So because I believe in stopping rampant government abuse and because I believe in protecting our liberties that the founding population of this country sacrificed so much for, I'm responsible for destroying my own country? Nice. Dissent isn't unpatriotic. Wishing for improvement is not patriotic.
Blindly adhering to something just because The Powers That Be said so isn't patriotic. It's only serving to destroy this nation.
You, and the others like you, and destroying our country. United We Stand? Not with people like you. End of Thread.
Then what's the point of having standards, if we just corrupt them so that they don't matter anymore? Ask any electrician how important standards are in his work. Ask him what would happen if the standards were gleefully ignored.
While I admit his initial response to the question at hand was a bit flippant, it was also a valid point -- in law, you can't make assumptions. A poorly worded phrase can cost millions.
Then why not write, as I would have, "It seems to me that the question you are asking is (blah). Is that correct? Please clarify. If that is indeed what you asked, the answer is..."
That's the polite and intelligent way of saying "I think this is what you are asking, here is what I think you are asking. Here is the answer to that question." It leaves the poster open to politely responding "Yes, that is what I meant" or "No, I was unclear. I was asking..." and also makes sure that the given answer is clearly tied to a particular, clarified question.
Playing stupid just makes the responder look stupid.
I don't think it's inappropriate at all to demand higher quality of a featured column of the site. Be contented if you want with substandard crap, but don't be surprised if that's all you get. If you want better, speak up. I want better, so I spoke up. If improvement is wanted, it has to be demanded.
I also never said that "I don't know" or "that is undecided but here are some relevant links" was not a valid answer. In fact, I explicitly said so in another comment. Before you flame me, check your facts first.
I also don't care what you think is inappropriate. The point of comments is to tell people what you think of an article, the article's subject, other posters, or topics related to any of those. I exercised my right. Bashing me for doing so just makes me think you wasted your time chastising me for having an opinion, which I have the right to have.
I wasn't aware that asking legitimate questions constituted a flame war. It's not my problem if you can't take legitimate questioning and criticism and brush it off as someone out to flame you. Belittling valid questions as beneath you does nothing to invalidate the question.
I also believe it's a mistake to trust the government to protect anyone. All politicians care about is wealth and power. All they listen to is money.
If the government could be trusted to do the right thing, don't you think it would be acting to protect the environment while we still (may) have time, handing down longer jail terms for crimes against people and real property than for spamming and software piracy? Don't you think that rape, murder, carjacking, mugging, armed robbery, and a long list of other crimes that actually hurt people emotionally and physically deserve that, instead of wasting the time and effort on crimes that hurt no one?
Don't you think that if the government could be trusted to look out for the best interests of the people, it would not repeatedly pass laws that favor the interest of businesses over the interests of the citizens? (most infamously, acting to make sure Disney can keep making money off of Mickey and therefore destroying our own creative commons, the long-standing culture of building on each others' creations, and the rich public domain on which our society has prospered for so long?
Don't you think that the government, if it really wanted to protect us, would come up with actually-effective ways to ensure safety that actually act to protect the public? Saying you can't take shampoo on a plane when the technology has existed for years to detect liquid explosives, and hasn't been deployed because of political squabbling, bureaucracy, and other petty problems is ridiculous when statistics show that many thousands upon thousands of people die in preventable road accidents every day, and yet the government will not require SUVs to not demolish cars (they override crash guards in car doors because they're so tall), they won't strengthen roofs to prevent rollover accidents, they won't provide increased funding to pull over speeders who think that they're above the law and who make the roads unsafer for us all, they won't increase average fuel economy requirements to lower pollution, decrease oil dependency, and lower prices...... that's just the start, the list goes on and on and on and on.
No, I don't trust the government to protect me. They haven't done anything to earn that trust lately. And I blame shortsighted mindsets like yours for not calling them to task and demanding more.
If the government can impeach its leader for lying about who he had sex with, why can't it impeach and remove a leader who lied about so many more things that actually are causing real hurt, real damage, and real destruction?
I'm also glad that it's our right to privacy that's getting abused rather than our right to life; they can applogise for invading your privacy, but dead is dead.
So if you're so privacy-conscious that you go so far to be random, why aren't you arguing for the safeguards that would still protect privacy while carrying out investigations into criminal behavior? You CAN have both; that's what's been said over and over and over and over. Or have you bitten the lie that "this is the only way" that the government wants you to believe so that it can do whatever it wants, unchecked?
it's still crazy to say "only a quarter of our users will be broken"
Happens all the time to those of us who use Firefox, and it apparently isn't crazy to those coders to say it with a straight face, but it's crazy if IE users get left out in the cold.
Ahahah. Not you in particular but there's a lot of hypocrisy in this here comment page.
So do what a web admin told me to do once when I told him IE wasn't available for my platform:
"Go buy a Windows system"
or what another told me:
"Go to someone's house and borrow theirs."... I do sympathize but I find it hard to be too terribly sorry since it's been way too long since I last saw a bunch of IE users suddenly put in the position of those of us who fight with Firefox problems every day.
Ahahahahah. So do you complain to sites that don't work in Firefox? All of them? If you're going to gripe about one excluded browser, go gripe about them all.
Or get software that complies to proper standards. You use a NTSC-standard TV, don't you? You wouldn't expect PAL to receive broadcasts, would you? (assuming you're in the US. Reverse that if you're in Europe). "I can't install anything on my computer"? http://www.portablefirefox.com/
That policy probably only looks stupid to you now because it's suddenly no longer to your advantage and the tables are turned.
Now you know how we users of standards-adhering software feel!
seriously people. it's not rocket science to write cross-browser compliant code.
It's also not rocket science, and is proper, to write code that complies to W3C standards. It's up to the user to obtain and use software that properly adheres to the standards that govern HTML. Would you buy a TV set that didn't adhere to the NTSC standard and then moan and gripe when your local TV station didn't broadcast a nonstandard signal, thus rendering your TV useless? No, you'd go out and buy a "real TV".
Sometimes, it takes a certain attitude to impart a particular lesson on someone. Is it immature of a parent to tell their child to grow up when the child exhibits bad behavior? I don't think so.
Respect is earned, not given, and the post was aimed at someone who had it at first and lost it over time due to a lousy attitude and lack of respect toward questioners.
I mean correct answers that are properly written, don't act like the poster is an idiot, don't "answer" (quotes intended) the question in glib sentences that hint at the poster being uninformed or stupid. It's easy to do (b) and (a) at the same time, and do it competently.
This is the worst Slashdot interview I've seen in a long, long time. It looks like you spent no time whatsoever reviewing a single answer and threw out the whole thing in five minutes.
I'll get on your case if I damn well please because I'd like to see a good discussion of this but this is not it. I'm also sick and tired of low-quality "I know everything, you're a fucking moron" attitudes in discussions.
It's not a conspiracy theory if it's the truth. Crying "conspiracy" is just an attempt to dodge the truth that you don't like. How can you claim that it's all a theory when the story is right there (on the front page of this same site no less) that it's actually happening?
The problem is, and you don't seem to be acknowledging this, is that there is no guarantee that only criminals are having their phones tapped. And the tapping that is going on is going on in violation of the laws against warrantless wiretapping, the laws that require the use of a specific procedure to ensure that rights are safeguarded.
Doesn't seem like you're really trying to safeguard your rights, not here. You say "I care about my rights" but then you go on to say "I don't care if someone taps my phone." The government has to have a reason and a warrant to tap a phone, end of story, and telcos cannot just hand over information to the government without a warrant, end of story.
You think it's OK for the government to do this, or so it appears. So I guess you really aren't supporting privacy protection after all, huh?
Which is it? "It's OK to tap my phone and by extension yours because I support what they're doing" (which means "It's OK to violate the law and the privacy rules that protect me and everyone else") or "No it's not OK, the government should act in everyone's best interest, but as is required by law, so the government needs to obey privacy rules"(which means "Yes, I do care about privacy, and I'm not being a hypocrite who wants their cake and wants to eat it too")?
We want real answers, not answers that look like they were written by a five-year-old, and answers that show respect for the poster, not attempts to act like you don't know what they're talking about. You played stupid in more than one of the questions that were pretty damn clear (the "someone stole my CDs one was pretty clearly asking about that CD being used in, say, an MP3-playing car stereo, an iPod, etc. owned by the person. If you didn't know what they were referring to, couldn't you have asked someone to proof read your answer first?
And then you go on to complain about lawyers being dissed. When people ask questions, they want firm answers, not wishy-washy stuff that seems to be coming from a grade schooler. Even if the answer is "I do not know the answer to that question" or "The answer to that question has not been fully decided yet, but here are some relevant links to read".
We shouldn't have to explain this stuff to someone who theoretically went to high school, college/university, and then law school. Isn't proper debate part of the law-school curriculum, and don't you have to learn to write proper arguments as part of English courses?
Pretending you don't know where the mp3's came from comes off as very rude, at least to my eyes.
His attitude of answering questions he doesn't like with flippant "grow up" remarks makes him rude to mine. This guy has no sense of manners, grammar, or proper respect of others in a discussion.
I would not hire him as a lawyer if I needed one for anything.
Nobody cares because it's been turned into an excuse to erode rights and to spy on innocent people. Did you care about that before it started happening? If not, what are you complaining about?
I know how it all works. My point was that the Republicans bash the Democrats and conveniently ignore the problems with their own candidate while pointing out every little flaw in the opposition.
The whole thing is ridiculous. Why can't we just compromise!?
Why not hold the election over a weekend? It gives plenty of time for everyone to vote and would increase voter turnout.
Gee, I guess then nobody works on weekends. Then I guess you can't shop, you can't go to restaurants, you can't get appliance repair, you can't get your grass mowed, it goes on and on! You can't pick any one day of the week and act like it'll magically solve that problem.
The idea of requiring employers to provide employees time to vote, at the time of the employee's choosing, with reasonable time allotment, is more appropriate.
My computer isn't my property, even though the spammer expects my computer to decode and display the spam, and any images included with it?
Uh.
Yes, they do make use of my property, to deliver their crap to me. Or are you arguing that my computer doesn't actually belong to me?
It is quite possible to have someone charged with trespass even if they had the OK to enter in the first place. As soon as the property owner decides that you must leave, and you do not, you are guilty of trespass. If you do something with someone's property without their permission and they decide that they do not like what you have done, you can be charged with trespass.
If you walk into my driveway and bash up my garage door, you will be charged with destruction of property and with trespass.
Oh, now that makes more sense. I will still say it's ridiculous, but this time as in "That's overpriced!". Seriously, why does something so vital to safety as a rear wiper cost that much instead of not being included with the car, and why, when I can buy a Garmin Streetpilot GPS system for $500USD or less, does a system that you can't transplant cost so much?
Slashdot Mirror
Then send it to the administrators? Surely, there's someone who's responsible for that job. Ask them to do it.
And file the bugzilla bug anyway. It'll come in handy for a lot of people.
So because I believe in stopping rampant government abuse and because I believe in protecting our liberties that the founding population of this country sacrificed so much for, I'm responsible for destroying my own country? Nice. Dissent isn't unpatriotic. Wishing for improvement is not patriotic.
Blindly adhering to something just because The Powers That Be said so isn't patriotic. It's only serving to destroy this nation.
You, and the others like you, and destroying our country. United We Stand? Not with people like you. End of Thread.
Then what's the point of having standards, if we just corrupt them so that they don't matter anymore? Ask any electrician how important standards are in his work. Ask him what would happen if the standards were gleefully ignored.
File a bug on bugzilla, and ask that the developers sign the executable, or other appropriate fix-its? Surely, it can be done.
While I admit his initial response to the question at hand was a bit flippant, it was also a valid point -- in law, you can't make assumptions. A poorly worded phrase can cost millions.
Then why not write, as I would have, "It seems to me that the question you are asking is (blah). Is that correct? Please clarify. If that is indeed what you asked, the answer is..."
That's the polite and intelligent way of saying "I think this is what you are asking, here is what I think you are asking. Here is the answer to that question." It leaves the poster open to politely responding "Yes, that is what I meant" or "No, I was unclear. I was asking..." and also makes sure that the given answer is clearly tied to a particular, clarified question.
Playing stupid just makes the responder look stupid.
I don't think it's inappropriate at all to demand higher quality of a featured column of the site. Be contented if you want with substandard crap, but don't be surprised if that's all you get. If you want better, speak up. I want better, so I spoke up. If improvement is wanted, it has to be demanded.
I also never said that "I don't know" or "that is undecided but here are some relevant links" was not a valid answer. In fact, I explicitly said so in another comment. Before you flame me, check your facts first.
I also don't care what you think is inappropriate. The point of comments is to tell people what you think of an article, the article's subject, other posters, or topics related to any of those. I exercised my right. Bashing me for doing so just makes me think you wasted your time chastising me for having an opinion, which I have the right to have.
I wasn't aware that asking legitimate questions constituted a flame war. It's not my problem if you can't take legitimate questioning and criticism and brush it off as someone out to flame you. Belittling valid questions as beneath you does nothing to invalidate the question.
... ... that's just the start, the list goes on and on and on and on.
I also believe it's a mistake to trust the government to protect anyone. All politicians care about is wealth and power. All they listen to is money.
If the government could be trusted to do the right thing, don't you think it would be acting to protect the environment while we still (may) have time, handing down longer jail terms for crimes against people and real property than for spamming and software piracy? Don't you think that rape, murder, carjacking, mugging, armed robbery, and a long list of other crimes that actually hurt people emotionally and physically deserve that, instead of wasting the time and effort on crimes that hurt no one?
Don't you think that if the government could be trusted to look out for the best interests of the people, it would not repeatedly pass laws that favor the interest of businesses over the interests of the citizens? (most infamously, acting to make sure Disney can keep making money off of Mickey and therefore destroying our own creative commons, the long-standing culture of building on each others' creations, and the rich public domain on which our society has prospered for so long?
Don't you think that the government, if it really wanted to protect us, would come up with actually-effective ways to ensure safety that actually act to protect the public? Saying you can't take shampoo on a plane when the technology has existed for years to detect liquid explosives, and hasn't been deployed because of political squabbling, bureaucracy, and other petty problems is ridiculous when statistics show that many thousands upon thousands of people die in preventable road accidents every day, and yet the government will not require SUVs to not demolish cars (they override crash guards in car doors because they're so tall), they won't strengthen roofs to prevent rollover accidents, they won't provide increased funding to pull over speeders who think that they're above the law and who make the roads unsafer for us all, they won't increase average fuel economy requirements to lower pollution, decrease oil dependency, and lower prices
No, I don't trust the government to protect me. They haven't done anything to earn that trust lately. And I blame shortsighted mindsets like yours for not calling them to task and demanding more.
If the government can impeach its leader for lying about who he had sex with, why can't it impeach and remove a leader who lied about so many more things that actually are causing real hurt, real damage, and real destruction?
Open your eyes. Please.
I'm also glad that it's our right to privacy that's getting abused rather than our right to life; they can applogise for invading your privacy, but dead is dead.
So if you're so privacy-conscious that you go so far to be random, why aren't you arguing for the safeguards that would still protect privacy while carrying out investigations into criminal behavior? You CAN have both; that's what's been said over and over and over and over. Or have you bitten the lie that "this is the only way" that the government wants you to believe so that it can do whatever it wants, unchecked?
it's still crazy to say "only a quarter of our users will be broken"
Happens all the time to those of us who use Firefox, and it apparently isn't crazy to those coders to say it with a straight face, but it's crazy if IE users get left out in the cold.
Ahahah. Not you in particular but there's a lot of hypocrisy in this here comment page.
So do what a web admin told me to do once when I told him IE wasn't available for my platform:
... I do sympathize but I find it hard to be too terribly sorry since it's been way too long since I last saw a bunch of IE users suddenly put in the position of those of us who fight with Firefox problems every day.
"Go buy a Windows system"
or what another told me:
"Go to someone's house and borrow theirs."
Ahahahahah. So do you complain to sites that don't work in Firefox? All of them? If you're going to gripe about one excluded browser, go gripe about them all.
Or get software that complies to proper standards. You use a NTSC-standard TV, don't you? You wouldn't expect PAL to receive broadcasts, would you? (assuming you're in the US. Reverse that if you're in Europe). "I can't install anything on my computer"? http://www.portablefirefox.com/
That policy probably only looks stupid to you now because it's suddenly no longer to your advantage and the tables are turned.
Now you know how we users of standards-adhering software feel!
seriously people. it's not rocket science to write cross-browser compliant code.
It's also not rocket science, and is proper, to write code that complies to W3C standards. It's up to the user to obtain and use software that properly adheres to the standards that govern HTML. Would you buy a TV set that didn't adhere to the NTSC standard and then moan and gripe when your local TV station didn't broadcast a nonstandard signal, thus rendering your TV useless? No, you'd go out and buy a "real TV".
What ever happened to serving the lowest common denominator?
I guess you missed the part where IE users are in the minority. The same argument used to make sites that don't work in Firefox in many other places.
So I guess you like that argument when it's used in IE's favor but not when it isn't. Do I have that right?
Sometimes, it takes a certain attitude to impart a particular lesson on someone. Is it immature of a parent to tell their child to grow up when the child exhibits bad behavior? I don't think so.
Respect is earned, not given, and the post was aimed at someone who had it at first and lost it over time due to a lousy attitude and lack of respect toward questioners.
I mean correct answers that are properly written, don't act like the poster is an idiot, don't "answer" (quotes intended) the question in glib sentences that hint at the poster being uninformed or stupid. It's easy to do (b) and (a) at the same time, and do it competently.
This is the worst Slashdot interview I've seen in a long, long time. It looks like you spent no time whatsoever reviewing a single answer and threw out the whole thing in five minutes.
I'll get on your case if I damn well please because I'd like to see a good discussion of this but this is not it. I'm also sick and tired of low-quality "I know everything, you're a fucking moron" attitudes in discussions.
It's not a conspiracy theory if it's the truth. Crying "conspiracy" is just an attempt to dodge the truth that you don't like. How can you claim that it's all a theory when the story is right there (on the front page of this same site no less) that it's actually happening?
The problem is, and you don't seem to be acknowledging this, is that there is no guarantee that only criminals are having their phones tapped. And the tapping that is going on is going on in violation of the laws against warrantless wiretapping, the laws that require the use of a specific procedure to ensure that rights are safeguarded.
Doesn't seem like you're really trying to safeguard your rights, not here. You say "I care about my rights" but then you go on to say "I don't care if someone taps my phone." The government has to have a reason and a warrant to tap a phone, end of story, and telcos cannot just hand over information to the government without a warrant, end of story.
You think it's OK for the government to do this, or so it appears. So I guess you really aren't supporting privacy protection after all, huh?
Which is it? "It's OK to tap my phone and by extension yours because I support what they're doing" (which means "It's OK to violate the law and the privacy rules that protect me and everyone else") or "No it's not OK, the government should act in everyone's best interest, but as is required by law, so the government needs to obey privacy rules"(which means "Yes, I do care about privacy, and I'm not being a hypocrite who wants their cake and wants to eat it too")?
We want real answers, not answers that look like they were written by a five-year-old, and answers that show respect for the poster, not attempts to act like you don't know what they're talking about. You played stupid in more than one of the questions that were pretty damn clear (the "someone stole my CDs one was pretty clearly asking about that CD being used in, say, an MP3-playing car stereo, an iPod, etc. owned by the person. If you didn't know what they were referring to, couldn't you have asked someone to proof read your answer first?
And then you go on to complain about lawyers being dissed. When people ask questions, they want firm answers, not wishy-washy stuff that seems to be coming from a grade schooler. Even if the answer is "I do not know the answer to that question" or "The answer to that question has not been fully decided yet, but here are some relevant links to read".
We shouldn't have to explain this stuff to someone who theoretically went to high school, college/university, and then law school. Isn't proper debate part of the law-school curriculum, and don't you have to learn to write proper arguments as part of English courses?
Pretending you don't know where the mp3's came from comes off as very rude, at least to my eyes.
His attitude of answering questions he doesn't like with flippant "grow up" remarks makes him rude to mine. This guy has no sense of manners, grammar, or proper respect of others in a discussion.
I would not hire him as a lawyer if I needed one for anything.
Nobody cares because it's been turned into an excuse to erode rights and to spy on innocent people. Did you care about that before it started happening? If not, what are you complaining about?
I know how it all works. My point was that the Republicans bash the Democrats and conveniently ignore the problems with their own candidate while pointing out every little flaw in the opposition.
The whole thing is ridiculous. Why can't we just compromise!?
Why not hold the election over a weekend? It gives plenty of time for everyone to vote and would increase voter turnout.
Gee, I guess then nobody works on weekends. Then I guess you can't shop, you can't go to restaurants, you can't get appliance repair, you can't get your grass mowed, it goes on and on! You can't pick any one day of the week and act like it'll magically solve that problem.
The idea of requiring employers to provide employees time to vote, at the time of the employee's choosing, with reasonable time allotment, is more appropriate.
The sad thing about that? He didn't. He got more votes than Bush did. But that's what the Bush fans conveniently forget about.
What?
My computer isn't my property, even though the spammer expects my computer to decode and display the spam, and any images included with it?
Uh.
Yes, they do make use of my property, to deliver their crap to me. Or are you arguing that my computer doesn't actually belong to me?
It is quite possible to have someone charged with trespass even if they had the OK to enter in the first place. As soon as the property owner decides that you must leave, and you do not, you are guilty of trespass. If you do something with someone's property without their permission and they decide that they do not like what you have done, you can be charged with trespass.
If you walk into my driveway and bash up my garage door, you will be charged with destruction of property and with trespass.
Sheesh.
Considering the fact that to deliver the junk the trucks would have had to enter one's property to be able to block the door, yes, it's trespass.
Oh, now that makes more sense. I will still say it's ridiculous, but this time as in "That's overpriced!". Seriously, why does something so vital to safety as a rear wiper cost that much instead of not being included with the car, and why, when I can buy a Garmin Streetpilot GPS system for $500USD or less, does a system that you can't transplant cost so much?