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  1. Re:This summary is wrong, they are banning content on Reddit Will 'Hide' Vile Content After Policy Change · · Score: 1

    Well, they did say that they would ban some subs dedicated to showing pictures of corpses under the same pretext. I haven't been to any of those subs, so I just let that slide, but that could be as you describe. Just showing a dead body may be distasteful, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with violence.

  2. Re:Ever killed a poacher? on Game About Killing Poachers Vies For Top Prize In Microsoft Student Tech Contest · · Score: 1
    The Laredo case was a little more than shooting someone in his trailer. Here:

    Gonzalez had endured several break-ins at his trailer when the four boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15, broke in at night. Gonzalez, who was in a nearby building at the time, went into the trailer and confronted the boys with a 16-gauge shotgun. Then he forced the boys, who were unarmed, to their knees, attorneys on both sides said.

    The survivors said they were begging for forgiveness when Gonzalez hit them with the barrel of the shotgun and kicked them repeatedly. Then, the medical examiner testified, Anguiano was shot in the back at close range. Two mashed Twinkies and some cookies were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.

    Another boy, Jesus Soto Jr., 16, testified that Gonzalez ordered them at gunpoint to take Anguiano’s body outside.

  3. Re:Ever killed a poacher? on Game About Killing Poachers Vies For Top Prize In Microsoft Student Tech Contest · · Score: 2

    That's not what legislation on the subject says, at least not in many states. In Texas, for example, it's perfectly legal to shoot someone in the back who is running away from you and poses no danger to yourself or your family as long as they're carrying some possession of yours. Any possession, no matter how trivial.

  4. Re:No chance of winning on Game About Killing Poachers Vies For Top Prize In Microsoft Student Tech Contest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.

    ... Well, we make games about it. And movies. And books, and comic books, and we plaster the faces of our fictional vigilantes all over billboards and buses and soft drink cups and onto the toys that our children play with.

    I mean, we don't encourage it. ::wink:: But yeah, we encourage it.

  5. Re: This summary is wrong, they are banning conten on Reddit Will 'Hide' Vile Content After Policy Change · · Score: 1

    Posting personal data is banned by a separate rule. I was using their example: advocating for drugs is okay, advocating for rape is not. They reason they give for that is violence, though they allow promoting violence in other contexts. I gave the example of vigilantism, which is also illegal.

  6. Re:This summary is wrong, they are banning content on Reddit Will 'Hide' Vile Content After Policy Change · · Score: 1

    No, they specifically mentioned legality: subs which contain illegal content (e.g.: copyrighted material) would be banned, but subs discussing illegal activities (e.g.: the use of drugs) would not be.

  7. Re:Medical Disagree; A European example on Scientology Group Urged Veto of Mental Health Bill · · Score: 1

    The procedure isn't exactly the same, but something very similar already exists in the US (it varies somewhat state by state). The difference with this bill is that the doctor would now have the option to detain unilaterally, without the approval from the mayor or a request from a family member. Also it would be any doctor who could do this, not just a psychiatrist. A cardiologist, for example.

  8. This summary is wrong, they are banning content on Reddit Will 'Hide' Vile Content After Policy Change · · Score: 4, Informative

    Reddit introducing three tier content tiers: approved / hidden / banned. They announced that they would hide some of the undesirable content, as the summary said, but they are outright banning other content - they gave the example of /r/rapingwomen as a subreddit which would be banned, not hidden.

    The differentiator between a sub to be banned and a sub to be hidden is officially the promotion of violence. Given the unlikelihood they that would start banning subs like /r/justiceporn though, the real differentiator is probably better characterized as: "subs which we don't like and which also have a violence theme."

  9. Re:Feels weird agreeing with scientologists on Scientology Group Urged Veto of Mental Health Bill · · Score: 1

    Right. It doesn't happen on whim, it requires a warrant. This bill would have removed that requirement.

  10. Re:Feels weird agreeing with scientologists on Scientology Group Urged Veto of Mental Health Bill · · Score: 0

    This doesn't seem to be an accurate portrayal of the bill at hand. The CDC already has the power to apply and enforce quarantine.

    The summary says that each individual doctor would be able to make up a reason for detaining you if they wished, and apparently you wouldn't even have to be a danger to others.

  11. Feels weird agreeing with scientologists on Scientology Group Urged Veto of Mental Health Bill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It feels weird agreeing with scientologists, but you know how it goes with a broken clock.

    Doctors get an awful lot of trust, much of it deserved and most of it necessary, given what they do, but seeing a doctor shouldn't mean risking my freedom. Even temporarily.

  12. Why is it always HotHardware? on Lenovo ThinkPad W550s: Heavy, But a Battery That Lasts Nearly All Day · · Score: 1

    I like reviews for new hardware, I'm not against that at all, but why is it always HotHardware which gets posted? Do they have some kind of affiliation with Slashdot? Or Dice?

    There are a lot of other good review sites out there.

  13. Re:No Free Speech on Reddit CEO: Site Is 'Not a Bastion of Free Speech,' Change Coming · · Score: 1

    The GP made a factual claim, saying either that Reddit had never managed to keep racists corralled or that adults had never had quality conversation there (or both). If a moderator isn't allowed to mod down an inaccurate claim, the comments will just get polluted with uninformed or malicious detritus.

    Also, how the hell is this not trolling? A one line statement, obviously intended to be insulting? Troll was the right mod for this post.

  14. Re:Wow ... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Amazon seems to be doing pretty well. Lexmark has done very well with this model. Gillette has done very well for themselves as well. And IBM.

    Customer lock-in wasn't invented by Apple. What makes Apple impressive is that they've managed to do it while getting their customers to keep asking for more of the same.

  15. Re:Huh on Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Past Reports Of Man's Molestation Arrest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ar, what a monster. He should be burned alive, but not to death, and then allowed to recover just enough so that he can fully feel all of the spikes of the iron maiden that closes on him as a manticore drips acid into his eyes.

    Am i doing this right? I have no end of sympathy for your daughter, but I'm clearly not as vengeance-driven as you are. At some point in our past we decided that eye-for-an-eye was not a workable approach to justice and three lifetimes plus hundreds of years for an offense of twelve hours, no matter how awful those twelve hours may have been, goes so far beyond eye-for-an-eye... There's some horrible disconnect when it comes to sex crimes. We load down the act of sex with so much baggage that it's social anathema to do anything mildly sexually deviant, and crimes related to sex are seen as absolutely horrifying while doing relatively little physical / financial / property damage. There is of course the psychological aspect, which I by no means wish to trivialize, but I can't help but think that the psychological damage is made as severe as it is by all of the baggage which we attach to sex.

    I have heard people say, without hyperbole, that they think that rape is as bad or worse than murder. Many rape victims also seem to feel that - 13% of rape victims attempt suicide. Think about that. These are people, a large number of people, who genuinely believe that it's better to be dead than raped. That's a problem, a big one, and it's a problem of perception. The courts only reinforce this, if they're handing down life-ending sentences over rape offenses, and that feeds the problem further.

    Back to TFA: molestation isn't rape. Without reading the article, I'd guess based on the sentence that the offense of the guy in question was pretty small. Maybe a grope on the train or something, happens pretty often on those crowded Japanese commuter trains. Is that also worth murder?

  16. Re:political speech on Illinois Supreme Court: Comcast Must Identify Anonymous Internet Commenter · · Score: 1

    You can't Godwin a conversation about World War 2, it only applies when someone is forcing an analogy. Same with Bush.

  17. Re:political speech on Illinois Supreme Court: Comcast Must Identify Anonymous Internet Commenter · · Score: 3, Informative

    There have been convictions for internet obscenity. Bush (or Ashcroft? I don't know who to attribute this to) set up an "Obscenity Prosecution Task Force" in 2005 and successfully prosecuted several pornographers.

  18. What happens if you link your business to this? on Facebook's Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory · · Score: 1

    Like everyone else here, I don't want to give Facebook my real information. So when I set up a Facebook page for my business and it demanded a personal account to link to that business, I just made something up. I don't care if they ban / lock my personal account. Or all of my personal Facebook accounts, those mean squat to me, but what happens to my business page if that happens? Does anyone know for sure what happens in that case?

  19. Re:Does it matter? on Study: Sixth Extinction Event Is Underway · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, I got it from this XKCD. And he got it from this report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The trouble is, the AAAS seems to have changed around their website since then and the report is either no longer available or is just no longer findable by me.

    So there you are. I'm willing to trust the XKCD guy, he's always been pretty diligent, but you can go hunting for the original document if you'd like.

  20. Re:Does it matter? on Study: Sixth Extinction Event Is Underway · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Okay. If we want to start with the ocean, which is 3/4 of the world: marine fish biomass has dropped by 80% over the last century.

  21. Scare quotes? on School Lunch Program Scans Student Thumbprints For 'Tracking Purposes' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's with the scare quotes? Of course the thumb prints are for tracking purposes. What else could they possibly be good for? A collage?

  22. Re: Same studies say whites are moronically stupid on Tech Jobs and Apple: Every Bit As "Fun" As Pleasure Island? · · Score: 1

    They are much less likely to be breastfed, which can change IQ by 3 points.

    Not to detract from your main point, but breast feeding is one of those topics which has been highly politicized and any weird claims like this should be taken with a grain of salt. I've read a study claiming what you say (can't find it now), here's another study claiming that isn't true. There are many more. Enough that I think you'd need to be an expert in the field in order to sort between them.

    Usually though, when researchers start dickering over this sort of thing, what you can say for sure is that whatever the effect may be it isn't large enough or definitive enough to shut up all the people who are wrong about it. So at the end of the day it likely doesn't matter.

  23. Re:Now make a good joystick again... on Logitech Introduces G29, G920 Racing Wheels For PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC · · Score: 2

    I wouldn't mind if they made another expensive one, as long as it was for people with normal sized hands. The last good joystick I had was a Logitech: it had two hat switches and three buttons on top, all of which I could reach with my thumb of average length. It was wonderful, ergonomic, had force feedback, and cost me something like $90 many years ago.

    A few years ago I pulled it out and realized that it was unrecoverably broken, so I spent some money and got a Saitek X65F - it's one of those premium all-metal joysticks, build quality was fantastic. The top of the joystick though, the head part, is ridiculously huge. My thumb would have to be at least twice as long as it is in order to reach all the buttons and switches there. (I do not have small hands.) And this problem doesn't seem to be unique to the X65F: all of the premium joysticks have gigantic heads. They can advertise more buttons and hat switches that way, I guess, but they're useless if you have to take your hand off the stick to reach them.

  24. Re:Telling it straight on Ex-CIA Director: We're Not Doing Nearly Enough To Protect Against the EMP Threat · · Score: 1

    Anonymity isn't built into this. A Senator who wishes to place a hold anonymously brings the issue to his party leader and they place the hold on his behalf, without revealing his identity. As for why there's no time limit: I imagine because there was no need for it originally.

  25. Re:Telling it straight on Ex-CIA Director: We're Not Doing Nearly Enough To Protect Against the EMP Threat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well you can read the wikipedia article if you want, but all of these procedural rules boil down to pretty much the same thing: good rules which exist to foster informed consideration and thoughtful discussion of pending legislation become tools of abuse when the goal stops being about passing good legislation and starts being about pleasing your campaign donors.

    The Senate hold was originally about giving a senator time to gather additional information on an issue, now it's a way to stop bills which a senator doesn't like without needing or allowing a vote on them. It can be defeated by a cloture vote, but this requires 60/100 senators rather than a simple majority. This rule has been used to great effect over the last six years to stop anything and everything. You may have heard that our congress over that time has been the least productive congress ever? This is what they've been using to achieve that. Most famously though, Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd used secret holds to stop an anti-corruption transparency bill (temporarily - they were found out pretty quickly). Stevens was later convicted for corruption related to taking money from oil companies, though that conviction was later thrown out for procedural reasons.