or one in Minecraft ?

This could be the end of the world.......of Warcraft.

One could only hope so?

Look, just because the Maw is ruled by a merciless bald tyrant who goes around with his shirt off and who plans to conquer the world doesn't mean you can compare it to Russia.

...this is could never happen in the UK, but historical events tell me otherwise.

where can my friend get a copy of this Minecraft of which you speak?

Comes free with Raspbian for the Pis. Interestingly it also comes with easily available instructions on how to make a bit block of TNT in Python and how to blow it up!.

ISTR from other articles these kids were doing a lot more than just blowing up virtual buildings and "playing" with molotov cocktails. They were also building pipe bombs and talking about using those in the real world. Not exactly "kids jailed for blowing up FSB headquarters in Minecraft". They'd be getting jail time in "the west" too probably. Now whether or not a couple of 14 year olds deserve 4 to 5 years of hard labour in a Russian Gulag is a whole different debate.

I knew people when I was that age who would make home-made explosives, pipe bombs and such. It's stupid, and it's dangerous, and looking back at it, it's remarkable that they didn't lose any body parts, but if this tells us anything, it's that 14 year-old boys are idiots, and some of them have a destructive impulse. Going from that to "try them as adults and put them in a gulag" is ridiculous, especially when they didn't actually blow anything up.

I don't know enough of the finer details of the case to decide on just how ridiculous it is, but I am just slightly annoyed at the tendency for most news agencies here to frame it only in the "Russian boys tried as adults and send to hard labour for blowing up minecraft building" in what seems like an attempt to shout "See, Russia BAD!". When the reality is more like "Russian boys given extremely harsh sentences for doing dangerous and stupid things with explosives and talking about blowing up the FSB headquarters", because apparently they did talked about doing so in a way that made it highly dubious they meant only in Minecraft. That's a very different (but much more valid) headline. And criticism on the harshness on the sentence is probably valid (but again, I don't know the exact details of how far they went, only broad strokes pieced together from a whole load of different sources. I'd go to Russian media, but I don't speak nor read Russian)

I was that dumb kid, started out with black powder, then nitrating everything I could find with nitric acid (gun cotton, TNT), thermite, ammonium nitrate & sugar, sulphur & red phosphorus. Its crazy that it was possible to buy that stuff easily. Especially because it was around the time of The Troubles in Ireland.

As you say, it's amazing that we didn't blow ourselves up (although came fairly close more than once).

My Grandad had a box of gunpowder and a small cannon. Over the years I was taught a lot about how to do things safely and we regularly blew things up and made (very) loud noises. Indeed my Prof Dad and several other uni mad scientists frequently joined in the mayhem.

A few weeks ago, in the UK, a 14 year old was jailed for downloading a copy of "the anarchists cookbook". I don'y know the details of the case, but 30 years ago, in the golden age of the internet, every geek who knew how to Archie and FTP had that file, along with "the big book of mischief" and various other interesting texts. Just because it was interesting to read these things. But it's a different world now, one where creeping censorship is taking over the internet, and "having access to information" is treated much the same as "doing bad stuff with that information."

I had a copy back in '86. I downloaded it from a BBS to an Apple ][. I remember printing it on green-bar tractor-feed fanfold paper.

We tried a few things from it. A friend of mine blow up his parents kitchen (thank god he we uninjured in the blast).

I didn't have a printed copy, wouldn't have done, and was never a 14-yo idiot. I can't even remember where I didn't get a copy I didn't have from.

However, the recent case of a 14-yo being imprisoned for having a copy of this, was more down to a case of "what they could get him for". IIRC, he was into all sorts of dodgy far-right extremist shit. It was probably the charge that was easiest to make stick in court. Unlike in the US, where multi-century sentences are commonplace, we tend to go for prosecuting on the most serious charge(s) and treating everything else as not worth the paperwork.

Sentences are typically served concurrently , not sequentially here as well. Funnily enough, we also don't tend to treat those who have been deprived of their liberty as a free source of slave labour, and consequently don't have both the world's highest prison population, and the world's highest per capita prison population as well.

"Land of the free," my hairy arse.

Having said that, there's plenty of politicians here who seem too keen on importing US-style justice, despite it having been proven unequivocally not to work to reduce crime. The mind boggles, eh?

I mean, doesn't the name 'Minecraft' basically say it all?

Thoughtcrime :-(

Perhaps ownership of "Raid Over Moscow", "Megafortress", "Red Storm Rising" or thousands of other games are also illegal because they depict situations where ex Soviet war machines and buildings might get trashed. I may have to revisit Harpoon; for all of it's advanced age, it's still a satisfying RTS from long before RTS was recognised as a thing.

Pray tell explain how DCS world is legal, and of origins over borders to the East of Poland. A game / sim which definitely depicts the likes of the SU-27 at significant disadvantage against NATO. I had better not go giving the FSB ideas. There are few other good air combat simulations of the last 20 years.

Sham courts, firewalled internet, political exile/poisoninings/murders, state TV and press. I feel very sorry for the good Russian people that are being dragged down by their ex-KGB dictator.

Good Russian people have kicked out several successive dictatorships over the last hundred years. We can't fix their problems for them, but they are very, very welcome to come out of the cold.

First off, Russia today is not the Soviet Union, which hasn't existed for 30 years.

Second of all, Minecraft is not illegal in Russia. Blowing up government buildings without a licence is. And intent matters in legal matters.

Third: Do those anti-Soviet games come with instructions for how to build pipe bombs? If so, awesome. And a bit scary.

If you think Russia is not the Soviet Union, you would be correct. But the power vested in it has its origins in the Soviet Union, and the FSB is really not far removed from that machinery of state. Putin's career history is both well known, and not known at all.

To be blunt, publically, he is a nasty paranoid fucker that along with his cronies are prepared to bully everyone to get what they want. Including kids playing video games. Stamping out political opponents. Poisonings. State media and newspapers. What more tools of oppression do you want? It's more the Soviet Union than the Soviet Union was. Those that remember the events of the late 80s were heavily coordinated by modem Comms. Stamp out Comms routes, stamp out opposition.

I can only assume the downvoters here are of Russian origin in which case, being outside the great firewall you would think they might learn what the rest of the world thinks of their shenanigans.

Meh. The world is consigned to its doom at the greed of a few men. Maybe the cockroaches do deserve to inherit it.

I think the FSB may want to invest in some obsidian bricks.