Australia has exit border control. You have to contact immigration even if you leave by boat. They will ask you your itinerary, residences overseas, and contacts overseas.

You can be prevented from leaving if you are an Australian citizen or permanent resident and the authorities think you'll be negatively affecting Australia's international interests while abroad.

You can also be arrested and placed in detention if you don't have a valid visa (even if you're leaving!)

So no, the idea of a western country keeping people in, or tabs on them when they leave, is not unheard of.

For those who don't know, you can cruise through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River via Street (River) view... but who the hell is the guy in the sunglasses?

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=grand+canyon&hl=en&ll=36.180562,-113.116608&spn=0.215596,0.885086&sll=-34.880632,138.660651&sspn=0.030277,0.055318&t=h&hnear=Grand+Canyon&z=11&layer=c&cbll=36.180623,-113.116661&panoid=3hhY7tdbII1RSBq3fRGQ6A&cbp=12,41.4,,0,-2.93

...if you were to loosely identify video game cabinets and consoles as computers (which of course they are.)

After all, Radio Shack introduced its first line of PCs in 1977. Sure, they stopped making their own clones in the mid-90s, but they still kept on selling them.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

Find and get over 385,550,734 Australian and online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more

My local chemist pre-orders my medication in anticipation that I will continue to buy it from them. However, there is no guarantee of this. I could go somewhere else, wait for that chemist to order the medication (it's not common) and then buy it from them. Still, since I have established a pattern of going to one particular chemist for said medication, that chemist regularly re-orders it after I collect it.

Is this prior art?

This is why the push by major ad companies like Google for ubiquitous broadband.

Once average speeds hit an acceptable point (probably no more than a year or two off), all 'static' content (ie non-video) will be rendered on the server, merged with advertising content, and then sent out to the user as a solid block, probably an imagemap with hotspot data, a second 'reactive' image and some javascript so it all gels and has feedback.

Whole web pages could (and will, I'm sure) be rendered this way. Just leave spaces for the browser to insert widgets and video and you're done.

Of course, more sophisticated ways of detecting and blanking out ads in the image data will probably be developed, but it will make the ad-removal process much more difficult. On the bright side, ads delivered this way will be exclusively still images (unless animated PNG catches on), which are at least less annoying than animated ads or video clips.

Maybe the average adblock user will find this 'balance' acceptable, and see no need to block still image advertising when it appears in this fashion?

Well, except the 'ability' isnt programming per se, but programming in Java or Ruby. Let's be clear about that. People who have difficulty speaking English don't typically have a problem with language in general.

The biggest barrier to minorities becoming programmers is that modern languages have been designed to be efficient and understandable for white males.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, only noting that as languages have evolved, they've become less intuitive for non-core users. Women, for example, typically have no problem learning procedural programming. Pascal was a very popular training language in the 80s and 90s well understood by female students.

So while I can agree with other commenters that modern languages require a certain aptitude, this is more by design than some inherent nature. The solution is to stop a one-sized-fits-all approach and consider different programming styles for different demographics.

Segregation? Sure. But modern apps can already have various chunks written in different languages. There's scope there to use procedural (for example) where feasible.

Why, you ask? Diverse voices make a better product.

Customers don't generally report casual breakdowns, for example. Also, habit trends can help with designing newer models. You'll always get a better picture of your customers' habits with transparent metrics.

...they would be fools not to. It's worth its proverbial weight in... well, nothing else is that valuable.

What he really means is they don't share it. But for their own purposes it's a pretty sure bet they analyze the hell out of it.

I get how the martyr meme is cool, but putting it aside for just one second:

If he had gone to prison, it would've been the country club type, no? With the games rooms, libraries, etc. Not the rapey, death-row kind.

So in that context, committing suicide to avoid incarceration seems a tad over-reactive, doesn't it? Not trying to make light of the tragedy here, just pointing out that perhaps the bigger one is that he thought he was going to SuperMax, not Club Fed.

Computer crimes don't get you sent to maximum security, FYI.

Even if IA has some bizarre exception to copyright law, you don't, so seeding that embedded copy of MK4 or Time Crisis is not completely without risk.

To clarfy:

These games still have commercial value. If rights holders turned a blind eye, they would be effectively permitting commercial exploitation of the ROMs (and yes, people still pay to play them). Good news for some, perhaps, but bad for the few remaining amusement companies operating licensed machines, and bad for the rights holders who will find themselves facing competition from their own games. Also, if they don't defend the trademark violations they could find their properties in the public domain. While I'd love to be able to legally print and sell Pac Man t-shirts without licensing, I can't see that happening.

Oh, and if historical value mattered, Disney wouldn't still be successfully enforcing their copyright over the Silly Symphonies.

Whoever it ws at IA that thought 'oh, they won't care' is in for a rude awakening I suspect...

it's no less 'legal' than the archive.org copy. That said, I've seen Capcom take down MAME arcades so it won't be up there long I'm sure...