Well, if it's this instead of blowing up a building or two as a means of protest... I'm not too upset about punters needing to pop down to the shops for a few days.
Hackers deface 'sinful' French Euromillions site
Hackers sprayed digital graffiti on the French Euromillions website over the weekend as part of a protest against the "sin" of gambling. A group identifying itself as the “Moroccanghosts” hacking crew posted messages decrying the lottery as the work of the devil in both French and Arabic after breaking into the euromillions.fr …
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Monday 29th October 2012 14:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Oh that makes it alright then.
I tell you what, maybe if they stop trying to impose their way of life on us then maybe we might learn to accept theirs.
I am sick to fucking death of these idiots (my personal opinion btw) trying to ram their skewed views down our throats. We pussy foot around them, pander to them and then let them shit on us. Maybe, just maybe we need to start growing a pair.
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Tuesday 30th October 2012 00:56 GMT Graham Marsden
Re: @Jim Booth
"I merely point out that leave us alone and we will leave you alone. Clearly, this is too much to ask to some people."
And have you ever considered that *THEY* might be saying exactly the same thing???
Imagine someone started interfering in your country's political affairs? Imagine if they invaded your part of the world because they thought they knew best about how things should be run? What would you do?
Do you think you might say to them "leave us alone and we will leave you alone"?
Still, clearly, this is too much to ask to some people...
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Tuesday 30th October 2012 13:35 GMT EvilGav 1
Re: @Evil Auditor @Jim Booth
Stating "grow a pair" := "invade their country"
It means stop pandering to them *in your own country*.
In point of fact, there actually wouldn't even *be* as many hardline muslim countries without the West (i'm thinking Egypt and Libya here) - the overthrow of their governments was done with the help of the West, after the incumbent populations started the ball rolling.
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Tuesday 30th October 2012 15:23 GMT Graham Marsden
Re: @Evil Auditor @Jim Booth
> It means stop pandering to them *in your own country*.
Yes, because Freedom of Expression only applies to people who have views we like...
> In point of fact, there actually wouldn't even *be* as many hardline muslim countries without the West (i'm thinking Egypt and Libya here) - the overthrow of their governments was done with the help of the West, after the incumbent populations started the ball rolling."
And I'm thinking of eg Iran where the West colluded to overthrow the Shah (and then *got* a hardline Muslim country!)
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Monday 29th October 2012 17:06 GMT toadwarrior
Re: We pussy foot around them, pander to them and then let them shit on us.
Does france even have unmanned drones? Just because the US does something stupid doesn't mean all western nations should be punished.
By that logic the iraq war was right because we can lump all brown people into one group.
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Monday 29th October 2012 17:25 GMT sabroni
@toadwarrior
Don't be a dick. The sentence "We pussy foot around them, pander to them and then let them shit on us." is obviously not about the defacement of the lottery website, it's a comment on "us" meaning the west, and "them" meaning Muslims. My reply was to that statement, not a comment about the subject of the article.
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Monday 29th October 2012 18:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We pussy foot around them, pander to them and then let them shit on us.
Oh please, do not tar all Western countries with the US brush. This is not about bombing civilians. That is abhorrent in my opinion and a completely separate issue. This is about trying to impose religious views from one group of people who believe one thing onto another who do not. Respect our right to believe is what we want to (or not) and we will respect yours, its that simple.
I have muslim friends and they do not impose their views on me and I do not impose my lack of views ( i am an atheist) on them. Its called mutual respect.
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Tuesday 30th October 2012 12:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
I do not impose my lack of views ( i am an atheist) on them
2 points.
Atheism is not 'lack of views'. I'm an atheist and hold this view very strongly - admittedly to me it is not a 'view' or even a 'belief', but a conviction.
The second point is what happens when simply having an alternate view is considered disrespectful to the other party? Some 'views' are by their very nature intolerant of others, and can NEVER hold 'mutual respect'.
Your muslim friends may be nice to you as a person, but to them you are still an Infidel, and their religion tells them how to handle infidels. If they had to choose between their religion and you....well...I wouldn't hold any hope.
Qur’an:9:5 “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”
Hmm....not much in the way of 'mutual respect' here then.
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Monday 29th October 2012 13:48 GMT Sky
It really makes me upset seeing old ladies at the local newsagent patiently doing the lottery, clearly some of them really need money, and are putting so much hope in it. Not really related to this article or to the lottery, but more related to the sad state of affairs when living costs are so high and we're getting scr**ed for higher energy, fuel, food costs.
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Monday 29th October 2012 15:06 GMT Lee Dowling
Re: @Sky
Until you have no money, you don't really see just how much people throw away every day anyway.
Sure, there are absolute essentials, but your TV isn't one. Or your phone (lots of cheap packages for infrequent users or those who receive-only). Or your Internet. Or your lottery. Or your pet (VERY expensive, as pointed out above), or your knitting, or vast swathes of your daily life.
I bet the little old lady buying the ticket spends more on "Christmas hamper funds" that get lost in the profit of the company itself (not to mention the risk of bankruptcy), isn't on the best phone package, pays a fortune for her house insurance because the company she's with hasn't changed since the 70's, has a bank account that charges her, has a (now digital!) TV with probably a cable subscription package or Sky even if her son set it up for her, maybe a second TV in the kitchen, a tumble-dryer, a dishwasher, etc. not to mention what she spends on the grandchildren when they come.
If people do it - that's their prerogative. Sure, I have no sympathy if they then come begging for a tenner, but you don't tend to see financially-dependent elder generations. That's really the domain of the young, while the old live off carefully managed pensions, paid their "stamp" religiously, claim only the benefit they actually need, don't have four-kids in the house going hungry while they play on Wii, etc.
Sure, it's all crass generalisations but that's what I see. The people who are throwing their money away are either old and have it to throw away (and if they didn't do lottery, they'd give it to the grandkids in Pepsi or something), or the younger generations who don't have it, get it from taxpayers somehow and STILL throw it away on worse AND then claim poverty.
I don't really think the older generations have much to worry about compared to the 7-child families who ignore the paid-for family planning, cost the police, NHS, social services, etc. a fortune to manage, run rings around the benefit red-tape, live in a paid-for house, keep their driving licences with 40 points because it's "vital to their profession" despite the fact they spend all their money on drink and then go run people over, etc. By comparison, one little old lady and her cat having a weekly flutter doesn't even register any more.
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Monday 29th October 2012 13:49 GMT Manny Bianco
Oh you believers...
"Oh you believers. Wine, games of chance, statues all augur impurity and are the work of the devil."
"Believers." I assume, the majority of those using the website are not believers in that particular religion, so the message doesn't apply to them.
These religious nutters always ruin the party for everyone else. They're like the burned crisp at the bottom of the packet.
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Monday 29th October 2012 15:10 GMT Lee Dowling
Re: Oh you believers...
Or, as I've found myself saying a lot lately:
He's your god, they're your rules, you're the one that will burn in your hell.
Me? I'm a non-believer but if the option comes up I'll have the endless feast with forty virgins and none of the guilt, thanks. So long as I don't have to "bet" my whole life on that being what awaits me if I've been a good boy by some arbitrary set of rules that nobody can agree on.
As a mathematician / scientist, I'll take the bet that nothing bad will happen to me when I'm dead. All my data points that way, and it means zero lifestyle choices or arguments are necessary beyond what I do anyway.
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Monday 29th October 2012 16:43 GMT Jean-Luc
Re: Oh you believers...
>As a mathematician / scientist, I'll take the bet that nothing bad will happen to me when I'm dead.
Amen. Not only that, but if there is a deity, the likelihood that one's particular religious affiliation, usually derived at birth, happens to match the Big Guy's is not that great. The bets are pretty spread out between Allah, Christ, Yahweh, Brahma, whatever Buddhists are into (which really should be nothing), etc...
Not to mention the various bits and pieces of Christianity and Islam that consider other bits heretical and pagan and doomed to big lakes of fire.
Live ethically and hope for the best :-)
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Monday 29th October 2012 14:12 GMT I think so I am?
Re: The National Lottery
People who buy more than one tick are morons, to improve your chances of winning the lotto by 1% you need to by around 14,000 tickets.
It always amazes me when I see some people who struggle to pay bills spending £20-30 a week on lotto tickets.
But they are also the same people who pay Sky £50 month when they can afford to put cloths on their kids backs.
Its a sad state of affairs when the people who cant afford something are the one's spending the most money on it. Yet the people who could afford are the once that do it as a flutter at a £1 a week.
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Monday 29th October 2012 14:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
On the one hand
On the one hand, i agree that the lottery is a waste of money, and that you have a higher chance of dying on a daily basis than you do of winning any meaningful amount.
On the other hand though, it's the only way I'll ever be able to afford a house in my local area.
*shrugs*
1 in 2.3 million odds of getting the £100,000 towards a house, are better than the 0% chance of me affording one normally.
I'm not kidding, local area I can buy a house and get a mortgage costing me £450 a month. OR I can rent the same type of house for £700 a month.
While paying that rent, I have almost no money to put away each month towards a mortgage. Ergo it is impossible for me to save up the money to become a home owner, which would in turn save me more money. (may not work this way in other towns / cities)
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Monday 29th October 2012 15:23 GMT Lee Dowling
Re: On the one hand
Welcome to the universal vicious cycle.
Most of us break out of it by a) getting a better job, b) reducing expenses or c) luck. (Though I don't claim you're NOT doing those things, or are lazy or anything, it's just the only way to break out). There's no magic formula that makes everyone a houseowner, and never has been. Hell, even back in the times of the Great Fire of London hardly anyone *owned* a house. Read Dickens, with the landlords (and even mortgagers) like Scrooge, etc.
It's a fact of life, no matter where you live. You can't afford something until you can prove to someone that you don't need them to help you afford it.
I bought a house, out of that cycle, years back. The owner went bankrupt but was a friend, we swooped in, got a decent offer in (way below valuation), cleaned up the DISGUSTING mess they'd left which had already prompted calls from the RSPCA and the council (100 dead rabbits left to rot in the garden, faeces through the house, rotten meat soaking through the floor, etc.), took a HUGE gamble on his creditors not selling the house before we could move into it, risked further money we didn't have to do it up so that we *were* able to get a mortgage on it (literally, the surveyor was physically sick from the smell and said they couldn't give us anything until it was cleaned up), got a stupidly cheap mortgage by luck (HSBC literally LAUGHED in our faces when we told them what we wanted, the guy in the little independent shop next door was much more customer-friendly even if their company dive-bombed in the mortgage crisis but, fortunately, not so far that we lost the house or mortgage ourselves and we NEVER missed a payment to the company that managed their mortgages), got a deposit from family (only one side as the other side similarly could never have afforded it), moved in BEFORE the decisions were made about the bankruptcy in court (we had to literally remove bankruptcy / repossession notices from the front door each morning), and - eventually - got it. And then a few years later we split up, resold it, made enough profit to pay off all the loans we'd risked to get it and a TINY bit more.
Since then, my new girlfriend actually owns my new house because only she could get a mortgage after the crisis. Literally, her whole family from Italy chipped in to pay the deposit and even then the bank ummed and arred over it.
So the only times I've ever been in a house I've "owned" (or the person I'm with has owned), it's been luck, risk, gamble, and money I couldn't really afford to lose on the line. It paid off for me, but I think a lot of people are in the position which is inescapable. At least you're not alone, little comfort though that may be.
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Monday 29th October 2012 16:09 GMT Robert Grant
Re: On the one hand
It may be universal but it's certainly got harder to buy a house (although yes, it's easier than in the time of Dickens, which I'm not sure really says anything!) - now that those in their 50s/60s have ridden the wave of property prices increasing way above inflation/salaries etc and their (relative to income) easier purchases, consequently anyone now has a much harder time of it all buying.
So in conclusion, the magic formula for home ownership is: buy at 2.5x salary, 30 years ago. You'll be mortgaging (hah) the futures of the next couple of generations, but you'll give Thatcher and Reagan the credit instead.
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Monday 29th October 2012 17:03 GMT wowfood
Re: On the one hand
In response to the previosu post. The average paycheck for my area would work out around. 12k per year. There really isn't much in the way of higher earning jobs here. I'm actually lucky enough to be in one of the higher earning jobs on 20k. The highest I can hope to get in my area, without becoming a manger is probably 24k.
My monthly paycheck, after bills (and I'm talking basic electric / gas / council tax / internet... don't have TV) and after rent leaves me with enough money for food and drink. That's about it. I live in a holiday town though, which jacks the prices up even more. I think it's something like 1 in 10 houses down here are holiday homes which remain unoccupied for 11 months of the year. And the remainder have jacked up prices. It gets pretty ridiculous. Most people I know who are on a normal wage can't even afford to live alone. I know people up to their 40's who had to live with parents because getting their own place cost too much. Or having to live in a four bedroom flat with friends because it was the only way to get a cheap enough flat.
As cruel as it sounds, I kind of wish the recession had hit house prices even harder (I say cruel because my mum / step father bought a house just before the recession hit) just to put them down to a reasonable level. Or at the very least if we ever get out of this recession businesses start upping wages (hah like that'll happen) to match inflation of costs.
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Monday 29th October 2012 16:09 GMT Dave 15
Several questions for the perpetrators of this
First,
What do you think about pension plans? Do you have one? (I guess only if the pension plan doesn't involve strapping explosives to yourself). But pensions - as forced on everyone - muslim or not - in the UK are gambles - your money is taken and 'bet' on the 'stock exchange'. (aka 'investment' to those who want to sell it).
Second
What the fuck has it got to do with you what I spend my money on? I don't care if you want to stop and kneel to the east and chunter on bobbing and bowing, why should you care whether I use whores or gamble? It is really none of your business. If you stop trying to force me to be a muslim then I might have a better impression about your religion. As it is all you do is make the rest of us believe you are a bunch of lunatic idiots, unfortunately that rubs off on the more sensible members of your religion and they get tarred with the same brush. Lots of things are 'sins' to one religion or another - most religions have a 'God' figure who normally 'forgives' sins if you make a suitable prayer or recompense. So why not get on with your life and let the rest of us get on with ours.
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Monday 29th October 2012 16:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Oh you believers. Wine, games of chance, statues all augur impurity and are the work of the devil."
Clean water is a recent commodity, if the early Muslims were forbidden any alcohol it's probable they would have all died from water borne diseases. What the Koran says is that it’s disrespectful to god to prey when drunk which if you believe in a God makes sense but it is possible to drink alcohol moderately without getting drunk.
The current Islamic total ban on alcohol is just a recent interpretation.
Anonymous for obvious reasons
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