I do not doubt this to be true. Things are often more complex then they appear. My whole entire point is and was that people should NOT diminish abuse or the effects there-of... whether it be done once or is habitual.
Of course... the idea that it can even happen just ONCE is foreign to people like me. It is not in my genes to hit people. Some people tend to be more aggressive than others, and some people just know how to channel their aggression better. For those people, there will be no thought of excuses.
I am not presenting you with an argument. I am merely stating that an episode of a US "Reality" TV show that you don't even have a bibliographic reference for does not prove that men get abused by the system and women do not. I have seen PBS shows that actually have had lawyers and psychiatrists and other experts on that have stated that women get screwed by the justice system and that the public perception that woman have more defacto rights in issues like this is just pure mythology.
Yes I am sure a TV show like COPs has it's place in an intelligent discussion about human rights or domestic violence, but most intelligent people would not take your example seriously. That being said, I'm sure Asshats like Chyeld would agree with you.
Are you presenting your opinions honestly? Are you that damaged that your world view is as you've presented it? Or are you simply one of the best trolls I've seen so far? I don't know. What I do know, what I have a certainty of belief and convictions in, is that the world works nothing like you've presented it. And if you honestly believe what you are saying, I hope that someday you receive the help you need. As with most hypocrites: you are what you preach: a troll. You at once describe a situation of a fanatical mother (and as you can tell from my posts I am against simple-minded fanaticism); and projected your own callous attitudes towards abuse on people like me.
Most people I have met who have ZERO morals and are 100% hypocrites are people who call be "damaged" and say I "need help"... Yes I've heard it all before, but the sad thing is that people like you spend more time demonizing people, and using dishonest and Trollish comparisons to beef up your own Right Wing agenda's. You are sad and pathetic.
The fact is he is using a Robert Deniro movie to, as is taken from the quantumG post:
He explains that he "lost control" once Yes John Hinckley Junior should not be victimized either because he only tried to kill a politician once, just like Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver.
I can understand that just because he did it once, does not mean that he will do it again. But that is besides the point. I am not making excuses about JHR, and then claiming that I am not making excuses. As with most people, I see hypocrisy. I'm sure in many cases this may be thoughtless and unintended, but I wish I could actually get to know somebody who is not a hypocrite.
There's no excuse for it, he shouldn't have done it. He was wrong and he admits it. Does that mean he should be continually punished for the thing he did wrong once? That "but" there does not contradict the fact that there is no excuse. "Does that mean he should be continually punished for the thing..." I don't know. Probably not. But that is just my opinion.
That "but" there does not contradict the fact that there is no excuse. That "but" there is what is known as a Freudian slip. People's REAL intentions and meaning get explained AFTER the "but". Much the same as when he refers to abusers as being victims.
William Shakespeare (in Macbeth) used the phrase "Thou dost protest too much". People do not NEED to be apologists for abuse if they have nothing to apologize about. Whether or how people should be punished is besides the point. I am merely pointing out faulty arguments.
I always get the sense, that when posting, I need to explain that I am only attacking the arguments to which I am making reference to, and nothing else. That being said I think having criminal databases is, in general, a bad idea; and having them public is outright stupid. Since that was not the point I was arguing however, I will not elaborate.
I'll add one more comment. You said: "...someone who falls victim to their rage" Yes I understand that you think of people who commit spousal abuse as victims.
I was wandering if you just miss-poke and if you will publicly apologize.
Of course nobody said anything about 100% certainty. The issue is more about probability. I think most people realize that people can make mistakes. I'm sure if a person accidentally beats a woman in an accidental fit of rage, then that person may not necessarily do it again. This person may not necessarily be accident prone after all.
The problem is that a LOT of people seem to think that beating woman up even once is excusable (hence people like yourself and quantumG claim that there is no excuse for this, BUT it happens, and people shouldn't be labeled as wife beaters because they happened to have been caught beating up their wife only once.)
So yes, I may very well be "dangerous" as you claimed before, because I made the observation that when people do things, they usually just don't do things out of the blue. Yes I see patterns where other people see excuses.
So it's okay to hit women if you just do it once? Glad I don't live near you. He's not saying it's ok to do it. He's saying that people can make mistakes sometimes and there's a difference between someone who recognizes that what they did was wrong and doesn't do it anymore and a person who continues to do it because they don't see a problem with it. That reasoning would be applicable if it were true. Unfortunately people are highly predictable. If they do something once, chances are they will do it again. If a person has a certain belief, chances are they are not going to change that belief because they go to an anger management class. If somebody cannot control their emotions in certain circumstances, then chances are if those same circumstances come up again then they will once again loose control.
People have free will when they do things right. When people do things wrong they are merely products of the genes and the environment around them. People's ability to interpret reality is really something special. No hallucinogenic drugs required.
There's never an excuse to beat up on a woman, but there's a difference between a habitual wife beater and someone who falls victim to their rage... You said it right when you said "There's never an excuse". You lost me when you said "but".
Yep, that's a pretty obvious BUT...and you got modded as Insightful! I would never presume to reason why you say the things you do, but I have noticed a tendency for you to get overly emotional on Slashdot. I could only presume that you are the same way in real life, and hence your reasoning reflects your behavior.
People amaze me.
Of course databases are just another excuse to not do anything about a problem but react to it in a very passive and thoughtless manner.
What actually happens is that a person's lungs acclimatizes to the low oxygen atmosphere of the mountains, thus giving the athlete the ability to utilize oxygen more efficiently during competition. It's quite unfair to those athletes who cannot afford to go to the Alps to train, but the Olympics was never about fairness.
The fact that some differences are considered a legitimate part of competition and others are not is not a defect or hypocrisy - it is the nature of competition itself. Making a statement without backing it up with an explanation or reasoning is not helpful. Just because you believe something to be true, does not make it so.
To be fair, people would have to run against people of the exact same size, wieght, shape and metabolism, and preferably have psychological and neurological tests done to make sure they are of the same mental AND physical makeup, otherwise one athlete will have an advantage over another.
This example of the blade runner just amplifies the unfairness of the Olympics, and it's rather farcical nature. As far as I know there is no way to absolutely and conclusively test for substances (hormones, or otherwise) that could give a person an advantage. If the Olympics was not based on competition, then cheating would not be a concern; but for some reason some people want to believe that the Olympics is promoting sport and presumably a healthy lifestyle.
From TFA:
"The Court rejects the test for "authorization" articulated by defendant's expert, Lawrence Baldwin. To find all access "authorized" which is successful would essentially turn the computer crime laws of this country upside down." One could only hope.
A credit score is a little more of a stretch, but using the logic "bad credit == deadbeat", it could be a stand-in for proper hiring practices. Actually, that's more indicative of someone who could be "bought off" easily. Do you want someone working for you that might be bribed to do something (e.g. corporate espionage, etc.) because they have a lot of debt and need the money? I think not. Of course it's more indicative of a prejudice towards poor people in general. CEO's are more likely to ruin a company through corruption than a poor graduate who has a massive student loan.
It's done because study after study after study conducted by everyone but my Great Aunt Matilda shows that employees who use drugs are more likely to have an accident at work Seems improbable that this is true. However, since the concept of "drugs" is political, and "drugs" are in fact defined as "drugs" by politicians and lawyers (amongst others), this would mean that people in the US are getting fired for political reasons.
As with most political issues, there is usually a lot of hypocrisy involved. People who drive red cars have historically had more accidents, and yet I doubt if these people who drive red Honda's will get fired from their jobs and possibly be put in jail. I do however think that people who smoke marijuana or consume Magical Mushrooms would likely be fired and put into jail. This is because people are hypocrites.
And I really doubt if any such studies tried to assess how, let's say, "recreational" drugs can improve productivity. I would surmise that most or all of these studies have an underlying bias to find negative evidence.
Of course I could be wrong, and I'm not an expert, and I don't have a license to conduct my own double-blind studies (research into things like LSD is very rare these days as it is next to impossible to get approval).
Urine and credit score can be argued to be relevant to employment. ANYTHING can be argued to be relevant to employment, such as religious and political beliefs.
I will digress however; I can see a Manager talking about a certain religious or political or sexual topic, and then seeing how their employee's heart rate's respond. Of course when these employee's get fired, they will be told they were let go because the stress indicators of their monitoring systems indicated that they could not emotionally handle the job.
Yes I can also see how people can and arguably should be fired for using mind altering drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, poppyseed bagels, and sugar (if you don't think sugar is a DRUG, then you are fooling yourself).
Sorry mate it's not always obvious, especially in forums like this. But you yourself seem to be implying that I was not being sarcastic. At any rate no offense was intended.
The point of the book is to make people aware of the gradual attrition of human rights via subtle nuances and ideals put in place by the powers that be.
You don't defuse a bomb after it's gone off, but more so pay attention to the signs that a bomb is being built and put into place......you idiot. Gradual attrition of human rights? I think this is more apparent than real.
The most significant thing that is really changing is the technology which makes it easier. Just as McCarthyism , Watergate, the Witch Trials of Europe or the US hasn't seemed to make people more aware of anything; certainly not here in the West or in places like Zimbabwe, Darfur, Rwanda, etc.
I don't see any gradual decline of human rights. Perhaps there is a small micro-historic malaise happening in the Middle Class in some US states, other than that it seems to be business as usual.
Microsoft can have as much of my urine as they like. If they want to test it, they can just hold out a cup. The fact that companies are willing to go to such disgusting extremes to monitor employees is reason enough for these practices to be illegal (which they are in Canada, except for a few notable exceptions like military duty).
People in Canada won't have anything to worry about from Microsoft's technologies (unless they continue to follow the US lead) of a post 9/11 Orwellian Big Brother state (I guess people in Britain and Ireland have nannies to look after them).
It's ironic though, that this type of monitoring would in theory favour people like me who do things fast and efficiently, without cheating or cutting corners. But it has been my experience that the people (like me) who show up on time, are at the top of the percentile range on OBJECTIVE company tests (entrance tests, etc) will see absolutely ZERO benefit as the rewards will go to the social networking types who smile their way to the top instead of working. Yes these tests will be completely ignored for the ass-kissers and slackers. These tests will however be used to punish people whom management does not personally like.
Of course I could be completely wrong. But experience tells me otherwise.
"Do the world a favour and stop condescending to people you don't know or understand."
Follow your own fucking advice. Nobody in Cambodia asked you to protect them from food, water, medicine, and education. Nobody asked you to teach me what it's like to work in a factory, since I have. Nobody asked you to label people who are just trying to help, but your political feelings shine through when you do.
- I am not protecting, nor trying to protect anybody - I'm not trying to teach you what it is like to work in a factory - I have labeled nobody
"People never cease to amaze me. Instead of just admitting they are wrong, they make excuses for their belief systems. It almost seems as if everybody was born to be a politician."
So, admit you're wrong already and stop making excuses for your isolationist, anti-modern, neoluddite, romantic agrarian belief system.
- As far as I am aware I am not wrong. I always correct myself when I make mistakes. - I am not isolationist - I am not anti-modern - I am not neoluddite (in fact vary much the opposite) - I don't know what a "romantic agrarian belief system" is, so I cannot comment. - I don't make excuses
I don't give a fuck about your childish games.
- I don't play games
Did you know there are many poorly educated white people and many well educated people of other races? By saying that bringing education to the poor is racist, you're saying there's a specific race element to being poor. How's that make me the racist, you racist?
- I have NEVER said bringing education to poor people is racist.
My experiences derive from not only formally studying various socio-economic systems, but by actually having the opportunity to actually talk to a very wide variety of people from various places throughout the world.
You claim that you are not racist or condescending to these people and yet you make statements like:
- What phone are they going to use to reserve the book?
- With what light will they read it after the sun goes down?
- How are they going to travel 100 miles on foot to the "local library"?
- All of which are taking a very biased and Western industrialized perspective. And of course you are inserting your own biases by stating that people who don't have OLPC computers have libraries with only 5 books in them that are 100 miles away and that can only be reached on foot. - In many places throughout the world, people go to sleep when the sun goes down. They do not find this to be an unfortunate outcome of their "poverty" because they never became industrialized
- Many of the people targeted with the XO are not living in clean rows of houses with white fences but with no computers.
- They're living in places where subsistence farming and odd jobs are the employment.
- They're happy to have clean water and vaccinations, some clothes and maybe some shoes.
- If you are telling me that these statements are not filled with prejudice then you are either lying or are not intellectually capable of acknowledging your own racism. - You are making it VERY clear that you think subsistence farming is negative. And if they don't have clean water, then chances are VERY high that this is because Western companies came in and started polluting their water supply. Laptop computers cannot make water clean.
- As for vaccinations; people generally have immunity from diseases that are not introduced by the likes of foreign invaders like economic and religious missionaries.
Of course schooling itself is a very Western and Industrialized notion. It does not make people smarter. It can however, in very rare circumstances, influence people
Slashdot Mirror
I do not doubt this to be true. Things are often more complex then they appear. My whole entire point is and was that people should NOT diminish abuse or the effects there-of... whether it be done once or is habitual.
Of course... the idea that it can even happen just ONCE is foreign to people like me. It is not in my genes to hit people. Some people tend to be more aggressive than others, and some people just know how to channel their aggression better. For those people, there will be no thought of excuses.
I am not presenting you with an argument. I am merely stating that an episode of a US "Reality" TV show that you don't even have a bibliographic reference for does not prove that men get abused by the system and women do not. I have seen PBS shows that actually have had lawyers and psychiatrists and other experts on that have stated that women get screwed by the justice system and that the public perception that woman have more defacto rights in issues like this is just pure mythology.
Yes I am sure a TV show like COPs has it's place in an intelligent discussion about human rights or domestic violence, but most intelligent people would not take your example seriously. That being said, I'm sure Asshats like Chyeld would agree with you.
You at once describe a situation of a fanatical mother (and as you can tell from my posts I am against simple-minded fanaticism); and projected your own callous attitudes towards abuse on people like me.
Most people I have met who have ZERO morals and are 100% hypocrites are people who call be "damaged" and say I "need help"... Yes I've heard it all before, but the sad thing is that people like you spend more time demonizing people, and using dishonest and Trollish comparisons to beef up your own Right Wing agenda's. You are sad and pathetic.
I can understand that just because he did it once, does not mean that he will do it again. But that is besides the point. I am not making excuses about JHR, and then claiming that I am not making excuses. As with most people, I see hypocrisy. I'm sure in many cases this may be thoughtless and unintended, but I wish I could actually get to know somebody who is not a hypocrite.
I don't know. Probably not. But that is just my opinion. That "but" there does not contradict the fact that there is no excuse. That "but" there is what is known as a Freudian slip. People's REAL intentions and meaning get explained AFTER the "but". Much the same as when he refers to abusers as being victims.
William Shakespeare (in Macbeth) used the phrase "Thou dost protest too much".
People do not NEED to be apologists for abuse if they have nothing to apologize about. Whether or how people should be punished is besides the point. I am merely pointing out faulty arguments.
I always get the sense, that when posting, I need to explain that I am only attacking the arguments to which I am making reference to, and nothing else. That being said I think having criminal databases is, in general, a bad idea; and having them public is outright stupid. Since that was not the point I was arguing however, I will not elaborate.
Sorry mate, but some of us don't base our beliefs on what we see on American Reality TV. I do expect you to get up-modded for your insights however.
Truth be damned.
I'll add one more comment.
You said:
"...someone who falls victim to their rage"
Yes I understand that you think of people who commit spousal abuse as victims.
I was wandering if you just miss-poke and if you will publicly apologize.
Of course nobody said anything about 100% certainty. The issue is more about probability. I think most people realize that people can make mistakes. I'm sure if a person accidentally beats a woman in an accidental fit of rage, then that person may not necessarily do it again. This person may not necessarily be accident prone after all.
The problem is that a LOT of people seem to think that beating woman up even once is excusable (hence people like yourself and quantumG claim that there is no excuse for this, BUT it happens, and people shouldn't be labeled as wife beaters because they happened to have been caught beating up their wife only once.)
So yes, I may very well be "dangerous" as you claimed before, because I made the observation that when people do things, they usually just don't do things out of the blue. Yes I see patterns where other people see excuses.
I've met people like you before. I can assure you that it is not ME who is dangerous.
People have free will when they do things right.
When people do things wrong they are merely products of the genes and the environment around them.
People's ability to interpret reality is really something special. No hallucinogenic drugs required.
You lost me when you said "but".
Yep, that's a pretty obvious BUT
I would never presume to reason why you say the things you do, but I have noticed a tendency for you to get overly emotional on Slashdot. I could only presume that you are the same way in real life, and hence your reasoning reflects your behavior.
People amaze me.
Of course databases are just another excuse to not do anything about a problem but react to it in a very passive and thoughtless manner.
What actually happens is that a person's lungs acclimatizes to the low oxygen atmosphere of the mountains, thus giving the athlete the ability to utilize oxygen more efficiently during competition. It's quite unfair to those athletes who cannot afford to go to the Alps to train, but the Olympics was never about fairness.
...do you think it's likely that people would voluntarily amputate their legs to be faster? Never under-estimate the fanatical.To be fair, people would have to run against people of the exact same size, wieght, shape and metabolism, and preferably have psychological and neurological tests done to make sure they are of the same mental AND physical makeup, otherwise one athlete will have an advantage over another.
This example of the blade runner just amplifies the unfairness of the Olympics, and it's rather farcical nature. As far as I know there is no way to absolutely and conclusively test for substances (hormones, or otherwise) that could give a person an advantage. If the Olympics was not based on competition, then cheating would not be a concern; but for some reason some people want to believe that the Olympics is promoting sport and presumably a healthy lifestyle.
However, since the concept of "drugs" is political, and "drugs" are in fact defined as "drugs" by politicians and lawyers (amongst others), this would mean that people in the US are getting fired for political reasons.
As with most political issues, there is usually a lot of hypocrisy involved. People who drive red cars have historically had more accidents, and yet I doubt if these people who drive red Honda's will get fired from their jobs and possibly be put in jail. I do however think that people who smoke marijuana or consume Magical Mushrooms would likely be fired and put into jail. This is because people are hypocrites.
And I really doubt if any such studies tried to assess how, let's say, "recreational" drugs can improve productivity. I would surmise that most or all of these studies have an underlying bias to find negative evidence.
Of course I could be wrong, and I'm not an expert, and I don't have a license to conduct my own double-blind studies (research into things like LSD is very rare these days as it is next to impossible to get approval).
I will digress however; I can see a Manager talking about a certain religious or political or sexual topic, and then seeing how their employee's heart rate's respond. Of course when these employee's get fired, they will be told they were let go because the stress indicators of their monitoring systems indicated that they could not emotionally handle the job.
Yes I can also see how people can and arguably should be fired for using mind altering drugs like coffee, tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, poppyseed bagels, and sugar (if you don't think sugar is a DRUG, then you are fooling yourself).
Sorry mate it's not always obvious, especially in forums like this.
But you yourself seem to be implying that I was not being sarcastic.
At any rate no offense was intended.
You don't defuse a bomb after it's gone off, but more so pay attention to the signs that a bomb is being built and put into place...
I think this is more apparent than real.
The most significant thing that is really changing is the technology which makes it easier. Just as McCarthyism , Watergate, the Witch Trials of Europe or the US hasn't seemed to make people more aware of anything; certainly not here in the West or in places like Zimbabwe, Darfur, Rwanda, etc.
I don't see any gradual decline of human rights. Perhaps there is a small micro-historic malaise happening in the Middle Class in some US states, other than that it seems to be business as usual.
http://slashdot.org/~Skreems
People in Canada won't have anything to worry about from Microsoft's technologies (unless they continue to follow the US lead) of a post 9/11 Orwellian Big Brother state (I guess people in Britain and Ireland have nannies to look after them).
It's ironic though, that this type of monitoring would in theory favour people like me who do things fast and efficiently, without cheating or cutting corners. But it has been my experience that the people (like me) who show up on time, are at the top of the percentile range on OBJECTIVE company tests (entrance tests, etc) will see absolutely ZERO benefit as the rewards will go to the social networking types who smile their way to the top instead of working. Yes these tests will be completely ignored for the ass-kissers and slackers. These tests will however be used to punish people whom management does not personally like.
Of course I could be completely wrong. But experience tells me otherwise.
"Do the world a favour and stop condescending to people you don't know or understand."
Follow your own fucking advice. Nobody in Cambodia asked you to protect them from food, water, medicine, and education. Nobody asked you to teach me what it's like to work in a factory, since I have. Nobody asked you to label people who are just trying to help, but your political feelings shine through when you do.
- I am not protecting, nor trying to protect anybody
- I'm not trying to teach you what it is like to work in a factory
- I have labeled nobody
"People never cease to amaze me. Instead of just admitting they are wrong, they make excuses for their belief systems. It almost seems as if everybody was born to be a politician."
So, admit you're wrong already and stop making excuses for your isolationist, anti-modern, neoluddite, romantic agrarian belief system.
- As far as I am aware I am not wrong. I always correct myself when I make mistakes.
- I am not isolationist
- I am not anti-modern
- I am not neoluddite (in fact vary much the opposite)
- I don't know what a "romantic agrarian belief system" is, so I cannot comment.
- I don't make excuses
I don't give a fuck about your childish games.
- I don't play games
Did you know there are many poorly educated white people and many well educated people of other races? By saying that bringing education to the poor is racist, you're saying there's a specific race element to being poor. How's that make me the racist, you racist?
- I have NEVER said bringing education to poor people is racist.
My experiences derive from not only formally studying various socio-economic systems, but by actually having the opportunity to actually talk to a very wide variety of people from various places throughout the world.
You claim that you are not racist or condescending to these people and yet you make statements like:
- What phone are they going to use to reserve the book?
- With what light will they read it after the sun goes down?
- How are they going to travel 100 miles on foot to the "local library"?
- All of which are taking a very biased and Western industrialized perspective. And of course you are inserting your own biases by stating that people who don't have OLPC computers have libraries with only 5 books in them that are 100 miles away and that can only be reached on foot.
- In many places throughout the world, people go to sleep when the sun goes down. They do not find this to be an unfortunate outcome of their "poverty" because they never became industrialized
- Many of the people targeted with the XO are not living in clean rows of houses with white fences but with no computers.
- They're living in places where subsistence farming and odd jobs are the employment.
- They're happy to have clean water and vaccinations, some clothes and maybe some shoes.
- If you are telling me that these statements are not filled with prejudice then you are either lying or are not intellectually capable of acknowledging your own racism.
- You are making it VERY clear that you think subsistence farming is negative.
And if they don't have clean water, then chances are VERY high that this is because Western companies came in and started polluting their water supply. Laptop computers cannot make water clean.
- As for vaccinations; people generally have immunity from diseases that are not introduced by the likes of foreign invaders like economic and religious missionaries.
Of course schooling itself is a very Western and Industrialized notion. It does not make people smarter. It can however, in very rare circumstances, influence people