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User: DesScorp

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Comments · 2,299

  1. Re:Hate crimes... on Dharun Ravi Trial: Hate Crime Or Stupidity? · · Score: 1

    Intent shouldn't matter one iota. If you murder because of money or because you hated someone, it changes nothing. The victim is just as dead. And what are you going to do? Give the killer the death penalty, twice? Turn up the juice on the chair just to let him know how awful his feelings were?

  2. Re:Hate crimes... on Dharun Ravi Trial: Hate Crime Or Stupidity? · · Score: 1

    It probably means they hate queers too, and think this guy's actions were just a-okay.

    Or maybe he's just afraid of the government criminalizing thought and feeling, which you guys are apparently Okey Dokey with. Careful with that, though. Democrats aren't always going to be in charge. When you set a precedent, the other side can use it too. Anti-military speech? Why, sounds like a hate crime to me!

  3. Re:Whom to blame on Dharun Ravi Trial: Hate Crime Or Stupidity? · · Score: 2

    Santorum, Bachman, etc...

    The only blame in this is on the guy that set up the webcam. And that charge should be violation of privacy. Period.
    The very notion of hate crimes is dangerous. It essentially criminalizes feelings. That's one huge Orwellian road to go down, and it opens a Pandora's box of hellish proportions.

    If someone murders, charge them with murder. If someone beats someone else, charge them with assault. Let that be the end of it.

  4. Re:New classification needed on Dharun Ravi Trial: Hate Crime Or Stupidity? · · Score: 0

    "Why should the law or the government get to mandate good manners?"

    Because that's what the law does, of course. What else do you think it does? On the sliding scale of human behavior, from benevolent to benign to malicious, we have a sliding scale of laws from incentives (for benevolent behavior), to no law (for most behavior), to civil fines (for mildly bad behavior), to misdemeanors, to felonies, to capital crimes.

    If you aren't an anarchist, then this should be obvious to you.

    I'm heartened to see your defense of things like laws against cursing in public, laws against public nudity, and laws against obscenity.

  5. Re:Legitimacy? on Canada's Conservatives Misled Voters With Massive Robocall Operation · · Score: 4, Informative

    They're the Corporate-Regressive party, our own home-grown copy of American neoliberal parties like the GOP. No real Canadian actually thinks they are legitimate.

    Is this a variation of the "No True Scotsman" argument?

  6. Re:The UN can go pound sand on UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role · · Score: 1

    So a prison camp for terrorists is "kidnapping" now?

  7. Re:Two bad choices on UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role · · Score: 1

    Who is John Galt's IT guy?

    Whoever he hires.

  8. The UN can go pound sand on UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The UN fancies itself as a nascent world government. I don't know about the rest of the world, but the US isn't going to go along with putting the Internet in the hands of the same people that made Qaddafi's Libya chair of the Human Rights Commission.

  9. Re:I'm Confused on Heartland Institute Document Leaker Comes Forward, Maintains Documents Are Real · · Score: 0

    Not only is the "smoking gun" doc fake, it Heartland says that a number of the "real" documents have had some info altered as well.

    Really, for a guy that's supposed to be smart, this was a really, really dumb thing to do.

  10. Re:No evidence? on Heartland Institute Document Leaker Comes Forward, Maintains Documents Are Real · · Score: 0

    You blew your credibility the millisecond you quoted WUWT as a reliable source. Anthony Watt is just another right wing corporate whore with no credentials, no scientific training, no mainstream credibility, and a big mouth (very common in the wingnut alternative reality).

    Yeah, just completely ignore pieces from places like The Atlantic that finger the "smoking gun" doc as a complete fraud. We wouldn't want to get in the way of your conspiracy theory rant.

  11. Re:Forgery - (And obviously so) on Heartland Institute Document Leaker Comes Forward, Maintains Documents Are Real · · Score: 0

    Climiate science is SCIENCE. In science, belief is irrelevant. Only evidence matters.

    "Hide the decline".

    There's plenty of evidence casting doubt on AGW. The fact is that many predictions of the AGW computer models aren't panning out in reality. There's no way to get around that fact. You can scream "SCIENCE" all you like, but you're treating it like someone insulted your religion. And this guy committed fraud, and pushed forged and altered documents to the press. You keep saying that the science is with you, and yet guys like this are willing to lie to win.

  12. Re:Idiotic Comments on The Pirate Bay On Track To Be Banned In the UK? · · Score: 2

    Because, of course, culture didn't exist prior to the development of copyright...

    Commercialized culture didn't. Great art was done almost exclusively by commission for wealthy patrons or religions. All those great Greek statues and buildings? Religious temples and art. All of the famous Byzantine and Medeival art? For churches. The explosion of the new masters in the Renaissance? Paid for by the Catholic Church and the Medici's and other rich Italian families. Great art paid for by the masses by popular demand? It didn't exist. If you made a good living, it's because you found a rich patron. Otherwise, you didn't eat unless you could really wow 'em on the street corner. Even then, most times, artists of all stripes were poor. Patronage made our best art happen.

    Good luck getting that system to work now. There's a reason why the "free music" model bands have failed: all of the really talented acts want to, you know, get rich. The copyright system allows them (and authors and filmmakers and playrights, etc) to make a good living. Take copyright away, and the vast majority of the El Cheapo public wouldn't put forth a dime. Bye bye Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. Bye bye, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson. Bye bye, Stephen King, Herman Wouk, Ernest Hemingway.

    People want to make money. And the "give it for free and hope good things happen" model doesn't work. If you want to convince Bill Gates or Warren Buffett to pay promising new bands to make records that are available to the public gratis, go for it. I bet they laugh at you, though.

  13. Re:Go EU on EU Court Rules Social Networks Cannot Be Forced To Police Downloads · · Score: 2

    The US has zero balance in its laws.

    The US is 100% for the rich powerful interests and 0% for the citizens.

    This is just as ludicrous as what the parent poster wrote. We wouldn't have elections if that was the case.

  14. Re:Go EU on EU Court Rules Social Networks Cannot Be Forced To Police Downloads · · Score: 1

    A defeat for US e-colonialism.

    This is absolutely silly, this notion that the US is on the only country that has concerns about piracy and copyright violation. Europe has IP laws too. This central argument... that if mean ole' America went away, everyone would happily download pirated content all day with support from governments... is ludicrous.

  15. Heartland claims it's a fake on Leaked Heartland Institute Documents Reveal Opposition To Science · · Score: 2

    The Heartland Institute has posted a notice on their website that the doc the Guardian published is a fake:

    One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.

    We respectfully ask all activists, bloggers, and other journalists to immediately remove all of these documents and any quotations taken from them, especially the fake “climate strategy” memo and any quotations from the same, from their blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.

    The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. We ask them in particular to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions.

    Heartland also claims that some genuine documents were stolen and then altered.

    So, do we have another Dan Rather Memogate here?

  16. Re:I keep my mouth shut when I hack the CIA on Did Anonymous Take Down CIA.gov? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you think I would talk about it when I hack the CIA? Uh... I mean IF I hacked the CIA!

    If these guys in Anonymous have a tenth of common sense as they have hacking skills, they'll keep their mouths shut about specifics.

    There are two kinds of skilled hackers: showboats and pros. Showboats brag in various places and settings about how good they are ("Look what I did!"). Pros keep their traps shut, and stay in the shadows. They also tend to have big paychecks because they keep their traps shut, and stay in the shadows. Showboats end up getting their doors kicked in by black-clad law enforcement. Though they're "Anonymous", they're still showboats, bragging to the world (and even threatening it... "We do not forgive").

    Sooner or later, the Anonymous guys are going to end very, very badly.

  17. Re:The establishment needs a target to blame on Did Anonymous Take Down CIA.gov? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Any "terrorist" attack, blame it on Al-Qaeda.

    Any "hacking" on any government or multi-national coroporation website, blame it on Anonymous.

    Soon people will stand united against these "fringe" groups, and keep giving up their freedom in progress.

    Anonymous has quite openly made asses of themselves to the point where people suspecting them is pretty justified. They've made a MO of poking angry bears with a stick to hear them growl. I'll feel not one whit of sympathy when these clowns are sitting in a courtroom getting their federal indictments.

  18. Re:Well... on Stanford's Francis Fukuyama Builds Personal Surveillance Drone · · Score: 1

    ...what with history being over, he needed something else to do.

    Ha ha. Really, he should feel silly for writing that book. As if the end of one empire really meant the end of history.

  19. Re:It's a good thing the military is still funded. on White House Wants Devastating Cuts To NASA's Mars Exploration · · Score: 1

    Everyone /does/ pay something, idiot. Sales taxes. Property taxes. Social Security. Medicare. Gasoline.

    More specifically, if there are going to be income taxes, then everyone should pay something toward those too, not just the peripheral taxes. I'd prefer a low flat tax across the board, but regardless of what kind of tax structure we have, if we're going to have one, everyone with income should pay into it. Of course, if we'd actually take responsibility and not spend so much, this would be less of a problem in any case.

  20. Re:It's a good thing the military is still funded. on White House Wants Devastating Cuts To NASA's Mars Exploration · · Score: 1

    The article simply says that the 46 percent pay taxes in other areas. But... so what? Other people pay income taxes and those taxes as well. The fact remains that close to half of our population pays no income taxes after refunds. Some of them even make money after things like the EIC.

  21. Re:It's a good thing the military is still funded. on White House Wants Devastating Cuts To NASA's Mars Exploration · · Score: 2

    Space exploration is where most of our military science came from in the first place.

    Demonstrably false. America's first rocket... the Redstone... was an evolution of captured German V-2 technology to give the Air Force a ballistic missile. It was adapted from military use to civilian purposes, not the other way around. You've got it backwards. Our space technology was spawned from military technology. From the very beginnings of the space program, rockets, technology, pilots... all of it came from military sources.

  22. Re:Google this on "Liberated" Tunisia Still Censoring Websites · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There never was an "Arab Spring". There was an Islamic Spring. You had to be truly naive to think that liberal democracy was going to sweep North Africa... and apparently, a lot of people in the West were. What happened there was more comparable to Iran in 1979 than the American Colonies of 1776. They tossed out secular dictators for religious rule. If that's what they want, then by all means, that's what they should have. Majorities should mean something. But we should stop kidding ourselves that what's going on over there is about freedom as the West defines it.

  23. Re:But they still have the data center on NASA Unplugs Its Last Mainframe · · Score: 2

    NASA seems to spend money at a relatively constant rate, independent of whether they're flying anything.

    Which makes them no different from any other government agency.

    NASA should disestablished, and it's responsibilities farmed out to other agencies. Give space launch to the Air Force and Navy, and science functions to universities and other research agencies.

  24. Re:Greenhouse gas emissions on Sergey: In Soviet Russia, Rocket Detonates You! · · Score: 2

    Yes. My immediate thought was on the "...the Russians are not as concerned with safety."

    But by all means, we should entrust manned launches to them.

    We really, really need to further accelerate devlopment of the Delta Heavy and Atlas Heavy families of rockets, and get them man rated. Stat.

  25. Re:Greenhouse gas emissions on Sergey: In Soviet Russia, Rocket Detonates You! · · Score: 1, Troll

    Get your facts straight. USSR has existed for 73 years and despite many people think otherwise, Stalin died in 1953 and Stalinism died with him, thanks to Khrushchev.

    If you're telling me that after the rule of Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Putin, Medvedev, and maybe Putin again... that the spirit of autocracy died with Stalin, I suggest you open your eyes. Look at the history of Russia: long periods of harsh rule interspaced with brief periods of liberalization, only to be replaced soon with autocracy again.