It can be both. e.g. being abused(physically or sexually) makes you far more likely to abuse others. Such a person is both a criminal, and a victim. Yes, he chose to abuse someone, but the circumstances which led him to choose that behavior are to some extent out of his control.
I'm not suggesting that we free people who have done terrible things to others. I'm suggesting that we will have a much healthier society if we focus on building communities instead of building prisons. You reap what you sow.
Look at the demographics of prison populations. e.g. Poor black inner city men are vastly overrepresented. You can dig up the citations yourself. Is this because black men are inherently more criminal? Of course not. It's because poverty and economic disenfranchisement cause people to lash out.
Any person, when born into a near hopeless situation, given no tools to escape, will take any opportunity to improve their lives. The opportunities most readily available to our less fortunate citizens are criminal, and it's *our fault* that they don't have better opportunities.
You say this is an extraordinary claim that is false on its face. The only other explanation for our prison demographics is that non-white races are inherently more criminal. Is that really the position you're taking?
We stopped being vigilant a long time ago. We stopped being honest citizens a long time ago. Many will sing the last line of our national anthem without a hint of irony, despite the fact that we imprison more people than any country in the world.
The crimes we need to be afraid of are not the crimes committed by people behind bars. They are the crimes committed by men in suits, in government or corporate board rooms. Most people in prison are victims, either of unjust laws, or an economy deliberately engineered to work against the common man. We need to focus on the real problem. It's not the schizophrenics on the street corner, it's the sociopaths in DC and NYC.
Who said Linux was without cost? You said "If you aren't being charged for the product, you are the product." I am not charged for Linux, and I am not being sold either. What made you think I said no one pays for Linux?
These companies do so because it is in their mutual best interest to do so (the overwhelming majority of Linux code is written by large corps). My point about the costs stand, the costs are overwhelmingly donated.
And that's a great point. If you provide value to the parties providing the resources, free riders are not a problem.
Not to downplay the treason of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning
The treason has been committed by the likes of James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Peter King, Dianne Feinstein, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney.
The only reason a heroin addict might steal and do whatever is because he can't get his fix legally. Opiates can be produced for pennies a dose. It's a lot cheaper for society to maintain addicts on opiates than it is to imprison them, or to deal with the costs incurred by addicts getting an illegal fix. As a bonus, when they don't have to spend all their effort in getting drugs, they can actually take advantage of their tolerance and become productive members of society, holding down a job, going to school, and paying taxes just like everyone else. Heroin and morphine maintenance programs have proven this, but have been shut down for political reasons.
Terence McKenna should have taken less psilocybin and more science classes. Like his brother Dennis. And I'm speaking as someone who loves psilocybin.
This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant.
We have evidence of lots of things springing from nothing in a single instance. They're called quantum vacuum fluctuations. Particles of matter and antimatter spring into existance in the vacuum all the time, only to annihilate each other an instant later. The part that's difficult to explain about the universe is why it hasn't annihilated itself, not why it sprang into existence.
Also, the entire universe didn't spring into existence in one instant. The universe as we know it, meaning mostly comprised of atoms, took 380,000 years to form. This is preceeded by at least 5 different epochs when the universe was dominated by different forms of matter. To be fair, most of these epochs occured within the first second after the big bang. But in quantum terms that's a long time. Plank time is only about 5^-44s.
The rest of this quote is just argument from incredulity. Worthless.
Why are states allowing themselves to be blackmailed like this? Why can't they just release "open source" text books and hand them out for free in EPUB format?
You choose people you trust for a term to collectively make decisions rather than voting on every issue.
It's a lot easier to sway the opinions of a small group of ambitious sociopaths than it is an entire nation. What's good for 51% of Congresspeople is only good for 0.00015% of Americans. What's good for 51% of Americans is good for 51% of Americans.
The "public" doesn't have the knowledge to have their opinions really matter on most topics.
Nor do our representatives. They get briefed on important issues by lobbyists who care for nothing but their own self interest. They exchange their time for money, so that the only policies they are even able to contemplate are those that favor the extremely wealthy. If someone did have a clue, those monied interests would not support his candidacy, because they could not control him.
its a DAMN good thing that the dimwit "will of the masses" is not involved in the vast majority of things the government does, because the will of the masses is both ignorant and easily controlled
Whereas the will of our government is malicious, greedy, and easily controlled. You know how poorly you think of your fellow citizens? Now realize that our elected representatives are the most ambitious, self serving bastards among them.
IMO, the majority of the problem we've got with the federal government today stems from the fact that the separation between the will of the people and the federal government has eroded over time
No, it's because the will of a tiny but extremely wealthy elite has come to matter much more than the will of the rest of us.
Instead of good people being elected, the slime balls who can most effectively sway the opinion of the ignorant masses gets elected
And the slime ball does that by spending money given to him by the extremely rich, to whom he is then indebted.
What am I doing that's so important to keep secret? I'm minding my own business, that's what. You should do it too.
The reason we should all be afraid of the authorities spying on us is because more often than not, they are the POS humans that are the greatest threat. Remember COINTELPRO? Remember the FBI infiltrating mosques? Remember the IRS harassing political groups? Remember people like Thomas Drake being prosecuted for blowing the whistle on massive amounts of public corruption and fraud?
In an authoritarian regime, anything you do that stands out will get you unwanted attention. If you don't believe we're authortarian today, there's no guarantee we won't be in the future. If we can't protect our privacy today, how will we protect it then? If you want to live a free life, you need privacy.
Tor is not a magic bullet. Anything you send over Tor can be intercepted by an exit node. If you send any identifying information over Tor, all the onion routing in the world won't help you. You can easily do this accidentally, all it takes is for you to visit a page with a google or facebook script on it. You can't just plug into Tor and expect it to take care of everything for you.
The only way to use Tor securely is to partition your Tor activities from everything else you do. This is most easily accomplished with a separate computer, or a VM used only for anonymous activities. Remember, it only takes one slip up and you are identifiable. That's how they got Ulbricht, and they can get you too.
A box that you plug into and forget about is going to provide nothing but a false sense of security. Bad idea.
Unfortunately I don't think we will see many hacks for this generation. They are so tied in with their online features that it will be nearly impossible to modify them without detection.
As long as they make single player games, someone will figure out how to spoof the authentication server. If they don't make single player games, I'm not interested anyway.
Even on the 360 you have to make sure you never go online with a modchip enabled or you get perma-banned.
I really only play single player games. I could not care less if I get a banned 360.
So we should build data centers in abandoned mines. Plenty of shielding from cosmic rays, a steady 55F ambient temperature, and all the heat exchange capacity you could want.
So I should be able to pick up a used Xbox and PS3 for cheap sometime after Christmas. Why spend $500 when I can spend $100 on a console that's been thoroughly hacked?
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
No matter which desktop you choose, your apps will work. That's standard enough. The choice of desktops is one of Linux's greatest strengths. I can make my desktop work they way I want it to, without interfering with your ability to make your desktop work the way you want it.
Ubuntu has gone off to create its own standard, and the one the world outside of open source software will see as the defacto Linux desktop.
Rather Ubuntu will continue to be increasingly marginalized and irrelevant.
Linux has crap adoption outside of open source circles precisely because there is no (seemingly) standardized desktop for business.
Each business can set its own standards for what desktop provides the tools their employees need.
Like or not, Canonical and Ubuntu offer this standard, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Unless you're running a business that doesn't want every employee's desktop search to be reported to third parties.
I'm not a open source greybeard position stickler who thinks everything has to be done based on decrees from the people who are as far away from the real world pragmatism as possible.
Open source is the most pragmatic solution in the long run. A proprietary standard today becomes vendor lock-in in the future. Open source allows you to choose what works best for your business, not Microsoft or Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
It can be both. e.g. being abused(physically or sexually) makes you far more likely to abuse others. Such a person is both a criminal, and a victim. Yes, he chose to abuse someone, but the circumstances which led him to choose that behavior are to some extent out of his control.
I'm not suggesting that we free people who have done terrible things to others. I'm suggesting that we will have a much healthier society if we focus on building communities instead of building prisons. You reap what you sow.
Look at the demographics of prison populations. e.g. Poor black inner city men are vastly overrepresented. You can dig up the citations yourself. Is this because black men are inherently more criminal? Of course not. It's because poverty and economic disenfranchisement cause people to lash out.
Any person, when born into a near hopeless situation, given no tools to escape, will take any opportunity to improve their lives. The opportunities most readily available to our less fortunate citizens are criminal, and it's *our fault* that they don't have better opportunities.
You say this is an extraordinary claim that is false on its face. The only other explanation for our prison demographics is that non-white races are inherently more criminal. Is that really the position you're taking?
"Piracy forces upon heavy metal a new business model" might be closer to the truth.
"Advances in technology made the old business model obsolete" is closer to the truth.
The definition is largely "do you know that what you did was wrong."
A very large number of people in prison are there for things that every thinking person knows are not wrong.
We stopped being vigilant a long time ago. We stopped being honest citizens a long time ago. Many will sing the last line of our national anthem without a hint of irony, despite the fact that we imprison more people than any country in the world.
The crimes we need to be afraid of are not the crimes committed by people behind bars. They are the crimes committed by men in suits, in government or corporate board rooms. Most people in prison are victims, either of unjust laws, or an economy deliberately engineered to work against the common man. We need to focus on the real problem. It's not the schizophrenics on the street corner, it's the sociopaths in DC and NYC.
Who said Linux was without cost? You said "If you aren't being charged for the product, you are the product." I am not charged for Linux, and I am not being sold either. What made you think I said no one pays for Linux?
These companies do so because it is in their mutual best interest to do so (the overwhelming majority of Linux code is written by large corps). My point about the costs stand, the costs are overwhelmingly donated.
And that's a great point. If you provide value to the parties providing the resources, free riders are not a problem.
If you aren't being charged for the product, you are the product.
This axiom has been true for a very long time and it's true for this site as well as any other such thing.
Linux?
Not to downplay the treason of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning
The treason has been committed by the likes of James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Peter King, Dianne Feinstein, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney.
Notice that the drugs he was addicted to wasn't illegal at the time? So he could get it from a pharmacy or mail order no problem.
And that's exactly what I'm advocating should be the case today.
Agreed. Prohibitionists pose a greater danger to society than any drugs or addicts.
The only reason a heroin addict might steal and do whatever is because he can't get his fix legally. Opiates can be produced for pennies a dose. It's a lot cheaper for society to maintain addicts on opiates than it is to imprison them, or to deal with the costs incurred by addicts getting an illegal fix. As a bonus, when they don't have to spend all their effort in getting drugs, they can actually take advantage of their tolerance and become productive members of society, holding down a job, going to school, and paying taxes just like everyone else. Heroin and morphine maintenance programs have proven this, but have been shut down for political reasons.
What's the best thing an opiate addict could do? Found Johns Hopkins Hospital.
For the record, I believe euthanasia laws need modernized.
You mean they need to be modernized. People who drop the auxillary verb need to die a horrible death.
Terence McKenna should have taken less psilocybin and more science classes. Like his brother Dennis. And I'm speaking as someone who loves psilocybin.
This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant.
We have evidence of lots of things springing from nothing in a single instance. They're called quantum vacuum fluctuations. Particles of matter and antimatter spring into existance in the vacuum all the time, only to annihilate each other an instant later. The part that's difficult to explain about the universe is why it hasn't annihilated itself, not why it sprang into existence.
Also, the entire universe didn't spring into existence in one instant. The universe as we know it, meaning mostly comprised of atoms, took 380,000 years to form. This is preceeded by at least 5 different epochs when the universe was dominated by different forms of matter. To be fair, most of these epochs occured within the first second after the big bang. But in quantum terms that's a long time. Plank time is only about 5^-44s.
The rest of this quote is just argument from incredulity. Worthless.
Why are states allowing themselves to be blackmailed like this? Why can't they just release "open source" text books and hand them out for free in EPUB format?
Textbook lobby.
You choose people you trust for a term to collectively make decisions rather than voting on every issue.
It's a lot easier to sway the opinions of a small group of ambitious sociopaths than it is an entire nation. What's good for 51% of Congresspeople is only good for 0.00015% of Americans. What's good for 51% of Americans is good for 51% of Americans.
The "public" doesn't have the knowledge to have their opinions really matter on most topics.
Nor do our representatives. They get briefed on important issues by lobbyists who care for nothing but their own self interest. They exchange their time for money, so that the only policies they are even able to contemplate are those that favor the extremely wealthy. If someone did have a clue, those monied interests would not support his candidacy, because they could not control him.
its a DAMN good thing that the dimwit "will of the masses" is not involved in the vast majority of things the government does, because the will of the masses is both ignorant and easily controlled
Whereas the will of our government is malicious, greedy, and easily controlled. You know how poorly you think of your fellow citizens? Now realize that our elected representatives are the most ambitious, self serving bastards among them.
IMO, the majority of the problem we've got with the federal government today stems from the fact that the separation between the will of the people and the federal government has eroded over time
No, it's because the will of a tiny but extremely wealthy elite has come to matter much more than the will of the rest of us.
Instead of good people being elected, the slime balls who can most effectively sway the opinion of the ignorant masses gets elected
And the slime ball does that by spending money given to him by the extremely rich, to whom he is then indebted.
It may be non-violent, but is it effective?
Rather than exit nodes, we need a lot more dark net content.
What am I doing that's so important to keep secret? I'm minding my own business, that's what. You should do it too.
The reason we should all be afraid of the authorities spying on us is because more often than not, they are the POS humans that are the greatest threat. Remember COINTELPRO? Remember the FBI infiltrating mosques? Remember the IRS harassing political groups? Remember people like Thomas Drake being prosecuted for blowing the whistle on massive amounts of public corruption and fraud?
In an authoritarian regime, anything you do that stands out will get you unwanted attention. If you don't believe we're authortarian today, there's no guarantee we won't be in the future. If we can't protect our privacy today, how will we protect it then? If you want to live a free life, you need privacy.
Tor is not a magic bullet. Anything you send over Tor can be intercepted by an exit node. If you send any identifying information over Tor, all the onion routing in the world won't help you. You can easily do this accidentally, all it takes is for you to visit a page with a google or facebook script on it. You can't just plug into Tor and expect it to take care of everything for you.
The only way to use Tor securely is to partition your Tor activities from everything else you do. This is most easily accomplished with a separate computer, or a VM used only for anonymous activities. Remember, it only takes one slip up and you are identifiable. That's how they got Ulbricht, and they can get you too.
A box that you plug into and forget about is going to provide nothing but a false sense of security. Bad idea.
Unfortunately I don't think we will see many hacks for this generation. They are so tied in with their online features that it will be nearly impossible to modify them without detection.
As long as they make single player games, someone will figure out how to spoof the authentication server. If they don't make single player games, I'm not interested anyway.
Even on the 360 you have to make sure you never go online with a modchip enabled or you get perma-banned.
I really only play single player games. I could not care less if I get a banned 360.
Here's another way you can get really high with Bitcoin.
So we should build data centers in abandoned mines. Plenty of shielding from cosmic rays, a steady 55F ambient temperature, and all the heat exchange capacity you could want.
So I should be able to pick up a used Xbox and PS3 for cheap sometime after Christmas. Why spend $500 when I can spend $100 on a console that's been thoroughly hacked?
A problem with Linux in general is there is simply too much choice and no apparent standardization.
No matter which desktop you choose, your apps will work. That's standard enough. The choice of desktops is one of Linux's greatest strengths. I can make my desktop work they way I want it to, without interfering with your ability to make your desktop work the way you want it.
Ubuntu has gone off to create its own standard, and the one the world outside of open source software will see as the defacto Linux desktop.
Rather Ubuntu will continue to be increasingly marginalized and irrelevant.
Linux has crap adoption outside of open source circles precisely because there is no (seemingly) standardized desktop for business.
Each business can set its own standards for what desktop provides the tools their employees need.
Like or not, Canonical and Ubuntu offer this standard, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Unless you're running a business that doesn't want every employee's desktop search to be reported to third parties.
I'm not a open source greybeard position stickler who thinks everything has to be done based on decrees from the people who are as far away from the real world pragmatism as possible.
Open source is the most pragmatic solution in the long run. A proprietary standard today becomes vendor lock-in in the future. Open source allows you to choose what works best for your business, not Microsoft or Apple.