i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
I think most people would prefer more good coders. A lot of people who program suck at it, or just don't understand it at the level they need to because they've gone to school and had their head filled with computer science classes and not much real world. To be a good coder you need to be good at things besides programming.
It has nothing to do with ego, and a lot to do with the fact that the best programmers are often busy fixing the mistakes of other, less-capable programmers. Believe me, when you wait 6 months for someone to design a database for you that tracks your software deployments and when it finally arrives it has a 64k record limit, you're going to be in a very unpleasant mood. A lot of programmers simply can't look ahead and see the big picture -- how their software is going to interact with the larger ecosystem/infrastructure is it being placed into.
I'm sure your wife would love to know that you're looking for porn 5% more this month.
Pfft! Most women don't care if their guy looks at porn. They just want him to pick up after himself and not sit on the couch after work all night watching TV with his hand in a bag of potato chips. Many marriages are sexless ones, especially after kids are in the picture. So really, while they wouldn't care about their man looking at porn, they'd probably be surprised -- I mean, who has time to masturbate when you've got two screaming kids who, if left unattended for more than 2 minutes will destroy everything you own and ever loved? Nobody, that's who.
. 'To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers,'
I believe I speak for every computer geek on the planet when I say "Ah! He's full of sh*t!" We've all done tech support. We've all been asked to fix the computer of our friend or family member. And we are STILL endlessly mystified as to how people can be so damn clueless. No. Being successful in the modern world doesn't depend on fluency in computers... it still depends on the same things that humanity has also (perhaps erroneously) placed value on: Who you know, how attractive you are, your personality, and in semi-rare cases, how good you are at what you do.
You're going through an awful lot of personal lubricant and we've noticed a drop in the number of text messages your Android phone has been receiving from user's we've identified as female. We've added some search suggestions to the box on the right for some singles sites in your area. -- Bro-ogle.
A judge recently ruled, in a cop abuse case, that the victim had every right to shoot the cop, since the victim's life was in mortal danger. And the judge would have found the victim "not guilty" by reason of self-defense.
Well, the judge was actually the US Supreme Court, and the summary of that decision is basically "We can't ask people to go against human nature, and when someone threatens another's life, that person has every right to fight back because that's instinctual and primal -- no law can stand against that." Exact quote follows...
The law has grown, and even if historical mistakes have contributed to its growth, it has tended in the direction of rules consistent with human nature. Many respectable writers agree that, if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, he may stand his ground, and that, if he kills him, he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this Court. . . . Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife. Therefore in this Court, at least, it is not a condition of immunity that one in that situation should pause to consider whether a reasonable man might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than to kill him.
J Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Brown v United States, 256 US 335, 343 (1921).
Wow, Internet Tough Guy advocates shooting at law enforcement
I advocate defending yourself from unlawful violations of your civil liberty, which can (and historically usually does) lead to violence. I do not advocate suicide. Violence is the last thing to try, not the first!
Those men have families too -- they're not going to unload their gun on a crowd of people with the will and determination to fight back if attacked when they are outnumbered 10 to 1 or more. They aren't suicidal either. A show of force and solidarity is a better deterrent than a truck load of guns... Liberty has historically been paid for in blood. It is is maintained by the willingness to pay for it. It's how we avoided a nuclear holocaust when the USSR still existed: Mutually Assured Destruction was the most successful peace policy the modern world has seen.
I'll do what civilized people do - get the courts involved.
There is nothing dignified about dying, or being beaten, arrested, and/or tortured, much less at the hands of a corrupt authority. Civilized people try to avoid those things -- but civilized people also understand that sometimes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good. If that means standing in front of a tank, so be it. We send our men and women overseas to fight for our freedoms every day, and they have the same attitude; They do everything possible to avoid violence, but if the enemy is intent upon it, then by god we give it to them. That's what patriotism is; It's not standing by your government, it's standing by your country -- it's about the people.
P.S. Yes, I'm posting this in the clear, under an alias that could probably be easily traced to my real life identity. I honestly don't give a damn. If you're some government agent reading this and want to add me to another watch list, go for it... I don't mind. I have only one request: Add my name to the very top, and place underneath the title, A Proud American. And then ask yourself if you can, in good conscience, sign your name the same.
The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s when they would send their own agents into groups of protesters to start a fight in order to justify moving the police in to arrest and remove the "violent" protesters. They were called provokateurs, and in large demonstrations back then, activists were taught to surround them and then quickly beat the f*ck out of them and leave them in a puddle of their own blood, vomit, and broken bones.
These days, with cameras everywhere, they have to rely on other tactics, but they're just as dirty. It is no surprise the FBI trains agents to worry about the law later -- the law is sufficiently complex right now that it can be interpreted to allow just about anything. We're now shipping US citizens who have never been convicted of any crime, nor left the country, to jails in other countries where we torture them in ways that the Geneva convention bans as war crimes; We simply redefined the legal definition of war. The US has not fought a war in 30 years, under the existing definition.
The FBI, homeland security, and other agencies get away with this kind of abuse of its citizens because nobody stands up and fights back. Imagine how different things would be if that guy who decided to mace those students who were sitting, in a peaceful protest, was suddenly mobbed and reduced to a bloody pulp. In most countries, this is how police brutality is dealt with: The citizens literally mob the guy and sometimes police die as a result... and this is how the balance of power is maintained.
It is a radical position to take, but our founding fathers were right: The right to bear arms is meant to ensure that when you, as a citizen, see abuse of power, you grab your gun and blow the guy away. Mind you, I don't advocate violence except as an option of last resort... but if a friend, family member, or fellow protester is being beaten or about to be "disappeared" for excercising their lawful and constitutionally granted rights.... the Founding fathers were quite clear on what you should do: Stop them, by any means necessary. I don't know whether you should, or whether I would, but... it was the method used to secure our freedom from Britain and ensure civil liberties for almost 150 years so it is worth thinking about at least.
"Okay, and the next item on the federal congressional budget... defunding of the FTC. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. We apologize to our corporate sponsors for the delay in identifying these activist accountants, and assure you that by the legislation passed will soon be defanged and rendered useless."
Please. The FTC is too small to make a difference here. Most of our personal data is shipped overseas anyway to strip it of any legal protections anyway. Remember HIPPA people? That's your private medical data. There's nothing preventing your insurance company from exporting it to an associate overseas, where there is no HIPPA and then selling that data back to a vendor in the US. There's a healthy market for this kind of thing -- it increases the number of rejects based on "pre-existing conditions"... it's very cost effective.
So if the government can't even protect your medical data, don't hold your breath about your personal data getting any protections.
My local government would sure like to know how to get in on that jail building and funding gravy-train. All we seem to get are unfunded mandates.
Well, the jails are built overseas by defense contractors, and staffed by foreign nationals sympathetic to American needs, and paid for by US tax dollars earmarked for all kinds of humanitarian aid, duty free imports, etc. It's all really quite complicated, so I'm afraid local governments can't receive funding for building long-term use jails. Hosting a National Security Event however will open up funding for the construction of temporary jails to house all the peaceful protesters that will show up to demonstrate their unpatriotic attitudes. We pay for overtime by local law enforcement and offer discounted equipment for anti-terrorism operations. We also have a reward incentive program; an undisclosed sum is set aside to reward people who arrest, or are involved in the arrest of, terrorists. For the definition of a terrorist, please see appendix A. Thank you for your cooperation, Citizen!
derp derp herp derp... my country is great derp derp herp how dare you protest in it derp herp... you get what you deserve, derp derp
Thank you for that stunningly well-written piece of literary brilliance, Good sir. I'm sure everyone here has the time, energy, and financial resources to visit each of the 176 other countries on the planet in order to personally interview everyone in each of those countries. You have cunningly exposed the flaws in my argument, and now as a final act of honor I shall throw myself upon my own sword.
Uh, that wasn't DHS, that was local police beating up on hippies.
The DHS helped local law enforcement plan mass arrests simultanously across multiple municipalities, offered funding for said arrests, and worked with local authorities to draft laws which would pass constitutional muster while restricting or eliminating the protester's ability to publicly assemble. So you are correct in that they didn't beat up the protesters, they just handed out the bullets, batons, built and funded the jails, supported the laws being rewritten, and told everyone the Occupy movement was supported by Al Quaeta.
Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
Kettle, meet pot. You're living in a country without freedom of speech right now. Look at what Homeland Security did to the Occupiers: Tanks, tear gas, mass arrests under cover of darkness, secret courts, deportation, just to name a few of the many creative things they did to punish the people who excercised their "freedom of speech". But there are many more examples, if you're one of those people that found that groundswell of democracy offensive and would prefer a more organized movement with a nice corporate logo and a spokesperson... I have a nearly inexhaustible supply of examples of civil rights violations in this country.
The bottom line is, the UK takes racism more seriously than the US. It has a good reason to given its own (much longer history) history of racial injustice. The entire business with Israel and Palestine is mostly the fault of the British -- they have a lot to atone for. And let's not even start with the religous intolerance -- the reason why "the colonies", well, aren't anymore, and then there was that bit of trouble they had in Ireland. No, I think the British have learned a very different set of lessons than we have... but if you want to say they have less "free speech" than we do, I'd have to say you are wrong: Over there I can tell law enforcement to sod off and they will (with a stiff lip of course). Over here, it's 4 hours with the high voltage anal prober if he's in a good mood. And may God have mercy on your soul if your name is something that sounds vaguely muslim or if you're not white.
Their justice system may be archaic, convoluted, and excessively harsh towards certain classes of anti-social behaviors, but I believe most people would gladly trade that here in exchange for national healthcare, a penal system that focuses on rehabilitation, an inherent right to privacy regarding many government processes (including the judicial branch), and a more modern infrastructure -- sewers, communication, electricity, internet, all much more modern than here in the US. Of course, a lot of that is because most of it got blown the hell up during WWII, but it is what it is. The British, on the whole, don't pretend their system is anything but what it is: It is a culture that prides itself on restraint and personal responsibility; Our culture is one of excessive indulgences and avoiding responsibility.
Also... they have Doctor Who. The US has... er.. SyFy's Mansquito. They can also find Nigeria on a map without having to google it.:) I'd gladly take their culture in exchange for the freedom to utter a long string of racial slurs and expletives...
For some serious giggles, google up the profits of the health care insurance companies and see for yourself.
I work for a health care insurance company. There is no incentive to improve business process here; Millions are wasted due to systemic inefficiency. Medicare is an example of administration done right: They take something like $0.05 of every dollar to administer the program -- that is, all the approvals, rejections, communications, support infrastructure, and personnel to move the money from point A to point B and provide full auditing of it as well. There is no private-sector company that can begin to approach that level of efficiency. But insurance companies' overhead costs are being spread across their entire subscriber base, an every solution is about as inefficient as any other in the private sector. This doesn't become apparent until you try to buy medical goods and services at "retail" prices. That's the price of systemic inefficiency, and since insurance companies have no incentive to improve business process, billions are lost every year due to it.
Before you complain about how they're profit-maximizing, consider that the reason you're paying so much isn't just to pad profit margins: It's also because there's no reason to be efficient. Most people can't afford not to have health insurance. Even a perfectly healthy person doing routine preventative care would see the equivalent of a decent used car rolling out of their pocket and into the gaping maw of "Medical expenses". Yes, the companies are to blame, but make sure you're pinning it on the right behavior!
There was an old indian prophecy, told after the arrival of the white man in America, shortly after the trail of tears. It was this: "One day, what they have done to us, they will do to each other." This country has a long history of stealing land held by indigenous people, slaughtering them, and relocating the survivors. The next land grab has arrived, except this time, it isn't a fight for physical property, but digital. And just as the fences went up, the land was repurposed, and the environment poisoned in its realworld counterpart, so too must the digital follow.
Everything must be owned. It is the mantra of capitalism. The first peoples of the internet; the hackers, the academics, the non-profits, are now being rounded up, jailed, or forcibly deported from their homes and off their property to make way for The Man. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. Your days of "free" code and believing nobody can own [the internet] are coming to an end. They have guns, they have the support of the government, and this time they won't bother with that non-sense about signing treaties. And future generations will never know a world where ideas couldn't be owned, where knowledge was free, and where anonymity from corporations and governments provided fertile ground for social change.
Make part of the Facebook login process to enter your your race, age, marital status, or other things that it is illegal for employers to ask you about
So let me get this straight: Your plan is to to give up personal information to a company, in order to avoid giving up personal information to a company? Can I have a plan that doesn't involve me prostituting my personal data in exchange for monentary favors?
Step 1. Paint giant bullseye on the top of your corporate office. Write "Insert bomb here," repeatedlty around the edge.
Step 2. Sell digital goods that can be used by sovereign powers to wage war on each other to both sides.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profi--Error: Connection reset by peer
I know you're joking, but in a lot of large cities a car is unnecessary, and
That whooshing noise was the joke sailing above your head. This wasn't about cars, this was about some Forever Alone dude hacking a wifi router into some whack LCD display. Who cares what it displays? Ordinary people just go out and buy an LCD display and a dev board (like Arduino) for this kind of thing. They don't consult the Necronomicon and then call forth Digitus, The Terrible One (and his lesser known counterpart, The Terrible Zero), and ask him to use his dark powers to transmorgify a f***ing wifi router into an LCD display. This is a classic example of why engineers, like children, should never be left unattended for long periods of time: They're inevitably do something completely nuts that'll leave the responsible adult left with a broken brain, babbling in the corner asking Whhhyyyyyyyy? This is just such a project.
The foundation of this country is free speech, and this is going down the lines of regulating speech that you have decided is offensive, which is supposed to be constitutional here.
The purpose of the first amendment was to prevent the government from quelling critical or rebellious speech which did not agree with its actions or policies. Free speech does not extend to slander, libel, inciting violence, etc.
It's a very common thing for people to either make jokes, or to insult someone either as a joke, or when they're fighting. It's kind of unexpected that they kill themselves over it, although harassment and invasion of privacy should be taken very seriously in this case.
Grabbing a video camera and taping someone doing something private and then releasing it publicly is not a "joke" or "insult". They are completely unrelated. Jokes and insults are words. This is the next level: Actions.
It's extremely unlikely that Ravi hated gay people even, he was just acting immature by projecting his own gay anxieties by laughing at something that actually humiliated his roommate. Ravi may even be gay himself.
From both a legal and ethical standpoint, irrelevant. Ravi is responsible for his own actions, regardless of motivations.
Now saying something that happens to offend someone makes you a hate criminal and elevates special privileges to individuals that aren't applied equally to everyone, like for example, white people.
This is not something that just "happened". It was willful and malicious. As well, it is perfectly possible for you to be prosecuted under this legislation even if you share the same attributes as your victim: White on white, gay on gay, etc. The law does not distinguish: It only looks at the person committing the act and the motivations for doing so.
This is the goal of the anti defamation league, to elevate jews and Israel above that of white people. They're against free speech. They're against white nationalist, yet they are all for Jew nationalism in Israel, where they're acting like Nazis over there.
You just Godwin'd yourself out of the debate. x_x
You can look to Canada and...
... and I quickly notice it's not the United States. We're talking about this country's laws. The comparison is disengenuous and meaningless.
And the anti-defamation league crafts these unconstitutional, biased laws and has been slowly passing them in America and wherever they can.
Defamation is illegal. Has been since before this country was founded, and those laws were imported from the British and their common law system, which can trace it's lineage all the way back to the Magna Carta. Saying something that is a lie about another person with intent to harm their character has never had a place in democratic society.
I happen to be a minority that would be protected by hate crime laws, I happen to realize they're unconstitutional, anti-speech and unreasonable.
They are none of those things. This is a fallacious conclusion.
Common folk are all too quick to outlaw everything and I think societies are destined to slowly wither away everyones' rights out of shear stupidity with poorly thought out laws.
The common folk have never had the ability to pass laws, nor enforce them. That is the very definition of a commoner. As to societies... well yes, all societies are cyclical in regards to civil rights. They begin, they rise, they peak, fall, and then perish. This is hardly news.
You instead want to punish a man by removing 10-20% of his life, which is what prison amounts to.
Full stop. I never said I wanted to punish him. I said the voters, elected representatives, prosecutor, and jury wanted to punish him; Which is a factual statement.
I still see no evidence that this was done because of the victim's sexual orientation.
Might want to get your eyes checked out then: At least 13 other people spotted it; Specifically the judge and jury.
And you are a little foolish bigot against gay men, not realizing that they are just as capable of defending themselves as any other man.
I have not made any statement regarding this, or any, man's ability to defend himself.
Gay men are just that - men. They aren't skinny little fags with limp wrists who make cosmopolitans so that all the little straight girls can condescendingly come and drink in their bars. The Stonewall Riots did not consist of men in high heels line dancing against the police.
These facts are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That said, the Stonewall riots were because of men in high heels; The police who entered that day did so to arrest persons without identification and persons wearing clothing which was not gender-conforming. Although Stonewall is historically remembered as being triggered by an attack on gay men, it was in fact a direct attack on the transgender community, although a minority of the gay community would fall under that.
Oppose this to the stupid Clementi, who simply should have punched Ravi in the face (and then buy him a beer) rather than leap off a bridge.
I don't believe you are qualified to say what a forceful and sudden outing of a person's sexual orientation to their friends and family might have on a person's mental state, nor what, if any, pre-existing medical conditions may have been present at the time he did so. However, it is still immaterial to the issue.
All you have done here is substituted yourself in place of this individual and then projected your own background, life experiences, and beliefs onto the situation. Projection is a coping mechanism, a form of ego-protection. That's what you're doing here: You aren't putting yourself in his shoes, nor dispassionately and objectively reviewing the facts. Worse, you're lashing out at someone who is, because the conclusions cause cognitive dissonance with your definition of what a man is. So, let me strike directly at the heart of your emotional response by saying this: A man is whatever he chooses to be, and however he chooses to act. A man is self-defined. The definition of what a man is, is therefore, entirely subjective. If you wish to accept a masculine identity where punching people in the face and then buying them beers is the correct response, that is perfectly okay (from a psychology standpoint). However, not everyone will choose to accept your definition... other men may choose differently.
I think the entire concept of a "hate crime" is wrong. Isn't stuff like this already covered by "making threats" and "intimidation"?
Yes, it is. But when someone makes a threat based on certain characteristics of a person, such as race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, they are disgracing the very foundation of this country, as well as any country that would consider itself a democracy: Namely, that all people equal under the law. But that equality doesn't start with the law, rather it is the product of a deeply-held cultural belief, which the law reflects and follows from. Democracy is, at its very core, about creating great people, who can then do great deeds for its own citizens: All the great scientists, engineers, poets, writers, politicians, are a product of this cultural belief. If a person is not able to rise to a point where they reach their full potential, that harms the whole. Within that context, hate crime legislation is specifically a response to the behavior of others which is overtly limiting and damaging to this most central of beliefs.
I'm all for equality. I don't think you should discriminate against someone because of their skin color, beliefs, sexual orientation, any of that stuff really.
But you're a man of words, and not of deeds. You stop short of giving your belief any teeth, any hope of implimentation. What you are saying is "discrimination is wrong, but if you do it, you shouldn't be treated any worse for having done so." There is another school of thought: That is, for people who are predatory, people who discriminate overtly and sufficiently to break the law, more severe punishment is called for because they are not as easily deterred as someone who lacks a strong motivation, or had a momentary lapse of judgement.
you're hiring them for a job the only thing that should matter is their skills
Except that nobody hires based only on skills. That's a myth, an illusion -- most people hire other people based on their likeability, which is exactly how it sounds: How much like you the person being interviewed is. That, right there, is the loci of discrimination: a person is either like you, or unlike you. A person like you will naturally receive more favors from you. The law steps in here and says: This is not what makes for a great society. A great society must rise above petty differences.
You can't fix discrimination by being more discriminatory.
Neither can you fix it by ignoring the problem, or not recognizing that people who are motivated to commit crimes on the basis of minority attributes are far more likely to continue to commit similar crimes against those possessing said attributes than a person who exhibits the same behavior, but is not motivated by hatred. A man who hits someone while drunk at a bar might only do that once in his life. A man who hits someone at a bar because he's wearing a skirt is far, far more likely to do it again.
But even worse, Ravi is also going to have his life ruined by a man who decided to end his own.
No, there is no "even worse". Someone is dead, and it isn't him. There are precious few situations in life in which surviving is a worse fate than dying: Getting deported, or spending 10 years in jail, is not on the short list.
What Ravi did was punch in the nose wrong - not 10 years in prison and deportation.
A jury of 12 people disagrees with your assessment. This wasn't some judge with an attitude problem: This was a law passed by elected representatives, in an open and accessible public forum, with ample opportunity for public discourse. It has been affirmed countless times by a majority -- and now has been affirmed unanimously by 12 randomly-selected people from that community. You are welcome to your opinion but as a matter of law, there is little doubt as to his guilt. That said, my opinion is that you are short-sighted and bigoted, and have probably done (or thought of doing) things like this because of your own homophobia. For someone like you, a verdict like this must be pretty scary.
Heck, the stupid stuff we did on our floor in college was just as bad or worse. I'm sure 99% of every man who went to college in the dorms can say the same.
And for the 1% of every man, would that be his sense of civic responsibility? The stupid stuff most people do is not motivated by a hatred or bias based on sexual orientation, race, or other immutable attributes of a person... as a rule, the stupid things people do in college comes down to matters of romance, and matters involving alcohol and a desire for peer acceptance.
I'm appalled by your casual disregard for the seriousness of this person's crime: It was clearly motivated by a desire to embarass his victim, was clearly done because of the victim's sexual orientation, and in fact rises to the standard of malicious intent because he recorded it with the intention of making it public.
I, for one, see no reason to invite more people into this country to practice hate crimes when we already have a full load of loonies and people trying to screw up our civil liberties as it is: If you're immigrating to another country, you don't do anything that could get you in trouble with the law. You have to be a model citizen, better even than the people you want to live with, at least until you get your papers. Maybe that's unfair, but that's the way it is, and if this guy gets deported it'll be (at the very, very least) because he was weapons-grade stupid. And that is nobody's fault but his own.
Depiction of children having sex is illegal in Canada. Even if you personally wrote it, or drew it.
Slide 1: Picture of anime character, age 10
Slide 2: Picture of anime character, age 14
Slide 3: Picture of anime character, age 18
Slide 4: Picture of anime character, age 20
Slide 5: Picture of anime character, age 30
Okay, if it would please the court, could the prosecution please point out which of these pictures depicts underage children, and which are of adults? Oh.. you mean it's the exact same artistic style? That there is no difference? Oh... okay.
Slashdot Mirror
i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
I think most people would prefer more good coders. A lot of people who program suck at it, or just don't understand it at the level they need to because they've gone to school and had their head filled with computer science classes and not much real world. To be a good coder you need to be good at things besides programming.
It has nothing to do with ego, and a lot to do with the fact that the best programmers are often busy fixing the mistakes of other, less-capable programmers. Believe me, when you wait 6 months for someone to design a database for you that tracks your software deployments and when it finally arrives it has a 64k record limit, you're going to be in a very unpleasant mood. A lot of programmers simply can't look ahead and see the big picture -- how their software is going to interact with the larger ecosystem/infrastructure is it being placed into.
I'm sure your wife would love to know that you're looking for porn 5% more this month.
Pfft! Most women don't care if their guy looks at porn. They just want him to pick up after himself and not sit on the couch after work all night watching TV with his hand in a bag of potato chips. Many marriages are sexless ones, especially after kids are in the picture. So really, while they wouldn't care about their man looking at porn, they'd probably be surprised -- I mean, who has time to masturbate when you've got two screaming kids who, if left unattended for more than 2 minutes will destroy everything you own and ever loved? Nobody, that's who.
. 'To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers,'
I believe I speak for every computer geek on the planet when I say "Ah! He's full of sh*t!" We've all done tech support. We've all been asked to fix the computer of our friend or family member. And we are STILL endlessly mystified as to how people can be so damn clueless. No. Being successful in the modern world doesn't depend on fluency in computers... it still depends on the same things that humanity has also (perhaps erroneously) placed value on: Who you know, how attractive you are, your personality, and in semi-rare cases, how good you are at what you do.
You're going through an awful lot of personal lubricant and we've noticed a drop in the number of text messages your Android phone has been receiving from user's we've identified as female. We've added some search suggestions to the box on the right for some singles sites in your area. -- Bro-ogle.
I've seen the future, and I think we should run.
A judge recently ruled, in a cop abuse case, that the victim had every right to shoot the cop, since the victim's life was in mortal danger. And the judge would have found the victim "not guilty" by reason of self-defense.
Well, the judge was actually the US Supreme Court, and the summary of that decision is basically "We can't ask people to go against human nature, and when someone threatens another's life, that person has every right to fight back because that's instinctual and primal -- no law can stand against that." Exact quote follows...
The law has grown, and even if historical mistakes have contributed to its growth, it has tended in the direction of rules consistent with human nature. Many respectable writers agree that, if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, he may stand his ground, and that, if he kills him, he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this Court. . . . Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife. Therefore in this Court, at least, it is not a condition of immunity that one in that situation should pause to consider whether a reasonable man might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than to kill him.
J Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Brown v United States, 256 US 335, 343 (1921).
Wow, Internet Tough Guy advocates shooting at law enforcement
I advocate defending yourself from unlawful violations of your civil liberty, which can (and historically usually does) lead to violence. I do not advocate suicide. Violence is the last thing to try, not the first!
Those men have families too -- they're not going to unload their gun on a crowd of people with the will and determination to fight back if attacked when they are outnumbered 10 to 1 or more. They aren't suicidal either. A show of force and solidarity is a better deterrent than a truck load of guns... Liberty has historically been paid for in blood. It is is maintained by the willingness to pay for it. It's how we avoided a nuclear holocaust when the USSR still existed: Mutually Assured Destruction was the most successful peace policy the modern world has seen.
I'll do what civilized people do - get the courts involved.
There is nothing dignified about dying, or being beaten, arrested, and/or tortured, much less at the hands of a corrupt authority. Civilized people try to avoid those things -- but civilized people also understand that sometimes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good. If that means standing in front of a tank, so be it. We send our men and women overseas to fight for our freedoms every day, and they have the same attitude; They do everything possible to avoid violence, but if the enemy is intent upon it, then by god we give it to them. That's what patriotism is; It's not standing by your government, it's standing by your country -- it's about the people.
P.S. Yes, I'm posting this in the clear, under an alias that could probably be easily traced to my real life identity. I honestly don't give a damn. If you're some government agent reading this and want to add me to another watch list, go for it... I don't mind. I have only one request: Add my name to the very top, and place underneath the title, A Proud American . And then ask yourself if you can, in good conscience, sign your name the same.
The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s when they would send their own agents into groups of protesters to start a fight in order to justify moving the police in to arrest and remove the "violent" protesters. They were called provokateurs, and in large demonstrations back then, activists were taught to surround them and then quickly beat the f*ck out of them and leave them in a puddle of their own blood, vomit, and broken bones.
These days, with cameras everywhere, they have to rely on other tactics, but they're just as dirty. It is no surprise the FBI trains agents to worry about the law later -- the law is sufficiently complex right now that it can be interpreted to allow just about anything. We're now shipping US citizens who have never been convicted of any crime, nor left the country, to jails in other countries where we torture them in ways that the Geneva convention bans as war crimes; We simply redefined the legal definition of war. The US has not fought a war in 30 years, under the existing definition.
The FBI, homeland security, and other agencies get away with this kind of abuse of its citizens because nobody stands up and fights back. Imagine how different things would be if that guy who decided to mace those students who were sitting, in a peaceful protest, was suddenly mobbed and reduced to a bloody pulp. In most countries, this is how police brutality is dealt with: The citizens literally mob the guy and sometimes police die as a result... and this is how the balance of power is maintained.
It is a radical position to take, but our founding fathers were right: The right to bear arms is meant to ensure that when you, as a citizen, see abuse of power, you grab your gun and blow the guy away. Mind you, I don't advocate violence except as an option of last resort... but if a friend, family member, or fellow protester is being beaten or about to be "disappeared" for excercising their lawful and constitutionally granted rights.... the Founding fathers were quite clear on what you should do: Stop them, by any means necessary. I don't know whether you should, or whether I would, but... it was the method used to secure our freedom from Britain and ensure civil liberties for almost 150 years so it is worth thinking about at least.
"Okay, and the next item on the federal congressional budget... defunding of the FTC. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. We apologize to our corporate sponsors for the delay in identifying these activist accountants, and assure you that by the legislation passed will soon be defanged and rendered useless."
Please. The FTC is too small to make a difference here. Most of our personal data is shipped overseas anyway to strip it of any legal protections anyway. Remember HIPPA people? That's your private medical data. There's nothing preventing your insurance company from exporting it to an associate overseas, where there is no HIPPA and then selling that data back to a vendor in the US. There's a healthy market for this kind of thing -- it increases the number of rejects based on "pre-existing conditions"... it's very cost effective.
So if the government can't even protect your medical data, don't hold your breath about your personal data getting any protections.
My local government would sure like to know how to get in on that jail building and funding gravy-train. All we seem to get are unfunded mandates.
Well, the jails are built overseas by defense contractors, and staffed by foreign nationals sympathetic to American needs, and paid for by US tax dollars earmarked for all kinds of humanitarian aid, duty free imports, etc. It's all really quite complicated, so I'm afraid local governments can't receive funding for building long-term use jails. Hosting a National Security Event however will open up funding for the construction of temporary jails to house all the peaceful protesters that will show up to demonstrate their unpatriotic attitudes. We pay for overtime by local law enforcement and offer discounted equipment for anti-terrorism operations. We also have a reward incentive program; an undisclosed sum is set aside to reward people who arrest, or are involved in the arrest of, terrorists. For the definition of a terrorist, please see appendix A. Thank you for your cooperation, Citizen!
Appendix A:
Terrorist, def.: Everyone.
derp derp herp derp... my country is great derp derp herp how dare you protest in it derp herp... you get what you deserve, derp derp
Thank you for that stunningly well-written piece of literary brilliance, Good sir. I'm sure everyone here has the time, energy, and financial resources to visit each of the 176 other countries on the planet in order to personally interview everyone in each of those countries. You have cunningly exposed the flaws in my argument, and now as a final act of honor I shall throw myself upon my own sword.
Uh, that wasn't DHS, that was local police beating up on hippies.
The DHS helped local law enforcement plan mass arrests simultanously across multiple municipalities, offered funding for said arrests, and worked with local authorities to draft laws which would pass constitutional muster while restricting or eliminating the protester's ability to publicly assemble. So you are correct in that they didn't beat up the protesters, they just handed out the bullets, batons, built and funded the jails, supported the laws being rewritten, and told everyone the Occupy movement was supported by Al Quaeta.
Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
Kettle, meet pot. You're living in a country without freedom of speech right now. Look at what Homeland Security did to the Occupiers: Tanks, tear gas, mass arrests under cover of darkness, secret courts, deportation, just to name a few of the many creative things they did to punish the people who excercised their "freedom of speech". But there are many more examples, if you're one of those people that found that groundswell of democracy offensive and would prefer a more organized movement with a nice corporate logo and a spokesperson... I have a nearly inexhaustible supply of examples of civil rights violations in this country.
The bottom line is, the UK takes racism more seriously than the US. It has a good reason to given its own (much longer history) history of racial injustice. The entire business with Israel and Palestine is mostly the fault of the British -- they have a lot to atone for. And let's not even start with the religous intolerance -- the reason why "the colonies", well, aren't anymore, and then there was that bit of trouble they had in Ireland. No, I think the British have learned a very different set of lessons than we have... but if you want to say they have less "free speech" than we do, I'd have to say you are wrong: Over there I can tell law enforcement to sod off and they will (with a stiff lip of course). Over here, it's 4 hours with the high voltage anal prober if he's in a good mood. And may God have mercy on your soul if your name is something that sounds vaguely muslim or if you're not white.
Their justice system may be archaic, convoluted, and excessively harsh towards certain classes of anti-social behaviors, but I believe most people would gladly trade that here in exchange for national healthcare, a penal system that focuses on rehabilitation, an inherent right to privacy regarding many government processes (including the judicial branch), and a more modern infrastructure -- sewers, communication, electricity, internet, all much more modern than here in the US. Of course, a lot of that is because most of it got blown the hell up during WWII, but it is what it is. The British, on the whole, don't pretend their system is anything but what it is: It is a culture that prides itself on restraint and personal responsibility; Our culture is one of excessive indulgences and avoiding responsibility.
Also... they have Doctor Who. The US has... er.. SyFy's Mansquito. They can also find Nigeria on a map without having to google it. :) I'd gladly take their culture in exchange for the freedom to utter a long string of racial slurs and expletives...
For some serious giggles, google up the profits of the health care insurance companies and see for yourself.
I work for a health care insurance company. There is no incentive to improve business process here; Millions are wasted due to systemic inefficiency. Medicare is an example of administration done right: They take something like $0.05 of every dollar to administer the program -- that is, all the approvals, rejections, communications, support infrastructure, and personnel to move the money from point A to point B and provide full auditing of it as well. There is no private-sector company that can begin to approach that level of efficiency. But insurance companies' overhead costs are being spread across their entire subscriber base, an every solution is about as inefficient as any other in the private sector. This doesn't become apparent until you try to buy medical goods and services at "retail" prices. That's the price of systemic inefficiency, and since insurance companies have no incentive to improve business process, billions are lost every year due to it.
Before you complain about how they're profit-maximizing, consider that the reason you're paying so much isn't just to pad profit margins: It's also because there's no reason to be efficient. Most people can't afford not to have health insurance. Even a perfectly healthy person doing routine preventative care would see the equivalent of a decent used car rolling out of their pocket and into the gaping maw of "Medical expenses". Yes, the companies are to blame, but make sure you're pinning it on the right behavior!
Everything must be owned. It is the mantra of capitalism. The first peoples of the internet; the hackers, the academics, the non-profits, are now being rounded up, jailed, or forcibly deported from their homes and off their property to make way for The Man. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. Your days of "free" code and believing nobody can own [the internet] are coming to an end. They have guns, they have the support of the government, and this time they won't bother with that non-sense about signing treaties. And future generations will never know a world where ideas couldn't be owned, where knowledge was free, and where anonymity from corporations and governments provided fertile ground for social change.
Make part of the Facebook login process to enter your your race, age, marital status, or other things that it is illegal for employers to ask you about
So let me get this straight: Your plan is to to give up personal information to a company, in order to avoid giving up personal information to a company? Can I have a plan that doesn't involve me prostituting my personal data in exchange for monentary favors?
"At least one US senator agrees."
So put another way, only one US senator agrees. The rest have been well-paid to support anything desired by anyone carrying the title "employer".
Step 1. Paint giant bullseye on the top of your corporate office. Write "Insert bomb here," repeatedlty around the edge.
Step 2. Sell digital goods that can be used by sovereign powers to wage war on each other to both sides.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profi--Error: Connection reset by peer
I know you're joking, but in a lot of large cities a car is unnecessary, and
That whooshing noise was the joke sailing above your head. This wasn't about cars, this was about some Forever Alone dude hacking a wifi router into some whack LCD display. Who cares what it displays? Ordinary people just go out and buy an LCD display and a dev board (like Arduino) for this kind of thing. They don't consult the Necronomicon and then call forth Digitus, The Terrible One (and his lesser known counterpart, The Terrible Zero), and ask him to use his dark powers to transmorgify a f***ing wifi router into an LCD display. This is a classic example of why engineers, like children, should never be left unattended for long periods of time: They're inevitably do something completely nuts that'll leave the responsible adult left with a broken brain, babbling in the corner asking Whhhyyyyyyyy? This is just such a project.
You can only unlock the Achievement "I Put My Toaster On the Internet!" if it's using Arduino. Sorry man.
The foundation of this country is free speech, and this is going down the lines of regulating speech that you have decided is offensive, which is supposed to be constitutional here.
The purpose of the first amendment was to prevent the government from quelling critical or rebellious speech which did not agree with its actions or policies. Free speech does not extend to slander, libel, inciting violence, etc.
It's a very common thing for people to either make jokes, or to insult someone either as a joke, or when they're fighting. It's kind of unexpected that they kill themselves over it, although harassment and invasion of privacy should be taken very seriously in this case.
Grabbing a video camera and taping someone doing something private and then releasing it publicly is not a "joke" or "insult". They are completely unrelated. Jokes and insults are words. This is the next level: Actions.
It's extremely unlikely that Ravi hated gay people even, he was just acting immature by projecting his own gay anxieties by laughing at something that actually humiliated his roommate. Ravi may even be gay himself.
From both a legal and ethical standpoint, irrelevant. Ravi is responsible for his own actions, regardless of motivations.
Now saying something that happens to offend someone makes you a hate criminal and elevates special privileges to individuals that aren't applied equally to everyone, like for example, white people.
This is not something that just "happened". It was willful and malicious. As well, it is perfectly possible for you to be prosecuted under this legislation even if you share the same attributes as your victim: White on white, gay on gay, etc. The law does not distinguish: It only looks at the person committing the act and the motivations for doing so.
This is the goal of the anti defamation league, to elevate jews and Israel above that of white people. They're against free speech. They're against white nationalist, yet they are all for Jew nationalism in Israel, where they're acting like Nazis over there.
You just Godwin'd yourself out of the debate. x_x
You can look to Canada and...
... and I quickly notice it's not the United States. We're talking about this country's laws. The comparison is disengenuous and meaningless.
And the anti-defamation league crafts these unconstitutional, biased laws and has been slowly passing them in America and wherever they can.
Defamation is illegal. Has been since before this country was founded, and those laws were imported from the British and their common law system, which can trace it's lineage all the way back to the Magna Carta. Saying something that is a lie about another person with intent to harm their character has never had a place in democratic society.
I happen to be a minority that would be protected by hate crime laws, I happen to realize they're unconstitutional, anti-speech and unreasonable.
They are none of those things. This is a fallacious conclusion.
Common folk are all too quick to outlaw everything and I think societies are destined to slowly wither away everyones' rights out of shear stupidity with poorly thought out laws.
The common folk have never had the ability to pass laws, nor enforce them. That is the very definition of a commoner. As to societies... well yes, all societies are cyclical in regards to civil rights. They begin, they rise, they peak, fall, and then perish. This is hardly news.
You instead want to punish a man by removing 10-20% of his life, which is what prison amounts to.
Full stop. I never said I wanted to punish him. I said the voters, elected representatives, prosecutor, and jury wanted to punish him; Which is a factual statement.
I still see no evidence that this was done because of the victim's sexual orientation.
Might want to get your eyes checked out then: At least 13 other people spotted it; Specifically the judge and jury.
And you are a little foolish bigot against gay men, not realizing that they are just as capable of defending themselves as any other man.
I have not made any statement regarding this, or any, man's ability to defend himself.
Gay men are just that - men. They aren't skinny little fags with limp wrists who make cosmopolitans so that all the little straight girls can condescendingly come and drink in their bars. The Stonewall Riots did not consist of men in high heels line dancing against the police.
These facts are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That said, the Stonewall riots were because of men in high heels; The police who entered that day did so to arrest persons without identification and persons wearing clothing which was not gender-conforming. Although Stonewall is historically remembered as being triggered by an attack on gay men, it was in fact a direct attack on the transgender community, although a minority of the gay community would fall under that.
Oppose this to the stupid Clementi, who simply should have punched Ravi in the face (and then buy him a beer) rather than leap off a bridge.
I don't believe you are qualified to say what a forceful and sudden outing of a person's sexual orientation to their friends and family might have on a person's mental state, nor what, if any, pre-existing medical conditions may have been present at the time he did so. However, it is still immaterial to the issue.
All you have done here is substituted yourself in place of this individual and then projected your own background, life experiences, and beliefs onto the situation. Projection is a coping mechanism, a form of ego-protection. That's what you're doing here: You aren't putting yourself in his shoes, nor dispassionately and objectively reviewing the facts. Worse, you're lashing out at someone who is, because the conclusions cause cognitive dissonance with your definition of what a man is. So, let me strike directly at the heart of your emotional response by saying this: A man is whatever he chooses to be, and however he chooses to act. A man is self-defined. The definition of what a man is, is therefore, entirely subjective. If you wish to accept a masculine identity where punching people in the face and then buying them beers is the correct response, that is perfectly okay (from a psychology standpoint). However, not everyone will choose to accept your definition... other men may choose differently.
I think the entire concept of a "hate crime" is wrong. Isn't stuff like this already covered by "making threats" and "intimidation"?
Yes, it is. But when someone makes a threat based on certain characteristics of a person, such as race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, they are disgracing the very foundation of this country, as well as any country that would consider itself a democracy: Namely, that all people equal under the law. But that equality doesn't start with the law, rather it is the product of a deeply-held cultural belief, which the law reflects and follows from. Democracy is, at its very core, about creating great people, who can then do great deeds for its own citizens: All the great scientists, engineers, poets, writers, politicians, are a product of this cultural belief. If a person is not able to rise to a point where they reach their full potential, that harms the whole. Within that context, hate crime legislation is specifically a response to the behavior of others which is overtly limiting and damaging to this most central of beliefs.
I'm all for equality. I don't think you should discriminate against someone because of their skin color, beliefs, sexual orientation, any of that stuff really.
But you're a man of words, and not of deeds. You stop short of giving your belief any teeth, any hope of implimentation. What you are saying is "discrimination is wrong, but if you do it, you shouldn't be treated any worse for having done so." There is another school of thought: That is, for people who are predatory, people who discriminate overtly and sufficiently to break the law, more severe punishment is called for because they are not as easily deterred as someone who lacks a strong motivation, or had a momentary lapse of judgement.
you're hiring them for a job the only thing that should matter is their skills
Except that nobody hires based only on skills. That's a myth, an illusion -- most people hire other people based on their likeability, which is exactly how it sounds: How much like you the person being interviewed is. That, right there, is the loci of discrimination: a person is either like you, or unlike you. A person like you will naturally receive more favors from you. The law steps in here and says: This is not what makes for a great society. A great society must rise above petty differences.
You can't fix discrimination by being more discriminatory.
Neither can you fix it by ignoring the problem, or not recognizing that people who are motivated to commit crimes on the basis of minority attributes are far more likely to continue to commit similar crimes against those possessing said attributes than a person who exhibits the same behavior, but is not motivated by hatred. A man who hits someone while drunk at a bar might only do that once in his life. A man who hits someone at a bar because he's wearing a skirt is far, far more likely to do it again.
But even worse, Ravi is also going to have his life ruined by a man who decided to end his own.
No, there is no "even worse". Someone is dead, and it isn't him. There are precious few situations in life in which surviving is a worse fate than dying: Getting deported, or spending 10 years in jail, is not on the short list.
What Ravi did was punch in the nose wrong - not 10 years in prison and deportation.
A jury of 12 people disagrees with your assessment. This wasn't some judge with an attitude problem: This was a law passed by elected representatives, in an open and accessible public forum, with ample opportunity for public discourse. It has been affirmed countless times by a majority -- and now has been affirmed unanimously by 12 randomly-selected people from that community. You are welcome to your opinion but as a matter of law, there is little doubt as to his guilt. That said, my opinion is that you are short-sighted and bigoted, and have probably done (or thought of doing) things like this because of your own homophobia. For someone like you, a verdict like this must be pretty scary.
Heck, the stupid stuff we did on our floor in college was just as bad or worse. I'm sure 99% of every man who went to college in the dorms can say the same.
And for the 1% of every man, would that be his sense of civic responsibility? The stupid stuff most people do is not motivated by a hatred or bias based on sexual orientation, race, or other immutable attributes of a person... as a rule, the stupid things people do in college comes down to matters of romance, and matters involving alcohol and a desire for peer acceptance.
I'm appalled by your casual disregard for the seriousness of this person's crime: It was clearly motivated by a desire to embarass his victim, was clearly done because of the victim's sexual orientation, and in fact rises to the standard of malicious intent because he recorded it with the intention of making it public.
I, for one, see no reason to invite more people into this country to practice hate crimes when we already have a full load of loonies and people trying to screw up our civil liberties as it is: If you're immigrating to another country, you don't do anything that could get you in trouble with the law. You have to be a model citizen, better even than the people you want to live with, at least until you get your papers. Maybe that's unfair, but that's the way it is, and if this guy gets deported it'll be (at the very, very least) because he was weapons-grade stupid. And that is nobody's fault but his own.
Depiction of children having sex is illegal in Canada. Even if you personally wrote it, or drew it.
Slide 1: Picture of anime character, age 10
Slide 2: Picture of anime character, age 14
Slide 3: Picture of anime character, age 18
Slide 4: Picture of anime character, age 20
Slide 5: Picture of anime character, age 30
Okay, if it would please the court, could the prosecution please point out which of these pictures depicts underage children, and which are of adults? Oh.. you mean it's the exact same artistic style? That there is no difference? Oh... okay.