Kell

Pavel Durov has been indicted in France in front of an investigative judge, he is released from custody on a 5 million euros bail and is forbidden from leaving France during the investigation.

> Similarly, in Civil law jurisdictions (those that take traditions from the French) judges regularly rely on past rulings by respected judges.

You are indeed correct in most of your comment. But in France while it's true that judges read decisions by other judges, they will never ever quote another judge (except the ECHR). If for instance the Court de cassation (One of the French three (or four, or five, depends on how you count them) Supreme Courts) has said that "X has to be interpreted as Y". Lower judges will start using the sentence directly lifted from the Court de cassation decision "X should be interpreted as Y", but without quotation marks or any sort of attribution. It's a fiction that the judge came up with this interpretation by himself. Sometimes the judge will use some sort of caveat like "Il est constant que" ("It is always the case that") which is a way of saying that he is looking at precedent, without saying it explicitly.

If a judge did quote directly the Court de cassation with attribution, his decision could be appealed and be overthrown by the Court de cassation itself.

And if a judge disagrees with our Supreme Court, he will oftentimes without any hesitation "enter in resistance" (issuing decisions that go against the Court de cassation interpretation), the idea is that this is the way judges try to get the Supreme Court to change its opinion. This is also possible because he have more or less 90 judges in the Court de cassation, and turnover is quite high, so if a decision was only one or two votes in a direction (which no one knows because the votes are secret and the ratio of yays and nays also is secret), in a year, a judge or two at the court may change and the position could change.

My conclusion would be that in France we do respect precedent most of the time... but only if the judge agree with it. Our judges have a natural inclination to ignore precedent. Meanwhile in Common law countries, there is a natural inclination ot respect it... but sometimes judges disagree.

Caveat : In France, decisions by the Constitutional Council (the "Higher" Supreme Court... the Court of cassation would disagree on the "Higher" part) do create binding precedent... because those decision can change directly the text of the law. If the Council says that a sentence in a law is unconstitutional. Then the sentence is stripped out of the Code itself. Lower judges cannot therefore ignore it.

We don't know if they tried to get a tax ruling beforehand. And unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with the case to speculate on it.

The French gov can only give prosecutors general instruction and those have to be written down. Oral instructions and individual instructions (prosecute that case, drop that other one) are forbidden.

A prosecutor can still try to please the government, by doing things he thinks the gov will like, but if he receive an instruction on that matter... that would be quite a bit scandalous.

Anyway... the National Prosecutor for Financial Affairs has shown that she is quite feisty. She goes after a lot of people with a lot of power. With or without gov. aproval.

Sales office or not, the important aspect of this raid is to gather business data, not technical data. And emails are probably the most important thing they are after.

>this can happen in France given the way in which laws are prosecuted,

I am a French lawyer.

So I have to disagree. This is not the case here. The prosecutors are plainly saying that Google did something outright illegal by misinterpreting on purpose a clause in the French Irish tax convention.

According to the prosecutors in this case Google used a clause sheltering pure advertisement and research subsidiaries of Irish companies from having to pay French tax. But this clause is clearly intended to protect subsidiaries doing market research and advertising a product in advance of actually selling it in France (And also for subsidiaries doing purely informative business (tech support, warranty management etc.) and pure research).

So Google is saying that they do advertisement, so that this clause apply to them, but a reading of the part of the convention that was made public by the prosecutors, clearly show that this is apparently wrong. But the fact that I still haven't found the full convention is a huge caveat :).

So most of developed countries would have enough to prosecute.

Disclosure : French law is my field of work but I only have knowledge of this case by the media (which is terrible in legal matters in France, really, worse than the US sometimes).

It seems that the prosecutors are using a small clause in the French Irish tax treaty saying that the taxation rules applying to a corporation officially incorporated in Ireland are different (implying much higher than the Irish 12.5%), if this corporation has a "stable establishment" in France. The prosecutor is arguing that this applies to Google, so that paying only the Irish 12.5% was illegal.

So no, they are not being accused of using legal methods to minimise their tax bills.

The main problem is actually a even more complicated. It rests on the understanding of the wording of the convention relating to the words "Fixed installation of affairs used only for purposes of advertising (...)" (those are exempted from the "stable establishment" exemption).Google argues that their advertising business makes them exempt to it. Meanwhile French prosecutors argue this clause is intended for companies advertising their own products (imagine Tesla having an agency in France advertising the Tesla cars because they intend to open a point of sale in France, but not selling them yet), not the actual sale of advertisement space like Google do.

And frankly when reading the elements of the convention the Prosecutors have made public... they seem to have a pretty solid ground.

PS : Yay at last, being a tech fan with french legal background is useful !

> Edit: Remembered one more: Juries deciding whether murderers are guilty or not. Simply unthinkable over here. Ironically the horror of this scenario is fuelled by the US/Hollywood itself.

Maybe not in Germany, but France has juries for murder case since 1810, actually, a jury is theoretically mandatory for any case where a sentence of more than 10 years in prison is possible. The accused cannot waive this "right" like in some cases in the US. (in practice, because juries take a lot of court time, are shaky and difficult to manage, prosecutors often will prosecute a serious crime like a less serious similar one to avoid having to go in front of a jury (e.g. instead of prosecuting something as rape, do it as if it was sexual assault). The prosecutor must have the agreement of the victim and the accused to do it).

Also, it's not only France. Austria, Greece, Italy, Belgium and others have that sort of jury.

So Yubikey would work. It identifies itself as a Keyboard to the OS.

> Especially as one can't force CSS to stop calling it color.

Actually... It's (jokingly) possible :)

http://spiffingcss.com/

So what are you proposing in this case, that the original poster had kept the Wikipedia title? Or that the linked Wikipedia article shouldn't have been posted at all ?

Because hn's anti editorialization policy is useless in both cases. For, in the first case, without editorialization, the title is completely useless except for experts on the subject. And for the second case, it has nothing to do with title editorialization, but with content.

About the blue color and color-blindness problem...

It depends on the colors badges can be, apart from blue. If they can be yellow or green... that might be a problem because of tritanopia and tritanomaly. But I only know of blue and orange badges. So true... those orange badges might appear red to someone with tritanopia... but he's not going to mistake a blue badge with an orange-red one.

You are still right for the fully achromats out there. But a shading level difference between the orange and the blue badge could be enough. Otherwise, a simple indicative letter is enough (E for employees, I for interns and C for contractors would be more than enough).

Again... if there are more than two colors for those badges (green, yellow, red?) the problem of relying on color to convey information could be more problematic.

I've lived in part of the poorest region of Brazil in 2004. Most people I knew in middle class could afford at least a computer good enough to download things on emule or kazaa (BT was just starting to get popular but was still more geeky by then, where I lived) ... And I was impressed by the pirating knowledge... People who barely knew how to use Word and Excel, could download, or had a son who knew how to do it. Yet they couldn't afford to consume movies and music at the normal price. Because of extremly High tariffs, cultural goods where more expensive than in the US or Europe. And yet salary was much lower...

Broadband was expensive too, but 512k was something like 60$... And because internet access had so much more use than just consuming cultural information, people would prefer to get it and save on something else. Like the dvds that they would get by pirating.

Before 2002 when Broadband access was excessively rare... Most people would just buy pirated dvds from the flea market... For 5 $ or less. They where ready to pay for them... but at a lower price than what official goods where... You never bought dvd for youself except if you were wealthy or to give them as gifts.

In most of Europe, actually, laws can be retroactive... What is forbidden is a harsher criminal law. For example, creating an incrimination by law after a crime has been committed is a harsher criminal law and is forbidden. But if the legislator wishes to repeal a criminal law, the new softer law can be retroactive. It's called retroactivity in mitius.

I don't know if it's the same in Germany, but it's probable[1]. If so, then yes, the german legislator can make this case disapear completly by making the laws on the subject softer.

[1] Actually, I used to think that this rule was universal, because it seemed to be common sense... but that rule might not exist in countries of Common Law ?

It's because in France and Belgium we have a category, called "Magistrat" that contains both the judges (independent, neutral etc.) and the prosecutors (neither independent, nor neutral). So we often discuss it saying that judges are neutral magistrates. Sometimes this is lost in translation :).

Edit : And the Juge d'Instruction IS a special judge, because he doesn't judge anything, his job is to head all investigations in serious and complicated cases. Normally that would be the prosecutors job... so it's an independent and trully neutral man (a judge) doing a prosecutor job, in the interest of the accusation and the defense, at the same time. That's quite special.

Actually, it's not exactly two investigations. In criminal cases, if you face at least 10 years in jail, the investigation is not headed by the prosecution or the police, it's a special judge, who's actually a sitting independent judge. And his job is to head an investigation, seeking both proofs for you or against you (with the help of the police, who executes his orders and requests), and then presenting everything to the prosecution and the defense lawyers before going into trial. So because his job is not to convict you, like the prosecution, his investigation is actually much more neutral, with some exceptions.

It's quite a good system in theory, but it has some quirks.

Hahahaha. You're funny.

Ok. So I'm doing a strawman... But you're not doing an argument from authority ?

So let's be clear. Bell's theorem is not an "old thing". I mean, what serious scientist argue something like that... (Yep, that's a No true Scotsman ;-) ) I've never encountered any argument in that direction. Of course some people argue against some of the derivations of Bell's theorem, and his test, but against the soundness of the theorem in itself ? For the record : "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."

Then people who challenge the consequences of Bell's Theorem, argue for Non Local Hidden Variables (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9906036v1.pdf). But frankly, non locality is not at all in the actual consensus of quantum physicists. It would have huge consequences on special relativity.

So, again, if you want to argue that Non locality is true, welcome to a completely new world of physics. As of today, no one have any proof that non-locality is real. The scientific consensus is that No communication theorem is a much more credible solution to the EPR paradox. I mean of course some people say that proof of NCT are circular. But most only do because they think we can find a better proof of it.

How many serious scientists work on disproving the Non Communication Theorem ? John Cramer ? Some people in his lab ? That's mostly it. And as of today... they found nothing I am aware of.

And then what are your references ? A nature article, published in the vulgarization part of the review and non peer reviewed ? That short blog post that show very limited understanding of the problems with Quantum Entanglement ?

Anyway, if No Com Theorem is false, boy what a world, time traveling become possible, teleportation, several other sci-fi things. That would be great. But probably will never happen.

"If you have a particle (such as a photons, electrons, or molecule) and have it physically interact with another particle, and then separate them, the result is that they can then both be described as being in the same quantum mechanical state. Basically, they are now the same, in factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.

However, because we are dealing with quantum mechanics, the state of those particles remains undefined until measured (because it would then be forced to assume a specific state)."

No they are NOT in the same quantum mechanical state at the moment of entanglement. They are, as you said later, undetermined until measurement (or better, until the collapse of the wavefunction). So they are not the same before, unless you accept the completely discredited theory of local hidden variables (cf. Bell's Theorem). They are connected, by the spooky action at a distance, and at the moment of measurement of one, the other will react accordingly. But before that measurement neither are in any state at all.

But at least I've pinpointed the point where you got QT wrong : "Say you had a binary bit you wanted to transfer. First, you must entangle the bits. Then, put one of them on the other side of the globe. Observe one of them, forcing it to assume a certain state, and the other will instantly change. Like magic."

The problem, see, is that, by definition of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wavefunction is completely random. You can't force a photon to assume the state you want, it'll assume a random state. Then the other photon will indeed assume the symmetrical state. But that's still be the product of the randomness of the first measurement.

In other words, causality has not been violated because no information is transmitted, only randomness. It's like having two connected dices separated by hundred of miles, when you roll a 1, the other rolls a 6, when you roll a 2 the other will roll a 5 etc. So you roll your dice, and you look at it. You got a 4 ! Great. Now you know that somewhere around in the world someone is looking at his own dice and seeing a 3. Did you transmit any kind of information ? No you knew beforehand that the guy would have a symmetrical result. And you can't tell him a message, because it's completely random. How would you say to your friend on the other side of the planet "Hello" ? You just got 5 fours in a row on the dice... Your friend know it. But that has no meaning at all.

Now, of course, you can imagine local hidden variables, that could be read beforehand to influence the result. Or use another way of influencing the result of the wavefunction collapse, so that a message could be transmitted. But that's what I was speaking of when I said that you had first to reinvent the laws of physics. Cause the Bell's theorem and the No Communication Theorem forbid it in the actual understanding of science. Boy I would love to live in an universe where we can so easily violate causality. That would be FUN !

Oh, I'm happy to tell you that you should read a bit about the No-Communication Theorem.

Here, this post explain it fairly well : http://lesswrong.com/lw/q2/spooky_action_at_a_distance_the_n...

Maybe that (non peer reviewed) author at nature should read it too.

The wikipedia page for the no communication theorem is fine too. Or this technical article : http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0212023.pdf

... Quantum teleportation as a mean of transmitting information ?

You know that as of today, QT is completely unable of transmitting data... It transmits a quantum state instantly yes, but that "transmission" cannot in any way be used to transmit any form of data, it would be a severe breach of relativity theory. Look, it's the second sentence of the Wikipedia article on the subject : "Because it depends on classical communication, which can proceed no faster than the speed of light, it cannot be used for superluminal transport or communication of classical bits" [1].

And anyway, the Quantum Communication Measurement and Computing Conference, is not about QT, even if it is probably a discussed subject. The scope of that conference is : "Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Communications, Quantum Measurement and Quantum Metrology, Quantum Computing and Quantum Information Theory, Implementations of Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Simulations, Quantum Control, Foundations of Quantum Physics" [2].

So QT may serve as a way to allow really fast transmission of data, but for that, first physicist would have to completely reinvent physics. That's of course a possibility. But don't count on it as a "soon enough for a broader audience than just physicists" thing. We are decades away from such a breakthrough. And then, if that sort of breakthrough happens... gosh, that would probably change the face of the world in a much more important way than just a faster wireless data feed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation [2] http://qcmc2012.org/about-qcmc/

Hum. If someone is saying that men can't take care of children. He or She is not a feminist. You know that not every women is a feminist right ? Now... the problem is that the judicial system is macho and, yes, thinks that only a woman can take care of a child. That's utterly chauvinistic (in the American sense of chauvinistic).

Actually I'm not answering the rest of your post it's too much hate filled and trollistic to deserve a response. I'm sorry you feel like that.

The Church had almost nothing to do with the catacombs in Paris (I don't know about the others, but IIRC in Rome it's also more complicated since they were created at a time where the Church had almost no political power and not very much wealth... but I could be mistaken for Rome). The Parisian "catacombs" were created in preexisting tunnels. And actually weren't catacombs at all, because people never wanted to be buried there, it's not a necropolis. The catacombs were created because the monarchy in France was pissed with the old Innocent Cemetery which was in the very center of Paris, just north of the City Island and was spreading diseases, wasting real estate and serving as a harbor to criminals etc. Also the graveyard was literally overflowing (yep, literally, basement walls in houses nearby had started to crumble under the pressure of the accumulated bones). So by a royal edict of 1785 the bones in the Innocent Cemetery where moved to an underground ossuary, that became known as the Catacombs of Paris. The Church only did the praying and rituals allowing for the transfer of the dead.

But the tunnels where actually the old Parisian quarries.. And people dug those for centuries, at times of war and peace, with rules or without. It was everything but based on a large, stable and wealthy institution. Damn, even during the Revolution people still worked in those tunnels. And miners who worked in the 16th and 17th century were pretty much free workers who lived by selling building material that they mined underground.

You can also create a Conspiracy theorist persona. Keep asking questions online with a semi anonymous account about the government excess, about the moon, the aliens, the freemasons etc.

Then if in court you can try to argue that for a tin foil hat like you, the actual tin foil cell phone protection isn't an indication of anything. And much less suspicious.

:-).

The problem I see is that your kids are in school the week... And you should have at least one day with your kids (society benefits a lot of this, and it makes day care cheaper) . Maybe have either Saturday or Sunday of mandated free time, and then Amazon could hire people either Sunday or Saturday...

Maybe that's why I live in France :-).

I think it's what he is saying. Govs take money from the private sector to develop long term things, that the private sector won't have the leverage and the pockets to do, but the aggregate of a whole nation can. What OP is saying is that we need both. States to do basic and fundamental long term research. And applied, short term, cost reducing research, to give what the gov helped discover to the public at large.

That's probably because Orwell's utopia is too extreme to happen... the steps that lead to it are too radical, and can only happen in some extreme circonstances.

So Orwell was a little paranoid... but Huxley was spot on.

Hu? Not telling you what's in it ? Isn't the recipe open sourced and extensively discussed on their website ?

Like here for example : http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424 ?

What about two 16 years old teens having conscient, consenting sex ? In some states that can be considered rape... If I think this kind of definition of rape is dumb... I can't challenge it? .. just because you said so? It's not because some people challenging its definition are rape apologists, that the challenge should be forbidden at all.

But yeah... drunk unwilling sex is pretty much rape.

Well, Android runs a javaesque language, and still they had to rewrite... because Mobile isn't Desktop. So not matter what language they choose... they'll have to rewrite for mobile.

Yes, but I think he's speaking about some other taxes, like the infamous (to french people) "redevance audiovisuelle". The ~120€ tax that you pay annually for owning a tv set. But actually, here in France, this tax only subsidize the French Movie Industry and the Public TV Channels (Fr2, Fr3, Fr4, FrO, Tv5, France24 etc.), not the broadband connection.

Still, the broadband connection is subsidized by the gov, so somewhere there are taxes being collected to pay for it. But does it justify the 4 fold price markup in the US ? I don't think so.