I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that I witnessed orion67 being mounted by a sexually aroused pig. The rumors that I saw him mounted by an aroused pony or, in fact, any animal other than Henry the pig are categorically false.
That's going to be tough to gauge... If reading to my child makes me smile and they claim 10% royalties, does that mean I have to smirk at them? If reading to my child helps him fall asleep, does that mean I owe them a couple of scrapings off of an Ambien? If I read a scary story and he has a nightmare, do I need to jump out of the author's closet and shout, "Boo!"?
They really need to put together a cost-schedule for this stuff.
The Author's Guild has me over a barrel. 2-4 books a day (2 at nap time if I'm home and another couple before bed). Man, I never realized that reading Dr Seuss to my 3-year-old would be such a nightmare in terms of derivative rights and royalties.
Even though I've been doing this daily for years, does it help me at all that he's yet to give me any kind of financial compensation for it?
I'll be impressed when they quit screwing up their environment and rendering entire cities uninhabitable.
Why would they stop rendering cities inhabitable when it's profitable (at least short-term) and there are so many other cities that they can grab with impunity? You just have to think outside the box a little.
I wouldn't shut up until the Supreme Court had heard the case.
Best of luck. There are a great many people that would love to get in front of the Supreme Court. Something tells me that your "There is no password on my WAP - Anybody could have downloaded that. I just didn't bring it up during trial to make a point." defense, although perfectly valid, will be your last words if you really keep repeating it until either getting through to the Supreme Court or dying of old age.
And I'd want enough money to be set up for life from the jurisdiction that was stupid enough to let their public officials have search warrants when there was still reasonable doubt as to innocence.
Good luck with that too. It's up to the jury to decide whether or not there's "reasonable doubt as to [your] innocence". Are you suggesting that we re-work our system so that the police can only collect evidence after conviction?
Thank you for that. It's an interesting read but, for anyone who wants to save some time, here it is in a nutshell:
If your computer is targeted in a police investigation, your life is going to be a huge pain in the ass for a while even if you somehow manage an acquittal.
As for theft, there is no ability to steal the car. It's connected to a grid, with no means of driving it off the grid. It has no use outside the grid, making it pointless to steal.
You just summed up the single failing point of the Great Bumper Car Heist of '97 that I organized... Man, did we have a tough time explaining that one to the cops.
They typically (always?) have to meet a set of minimum physical standards to get hired. However, they are not often required to maintain those standards once employed. Professional firefighters, on the other hand, typically have to meet a much stricter set of standards to get hired and maintaining their health is certainly a condition of employment. I know a cop here (captain now) who tried for about a decade to get into the fire department but, once he finally passed the physical entrance screen he was so close to retirement that he decided to just stick it out with the police force. (The guy's in incredible shape - I don't know what they put the firefighters through, but it must be rough.)
That said, I can think of a bunch of good reasons for cops to walk a beat rather than patrolling. If not just for health, just to lower the barrier a little between them and the rest of us grunts - For their sake and ours.
You can already download a snapshot of wikipedia (which we all know is the end-all source of infinite, accurate information on all things worth knowing.) GPS units can hand you maps and routes for pretty much anywhere a typical person needs to go with a single DVD update. I don't know of a handy, portable dictionary/jargon download but given its size relative to the maps/wikipedia, there must be some out there. All we need is some more advanced diff-tools and we've got it all local all the time.
Really, the Internet is just needed for updates, interaction with other humans (or at least their avatars/slashdot personalities), shopping, and porn.
The big secret, I mean the one they really keep under wraps to try to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle... Is that plutonium and uranium are delicious. Really, really good - Here in Los Alamos we sprinkle highly enriched uranium on our corn-flakes in the morning - It's a great wake-me-up. Devouring large quantities of uranium (even un-enriched) and then 'processing' it internally is how the slugs are manufactured for gun-type weapons (the enrichment is done in the small intestine). Making an implosion weapon necessitates a circus elephant.
So, now that you know, feel free to go improvise a couple of nukes, just leave the dog alone!
Many more years ago than I'd care to discuss, I used to pull graveyards at the local 7-11. Corporate and Franchise policy back then was, that if you were robbed, you gave up the entire store, on the theory that you were more valuable than the cash or store contents.
We were told the same thing when we got our employment training at Allsup's - But you're right, I think it was a lawsuit dodge. There was an unspoken rule that anyone who managed to stop a shoplifter was promoted within a few weeks. And the manager who had the box of blank money orders and the printer stolen was demoted back to regular clerk level just a couple of weeks later (of course, from unrelated performance issues - Yeah right...)
That said, when I got robbed on my graveyard shift, I immediately gave up the register (just under $75), got the robber a bag, and even offered them a burrito before they left. (The really offensive part was when the cops asked me if I'd done it. There was ~$2k in the drop safe that could be removed with the tools we sold and $10k+ in the floor safe that I could probably break into after a little bit of work. Sure, question my integrity, but not my intelligence...)
Back on-topic, our company rolled out Pointsec to encrypt all of our laptops and switched to IronKeys to make sure that our USB sticks are secure. But if threatened, we've been instructed to turn over everything - Personal info, company-sensitive, classified nuclear weapons secrets - Everything.
So I suppose that every time somebody makes a crack about Xenu and his DC-8s, you immediately jump in and prove that you have "the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny"? There are a large number of people for which that's a sacred and important belief. If you do insert yourself and object, then you and I just disagree about where to draw the line. If not, then you're at best heavily biased and at worst a hypocrite.
Somebody holding their beliefs sacred is fine - Good on 'em. But that doesn't imply that I also need to hold them sacred. And if somebody huffs off as soon as they hear "A Jew, a Catholic, and an atheist walk into a bar...", well then that's their problem. Sorry. Now if it was walking up to somebody and directly ridiculing them for their beliefs, that would be different - You'd have to be a complete prick. But what's wrong with making light of a belief structure if you find something funny about it? I'm not going to make Catholic jokes while I'm attending mass or make Jew jokes during a briss - That would be disrespectful and irreverent. But out in the wild, it seems just fine to me. There are some funny jokes out there about Xenu, Jesus, the Buddha, and most large religious groups as generic stereotypes - If you find all of those jokes offensive just because they're making light of something that Somebody Somewhere holds sacred, you must spend a lot of time shouting down tacky jokes.
Yes, there are some subjects that I hold as taboo for humor and I have pointed out to people that their attempt at humor was just not funny. But mostly it's making light of something that involves deep pain for others - Jokes about child abuse or the holocaust, for example, I consider to be in poor taste. If they want to joke about it to others, that's fine, but I make it clear that I'm not interested.
As a side note... You know, calling a stranger an asshole, asking him if he has "the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny," and then asking if they "take [their] lessons from 14-year-olds on what is and is not appropriate..." It makes you sound, well, a lot like a 14-year-old. I don't think I'll be taking my lessons on what is and is not appropriate from you.
Sorry my post endorsing blasphemy hurt your feelings, but maybe you should grow a little thicker skin.
I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as to say that there are no adults without kids or that people who decide not to breed are wrinkly Peter Pans... There are plenty of great people that have given great benefits to society that never reproduced and likely acted more mature than I do.
That said, I personally didn't grow up until after my first child was born - It definitely changes a person. Up until that point, I was a child in a late-20's body (I still revert occasionally to the mind-set of a five year old, but that's tough to avoid when you spend an entire day on the floor playing with toddlers. Actually, I'm not even sure why I would want to avoid it...)
Now all that said, I'm still confused by your post. How does equating reproduction to adulthood lead you to say, "legislating adulthood is easy"? Are you suggesting that we restrict adult privileges to parents or force people to breed when it's time for them to become an "adult"?
I'm right there with you. I hate needles - When I have blood drawn, they typically ask me if I'm going to pass out because I sit there blanched and sweaty dreading the syringe. Not that I'm squeamish - I personally lanced my ear with a carpet cutter to drain pus out when it started cauliflowering from wrestling and didn't even flinch - It's just needles. Given a choice, I'd take a firing squad or hanging before lethal injection, a gas chamber, or the electric chair.
The thing is, we're not actually trying to be merciful to the people we're killing - We're just trying to look civilized and be merciful to the witnesses and executioners. Even though lethal injection is probably much more painful than a noose or a firing squad, it's easier to watch.
Want to do anything, anything at all and not get busted? Say: my religion says I must do it... It is a "get out of jail" card...
Um... Not really. We do draw the line at blowing people up in the name of jihad, marrying little girls, and for some reason smoking ganja. Other than that, I guess it works OK.
Agreed about making fun of sacred stuff though. Blasphemy is sometimes funny - My typical explanation of communion includes a scene where Zombie Jesus (who has returned after 3 days of death to feast on the brains of the living) gets miracled into wine and crackers so that we may feast upon him as he once feasted upon us. Not totally scripturally accurate, but more fun.
Seriously, if somebody gets all huffy about somebody cracking a joke about their religion, they must not be that secure in their beliefs.
True, there was one interesting metric where Windows got its ass kicked (copying small files around). But for the most part, I saw no major ownage. In fact, it showed that Windows did a better job with large files and had a faster turn-around time to boot & shut-down.
Windows takes longer to install and takes up more hard drive room... Meh. I don't re-install my OS very often and my hard drive is big enough that the extra 5 GB is just a nit-picky annoyance and a point I can use to bash Windows, but not actually something that will inconvenience me. Other than that, they stacked up pretty evenly (at least the x86 versions of Ubuntu 9.04 & Windows 7 - That's all I was really looking at).
How exactly did "Ubuntu Wipe Windows 7"? And in what way did these metrics show that "The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user"?
Seriously, and if it takes more that 1 GB of my 500 GB hard drive then there's something wrong.
Why don't they benchmark some more important timings like how long it takes to shutdown, how long it takes to paste text in an email and how long it takes to run a disk defrag.
Boot-up/shut-down are there. I was focused on the Windows 7/x86 & Ubuntu 9.04/x86 'cuz that's what I run. Windows 7 boots about 13 seconds faster and takes about 4 seconds longer to shut down.
Disk I/O is there too. For moving large files around, the numbers were more-or-less comparable. For moving small files (probably comparable to running a disk defrag), Windows 7 got its ass handed to it. Hopefully Microsoft is aware of this and does something about it before subjecting users to it.
Everything took more than 1 GB of hard-drive space installed, but Windows was 3-4 times as big (7.9 GB rather than 2.3 GB).
Thanks for that link. I have a 4 year old who does just fine in Windows (I haven't introduced him to Linux - I've got my Linux side set up for work and Windows for play), but I'm reluctant to really let him loose because I don't want him mucking things up (wiping my desktop out, shuffling files around, deleting my porn, etc). For some reason, it had never occurred to me to just give him his own disposable OS to play with that was set up specifically for educational games/tools - And it looks like the desktop you put together fits the bill quite nicely. If all goes well, I hope to just configure a drive for him and let him keep it to boot into when he wants to play.
I just ordered a 2 GB thumb drive from Amazon and have SOAS and Qimo downloading to try out - Thanks again, I look forward to trying it.
I think that it was named after Axel Rose, since either would be entertaining to see pitched off a cliff into hostile terrain just to see how they fare.
TFA speculates that it "would make a natural combination with the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR)". (Although I think that was just a tie-in for the author to insert some copy-pasta, as combining the two robots seems like a pretty dumb idea to me... EATR is a radically different design and not nearly as mobile.)
Still, it could make for some awkward situations if this thing is indeed used for search and rescue - better not give it AI. "Well, I found her, but my battery's low. I think that only one of us is making it out of here alive... *Munch munch munch*"
If you disagree with recording DNA there's no reason why recording fingerprints before conviction should be acceptable either.
I think that's taking it a little far. There are sometimes very good reasons to take prints/DNA. If you're accused of a crime and you claim that you've never been to the scene, prints or DNA could potentially (in)validate your story and effect your conviction/release.
However, if you're caught shoplifting or even if you're accused of something more serious and admit your guilt openly, I see no reason why either should need to be taken.
Umm, pretty much every President and Vice President has been a lawyer by trade before entering politics.
[citation needed]
If you start at Washington, about 3/4 of our presidents were ex-military (31 according to wikipedia).
Most recently, Carter was ex-Navy. Reagan was an actor. Bush #1 was ex-Navy. Clinton studied law but was basically a career politician. Bush #2 was (kind of) ex-National Guard and then an oil man. Yes, Obama studied & taught law.
When you say "pretty much every President...", who exactly are you referring to?
Slashdot Mirror
I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that I witnessed orion67 being mounted by a sexually aroused pig. The rumors that I saw him mounted by an aroused pony or, in fact, any animal other than Henry the pig are categorically false.
See? That's responsible trolling.
That's going to be tough to gauge... If reading to my child makes me smile and they claim 10% royalties, does that mean I have to smirk at them? If reading to my child helps him fall asleep, does that mean I owe them a couple of scrapings off of an Ambien? If I read a scary story and he has a nightmare, do I need to jump out of the author's closet and shout, "Boo!"?
They really need to put together a cost-schedule for this stuff.
The Author's Guild has me over a barrel. 2-4 books a day (2 at nap time if I'm home and another couple before bed). Man, I never realized that reading Dr Seuss to my 3-year-old would be such a nightmare in terms of derivative rights and royalties.
Even though I've been doing this daily for years, does it help me at all that he's yet to give me any kind of financial compensation for it?
I'll be impressed when they quit screwing up their environment and rendering entire cities uninhabitable.
Why would they stop rendering cities inhabitable when it's profitable (at least short-term) and there are so many other cities that they can grab with impunity? You just have to think outside the box a little.
I wouldn't shut up until the Supreme Court had heard the case.
Best of luck. There are a great many people that would love to get in front of the Supreme Court. Something tells me that your "There is no password on my WAP - Anybody could have downloaded that. I just didn't bring it up during trial to make a point." defense, although perfectly valid, will be your last words if you really keep repeating it until either getting through to the Supreme Court or dying of old age.
And I'd want enough money to be set up for life from the jurisdiction that was stupid enough to let their public officials have search warrants when there was still reasonable doubt as to innocence.
Good luck with that too. It's up to the jury to decide whether or not there's "reasonable doubt as to [your] innocence". Are you suggesting that we re-work our system so that the police can only collect evidence after conviction?
Thank you for that. It's an interesting read but, for anyone who wants to save some time, here it is in a nutshell:
If your computer is targeted in a police investigation, your life is going to be a huge pain in the ass for a while even if you somehow manage an acquittal.
IANAL.
As for theft, there is no ability to steal the car. It's connected to a grid, with no means of driving it off the grid. It has no use outside the grid, making it pointless to steal.
You just summed up the single failing point of the Great Bumper Car Heist of '97 that I organized... Man, did we have a tough time explaining that one to the cops.
They typically (always?) have to meet a set of minimum physical standards to get hired. However, they are not often required to maintain those standards once employed. Professional firefighters, on the other hand, typically have to meet a much stricter set of standards to get hired and maintaining their health is certainly a condition of employment. I know a cop here (captain now) who tried for about a decade to get into the fire department but, once he finally passed the physical entrance screen he was so close to retirement that he decided to just stick it out with the police force. (The guy's in incredible shape - I don't know what they put the firefighters through, but it must be rough.)
That said, I can think of a bunch of good reasons for cops to walk a beat rather than patrolling. If not just for health, just to lower the barrier a little between them and the rest of us grunts - For their sake and ours.
I just added a "new" #2
Argh! I can't help it...
Who is #1?
You are #6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!
When #2 leads to Prisoner flash-backs instead of potty humor, you know you've entered nerd-dom.
Off-topic... I know... Feel free to mod-bomb. Karma bonus foregone.
Will be stored in an information cache?
You can already download a snapshot of wikipedia (which we all know is the end-all source of infinite, accurate information on all things worth knowing.) GPS units can hand you maps and routes for pretty much anywhere a typical person needs to go with a single DVD update. I don't know of a handy, portable dictionary/jargon download but given its size relative to the maps/wikipedia, there must be some out there. All we need is some more advanced diff-tools and we've got it all local all the time.
Really, the Internet is just needed for updates, interaction with other humans (or at least their avatars/slashdot personalities), shopping, and porn.
OK! OK! Just leave the dog out of it!
The big secret, I mean the one they really keep under wraps to try to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle... Is that plutonium and uranium are delicious. Really, really good - Here in Los Alamos we sprinkle highly enriched uranium on our corn-flakes in the morning - It's a great wake-me-up. Devouring large quantities of uranium (even un-enriched) and then 'processing' it internally is how the slugs are manufactured for gun-type weapons (the enrichment is done in the small intestine). Making an implosion weapon necessitates a circus elephant.
So, now that you know, feel free to go improvise a couple of nukes, just leave the dog alone!
Many more years ago than I'd care to discuss, I used to pull graveyards at the local 7-11. Corporate and Franchise policy back then was, that if you were robbed, you gave up the entire store, on the theory that you were more valuable than the cash or store contents.
We were told the same thing when we got our employment training at Allsup's - But you're right, I think it was a lawsuit dodge. There was an unspoken rule that anyone who managed to stop a shoplifter was promoted within a few weeks. And the manager who had the box of blank money orders and the printer stolen was demoted back to regular clerk level just a couple of weeks later (of course, from unrelated performance issues - Yeah right...)
That said, when I got robbed on my graveyard shift, I immediately gave up the register (just under $75), got the robber a bag, and even offered them a burrito before they left. (The really offensive part was when the cops asked me if I'd done it. There was ~$2k in the drop safe that could be removed with the tools we sold and $10k+ in the floor safe that I could probably break into after a little bit of work. Sure, question my integrity, but not my intelligence...)
Back on-topic, our company rolled out Pointsec to encrypt all of our laptops and switched to IronKeys to make sure that our USB sticks are secure. But if threatened, we've been instructed to turn over everything - Personal info, company-sensitive, classified nuclear weapons secrets - Everything.
Where is the cost coming from, anyone?
High market demand and little apples-to-apples competition.
So I suppose that every time somebody makes a crack about Xenu and his DC-8s, you immediately jump in and prove that you have "the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny"? There are a large number of people for which that's a sacred and important belief. If you do insert yourself and object, then you and I just disagree about where to draw the line. If not, then you're at best heavily biased and at worst a hypocrite.
Somebody holding their beliefs sacred is fine - Good on 'em. But that doesn't imply that I also need to hold them sacred. And if somebody huffs off as soon as they hear "A Jew, a Catholic, and an atheist walk into a bar...", well then that's their problem. Sorry. Now if it was walking up to somebody and directly ridiculing them for their beliefs, that would be different - You'd have to be a complete prick. But what's wrong with making light of a belief structure if you find something funny about it? I'm not going to make Catholic jokes while I'm attending mass or make Jew jokes during a briss - That would be disrespectful and irreverent. But out in the wild, it seems just fine to me. There are some funny jokes out there about Xenu, Jesus, the Buddha, and most large religious groups as generic stereotypes - If you find all of those jokes offensive just because they're making light of something that Somebody Somewhere holds sacred, you must spend a lot of time shouting down tacky jokes.
Yes, there are some subjects that I hold as taboo for humor and I have pointed out to people that their attempt at humor was just not funny. But mostly it's making light of something that involves deep pain for others - Jokes about child abuse or the holocaust, for example, I consider to be in poor taste. If they want to joke about it to others, that's fine, but I make it clear that I'm not interested.
As a side note... You know, calling a stranger an asshole, asking him if he has "the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny," and then asking if they "take [their] lessons from 14-year-olds on what is and is not appropriate..." It makes you sound, well, a lot like a 14-year-old. I don't think I'll be taking my lessons on what is and is not appropriate from you.
Sorry my post endorsing blasphemy hurt your feelings, but maybe you should grow a little thicker skin.
I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as to say that there are no adults without kids or that people who decide not to breed are wrinkly Peter Pans... There are plenty of great people that have given great benefits to society that never reproduced and likely acted more mature than I do.
That said, I personally didn't grow up until after my first child was born - It definitely changes a person. Up until that point, I was a child in a late-20's body (I still revert occasionally to the mind-set of a five year old, but that's tough to avoid when you spend an entire day on the floor playing with toddlers. Actually, I'm not even sure why I would want to avoid it...)
Now all that said, I'm still confused by your post. How does equating reproduction to adulthood lead you to say, " legislating adulthood is easy"? Are you suggesting that we restrict adult privileges to parents or force people to breed when it's time for them to become an "adult"?
I'm right there with you. I hate needles - When I have blood drawn, they typically ask me if I'm going to pass out because I sit there blanched and sweaty dreading the syringe. Not that I'm squeamish - I personally lanced my ear with a carpet cutter to drain pus out when it started cauliflowering from wrestling and didn't even flinch - It's just needles. Given a choice, I'd take a firing squad or hanging before lethal injection, a gas chamber, or the electric chair.
The thing is, we're not actually trying to be merciful to the people we're killing - We're just trying to look civilized and be merciful to the witnesses and executioners. Even though lethal injection is probably much more painful than a noose or a firing squad, it's easier to watch.
Want to do anything, anything at all and not get busted? Say: my religion says I must do it...
It is a "get out of jail" card...
Um... Not really. We do draw the line at blowing people up in the name of jihad, marrying little girls, and for some reason smoking ganja. Other than that, I guess it works OK.
Agreed about making fun of sacred stuff though. Blasphemy is sometimes funny - My typical explanation of communion includes a scene where Zombie Jesus (who has returned after 3 days of death to feast on the brains of the living) gets miracled into wine and crackers so that we may feast upon him as he once feasted upon us. Not totally scripturally accurate, but more fun.
Seriously, if somebody gets all huffy about somebody cracking a joke about their religion, they must not be that secure in their beliefs.
Thank you for that.
True, there was one interesting metric where Windows got its ass kicked (copying small files around). But for the most part, I saw no major ownage. In fact, it showed that Windows did a better job with large files and had a faster turn-around time to boot & shut-down.
Windows takes longer to install and takes up more hard drive room... Meh. I don't re-install my OS very often and my hard drive is big enough that the extra 5 GB is just a nit-picky annoyance and a point I can use to bash Windows, but not actually something that will inconvenience me. Other than that, they stacked up pretty evenly (at least the x86 versions of Ubuntu 9.04 & Windows 7 - That's all I was really looking at).
How exactly did "Ubuntu Wipe Windows 7"? And in what way did these metrics show that "The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user"?
This whole article is a troll. I'm going to have check out whoever this guy is that submitted it.
Seriously, and if it takes more that 1 GB of my 500 GB hard drive then there's something wrong.
Why don't they benchmark some more important timings like how long it takes to shutdown, how long it takes to paste text in an email and how long it takes to run a disk defrag.
Boot-up/shut-down are there. I was focused on the Windows 7/x86 & Ubuntu 9.04/x86 'cuz that's what I run. Windows 7 boots about 13 seconds faster and takes about 4 seconds longer to shut down.
Disk I/O is there too. For moving large files around, the numbers were more-or-less comparable. For moving small files (probably comparable to running a disk defrag), Windows 7 got its ass handed to it. Hopefully Microsoft is aware of this and does something about it before subjecting users to it.
Everything took more than 1 GB of hard-drive space installed, but Windows was 3-4 times as big (7.9 GB rather than 2.3 GB).
Thanks for that link. I have a 4 year old who does just fine in Windows (I haven't introduced him to Linux - I've got my Linux side set up for work and Windows for play), but I'm reluctant to really let him loose because I don't want him mucking things up (wiping my desktop out, shuffling files around, deleting my porn, etc). For some reason, it had never occurred to me to just give him his own disposable OS to play with that was set up specifically for educational games/tools - And it looks like the desktop you put together fits the bill quite nicely. If all goes well, I hope to just configure a drive for him and let him keep it to boot into when he wants to play.
I just ordered a 2 GB thumb drive from Amazon and have SOAS and Qimo downloading to try out - Thanks again, I look forward to trying it.
I think that it was named after Axel Rose, since either would be entertaining to see pitched off a cliff into hostile terrain just to see how they fare.
TFA speculates that it "would make a natural combination with the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR)". (Although I think that was just a tie-in for the author to insert some copy-pasta, as combining the two robots seems like a pretty dumb idea to me... EATR is a radically different design and not nearly as mobile.)
Still, it could make for some awkward situations if this thing is indeed used for search and rescue - better not give it AI. "Well, I found her, but my battery's low. I think that only one of us is making it out of here alive... *Munch munch munch*"
NASA's write-up with pics.
If you disagree with recording DNA there's no reason why recording fingerprints before conviction should be acceptable either.
I think that's taking it a little far. There are sometimes very good reasons to take prints/DNA. If you're accused of a crime and you claim that you've never been to the scene, prints or DNA could potentially (in)validate your story and effect your conviction/release.
However, if you're caught shoplifting or even if you're accused of something more serious and admit your guilt openly, I see no reason why either should need to be taken.
Umm, pretty much every President and Vice President has been a lawyer by trade before entering politics.
[citation needed]
If you start at Washington, about 3/4 of our presidents were ex-military (31 according to wikipedia).
Most recently, Carter was ex-Navy. Reagan was an actor. Bush #1 was ex-Navy. Clinton studied law but was basically a career politician. Bush #2 was (kind of) ex-National Guard and then an oil man. Yes, Obama studied & taught law.
When you say "pretty much every President...", who exactly are you referring to?