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Ever hear of someone being charged with a hate crime for hitting a white person?

Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.

Or you could use a little Google-fu before you spout off about how "I've never heard about XYZ happening!" You would have quickly found out, for example, about Ronald Taylor, a black man who in 2000 was charged with hate crimes after a murder spree targeting white people. He was convicted and sentenced to death; one of the prosecution's arguments against the insanity defense was that he was "competent" enough to only target whites.

All this hate crime bullshit is nothing but racism, pure and simple. You hit or kill someone, you go to jail. It shouldn't matter what color or sex they are.

The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"

Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.

But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)

Ever hear of someone being charged with a hate crime for hitting a white person?

Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.

Or you could use a little Google-fu before you spout off about how "I've never heard about XYZ happening!" You would have quickly found out, for example, about Ronald Taylor, a black man who in 2000 was charged with hate crimes after a murder spree targeting white people. He was convicted and sentenced to death; one of the prosecution's arguments against the insanity defense was that he was "competent" enough to only target whites.

All this hate crime bullshit is nothing but racism, pure and simple. You hit or kill someone, you go to jail. It shouldn't matter what color or sex they are.

The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"

Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.

But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/2390330/detail.html

In 2002, the top-paid garbage collector made $66,000. Almost half of that was overtime pay. Another garbage collector made $62,000. Three others had annual pay of more than $50,000.

One reason overtime is so high is because these guys can start collecting overtime while they're still on their regular eight-hour shift.

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Also, no forced holiday work, and probably better status than most IT people.
Many IT people I know must work either thanksgiving or christmas each year. And every other holiday is viewed as an installation opportunity by the business.

I left IT as a worker and have been recommending against entering the field for the last 6-7 years.

There are many other fields you can go into which have better hours, more women (better dating prospects), higher status (better dating prospects, more parties paid for by the company, more quality company travel to nice locations), and no forced holiday work.

IT has sucked as a field badly since SOX (so about 2001-2002). It sucked before that, but it was more of a trade off. I know some "developers" who get to program 1 week and spend the next 5 testing and filling out documentation.

Well after seeing this image: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/2008/1127/18160621_240X180.jpg

And reading her comments: "I already have severe depression. I mean, it's so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn't do. It's not fair," Sauro said. Sauro, who lives in Ross Township, is disabled with pancreatitis. She needs an islet cell transplant and is hospitalized weekly."

I want to take my sniper rifle, fill it with paintballs, drive to the RIAA headquarters, and wait for Adolf Hitler..... er, the RIAA CEO to walk within my sights so I can splash him with pellets. He's evil. Pure evil. The scum deserves to be tarred and feathered.

but does that make her innocent? Does anything mentioned in the summary or articles?

The Sauros said they've lived in their home since Ciara's father moved out. They claim the Internet account in the lawsuit was opened by him at his new address.

Not proof of course but it will be easy enough for the lawyer to check it and bring it to court. Between that and the fact that it is a common stunt amongst the poor to open an account in their child's name when their own credit is messed up already, I would tend to believe them here. That putting their child's credit at risk is more acceptable when it means getting water/sewer, gas or electricity turned on where the child is living then it is for snagging internet or utilities for themselves away from where the child lives.

Would be nice if this being in the news brought some attention to the girl from the Pirates, the Steelers or some charity etc, sounds like they need more help then just getting this copyright infringement case cleared up.

She was found guilty in absentia. Because she was hospitalised, she was unable to respond to the subpoena. The family claims that the account upon which the downloads occurred were made by the girl's father, who lives at another address. It's all in the articles linked in the summary, but in case you missed them, they're here.

Not a murder, probably. But quite possibly a manslaughterer and a reckless endangerer.

At the very least, it didn't HURT anything

I just happened to be outside and looking east and saw it launch... And I was about 300 miles away in Irwin, PA.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/10552546/ detail.html

Disney doesn't own the local ABC affiliate. It just so happens to be "sweeps" month so local news companies are running as much sensationalist stuff as possible to pump up their ratings. Two examples from Pittsburgh:

How can you get free cable? WTAE-TV suggests calling Comcast and providing one of several codes, all of which happen to contain the station's call letters.

WPXI-TV showed a group of women in silhouette. "We're not showing you these women's faces... not because they get paid to shop!" (What's better is that WPXI separately advertised bringing you the news "without fluff.")

The federal government is threatening to cut off funding for
  Pennsylvania if it does not accept the new replacement touch screen Vote-a-tons from Diabold
  (and no paper trail allowed).

From the same company that delivered the 'correct' results for the state of Ohio,
they are now targeting Pennsylvania:
VoteFixing

If I remember correctly, the vote totals can be editied for 'correctness' using MS Access?

Pennsylvania:
The state where Judges get payoffs
from Legislators to approve double digit pay increases
with secret midnight voting sessions:
Payoffs

The results of secret government:
GoldDiggaz

So, Lawmakers Threaten reporters for telling the truth:
"Screw them!"

Can we please call on the U.N. to police our local state government with independent observers?

They've done this with dogs successfully before. I think it was posted here on Slashdot too.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/video/4668289/ detail.html%20/4668289/detail.html

...that people have been stealing cars by acquiring a car's VIN and buying a key for that car. It's simple enough to put a piece of tape over the VIN on your dashboard - it can easily be removed if someone has a legitimate reason to see it - but any yahoo with an RFID scanner can get the VIN from an RFID tag, AND, even creepier, your registration and title information. For those who might be wondering, here in Texas that includes your home address.

I'm sorry, I'm not really the tin-foil hat type, but I'd just as soon keep that information just a little bit harder for the bad guys to come by.

The case was with a California company, but the Feds decided to try the trial here in Pittsburgh. They thought a federal judge in Pittsburgh would be more conservative than a judge in California, but thought wrong.

Here's more information from our local papers:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Tribune Review

WTAE-TV

He's fine, he's just busy trying to buy Saddam Hussein on the black market.

Note to the inventors: If you get an order for one of these from Mook, please don't sell it to him.

Same way with some drug paraphenelia You can have a bong or a glass pipe, as long as there are no drugs around, too. With both, the paraphenelia charge gets tacked on.

Not true anymore. They are cracking down on the sellers of paraphernalia sans drugs. Several months ago Ashcroft's DoJ launched "Operation Pipe Dreams" and busted a number of head shops and Internet sites selling glass bongs. (Some very pretty ones, too.) The DoJ is charging the proprietors with conspiracy to sell drug paraphernalia. Even Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) is going to be spending at least six months in jail for selling glass pipes and bongs through an outfit called "Chong Glass".

I had purchased several items from one of those places last year. A week after the big bust happened in February, I got spam from that site- "Hey, we're having a big sale!" and I had never gotten spam from them before. Which strongly implies that Ashcroft's Justice Department is encouraging people to send spam under duress so they can add people's names to some sort of list.

The War on Drugs does not provide a good analogy for DeCSS at all. In fact the latest developments in the drug war provide the MPAA with a strong argument. If DeCSS is a tool analogous to a water pipe, which may be used for illegal purposes, you can still be arrested for distributing it. Thanks, Bush Administration!

(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)

Screw robots, what about the saga of lobsterboy? Can you believe this is a respected CS school? My parents called, they want their $120,000 back.

Intrigue

Drunken Misadventure

Vow of silence broken

a new beginning

It's a ban, but it's not censorship...