That's a terrible way to look at it. I would not suggest it should be standard ethical procedure for prosecutors to try to bend laws as much as possible in the hopes that they could convict people for things not clearly laid out for people to read. Otherwise, ignorance of the law does become a defense because you can never be reasonably expected to know what the law will be bent to include at some later point. We already have far too much of this going on and do not need to make it the suggested practice.
All well and good, but Lori Drew did not cause the death of Megan Meier. Megan Meier did by hanging herself. Laws above are made for much more direct causes, like reckless driving resulting in plowing into a pedestrian. They're not for and should not be for something so indirect as this. As many people have pointed out, she had a huge fight with her mother right before killing herself. If you're going for indirect contributions to her death, you have to factor that in pretty highly.
Actually, no, the article shows that it's not really the case. The Missouri prosecutors found that there was nothing to charge her with that would stick. So rather than waste time and money on it, they didn't charge her. Then some federal prosecutor in LA (where myspace's servers are) decide to jump in and try the whole violating Terms of Service = hacking tack.
In the end, you are right in that she'll probably walk. I think it more likely that she'll lose a wrongful death suit, however.
Do you seriously not understand they could charge her with both if both applied? This is what the normal routine is in prosecutions around the country every day. They charge them with everything they thing applies. But that's a bit of a moot point, really. Because we are actually talking about two different groups here. Missouri (where Drew and Meier were located) didn't charge Drew with anything. Federal prosecutors in LA (where myspace is located) filed the charges. So, basically, Missouri got it right and some federal prosecutor in LA tried to make a name for himself by criminalizing breaking terms of service. Hopefully this should clear up your confusion.
If you swerve at another car, and they swerve to miss you and crash and die, can you be charged?
You'd be charged with reckless driving, with a penalty according to how reckless it is. We have a law for that. And again I tell you your entire little scenarios, no matter how good they sound to you when you type them out, are moot - because otherwise they would have charged her with that.
Once again, I'm sad that I wasn't clearer in my original post. The speech I meant was telling myspace things that violated their terms of service. That was the only "crime" they convicted her of. I don't believe simply saying something to myspace that does not harm myspace should be considered a crime.
Okay, on to the other topic. Your argument is reasonable sounding, but there's one key thing you've left out - they never charged her with any of this stuff. If every time I bump into you on the street I tell you you are a horrible, ugly person and should kill yourself, there is no law against it. Even if I really wish you would kill yourself. Now, if I make a plan to kill you, I am conspiring to commit a crime. Which crime was Lori Drew conspiring to commit? Person A cannot be charged with Person B's suicide, as Person B is the one committing the act. The only thing that comes close is when Person A provides a means to commit suicide for Person B. Here, Person A only provided motivation, not means.
In much the same way, I could openly talk about a plan to embarrass my neighbor in such a way that he would have to steal a car. But I can't be charged with stealing the car, because I didn't do it. Notice how this is crucially different to your example, which is to plan to kill someone. That is because it would be a crime that I can be charged with for me to kill someone.
So, no matter how strongly you assert that this is murder or manslaughter, the simple fact is that the prosecutors never tried to charge her with that. So either, a) it's not a crime or b) even if it is a crime, there's no way to prove it in this case.
As such, I can't really put any stock in your assertions.
Please, no need to be snarky. Google results ARE a good indication of the way people are using language, both written and spoken. If it is as widespread as you say, then there would be far more hits in proportion to the correct way.
I took your example. You are the one making the claim. I'm sorry your example turned out not to be an example. If you have an actual example that you want to use as an example, please post it. Until then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to file you in the crazy file.;-)
Nah, don't expect so. I have heard plenty of instances of phrases along the lines of "I am twice the man that he is." But that's completely grammatically correct. Googling "smarter that I am" returned only 371 hits and scanning them looks doesn't make me thing that it's anything other than a typo. Even if it wasn't, this compares to 424,000 hits for "smarter than I am." That's about 0.09% of the hits. I'm going to go ahead and round that to zero.
Well, the thing is, I have never heard anyone use "that" rather than "than" in verbal communication. So, no, I can't really follow that line. Only thing I ever here is "then" being mixed up with "than", in both directions.
You should study how mistakes are made a bit more. When typing fast, I often mistype one work for another. Even though I know very well the rules for "its" and "it's" (a mistake you made in your post), "their" and "there", "than and then", sometimes my fingers just decide to type one thing even though my brain is thinking another. Sometimes I type "you" instead of "your", too. Or "to" instead of "too". None of this has anything to do with not knowing the rules. It's partially about not proofreading (c'mon, it's just a slashdot comment), but even proofreading can miss them because the brain sometimes reads what it means and not what it sees.
Actually, the conversation has to get quite a bit more than "racy." And there has to be quite a bit more than talking her into a "meeting." Prosecutors have to have a pretty clear cut case that the defendant is explicitly going there to have a sex with someone who thinks is underage, or the case will never stick.
Now, lets contrast this with Lori Drew. Which of the things did she do that were against the law, other than the bogus charge of violating myspace terms of service? See, that's the problem. None of those things were actually illegal. That's why she hasn't been charged with them. This is why even though I despise Lori Drew, for society's sake I don't want them using any means necessary to convict her. Because we will all pay the price for that kind of behavior.
And, as others, you have misinterpreted what I meant about speech. I'm talking about her telling myspace that she was someone other than who she was. I never meant anyone to think I meant speech could never be a crime. Ordering someone to kill another person is speech, as is posing as someone you are not in order to defraud them. The killing and the defrauding are both crimes, so the speech is a contributing crime. But, again, in this case the thing Lori Drew did (playing, tricking and bullying Megan Meier) wasn't actually a crime. So the speech cannot be a crime since it wasn't used to commit a crime.
1) You and many others have misunderstood my post. The speech I mean is telling myspace she was someone other than who she was. It in no way harmed myspace. And yet that's what they tried to convict her for. She was not convicted for doing anything to Megan Meier. So your list of reasons are moot. If she was charged based on those with laws that apply, that's fine and dandy. She wasn't. She was charged with lying to myspace.
2) Stop changing the subject line. It's an annoying habit that you have. We have subject lines to group conversations together, not to serve as the first sentence of your reply. If makes you look like a fool.
The only good news is that Apple owns the mobile web with the iPhone, so it can pretty much establish HTML5 itself and provide Flash-killer standards-based video without any help from Firefox.
Even granting this optimistic projection that Apple will "own" the mobile web for any length of time, currently that accounts for, what, less than 1% of all web use? Do you really think the standard will be pushed by something that is involved with a tiny fraction of web use?
And, personally, the phone is one of the last places I want to use as my video viewer. Maybe some occasional youtube clips, but for the most part at least 90% of my web usage in this area is going to be on my laptop. My laptop running a browser that is definitely not Safari.
"Discussing things"? You're going to have to try a little harder than that.
If a man did the exact same things, the same laws would apply. I'm not saying they couldn't incorrectly apply a law that doesn't apply, much like they did in Lori Drew's case. But as far as I know, there's nothing in the record of cybersex, nude photo exchanges, etc.
Again, you're completely missing the context of my post. None of those situations fall within it.
So yeah, you can pull a quote of mine out of context, put it in a different context and claim I'm wrong. Can't really stop you on that. But if you actually want to have this discussion within the context of where I made that statement, let me know.
I'd just like to point out that this is patently false.
I'd just like to point out that you are completely wrong.
Neat, we can both contradict each other!
Seriously, though - the market is around 90% of the market. Most hardware simply isn't made without at least Windows support. If it doesn't have Windows support, it gets taken back to the store. Now, there are some pieces of hardware that are crap and don't work right in any OS (I'm looking at you, Creative Labs), but that's not really germane to this discussion. There are also specialized components made for servers or other special situations that may be more likely to have Linux support than Windows, but again, that's not really germane to a discussion of the casual user (which is what you replied to).
These simple facts transcend either your or my anecdotal experiences.
I installed my first linux machine about 15 years ago, so yeah, I was exaggerating. It really did seem like longer. And yes, it was a fairly new thing when I did. I went to TAMU and I remember attending a demo they did for their own distribution. I can't remember now if I ever installed the TAMU distribution or if my slackware install was my first. I later installed Redhat, Gentoo (very shortly), Debian and some others I can't remember. My last serious installation was a Debian (potato or woody) laptop that ran fine for years. But that was because I just wanted it to be an http/smtp server. Even so, getting some of the hardware to work was quite frustrating. I finally turned off that machine about two years when I moved to Google Apps for Domains. At that time, dselect would crash on me and the system wouldn't even let me do security updates anymore.
I'm sure part of my issue is that I wanted to install it on laptops (work often gave away old clunky laptops that were being replaced by newer shiny ones). Linux lagged Windows by years on laptop support. I can't say I know the state of that lag now since I haven't installed another. But I have also had real issues with desktops, too. Wireless PCI network cards have been a particular bane of mine. Linux also greatly lagged on the wireless front by quite a few years. Again, can't speak to that now. Another fun failures was a cheapo SATA controller card.
And yes, I fully agree that if you have the time to dedicate to really learning the system, I would be much more of an expert at Linux and would probably be able to figure out issues a LOT quicker. To some degree, my greater experience with Windows puts me in that category. If I were an admin of a network, I would love for that network to be all-Linux and hate for it to be all-Windows. But again, I speak as a casual user, not as a network admin. I do know that at the place I work, we have a particularly unskilled and uninquisitive network admin. All the machines are Windows machines, including all the servers. He manages to make it work, even though he is clueless. And when I have to try to figure out something rather than ask him to do it, I can usually navigate the GUIs enough to get it done. I can't even imagine all this being true for a linux shop with the same admin.
The thing about troubleshooting is that we're all anecdotes. Unless someone has spent a great percentage of their time purely troubleshooting both systems, their data is skewed. And if you've spent that much time, you've moved yourself into the expert user category and that's a different discussion. I fully admit that my experience may not be the same as your (speaking of all posters on this thread) experience. Nevertheless, it is my experience.
Well, my most recent experience with linux and hardware was actually less time consuming than usual. It was basically "Q: So, how do I get this pcmcia ethernet card to work on this laptop? A: You don't. There is zero driver support for it in linux." So yeah, that was pretty quick. Prior to that, on another laptop, the kernel simply locked on boot. This was also quickly solved as I realized that it just wasn't worth it. As much as I'd rather be using linux for various ideological reasons, my time had become valuable that I could stomach just installing the "inferior" Windows, which would work right out of the box.
In having experience as a casual user of Linux with several distributions over the last few decades, I don't really see how the left and right half of this statement go together. I've spent far more time digging through newsgroups and forum posts and google hits trying to find answers to my Linux problems than I ever did with Windows. And I'm a computer programmer by trade and a former help desk worker and hardware debugger.
Windows sucks, but Linux sucks, too. The thing about Windows is that it typically has far fewer rough edges in its GUIs than Linux does, and that's where you get hung up on when you're doing something for the first time. It also has far wider hardware support. And you've got to be kidding if you don't recognize that hardware troubleshooting is one of the biggest time sinks there is.
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That's a terrible way to look at it. I would not suggest it should be standard ethical procedure for prosecutors to try to bend laws as much as possible in the hopes that they could convict people for things not clearly laid out for people to read. Otherwise, ignorance of the law does become a defense because you can never be reasonably expected to know what the law will be bent to include at some later point. We already have far too much of this going on and do not need to make it the suggested practice.
Better example - borrowing based on collateral that a character has, then giving both the money and the collateral to another character.
Ever read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut?
You should.
They might even have charged the trio of conspirators under sexual predator laws - they were obviously "getting off" on their actions.
I don't think you understand what sexual predator laws actually are.
All well and good, but Lori Drew did not cause the death of Megan Meier. Megan Meier did by hanging herself. Laws above are made for much more direct causes, like reckless driving resulting in plowing into a pedestrian. They're not for and should not be for something so indirect as this. As many people have pointed out, she had a huge fight with her mother right before killing herself. If you're going for indirect contributions to her death, you have to factor that in pretty highly.
Actually, no, the article shows that it's not really the case. The Missouri prosecutors found that there was nothing to charge her with that would stick. So rather than waste time and money on it, they didn't charge her. Then some federal prosecutor in LA (where myspace's servers are) decide to jump in and try the whole violating Terms of Service = hacking tack.
In the end, you are right in that she'll probably walk. I think it more likely that she'll lose a wrongful death suit, however.
Do you seriously not understand they could charge her with both if both applied? This is what the normal routine is in prosecutions around the country every day. They charge them with everything they thing applies. But that's a bit of a moot point, really. Because we are actually talking about two different groups here. Missouri (where Drew and Meier were located) didn't charge Drew with anything. Federal prosecutors in LA (where myspace is located) filed the charges. So, basically, Missouri got it right and some federal prosecutor in LA tried to make a name for himself by criminalizing breaking terms of service. Hopefully this should clear up your confusion.
If you swerve at another car, and they swerve to miss you and crash and die, can you be charged?
You'd be charged with reckless driving, with a penalty according to how reckless it is. We have a law for that. And again I tell you your entire little scenarios, no matter how good they sound to you when you type them out, are moot - because otherwise they would have charged her with that.
Once again, I'm sad that I wasn't clearer in my original post. The speech I meant was telling myspace things that violated their terms of service. That was the only "crime" they convicted her of. I don't believe simply saying something to myspace that does not harm myspace should be considered a crime.
Okay, on to the other topic. Your argument is reasonable sounding, but there's one key thing you've left out - they never charged her with any of this stuff. If every time I bump into you on the street I tell you you are a horrible, ugly person and should kill yourself, there is no law against it. Even if I really wish you would kill yourself. Now, if I make a plan to kill you, I am conspiring to commit a crime. Which crime was Lori Drew conspiring to commit? Person A cannot be charged with Person B's suicide, as Person B is the one committing the act. The only thing that comes close is when Person A provides a means to commit suicide for Person B. Here, Person A only provided motivation, not means.
In much the same way, I could openly talk about a plan to embarrass my neighbor in such a way that he would have to steal a car. But I can't be charged with stealing the car, because I didn't do it. Notice how this is crucially different to your example, which is to plan to kill someone. That is because it would be a crime that I can be charged with for me to kill someone.
So, no matter how strongly you assert that this is murder or manslaughter, the simple fact is that the prosecutors never tried to charge her with that. So either, a) it's not a crime or b) even if it is a crime, there's no way to prove it in this case.
As such, I can't really put any stock in your assertions.
Please, no need to be snarky. Google results ARE a good indication of the way people are using language, both written and spoken. If it is as widespread as you say, then there would be far more hits in proportion to the correct way.
I took your example. You are the one making the claim. I'm sorry your example turned out not to be an example. If you have an actual example that you want to use as an example, please post it. Until then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to file you in the crazy file. ;-)
Nah, don't expect so. I have heard plenty of instances of phrases along the lines of "I am twice the man that he is." But that's completely grammatically correct. Googling "smarter that I am" returned only 371 hits and scanning them looks doesn't make me thing that it's anything other than a typo. Even if it wasn't, this compares to 424,000 hits for "smarter than I am." That's about 0.09% of the hits. I'm going to go ahead and round that to zero.
Well, the thing is, I have never heard anyone use "that" rather than "than" in verbal communication. So, no, I can't really follow that line. Only thing I ever here is "then" being mixed up with "than", in both directions.
You should study how mistakes are made a bit more. When typing fast, I often mistype one work for another. Even though I know very well the rules for "its" and "it's" (a mistake you made in your post), "their" and "there", "than and then", sometimes my fingers just decide to type one thing even though my brain is thinking another. Sometimes I type "you" instead of "your", too. Or "to" instead of "too". None of this has anything to do with not knowing the rules. It's partially about not proofreading (c'mon, it's just a slashdot comment), but even proofreading can miss them because the brain sometimes reads what it means and not what it sees.
Actually, the conversation has to get quite a bit more than "racy." And there has to be quite a bit more than talking her into a "meeting." Prosecutors have to have a pretty clear cut case that the defendant is explicitly going there to have a sex with someone who thinks is underage, or the case will never stick.
Now, lets contrast this with Lori Drew. Which of the things did she do that were against the law, other than the bogus charge of violating myspace terms of service? See, that's the problem. None of those things were actually illegal. That's why she hasn't been charged with them. This is why even though I despise Lori Drew, for society's sake I don't want them using any means necessary to convict her. Because we will all pay the price for that kind of behavior.
And, as others, you have misinterpreted what I meant about speech. I'm talking about her telling myspace that she was someone other than who she was. I never meant anyone to think I meant speech could never be a crime. Ordering someone to kill another person is speech, as is posing as someone you are not in order to defraud them. The killing and the defrauding are both crimes, so the speech is a contributing crime. But, again, in this case the thing Lori Drew did (playing, tricking and bullying Megan Meier) wasn't actually a crime. So the speech cannot be a crime since it wasn't used to commit a crime.
1) You and many others have misunderstood my post. The speech I mean is telling myspace she was someone other than who she was. It in no way harmed myspace. And yet that's what they tried to convict her for. She was not convicted for doing anything to Megan Meier. So your list of reasons are moot. If she was charged based on those with laws that apply, that's fine and dandy. She wasn't. She was charged with lying to myspace.
2) Stop changing the subject line. It's an annoying habit that you have. We have subject lines to group conversations together, not to serve as the first sentence of your reply. If makes you look like a fool.
The only good news is that Apple owns the mobile web with the iPhone, so it can pretty much establish HTML5 itself and provide Flash-killer standards-based video without any help from Firefox.
Even granting this optimistic projection that Apple will "own" the mobile web for any length of time, currently that accounts for, what, less than 1% of all web use? Do you really think the standard will be pushed by something that is involved with a tiny fraction of web use?
And, personally, the phone is one of the last places I want to use as my video viewer. Maybe some occasional youtube clips, but for the most part at least 90% of my web usage in this area is going to be on my laptop. My laptop running a browser that is definitely not Safari.
"Discussing things"? You're going to have to try a little harder than that.
If a man did the exact same things, the same laws would apply. I'm not saying they couldn't incorrectly apply a law that doesn't apply, much like they did in Lori Drew's case. But as far as I know, there's nothing in the record of cybersex, nude photo exchanges, etc.
If we decide she can be imprisoned based simply on her speech, it's is not just her but we who will face the consequences.
Again, you're completely missing the context of my post. None of those situations fall within it.
So yeah, you can pull a quote of mine out of context, put it in a different context and claim I'm wrong. Can't really stop you on that. But if you actually want to have this discussion within the context of where I made that statement, let me know.
[Windows] also has far wider hardware support.
I'd just like to point out that this is patently false.
I'd just like to point out that you are completely wrong.
Neat, we can both contradict each other!
Seriously, though - the market is around 90% of the market. Most hardware simply isn't made without at least Windows support. If it doesn't have Windows support, it gets taken back to the store. Now, there are some pieces of hardware that are crap and don't work right in any OS (I'm looking at you, Creative Labs), but that's not really germane to this discussion. There are also specialized components made for servers or other special situations that may be more likely to have Linux support than Windows, but again, that's not really germane to a discussion of the casual user (which is what you replied to).
These simple facts transcend either your or my anecdotal experiences.
I installed my first linux machine about 15 years ago, so yeah, I was exaggerating. It really did seem like longer. And yes, it was a fairly new thing when I did. I went to TAMU and I remember attending a demo they did for their own distribution. I can't remember now if I ever installed the TAMU distribution or if my slackware install was my first. I later installed Redhat, Gentoo (very shortly), Debian and some others I can't remember. My last serious installation was a Debian (potato or woody) laptop that ran fine for years. But that was because I just wanted it to be an http/smtp server. Even so, getting some of the hardware to work was quite frustrating. I finally turned off that machine about two years when I moved to Google Apps for Domains. At that time, dselect would crash on me and the system wouldn't even let me do security updates anymore.
I'm sure part of my issue is that I wanted to install it on laptops (work often gave away old clunky laptops that were being replaced by newer shiny ones). Linux lagged Windows by years on laptop support. I can't say I know the state of that lag now since I haven't installed another. But I have also had real issues with desktops, too. Wireless PCI network cards have been a particular bane of mine. Linux also greatly lagged on the wireless front by quite a few years. Again, can't speak to that now. Another fun failures was a cheapo SATA controller card.
And yes, I fully agree that if you have the time to dedicate to really learning the system, I would be much more of an expert at Linux and would probably be able to figure out issues a LOT quicker. To some degree, my greater experience with Windows puts me in that category. If I were an admin of a network, I would love for that network to be all-Linux and hate for it to be all-Windows. But again, I speak as a casual user, not as a network admin. I do know that at the place I work, we have a particularly unskilled and uninquisitive network admin. All the machines are Windows machines, including all the servers. He manages to make it work, even though he is clueless. And when I have to try to figure out something rather than ask him to do it, I can usually navigate the GUIs enough to get it done. I can't even imagine all this being true for a linux shop with the same admin.
The thing about troubleshooting is that we're all anecdotes. Unless someone has spent a great percentage of their time purely troubleshooting both systems, their data is skewed. And if you've spent that much time, you've moved yourself into the expert user category and that's a different discussion. I fully admit that my experience may not be the same as your (speaking of all posters on this thread) experience. Nevertheless, it is my experience.
The usual reason Linux gets changed at all is because I change to another distro.
This is only true if your machine is not connected to the outside world.
Well, my most recent experience with linux and hardware was actually less time consuming than usual. It was basically "Q: So, how do I get this pcmcia ethernet card to work on this laptop? A: You don't. There is zero driver support for it in linux." So yeah, that was pretty quick. Prior to that, on another laptop, the kernel simply locked on boot. This was also quickly solved as I realized that it just wasn't worth it. As much as I'd rather be using linux for various ideological reasons, my time had become valuable that I could stomach just installing the "inferior" Windows, which would work right out of the box.
Linux - Because your time isn't free.
In having experience as a casual user of Linux with several distributions over the last few decades, I don't really see how the left and right half of this statement go together. I've spent far more time digging through newsgroups and forum posts and google hits trying to find answers to my Linux problems than I ever did with Windows. And I'm a computer programmer by trade and a former help desk worker and hardware debugger.
Windows sucks, but Linux sucks, too. The thing about Windows is that it typically has far fewer rough edges in its GUIs than Linux does, and that's where you get hung up on when you're doing something for the first time. It also has far wider hardware support. And you've got to be kidding if you don't recognize that hardware troubleshooting is one of the biggest time sinks there is.
Good old Comparison of Art and Terror Plans University. Anybody know how CATPU's football program is doing lately?