Jeffrey Sterling? David Drake? "No, no, no, silly. Like Panetta and Petraeus. See, the system works as expected." The system stinks all the way to the moon. I think Snowden is either going to grow old outside the USA or be extraordinarily renditioned back to face a Virginian kangaroo court populated by spooks and other useful idiots. Even in the senate's Patriot Act sunset debate, the surveillance state's champions mumble sotto voce about all the other sooper-seekrit programs that Snowden stole information on and spilled the beans to unauthorized foreign entities.
Gawd forbid they should turn around and take a suspicious look at some of the crap the CIA pulls daily (and has done since its inception).
Maybe the most likely way to stop mass-surveillance is through a revolt by the intelligence workers.
"Dear Congresskritters, you're sending too much funding to my employer who is then able to command me to do foolish, unproductive stuff. Please stop."
I don't think you've thought this through. Besides, we're already demonizing too many whistleblowers. The few who have gotten away with complaining their bosses are breaking the law only barely show up on the radar.
Incidentally, conviction rates in a number of foreign countries, such as Japan, are quite high. Japan's is greater than 99%.
Bad idea to go there. The Japanese judicial system and police have far fewer compunctions about offending rights of the accused. They'll happily toss any accused into a dungeon and patiently wait for them to "come around." The Japanese justice system is well known for expecting the accused to be good and want to confess their depravity.
Thousands of years of Samurai worshipping an emperor (believed to be a god) doesn't wear off that quickly. There's a good reason why Japanese rapes and other forms of bad crimes are almost unheard of. They really are not tolerated, with vengeance.
Given that the government has no authority to abridge speech, how did we get 'sexual harassment' law ...
"Activist judges" was a big phrase when I was growing up. It even vexed the Vatican ("Activist priests").
I don't get it either. One individual "harassing" another individual should've been covered by existing law. Why'd gender need to be dragged in too? Anyone harassing anyone should have been punished equally.
Blame the Seventies (?) for being stupid, I guess.
And blame politicos for their penchant to be bought by special interests, which is the real flaw in the ointment.
... you can safely call it Nazi Germany and not be mistaken.
Not yet, I don't think. Call me Pollyanna, but the US has bounced back from crap like this before, and it can do it again. We've a lot more power on our side now too to keep our politico-critters in line, what with the Internet and all. They can blather all they like, but they can't get away with lies like Goebels spouted in his day for very long.
It's not a little insulting to Germany too, considering the lengths they've gone to in shucking off that BS. I'm glad the Nazis lost, and I'm even more glad that modern Germans are nothing like Nazi Germany. It was a temporary aberration; a very destructive one, but a temporary one.
The US, on the other hand, is just getting started. This could yet turn out to be the worst century ever at this rate. Obama is currently freaking out about the NSA potentially losing its illegal ability to ignore the 4th amendment, ffs.
Contemporary civilization is on the knife edge of going forward, or falling back into hell for all, but we are not there yet and still can stop the darkness if we just keep on fighting it. All's not lost. I hope.
Also, if there are so many stoned people higher than a kite on illicit drugs in the world, that makes it tough on governments to find angry people to fight wars globally on all sides.
If only we could get all the jerks who want to start wars stoned permanently, we wouldn't need to inconvenience the rest.
Judge should look downtown and see what the CIA's been doing in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. It's a corrupt system, driven by ignorant idiot savants.
It was a determined and greedy effort to distribute drugs primarily. He stated that in his logs, for heaven's sake.
"a determined and greedy effort" - an emotional argument if I ever heard one. He's a libertarian. He was hoping to change the world. He doesn't believe it should be illegal in the first place. Nor do I.
Sadly, we still inhabit a world where assholes have the power to tell us what's allowed, and they'll send us to prison when we act otherwise.
You do realize that this was a federal court, which is funded by the same government which prosecutes these cases? The judge is naturally going to be on the prosecution's side because it happens to be the federal government.
Is this cynicism, because a judge being naturally on the prosecution's side doesn't sound like justice to me. Judges are supposed to be impartially interpreting the law. What's the point of a trial if not so? Just shoot the fscker if that's the situation. Who's going to complain?
You're describing the Nazi court system which was told what to do by its political masters.
I'm not yet cynical enough to believe the US has morphed into Nazi Germany. They're trying, I admit, but they're not there yet.
So, instead of praising the police department for its use of body cams, Techdirt, as usual, slams the police department for actually doing the right thing?
I have no idea how you managed to come up with that interpretation. That makes no sense whatever to me. When I read it, this seemed a very poor interpretation of the situation:
But what can damn can also exonerate.
I don't want to damn cops for doing what's right, and a cop doing the right thing shouldn't need exoneration. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. This camera footage proves he was just doing his job as he should have been. Cop-cams are a good thing, because they keep both sides honest.
I don't want good cops to fear being captured on camera doing their jobs as they should. I do want "bad guys", whether bad cops or jerks like this woman, being held accountable.
This's a happy ending, brought to you by police body-cams. Great job, officer!
I don't think anybody here is going to argue that what he did was a crime.
Doing something which has been made illegal is a crime by definition. It shouldn't have been made illegal. We proved long ago that Prohibition lead to far worse problems than people drinking ethyl alcohol, which is why it was repealed. Our current form of Prohibition is causing horrible problems which should appall everyone. Babies are finding stun grenades blowing up in their faces. Civilian "Officers of the Peace" are carrying military weapons, arriving on scene in tanks, and shooting people who reach for their wallet or cellphone. Minorities are treated like !@#$ on the street by police, because they might be "holding." This is not how police should be acting. This is how an occupying military force acts.
His other crimes aside, it's indisputable that he ran the Silk Road operation; and it was an operation.
It's not indisputable. The defense was gagged at every opportunity. The judge was on the prosecution's side from the beginning and shot down every attempt to counter with their side, "because drugs." The judge's summation is a perfect example.
Ulbricht's hiring a hit on the guy he thought was selling him out is all he should be held accountable for. What's that, twenty years? Instead, he'll never again see freedom in his lifetime.
It's hilarious that on this site which rails at control by copyright and trademark, that one can't even use a screen name without being accused of infringing proprietary right to four characters.
I thought your doing it was stupid, not infringing. Please go right ahead and look as stupid as you wish.
Are you really as thick headed as you look or are you just paid to look that way? Either way, no skin off my ass. I'm just curious trying to understand a strange phenomenon. And, I wish I could get in on the action. Your paymaster must be an intellectual imbecile. Good for you for reeling the idiot in.
... to the letter. The USA learned the Nazi fascists' lessons well. It's pretty sad that this is what passes for "independent judiciary" in the 21st century. We should be able to expect better from our rulers than this by now. I hope the judge enjoys their fruit of the poisoned tree.
BTW, "Ross Ulbricht, the man convicted of being behind the darkweb drug marketplace known as the Silk Road ..." would've been better. I doubt very much that we've been told the whole story and it will be an interesting wait to hear the real truth behind this judicial travesty. It was a mess from the get go, and very much what I expect for Kim Dotcom re: Megaupload. This is a pathetic ghost of what we should expect from a justice system. It was fat-fingered from day one.
Once again, TD is not a news site. It's an opinion site. They often don't bother to release timely comments on breaking news. They often spend time thinking and researching and understanding the nuances of an issue before they bother commenting on it.
NSA still wants the power to illegally snoop? No surprise there. Congress still don't know what they're doing wrt ignoring the 4th amendment? Same old, ... McConnell is still stooging for the police state surveillance aparatus? Wake me up when anything changes.
That's pretty funny. Nice shot. I really wonder how stupid his/her employer is for he/she to get away with pathetic attempts like this and still remain on the payroll.
It used to be that people's worship of their deity had to be filtered through priests, and their "Holy Book" was written in a language zealously hoarded by said priests.
Today, lawyers serve the same function, or have managed to insinuate themselves into said function on Earthly planes of existence. It's a bit comical that the legal profession is still using that same zealously hoarded language the priests used for pretty much the same effect (locking out laymen from their sinecures enabling horrifically expensive "services" on their part). What a racket!
Re: When Microsoft stops using mega-DRM, I'll believe that it doesn't work.
But of course NOT picking out one big bright cherry would demolish the assertion that key is no DRM.
Is it too much to ask that you at least read the article and attempt to understand what it's saying before puking your pointless BS into the comments? "No DRM" is only one of many consumer friendly features Karl notes GOG is offering here.
I'm not a gamer (at all) but even I enjoyed this article. Considering all of the crap I've read about what the likes of EA do to their customers, I hope they'll spark a revolution in the gaming world just through pointing the way. It's great to read that GOG's likely to make a killing with their W3. Show the other publishers what they're missing, and what they're wasting vast sums of money and effort on for nothing more than annoying their most devoted fans!
P.S. Who do you think you're fooling by continuing to pawn yourself off as Gwiz? Do your employers actually fall for BS like that? How do I get a job like that? I could spew much better BS (in my sleep) than you appear able to.
P.P.S. "This is just usual Techdirt trick ..." Man, you've got a lot of nerve trying that one. You're so repetitively predictable, it isn't even funny. I could replace you with a couple of lines of perl code and nobody'd know the difference.
The best way to make bad laws go away is to apply them in their full, idiotic glory.
You'd think so, but it also appears to be the slowest way. Many people don't appear to even notice the first three (or ten) times they're smacked with a clue-by-four. We're breeding some very slow learners these days.
Just look at how slow the Streisand Effect has been getting out there to common knowledge, yet every day it seems some dipstick pops up their head oblivious to it. These are educated and on-line connected people like lawyers and PR flacks who should have been informed about it years ago.
The last few US governments have been controlled by NeoCons allied with the American-Israeli PAC. NYT is just one of the NeoCons' propaganda outlets. You do the math.
You do realize there is a difference between Jews and Zionists, yes?
On the post: Elected Officials Grudgingly Admit Snowden Forced This Debate On Surveillance... As White House Insists He Belongs In Jail
Re:
Jeffrey Sterling? David Drake? "No, no, no, silly. Like Panetta and Petraeus. See, the system works as expected." The system stinks all the way to the moon. I think Snowden is either going to grow old outside the USA or be extraordinarily renditioned back to face a Virginian kangaroo court populated by spooks and other useful idiots. Even in the senate's Patriot Act sunset debate, the surveillance state's champions mumble sotto voce about all the other sooper-seekrit programs that Snowden stole information on and spilled the beans to unauthorized foreign entities.
Gawd forbid they should turn around and take a suspicious look at some of the crap the CIA pulls daily (and has done since its inception).
On the post: NSA Personnel: Search For Needles Not Being Helped By Continual Addition Of Hay To The Stacks
Re:
"Dear Congresskritters, you're sending too much funding to my employer who is then able to command me to do foolish, unproductive stuff. Please stop."
I don't think you've thought this through. Besides, we're already demonizing too many whistleblowers. The few who have gotten away with complaining their bosses are breaking the law only barely show up on the radar.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Re: Legal truth
Bad idea to go there. The Japanese judicial system and police have far fewer compunctions about offending rights of the accused. They'll happily toss any accused into a dungeon and patiently wait for them to "come around." The Japanese justice system is well known for expecting the accused to be good and want to confess their depravity.
Thousands of years of Samurai worshipping an emperor (believed to be a god) doesn't wear off that quickly. There's a good reason why Japanese rapes and other forms of bad crimes are almost unheard of. They really are not tolerated, with vengeance.
On the post: Finding And Responding To The Media's Favorite Ridiculous And Misleading Free Speech Tropes
Re:
"Activist judges" was a big phrase when I was growing up. It even vexed the Vatican ("Activist priests").
I don't get it either. One individual "harassing" another individual should've been covered by existing law. Why'd gender need to be dragged in too? Anyone harassing anyone should have been punished equally.
Blame the Seventies (?) for being stupid, I guess.
And blame politicos for their penchant to be bought by special interests, which is the real flaw in the ointment.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Re: Re: Legal truth
Not yet, I don't think. Call me Pollyanna, but the US has bounced back from crap like this before, and it can do it again. We've a lot more power on our side now too to keep our politico-critters in line, what with the Internet and all. They can blather all they like, but they can't get away with lies like Goebels spouted in his day for very long.
It's not a little insulting to Germany too, considering the lengths they've gone to in shucking off that BS. I'm glad the Nazis lost, and I'm even more glad that modern Germans are nothing like Nazi Germany. It was a temporary aberration; a very destructive one, but a temporary one.
The US, on the other hand, is just getting started. This could yet turn out to be the worst century ever at this rate. Obama is currently freaking out about the NSA potentially losing its illegal ability to ignore the 4th amendment, ffs.
Contemporary civilization is on the knife edge of going forward, or falling back into hell for all, but we are not there yet and still can stop the darkness if we just keep on fighting it. All's not lost. I hope.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Re: Objectively speaking...
If only we could get all the jerks who want to start wars stoned permanently, we wouldn't need to inconvenience the rest.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Legal truth
"a determined and greedy effort" - an emotional argument if I ever heard one. He's a libertarian. He was hoping to change the world. He doesn't believe it should be illegal in the first place. Nor do I.
Sadly, we still inhabit a world where assholes have the power to tell us what's allowed, and they'll send us to prison when we act otherwise.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Legal truth
Is this cynicism, because a judge being naturally on the prosecution's side doesn't sound like justice to me. Judges are supposed to be impartially interpreting the law. What's the point of a trial if not so? Just shoot the fscker if that's the situation. Who's going to complain?
You're describing the Nazi court system which was told what to do by its political masters.
I'm not yet cynical enough to believe the US has morphed into Nazi Germany. They're trying, I admit, but they're not there yet.
On the post: Body Cam Footage Clears Police Officer Of Bogus Sexual Assault Allegations
Re:
I have no idea how you managed to come up with that interpretation. That makes no sense whatever to me. When I read it, this seemed a very poor interpretation of the situation:
I don't want to damn cops for doing what's right, and a cop doing the right thing shouldn't need exoneration. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. This camera footage proves he was just doing his job as he should have been. Cop-cams are a good thing, because they keep both sides honest.
I don't want good cops to fear being captured on camera doing their jobs as they should. I do want "bad guys", whether bad cops or jerks like this woman, being held accountable.
This's a happy ending, brought to you by police body-cams. Great job, officer!
On the post: CD Projekt Red Does Everything Right With Witcher 3 DRM & DLC...And Breaks Sales Records
Re: Re: Re:
Well, if copying is theft, guilty.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
Re: Objectively speaking...
Doing something which has been made illegal is a crime by definition. It shouldn't have been made illegal. We proved long ago that Prohibition lead to far worse problems than people drinking ethyl alcohol, which is why it was repealed. Our current form of Prohibition is causing horrible problems which should appall everyone. Babies are finding stun grenades blowing up in their faces. Civilian "Officers of the Peace" are carrying military weapons, arriving on scene in tanks, and shooting people who reach for their wallet or cellphone. Minorities are treated like !@#$ on the street by police, because they might be "holding." This is not how police should be acting. This is how an occupying military force acts.
It's not indisputable. The defense was gagged at every opportunity. The judge was on the prosecution's side from the beginning and shot down every attempt to counter with their side, "because drugs." The judge's summation is a perfect example.
Ulbricht's hiring a hit on the guy he thought was selling him out is all he should be held accountable for. What's that, twenty years? Instead, he'll never again see freedom in his lifetime.
On the post: Insanity Rules In Ireland: Media Ordered Not To Report On Parliamentary Speech
Re: Re: Enough sour grapes to start a whinery
I thought your doing it was stupid, not infringing. Please go right ahead and look as stupid as you wish.
Are you really as thick headed as you look or are you just paid to look that way? Either way, no skin off my ass. I'm just curious trying to understand a strange phenomenon. And, I wish I could get in on the action. Your paymaster must be an intellectual imbecile. Good for you for reeling the idiot in.
On the post: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison
The judge was just following orders.
BTW, "Ross Ulbricht, the man convicted of being behind the darkweb drug marketplace known as the Silk Road ..." would've been better. I doubt very much that we've been told the whole story and it will be an interesting wait to hear the real truth behind this judicial travesty. It was a mess from the get go, and very much what I expect for Kim Dotcom re: Megaupload. This is a pathetic ghost of what we should expect from a justice system. It was fat-fingered from day one.
On the post: Insanity Rules In Ireland: Media Ordered Not To Report On Parliamentary Speech
Re: Off topic...
NSA still wants the power to illegally snoop? No surprise there. Congress still don't know what they're doing wrt ignoring the 4th amendment? Same old, ... McConnell is still stooging for the police state surveillance aparatus? Wake me up when anything changes.
On the post: Insanity Rules In Ireland: Media Ordered Not To Report On Parliamentary Speech
Re: Enough sour grapes to start a whinery
That's pretty funny. Nice shot. I really wonder how stupid his/her employer is for he/she to get away with pathetic attempts like this and still remain on the payroll.
On the post: Rosie O'Donnell's Ex Accuses Her Of Copyright Infringement... For Posting Photos Of Their Daughter To Instagram
Re:
Today, lawyers serve the same function, or have managed to insinuate themselves into said function on Earthly planes of existence. It's a bit comical that the legal profession is still using that same zealously hoarded language the priests used for pretty much the same effect (locking out laymen from their sinecures enabling horrifically expensive "services" on their part). What a racket!
On the post: CD Projekt Red Does Everything Right With Witcher 3 DRM & DLC...And Breaks Sales Records
Re: When Microsoft stops using mega-DRM, I'll believe that it doesn't work.
Is it too much to ask that you at least read the article and attempt to understand what it's saying before puking your pointless BS into the comments? "No DRM" is only one of many consumer friendly features Karl notes GOG is offering here.
I'm not a gamer (at all) but even I enjoyed this article. Considering all of the crap I've read about what the likes of EA do to their customers, I hope they'll spark a revolution in the gaming world just through pointing the way. It's great to read that GOG's likely to make a killing with their W3. Show the other publishers what they're missing, and what they're wasting vast sums of money and effort on for nothing more than annoying their most devoted fans!
P.S. Who do you think you're fooling by continuing to pawn yourself off as Gwiz? Do your employers actually fall for BS like that? How do I get a job like that? I could spew much better BS (in my sleep) than you appear able to.
P.P.S. "This is just usual Techdirt trick ..." Man, you've got a lot of nerve trying that one. You're so repetitively predictable, it isn't even funny. I could replace you with a couple of lines of perl code and nobody'd know the difference.
On the post: Rosie O'Donnell's Ex Accuses Her Of Copyright Infringement... For Posting Photos Of Their Daughter To Instagram
Re:
You'd think so, but it also appears to be the slowest way. Many people don't appear to even notice the first three (or ten) times they're smacked with a clue-by-four. We're breeding some very slow learners these days.
Just look at how slow the Streisand Effect has been getting out there to common knowledge, yet every day it seems some dipstick pops up their head oblivious to it. These are educated and on-line connected people like lawyers and PR flacks who should have been informed about it years ago.
On the post: The NYTimes Plays Its Role In 'Keeping Fear Alive' With Pure Fearmongering Over PATRIOT Act Renewal
Re:
The last few US governments have been controlled by NeoCons allied with the American-Israeli PAC. NYT is just one of the NeoCons' propaganda outlets. You do the math.
You do realize there is a difference between Jews and Zionists, yes?
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