Posts by Ian Michael Gumby 4454 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2006
It's not a question of prison time.
Visa and MC have to answer to their shareholders. before you get to jail time, you have to explain why you spent millions of dollars on legal fees, and fines.
It's not about morality, but simple dollars and cents.
I wonder how many down votes because common sense dispells all of the conspiracy theories?
I don't recall the last time the EFF broke the law.
Since you're an expert on this, could you please refresh my memory?
That's kind of the point.
This isn't a free speech issue or one of government oppression of Wikileaks.
It's a matter of risk vs reward. A simple matter of business. Wikileaks just isn't worth the risk and if you read the CC firm's contract, they probably violated a ToS.
Look, you can spin all of your conspiracy theories, but the truth is much simpler and a better story.
It's all a matter of risk and the law. Post 9/11, anti money laundering, anti terror laws require that the CC houses crack down on companies, not for profits, etc... That may have ties to terrorist organizations.
Now you have Wikileaks. Has Wikileaks been accused of illegal activities? YES, however, they have yet to have been charged. Wikileaks solicits funds from their supporters. How well has Assange and company kept their records?
Wikileaks has attacked US finacial shops. B of A generates lots of revenue for the CC companies. How much does Wikileaks generate?
Yes you are correct that the US can apply pressure to the CC companies. Yet you are wrong in saying that they are doing anything illegal or nefarious. The laws which have not yet been applied have been on the books in not only the US but also the other G8 countries long before Wikileaks got created.
When you add it all up, Wikileaks is bad for business and not worth the potential risk.
So they get dropped.
No pressure, no phone calls from the President. It's just S.O.P
Using quasi-legal terms out of context doesn't work. There is no such thing as a quasi-monopoly. Ok there is, however not in the context of your post. A company isn't a monopoly until it has been determined by the courts to in fact be a monopoly and once determined to be a monopoly, then the laws change.
A company can take action which legal under the law while the same action undertaken by a monopoly would be deemed illegal.
VISA, Amex, Discover, MC among others are in a highly regulated industry and none have been found to be monopolies even when there have been investigations in to some of their activities that were found to be anti-competitive like exclusivity deals w banks.
With respect to Wikileaks... When you play with fire, expect two things... One you will get burned... Two... You may become too hot to handle.
Since there is no monopoly, refusing to do business w Wikipedia isn't illegal and canceling any contract with them would fall to what was stipulated in the contract. These types of contracts always favor the CC house.
There is no collusion.
Suppose you bought a house in a well known flood plain. You try to get flood insurance from various insurance companies. They all turn you away. Just because you can't get insurance doesn't mean that the insurance companies colluded against you.
Same thing for Wikileaks.
Btw, when you attack the US, and also make threats against a major US bank (B of A), you should realize that you are going to face certain repercussions...
You raise an interesting point, however don't confuse it by attaching it to the Wikileaks thing...
To answer your point... Governments like CC and debit card transactions in that they are traceable. Cash transactions are not.
If I expense a $40.00 cab ride from OHare to downtown Chicago, and I pay cash, can you prove I actually took a cab and didn't pay $2.50 for a ride on the Blue line in to the city? If I paid with a credit card, you would know...
It's the same thing w corporate expnse reports... But let's not go there because managers frown on creative accounting...
No, they don't have to do business with you when you violate the terms of the contract, or if Visa wants to exercise their out clause.
Have you ever read a bank's contract, or one of your credit card's contracts?
They can change the rules at any time.
Wikileaks is going to burn through a lot of capital just to save face.
But then again, what's going to happen when Assange gets sent off to Sweden and then is past his 15min of fame?
Is he going to go the distance of trying to become a E list celeb?
Big brothers are all watching. And they have time on their side.
Sorry, but while Apple makes decent kit, it's not the supreme smart phone. OS aside, Nokia phones are solid. Cant say that about apple.
I for one want my subsidized phone to last the life of the contract. Is that too much to ask?
Oh yeah. Mine is the jacket that has a phone which is used as a phone and does email. Could care less about watching vids or surfing the web, I have an iPad2 for that.
Its a bit misleading so I'll explain...
Oracle only has to win on one count.
Invalidating patents takes time and money and Google is doing their best to fast track this. (Gee no politcal lobbying done on their part, right? ;-) <mock shock>.
Then there's the copyright issue too.
As to the numbers. 2.6 billion is an accurate number based on the license revenue, and damages.
200mil a year for 10 years? Sounds about right because of all of the Google/Android fan bois.
If it goes to trial... you can also expect to see Oracle claiming punitive damages when they win.
Interestingly enough, I don't see the telco handset makers asking Google for indemnification, however, I think if Oracle wins the full amount, they may not go after the handset makers.
(JMHO)
Sorry not to rain on SeaMicro's parade but the benchmark isn't necessarily apples to apples in comparison.
I don't know specifics about the job,but your cluster design is going to be based on what sort of job you want to run.
The article is a fail because the author doesn't know Jack, and the benchmark is a bit stacked in SeaMicro's favor.
Grammars change over the years.
I'm not suggesting that Microsoft's hints on grammar should always be followed, however, not all 'admins' or secretaries are going to have an English degree.
The point I was trying to make is that we can create makeshift jobs that may pay a wage, however that individual will have no future. Literally a slave wage earner. Currently in the US, there are a lot of jobs that go unfilled. Farm labor where you can't harvest the crop using machines. Try weeding a single field of Watermelons or picking them. Its hard work. I can honestly say you wouldn't last a week, let alone a single day. Try getting people who claim to want to work to take those jobs. Obama and his team are saying that as the technology evolves, so too does the workforce to meet its demands.
With respect to automation undoing labor specialization, the reverse could be said about technology. As we become more advanced technologically, we become more specialized. I don't know about you, but I sit in front of a computer all day. While I can program it down to the microcode, I couldn't talk to you intelligently about microprocessor design or hardware design. I also doubt you'd see your family intern to perform open heart surgery. (You get the idea.)
"Oracle is just a bastion of patent trolling & I hope they end up the same as SCO; ie dead in the water. "
Again, while you say the term 'patent troll', do you really understand what it means?
Oracle actually produces products and uses the technology where they purchased the IP and ensuing patents. There is no troll here.
A patent troll exists to purchase IP from defunct companies with the sole purpose of attempting to gain revenue from extorting licenses from these assets. They produce no products except billable hours for lawyers.
What Oracle is saying is that they want to go to trial and not wait for Google to continue to pick apart Oracle's software patents.
The point of law is that until the patents are picked apart, by law they hold true.
But I have to wonder if all of those lobbying dollars and the fact that the White House's CTO is a former Google lobbyist/employee?
Naw that would have no effect on how things happen.
First, you're a bit out of date.
That battle has been over for a while and Microsoft is still acting within the law. And yes the courts are watching.
But what does this have to do with Google?
The issue of the article is if Google is violating the law and if it should be found to be a monopoly. Once its found to be a monopoly and it has been abusing their position in one market to stifle competition in another... well then that's when you can compare it to Microsoft and possibly IBM.
You could also say that Google learned from Microsoft. Sure they paid out hundreds of millions in fines and legal fees. But they made Billions at the same time. You do the math...
(Lucky that its civil law and not criminal law. But that's a different story and would require you to understand a bit more about the law...)
Google Maps bought their map data from Navteq and TeleAtlas. Navteq bought Map24 and was since acquired by Nokia. TeleAtlas was acquired by and is now owned by TomTom.
Both Navteq and TeleAtlas have been in the mapping business prior to Google being a search engine.
"Err, excuse me, but is that normal human behaviour and capitalistic business practice? Is it a crime?"
In a simple one word sentence that even you can understand... YES.
For the longer version... When a company abuses its dominant market position to enter and hamper the markets of another product or service, it is illegal. Of course it depends on what country but here in the US there's this thing called the Sherman Anti-trust Act?
I'm assuming that each other Western country that is part of the G8 also has adopted similar laws...
"Google, so far have never shown the audacity to abuse their marketing power in the way Microsoft has. "
Uhm, you're joking right?
Its so hard to tell if you're saying this with a straight face, or you really are that dense or so blinded by Google.
For the record, Google has indeed broken the law. Stop me if you heard this one about a company that while mapping the streets was actually 'war driving' and capturing any unencrypted traffic it might have snarfed. Of course the law is different in each country, however I believe this action was illegal in most of the jurisdiction when it occurred.
Google is evil. No joke about that.
Its amazing to see all of the Microsoft bashing when Google is acting just as bad.
For some mysterious reason, data nodes in Hadoop or Appliances you end up paying around 10K a node (list price)
Even though there's Moore's law, you still end up paying 10K list, albeit getting more machine for your buck.
I've seen this when pricing out DELL, IBM xSeries, SGI/Rackable, and now Netezza.
Interesting....
Look, I'll break it down to you.
On the one hand, sysadmins are lazy. And that's actually a good thing because instead of doing something manually each time, they'll stop and make the time to write a script so that it takes one command and 5 minutes to fix something, but tell their pointy haired managers it will take an hour. or a couple of hours. (A good admin always exaggerates the amount of time something will take so that they still look like heroes and in the event something goes wrong with the fix, they don't have to take time to explain in detail what they are actually doing....) Lazy system admins also don't like to be disturbed by silly gits making unreasonable requests like supporting non-approved hardware, knowing that once they help you, they can never refuse to support it....
On the other hand. There are your typical users, smart users, and super users who used to be admins in their past life and know the drill.
The typical user actually does the things the anonymous BOFH talks about. They are that stupid.
You would be considered a 'smart user' but still too dumb to realize all of the ways your PC can be infected by 'drive-by' incidents. Meaning you're not paranoid enough to be given control.
Then there are the super user class. These are the guys who work in IT, build their own PCs, maintain their friends and family pc's, have a small network of Unix/Linux boxes in their basement. Now these are the people who respect and understand why the IT guys lock down the PCs and know enough not to complain. They also know enough to get a dozen of the really good doughnuts (not the stuff from Dunkin Doughnuts where they give you their day old stuff and pretend that its 'fresh'.).and present it to the IT dept head as he asks for a special favor.
(Beer works too but only if you know the staff is going out for drinks and where they go for drinks because they normally want to avoid silly gits who pester them for administrator access on their PCs.)
So yeah. you may bitch, but the fact that you bitch means that you don't know what you don't know and that makes you dangerous.
Yeah I know its a catch-22, and that's the point.
Mine's the jacket with the old worn BOFH shoulder patch as I head out the door after getting a text telling me where the system admins are going for their drinks because they know I'll be buying them a round or two. :-)
Yeah, your analogy is flawed. Just to point out the obvious one...
Your bike racer rented the bike. (This means he had to sign a contract on the proper T's and C's.)
A better analogy was that he stole the bike. Won the million in the race, was then nabbed for the theft. Suppose that the bike he stole only cost 100,000 pounds. He could always buy the rental company a new bike in addition to the old one.
The biker faces jail time and also has to make or attempt to make restitution to the owners of the bike he stole. The courts could also disgorge him of his profits he made from his illegal action.
(Crime doesn't pay and its important for the justice system of *any* country to re-enforce that concept.) Note that there will always be an exception to that case....
You want a better analogy... Look at the insider trading case(s) which took down guys like Bob Moffat of IBM who would have been the next leader of IBM.
In these cases, the courts not only sentence them to jail time, but they are ordered to make restitution and surrender any profits from the trades plus interest to the courts.
Does that make sense?
Google didn't sign and ignore the T's and C's of a contract, they essentially stole IP so that they wouldn't have to sign a contract and pay fees to Sun/Oracle.
Oh and one more thing... in the bike racer example... The rental company where he stole the bike... they could also give him the option of giving up the million dollars to them and they'll then drop the charges against him. Its not just the jail time but the felony conviction which will screw up one's future.
"Why have they lost revenue? because android is a much better platform to develop for and provides much more than anything Oracle can offer with what they currently have."
No, not at all.
Dalvik is a clone of Java. The lawsuit has nothing to do with the merits of the platform, but of a core component of the platform that was created as Oracle alleges to bypass paying Oracle the license to use Java ME.
Could Android exist if it had used Java ME? Absolutely.
It's not the issue of what oracle can make but to disgorge google of the profits they made as a result of their transgression.
You have to look at it from this perspective...
Google is gambling that even if it loses the lawsuit, they then pay a penalty... Lets say triple the license amounts. This amount may seem like a lot of money, but it's a fraction of what they are making off all of the handset's revenue streams.
The concept is to send the message that crime doesn't pay.
First, I say that oracle's claims have merit. If you look at the claims, they have lost a ton of licensing revenue along with future potential revenue from existing licensees.
Sun wasn't dumb in how they wrote their contracts and were it not Oracle, sun would be suing instead. Why? Precisely because of the potential amount of damages.
In any lawsuit like this, the amount of damages is a SWAG. You guess err estimate high because you only have one shot at the number. This is going to be your max. You then end up negotiating from there. (Assuming Google is going to settle.). If not, then the number is to ball park what they think they deserve.
Now even though I call it a game, the numbers are real. Oracle is correct in their estimates.
Based on a first blush read of the article and not Google's filing, google is claiming that Oracle is using Google's profits from ad revenue on Android apps and not just the revenues from the OS itself. IMHO, Oracle is correct because the phone is a loss leader so Google can profit from their ad revenue.
While I think both companies are evil, Google thinks that they are too big to fail and should be declared a monopoly. ( but that's a different issue) with respect to the issue at hand... oracle has the stronger hand...
But if you look in the mirror... :-)
Seriously? Oracle s for once the injured party. They were open in that they bought Sun for Java. No secret there. They are actively involved in Java development, and they use Java in a large bulk of the products they ship.
This is not the actions of a patent troll.
Google however is trying to steal from Oracle and is abusing the entire Open Source model.
It's amazing how you and others try to justify and defend Google when they are t he ones abusing the system.
What? You didn't set the no robots text so that Google and others wouldn't actually crawl your web pages?
Didn't you know that because you didn't do this that you've implicitly agreed to the Chocolate factory from indexing your web site and posting all of your *copyright* material on the interwebs for everyone to see/steal. (After all, everyone knows that if its posted on the web, then its free for the taking....)
Ok if you didn't get the sarcasm, then you need to grow up.
I agree with the sentiment that trying to charge someone who just provided links to allegedly infringed material is a joke.
Putting this act on the same level as McKinnon, even is jest is plain stupid.
I would rather see the Brits take the US lawyers and corporate types who think extraditing the 'nerd' and charge them with something under British law, and extradite them to the UK.
Oh wait. they'd probably place them under house arrest like Assange, which makes our notorious
club fed' look like Alcatraz....
No Seriously, please extradite these clowns. And please keep them. We have enough pointy haired idiots running our large corporations that they wouldn't be missed.
When a pointy haired management type decides to go for the lowest cost consultant or the off shore resource (uhm they call it global sourcing these days...) One has to wonder if they calculated the costs and loss of good will when someone doesn't do their jobs and secure the site?
Just a curious question about expectations of top notch software from sub par developers. Doesn't that mean that the management chain is also sub par?
You have calendar reminders, birthday reminders going back to the late 80's.
And if you get down to it... the patent is invalid because its basically a system to send messages (e-mail, pager, sms, etc...) based on a triggered event.
Whoever granted this patent should be fired for gross incompetence.
I don't think you really get it.
Look where your farmland is located.
Here in the Midwest of the US... you're going to continue to see more rain and flooding which will have a negative impact on the crops. Its not just the cold temp but the overall weather patterns and timing.
You will see droughts continue where it was once lush farmlands.
You could potentially see blight on crops or cross contamination of bacteria causing food to be destroyed en mass. (See Germany).
I agree this is nothing to panic about, but I don't agree that we will continue to sustain good growing conditions globally.
Its not just a shift in the sun's solar flare rate, but also a shift in the earth's magnetic poles that can have a greater impact that human's CO2 output. But don't tell the doomsday climate 'experts' that.
No, its not a big if.
You're right that I haven't been following the case. Last time I checked, Oracle still had a lot on the table. Google's code excerpts still stand, and Apache has made the statement that Google's code isn't based on their's.
Last time I checked, we're still in the discovery period and that the actual trial hasn't started.
Also, we're in the peanut gallery. We won't see or know all of the evidence collected or presented.
This means that the actual trial hasn't started. Its going to be a jury trial right?
So going forward, you have an option of Google settling with Oracle or it goes to trial.
You have the trial and Oracle wins.
You have the trial and Google wins.
The odds are that if this goes the distance, Oracle will win on some counts.
Its a stronger case than SCOs.
Again, the whole point of my first post is that regardless of the outcome, the uncertainty of the lawsuit represents risk.
Google's behavior with the handset manufacturers also represents risk.
But hey, what do I know? I'm neither a fan of either company. Not so sure you can say the same. :-)
LOL...
You seem to forget that there's this other big giant sitting on the sidelines with their own patent suit against Google.
You and others dismiss Oracle's Java suit against Android.
If that goes the distance and Oracle wins... You're going to see a world of hurt put on Google since they will have to indemnify the phone manufacturers and you'll see Android either die, or new phones jump in price because of the licensing costs.
BTW, don't count out Meego and Nokia's Intel relationship. There's more to the MS deal than just handsets....
Also didn't you get the memo? With the rise of the Internet bloggers obtaining 'journalist' standards, all journalists have been forced to lower their standards and become 'lobbyists'.
(It keeps them off the dole. ;-)
Andrew, not using a feature of the car is not the same thing as opting out of having your telemetry captured.
As another reader pointed out, OnStar captures your car's telemetry, but its kept private until there's either your authorization to allow the police to access it, or the police contact Onstar with a LE sub.
But you do realize the irony is that while you're saying "Meh... no big deal..." you do realize that if this were the US or Brit government doing this... you and 100 other commentards would be screaming bloody murder.
People are more forgiving of large corporations snooping in on their private lives than if the incompetent bureaucratic governments did so. Unfortunately in this ignorance many forget the potential harm that can occur.
The bigger problem which obviously you seem to ignore is that when companies think about adding benefits and features to their products, they don't think enough about security. Its always a rush to be first to market and security is always an after thought. Oh wait, you did think about it because you gloss over this point in your #2 argument. "A programming oversight". Yeah right.
(And actually you are right because the developers/architects don't bother to think beyond meeting the stated functional spec.)
For those smug* enough to own a Leaf, it would be one thing for Nisan to say that they are capturing your car's telemetry so that they can better research and understand your driving habits and use it to improve the next generation of electric cars, however, not saying it, or allowing you to opt-out of the data capture is another thing.
And the reason I call the drivers of Leaf's smug is that many of them are purchasing/leasing the vehicles because the want to help save the environment. So what they end up doing is increasing the amount of electricity required to be generated, yet voting down and not supporting nuclear energy which is the cleanest and most efficient method of producing energy and can keep up with the increased demand. But that's a different rant. ;-)
I don't think you or anyone else really understands what Microsoft and others are saying.
What they are saying is that if the patents are being sold, then the purchaser is going to be obligated to honor the existing licensing agreements.
Here's an example...
Suppose I patented a working fusion reactor. Now there's cheap abundant energy for all because I licensed it to all of the world's governments and power companies making me a fortune. But then I go and blow my fortune on hookers and tiger blood. (Charlie Sheen reference) I am then forced to sell my patents so I can keep a roof over my head and some food on the table.
So I then I auction off the patents to pay my debt.
Unless the auction specifically requires the transfer of the licensing agreements to the purchaser, meaning that they have to honor the terms and conditions of the existing agreements, they can then go ahead and declare the agreements null and void and force everyone to come back to the table and re-agree upon new T's and C's.
While IANAL, were this a normal sale of the patents, then the existing licenses would survive the sale. Auctioning off the asset to satisfy a debt... that's another matter.
I doubt anyone cares if Google owns the patents as long as their existing agreements are kept in place.
Today's lawyers are trained to do what it takes to argue the case in front of them.
Not to do what is right.
So you can have a lawyer argue one side of the argument for one case, defending Microsoft's abuse of the patent system, and then in the next case, argue the exact opposite. If it means a win for Microsoft. (Meaning that the lawyer is Microsoft's lawyer.)
If Microsoft wants true software patent reform, then they should be pushing to toss out all of the patents given to software systems and business processes.
The Smart car was DOA from the start. Penske motors gave back their franchise to Mercedes. ( http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/18/autos/smart-car-penske-mercedes.fortune/index.htm )
The concept of the car was flawed at the start.
For those who live in the city, most live in apartments or row houses. If you own a garage space, you usually have only one space. So you need a car that best serves your purpose.
If you live in the suburbs, you may have the garage space, but you need to be able to travel at highway speeds.
The point is that city dwellers may only travel short distances, but they need a car that has more than two seats and no luggage space. If you live in the burbs, as a second car, you need something which is capable of traveling at highway speeds.
For those who could afford to have a specialized car like the smart, it makes no sense because of the costs of ownership when compared to something which is more practical.
As a city dweller who walks to work, I have a jeep because I need something I can count on in the winter, and haul stuff around. When it comes time to go grocery shopping, my wife usually teams up with some of the neighbors or friends to make the most of the trip.
I'm all for electric cars as long as we have nuke plants supplying the electricity. (Its still the only clean, abundant, and consistent source of power.) I'd still take an electric mini over the smart car because its more practical.
That's the point. The Electric Mini which was done a couple of years ago as a pet project was/is a better e Car than this car will ever be.
I'm not trying to compare this car to a Tesla (The dealership here is about a click down the road from me.) That would be unfair.
This 'car' should be compared to a golf cart. You don't like Cushman carts, you have Yamaha,
The smart isn't really suited for highway driving, and even in the city not so much.
As to the 'golf cart'. Yeah I know golf carts since I grew on a golf course as a caddy. ;-)
Don't dismiss golf carts, they have a lot more uses than just being used by the players.
Ok, let me see if I have this straight.
"The criticism that Elop announced the deal prematurely has a lot of merit, and I said so at the time. I'm sure Elop would have preferred to have had teams working on WP, so he could wave a real working prototype around when the deal was announced."
As part of this deal, Nokia gets 1 Billion dollars. Ok. When do they get it? When they inked the deal?
Now I don't know about you, but transferring a billion dollars would be considered a material event, right?
Not to mention the deal itself would be considered a material event.
For those who live outside of the US, both NOK and MSFT are traded on NASDAQ so there's this thing called 'Rule FD'....
It seems that a lot of the 'bloggers' who are calling for NOK's impending doom or MSFT doing a buy out are reading too much in to what's been said.
Conspiracy theory? I think not.
NeXT Step is Mach, a unix micro kernel developed at CMU.
Its an OS that can't run on other OSs although you could probably put an emulator on another platform.
You port it to the hardware not to another OS.
I think you're confused by the fact that the slabs were running on Moto chips and the OS was ported to Intel. (Last things done before Apple brought Steve back.)
When Jobs went back to Apple, they bought and brought NeXT back in house which became the core of the Mac's OS X.
With respect to Nokia...
Until the dust settles you won't know anything.
Uhm no, not exactly.
There have been several lawsuits that have been settled out of court because the courts have to weigh the facts of the case and neither side wants to risk setting a bad precedence.
In many of these cases the exec would hold a position outside of the specific work they did until the non compete period ends.
But this case goes beyond that... There are allegations of theft of IP. Also the fact that the person from Paypal was in a fiduciary position during the failed negotiations. It's these accusations which are more damaging than just poaching an exec.
You have to sign a contract.
In the contract there are a couple of key phrases...
1) If any paragraph of this contract is invalidated then only that paragraph is invalidated and the rest of the contract as a whole is still enforceable. (Or something to that effect.)
2) If the company like IBM says that you can't work for any of IBM's customers, the paragraph is too vague and is in conflict with your right to work. So while that statement is in the contract, its unenforceable. Because the enforceability of this paragraph varies from state to state, its left in.
3) Companies then add a second separate paragraph which states that you can't go to work for a specific company X, and or Y, this clause generally is enforceable.
Again it depends on the state, court and judge to determine enforceability.
With respect to this lawsuit, it looks like Google has taken a page out of Microsoft's playbook.
(Hey! Its not evil, its *big* *business*. We would never do anything evil, right? Trust us...)
[That was sarcasm.]
You are right that you can't just create a payment system out of thin air overnight. And while it takes many months, you can always reduce the time it takes by hiring people who've already done it once before. Which is why a company will hire someone with the specific skills. The issue is that the person who left PayPal left with specific intellectual property developed at Pay pal for Pay pal. On the surface, the lawsuit has merit.
First, you have to question why she is wearing those Harry Carry glasses. (Its a Chicago reference...)
While I don't know either lawyer, one has to ask why they are in small claims court and why would a lawyer bring in a paralegal to such a case?
So please don't get your panties in a twist.
And how is this IT related other than your porn reference cause everyone knows that Al Gore created the internet for porn....
Its a non-story. Essentially some reporter asked Obama a question about McKinnon. His response is that he's satisfied that they were doing everything within the law to get McKinnon extradited, its a valid extradition so he's waiting to see what the UK courts do. He says that the US will honor the UK court's decision. (Patent no brainer response.)
So now a reporter calls up McKinnon's mum and asks how she feels about Obama's comment that whatever the UK judges decide is the final answer? What do you think, she's going to say?
Its a non-issue. What is an issue is what the UK courts decide. Is an undiagnosed 'mental health' issue enough to stop extradition? Its an affirmative defense that has repercussions outside of this trial. That would be a story.
Sorry, but when you see the following quote in the story...
"The comments appeared to contrast with a recent statement from US Attorney General Eric Holder in which he vowed to take all steps necessary to have McKinnon extradited and “held accountable for the crimes that he committed.”
"
You have to wonder what the author is thinking.
Both Obama's qoute and Holder's quote are in sync.
Holder is saying that they will do everything legally allowed under the law to get McKinnon to the US to face trial. Obama is saying that they've done that and that it's up to the UK Judicial system to decide McKinnon's fate.
It's a non story.
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