Well, if you tell them you want a sex change, you're probably not going to try to convert them to going down the same road...
I think that's what offends a lot of people about born-again fundamentalist evangelicals - the lack of respect for other people's beliefs. The evangelicals don't see it - they believe its God's command.
I was going to point out that if you had doubts about their support in such a case, it says more about how you feel than anything else, but I didn't want to obscure the point of the post, which is that there's a big difference between how real friends would react, compared to acquaintances.
People say they have fewer people they can talk to about important stuff, even if they are talking to lots more people from all over the place about unimportant stuff online."
Maybe people are talking about important stuff more than ever, but doing it behind the anonymity or convenience of blogs?
People who say they have dozens or hundreds of close friends in real life don't know the meaning of the term "close friends". A close friend is one you could tell anything, and their response is "how can I help?"
Want an easy 20-second test of whether someone is really a close friend or just an acquaintance? Tell them you want to get a sex change and watch their reaction.
I think we should focus on building a nanotech device that will build nanotech devices that build nanotech devices. My worry is that this has already happened. How would I know?
.. you'll know that the recycling nanobots have been created (and let into the wild) when your tires (and everything else) is turned into "grey goo".
Far from being a joke, disassemblers would be the absolute worst possible plague imagineable.
They could get into the wild on a single piece of paper.
I would be most comfortable in a country that combined the two approaches, with a statement of basic rights in the Constitution and laws stating how the articles will be enforced on the books as well.
That's why you THROW the chair... and its much more impressive when its an expensive "ergonomic" chair than your aunt's old bridge table folding chair. Now if only pro wrestlers would make the switch to *real* chairs when supposedly clubbing their opponents... those folding chairs don't fool anyone. An Aeron, on the other hand, while shouting "I'll fucking [kill/bury/whatever] you...
Article 183 of the cCanadian Criminal Code defines a private conversation to include telecommunications between two people.
Article 184 of the Canadian Criminal Code:
Canadian Criminal Code Part VI - Invasion of Privacy
Article 184 - Interception
INTERCEPTION
184 [1] Every one who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, wilfully intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
[2] Subsection [1] does not apply to
[a] a person who has the consent to intercept, express or implied, of the originator of the private communication or of the person intended by the originator thereof to receive it;
In other words, you can record ANY conversation you are involved in, since you have obviously given yourself consent.
Its also admissible as evidence. Here in Québec, the appropriate section is Articles 2857 and 2847:
Art. 2857: All evidence of any fact relevant to a dispute is admissible and may be presented by any means.
Art. 2847: A statement recorded on magnetic tape or by any other reliable recording technique may be proved by such means, provided its authenticity is seperately proved.
... in other words, you need to have the person who made the tape state under oath that they made the tape, and then its admissible as evidence.
Other provinces have similar provisions.
Buy a mini tape recorder and keep it handy. They're cheap, easy to operate, and make recordings that are good enough for the courts to determine who is credible and who isn't. I was glad to have mine last month... I'm sure the other party won't be when we meet in court next month, though.
You know, those housing ideas are great. And having the individual states pay their representatives in both houses would certainly emphasize that the voter is paying the tab, not "gubbiment".
The houses at the capitol could be like mini-embassies for each state. Less privacy to do "dirty deals", etc.
The taking of pork jobs after leaving office is a real problem. It doesn't pass the "smell test." Perhaps we need a "reverse-means" test - if you have too much money, you can't run for office, because your decisions will be influenced by how it will affect your portfolio/assets/etc.
Not that simple:-) Are individuals free to buy TV time? to place ads/statements of their own choosing? Once you get done plugging all the loopholes, the First Amendment problems will be really obvious.
Well, there's a difference between free speech and buying advertising. Up here, anyone attempting to do an end run around the spending rules on elections is going to get hauled before the regulators. Editorial comment, letters to the editor, etc., are all free speech, and thus not under the regulations... buying paid political ads or advertising to influence the outcome of an election is different - its not considered free speech if you have to pay for it:-)
It may sound overly-restrictive, but lets face it... the alternative wasn't working, and if you're going to reform the system, why not go whole hog?
Here in Québec we've banned ALL corporate and union donations - individuals only, and it has to be from their own funds. We went from the place where "vote early, vote often" and "dead people are voters too" to one of the most transparent processes.
Violate those rules, and you'll see your name in the news, as well as being banned from office for 5 years.
In many areas, a budget bill is considered a vote of confidence in the government. After all, if you can't pass the budget, how can you govern?
A lump sum at the end of the term, upon re-election, is a good incentive to please the people. The problem is that we don't often hear about crooked scams until after the incumbent gets tossed out...
Politicians... can't live with them... can't shoot them...
That's why the spending cap. It won't matter if you have millions, if you can't spend them in an election. Also, since you'd only be able to donate $1k to your own campaign, how much money you or some corporate sponsor has is irrelevent.
We've done it here. Per-voter spending limits. Donation limits. Disclosure of donors lists and amounts donated. Absolute bans on all forms of corporate contributions (money and in-kind). And we still use a paper ballot, and the votes are counted by people from the winner and the runner-up from the previous election, in view of election officials so that any disputes can be settled or, if not possible, noted for further action.
Porkbarrel projects would increase the taxes on the locals, whereas promoting real economic growth would lower the tax share for individuals. Politicians would come out ahead $$$ with less pork, not more.
As for increasing their salaries, already its attracting the wrong kind of people - the "carer politician." Better to get people into politics because they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
Even better - choose your leader by lottery - the loser is the "elected official." After all, even a random group culled from the population couldn't have done as bad as the current crop. They would have at least had SOME contact with "real people," and not just the political chattering class.
RE: Freedom of speech and campaign contributions... while its true that "money talks", restricting campaign contributions is not restricting a person's freedom of speeh. They're free to continue to say what they want. They're just not free to buy certain things, like a politicians' vote. As for business being banned, businesses aren't people, and don't have the same rights.
Now while capping income would make you think that it would create incentives for more porkbarrelling, the truth is that it would be the least efficient way to raise the politicians' income; real economic growth (as opposed to pork) works better, because the pork also raises the individuals tax share, whereas real economic growth grows the tax base, reducing the individual tax share.
Politicians salaries capped at the AVERAGE income of their consitituents. This way, its in their best interests to make sure that people have decent jobs, with decent incomes. Also, when a recession hits, they'll also feel some of the pain, instead of being insulated from it.
Spending of $0.50/voter maximum for any election.
No contributions from business.
Maximum contribution of $1k/year from any voter, to be split among ALL contributions they make to all politicians.
No more voter registration along party lines. Either you're elligible to vote, or not. Who you vote for, what party you want to be aligned with, etc., are all your own bloody business.
Designate certain bills as "government confidence" votes. If the bill (budgets are good for this) isn't passed, the government falls, and a new election is held.
Seriously, this interview was an example of "title inflation". The guy's not the "Lead Project Manager" - (how can you even have more than one lead) he's :
At Microsoft, I'm one of several Lead Program Managers on the IE team. My team and I are responsible for handling all of the incoming customer & security requests. I also do a lot of security outreach and enjoy spending time at various security conferences worldwide.
In other words, he's not even a project manager - he's works with the guys who takes all the complaints from people (from the helldesk/helpdesk), organizes them, and gives them to someone else... but giving him a title of "Lead Project Manager" sounds better. Just how many "Lead Project Managers" are working on the IE7 project, anyway?
Choice clueless quote:
The first lesson was that the Internet isn't an innocent place any more. When IE6 was under development 6 years ago, viruses were inconveniences and true Internet crime wasn't a concern
And Word macro viruses have been around since 1995 - the same time Windows 95 was released. By 2000, there were over 500 new viruses a MONTH... and the easiest way to spread them was by the Internet. 15 new viruses a day was only an inconvenience if you were one of the lucky/smart people who weren't running Windows.
Well, at least its not like it really matters, since the *real* project lead probably is more clued-in (or at least you can hope).
The only way to clean it up is to remove the funding.
Here, we've banned ALL contributions except for private, personal ones, and these are limited to a maximum of $3000 per year per person, must come from your own private funds (you can't give funds to someone else to donate "in their name", nor can they be from your business), contributions have to be reported by the recipient, and you have limits on campaign spending as well, so you can't just "buy an election".
I'm sure there's someone (probably LOTS of "soneones") in the.ru domain that could have sold all sorts of info to them for much, much less less - and it would be more up-to-date.
The methods include microscopic earphones and wireless device
The article makes this sound like something new... but people were doing this more than 30 years ago in high school... we had one guy who took the finals with a walkie-talky stripped out of its case, battery pack taped to one leg, transceiver to the other, switch in one shirt cuff, earpiece in the other, and wires connecting it all... so he could get the answers from another student.
Of course, anyone desperate enough to do that is also dumb enough to believe you when you transmit the wrong answers;-) (in other words, I was tired of him sitting behind or beside me, always trying to copy my answers, and then ME being accused of copying HIS answers)
MySpace says on a "Tips for Parents" page that users must be 14 or older. The Web site does nothing to verify the age of the user, such as requiring a driver's license or credit card number, Loewy said.
A lot of adults don't have drivers licenses
who the %!@&(! is going to post their credit card # nowadays unless they have to
kids can peek at credit card #s in their parents' wallet or purse, or swipe a carbon from the trash at a restaurant, same as other scam artists
People have legitimate reasons to give a false identity (for example, rape victims who want to look for help anonymously)
FTFA: The lawyer for the parents:
To create an account, a MySpace user must list a name, an e-mail address, sex, country and date of birth.
"None of this has to be true," the lawsuit said.
So the lawyer states the obvious... that people lie to get free stuff
The lawyer doesn's say whether she lied about her age, and MySpace can't say w/o violating her privacy, so yes, she lied.
The lawyer fails to show how MySpace is responsible for Pete Solis' (the alleged rapist) actions.
FTFA:
Attorneys general from five states, including Texas, have asked MySpace.com to provide more security, the lawsuit said. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sent a letter to the MySpace.com chief executive officer May 22, asking him to require users to verify their age and identity with a credit card or verified e-mail account.
The attorneys general should buy a clue. A LOT of minors have verifiable email accounts (I'm not talking about free accounts like Yahoo! or GMail)
People don't want to reveal their real identigy online because of pricacy and security concerns (hint - identity theft - how many sites have coughed up people's details, like cc #s, etc - its a regular occurance)
Again, the problem is Pete Solis, not MySpace. Are you going to ask the shops at the local mall to verify identity and age before allowing kids in - because that's where a lot of the under-agers hook up...
FTFA: Stanford Law School:
Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said she does not think MySpace is legally responsible for what happens away from its site.
"If you interact on MySpace, you are safe, but if a 13-year-old or 14-year-old goes out in person and meets someone she doesn't know, that is always an unsafe endeavor," Gelman said. "We need to teach our kids to be wary of strangers."
And the same can be said for the local mall, the local cineplex, the local church, the local school, the local park, and any one of a number of other venues. Pete Solis has been arrested and charged. MySpace hasn't been charged, because they commited no crime, and didn't go out of their way to enable a crime. The only other difference (and a very significant one) is Solis, the alleged rapist, doesn't have $30 million.
Bottom line: There is no real way to verify a person's age or identity online that doesn't also cause problems. The internet is like any other public place - anyone can use it, and anyone *will* use it - which is why parents need to be more vigilant. Even that won't be enough, though - if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, rapes and assaults would still happen, no matter how careful everyone is... which is why you go after the per[p|v]s.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you tell them you want a sex change, you're probably not going to try to convert them to going down the same road ...
I think that's what offends a lot of people about born-again fundamentalist evangelicals - the lack of respect for other people's beliefs. The evangelicals don't see it - they believe its God's command.
Who said anything about lying :-)
We all know you posted AC because, deep down, you really want to ...
... come on, fess up.
Seriously, you've never lied? Bullshit. Or, when someone asks "Does this dress make me look fat?" do you answer "It's not the dress."
I was going to point out that if you had doubts about their support in such a case, it says more about how you feel than anything else, but I didn't want to obscure the point of the post, which is that there's a big difference between how real friends would react, compared to acquaintances.
I've got to agree ... bogus article alert time.
People say they have fewer people they can talk to about important stuff, even if they are talking to lots more people from all over the place about unimportant stuff online."
Maybe people are talking about important stuff more than ever, but doing it behind the anonymity or convenience of blogs?
People who say they have dozens or hundreds of close friends in real life don't know the meaning of the term "close friends". A close friend is one you could tell anything, and their response is "how can I help?" Want an easy 20-second test of whether someone is really a close friend or just an acquaintance? Tell them you want to get a sex change and watch their reaction.
I think we should focus on building a nanotech device that will build nanotech devices that build nanotech devices. My worry is that this has already happened. How would I know?
Far from being a joke, disassemblers would be the absolute worst possible plague imagineable.
They could get into the wild on a single piece of paper.
You might notice it as a ingle letter mi ing ...
But a f w minut lat r it will b wor ,
h n x hing you know, v ry co r n;
y u'r d m d.
, !
There's likely going to be some big things coming
Welcome to Canuckistanbul, comrade.
http://lois.justice.gc.ca/en/P-21/255104.html
There's a loophole to the requirement to inform the person (5)(3)(b), and to use the information (8) (2) (b thru f, j, l, m) ...
That's why you THROW the chair ... and its much more impressive when its an expensive "ergonomic" chair than your aunt's old bridge table folding chair. Now if only pro wrestlers would make the switch to *real* chairs when supposedly clubbing their opponents ... those folding chairs don't fool anyone. An Aeron, on the other hand, while shouting "I'll fucking [kill/bury/whatever] you ...
Article 183 of the cCanadian Criminal Code defines a private conversation to include telecommunications between two people.
Article 184 of the Canadian Criminal Code:
In other words, you can record ANY conversation you are involved in, since you have obviously given yourself consent.
Its also admissible as evidence. Here in Québec, the appropriate section is Articles 2857 and 2847:
You know, those housing ideas are great. And having the individual states pay their representatives in both houses would certainly emphasize that the voter is paying the tab, not "gubbiment".
The houses at the capitol could be like mini-embassies for each state. Less privacy to do "dirty deals", etc.
The taking of pork jobs after leaving office is a real problem. It doesn't pass the "smell test." Perhaps we need a "reverse-means" test - if you have too much money, you can't run for office, because your decisions will be influenced by how it will affect your portfolio/assets/etc.
Well, there's a difference between free speech and buying advertising. Up here, anyone attempting to do an end run around the spending rules on elections is going to get hauled before the regulators. Editorial comment, letters to the editor, etc., are all free speech, and thus not under the regulations ... buying paid political ads or advertising to influence the outcome of an election is different - its not considered free speech if you have to pay for it :-)
It may sound overly-restrictive, but lets face it ... the alternative wasn't working, and if you're going to reform the system, why not go whole hog?
Here in Québec we've banned ALL corporate and union donations - individuals only, and it has to be from their own funds. We went from the place where "vote early, vote often" and "dead people are voters too" to one of the most transparent processes.
Violate those rules, and you'll see your name in the news, as well as being banned from office for 5 years.
In many areas, a budget bill is considered a vote of confidence in the government. After all, if you can't pass the budget, how can you govern?
A lump sum at the end of the term, upon re-election, is a good incentive to please the people. The problem is that we don't often hear about crooked scams until after the incumbent gets tossed out ...
Politicians ... can't live with them ... can't shoot them ...
That's why the spending cap. It won't matter if you have millions, if you can't spend them in an election. Also, since you'd only be able to donate $1k to your own campaign, how much money you or some corporate sponsor has is irrelevent.
We've done it here. Per-voter spending limits. Donation limits. Disclosure of donors lists and amounts donated. Absolute bans on all forms of corporate contributions (money and in-kind). And we still use a paper ballot, and the votes are counted by people from the winner and the runner-up from the previous election, in view of election officials so that any disputes can be settled or, if not possible, noted for further action.
Porkbarrel projects would increase the taxes on the locals, whereas promoting real economic growth would lower the tax share for individuals. Politicians would come out ahead $$$ with less pork, not more.
As for increasing their salaries, already its attracting the wrong kind of people - the "carer politician." Better to get people into politics because they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
Even better - choose your leader by lottery - the loser is the "elected official." After all, even a random group culled from the population couldn't have done as bad as the current crop. They would have at least had SOME contact with "real people," and not just the political chattering class.
RE: Freedom of speech and campaign contributions ... while its true that "money talks", restricting campaign contributions is not restricting a person's freedom of speeh. They're free to continue to say what they want. They're just not free to buy certain things, like a politicians' vote. As for business being banned, businesses aren't people, and don't have the same rights.
Now while capping income would make you think that it would create incentives for more porkbarrelling, the truth is that it would be the least efficient way to raise the politicians' income; real economic growth (as opposed to pork) works better, because the pork also raises the individuals tax share, whereas real economic growth grows the tax base, reducing the individual tax share.
In other words, it becomes a pork disincentive.
Reform the process:
No no, for a SAFER IE experience, hit Alt+F4.
Seriously, this interview was an example of "title inflation". The guy's not the "Lead Project Manager" - (how can you even have more than one lead) he's :
In other words, he's not even a project manager - he's works with the guys who takes all the complaints from people (from the helldesk/helpdesk), organizes them, and gives them to someone else ... but giving him a title of "Lead Project Manager" sounds better. Just how many "Lead Project Managers" are working on the IE7 project, anyway?
Choice clueless quote:
Viruses have been a problem with Windows for how long? Oh, right - they've been with us since the DOS days ... http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/timeline.htm
And Word macro viruses have been around since 1995 - the same time Windows 95 was released. By 2000, there were over 500 new viruses a MONTH ... and the easiest way to spread them was by the Internet. 15 new viruses a day was only an inconvenience if you were one of the lucky/smart people who weren't running Windows.
Well, at least its not like it really matters, since the *real* project lead probably is more clued-in (or at least you can hope).
The only way to clean it up is to remove the funding.
Here, we've banned ALL contributions except for private, personal ones, and these are limited to a maximum of $3000 per year per person, must come from your own private funds (you can't give funds to someone else to donate "in their name", nor can they be from your business), contributions have to be reported by the recipient, and you have limits on campaign spending as well, so you can't just "buy an election".
Well, actually, he ended up in an institution for the criminally insane ... but that's another story.
Just goes to show - instant karma's gonna get you!
I'm sure there's someone (probably LOTS of "soneones") in the .ru domain that could have sold all sorts of info to them for much, much less less - and it would be more up-to-date.
The article makes this sound like something new ... but people were doing this more than 30 years ago in high school ... we had one guy who took the finals with a walkie-talky stripped out of its case, battery pack taped to one leg, transceiver to the other, switch in one shirt cuff, earpiece in the other, and wires connecting it all ... so he could get the answers from another student.
Of course, anyone desperate enough to do that is also dumb enough to believe you when you transmit the wrong answers ;-) (in other words, I was tired of him sitting behind or beside me, always trying to copy my answers, and then ME being accused of copying HIS answers)
FTFA: The lawyer for the parents:
FTFA: The lawyer for the parents:
FTFA:
FTFA: Stanford Law School:
And the same can be said for the local mall, the local cineplex, the local church, the local school, the local park, and any one of a number of other venues. Pete Solis has been arrested and charged. MySpace hasn't been charged, because they commited no crime, and didn't go out of their way to enable a crime. The only other difference (and a very significant one) is Solis, the alleged rapist, doesn't have $30 million.
Bottom line: There is no real way to verify a person's age or identity online that doesn't also cause problems. The internet is like any other public place - anyone can use it, and anyone *will* use it - which is why parents need to be more vigilant. Even that won't be enough, though - if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, rapes and assaults would still happen, no matter how careful everyone is ... which is why you go after the per[p|v]s.
No, the deal wasn't accepted, so rather than 1 million computers, the schools only got 200,000, and Microsoft got to shell out less cash :-(