Slashdot Mirror

Lol https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/weird/Woman-Severely-Injured-in-Sex-ToyPower-Tool-Encounter.html

I think a better way to look at is to look at this case

http://www.miamiherald.com/lat...

When a 13-year-old runaway threatened to leave a Miami pimp, police say, he forced her to a Liberty City flea market tattoo shop to ink his street name, "Suave," on her eyelids.

The vicious twist to a human trafficking case surfaced this month when Miami police arrested Roman Thomas III, 26, who was already on probation after serving four years in state prison for having sex with a minor.

Thomas was wearing a state corrections GPS monitor when Miami police arrested him on March 18.

The girl, dubbed "Sparkle," was pimped through the classified advertising website Backpage.com, police say. Thomas and a woman plied the girl with liquor, marijuana and the drug Molly as she had sex with men at the Miami Shores Motel.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/...

Now suppose it was a newspaper? I think they'd refuse to run the ad. And if a newspaper run ads like this they would not be protected by safe harbor protections.

I don't see why a website should be allowed to run ads like this, profit from them, and then claim those protections.

And if you look at the law you find it only applies to sex trafficking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) is a United States bill introduced by Senator Rob Portman. It seeks to clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act (which make online services immune from civil liability for the actions of their users) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity. Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage (which had been accused of facilitating child sex trafficking), and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.

I.e. it's not 'the end of the internet', or anything like it. It's basically an 'anti Backpage law' that adds an exemption for sex trafficking.

And look at this

https://www.dallasnews.com/new...

For many of us, gift cards are presents for hard-to-please family members who want to pick out their own gadgets at Best Buy.

For pimps and prostitutes, gift cards have become a currency to pay for sex ads on Backpage.com, anti-prostitution activists say.

Dallas-based Backpage, a classified-ad site similar to Craigslist, is the leading online marketplace for sex, according to government investigators and federal prosecutors who have been struggling for years to shut it down. The U.S. Justice Department says more than half of sex-trafficking victims are under 18.

Credit card companies stopped doing business with the website two years ago. People could still buy Backpage ads, but it became more difficult: They had to mail in checks or use complicated digital currencies like bitcoin.

But now, Backpage has begun accepting gift cards from major retailers, The Dallas Morning News has confirmed. That means a pimp could walk into any local grocery store and pick up a convenient, untraceable way to pay the site to post ads selling women, critics say.

So more than half the victims were under 18. That's not a failure of moderation, that's a business model. Them hiding behind safe harbor protections was bogus from the start.

At this point, so much silt has been stirred, it's hard to know who's telling the truth, if anyone. If scientists want more credibility, they need to start flushing out the ideological charge embedded in universities where they study. Sure, Saud and Koch are hardly objective, but neither are the blowhards at the ivy league.

There is a lot of science out there to read. And trying to invalidate physics by casting aspersions on those who practice it is pretty disingenuous.

There really isn't much left to argue about, either greenhouse gases are greenhouse gases, or they aren't. With some 800 terawatts of radiative forcing in the atmosphere. (1.6 watts per square meter) since 1750, something happens somewhere.

Here's one report - http://news.mit.edu/2010/expla... - where is the blowhardism in it? It's about as simple as can be made. I see no political or monetary agenda. Do you?

what is more, the denialists tend to dreadfully underestimate the money for the research and the scientists salaries. That's a hilarious excuse.

But really, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny. The basic physics is irrefutable, you can prove the energy retention characteristic of the chemical composition of an atmosphere in your basement. Grade school children do it all the time in school science fairs.

Really, all you are left with is proving that the effect doesn''t exist in large scale systems.

And the research for that is vanishingly small. Even one of the last gasp "refutations" of AGW is the measurements of air temperatures in the troposphere versus satellite discrepancies. Which have long since been brought into correlation, but are still being drug up as a strange sort of false dilemma by deniers.

which by the way, the troposphere is not the surface.

I've always challenged deniers to provide the cites for the refutation of AGW. So far, everything has been pretty easy to refute, either by later research, or sad to say, sometimes deliberate falsification.

And no, the kooks who say the world will end are almost certainly wrong - Something will be here until the sun goes red giant. But things will change. We have a sneak preview of it going on right now. The city of Miami in Florida is already undergoing flooding every spring tide at present levels. The water is there - that cannot be denied. You can walk in it on the street, and it's salt water. http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/H...

http://www.local10.com/news/lo...

These are not from storm surges, these are from a completely natural event. Just higher than it used to be.

And that's just one part of it.

So if you actually are interested in real research, with none of the blowhardism you hate, it's all out there. But the denialists are pretty much now relegated to the same part of humanity as creationists and it's brother Intelligent design, Vaxxers, moon landing conspiracists, and tobacco industry lawyers.

Sounds like this could change due to Congressional interest though. Major Cruise Lines Begin Posting Crime Stats. Admittedly this is crime stats not cruise ship deaths, but there is enough overlap death stats might be publicly known eventually.

There are a total of 12 business models that are known to have ever made money at all.

What? That's a horrific oversimplification. And if you're going to do that you may as well go all the way: There's only one business model that works -- make more money than you spend.

you don't exactly hear the Porn industry complaining that the Internet ruined their movie business, do you?

Nope, not ever. And that's just a few from the first page of Google results.

recognize the obvious: Distribution online is effectively free.

While true, recent history has shown that this isn't the biggest issue. The problem is that piracy is more convenient. If I want to watch a movie legitimately I have to obtain the discs, plug it into the machine, sit through 1-2 minutes of unskippable copyright warnings (being shown only to the very people who aren't infringing.. I get that legally they need those warnings but there's no reason to make them unskippable.) 30 seconds of stupid menu animations, probably a handful of ads for other shit (which are thankfully mostly skippable but still..) Then sometimes you get shown the damned copyright notices again after you finally get to the menu to hit play. 4-5 steps and several minutes of useless shit in order to finally view your show. Assuming you're wanting to watch something old enough to have discs available in the first place. And you're paying for all that shit.

Oppose that to a torrent. Yes you have to wait for the download but with modern internet speeds that's usually less than an hour and frequently only a few minutes depending on number of seeders and the quality (file size) you're picking up. Less time than having to go to the store to pick it up for a lot of people, and far less than ordering from Amazon or other online sellers. And when you get it you hit play and you're immediately watching your movie. Two steps and no wait time beyond the initial obtaining which is comparable to obtaining a legitimate disc.

Thanks mostly to Netflix and Apple, this is improving quite a bit -- primarily in the sense that they've mostly proved that people will actually pay for content if its a) reasonably priced and b) convenient. The recording industry has mostly realized this and most music is available through iTunes, Google Play and a few other big name services (often available through all of these services.) That's exactly what people want and will pay for. Simple, fast and not unduly expensive.

The TV industry is slowly catching on. They're not there yet. Every studio is making their own access site which destroys that "convenient" aspect that's so important: If I want to watch Game of Thrones, I have to know which site is distributing it in the first place, and if its not one I've signed up for I've got to go through that whole hassle. Rinse and repeat for every single show I'm interested in.

That "knowing who distributes it" in particular is terrible. If they want to create a competitor to Netflix and Hulu for whatever reason then great -- but having 47 competitors that all offer only one or two (popular) shows each isn't going to solve anything (of course they'll use the fact that nobody cares enough to sign up for that much shit as yet more evidence that copyright infringement is destroying their business, even though that's not the underlying problem.)

The movie industry on the other hand is still stuck in the past for the most part. They usually distribute "ultraviolet" codes with discs nowadays which is great but it means I still have to pick up the discs.

Are minorities treated like second-class citizens in the US or something?

Family Outraged After North Miami Beach Police Use Mug Shots as Shooting Targets

A South Florida family is outraged at North Miami Beach Police after mug shots of African American men were used at a shooting range for police training.

It was an ordinary Saturday morning last month when Sgt. Valerie Deant arrived at the shooting range in Medley, or so she thought.

Deant, who plays clarinet with the Florida Army National Guard’s 13th Army Band, and her fellow soldiers were at the shooting range for their annual weapons qualifications training.

What the soldiers discovered when they entered the range made them angry: mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the guardsmen.

Even more startling for Deant, one of the images was her brother. It was Woody Deant’s mug shot that taken 15 years ago, after he was arrested in connection to a drag race in 2000 that left two people dead. His mug shot was among the pictures of five minorities used as targets by North Miami Beach police, all of them riddled by bullets.

“I was like 'why is my brother being used for target practice?'" Deant asked.

She immediately called her brother, Woody Deant, who was 18 years old when the picture was taken.

“The picture actually has like bullet holes,” Woody Deant said. “One in my forehead and one in my eye. I was speechless," he added.

The City of Medley owns the Medley Firearms Training Center and it leases the facilities to law enforcement agencies in the area. The shooting range staff doesn’t select the targets used by law enforcement and the military.

North Miami Beach Police Chief J. Scott Dennis admitted that his officers could have used better judgment, but denies any racial profiling.

He noted that the sniper team includes minority officers. Dennis defended the department’s use of actual photographs and says the technique is widely used and the pictures are vital for facial recognition drills. But the Deant family questions why officers were firing targets with images of real people, in this case African-Americans, especially at a time when relations between minority communities and law enforcement are so tense.

“Our policies were not violated,” Dennis said. “There is no discipline forthcoming from the individuals who were involved with this.”

NBC 6 Investigators spoke with sources at federal and state law enforcement agencies and five local police departments that have SWAT and sniper teams in an attempt to find out if this is a common practice. All law enforcement agencies said they only use commercially produced targets, not photos of human beings for target practice.

Yes, the short answer is that in the USA minorities are second class citizens. They are often are denied the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Now consider what would happen if a minority gun club had targets made of white people. They would be slapped with the label "terrorist" and end up in a Federal maximum security lockup for life.

You don't think so? No matter who you are if you did the same thing with pictures of cops it would happen to you. But if you have a gun and badge and you do the equivalent, then it's just bad judgement.

Well, taxis have their own horror stories, including at least one serial killer.

Sexual assault is only a click away (googled "taxi driver assault" and skipped the advertisement)

Grabbing the breasts is only ONE of the things this taxi driver did...

kidnap and rape

But I understand your rebuttal of somebody saying they've never heard of a ride gone bad with Uber. Personally, I think the important part would be rate at which things go wrong(and horribly wrong).

"It's unlikely that a high school student would come away with any other conclusion than the police are a fearful group to be avoided at all costs," says Eugene O'Donnell, a former police office

That's the current state of affairs, so it would seem they are teaching exactly what they should be.

On the bright side breaking the law is a good way to have contact with the police and hence one of those costs is to not break the law.

On the less bright side, that means not making contact with the police to report crimes and wanted people, since it isn't worth the risk of contact with police: http://www.kgw.com/story/news/...

And if someone needs medical attention, 911 is not the way to do so, especially if they they might have seizures or anything the police might interprete as not obeying their god like commands: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/l..., http://www.nhregister.com/gene..., http://fox59.com/2013/02/05/ep..., http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/l..., http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2...

So hopefully you have the number of a medical service rather than the generic let's send the police anyway 911 call.

And yes people lie, and some of those are probably people lying, but there have been enough cases to end in court with the one claiming they were having a seizure or similar winning.

"It's unlikely that a high school student would come away with any other conclusion than the police are a fearful group to be avoided at all costs," says Eugene O'Donnell, a former police office

That's the current state of affairs, so it would seem they are teaching exactly what they should be.

On the bright side breaking the law is a good way to have contact with the police and hence one of those costs is to not break the law.

On the less bright side, that means not making contact with the police to report crimes and wanted people, since it isn't worth the risk of contact with police: http://www.kgw.com/story/news/...

And if someone needs medical attention, 911 is not the way to do so, especially if they they might have seizures or anything the police might interprete as not obeying their god like commands: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/l..., http://www.nhregister.com/gene..., http://fox59.com/2013/02/05/ep..., http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/l..., http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2...

So hopefully you have the number of a medical service rather than the generic let's send the police anyway 911 call.

And yes people lie, and some of those are probably people lying, but there have been enough cases to end in court with the one claiming they were having a seizure or similar winning.

It is, under certain circumstances, a federal felony to possess a lobster. Or a fish.

Unless the given fish is being used as a deadly weapon that doesn't appear to make any sense.

Can you explain under what circumstances possession of a lobster or a fish is a felony?

Both situations are covered under 16 U.S.C. Sec. 3372

In the first case, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set rules as to the size of lobsters which can be harvested. Possession of lobsters which are smaller than the regulations permit (known as "short" lobsters) are in violation of 16 USC section 3372.a.1. (cf. Short Lobster Arrests)

In the second, possession of "any fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law or regulation of any State or in violation of any foreign law" (16 USC Sec 3372.a.2.A). [Emphasis added] For example, possession of Costa Rican Sailfish

N.B. IANAL

I've often wondered why the TSA's "Behavioral Detection" crap can't detect thieves like Brown, Burton, Simmons, Defelis, Noukeo, Burley, German, Persad, Webb, Pepper, and Arato, or actual sex offenders like Sean Shanahan and Charles Henry Bennett, or complete suicidal whackjobs like Diego Gonzales who was an actual TSA BDO. Shouldn't his fellow BDOs have noticed... I don't know... something wrong?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071903686.html

This article sums it up well in that it's a group with no official racist views but is filled with an unknown amount of racists: http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/07/tea-party_racism

The tea party, of course will not have an official racist POV because even they know it would be incredibly stupid to have that out in the open. But when one of their top players is stupid enough write a letter mocking black people, gets caught and has to be sacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsPSUxV07x8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38VioxnBaI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUsBvkfQKUw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vrXJ5-EuoE
Anyone could sit here for days posting links to videos and sites showing examples of Tea Party racists. Sure they like to claim there have been plants but there aren't that many plants and the fact one of their highest people was clearly racist to the point where they had to get rid of him goes to show there is a lot of racism in the tea party. If we're going to attack moderate muslims for not tackling their extremists then the same should be done to the tea party.

The tea party won't do that because the people who aren't textbook racists are still the sort that want to just simply keep the brown people out of their country while forgetting their country was stolen from brown people.

Searching for tea party god or tea party christianity will bring up tons of official tea party sites talking about god. Some people like to claim it's not a religious group but it is they mention god often and their mascot, Palin, always talks about god. Like with the racism, it's easy to find links where tea party idiots have been intolerant of other religious beliefs.

http://www.examiner.com/humanism-freethought-in-tampa-bay/atheists-challenged-by-tea-party-patriots
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Holy-water-Two-teachers-tossed-for-allegedly-tossing-holy-water-on-atheist-94795819.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/mark-williams-tea-party-l_n_582591.html
http://race.change.org/blog/view/tea_party_plans_kkk-style_attack_on_muslim_place_of_worship
so much for freedom of religion - http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=3e3c9354-e295-4195-bb8a-0e50fd522cf9

Again, there is plenty of material out there showing the tea party's hate for anything atheist or Muslim.

The mere fact the tea party came out just as we had our first black president pretty much shows their mentality. They had no problem with Bush driving up the national debt because it was money spent on killing brown people who didn't believe in Jesus.

Quote:
"Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday."

She goes on to say that the TSA procedure to not retain copies of the pictures taken by airport scanners is "protecting our rights". If the argument is going to be made that not making copies is "good enough" let's ask Rolando Negrin, the TSA employee who was arrested and fired after beating the snot out of one of his co-workers for their cracks about the size of his genitals.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/TSA-Fracas-After-Body-Scanner-Reveals-TMI-92971929.html

So, if someone only "publicly" derides your appearance, reading habits or porn preferences then your rights are violated. If the government gives unfettered access to the fine details of your private life to a select group it is a good thing?

The process is supposed to be based upon reasonable cause and suspicion. Evidence is to be presented to a judge who would issue a search warrant to give the government the temporary permission to snoop into the details of your private life to collect evidence of a crime. Homeland Security is quick to jump onto any opportunity to treat every American as a criminal "who just hasn't been caught yet".

Like if I showed up at your house, said I owned the place, and everyone simply agreed with me and kicked you out of your home. What?!? That could never really happen! Oh wait... it could.