"That said, what exactly is your point? Someone with no record at all could have done exactly the same thing or worse."
I've no idea how you cannot miss my point. Pre AB109 would have almost certainly had this monster off the streets when he violated the terms of his post release supervision -- and post AB109 made it virtually impossible to take him off the streets for more than a few days. Pre AB109 he wouldn't have been on the streets to commit this crime. This mind set about keeping "non-violent" drug users out of prison is wrong. You really need to look at the full criminal history of a "non-violent drug user". The goal needs to be to make it EASIER to take repeat felons off the streets -- not harder.
The mind-set that passed AB109 is nothing but naivety and idiocy that failed to consider the consequences of ignoring someone's history.
"So why defend the system that failed to protect your daughter? By your own admission the system didn't work, so what is to be gained by perpetuating it?"
I'm not. Re-read my post. I'm arguing against the mindset that CHANGED the system to favor drug users with no consideration to reality or consequences. Casting a wide legislative net to help "drug users" keep from spending time in prison is what contributed to a monster kidnapping and brutally raping my daughter.
"Seriously though, anyone who "robs" or "steals" is no longer a "non-violent" offender. There are pretty precise lists that categorize that, state-by-state and federally. Burglary II, something not involving another person, is usually considered "non-violent". Burglary I specifically involves someone else. One is "class A" felony, the other "class B"."
Seriously, though -- under AB109 in CA if your LAST felony offense was "non-violent" (and most thefts are listed as non-violent), you are treated during post release supervision as if you committed a misdemeanor and are supervised by county probation (with virtually no way for revocation time) instead of state parole. Had our monster been supervised by state and he received the typical amount of revocation time he would have been in prison the night he decided to rob houses (and kidnapped my daughter). His last office was drug related (meth). You'd be surprised (or horrified) by what CA considers (or does not consider) violent and/or sexual crimes now.
And there was a tracking system -- "probation". He violated it and received a "flash incarceration" (required by AB109) rather than real revocation time (under state parole) -- solely because his LAST offense was a 3N offense (non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious). Fun fact: Under AB109 if an offender has in their past a "serious" or "violent" or "sexual" felony and their current crime is a 3N and they receive prison time -- they serve that time in STATE prison whereas under AB109, they would service there sentence in county jail without the "violent, sexual, serious" past crimes. The "rap sheet" is enough to keep them in state prison but when it comes to post-release supervision they are all sunshine and rainbows for county supervision.
"Most people, when talking about "non violent drug offenders", are meaning people who usually have no other felony convictions, and are busted for using pot, LSD, X, or something else along those lines"
If someone is a prolific re-offender (felony after felony after felony) we need to make it easier to get them off the streets, not harder. Cops in my state rarely, if ever, arrest for pot unless it's bales of it -- or you are smoking it while driving. Most of the "recreational" offenses are misdemeanors or citations (fine). You need to look at those "non-violent drug offenders" rap sheets. You'll find very few with ONLY drug offenses in their past. It takes quite a bit to get a few years or more in prison.
The majority of recreational drug users are not, in fact, in prison or even arrested.
Again -- once it gets to the point where threats of violence are used to rob money for drugs that's the point where it needs to be made easier to take them off the streets and for longer periods of time.
"and imprisoning non-violent drug offenders "civilization.""
Posting non-anonymously because I need to point out your naivety.
I take issue with this. My daughter (10 years old at the time) was kidnapped and brutally raped by someone who was considered a "low risk" drug offender.
The problem with your thinking is that the vast majority "non-violent" drug offenders can't work. They need to feed their habit so they need money. They'll lie, rob, steal friends, family or strangers to get what they need. By the time they are at the point of treats of violence for money there usually has been several opportunities for the "offender" to receive help. Some just wont accept the help or it doesn't stick. At this point it doesn't matter -- now we're at the point where we *NEED* to take this "non-violent" offender off the streets as easily and as often as we can.
Our monster had a long history (including violent felonies) yet he was considered "low risk" because is LAST felony wasn't "violent" or "serious" or "sexual". Well meaning idiots cast a wide "help drug addicts" net with laws like AB109 (assembly bill in CA) which doesn't allow a felon to be supervised by state parole (with higher chances of real revocation time) but forces them on county probation with the equivalence of placing someone who violates the terms of probation in the "time out chair" (no more than about 10 days).
Our monster was on "ab109 probation" and had violated the terms of his probation. Had he been under state supervision, he likly would have been put back in prison for 90-180 days if not longer (considering his history). Instead, he received a 6-day "time out" in county jail, dropped in a drug rehab program, stayed clean JUST long enough to pee in a cup and the very same day went out to rob houses for drug money after getting high with some friends. He just also happened to kidnap my daughter, too.
*MOST* drug offenders who make it to prison are repeat felons already. Yes, there are exceptions but they are EXCEPTIONS. If threat of prison didn't get them clean -- if rehab didn't work for them, if they just cant stop -- I'm sorry, drop them in prison as often and for as long as it takes.
Note: Our monster got life w/o parole + 200+ years to life on top of that. That should give you an idea the horrors my daughter had to endure by a "low risk" and "non-violent" drug offender.
" Not only is this not overbooking, but it's also a mindbogglingly dickish move by an airline to de-board someone already sitting and expecting to reach their destination, even more dickish that it wasn't voluntary at all."
I agree it was poorly handled. But the "employee" that needed to be on board was for 4 members of a flight crew who were to be working shortly after their arrival on ANOTHER flight which would have been delayed or cancelled -- which would have caused 100+ other passengers who were expecing to reach their destination to be disappointed -- and then the aircraft that is stuck THERE will cause FURTHER delays for 100+ others or more.
It wasn't just 4 employees looking for free travel.
"I wonder what's the markup on those drugs. Are they that costly to produce?"
Most certainly, when you factor in the cost in R&D the cost per pill over a given period of time, the cost of FDA approval -- basically everything it takes to bring medication to market. Most people don't consider any of that -- just that when they put the powder in one end and the pill comes out the other end how much is the pill?
By definition, rare diseases are RARE and they wont be making huge numbers of pills to spread out the total cost.
I don't believe there is a solution other than to wait and hope newer technology will allow for the cheaper creation of new drugs. Think of it like continuing to use fossil fuels until we manage to get really good at making high efficiency solar panels and better ways to store power -- all at a good cost-point. Sooner or later we'll either run out of the resource (oil in my example, "money" for R&D for medications for rare diseases) or make the breakthroughs we need. If we dont, then we'll have some hard decisions to make...
"Because hiring decisions are very frequently not rational. Some studies have sent out resumes that were functionally identical, except that some had white-sounding names and some had black-sounding. The ones with the white-sounding names got significantly better responses, despite being exactly as qualified. "
I have little doubt that a bit of that is happening. However, if a business can get away with hiring fully qualified people who would work for less I believe they would overshadow what you are suggesting.
"Again, finding out why the wage gap exists is complicated."
Yes it is. And it's not because of "gender" or "race" to any great degree any more when apples to apples are compared.
Correlation != causation. Lets think this through. If a fully qualified black woman who is a perfect match for a given job will get paid 75% of a while male why the hell aren't all businesses hiring black woman and telling white men to pound sand?
It's more likely, as the article indicates, women short changing themselves in part -- and likely that they make different career choices than men. There aren't many IT jobs where you don't find your self working god-awful numbers of hours a week at least SOME times and quite a few where ~50 a low average. Not many woman who also want (or already have) families would willingly enter that type of work environment. With regards to race playing a factor, the single parent household rate is higher with black women than white -- again -- signifying different career choices and motivations.
You also don't see a lot of woman working on oil rigs, in the logging industry or commercial fishing. Long hours, long time away from home will usually equal fewer woman.
My daughter (age 14 now) suffers from PTSD. It's pretty severe. You can literally see her eyes dilate when she has a flashback. She's gone -- somewhere else. And when she comes back she's terrorized. Those little "trips down memory lane" have become shorter and the recovery time has become shorter as well but it's not gone or fully controlled yet. Also, silly things like startling her can send her in to a flashback or any type of mild anxiety completely unrelated to the original event.
We've played the "meds" game for a while but gave up after the last "lets try this and see if it works" game that seems to be the norm. The last time, my daughter tripped like she ate a 'shroom'. Light trails, solid objects moving on their own, thinking she has 6 or 7 fingers on each hand. After she "recovered" from that my daughter demanded the 'honor' of flushing those pills down the toilet.
We went back to EMDR therapy (non-medical) which, while a rollercoaster, is having an overall positive effect. I wonder if there's a similar trigger with the EM of EMDR and the effects of playing Tetris...
The problem is that any given reviewer wont "mesh" with what *YOU* like. Or what *I* like. In the dark ages (before www), I used to religiously read two or three movie reviewers in my area. After 5 or 6 reviews the lights clicked. If X liked a given movie it would be likely that I WOULDN'T like it. If Y liked a movie, then it was pretty good odds that I would enjoy it. It was a bit more complicated than that but that's the gist. I learned what THEIR criteria was pretty quick.
Occasionally, I'd see a crappy movie my "rules" would indicate I would enjoy it or vise versa but it was otherwise pretty accurate.
Good example of an exception -- Back to the Beach (1980s reunion movie). I did *NOT* want to see that film. Some friends and I went to see the latest Bond film (can't recall what it was) but it was sold out. They decided to see this and I didn't drive. Everything told me that this movie would be crap. I'm embarrassed to say I enjoyed it. The opening on the airliner set the tone and it was just fun to watch. My "rules" told me to avoid this film like the plague.
Until wifi dies. Or the Surface wont turn on. Or the touch screen wont work.
We issued Pro 4s to our sales staff. I'm not joking -- literally 10% were dead on arrival. About half of the rest experienced the above problems (mixed in with dead screens, dead USB ports and a few other things) within the first year. We're now 1 year out from issuing them and about 6 months out from no longer replacing a dead/broken one with a replacement Pro. There's maybe 10 left in my region (out of about 90).
I blame PART of that on sales staff. They can be brutal on hardware sometimes. I blame most of it on the hardware which can't hand real world use.
I still have an old ASUS netbook from waybackwhen(tm). I installed ubuntu on it and use it primarily as a remote terminal when I need to go in the field. I love the fact the thing can easily fit in my glove box. That sucker has taken some abuse and still is kicking.
Add in property tax and sales tax (which is pushing 10% in most of CA) and you are about at 50%. Hell, my property tax is about 8% of my total income (pretax). Toss in all the "fees" tacked on to things like phone service, cable service and the like and you can easily break losing 50% of your income to taxes in CA.
"That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked."
Ok. much more serious response to your post this time. The guy was a nut or a broken nut. Blaming Trump is like Blaming Obama for the Texas nut who flew his plane in to a building more than a few years ago. And I recall on this very board everyone speculating he was a right wing nut because "Texas". Turns out after his manifesto came out that he was a left wing nut.
Maybe we need to drop the modifiers and just call them what they are. Nuts.
"Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters."
It's how parties work. They try to ensure that popular passions dont overwhelm the party based on emotions. Kind of like how republics work. They reflect the will of the people "smoothed out" over time -- just not when they are pissed off over something that recently occurred and likely to make poor choices until anger fades and they can make choices based more on ideals thought than feelings and reactions.
Slashdot Mirror
"That said, what exactly is your point? Someone with no record at all could have done exactly the same thing or worse."
I've no idea how you cannot miss my point. Pre AB109 would have almost certainly had this monster off the streets when he violated the terms of his post release supervision -- and post AB109 made it virtually impossible to take him off the streets for more than a few days. Pre AB109 he wouldn't have been on the streets to commit this crime. This mind set about keeping "non-violent" drug users out of prison is wrong. You really need to look at the full criminal history of a "non-violent drug user". The goal needs to be to make it EASIER to take repeat felons off the streets -- not harder.
The mind-set that passed AB109 is nothing but naivety and idiocy that failed to consider the consequences of ignoring someone's history.
"So why defend the system that failed to protect your daughter?
By your own admission the system didn't work, so what is to be gained by perpetuating it?"
I'm not. Re-read my post. I'm arguing against the mindset that CHANGED the system to favor drug users with no consideration to reality or consequences. Casting a wide legislative net to help "drug users" keep from spending time in prison is what contributed to a monster kidnapping and brutally raping my daughter.
"Seriously though, anyone who "robs" or "steals" is no longer a "non-violent" offender. There are pretty precise lists that categorize that, state-by-state and federally. Burglary II, something not involving another person, is usually considered "non-violent". Burglary I specifically involves someone else. One is "class A" felony, the other "class B"."
Seriously, though -- under AB109 in CA if your LAST felony offense was "non-violent" (and most thefts are listed as non-violent), you are treated during post release supervision as if you committed a misdemeanor and are supervised by county probation (with virtually no way for revocation time) instead of state parole. Had our monster been supervised by state and he received the typical amount of revocation time he would have been in prison the night he decided to rob houses (and kidnapped my daughter). His last office was drug related (meth). You'd be surprised (or horrified) by what CA considers (or does not consider) violent and/or sexual crimes now.
And there was a tracking system -- "probation". He violated it and received a "flash incarceration" (required by AB109) rather than real revocation time (under state parole) -- solely because his LAST offense was a 3N offense (non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious). Fun fact: Under AB109 if an offender has in their past a "serious" or "violent" or "sexual" felony and their current crime is a 3N and they receive prison time -- they serve that time in STATE prison whereas under AB109, they would service there sentence in county jail without the "violent, sexual, serious" past crimes. The "rap sheet" is enough to keep them in state prison but when it comes to post-release supervision they are all sunshine and rainbows for county supervision.
"Most people, when talking about "non violent drug offenders", are meaning people who usually have no other felony convictions, and are busted for using pot, LSD, X, or something else along those lines"
If someone is a prolific re-offender (felony after felony after felony) we need to make it easier to get them off the streets, not harder. Cops in my state rarely, if ever, arrest for pot unless it's bales of it -- or you are smoking it while driving. Most of the "recreational" offenses are misdemeanors or citations (fine). You need to look at those "non-violent drug offenders" rap sheets. You'll find very few with ONLY drug offenses in their past. It takes quite a bit to get a few years or more in prison.
The majority of recreational drug users are not, in fact, in prison or even arrested.
Again -- once it gets to the point where threats of violence are used to rob money for drugs that's the point where it needs to be made easier to take them off the streets and for longer periods of time.
"and imprisoning non-violent drug offenders "civilization.""
Posting non-anonymously because I need to point out your naivety.
I take issue with this. My daughter (10 years old at the time) was kidnapped and brutally raped by someone who was considered a "low risk" drug offender.
The problem with your thinking is that the vast majority "non-violent" drug offenders can't work. They need to feed their habit so they need money. They'll lie, rob, steal friends, family or strangers to get what they need. By the time they are at the point of treats of violence for money there usually has been several opportunities for the "offender" to receive help. Some just wont accept the help or it doesn't stick. At this point it doesn't matter -- now we're at the point where we *NEED* to take this "non-violent" offender off the streets as easily and as often as we can.
Our monster had a long history (including violent felonies) yet he was considered "low risk" because is LAST felony wasn't "violent" or "serious" or "sexual". Well meaning idiots cast a wide "help drug addicts" net with laws like AB109 (assembly bill in CA) which doesn't allow a felon to be supervised by state parole (with higher chances of real revocation time) but forces them on county probation with the equivalence of placing someone who violates the terms of probation in the "time out chair" (no more than about 10 days).
Our monster was on "ab109 probation" and had violated the terms of his probation. Had he been under state supervision, he likly would have been put back in prison for 90-180 days if not longer (considering his history). Instead, he received a 6-day "time out" in county jail, dropped in a drug rehab program, stayed clean JUST long enough to pee in a cup and the very same day went out to rob houses for drug money after getting high with some friends. He just also happened to kidnap my daughter, too.
*MOST* drug offenders who make it to prison are repeat felons already. Yes, there are exceptions but they are EXCEPTIONS. If threat of prison didn't get them clean -- if rehab didn't work for them, if they just cant stop -- I'm sorry, drop them in prison as often and for as long as it takes.
Note: Our monster got life w/o parole + 200+ years to life on top of that. That should give you an idea the horrors my daughter had to endure by a "low risk" and "non-violent" drug offender.
" Not only is this not overbooking, but it's also a mindbogglingly dickish move by an airline to de-board someone already sitting and expecting to reach their destination, even more dickish that it wasn't voluntary at all."
I agree it was poorly handled. But the "employee" that needed to be on board was for 4 members of a flight crew who were to be working shortly after their arrival on ANOTHER flight which would have been delayed or cancelled -- which would have caused 100+ other passengers who were expecing to reach their destination to be disappointed -- and then the aircraft that is stuck THERE will cause FURTHER delays for 100+ others or more.
It wasn't just 4 employees looking for free travel.
"I wonder what's the markup on those drugs. Are they that costly to produce?"
Most certainly, when you factor in the cost in R&D the cost per pill over a given period of time, the cost of FDA approval -- basically everything it takes to bring medication to market. Most people don't consider any of that -- just that when they put the powder in one end and the pill comes out the other end how much is the pill?
By definition, rare diseases are RARE and they wont be making huge numbers of pills to spread out the total cost.
I don't believe there is a solution other than to wait and hope newer technology will allow for the cheaper creation of new drugs. Think of it like continuing to use fossil fuels until we manage to get really good at making high efficiency solar panels and better ways to store power -- all at a good cost-point. Sooner or later we'll either run out of the resource (oil in my example, "money" for R&D for medications for rare diseases) or make the breakthroughs we need. If we dont, then we'll have some hard decisions to make...
"Because hiring decisions are very frequently not rational. Some studies have sent out resumes that were functionally identical, except that some had white-sounding names and some had black-sounding. The ones with the white-sounding names got significantly better responses, despite being exactly as qualified. "
I have little doubt that a bit of that is happening. However, if a business can get away with hiring fully qualified people who would work for less I believe they would overshadow what you are suggesting.
"Again, finding out why the wage gap exists is complicated."
Yes it is. And it's not because of "gender" or "race" to any great degree any more when apples to apples are compared.
Correlation != causation. Lets think this through. If a fully qualified black woman who is a perfect match for a given job will get paid 75% of a while male why the hell aren't all businesses hiring black woman and telling white men to pound sand?
It's more likely, as the article indicates, women short changing themselves in part -- and likely that they make different career choices than men. There aren't many IT jobs where you don't find your self working god-awful numbers of hours a week at least SOME times and quite a few where ~50 a low average. Not many woman who also want (or already have) families would willingly enter that type of work environment. With regards to race playing a factor, the single parent household rate is higher with black women than white -- again -- signifying different career choices and motivations.
You also don't see a lot of woman working on oil rigs, in the logging industry or commercial fishing. Long hours, long time away from home will usually equal fewer woman.
That was the recommended disposal method by the ER.
My daughter (age 14 now) suffers from PTSD. It's pretty severe. You can literally see her eyes dilate when she has a flashback. She's gone -- somewhere else. And when she comes back she's terrorized. Those little "trips down memory lane" have become shorter and the recovery time has become shorter as well but it's not gone or fully controlled yet. Also, silly things like startling her can send her in to a flashback or any type of mild anxiety completely unrelated to the original event.
We've played the "meds" game for a while but gave up after the last "lets try this and see if it works" game that seems to be the norm. The last time, my daughter tripped like she ate a 'shroom'. Light trails, solid objects moving on their own, thinking she has 6 or 7 fingers on each hand. After she "recovered" from that my daughter demanded the 'honor' of flushing those pills down the toilet.
We went back to EMDR therapy (non-medical) which, while a rollercoaster, is having an overall positive effect. I wonder if there's a similar trigger with the EM of EMDR and the effects of playing Tetris...
One guys "crap" is another guys entertainment.
The problem is that any given reviewer wont "mesh" with what *YOU* like. Or what *I* like. In the dark ages (before www), I used to religiously read two or three movie reviewers in my area. After 5 or 6 reviews the lights clicked. If X liked a given movie it would be likely that I WOULDN'T like it. If Y liked a movie, then it was pretty good odds that I would enjoy it. It was a bit more complicated than that but that's the gist. I learned what THEIR criteria was pretty quick.
Occasionally, I'd see a crappy movie my "rules" would indicate I would enjoy it or vise versa but it was otherwise pretty accurate.
Good example of an exception -- Back to the Beach (1980s reunion movie). I did *NOT* want to see that film. Some friends and I went to see the latest Bond film (can't recall what it was) but it was sold out. They decided to see this and I didn't drive. Everything told me that this movie would be crap. I'm embarrassed to say I enjoyed it. The opening on the airliner set the tone and it was just fun to watch. My "rules" told me to avoid this film like the plague.
"How about some background? Flash-forward? What is this about?"
Microsoft is more than just "windows".
Hope that helps.
...say nothing at all.
Let the silence begin!
The name is a red flag. Idiocracy is on the horizon.
"Surface Pro 4"
Until wifi dies. Or the Surface wont turn on. Or the touch screen wont work.
We issued Pro 4s to our sales staff. I'm not joking -- literally 10% were dead on arrival. About half of the rest experienced the above problems (mixed in with dead screens, dead USB ports and a few other things) within the first year. We're now 1 year out from issuing them and about 6 months out from no longer replacing a dead/broken one with a replacement Pro. There's maybe 10 left in my region (out of about 90).
I blame PART of that on sales staff. They can be brutal on hardware sometimes. I blame most of it on the hardware which can't hand real world use.
I still have an old ASUS netbook from waybackwhen(tm). I installed ubuntu on it and use it primarily as a remote terminal when I need to go in the field. I love the fact the thing can easily fit in my glove box. That sucker has taken some abuse and still is kicking.
It's simple. The young ones like it because the old farts don't and aren't using it.
Add in property tax and sales tax (which is pushing 10% in most of CA) and you are about at 50%. Hell, my property tax is about 8% of my total income (pretax). Toss in all the "fees" tacked on to things like phone service, cable service and the like and you can easily break losing 50% of your income to taxes in CA.
"That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked."
Ok. much more serious response to your post this time. The guy was a nut or a broken nut. Blaming Trump is like Blaming Obama for the Texas nut who flew his plane in to a building more than a few years ago. And I recall on this very board everyone speculating he was a right wing nut because "Texas". Turns out after his manifesto came out that he was a left wing nut.
Maybe we need to drop the modifiers and just call them what they are. Nuts.
Even if every detail in the summary is true it's STILL likely to not be an accurate depiction of the entire profile of the gunman.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
I blame booze.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
Maybe things have changed but Sprint at least used to make it impossible to bring non-sprint phones to their network.
If that's still the case, change your "Psst" to "Pffft" and keep walking.
"It's amazing how much this country hates normal people that refuse to become breeders"
Because? Breeders aren't normal? You have a strange view of what is "normal"
"Thanks TMobile and Sprint for keeping the majors in line :)"
Yeah... it's a great price! But... it's Sprint.
"Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters."
It's how parties work. They try to ensure that popular passions dont overwhelm the party based on emotions. Kind of like how republics work. They reflect the will of the people "smoothed out" over time -- just not when they are pissed off over something that recently occurred and likely to make poor choices until anger fades and they can make choices based more on ideals thought than feelings and reactions.