I believe that JustNiz is the slashdot handle of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. After a long hard day of writing a majority decision protecting our 4th Amendment rights, she decided to relax by reading some good 'ol nerdy slashdot stories.

Unfortunately instead of escape, she ran into this story, which understandably griefed her a bit. Now she has to put up with your meany comments about her not caring about rights.

Having fun with your straw man arguments?

Never stated nor implied that the US has a perfect history (or present); merely that most of the rest of the world is hardly a model.

Some states (like Michigan) have addressed this by changing things up, and funding schools on a statewide basis rather than from property taxes.

Like US car companies, it is very hard to admit when the fat years are over. Give them time; I suspect they will come around a bit.

Er, so?

Yes, on a broad scale to get quality TV, it will still be made by people who make money off of it. It should be a relief that someone can still do that, not a bad thing.

Plus, SpaceX is already printing parts. So how is it news when their competitor does it?

Wait until they find the body of the Windows Phone fanboy.

The UK handled everything per the law. They received an extradition request from a country they have a treaty with regarding this. They are required by the treaty to deal with these, they can't ignore them. So they reviewed it in court, to make sure it was a valid request per the treaty and decided it was. He appealed and the case moved up the chain until the high court heard it and decided that this extradition request is legitimate under the treaty, the UK has no standing to refuse.

Up until this point, Assanage was in no trouble in the UK, he hadn't broken UK law, they were just acting based on the extradition request. However then he fled. That is now a violation of UK law. He violated the conditions of his bail. That makes him a criminal in the UK. Skipping bail doesn't make you a "political prisoner" it makes you a standard criminal.

I mean it is a really, really minimal legit player base it could possibly effect. You would have to be someone who plays only F2P games, and has made so few in-game purchases that you haven't even spent $5. There are just extremely few people who are like that. Further, even people like that can still play, they just can't participate in some of the other Steam features. The games are still available to them.

None of the restrictions are on buying or playing games. So even if you've never spent money (I'm not clear that retail doesn't count but let's say it doesn't) you can still play all the games you've got, and buy more games to play (at which point your account becomes unlocked). So you can do with it the main purpose: Play games, including free to play ones. It isn't like they are demanding money to unlock an account.

Also in the event this really was an issue for someone, they could just buy something cheap. I mean if you've dropped $50+ on a retail game it is not that big a deal to spend another $5 if it comes to that.

Sure, why not? There comes a point where an individual is so dangerous and destructive that a society cannot contain the violence they unleash at every opportunity. Life in prison merely changes the population exposed to that individual. Prison guards, staff, and other prisoners deserve protection from such uncontrollably violent people just as much as anyone else. Capital punishment reduces recidivism rates to zero. No one who has been executed has ever been found to continue committing crimes.

Probably because of the psychological damage to the individual(s) pulling the trigger.

It's only cheaper because our capital punishment process is so badly broken. It should not take decades to complete the process; that's just dumb. On the other hand, there are flaw in how it's applied currently (moving to the second part of your issue with it), so those also need to be fixed. I support the death penalty, but with some pretty major reforms. And as a strong advocate of it, I would be open to suspending it until said reform has changed the process to one which is much faster, cheaper, more humane, more fair, more evidence-based, and more regulated. For starters, take all the stuff the Innocence Project is doing and integrate it directly into the process and provide wide open access to all information going into the process to any third-party groups wishing to provide sunshine/oversight.

Some individuals are so dangerous and destructive that all members of society (including prison guards, staff, and other prisoners) deserve permanent protection from them. I have no issue with extinguishing the existence of those who are so fundamentally broken that we can't contain their violence. However, we need to bend over backwards to ensure the process to do that is applied fairly, reasonably, and is designed to make it as close to impossible to execute an innocent person as we can reasonably make it.

Capital punishment certainly can be "revenge killing", but it is not necessarily so. Personally, I think that if it's fairly applied and handled reasonably, it can be as simple as a society determining that an individual is simply too dangerous and destructive to be allowed to continue existing. I have no problem with that. Prison guards, staff, and indeed other prisoners are people too and they have a right to be protected from particularly destructive and dangerous individuals. At some point, it's fair to admit that you cannot adequately control the violence unleashed at every opportunity by someone who is fundamentally broken in a way we cannot fix.