But the law and the legal system *did* work in these cases; it was society, the media etc. that didn't. Not that it helps the victims, of course, but you need to recognise that this is a failure of society, not one of the criminal justice system, if you want to fix it.
That fails to take into account what Livejournal is actually about. It's not just a blogging service, it's a huge community (or maybe meta-community); I don't want to call it a social networking site, since it actually predates that particular fad, but while it all revolves around journals/blogging, slapping WP on your own web space and using that would mean that you'd miss out on all the stuff that actually makes Livejournal worthwhile and sets it apart from other blogging services.
Wow. I sure am glad I'm not related to you; you sound even worse than my parents, and they were already bad enough. Do the words "trust" and "respect" mean anything to you? "Respect" in particular seems to be a concept that escapes you, not to mention the fact that your children aren't your personal property. You're a couple of hundred years late there, bud.
since when was 11 teenage, and since when did 11 year olds have raging hormones?
You've never had children, have you? Some start earlier, some start later. But FWIW, this sounded more like it was just a prank, anyway - that she was doing it for shits and giggles, not because she had a genuine interest in racy offers.
Well, I hope you explained to her WHY what she did was wrong, instead of just saying "you broke our rules, bad daughter!". Children generally ARE willing to learn, but if all you do is lecture her, delete her profile and remove myspace access from home, then you should indeed be concerned about whether she'll do the same thing again from elsewhere.
Of course, you didn't say you didn't talk to her about it and explain it all to her, so I'll assume you did, but I still want to reemphasise the above for others who might read this.:)
I think it's mostly a knee-jerk reaction towards programs where you're required to pay. The fact that welfare helps people in need doesn't matter to people like this guy; he doesn't care whether it has a positive or a negative effect at all. All he cares about is that he has to pay (or, more likely, that he might have to pay once he moves out of mom's basement and gets a job), and he's ascribing all sorts of evil to welfare in order to bolster his position, since even he is not stupid enough to think that he needs a better reason to be opposed to it than "it costs me money, whaa-whaa".
But still, you're right: people like that astound me, too.
There may not have been anything *official*, but do you honestly think that the two countries' respective intelligence agencies were not involved? Come ON.
That a whole country could be DOS'd is evidence of someone doing a bad network install. The network should never be down.
Why not? Just as a reference, Estonia has 1.3 million inhabitants. How many zombie computers can you buy for a DDoS attack when you've got the FSB's budget? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure what Estonia's network infrastructure works like, but I certainly don't think that it's inconceivable that you can DDoS an entire country. It probably won't be Jimmy Random McScriptkid who does it; but then, the attacks on Estonia were orchestrated by Russia for all we know, anyway. Think about it.
That's not an excuse for signing it. I'm sorry, but I don't feel particularly sorry for CD-Wow here (even though I've ordered from them before and enjoyed their low prices) - they signed a contract, so OF COURSE they have to abide by its terms. Don't like it? Don't sign it. It's that easy.
And you may want to keep in mind that when someone offers you to sign a contract so he won't file a lawsuit against you, chances are that he's not convinced he'd actually win his lawsuit - that's another reason to fight instead of fold.
I simply cannot believe anything the "investigator" says.
Yet you apparently have no problem believing everything the accusers say. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced CCP is innocent here, but I'm not convinced they're guilty, either. But it seems rather ridiculous (and I'm not just talking about you but also about a bunch of other people who posted further up) to make up one's mind after hearing one side of a story already and then dismissing the other side of the story because it doesn't match the first side.
I mean... duh. What do you expect? If CCP hasn't done anything wrong, then a "combative and derisive" tone that's "100% supportive of CCP and 100% belligerant [sic] to the accusers" is, in fact, totally acceptable. We don't know whether they have or not, but to dismiss them for defending themselves now just proves two things: that you have already made up your mind, and that you do not have any actual evidence to support your conviction that they're "guilty", so you instead have to resort to attacking the messenger rather than the message.
I bet people said things like that about the Gutenberg bible when it was first printed, too.
Well, not literally, of course, but the fact that something doesn't have any value now doesn't mean it won't have any in the future. Who knows - maybe some day some historian will be researching, say, Lotus 1-2-3, and bemoan the fact that all the how-to books were destroyed as worthless back in the day so that much information about it is lost now.
What people like you always fail to see, though, is that reading an actual dead-tree book is a sensual experience that involves at least four of the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, tactile). Reading (at least recreational reading) is not primarily done to absorb information, it's done because it's FUN.
It's like the difference between getting to work in the most efficient way and getting on your bike on a weekend and riding it for a while just for the sake of it - just to enjoy doing so.
I can imagine that e-books might gain traction in companies etc., where you really DO care about little besides absorbing information, but even then, I'm not convinced. Why would you want yet another special-purpose device when you've already got your desktop system (in your office) or your laptop (when you're "on the road")?
You've been blinded by marketing, and you're failing to take reality into account.
Re:The original hardware store experiment
on
MacGyver Physics
·
· Score: 1
If I understood the concept, the whole setup is just symbolic and wouldn't work at all.
Your use of the irrealis is apparently entirely appropriate there.
Such delicious (and I presume, unintentional) irony on your part. Can't you see that the GP is pointing out that the compilers of the list ARE taking a side? They are deliberately hyping things in a way to make them as divisive as possible. You're ragging on EXACTLY the wrong person. Grow up, indeed!
Um, no, that's not what he's doing. The GP (or GGP, by now) sees deliberate bias when there is none, simply because he himself is biased and because the list doesn't fit his own bias.
Put another way, "reality has a well-known liberal bias". (And that comment is tongue-in-cheek insofar as that there is no actual bias, of course; it just seems that way if you're used to US-American politics.)
Occam's razor doesn't always give you the right answer, you know. It's a very valuable tool for determining whether a claim has merit when you have no other evidence for or against it, but you should realise that it's not perfect.
In other words: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but when extraordinary evidence exists, even extraordinary claims may well be the ones that you should accept as the most likely alternative.
I have no idea whether this actually applies here, of course, but what you're exhibiting is not an application of Occam's razor, it's cognitive dissonance: you have already formed a strong opinion on the topic, so you dismiss any claims that don't fit your opinion without even investigating them, and use Occam's razor to justify what you're doing.
It's a natural thing to do, but it's still not the right way to use Occam's razor.
Everytime someone links to that site, I wish they would've sent me to goatse or tubgirl or so instead. I'm gay, but seriously, that guy is just... EWWWWW.
(And if you read this, Jay: no offense, but seriously.)
Good point. I'm all for auctioning off citizenship - just make sure that *everyone* has to buy it, including those born in the USA to US-American parents.
Oh, it suddenly doesn't seem that appealing to you anymore, does it? Too bad.
I'm pretty sure your comment's tongue-in-cheek, but I think the following point is still worth discussing:
We'll have a test to insure that the Wrong Sorts don't breed.
Then you'll soon find that the "usual suspects" will be discriminated against in this area as well. There won't be any official discrimination, of course — in fact, absolutely everyone would be appalled that you would even suggest so —, but in reality, you'd still find that somehow, breeding licenses are less likely to be given out to, say, black people, just like there mysteriously are more black people in the death row, just like black people are more likely to get guilty verdicts, just like black people are more likely to be disenfranchised, and so on.
In other words, your suggestion is a bit like communism: looks good on paper, doesn't work in practice.
"Net neutrality" is not about different prices for different levels of service. It's about my ISP ARTIFICIALLY DEGRADING the quality of the service I ALREADY PAID FOR because the one I'm communicating with and who's NOT their customer isn't paying them AS WELL.
I mean... you've got a phone, right? And your girlfriend (e.g.) has one, too, from a different telco, and you're both paying for your phones. Now imagine that when you call her, your phone company decides to randomly disconnect you every two minutes; not because they can't provide a better line, but in order to blackmail your girlfriend into paying for the priviledge of talking to you, nevermind the fact that she's already paying HER phone company and that YOU are already paying YOURS.
I hope you understand why there is a difference. If I pay for a certain bandwidth, for example, then I expect to get that bandwidth (issues beyond my ISP's control, like the bandwidth of the site I'm connecting to, nonwithstanding). If my ISP sells me a certain package (say, a 6144/640 DSL line or so), and then ARTIFICIALLY restricts the bandwidth I get to/from a certain site, they're DEFRAUDING me.
If we got rid of the electoral college, only the votes of people in high population states would count.
Just out of curiosity, why would that be a bad thing? One voter in Alaska shouldn't be more important than one voter in Chicago. And while representation of the states is also important, well... that's what senate is for, right? It's not as if the *president* is going to represent 50 different states in a any fashion, anyway - neither a fair nor an unfair one.
That being said, Illinois has 21 electoral votes, while Alaska has 3. Other states, like Florida, New York, Texas or California, have even more - 27, 31, 34 and 55, respectively; many states have less votes than Illinois but less than Alaska, and *NO* state has less votes than Alaska does. The total number of electoral votes is 538, out of which Alaska has 3. The president (no matter who) is not going to care about Alaska because of these 3 votes.
In other words: the whole "small states would be marginalised" thing is a red herring. Small states *are* marginalised already, and changing the way the president is elected won't change a thing about that either way. However, it would make sure that the candidate who wins the election is actually the one who received the most votes, too, and nobody in their right mind could be opposed to that.
Finally, a history lesson: the electoral college was created in a time when there were considerable logistical difficulties associated with holding a general election. All the "instant" communication technology that came later on - telegraph, telephone, radio etc. - didn't exist; the only way to hold an election was to physically transport the votes, probably in a mail coach. If you think about the associated risks now (tampering, ballot loss etc.), it'll become obvious that having a system where every state ends up casting all their votes for one candidate was about the only practical choice. However, things have changed, and we do not have to worry about assaults on mail coaches etc. anymore, so there's no reason why the electoral college is still needed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, and then you stay in gitmo and continue to get tortured, anyway...
But the law and the legal system *did* work in these cases; it was society, the media etc. that didn't. Not that it helps the victims, of course, but you need to recognise that this is a failure of society, not one of the criminal justice system, if you want to fix it.
That fails to take into account what Livejournal is actually about. It's not just a blogging service, it's a huge community (or maybe meta-community); I don't want to call it a social networking site, since it actually predates that particular fad, but while it all revolves around journals/blogging, slapping WP on your own web space and using that would mean that you'd miss out on all the stuff that actually makes Livejournal worthwhile and sets it apart from other blogging services.
Wow. I sure am glad I'm not related to you; you sound even worse than my parents, and they were already bad enough. Do the words "trust" and "respect" mean anything to you? "Respect" in particular seems to be a concept that escapes you, not to mention the fact that your children aren't your personal property. You're a couple of hundred years late there, bud.
You've never had children, have you? Some start earlier, some start later. But FWIW, this sounded more like it was just a prank, anyway - that she was doing it for shits and giggles, not because she had a genuine interest in racy offers.
Well, I hope you explained to her WHY what she did was wrong, instead of just saying "you broke our rules, bad daughter!". Children generally ARE willing to learn, but if all you do is lecture her, delete her profile and remove myspace access from home, then you should indeed be concerned about whether she'll do the same thing again from elsewhere.
:)
Of course, you didn't say you didn't talk to her about it and explain it all to her, so I'll assume you did, but I still want to reemphasise the above for others who might read this.
I think it's mostly a knee-jerk reaction towards programs where you're required to pay. The fact that welfare helps people in need doesn't matter to people like this guy; he doesn't care whether it has a positive or a negative effect at all. All he cares about is that he has to pay (or, more likely, that he might have to pay once he moves out of mom's basement and gets a job), and he's ascribing all sorts of evil to welfare in order to bolster his position, since even he is not stupid enough to think that he needs a better reason to be opposed to it than "it costs me money, whaa-whaa".
But still, you're right: people like that astound me, too.
There may not have been anything *official*, but do you honestly think that the two countries' respective intelligence agencies were not involved? Come ON.
Why not? Just as a reference, Estonia has 1.3 million inhabitants. How many zombie computers can you buy for a DDoS attack when you've got the FSB's budget? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure what Estonia's network infrastructure works like, but I certainly don't think that it's inconceivable that you can DDoS an entire country. It probably won't be Jimmy Random McScriptkid who does it; but then, the attacks on Estonia were orchestrated by Russia for all we know, anyway. Think about it.
That's not an excuse for signing it. I'm sorry, but I don't feel particularly sorry for CD-Wow here (even though I've ordered from them before and enjoyed their low prices) - they signed a contract, so OF COURSE they have to abide by its terms. Don't like it? Don't sign it. It's that easy.
And you may want to keep in mind that when someone offers you to sign a contract so he won't file a lawsuit against you, chances are that he's not convinced he'd actually win his lawsuit - that's another reason to fight instead of fold.
Yet you apparently have no problem believing everything the accusers say. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced CCP is innocent here, but I'm not convinced they're guilty, either. But it seems rather ridiculous (and I'm not just talking about you but also about a bunch of other people who posted further up) to make up one's mind after hearing one side of a story already and then dismissing the other side of the story because it doesn't match the first side.
I mean... duh. What do you expect? If CCP hasn't done anything wrong, then a "combative and derisive" tone that's "100% supportive of CCP and 100% belligerant [sic] to the accusers" is, in fact, totally acceptable. We don't know whether they have or not, but to dismiss them for defending themselves now just proves two things: that you have already made up your mind, and that you do not have any actual evidence to support your conviction that they're "guilty", so you instead have to resort to attacking the messenger rather than the message.
Pretty sad.
Your fair use rights? You DO realise that this is in Japan and that your US-American laws don't apply there, right?
I bet people said things like that about the Gutenberg bible when it was first printed, too.
Well, not literally, of course, but the fact that something doesn't have any value now doesn't mean it won't have any in the future. Who knows - maybe some day some historian will be researching, say, Lotus 1-2-3, and bemoan the fact that all the how-to books were destroyed as worthless back in the day so that much information about it is lost now.
Who knows?
What people like you always fail to see, though, is that reading an actual dead-tree book is a sensual experience that involves at least four of the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, tactile). Reading (at least recreational reading) is not primarily done to absorb information, it's done because it's FUN.
It's like the difference between getting to work in the most efficient way and getting on your bike on a weekend and riding it for a while just for the sake of it - just to enjoy doing so.
I can imagine that e-books might gain traction in companies etc., where you really DO care about little besides absorbing information, but even then, I'm not convinced. Why would you want yet another special-purpose device when you've already got your desktop system (in your office) or your laptop (when you're "on the road")?
You've been blinded by marketing, and you're failing to take reality into account.
Your use of the irrealis is apparently entirely appropriate there.
To reference the Simpsons... how about "bemusement park"?
Um, no, that's not what he's doing. The GP (or GGP, by now) sees deliberate bias when there is none, simply because he himself is biased and because the list doesn't fit his own bias.
Put another way, "reality has a well-known liberal bias". (And that comment is tongue-in-cheek insofar as that there is no actual bias, of course; it just seems that way if you're used to US-American politics.)
What's it like to be a member of the sheeple?
Occam's razor doesn't always give you the right answer, you know. It's a very valuable tool for determining whether a claim has merit when you have no other evidence for or against it, but you should realise that it's not perfect.
In other words: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but when extraordinary evidence exists, even extraordinary claims may well be the ones that you should accept as the most likely alternative.
I have no idea whether this actually applies here, of course, but what you're exhibiting is not an application of Occam's razor, it's cognitive dissonance: you have already formed a strong opinion on the topic, so you dismiss any claims that don't fit your opinion without even investigating them, and use Occam's razor to justify what you're doing.
It's a natural thing to do, but it's still not the right way to use Occam's razor.
Again: what a waste of food. The donation to City Harvest is great, though.
(And I know I'm gonna be modded flamebait for not Supporting The Troops(tm), but I'm not gonna censor myself because of that.)
Everytime someone links to that site, I wish they would've sent me to goatse or tubgirl or so instead. I'm gay, but seriously, that guy is just... EWWWWW.
(And if you read this, Jay: no offense, but seriously.)
Good point. I'm all for auctioning off citizenship - just make sure that *everyone* has to buy it, including those born in the USA to US-American parents.
Oh, it suddenly doesn't seem that appealing to you anymore, does it? Too bad.
I'm pretty sure your comment's tongue-in-cheek, but I think the following point is still worth discussing:
Then you'll soon find that the "usual suspects" will be discriminated against in this area as well. There won't be any official discrimination, of course — in fact, absolutely everyone would be appalled that you would even suggest so —, but in reality, you'd still find that somehow, breeding licenses are less likely to be given out to, say, black people, just like there mysteriously are more black people in the death row, just like black people are more likely to get guilty verdicts, just like black people are more likely to be disenfranchised, and so on.
In other words, your suggestion is a bit like communism: looks good on paper, doesn't work in practice.
But then, you probably were joking to begin with.
You just don't get it, do you?
"Net neutrality" is not about different prices for different levels of service. It's about my ISP ARTIFICIALLY DEGRADING the quality of the service I ALREADY PAID FOR because the one I'm communicating with and who's NOT their customer isn't paying them AS WELL.
I mean... you've got a phone, right? And your girlfriend (e.g.) has one, too, from a different telco, and you're both paying for your phones. Now imagine that when you call her, your phone company decides to randomly disconnect you every two minutes; not because they can't provide a better line, but in order to blackmail your girlfriend into paying for the priviledge of talking to you, nevermind the fact that she's already paying HER phone company and that YOU are already paying YOURS.
I hope you understand why there is a difference. If I pay for a certain bandwidth, for example, then I expect to get that bandwidth (issues beyond my ISP's control, like the bandwidth of the site I'm connecting to, nonwithstanding). If my ISP sells me a certain package (say, a 6144/640 DSL line or so), and then ARTIFICIALLY restricts the bandwidth I get to/from a certain site, they're DEFRAUDING me.
I hope you get it now.
Just out of curiosity, why would that be a bad thing? One voter in Alaska shouldn't be more important than one voter in Chicago. And while representation of the states is also important, well... that's what senate is for, right? It's not as if the *president* is going to represent 50 different states in a any fashion, anyway - neither a fair nor an unfair one.
That being said, Illinois has 21 electoral votes, while Alaska has 3. Other states, like Florida, New York, Texas or California, have even more - 27, 31, 34 and 55, respectively; many states have less votes than Illinois but less than Alaska, and *NO* state has less votes than Alaska does. The total number of electoral votes is 538, out of which Alaska has 3. The president (no matter who) is not going to care about Alaska because of these 3 votes.
In other words: the whole "small states would be marginalised" thing is a red herring. Small states *are* marginalised already, and changing the way the president is elected won't change a thing about that either way. However, it would make sure that the candidate who wins the election is actually the one who received the most votes, too, and nobody in their right mind could be opposed to that.
Finally, a history lesson: the electoral college was created in a time when there were considerable logistical difficulties associated with holding a general election. All the "instant" communication technology that came later on - telegraph, telephone, radio etc. - didn't exist; the only way to hold an election was to physically transport the votes, probably in a mail coach. If you think about the associated risks now (tampering, ballot loss etc.), it'll become obvious that having a system where every state ends up casting all their votes for one candidate was about the only practical choice. However, things have changed, and we do not have to worry about assaults on mail coaches etc. anymore, so there's no reason why the electoral college is still needed.