The point people are making is if she is using underhand tactics to try and avoid the authorities why should we care if the authorities used underhand tactics to counter that?
Tying law enforcement down with the kind of strictness you suggest means they're fighting some of the most important criminals with both hands tied behind their back.
Here in the UK I've seen many cases of people having their home broken into, things stolen and the police knowing exactly who did it but not being able to arrest them because the goods are in their home and they have no evidence to get a warrant to go in. Frankly that kind of thing absolutely stinks, if the police know exactly who it is they should be able to go after them regardless else we end up with this situation where the criminal is better protected than the victim was.
He's pleaded not guilty and only turned himself in when he found they'd decided he was the culprit.
There is nothing to say he even did it, it could just as well be a case of the Republicans pushing for some Democrat's kid to be targetted to cover up a Republican screwup with anti-Democrat propaganda for all we know.
A good programmer knows the fundamentals of programming, they know all the common data structures, they know if they need to learn a new language they often don't need a full text but just need to know what the syntax rules are, whether arrays are 0 indexed etc. for example.
Start with the basics, explain the processes involved in them using a PC. Explain that when an executable file on hard drive is run how it's copied into memory, how references to external libraries are handled, the stack. Explain how code compiles down to bytecode to be run on an interpreter or down to native machine code and so on.
Once they know the fundamentals it'll be easy for them to pick up the rest in a well understood manner rather than doing how so many do and being dumped straight into programming without understanding how memory is actually being allocated etc. This is after all a large part of Comp. Sci. - not simply programming but understanding Computing.
Once they've got the basics you can go either way- either lower level and explain how various math topics relate to computing (set theory to databases, number theory to cryptography for example) or you can take things higher level and then teach them programming in a modern language.
It's another common misunderstanding that Putin is in power because he supressed opposition.
Regardless of opposition he's still the favourite of the majority of Russian people. His supression of opposition certainly silences the opposing viewpoint but the opposing viewpoint is not strong enough to challenge Putin regardless of that supression. It's still very wrong that he does this of course, but the point is that he's still the choice of the majority of Russian people.
You're still using words like "corrupt" when referring to these other nations and this still simply makes no sense in the context of the US being the current controller of the root DNS servers because it in itself is equally corrupt - at least Putin has majority support, something that can't be said for Bush when he was elected and the vote was rigged and something that certainly can't be said now. What about the news articles this year regarding US judges seizing domain names of gambling sites? What about that of them having the wikileaks domain name taken away? It's not like the US is even limiting control to select organisations, it's allowing individual judges to censor the internet as they see fit and in the case of the gambling sites - to businesses that don't even have anything to do with the US anymore having been made illegal there whilst remaining legal in the rest of the world.
You talk about the US not throwing you in jail if you disagree with the ruling power which is great. But how do you think the Afghans feel who disagree with democracy, who liked the Taliban's regime, how do you think these people feel if they're thrown in Guantanamo for agreeing with the Taliban's way of doing things over the US' way? The same goes for Iraq.
Regarding nervousness of Canadian's vs. Ukranians, keep two points in mind. 1) Canada is also rather close to Russia also and is in dispute with it and the US over arctic territory, 2) Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba are as equally nervous of the US as the Ukraine is of Russia, bearing in mind there are still a lot of Ukranians who would rather be part of the USSR still. You also suggest asking people whether they'd rather live in the US or Russia, well, which people exactly? If we're talking about large amounts of the population of the middle east and many in Asia or South America then I think they'd in fact tell you they'd rather live in Russia.
You have to realise that just because as an American citizen you're sat happy that your government isn't necessarily playing nicely with everyone else, isn't less corrupt than anyone else and so on. Similarly you have to realise that just because you don't like the Russian, the Iranian or the Chinese ways many of the people living there do. More importantly, what you probably don't realise is that had you been brought up under these regimes there'd be a good chance you'd be defending them as strongly right now as you're defending the US' ways.
But still you do understand that at least in the case of Iran and Russia the regimes were voted in by the people their? They're happy with that leadership, I'd say it's almost certain that more people in the world dislike the US leadership than dislike the Russian leadership.
The problem is you're imposing your view on the rest of the world and suggesting it's the only point of view. I too share your viewpoint but the point is there's a massive part of the world that doesn't and you can't simply say their opinion doesn't count just because it's different to yours.
Yet someone else who doesn't seem to understand what the UN actually is. I can only imagine you're making the mistake of confusing the UN security council with the UN as a whole.
The UN as an organisation consists of all but two countries in the world so yes, of course they're comprised of many nations that censor speech. They also consist of many nations that don't. The whole point in the UN is that it's an organisation that exists to oversee international systems, politics and disputes in such a way that all parties interests are covered.
You seem to be suggesting that your point of view is somehow more important of that of other nations.
Perhaps more strangely though is your suggestion that the UN shouldn't be tasked with looking after the root servers due to ineptitude in Sierra Leone and impotence in Rwanda. Can I just stop you there for a moment and point out the track record of the last 7 years of the nation that currently controls these servers?
I would much rather see an international system maintained by an international body than a nation that has shown a horrific decline in ethical and moral standards and has displayed utter arrogance towards the rest of the world in recent times. In fact, whilst you mention ineptitude in Sierra Leone by the international community one might specifically question what right anyone in the US has to say this when the US couldn't even display competence in it's own backyard during the whole hurricane Katrina disaster and now with the whole financial mess caused primarily by the US.
The UN is an entity that consists of just about every single country in the world. Of course that means what your perceive as bad countries are going to be involved but you do realise that they have an equal right to see the US as a bad country?
By having every single country have a say you end up with a view that is balanced upon world opinion, not just US opinion as it is now. US opinion most certainly does not represent the rest of the world and as such cannot be used as the single decision maker for international systems, be they technological, political or even financial. Even most of Europe, the US' closest allies disagree with the US on so very many things.
The US is no longer seen internationally as a country whose ways should be followed and who should be entrusted with important tasks and be allowed to make important decisions alone. For some American citizens to believe that this is the case and that the US should have the right to control such important systems as the internet by itself in this day and age only goes to show exactly why the US shouldn't be in control - sheer ignorance of and arrogance towards the rest of the world.
You do realise the only 2 countries not in the UN are Vatican City and Taiwan?
Are you suggesting that every other country in the world supports censorship of political speech?
Wouldn't it be a better idea to actually get a clue about an organisation for slagging it off? The UN has wide and varied roles, some it's great at, others not so. How can you be so sure the internet would be in the not so category?
More to the point why don't other aircraft interfere with each other either on the ground or in the air when they often fly/taxi fairly close to each other?
If a wireless mouse just happens to be on the same frequency as a plane what hope is there when other planes are almost certainly bound to be on the same frequency as each other for internal electronic?
The article sounds like FUD, I simply cannot believe modern aircraft are that prone to interference else I believe we'd have seen far far more incidents than this.
Primarily because she simply doesn't understand the majority of the issues the rest of them are talking about. If someone were to be VP and actually care about the country one might imagine the first thing they'd do is spend every waking minute, researching, learning and understanding the issues.
Instead of actually working out the problems and coming up with good proposals, or at least learning McCain's proposals she is basing her part of the campaign on misdirection, playing on ignorance and outright attacking the opposition with suggestions that Obama for example is a terrorist.
Her track record only goes to further suspicion in her real priorities and the ongoing court case surrounding her abuse of power raises yet more suspicion. Her previous quote about not knowing what a VP even does again, raises questions.
The other 3, whilst having been engaged in some hostilities towards each other have based their components of the campaigns around policy far more than Palin has.
Instead of actively working to prove her critics wrong about for example her lack of foreign policy experience or at least trying to demonstrate it's not something that would hold her back by getting out there and meeting some foreign leaders she instead seems to simply dodging the issues.
The longer she avoids actually learning about the job the more obvious it seems it's simply not the job she cares about but the power it brings. Obama was in a similar situation to her but made the effort to get out there and resolve the issues raised about his experience. If he too had simply not bothered and had instead launched rather unprovoked attacks at McCain I'd too question what his real interests were.
What strikes me about Obama, Biden and McCain is that whilst they may have some level of corruption I think to be fair on them all they do genuinely believe they can better the country if they become president.
Palin is the only one out the 4 who strikes me as only seeming to care about increasing her power rather than improving the country.
Tell that to Gary McKinnon who logged into US DoD and NASA computers because they had no blank passwords and is being extradited from the UK to the US with the possibility of spending the rest of his life in a US jail.
Whilst I agree there's something horribly wrong with such a simple crime with being punished so harshly it seems it's treated as if you walked round someones house looking through their stuff because they left the door open.
I do think realistically the punishment should be capped drastically lower if the victim did essentially leave the door open though as in the case of electronic break ins it's more down to curiosity and less to do with malice in those circumstances. It shouldn't carry a jail term, just community service and a fine of a maximum of a couple of hundred £ or something.
Same reason people buy designer jeans even though they're made in the same sweat shop to the same quality and almost identical design as your average £10 budget pair I'd guess.
But unfortunately it has stupid region protection games. I tried to buy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 off it for the PC the other day but it said it's not available in Europe. The game also wasn't available on Steam.
If they think I'm going to drive all the way in to town to buy a physical copy in Europe due to some artificial restriction they've created based on my IP they have another thing coming.
Oh and then they wonder why people resort to piracy.
Steam doesn't seem to impose these stupid restrictions but it also unfortunately didn't have GRAW2 for sale on it else I'd have just purchased from there.
The problem with rating these game download sites is just that, whilst D2D may seem awesome in the US it's pretty crap in Europe etc. due to the fact you're not actually allowed to buy half the games on it if you live here.
People could've said the same about WoW but WoW still managed to conjure up about an extra 7million players that weren't in the MMO market before it's arrival.
More and more people are coming online than ever before and the market is only increasing for MMOs.
Whilst I disagree with gold farming for other reasons for example the damage it does to game economies I have to also disagree with your point.
Who is more lazy, the guy who doesn't have a job and can play 16hrs a day to get ahead or the guy who can only play 2hrs a week due to working hard irl and buys gold with rl money to keep up?
I suppose it depends what you mean by lazy, certainly many of the people I've met who get ahead in games, get ahead because they don't work hard irl. Many are even living off nothing but benefits or simply just living off their parents.
I can see why people buy gold, the real problem is is that gold buyers aren't limited to those who do it because they have more money than free time, it's all too often those who also don't work irl doing it to get even further ahead which _really_ breaks the game.
...whilst policies and procedures often solve a lot of things in a cleaner, more common sense manner there are unfortunately far too many people lacking common sense.
Throwing hardware at it guarantees it'll be done, expecting people to follow policies and prcoedures will likely leave you with a 50% success rate in ensuring the correct data is kept/binned and that's if you're lucky.
The world as a whole would be so much more efficient if we could get people to follow policies and procedures or at least the common sense, good practice ones.
I think the key point is probably more that it can track people into buildings and then track them around the buildings.
Seeing as we already know predators can launch hellfires at targets using their mobile phone signals to pinpoint them I'd imagine the scenario is effectively that you could have a predator or group of predators taking it in turns effectively record someone's exact movements continuously whereever they go and by monitoring things such as cell phone signals, and perhaps with some rudimentary pattern recognition I'd imagine these kind of systems can effectively put together a log of someone's life noting where they go and when, when they use the phone and so forth.
I don't know how far things have advanced with pattern recognition but I've seen a lot of systems demonstrate tracking of people's movements so I wonder if perhaps these systems can even tell when someone sits down to eat, when they sit down at a computer and so forth also.
Essentially what they're getting at I think is that they can watch you wherever you are, know exactly what you do and when and you wont even know it. I wouldn't think it would be too far fetched that they may then be able to watch who you associate with and start tracking them too.
Kind scary if that's the case;)
The other possibility is perhaps that they've managed to better identify people based on their heat signatures maybe so they can tell almost any one person from another inside a building?
I realise saying good to censorship is often seen as taboo on Slashdot, but I do not think this is about whether YouTube should or shouldn't censor anymore, that decision was made long ago so I don't think this is a question of whether to censor or not to censor anymore.
I say good because as the decision to censor YouTube has long been set in stone it's also long been clear that there is a horrific bias in the censorship there. Pro-scientology propaganda is allowed but anti-scientology propaganda regularly gets removed. Pro-islamic extremism propaganda has long been allowed yet any anti-Islamic propaganda has often been removed.
I must make this clear, I absolutely don't advocate anti-Islamic propaganda because I think it only serves to increase hatred between factions and incite the whole situation but what I did think utterly stank is that anti-Western propaganda was allowed to flourish whilst the alternate and opposing extreme, anti-Islamic propaganda was removed as offence. I find it worrying that the burning of a Koran has up until now been classified by YouTube as more offensive than the sniping in the head of a US soldier.
This is at least a good first step towards sanity, if YouTube can balance it's pro-Scientology slant by reinstating anti-Scientology videos or outright removing pro and anti-Scientology videos then the service will be a lot more respectable.
It's still not ideal of course because as this was pushed through by a screaming politician it's still all about who shouts the loudest. At least both sides are shouting loud enough for YouTube to impose an equal policy on the matter now though on this issue at least.
Everyone knows steel doesn't lose strength when heated up, it's magic and goes from being a full strength solid to instantly being melted into a liquid at 1500C!
Haven't the 9/11 conspiracy theorists taught these scientists anything???
You need to check that, it's absolutely not the case- you can't be guilty of a crime someone else comitted. For some crimes you can be guilty of association if you knowingly aided the crime, but it's upto them to prove you knowingly aided the crime, something which is impossible unless they monitor your PC itself using a trojan or physically spy on you.
The only relevant point is that your ISP contract says you're responsible so the absolute worst case is that the ISP could terminate your contract with them and you could go elsewhere.
The only reason people have lost cases in these kind of scenarios is that they have either not turned up to court, or they've not had a technical enough background to argue this very point or had the common sense to deny it was them.
It's probably worth also adding that humans are gifted with an intelligence that dinosaurs were not.
We were able to keep those infected isolated to an extent and take other such measures to lessen the blow. If we'd all wandered and intermingled mindlessly it would probably have been even worse again.
Without downloading anything all that proves is that a particular IP is advertising a particular set of files with a particular checksum. This has two major flaws:
1) Just because the computer in question says it has the file, doesn't mean it has all of it. You'd need to download 100% (or at least enough to prove they have at least some of your IP) from this single machine to prove they really have what they say they have. I could setup a honey pot to make these people believe I'm sharing such a file but it doesn't mean I am, as such I haven't comitted any wrongdoing whatsoever but by your reasoning I should be allowed to have my personal details handed over, in breach of the data protection act and be forced into court. I would advocate people start setting up such honey pots with this specific software if I didn't think they'd somehow screw the system and still get you in trouble despite not doing the slightest thing wrong.
2) This still doesn't prove exactly who is responsible. All it proves is an IP address claimed it was sharing the content in question. Just as you can't be held responsible for someone stealing your car and running someone over, you can't be held responsible (yet) for someone stealing your wifi and downloading copyrighted material on your connection. People would need to spy on everything their kids/grandkids/spouses/friends/flatmates/lodgers/whoever do to ensure they weren't downloading copyrighted material if you were responsible for the actions of your connection. This is clearly unreasonable.
Perhaps what makes it even worse is that you could conjur up fake logs or a fake screenshot of an IP address and have it admissable as proof of guilt should this sort of thing be allowed to continue. Should I manage to get your IP address all I'd need to do is doctor a bitmap or edit a few text files with it, say to the courts it's proof of wrongdoing by you, hope you don't turn up to court (if it's sent to the wrong address or similar as has been the case with Davenport Lyons in some cases here) and then have you owe me £16,000.
The reason people are arguing this is because these companies in the US, the UK and so forth aren't gathering evidence that actually proves a specific person is actually guilty of anything so it's not over, and to give it up would be a severe loss for personal privacy and due process in the legal system.
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The point people are making is if she is using underhand tactics to try and avoid the authorities why should we care if the authorities used underhand tactics to counter that?
Tying law enforcement down with the kind of strictness you suggest means they're fighting some of the most important criminals with both hands tied behind their back.
Here in the UK I've seen many cases of people having their home broken into, things stolen and the police knowing exactly who did it but not being able to arrest them because the goods are in their home and they have no evidence to get a warrant to go in. Frankly that kind of thing absolutely stinks, if the police know exactly who it is they should be able to go after them regardless else we end up with this situation where the criminal is better protected than the victim was.
Assuming he actually is the hacker.
He's pleaded not guilty and only turned himself in when he found they'd decided he was the culprit.
There is nothing to say he even did it, it could just as well be a case of the Republicans pushing for some Democrat's kid to be targetted to cover up a Republican screwup with anti-Democrat propaganda for all we know.
A good programmer knows the fundamentals of programming, they know all the common data structures, they know if they need to learn a new language they often don't need a full text but just need to know what the syntax rules are, whether arrays are 0 indexed etc. for example.
Start with the basics, explain the processes involved in them using a PC. Explain that when an executable file on hard drive is run how it's copied into memory, how references to external libraries are handled, the stack. Explain how code compiles down to bytecode to be run on an interpreter or down to native machine code and so on.
Once they know the fundamentals it'll be easy for them to pick up the rest in a well understood manner rather than doing how so many do and being dumped straight into programming without understanding how memory is actually being allocated etc. This is after all a large part of Comp. Sci. - not simply programming but understanding Computing.
Once they've got the basics you can go either way- either lower level and explain how various math topics relate to computing (set theory to databases, number theory to cryptography for example) or you can take things higher level and then teach them programming in a modern language.
It's another common misunderstanding that Putin is in power because he supressed opposition.
Regardless of opposition he's still the favourite of the majority of Russian people. His supression of opposition certainly silences the opposing viewpoint but the opposing viewpoint is not strong enough to challenge Putin regardless of that supression. It's still very wrong that he does this of course, but the point is that he's still the choice of the majority of Russian people.
You're still using words like "corrupt" when referring to these other nations and this still simply makes no sense in the context of the US being the current controller of the root DNS servers because it in itself is equally corrupt - at least Putin has majority support, something that can't be said for Bush when he was elected and the vote was rigged and something that certainly can't be said now. What about the news articles this year regarding US judges seizing domain names of gambling sites? What about that of them having the wikileaks domain name taken away? It's not like the US is even limiting control to select organisations, it's allowing individual judges to censor the internet as they see fit and in the case of the gambling sites - to businesses that don't even have anything to do with the US anymore having been made illegal there whilst remaining legal in the rest of the world.
You talk about the US not throwing you in jail if you disagree with the ruling power which is great. But how do you think the Afghans feel who disagree with democracy, who liked the Taliban's regime, how do you think these people feel if they're thrown in Guantanamo for agreeing with the Taliban's way of doing things over the US' way? The same goes for Iraq.
Regarding nervousness of Canadian's vs. Ukranians, keep two points in mind. 1) Canada is also rather close to Russia also and is in dispute with it and the US over arctic territory, 2) Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba are as equally nervous of the US as the Ukraine is of Russia, bearing in mind there are still a lot of Ukranians who would rather be part of the USSR still. You also suggest asking people whether they'd rather live in the US or Russia, well, which people exactly? If we're talking about large amounts of the population of the middle east and many in Asia or South America then I think they'd in fact tell you they'd rather live in Russia.
You have to realise that just because as an American citizen you're sat happy that your government isn't necessarily playing nicely with everyone else, isn't less corrupt than anyone else and so on. Similarly you have to realise that just because you don't like the Russian, the Iranian or the Chinese ways many of the people living there do. More importantly, what you probably don't realise is that had you been brought up under these regimes there'd be a good chance you'd be defending them as strongly right now as you're defending the US' ways.
But still you do understand that at least in the case of Iran and Russia the regimes were voted in by the people their? They're happy with that leadership, I'd say it's almost certain that more people in the world dislike the US leadership than dislike the Russian leadership.
The problem is you're imposing your view on the rest of the world and suggesting it's the only point of view. I too share your viewpoint but the point is there's a massive part of the world that doesn't and you can't simply say their opinion doesn't count just because it's different to yours.
Yet someone else who doesn't seem to understand what the UN actually is. I can only imagine you're making the mistake of confusing the UN security council with the UN as a whole.
The UN as an organisation consists of all but two countries in the world so yes, of course they're comprised of many nations that censor speech. They also consist of many nations that don't. The whole point in the UN is that it's an organisation that exists to oversee international systems, politics and disputes in such a way that all parties interests are covered.
You seem to be suggesting that your point of view is somehow more important of that of other nations.
Perhaps more strangely though is your suggestion that the UN shouldn't be tasked with looking after the root servers due to ineptitude in Sierra Leone and impotence in Rwanda. Can I just stop you there for a moment and point out the track record of the last 7 years of the nation that currently controls these servers?
I would much rather see an international system maintained by an international body than a nation that has shown a horrific decline in ethical and moral standards and has displayed utter arrogance towards the rest of the world in recent times. In fact, whilst you mention ineptitude in Sierra Leone by the international community one might specifically question what right anyone in the US has to say this when the US couldn't even display competence in it's own backyard during the whole hurricane Katrina disaster and now with the whole financial mess caused primarily by the US.
You're still missing the point.
The UN is an entity that consists of just about every single country in the world. Of course that means what your perceive as bad countries are going to be involved but you do realise that they have an equal right to see the US as a bad country?
By having every single country have a say you end up with a view that is balanced upon world opinion, not just US opinion as it is now. US opinion most certainly does not represent the rest of the world and as such cannot be used as the single decision maker for international systems, be they technological, political or even financial. Even most of Europe, the US' closest allies disagree with the US on so very many things.
The US is no longer seen internationally as a country whose ways should be followed and who should be entrusted with important tasks and be allowed to make important decisions alone. For some American citizens to believe that this is the case and that the US should have the right to control such important systems as the internet by itself in this day and age only goes to show exactly why the US shouldn't be in control - sheer ignorance of and arrogance towards the rest of the world.
You do realise the only 2 countries not in the UN are Vatican City and Taiwan?
Are you suggesting that every other country in the world supports censorship of political speech?
Wouldn't it be a better idea to actually get a clue about an organisation for slagging it off? The UN has wide and varied roles, some it's great at, others not so. How can you be so sure the internet would be in the not so category?
More to the point why don't other aircraft interfere with each other either on the ground or in the air when they often fly/taxi fairly close to each other?
If a wireless mouse just happens to be on the same frequency as a plane what hope is there when other planes are almost certainly bound to be on the same frequency as each other for internal electronic?
The article sounds like FUD, I simply cannot believe modern aircraft are that prone to interference else I believe we'd have seen far far more incidents than this.
Primarily because she simply doesn't understand the majority of the issues the rest of them are talking about. If someone were to be VP and actually care about the country one might imagine the first thing they'd do is spend every waking minute, researching, learning and understanding the issues.
Instead of actually working out the problems and coming up with good proposals, or at least learning McCain's proposals she is basing her part of the campaign on misdirection, playing on ignorance and outright attacking the opposition with suggestions that Obama for example is a terrorist.
Her track record only goes to further suspicion in her real priorities and the ongoing court case surrounding her abuse of power raises yet more suspicion. Her previous quote about not knowing what a VP even does again, raises questions.
The other 3, whilst having been engaged in some hostilities towards each other have based their components of the campaigns around policy far more than Palin has.
Instead of actively working to prove her critics wrong about for example her lack of foreign policy experience or at least trying to demonstrate it's not something that would hold her back by getting out there and meeting some foreign leaders she instead seems to simply dodging the issues.
The longer she avoids actually learning about the job the more obvious it seems it's simply not the job she cares about but the power it brings. Obama was in a similar situation to her but made the effort to get out there and resolve the issues raised about his experience. If he too had simply not bothered and had instead launched rather unprovoked attacks at McCain I'd too question what his real interests were.
What strikes me about Obama, Biden and McCain is that whilst they may have some level of corruption I think to be fair on them all they do genuinely believe they can better the country if they become president.
Palin is the only one out the 4 who strikes me as only seeming to care about increasing her power rather than improving the country.
Tell that to Gary McKinnon who logged into US DoD and NASA computers because they had no blank passwords and is being extradited from the UK to the US with the possibility of spending the rest of his life in a US jail.
Whilst I agree there's something horribly wrong with such a simple crime with being punished so harshly it seems it's treated as if you walked round someones house looking through their stuff because they left the door open.
I do think realistically the punishment should be capped drastically lower if the victim did essentially leave the door open though as in the case of electronic break ins it's more down to curiosity and less to do with malice in those circumstances. It shouldn't carry a jail term, just community service and a fine of a maximum of a couple of hundred £ or something.
When has the US ever listened to the WTO other than when it benefits them?
It would be more appropriately named The US Control Of World Trade Organisation.
Same reason people buy designer jeans even though they're made in the same sweat shop to the same quality and almost identical design as your average £10 budget pair I'd guess.
But unfortunately it has stupid region protection games. I tried to buy Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 off it for the PC the other day but it said it's not available in Europe. The game also wasn't available on Steam.
If they think I'm going to drive all the way in to town to buy a physical copy in Europe due to some artificial restriction they've created based on my IP they have another thing coming.
Oh and then they wonder why people resort to piracy.
Steam doesn't seem to impose these stupid restrictions but it also unfortunately didn't have GRAW2 for sale on it else I'd have just purchased from there.
The problem with rating these game download sites is just that, whilst D2D may seem awesome in the US it's pretty crap in Europe etc. due to the fact you're not actually allowed to buy half the games on it if you live here.
People could've said the same about WoW but WoW still managed to conjure up about an extra 7million players that weren't in the MMO market before it's arrival.
More and more people are coming online than ever before and the market is only increasing for MMOs.
...you never played Planetside? That worked just fine. Something like that with the Halo universe would be equally pretty damn cool.
MMOs don't just have to be about farming the same mob over and over with a wizard or whatever.
Whilst I disagree with gold farming for other reasons for example the damage it does to game economies I have to also disagree with your point.
Who is more lazy, the guy who doesn't have a job and can play 16hrs a day to get ahead or the guy who can only play 2hrs a week due to working hard irl and buys gold with rl money to keep up?
I suppose it depends what you mean by lazy, certainly many of the people I've met who get ahead in games, get ahead because they don't work hard irl. Many are even living off nothing but benefits or simply just living off their parents.
I can see why people buy gold, the real problem is is that gold buyers aren't limited to those who do it because they have more money than free time, it's all too often those who also don't work irl doing it to get even further ahead which _really_ breaks the game.
...whilst policies and procedures often solve a lot of things in a cleaner, more common sense manner there are unfortunately far too many people lacking common sense.
Throwing hardware at it guarantees it'll be done, expecting people to follow policies and prcoedures will likely leave you with a 50% success rate in ensuring the correct data is kept/binned and that's if you're lucky.
The world as a whole would be so much more efficient if we could get people to follow policies and procedures or at least the common sense, good practice ones.
I think the key point is probably more that it can track people into buildings and then track them around the buildings.
Seeing as we already know predators can launch hellfires at targets using their mobile phone signals to pinpoint them I'd imagine the scenario is effectively that you could have a predator or group of predators taking it in turns effectively record someone's exact movements continuously whereever they go and by monitoring things such as cell phone signals, and perhaps with some rudimentary pattern recognition I'd imagine these kind of systems can effectively put together a log of someone's life noting where they go and when, when they use the phone and so forth.
I don't know how far things have advanced with pattern recognition but I've seen a lot of systems demonstrate tracking of people's movements so I wonder if perhaps these systems can even tell when someone sits down to eat, when they sit down at a computer and so forth also.
Essentially what they're getting at I think is that they can watch you wherever you are, know exactly what you do and when and you wont even know it. I wouldn't think it would be too far fetched that they may then be able to watch who you associate with and start tracking them too.
Kind scary if that's the case ;)
The other possibility is perhaps that they've managed to better identify people based on their heat signatures maybe so they can tell almost any one person from another inside a building?
I realise saying good to censorship is often seen as taboo on Slashdot, but I do not think this is about whether YouTube should or shouldn't censor anymore, that decision was made long ago so I don't think this is a question of whether to censor or not to censor anymore.
I say good because as the decision to censor YouTube has long been set in stone it's also long been clear that there is a horrific bias in the censorship there. Pro-scientology propaganda is allowed but anti-scientology propaganda regularly gets removed. Pro-islamic extremism propaganda has long been allowed yet any anti-Islamic propaganda has often been removed.
I must make this clear, I absolutely don't advocate anti-Islamic propaganda because I think it only serves to increase hatred between factions and incite the whole situation but what I did think utterly stank is that anti-Western propaganda was allowed to flourish whilst the alternate and opposing extreme, anti-Islamic propaganda was removed as offence. I find it worrying that the burning of a Koran has up until now been classified by YouTube as more offensive than the sniping in the head of a US soldier.
This is at least a good first step towards sanity, if YouTube can balance it's pro-Scientology slant by reinstating anti-Scientology videos or outright removing pro and anti-Scientology videos then the service will be a lot more respectable.
It's still not ideal of course because as this was pushed through by a screaming politician it's still all about who shouts the loudest. At least both sides are shouting loud enough for YouTube to impose an equal policy on the matter now though on this issue at least.
Everyone knows steel doesn't lose strength when heated up, it's magic and goes from being a full strength solid to instantly being melted into a liquid at 1500C!
Haven't the 9/11 conspiracy theorists taught these scientists anything???
You need to check that, it's absolutely not the case- you can't be guilty of a crime someone else comitted. For some crimes you can be guilty of association if you knowingly aided the crime, but it's upto them to prove you knowingly aided the crime, something which is impossible unless they monitor your PC itself using a trojan or physically spy on you.
The only relevant point is that your ISP contract says you're responsible so the absolute worst case is that the ISP could terminate your contract with them and you could go elsewhere.
The only reason people have lost cases in these kind of scenarios is that they have either not turned up to court, or they've not had a technical enough background to argue this very point or had the common sense to deny it was them.
It's probably worth also adding that humans are gifted with an intelligence that dinosaurs were not.
We were able to keep those infected isolated to an extent and take other such measures to lessen the blow. If we'd all wandered and intermingled mindlessly it would probably have been even worse again.
Without downloading anything all that proves is that a particular IP is advertising a particular set of files with a particular checksum. This has two major flaws:
1) Just because the computer in question says it has the file, doesn't mean it has all of it. You'd need to download 100% (or at least enough to prove they have at least some of your IP) from this single machine to prove they really have what they say they have. I could setup a honey pot to make these people believe I'm sharing such a file but it doesn't mean I am, as such I haven't comitted any wrongdoing whatsoever but by your reasoning I should be allowed to have my personal details handed over, in breach of the data protection act and be forced into court. I would advocate people start setting up such honey pots with this specific software if I didn't think they'd somehow screw the system and still get you in trouble despite not doing the slightest thing wrong.
2) This still doesn't prove exactly who is responsible. All it proves is an IP address claimed it was sharing the content in question. Just as you can't be held responsible for someone stealing your car and running someone over, you can't be held responsible (yet) for someone stealing your wifi and downloading copyrighted material on your connection. People would need to spy on everything their kids/grandkids/spouses/friends/flatmates/lodgers/whoever do to ensure they weren't downloading copyrighted material if you were responsible for the actions of your connection. This is clearly unreasonable.
Perhaps what makes it even worse is that you could conjur up fake logs or a fake screenshot of an IP address and have it admissable as proof of guilt should this sort of thing be allowed to continue. Should I manage to get your IP address all I'd need to do is doctor a bitmap or edit a few text files with it, say to the courts it's proof of wrongdoing by you, hope you don't turn up to court (if it's sent to the wrong address or similar as has been the case with Davenport Lyons in some cases here) and then have you owe me £16,000.
The reason people are arguing this is because these companies in the US, the UK and so forth aren't gathering evidence that actually proves a specific person is actually guilty of anything so it's not over, and to give it up would be a severe loss for personal privacy and due process in the legal system.