It's not about where the information comes from, it's about ensuring the defendant's right to examine the evidence against him. This is a critical part of due process, and if a juror brings outside information into the courtroom and bases their decision on it, the defendant will never have the chance to examine that information and respond to it.

Now, before you say, "But in this case, all the juror wanted was a definition of a word!", let me propose a hypothetical situation for you. Imagine that you are on trial for rape, and one of the jurors prints out the Wikipedia article on rape. It just so happens that the revision they've printed out contains an edit by some wacko that says "Any time a person has sex and then regrets it later, then the other person raped them." Now you have a juror circulating that bogus definition of rape around the other jurors, and you never get to know about it, so you never have the chance to tell the jury, "Whoa whoa, that isn't a legally accurate statement, and here's why." If the jurors had been forced to request such information from the judge, then even if the judge was stupid enough to print out a wikipedia article to define rape (which (s)he wouldn't), at least the defendant would know about it and could challenge it or bring it up to the jury.

Jesus, did you just read his first sentence and then stop? Here, let me repeat the GP's key point for you:

What the fuck does pregnancy have to do with this? asukasoryu's point was that if you cum in a girl without a condom, Kleenex can be used to clean up the mess. That's it.

No, he was implying that if you cum inside a girl with no condom, there is a mess afterwards to clean up. And, for some girls, he is right. With some girls it doesn't all stay inside after you're done.

Re-reading the OP's post, I think I misunderstood his point. I thought he was talking about legally getting away with defending himself, not actually protecting himself with a firearm. I was mistaken. I bow my head in shame.

In both of those stories, the intruder who was killed had discharged a firearm first. Granted, the parent didn't specify that in his list, but it was there in spirit. His point was that you can't even shoot someone who's breaking into your home, let alone attaching a tracking device to your car, as long as they don't attack you directly.

You make it sound like security is just some on/off switch that they forgot to turn on before making the code publicly viewable. That's not how it works. There will always be security improvements to be made to anything, and even... *gasp*... bugs. Especially in a pre-alpha. (If you don't believe me, then show me a major piece of software that's never had a security patch released).

I mean, christ, the code isn't done! They were just making it viewable it to the public so they could get suggestions for improvement. You know, open source and stuff?

No one called it sacrilege, they called it dishonest, because those actions are considered to be theft. And yes, even if your employer is very, VERY mean to you, stealing things from him/her is still theft. It may or may not be justified, but there is no way to argue that it is not theft.

Also, the survey didn't ask people if they would steal a couple boxes of pens from an employer that treated them like shit, cut their pay, bullied them into long hours, and fired them. Rather, the survey asked if people would steal office supplies and/or data from a job that they were leaving. That's all.

In short, stop dramatizing the argument and stick with the facts.

Every time an article comes up involving child pornography I know I'm going to be pissed off by the time I'm done reading the comments. And I was right. Each time I read someone's story like yours (a friend having his life ruined by these laws), part of me dies.

If I had one wish, it would be that every one of these "think of the children!" fuckers gets a microchip implanted in them. The instant that chip detects the person is sexually aroused by a guy/girl under the age of 18, they are immediately convicted as sex offenders and sent to prison for life. That's the only way we can REALLY protect the children, right?

Is that some sort of new female rapper? And who's this Kopete that's working on top of her?

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean when you say "get rid of blue video"? I have VDPAU set in VLC and I've never had a problem with it

You can thank me for that -- Windows 7 was my idea.

At which point people will just start using 3rd party adblocking software again to block all ads, and the cycle continues. Either:

1. Google will predict this cycle happening and thus won't bother trying such a stupid scheme, or
2. Google will not predict this cycle happening, will try what you suggested, and we'll get 3rd party adblocking tools again to compensate for punch-the-monkey ads.

Either way, we've nothing to worry about.

I would argue that you are not a typical desktop user, which is clearly what the GP was getting at.

Oh thank god, I was starting to think that I was the only one who did stuff like this as a child. So I'm not the only opponent of super-micro-management parenting...