva Convention regardless of whether the enemy is a signatory or not, some provisions are excluded when the opponent is not a signatory and/or does not follow the Convention but most provisions are still intact and apply with full force to the signatory, especially the parts protecting civilians and governing warfare in areas with a high civilian population, such as cities.
Only the executive government (generally referred to in the US as "the president", in Europe generally "the king") is bound by contracts and treaties. The government as a whole (including the legislative and the judiciary) can do anything it wants, as long as certain procedures are observed.
Aside from some lilliputian states the monarch is definitely not a part of the executive, yes many European nations has monarchs as head of state(out of tradition) but they have been deprived of all political power. The only power they typically wield is through whatever influence they have over public opinion(since they are typically quite popular with the public but most of these nations have laws prohibiting the monarch from attempting to influence politics either directly or indirectly).
In nations with monarchs the executive is typically the prime minister(which is democratically elected, comparable to the speaker of the house of representatives in the US), most certainly not the monarch(which is hereditary).
That does not make it any less of a war-crime, if the US armed forces ever acted in such a way I think that the US should be embargoed with twice as severe embargoes as the EU and US is currently leveraging against Iran.
The Geneva Convention did not exist in 1864, it does now and it explicitly forbids this sort of behavior, anyone who violates it is a war-criminal regardless of the reason you violate it.