QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 23rd June 2011, 8:37pm)
The Cleary household is either rather clever at gaming the system, or is entirely screwed up, in my opinion. Before Ryan was a household word, his brother Mitchell and mother Rita were in court after police seized 39 cannabis plants and three large jars of cannabis. This happened last March. The attorney for Mitchell and Rita said that both of them "
claimed incapacity benefit of £94 per fortnight and that they both suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of public or unfamiliar places." Mitchell smoked canabis to "ease the symptoms of epilepsy."
It worked then with Mitchell, but Mrs. Cleary might have trouble this time. Even if Ryan makes bail, I presume that he won't be allowed to go online as a condition of that bail. And if the UK authorities seem too lenient, there's always the possibility that the FBI will get pissed off and file for extradition of Ryan to the U.S. There appears to be evidence of Ryan's DDoSing and/or hacking that falls within U.S. jurisdiction.
You could also argue that even if Ryan needs psychiatric help, he sure as hell wasn't getting enough of it in his bedroom from his cat. He might be better off anyplace other than his bedroom, even prison. That's particularly true if the court makes sure that he has no Internet connection in his bedroom as a condition of bail or probation or whatever.
I think Mrs. Cleary had her chance already, and by now she is part of the problem.
I think you're really onto something. There should be some kind of outreach to getting people from social services to take a look at the profiles of people that are obviously on their computers to an unhealthy amount of time (e.g. most wikipedia admins) - I remember people did graphs of what times people were online and found a lot of them were doing basically nothing else apart from Wikipedia... I'm smart, young and have a lot more fun things around than Wikipedia but it's so easy for so many people to get sucked in...
I know that sounds so vain and arrogant but I'm being realistic, and the thing is I know I'm not the only one, a lot of the people who get involved in Wikipedia are actually good people, just too trusting and gullible that everything will just work out in the end if they follow this set of semi-religious rules handed down "over the generations" of users - it really does have that kind of religious fervour to it for some definitely, or just pure optimism hoping things can change when the whole system has been built to avoid change to keep the people who profit from "knowing the right people" in power.
The ogliarchical way it works is a lot like the also at least theoretically socialist British politics really and Americans should take a look at that to see how the Wikipedia model works out, really, there's no hard and fast rule saying you have to be a man, have to be from this family, have to go to these private clubs etc but it always works out like that in the end anyway because of the sheer social inertia, the networks built up.
I don't think Wikipedia would cooperate with them but if you think about it the police would be called in if they found someone living like that elsewhere, why is it when they are on the internet and mostly silent they are being basically forgotten about until they get to the worst point like that guy, you have to feel sorry for him really, I mean sniffing lighters... It's the kind of thing I can imagine wikipedia admins doing in between their
sugary drinks really... I think Wikipedia, at least ALL the people involved in the deep part of it, is kind of like a thing for people who're fed up of life and that insecurity fuels a lot of the aggressiveness too, it's the whole "keyboard warrior" mentality, the Wikipedia admins are the same kind of people mentally as the vandals and trolls themselves... That and of course the whole
google.com/search?q="You just have to look around our world today to see that power inspires nothing more than the desire to retain it and to eliminate anything that threatens it."