Not sure why this was modded flaimbait... this is one of the areas where Ada does generally shine, it is a language built for auditing.
That might turn out to be an important point. Suppose some day two cars of different manufacturers cash into each other. Will comparative code audits find their way to court?
Yeah, well, if you're standing in the North Pole you can only go due South. Your belief that the Greens "everywhere" are Marxists says more about your fundamentalism then theirs.
According to international law the West Bank settlements are illegal, period. Nothing arguable about it.
Other than fixing my quote, you appear to be saying that yes there are various types of Israel critics, but essentially they are all different shades of stupid. Which you distinguish only by your ability to set them straight. Thankfully you allow there might be a tiny minority that is reasonable but remains unheard.
Well I can agree that it is hard to find reasonable discussion on the subject. That is on the reflexive supporters too, though.
Do you agree they are separate things though? Would you say it is possible to be opposed to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and illegal annexation of land, because of the facts rather than their Jewishness? Because otherwise you're just saying "all criticism of Israel is actually anti semitic", period (let's put aside the fact that Palestinians are Semites also).
I tend to think that true anti Semites, of which there are a few but not nearly as many as Abe Foxman would have you believe, don't bother with cloaks. Conversely most critics of Israel who refrain from slurs probably, in my estimation, don't secretly hate Jews for being Jews.
There's a documentary you might find interesting, link, on the subject of how charges of anti semitism are used as rhetoric device.
With any luck I'll find time to read the linked article. NYT isn't actually known for fairness on this topic though, for instance it's been decades since they had a reporter there who even spoke Arabic. It's difficult to accurately report both sides of a conflict when you rely on one party to supply translators when interacting with the other.
But then again, that has been said of US mainstream media generally.
Well I am not sure if you expect me to consider a site called "gunssavelives.net" entirely objective. But even so, from skimming down their front page it turns out that yes, sometimes a gun was used against a knife or somesuch, but mostly it is guns defending against against guns. There is no explanation given for how they select these items, or how much goes unreported and why.
So what I still think is likely, and actually that's all I said in my earlier post, is that if there were 99% less firearms to begin with (which would bring the US in the same ballpark as most other Western nations) there would likely be very few situations which would even escalate to that point, as is the case in so many other places.
The murder by numbers data is interesting. Basically it is saying that the murder rate is decreasing. Well, I would surely hope that that's right. But if so, I should think it would be a good reason to ease up on the armed-to-the-teeth fashion you've got, rather than taking it as encouragement to push it even further?
As an aside, I can't help notice that the sudden dip in the graph happens to coincide with a swap in source of these numbers (see the legend). Not sure what that means, if anything, but it is something which stands out and is not further explained as far as I saw.
They then go on to argue that the apparent drop in murder rate is unquestionable due to the facts that the number of prisoners has quadrupled in 20 years, as has the number of prisoners executed, and the number of states which have introduced concealed carry permits.
They say it like they're proud of that shit (quoting SLJ, natch)
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who use firearms in defense every year. Mass shootings are used to whip up hysteria, while the defensive use of firearms in deadly situations is conveniently ignored.
I think a lot of people would argue that the vast majority of "defensive use of firearms in deadly situations" would not even be necessary in a country where it is even slightly difficult to get your hands on automatic firearms.
Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence, and the US numbers start to look a whole lot like those of other industrialized nations.
No, actually it doesn't. Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence and you're still left with outrageous numbers of cases of "defensive use of firearms" (which you mentioned in the first paragraph but had forgotten in the second?). Cases which in most other countries would wind up a fistfight or not even that.
No, I'm pointing out that European countries _continue_ to participate in war. I'd love to hear why a convicted murderer deserves to live, but a war can be just despite inevitable innocent civilian casualties.
As I started out saying, I think between life or death, life in prison is the harsher sentence. So when you say "deserve to live" I have to do a double take. There are better arguments against capital punishment than declaring murderers, say, inherently "worthy of life". I have not declared any individual fit to live or die -- that was kind of my point: I am arguing that, yes...
Oh, no, the justice system might have made a mistake! The wrong man might be executed!
... this non-zero probability of mistakes is a pretty strong argument against inflicting final and irreversible punishment. In fact it does happen, so tell it to the family of the wrong man executed.
saying such a thing while dripping with moral superiority while also supporting the killing of people without a trial is kind of funny
Um, what? I am not sure if my moral superiority was that obvious.:-) But seriously, I support the killing of people without a trial? Where did you get that idea? Because that's what all Europeans do? You were the one who came up with the war victim analogy, in an ad stereotypem that failed to address any of my points I might add.
I'd say that Americans should be very careful about who they decide to execute, but I'd also put this all in perspective. Cutting off the supply of medicine is probably worse than the remote possibility that a innocent man or two has been executed unjustly.
I think I might agree there, because it affects more people (although not nearly to the same degree, obviously). But conversely, supposing that this export restriction remains in place, should the US continue executing prisoners, as a matter of principle or something, despite this harm to large numbers of bystanders?
Where is the cutoff in medicine due to drone attacks? The whole issue is absurd.
I would not support such a cutoff, probably. I agree that using trade bariers for political purposes is absurd. But that isn't an argument in favour of killing alleged capital offenders.
Thanks for the link, I do consider Amnesty reputable. I just mentioned the cost aspect in passing, as a downside of abolishing. Which should be of no consequence because it is trumped, in my estimation, by the mere possibility of getting it wrong in even a tiny fraction of death sentences. So we agree, I suppose, and have now apparently established that the cost aspect is actually another upside/ of abolishing capital punishment. Result.
It's a good thing Europe never has any wars, or they'd sound almost hilariously hypocritical for condemning the killing of another human being with some kind of legal justification.
Not to trivialise casualties of war, in Europe or anywhere else, but are you saying that because I live on a continent which has suffered some seriously mad regimes and bloody wars as a result, I am therefore disqualified from commenting on the American reluctance to abolish capital punishment?
Okay. It seems to me that you can't actually compare the deaths of war, whether soldiers or civilians, to deaths of convicts in the course of "justice".
Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment.
Life imprisonment gives time for the prison chaplain to help the prisoner find Jesus and thus go to heaven. Capital punishment makes it more likely the person will die a sinner and thus go to hell.
Well done, I can't tell if you are arguing in favour or against capital punishment:-)
Are you aware that it costs more to the tax payers to kill prisoners than to keep them incarcerated for the rest of their life?
Clearly I wasn't aware of that, no. I'd be interested to learn more, have any references? I suspect thaylin has a point in that it, supposing you are correct, might be due to the typically long time between verdict and execution.
Computing the effective cost to society seems hard though, come to think of it. Particularly for he US system which, much more than most, seems aimed at extracting revenue off the prison population. Traditionally it is a source of cheap labor. And since privatization there are the big corporations that are contracted to run incarceration facilities.
The theory is that this lowers the cost per prisoner per day, due to the magic of the free market. In practice, well you'd have to compare to other nations who haven't privatized justice. But this unit cost is multiplied by the number of inmates, and the numbers in the US are staggering. Something like a quarter of the world's prisoners are in US jails.
Personally I think it might not be entirely coincidental that the US is pretty much unique in these two respects, that it has outsourced punishment to private sector and it has a vastly larger proportion of its people in jail than pretty much any nation. There is a major lobby which stands to gain much more from a long term sentence than a quick death, that much is hardly controversial.
Fair enough, different people will weigh these alternatives and come up with different answers. For what it's worth, I think the first argument is in itself strong enough to make the case against the death penalty.
Well, I am not saying mass murderers should walk free, obviously. The two strongest arguments against the death penalty, in my opinion, are
-- There will be always be some percentage of cases where the verdict turns out to be wrong, and you have murdered an innocent human being (in many cases exactly the crime you set out to punish)
-- Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment. There's ways you can relieve the burden on society, too.
If you get it wrong there's someone left to apologise to and compensate. If not, they get what they deserve.
I am an American staying outside America, and in my personal experience, most of the world people (non-Ameicans) do not seem to separate the American government from the people of the United States of America.
In other words, the world at large treats what the American government did as if it was done by the citizens of America.
Well, I don't know where you are located, but in my limited surroundings (Netherlands) I think my statement is accurate.
it's changing all the time, of course. The US is a democratic republic so, as time goes on and administration after administration of both major parties get away with all kinds of wicked behaviour -- unpunished by the electorate -- maybe more and more outside observers may conclude that, well, maybe a majority of citizens do support this stuff after all.
But like I said, at least where I am, this doesn't seem to be the majority view. People I talk to seem to think the US citizens are basically just another bunch of victims of a once great nation now well on its way to becoming police state.
In other words, Obama has shamed all of us, the Americans !!
Not to worry, US reputation had been plummeting for a while before Obama took office.
Besides, I think most international observers will recognize that the US govt does not represent its people. Which is a shame, of course, but also means that US citizens have some credit left whereas their government does not.
What's freaking me out, though, is there doesn't seem to be a bottom -- rock or otherwise.
What massive regulation do you mean? I am just an outside observer but my impression was that compared to most places the US barely restricted the financial sector at all since the 2008 debacle. These people were gambling with other people's money, taking outrageous risks, crafting "products" which nobody really understood -- taking the profits such as they were and leaving the losses for society. Yet these practices continue much the same. No one was prosecuted and bonuses for execs have continued to be enormous and apparently unrelated to performance.
The broken colour management in OS X is still far better than anything on Linux. Linux can't even get decent font rendering due to "patent problems."
Hm, that's odd. I simply copied the active color profile used by OSX over and set it up on my Linux partition (dual boot MBP) and it works like a charm. I haven't actually measured scientifically though (I am not a graphic designer) but most images immediately looked much better.
Also I find free TTF fonts look fine, which distro/version are you talking about?
Well, there have been several attempts at bulletproof hosting, cyberbunker type offerings. The problem seems to be that they attract mostly criminals, paedophiles, and extremists of various tendencies.
(OT) Coincidentally, I have been rereading Stephenson myself -- After Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon I am now devouring Anathem. I didn't really appreciate the first time, but now I am thoroughly enjoying it.
It seems to me you are not so much pro-Western as you are anti-everything else. Your first post in this thread is entirely typical, judging from your post history. Xenophobe is the word that comes to my mind. You are welcome to your opinion but you might reconsider just how narrowminded it makes you seem.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure why this was modded flaimbait... this is one of the areas where Ada does generally shine, it is a language built for auditing.
That might turn out to be an important point. Suppose some day two cars of different manufacturers cash into each other. Will comparative code audits find their way to court?
Yeah, well, if you're standing in the North Pole you can only go due South. Your belief that the Greens "everywhere" are Marxists says more about your fundamentalism then theirs.
According to international law the West Bank settlements are illegal, period. Nothing arguable about it.
Other than fixing my quote, you appear to be saying that yes there are various types of Israel critics, but essentially they are all different shades of stupid. Which you distinguish only by your ability to set them straight. Thankfully you allow there might be a tiny minority that is reasonable but remains unheard.
Well I can agree that it is hard to find reasonable discussion on the subject. That is on the reflexive supporters too, though.
The power-that-be can get to be power-that-be because people don't and / or can't think for themselves.
Their opinion of the people at large is betrayed in this tiresome use of acronyms. They must really think we're all complete muppets.
Cameron is a COMPLETE idiot!
Not true; many parts are still missing. But he's pulling himself together, so to speak.
He's almost all there, but for shame and common sense.
Many people use anti-Zionism against Israel as a cloak for anti-Semitism.
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
Do you agree they are separate things though? Would you say it is possible to be opposed to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and illegal annexation of land, because of the facts rather than their Jewishness? Because otherwise you're just saying "all criticism of Israel is actually anti semitic", period (let's put aside the fact that Palestinians are Semites also).
I tend to think that true anti Semites, of which there are a few but not nearly as many as Abe Foxman would have you believe, don't bother with cloaks. Conversely most critics of Israel who refrain from slurs probably, in my estimation, don't secretly hate Jews for being Jews.
There's a documentary you might find interesting, link, on the subject of how charges of anti semitism are used as rhetoric device.
With any luck I'll find time to read the linked article. NYT isn't actually known for fairness on this topic though, for instance it's been decades since they had a reporter there who even spoke Arabic. It's difficult to accurately report both sides of a conflict when you rely on one party to supply translators when interacting with the other.
But then again, that has been said of US mainstream media generally.
Well I am not sure if you expect me to consider a site called "gunssavelives.net" entirely objective. But even so, from skimming down their front page it turns out that yes, sometimes a gun was used against a knife or somesuch, but mostly it is guns defending against against guns. There is no explanation given for how they select these items, or how much goes unreported and why.
So what I still think is likely, and actually that's all I said in my earlier post, is that if there were 99% less firearms to begin with (which would bring the US in the same ballpark as most other Western nations) there would likely be very few situations which would even escalate to that point, as is the case in so many other places.
The murder by numbers data is interesting. Basically it is saying that the murder rate is decreasing. Well, I would surely hope that that's right. But if so, I should think it would be a good reason to ease up on the armed-to-the-teeth fashion you've got, rather than taking it as encouragement to push it even further?
As an aside, I can't help notice that the sudden dip in the graph happens to coincide with a swap in source of these numbers (see the legend). Not sure what that means, if anything, but it is something which stands out and is not further explained as far as I saw.
They then go on to argue that the apparent drop in murder rate is unquestionable due to the facts that the number of prisoners has quadrupled in 20 years, as has the number of prisoners executed, and the number of states which have introduced concealed carry permits.
They say it like they're proud of that shit (quoting SLJ, natch)
Totally off topic, but can't resist.
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who use firearms in defense every year. Mass shootings are used to whip up hysteria, while the defensive use of firearms in deadly situations is conveniently ignored.
I think a lot of people would argue that the vast majority of "defensive use of firearms in deadly situations" would not even be necessary in a country where it is even slightly difficult to get your hands on automatic firearms.
Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence, and the US numbers start to look a whole lot like those of other industrialized nations.
No, actually it doesn't. Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence and you're still left with outrageous numbers of cases of "defensive use of firearms" (which you mentioned in the first paragraph but had forgotten in the second?). Cases which in most other countries would wind up a fistfight or not even that.
So, just involuntary and ignorant violations, then.
No, I'm pointing out that European countries _continue_ to participate in war. I'd love to hear why a convicted murderer deserves to live, but a war can be just despite inevitable innocent civilian casualties.
As I started out saying, I think between life or death, life in prison is the harsher sentence. So when you say "deserve to live" I have to do a double take. There are better arguments against capital punishment than declaring murderers, say, inherently "worthy of life". I have not declared any individual fit to live or die -- that was kind of my point: I am arguing that, yes ...
Oh, no, the justice system might have made a mistake! The wrong man might be executed!
... this non-zero probability of mistakes is a pretty strong argument against inflicting final and irreversible punishment. In fact it does happen, so tell it to the family of the wrong man executed.
saying such a thing while dripping with moral superiority while also supporting the killing of people without a trial is kind of funny
Um, what? I am not sure if my moral superiority was that obvious. :-) But seriously, I support the killing of people without a trial? Where did you get that idea? Because that's what all Europeans do? You were the one who came up with the war victim analogy, in an ad stereotypem that failed to address any of my points I might add.
I'd say that Americans should be very careful about who they decide to execute, but I'd also put this all in perspective. Cutting off the supply of
medicine is probably worse than the remote possibility that a innocent man or two has been executed unjustly.
I think I might agree there, because it affects more people (although not nearly to the same degree, obviously). But conversely, supposing that this export restriction remains in place, should the US continue executing prisoners, as a matter of principle or something, despite this harm to large numbers of bystanders?
Where is the cutoff in medicine due to drone attacks? The whole issue is absurd.
I would not support such a cutoff, probably. I agree that using trade bariers for political purposes is absurd. But that isn't an argument in favour of killing alleged capital offenders.
Thanks for the link, I do consider Amnesty reputable. I just mentioned the cost aspect in passing, as a downside of abolishing. Which should be of no consequence because it is trumped, in my estimation, by the mere possibility of getting it wrong in even a tiny fraction of death sentences. So we agree, I suppose, and have now apparently established that the cost aspect is actually another upside/ of abolishing capital punishment. Result.
It's a good thing Europe never has any wars, or they'd sound almost hilariously hypocritical for condemning the killing of another human being with some kind of legal justification.
Not to trivialise casualties of war, in Europe or anywhere else, but are you saying that because I live on a continent which has suffered some seriously mad regimes and bloody wars as a result, I am therefore disqualified from commenting on the American reluctance to abolish capital punishment?
Okay. It seems to me that you can't actually compare the deaths of war, whether soldiers or civilians, to deaths of convicts in the course of "justice".
Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment.
Life imprisonment gives time for the prison chaplain to help the prisoner find Jesus and thus go to heaven. Capital punishment makes it more likely the person will die a sinner and thus go to hell.
Well done, I can't tell if you are arguing in favour or against capital punishment :-)
Are you aware that it costs more to the tax payers to kill prisoners than to keep them incarcerated for the rest of their life?
Clearly I wasn't aware of that, no. I'd be interested to learn more, have any references? I suspect thaylin has a point in that it, supposing you are correct, might be due to the typically long time between verdict and execution.
Computing the effective cost to society seems hard though, come to think of it. Particularly for he US system which, much more than most, seems aimed at extracting revenue off the prison population. Traditionally it is a source of cheap labor. And since privatization there are the big corporations that are contracted to run incarceration facilities.
The theory is that this lowers the cost per prisoner per day, due to the magic of the free market. In practice, well you'd have to compare to other nations who haven't privatized justice. But this unit cost is multiplied by the number of inmates, and the numbers in the US are staggering. Something like a quarter of the world's prisoners are in US jails.
Personally I think it might not be entirely coincidental that the US is pretty much unique in these two respects, that it has outsourced punishment to private sector and it has a vastly larger proportion of its people in jail than pretty much any nation. There is a major lobby which stands to gain much more from a long term sentence than a quick death, that much is hardly controversial.
Fair enough, different people will weigh these alternatives and come up with different answers. For what it's worth, I think the first argument is in itself strong enough to make the case against the death penalty.
Well, I am not saying mass murderers should walk free, obviously. The two strongest arguments against the death penalty, in my opinion, are
-- There will be always be some percentage of cases where the verdict turns out to be wrong, and you have murdered an innocent human being (in many cases exactly the crime you set out to punish)
-- Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment. There's ways you can relieve the burden on society, too.
If you get it wrong there's someone left to apologise to and compensate. If not, they get what they deserve.
Or, you know, join the rest of the civilised world and abolish capital punishment.
I am an American staying outside America, and in my personal experience, most of the world people (non-Ameicans) do not seem to separate the American government from the people of the United States of America.
In other words, the world at large treats what the American government did as if it was done by the citizens of America.
Well, I don't know where you are located, but in my limited surroundings (Netherlands) I think my statement is accurate.
it's changing all the time, of course. The US is a democratic republic so, as time goes on and administration after administration of both major parties get away with all kinds of wicked behaviour -- unpunished by the electorate -- maybe more and more outside observers may conclude that, well, maybe a majority of citizens do support this stuff after all.
But like I said, at least where I am, this doesn't seem to be the majority view. People I talk to seem to think the US citizens are basically just another bunch of victims of a once great nation now well on its way to becoming police state.
In other words, Obama has shamed all of us, the Americans !!
Not to worry, US reputation had been plummeting for a while before Obama took office.
Besides, I think most international observers will recognize that the US govt does not represent its people. Which is a shame, of course, but also means that US citizens have some credit left whereas their government does not.
What's freaking me out, though, is there doesn't seem to be a bottom -- rock or otherwise.
What massive regulation do you mean? I am just an outside observer but my impression was that compared to most places the US barely restricted the financial sector at all since the 2008 debacle. These people were gambling with other people's money, taking outrageous risks, crafting "products" which nobody really understood -- taking the profits such as they were and leaving the losses for society. Yet these practices continue much the same. No one was prosecuted and bonuses for execs have continued to be enormous and apparently unrelated to performance.
... is the operative word here. Bad puns aside though, impressive stuff!
The broken colour management in OS X is still far better than anything on Linux. Linux can't even get decent font rendering due to "patent problems."
Hm, that's odd. I simply copied the active color profile used by OSX over and set it up on my Linux partition (dual boot MBP) and it works like a charm. I haven't actually measured scientifically though (I am not a graphic designer) but most images immediately looked much better.
Also I find free TTF fonts look fine, which distro/version are you talking about?
Well, there have been several attempts at bulletproof hosting, cyberbunker type offerings. The problem seems to be that they attract mostly criminals, paedophiles, and extremists of various tendencies.
(OT) Coincidentally, I have been rereading Stephenson myself -- After Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon I am now devouring Anathem. I didn't really appreciate the first time, but now I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Boobies ain't for little kids!
You, sir, owe me a fresh cup of coffee and a new keyboard.
It seems to me you are not so much pro-Western as you are anti-everything else. Your first post in this thread is entirely typical, judging from your post history. Xenophobe is the word that comes to my mind. You are welcome to your opinion but you might reconsider just how narrowminded it makes you seem.