You would have to mandate some amount of play per day, or else this would have the same effect as just taking all the games. Or so I've heard.

That lie would be seen through very easily. Your bail condition would be to eat quite a few florets nightly, else land in jail.

It's more the manner in which the bail was presented; the manner in which the judge decided what the bail should be tends to a presumption of guilt (the judge is ordering surrender of an item valued by the child in lieu of being put in jail); it's a little too 'eye-for-an-eye' for the bail hearing portion of the case. Monetary bail, to a degree, is different; money (while valuable) isn't necessarily an 'item', despite its physical form, and that standard for bail is consistent for any manner of criminal dispute (theft, assault, murder, extortion, and so on).

Some creative maneuvering, and a series of tube slides is actually not a bad hiding spot. You just have to go barefoot (socks slide too much, and shoes make too much noise).

For a minor, it's not the child's financial assets that become an issue; it's his parents/guardians' assets.

That said, this isn't a forcible seizure, either; the 'bail' could go 'unpaid' (the system isn't turned over) and the kid goes to the lockup...however undesirable, there is an element of choice there for him/his parents or guardians/counsel to make.

No, no, no. It'd go like this:

Judge: "What's something of value to you?"
Defendant: "Yo' mama"
Judge: *facepalm* Bail is a grand, take him to lockup..."

Bear in mind, the kid has been charged, not convicted. I would agree, if found guilty, with your reasoning; until then, you're proving a point that may or may not need to be made.

In other words, when you get older, a twat is a twat, tits are tits, and you'll stop minding the jiggly bits in between as much.

Problems I see here...

ICCIDs as sequential numbers - Untrue. 89nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn1 may be a valid ICCID; if it is, 89nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn2 will not be (where n are digits). There may be a pattern utilised, but n+1 is not a reliable method for a given known ICCID.

He immediately alerted the media - Not the company? Sure, the public might have need or right to know, and though his intentions were more or less good, giving up details of an exploit without giving the (in this case) company a good-faith chance to fix what went wrong--thus giving the black-hat types a window to do what they will, with probably more nefarious intent--is in NO way responsible behaviour.

There was no evidence that the addresses were disseminated - gives guy some leeway on the ID theft and probably fraud charges. Conspiracy to commit unauthorized access charge, though? Pretty much indefensible, and probably a non-issue if he'd made a good-faith effort to bring this directly to AT&T's attention and/or if it hadn't been used to the extent of 100k+ addresses.

That said, AT&T isn't in the clear here. Further efforts could have been made on their part to secure this information, though an email address doesn't mean or lead to much except for those a) in the spam business or b) with more nefarious purposes and the appropriate tools at hand, ready to use. Is a stiff sentence fair here? I don't believe so, but nor is acquittal.

To a point, I'll agree; being a person who has played mostly online (though not horribly well), there are ways of figuring people out (betting patterns, how they jabber if they participate in any sort of chat either during or between hands) that serve as fairly rough analogues. These don't translate well to live games in and of themselves, but folks who play live games and dabble online that I've known tend to key in on those things when (naturally) nothing else is available, with slightly decreased returns.

Even when I escape to the real world (the one that exists for a few hours when the children sleep and vulgar language is allowed), I can't escape mention of that little bastard whose only resemblance to a square is the fact that his faces (not the space where his annoying face-parts are, but rather the surface faces of the prism of his being) are quadrilaterals (rectangles, in fact).

What. The. Fuck.

- Online gambling - More or less gambling of most any sort...otherwise online poker sites wouldn't have to set up shop in the Isle of Man to begin with, this isn't an internet issue.

- "Obscene" or violent porn, even if only acted - [citation needed]

- Ordering cheaper medical drugs from other countries - Import laws apply here, not necessarily internet related (the 'net only makes it a bit easier)

- Ordering pot or drugs - Laws against well predate a prevalent internet

- Sharing knowledge if it's copyrighted - Not directly the Government's will; most of that is civil litigation, though it might be enabled by poor legislation.

- Sharing entertainment if it's copyrighted - See above

- Revealing wrongdoing within US government (Wikileaks) - Might have a point here...certainly, there's some stuff that ends up in closets that shouldn't be, but let's also note that the DoJ hasn't directly done anything on this front, they're only probing as hard as they can.

- Posting knowledge of how to make bombs or certain other technical information - I can agree with letting this information be free, just go after the asshats who use it...

- Implementing your application or website in a certain way if it's software patented - Yes, patents are bullshit, but in a sane world, companies wouldn't try and patent a method for someone moving their finger across a glass surface for a distinct surface...i.e., companies don't have to patent the blatantly obvious.

- Anything else that hurts the business of Big Money Intangible Industries (Pharma, RIAA, MPAA, BSA) - Don't even really know what you're getting at here. You seem to be getting on a Copyright point, addressed above.

That said, the only things the US Government is really only actively cracking down on are alleged large scale piracy sites; and that only by domain seizure. Compare that to other locales where SWAT are engaged and seize equipment, the whole nine yards, talk to me then.

It's more the hypocrisy being showcased than anything. Apple are more than happy to go after a generic name that they just happened to use, and so did Amazon--yet, at the same time, they're doing the same damn thing with this. If they hadn't taken Amazon to task for using App Store, this bit would be pretty much non-issue (likewise, if they had chosen a variation on the name...maybe, 'Wireless Sync', or perhaps 'iSync' even)--then it would be simply a matter of whether or not Apple already had this in the pipe when it was submitted, and if not, if they took the idea of their own...and to a lesser degree, if they were already working on this or something like it, was it right to prevent a third-party from having their app out there being as they had no suitable solution in place themselves at the time.

And BOOM goes the dynamite.

Thank god I set my beer down before getting this far down in the comment thread, or my monitor would have required the attention of some Lysol wipes.