STOCKHOLM, Sweden – According to a published report on TorrentFreak.com, prosecutor Hakan Roswal announced this week that he plans to file copyright-infringement charges against five people associated with The Pirate cialis in usa Bay before Jan. 31, 2008.

Officials from The Pirate Bay, which bills itself as "the world's largest torrent tracker," said they are confident that Roswal's plans will not be successful. However, they said, they are ready to move to another country if necessary.

The report states that only two people associated with The Pirate Bay have been identified: co-founder Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom, former CEO of Rix Telecom, which at one time provided bandwidth to the site.

According to TorrentFreak.com, The Pirate Bay officials contend that they run a search engine and do not store any copyrighted material on their servers. The site has come under fire from law-enforcement agencies seeking to shut down its trading of copyrighted material, which is illegal in several countries.

Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay's offices in May 2006, taking the site offline for three days. The site returned after relocating to the Netherlands. The offices since have moved back to Sweden.

Earlier this week, The Pirate Bay announced plans to develop its own software after BitTorrent Inc., whose technology the site currently uses, announced that it was making deals with mainstream content providers.

The site typically has more than 1.5 million daily visitors.

Publish Date: November 11, 2007

By Ari Melber, AlterNet
Posted on November 10, 2007, Printed on November 11, 2007

Does the Democratic Party still stand for human rights and civil liberties?

Yes and no.

Most rank-and-file Democrats strongly support constitutional rights, from grizzled ACLU liberals to Iowa Caucus voters to MoveOn's web enthusiasts, and the issue regularly competes with Iraq as a top priority for party activists. Yet Democratic leaders are much more ambivalent. The Democratic Congress buckled in its largest civil liberties clash with the White House, passing legislation to expand warrantless spying in August. And while Democratic presidential contenders are better — they all opposed the surveillance bill and the administration's unconstitutional Military Commissions Act — few have used the full power of their office to advocate constitutional rights. As the Bush era of radical secrecy, unitary executive power and openly unconstitutional leadership draws to a close, the Democrats are still debating how to restore rights and liberties while waging a more effective battle against terrorists.

In the presidential field, Chris Dodd has outlined the most thorough civil liberties platform. The 26-year Senate veteran is the author of major legislation to restore habeas corpus and repeal the Military Commission Act. He also led the congressional battle against retroactive immunity for telephone companies that illegally assisted the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance. Joe Biden has staked out a leadership role on civil liberties as well. He was the first presidential candidate to back Dodd's pledge to filibuster Bush's surveillance bill — later Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton followed suit — and he was the first Democrat to introduce legislation reversing the controversial July executive order authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Biden's legislation, "The National Security with Justice Act," would also close U.S. government "black sites," require that all interrogations comply with the Army Field Manual and provide oversight to constrain the administration's use of "rendition" (the practice of outsourcing torture to other countries). Yet the bill does not have a single Senate co-sponsor — an indication of how reticent Democratic leaders are in this area.

The remaining Democratic frontrunners do not prioritize civil liberties much on the campaign trail, though they do advocate constitutional rights in contrast to the Bush administration. Obama, Clinton and John Edwards each say that if elected, for example, they will restore habeas corpus, close Guantanamo and halt illegal domestic spying. Obama and Clinton have both cosponsored stand-alone legislation to restore habeas corpus. And unlike Clinton, Obama has signed on to Dodd's more comprehensive bill, the "Restoring the Constitution Act," which has 13 co-sponsors. Edwards, a former senator, has not specifically spoken out on the bill, though he has endorsed several of its proponents in several addresses challenging the entire doctrine of a "Global War on Terror." Clinton also categorically ruled out the use of torture during a presidential debate in September, withdrawing her previous position that torture could be justified in a ticking time-bomb scenario.

Yet across the country, Democratic voters support a constitutional rights agenda much more forcefully than their elected leaders. According to survey that Belden Russonello & Stewart conducted this September, 81 percent of Democrats oppose torture, 70 percent favor restoring of habeas corpus, and 69 percent want to close Guantanamo. Iowa's pivotal (and knowledgeable) Democratic electorate supports these priorities at even higher rates than the national averages, including 94 percent opposition to torture and 88 percent support for habeas corpus. Democrats would not alienate swing voters on this score, either. The national survey found Independents had similar views, including higher support for habeas corpus (80 percent) and opposition to torture (87 percent) than Democrats across the country.

Civil liberties advocates say these positions, among Democrats and independents alike, are animated both by frustration with Bush's failures and a desire for new leadership that wages a battle against terrorists the "American way." That is the philosophy behind a new liberal group, the American Freedom Campaign, calling on all the presidential aspirants to affirm American values in the Constitution by strongly backing a freedom "pledge." That includes a policy commitment to restore habeas corpus, secure rights of the accused, ban all torture and defend personal liberties. With backing from MoveOn.org, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights, among others, the group has already elicited letters of support from each of the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Yet even that important list of priorities is not sufficient to restore the rule of law in the post-Bush era. Though members of Congress rarely admit it, and the public may not appreciate it, the most significant rejections of President Bush's counterterror policies have actually come from the courts — not from Congress or elections. The conservative Supreme Court has twice rejected Bush's detention policies at Guantanamo in the landmark Rasul and Hamdan decisions. Lower federal courts have also rebuffed executive programs to detain a U.S. citizen without trial and spy on Americans without the required warrants. Yet Bush has repeatedly responded by maligning court oversight as a barrier to national security and attempting to circumvent the rulings. Congress has reinforced that approach, even after the Democrats took control this year, by passing legislation to validate surveillance rebuffed by the courts; granting immunity to potential war criminals and contractors in Iraq; and stripping habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, which responded to the Hamdan decision in 2006. (The State Department also secretly granted immunity to Blackwater bodyguards, as the Associated Press reported this week.)

These congressional acts are counterintuitive, under traditional models of American government, because Congress is complicit in the reduction of its own power. The founders envisioned each branch of government asserting itself by checking the others — "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," as James Madison declared in the Federalist Papers. Under both Republican and Democratic control, however, Congress has cialis how it works let its power ebb — and assisted executive encroachments on the judicial branch. Thus civil libertarians must move on two fronts, advocating policy priorities (like habeas corpus) and pressing politicians to address vital — but vague — notions of restoring the proper constitutional separation of powers.

The next president should work with Congress to strengthen the branch of government that makes the law work: the courts. Civil libertarians can press candidates to outline their specific policies to strengthen judicial oversight — including potential misconduct in the next White House. The public is also entitled to know how a candidate would select judges with fidelity to the law — not deference to the executive branch. Another sleeper judicial issue for the campaign agenda is the administration's expansion of the "state secrets privilege," often referred to as a "nuclear" doctrine in government circles. The Bush administration has shut down scores of important cases by radically expanding the state secrets privilege, a Cold War doctrine allowing the executive to completely preempt a case by asserting that state secrets are jeopardized. Thus cases die without judges ever reviewing the underlying claims, or descriptions of the alleged secrets. (Here conservatives have swapped "judicial activism" for judicial torpor.) The American Bar Association has criticized the administration's abuse of this doctrine, and the bipartisan Constitution Project is advocating major reforms to the privilege. The issue sounds obscure now, but if evangelical activists could popularize their fight over "strict constructionist judges," civil libertarians can show peace and human rights activists how this doctrine has prevented accountability for numerous allegations of torture, rendition, detention and spying — fortifying a model of executive power that is remarkably unaccountable to the public.

There is a common theme in all of these measures. They affirm American values and enjoy wide support among Democratic and independent voters, but remain largely neglected by Democratic leaders.

It is an old fissure within the party. The 2000 Democratic Platform, for example, was notable for its prescient emphasis on how terrorism challenges an open society. The platform proposed to "disrupt terrorist networks" before they attack while protecting the "civil liberties of all Americans" and securing "the rights of the accused, even under the unusual circumstances of the investigation of threats to our national security." The document even singled out Osama Bin Laden as a key target for the United States, while the Republicans' 2000 platform does not mention him.

Yet even if the Democrats' 2000 platform reflected popular opinion within the party, it obviously did not drive party leaders after 9/11. Today, the question is whether the failures of the Bush administration have finally shown Democratic leaders what their constituents — and many other Americans — already believed. The United States can wage a battle against its enemies without sacrificing freedom, justice and democracy at home.

Ari Melber is a regular contributor to the Nation magazine and writer for its Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.the Nation magazine and writer for its Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign. is a regular contributor to the Nation magazine and writer for its Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign. and writer for its Campaign '08 blog, and a contributing editor at the Personal Democracy Forum. He served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and was a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.

Programmers enjoy a reputation for being peculiar people. In fact, even within the development community, there are certain programmer archetypes that other programmers find strange. Here are 10 types of programmers you are likely to run across. Can you think of any more?

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Gandalf

This programmer type looks like a short-list candidate to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. He (or even she!) has a beard halfway to his knees, a goofy looking hat, and may wear a cape or a cloak in the winter. Luckily for the team, this person is just as adept at working magic as Gandalf. Unluckily for the team, they will need to endure hours of stories from Gandalf about how he or she to walk uphill both ways in the snow to drop off the punch cards at the computer room. The Gandalf type is your heaviest hitter, but you try to leave them in the rear and call them up only in times of desperation.

#2: The Martyr

In any other profession, The Martyr is simply a “workaholic.” But in the development field, The Martyr goes beyond that and into another dimension. Workaholics at least go home to shower and sleep. The Martyr takes pride in sleeping at the desk amidst empty pizza boxes. The problem is, no one ever asked The Martyr to work like this. And he or she tries to guilt-trip the rest of the team with phrases like, “Yeah, go home and enjoy dinner. I’ll finish up the next three week’s worth of code tonight.”

#3: Fanboy

Watch out for Fanboy. If he or she corners you, you’re in for a three-hour lecture about the superiority of Dragonball Z compared to Gundam Wing, or why the Playstation 3 is better than the XB 360. Fanboy’s workspace is filled with posters, action figures, and other knick-knacks related to some obsession, most likely imported from Japan. Not only are Fanboys obnoxious to deal with, they often put so much time into the obsession (both in and out of the office) that they have no clue when it comes to doing what they were hired to do.

#4: Vince Neil

This 40-something is a throwback to 1984 in all of the wrong ways. Sporting big hair, ripped stonewashed jeans, and a bandana here or there, Vince sits in the office humming Bon Jovi and Def Leppard tunes throughout the workday. This would not be so bad if “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was not so darned infectious.

Vince is generally a fun person to work with, and actually has a ton of experience, but just never grew up. But Vince becomes a hassle when he or she tries living the rock ‘n roll lifestyle to go with the hair and hi-tops. It’s fairly hard to work with someone who carries a hangover to work every day.

#5: The Ninja

The Ninja is your team’s MVP, and no one knows it. Like the legendary assassins, you do not know that The Ninja is even in the building or working, but you discover the evidence in the morning. You fire up the source control system and see that at 4 AM, The Ninja checked in code that addresses the problem you planned to spend all week working on, and you did not even know that The Ninja was aware of the project! See, while you were in Yet Another Meeting, The Ninja was working.

Ninjas are so stealthy, you might not even know their name, but you know that every project they’re on seems to go much more smoothly. Tread carefully, though. The Ninja is a lone warrior; don’t try to force him or her to work with rank and file.

#6: The Theoretician

The Theoretician knows everything there is to know about programming. He or she can spend four hours lecturing about the history of an obscure programming language or providing a proof of how the code you wrote is less than perfectly optimal and may take an extra three nanoseconds to run. The problem is, The Theoretician does not know a thing about software development. When The Theoretician writes code, it is so “elegant” that mere mortals cannot make sense of it. His or her favorite technique is recursion, and every block of code is tweaked to the max, at the expense of timelines and readability.

The Theoretician is also easily distracted. A simple task that should take an hour takes Theoreticians three months, since they decide that the existing tools are not sufficient and they must build new tools to build new libraries to build a whole new system that meets their high standards. The Theoretician can be turned into one of your best players, if you can get him or her to play within the boundaries of the project itself and stop spending time working on The Ultimate Sorting Algorithm.

#7: The Code Cowboy

The Code Cowboy is a force of nature that cannot be stopped. He or she is almost always a great programmer and can do work two or three times faster than anyone else. The problem is, at least half of that speed comes by cutting corners.  The Code Cowboy feels that checking code into source control takes too long, storing configuration data outside of the code itself takes too long, communicating with anyone else takes too long… you get the idea.

The Code Cowboy’s code is a spaghetti code mess, because he or she was working so quickly that the needed refactoring never happened. Chances are, seven pages’ worth of core functionality looks like the “don’t do this” example of a programming textbook, but it magically works. The Code Cowboy definitely does not play well with others. And if you put two Code Cowboys on the same project, it is guaranteed to fail, as they trample on each other’s changes and shoot each other in the foot.

Put a Code Cowboy on a project where hitting the deadline is more important than doing it right, and the code will be done just before deadline every time. The Code Cowboy is really just a loud, boisterous version of The Ninja. While The Ninja executes with surgical precision, The Code Cowboy is a raging bull and will gore anything that gets in the way.

#8: The Paratrooper

You know those movies where a sole commando is air-dropped deep behind enemy lines and comes out with the secret battle plans? That person in a software development shop is The Paratrooper. The Paratrooper is the last resort programmer you send in to save a dying project. Paratroopers lack the patience to work on a long-term assignment, but their best asset is an uncanny ability to learn an unfamiliar codebase and work within it. Other programmers might take weeks or months to learn enough about a project to effectively work on it; The Paratrooper takes hours or days. Paratroopers might not learn enough to work on the core of the code, but the lack of ramp-up time means that they can succeed where an entire team might fail.

#9: Mediocre Man

“Good enough” is the best you will ever get from Mediocre Man. Don’t let the name fool you; there are female varieties of Mediocre Man too. And he or she always takes longer to produce worse code cialis herbal alternative than anyone else on the team. “Slow and steady barely finishes the race” could describe Mediocre Man’s projects. But Mediocre Man is always just “good enough” to remain employed.

When you interview this type, they can tell you a lot about the projects they’ve been involved with but not much about their actual involvement. Filtering out the Mediocre Man type is fairly easy: Ask for actual details of the work they’ve done, and they suddenly get a case of amnesia. Let them into your organization, though, and it might take years to get rid of them.

#10: The Evangelist

No matter what kind of environment you have, The Evangelist insists that it can be improved by throwing away all of your tools and processes and replacing them with something else. The Evangelist is actually the opposite of The Theoretician. The Evangelist is outspoken, knows an awful lot about software development, but performs very little actual programming.

The Evangelist is secretly a project manager or department manager at heart but lacks the knowledge or experience to make the jump. So until The Evangelist is able to get into a purely managerial role, everyone else needs to put up with his or her attempts to revolutionize the workplace.