and no, i am not talking about "extreme dictatorships", i am talking about the bulk of world societies. indonesia, for example, is a democracy. its also pretty conservative. i'm glad in your mind they completely don't matter for that reason. which tells us more about your exclusive nature and your willful desire to not matter to the rest of the world. which is pretty odd, since you have your sites on comparing world countries
its an ideological divide, and the only judgment you can make from a global perspective is that, in truth, on the global stage, the usa is pretty dead moderate. such that, yes, the republicans are to the true right (globally), and yes, the democrats are to the true left (globally). these are judgments from a truly global perspective. a perspective you do not represent. meaning your perspective is invalid in its judgments
now you may ignore me, and continue involving yourself in comparing the usa with norway and denmark. wow, you're views are so incredibly useful
issues are the complicated. i try to thinks hard abouts them when i'm on the toilets. and i push reals hard and out come deep thoughts like: pubs cause global warming
i am the smarts type person with the deeply thinking type stuff
compared to the netherlands, the usa is conservative, compared to saudi arabia, the usa is liberal. in fact, from a saudi perspective, republicans are left, and democrats are far left. so which is superior? the dutch viewpoint? or the saudi?
doesn't matter, its an ideological divide, and the only judgment you can make from a global perspective is that, in truth, on the global stage, the usa is pretty dead moderate. such that, yes, the republicans are to the true right (globally), and yes, the democrats are to the true left (globally). these are judgments from a truly global perspective. a perspective you do not represent. meaning your perspective is invalid in its judgments
i guess you consider the world outside the usa to be nothing more than northwestern euorope. compare the usa to a place like saudi arabia, and it is radically liberal. the truth is, the usa is at a truly moderate spot in the world
the problem is sexual exploitation of teens and children by adults. the reason for this is that children and teenagers are still in the formative stages of their sexuality and their identity, and to be used sexually alters their self-perception negatively and interferes with their ability to develop a healthy happy adult sexuality. an adult and a child can not consent to sexual behavior in the same way. if you don't understand this, please stop commenting on a topic you haven't given enough thought to
your entire rant is blissfully perhaps willfully ignorant of people who use other people. who use them in ways that demean them and psychologically hurt them, intentionally or unintentionally. this includes picture taking. do you really want to be so facetious that you need the obvious reality of such scenarios explained to you?
of course the world is full of pinheaded prudes. of course you can be a hysterical overprotective twit with your children. you are right on both points. but to put forth the idea that only pinheaded prudes or hysterical twits are against child pornography is like saying that only osama bin laden is against imperialism: an incredibly blind one sided and flat out wrong statement
the topic is complex. don't think by ignoring 75% of the psychological and social issues involved and applying a simplistic band aid, a false sense of complacency on the topic of fucking child pornography for crying out loud, that you in any way get to the truth of the matter. no, all you do is prove to be just another clueless fool in the debate, along with your fellow fools the prudes and hysterics: you, the willful ignorant
as for handling affairs locally, what some local yokel calls justice might be a worse crime than the crime they are punishing, if it is even a crime they are punishing, and not hysteria or he said she said. if a more national system is more complicated, as long as it also more just, i can deal with that trade off. and please don't try to press the lie that local yokels doling out justice can be called more just, according to any fanciful stretch of creative reasoning
as for your other benefits and complaints of historical agrarian societies, i see a whole bunch of other downsides you don't mention. i think its better we have less kids. and yes, societies who have more children therefore inherit the earth, but if immigration is diffuse enough, european values are impressed on children of muslim immigrants just as much as if the euros had their own kids, so its not THAT awful
the point is, it was made possible by republican/conservative ideology: privatize and deregulate everything, even things that shouldn't be dergulated and privatized. like utilities, prisons, the stock market
society swings, from left to right, left to right, back and forth, forever. right now, after the utter failures of conservative ideology under the bush administration under all fronts, domestic and foreign, now, under obama, we are having a huge swing left. and, frankly, the conservatives have no one to blame for this except themselves and the utter bankrupcty of their current ideology
conservatives will go into the wilderness for years or decades, retool, and come back with some ideology and some new hero just in time for when the democrats are the ones fucking things up for a change...
but right now, across the conservative landscape, there is nothing but smoking wreckage, all of their ideas bankrupt, and absolutely noone without egg on their face
it will JUST be the toilet paper supplier that is corrupt
rather than the fucking judge, sending kids to prison who shouldn't be there
in EVERY legal and fiscal environment there are certain incentives to do certain rotten things. its just that when you privatize and deregulate, you essentially add a myriad more avenues for such graft, and you also increase the scope and potential massive harm and criminality of such graft
fiscal and social conservatives operate under the rubrick of personal accountability and self-regulation. and this is an absolutely valid concept. except when you put a few people in charge of facets of society- prisons, utilities, the stock market- that can have wide ranging and hardcore adverse affects, beyond the individual who makes the mistake/ commits the crime
in other words, personal accountability and self-regulation are completely valid concepts when it comes to putting things on the line that only you can take damage from. for example: you crash your car, you have no insurance. tough luck. the one who takes most of the damage is you. conservative principles in full effect
but when those individuals do things like pad the books of privatized utilities, get kickbacks to send kids to private prisons (the very existence of pirvate prisons is a horrible shame on american society), give $1,000,000 housing loans to waitresses, etc., then you are abrogating your responsibilities in such a way that way more than just yourself is adversely affected when the shit hits the fan
in other words, personal responsiblity and self regulation are ideologically and philosophically unsound concepts when it comes to running aspects of society that have wideranging and dangerous affects
here's an allegory: should we privatize the nuclear icbm silos? obviously not. too much is at stake to let someone other than those with the ultimate reponsibility, the government, the representatives of the people, to take full charge. if you understand that, why don't you understand that the same concept applies to prisons, utilities, and the stock market
but conservatives have this completely airhead notion, and i don't know where it comes from, perhaps out of an overriding fear of bureaucracy, red tape, taxes, etc., that you can just privatize everything, and nothing bad will come of that
conservatives: it is more expensive to privatize some things, in terms of the shit hitting the fan, then the expense of the red tape, the bureaucracy, the extra taxes, that you loathe
its better to leave the door wide open and stand there with a gun, than it is to just a put a damn lock on the door and go about your business
you are telling me what we have now is superior... because we have "many eyes" (meaning: we have to work our asses off to maintain a baseline of civility)
hey: howabout the protocol provide some barrier of entry, so you don't have to work so hard? how's that wacky idea strike you?
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
"I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare," said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. "All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing."
why was the judge so harsh?
because he was getting kickbacks from the privately run prison
let me repeat that: in the usa, children, who did not deserve to be sent to prison, were being sent to prison for minor offenses. why? because the prisons were being run PRIVATELY, there was a PROFIT MOTIVE. enter: one crooked judge eager to line his pockets, and you have a cash machine
how evil is that? i mean really, how utterly shameful on us as americans that this took place? how shameful on us that we allowed the fiscal and legal environment in which PRIVATE PRISONS even fucking exist!
Several hundred families filed a class-action suit Friday against two Pennsylvania judges who pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending juveniles to private detention facilities.
"At the hands of two grossly corrupt judges and several conspirators, hundreds of Pennsylvania children, their families and loved ones, were victimized and their civil rights were violated," said Michael J. Cefalo, one of the lawyers representing the families. "It's our intent to make sure that the system rights this terrible injustice and holds those responsible accountable."
Pennsylvania lawmakers called on Friday for hearings into the state's juvenile justice system. And the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which blew the whistle on the judges, said it had sworn affidavits from families who said they had sought court-appointed counsel but were told that their children would have to wait weeks, sometimes months, for a lawyer. During that time, the children would have to remain in detention, the families said.
ok, so we have enron, we have this gem, we have the recent stock market crash
dear fiscal conservatives and republitards: why exactly do you want to privatize and deregulate everything?
i await your stunning insight as to how its all the democrats fault, when this private prison debacle and something like enron and the recent stock market meltdown are clear and obvious indications as to why, no, some things in this world you actually do not want to privatize and deregulate, that you actually want to keep utlities and prisons in the hands of the government, and you want to regulate the markets, for their own good. i now await your usual regurgitated kneejerk drivel about tax and spend democrats and socialism. well yes, actually, democrats are tax and spend. as opposed to republicans, who are just spend (all deficits climb sky high under republicans and are reduced under democrats: study past administrations). and as for socialism: yes, democrats actually do care enough to say gee, maybe its wrong middle class hardworking folks have to declare bankruptcy when they get a serious illness
"bloated government bureaucracy... blah blah blah... welfar
the point with nntp and smtp in the same thought is that both protocols were designed in a kindler gentler time, in which spam, literally, did not exist yet
absolutely will spammers always do their thing. any system designed by a man, can be broken by a man. but there is a difference between breaking into fort knox, and strolling into the local 7-11. smtp was not designed without any security, really, whatsoever. any protocol designed with security in mind, meanwhile, will still get spam, but no where near the degree and with such ease as we see on our old naive protocols from the dawn of the internet
jeff atwood is proposing a nonsolution to a nonproblem
for historical reasons, english has become the de facto language of business worldwide, and programming as a global profession simply follows this proclivity, no questions asked, no need to underline the point
a non-english speaking programmer knows he or she is limiting their options career-wise simply by ignoring the largest resource available to them: other programmers, who are undoubtedly speaking english, even if they themselves are not native english speakers. and so there is no need to insist programmers speak english, as it is self inclusivity (of those who choose to speak english freely) that is the prime motivator here, not esternally applied exclusivity (insisting someone speak english... that already knows its important)
if a programmer self-excludes by choosing not to speak english, who cares? its there choice. let them program in english language isolation. how does that effect you? its not like you are going to an english language symposium and run into someone who insists you speak hindi to them, or comment on an english language programming tip site, and run into a comment in mandarin, or sit next to a programmer in the office, who only speaks spanish. the hindi speaker would have never gone to the symposium in the first place: its in english, announced up front. the mandarin speaker would not comment in the english language programming site: all the other content is a sea of english, what's the point? and the spanish-only speaker would never have been hired in the most probably english-speaking place of business in the first place, you would never run into such a person
in other words, jeff is pointing out a nonexistent problem, that even if it existed, has a solution proposed which is pointless
but i will say that nothing, absolutely nothing, protects you from petty local politicians, anywhere in the world
the previously anonymous can make a legal case of it, if there is grounds to proceed, but that's about your only protection
some people have this odd attitude towards the government, that as soon as you are some sort of official, you become some sort of monolithic alien "them". no, mostly the government is composed of the same amount of virtuous people and sleazy people that you encounter in the general public, with an additional dose of well-meaning but bumbling fools, because, at least in a democracy, the government IS the general public
so its not like once someone becomes a politician, they become robotic overlords of perfect constitutional expediency. no, they go right on screwing things up at the same rate before they were elected. which with some politicians can be quite spectacular, especially in the murky world of local politics. the only difference is, with us law at least, is that you might have some recourse for grievance and punitive damages in a court of law
when you deal with the feds, you'll find things to be more fair, simply because there's usually nothing personal going on at a distance, not because the feds are any more capable. meanwhile, when you deal with the local mayor, or the local police, you sometimes get the same sort of overly personal bickering and nasty and shocking abuses as you would get with two neighbors arguing over the placement of a fence or a loud barking dog
you really have to indict the abuses of the local politician, not the entire government. and this goes for any country, not just the usa. the abuses of local politicians does not reflect on the country as a whole, for the usa, canada, mexico... any country in the world
you can own all the bits you want. just keep them on a cd in a safe in your office. but when you put something on the web, whether music, software, writing, whatever: you don't own it anymore. no one does
how's that for a coherent legal argument?
yeah, i know, intellectual property blah blah blah
how about: 1. anywhere besides the west, no one fucking cares 2. anyone below a certain age, no one fucking cares
intellectual property law is not going to evolve. it's going to be the vicitm of revolution. no storming of the bastille or anything like that. just an incredibly rapid obsolescence. intellectual property law is not morality, despite some of the rhetoric and tone you see and hear. intellectual property is a gentleman's agreement forged in oak paneled rooms smelling of cigar smoke when publishers were few and rich. now every pimply faced teenager with a dwl conneciton is a publisher. the gentleman's agreement is null and void
there's just no benefit to ip law anymore. no benefit at all. all it does is protect entrenched interest. it doesn't protect creators. it doesn't do anything except create artifical roadblacks to progress
ip law is simply archaic and defunct in the internet age
ip law is damge, to route around. its bogus. its history. all of it. the whole rotten bullshit load of it
just ignore ip law. as if it can be enforced anymore
Then it would proba%ly alter not just one byte, b%t a chain of them. The cha%n of modified bytes would be stru%g out, in a regular patter%. Now if only there were so%e way to read memory in%a chain of bytes, as if it w%re a string, to visu%lize the cosmic ray mod%fication. hmmm...
social contact is extremely important psychologically for human beings, especially in regard to close friends and family. we form social bonds with a small group of other humans who can finish our sentences and wordlessly engage in complex tasks with us. that our social connection with others in this small group can be said to be as strong and vital and deep and as complex and important for our survival as our psychological connection with our own hand or foot
such that to lose a loved one can be said to be virtually psychologically the same as to lose an arm or a leg, at least in terms of dramatic traumatic impact. that people's perceptions of ghosts might be the exact same psychological phenomenon as the perception of phantom limbs. the important person who has passed away is like their phantom limb they still perceive, that important psychological connection that carries on in denial after being severed from traumatically
in other words, ghosts are completely "real" in the sense that the person perceiving them might not be making them up at all, and are being completely psychologically honest when they see or hear their phantom loved one. assuming, and this is a big assumption, that the loss of a loved one and the perception of ghosts can be said to be the exact same psychological circuit as the loss of a limb and the perception of phantoms. which is a huge psychological if, but is not entirely out of the question, at some level of the mind
i've never heard this idea before, but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't already thought of it. but i would be excited to find out that this idea is original to me, so here this slashdot post stands as posterity as a possible original idea on my part. so mod me up for my historical posterity!;-P
although i can see how in a demented mind that can only view it through the lens of racism, that if i argue against religious extremism, whether christian, jewish, or muslim, that this makes me somehow anti-arab
you're a simple idiot. you can only see the world in simple stupid ways. you can only process my words according to your retarded proclivities
i overhear a bit of a conversation? i see a file? what the hell can be gleaned from random exposure to bits of detritus?
either you are a spy with a target and a purpose, or you are what, exactly?
i'd like to be more diplomatic, but i have to be honest: you are of low intelligence and highly xenophobic. i have not yet been described a coherent threat to american national security from random chinese people doing random things. nor do i see how there could be
i mean, you couldn't even describe to me an entertaining b-grade hollywood movie from this fantasy life of yours. how does it work, you read them a robert frost poem?
basically, this poor woman's condition has bolstered neurologists rethinking of the itch sensation as something completely unrelated to pain. she had an incredibly rare "phantom itch". how disabling was it? she scratched THROUGH HER SKULL, until she was scratching brain matter
she survived, in a debilitated condition, but she did better than her roommate, who, with a similar phantom itch, scratched through to his carotid, and killed himself
read, for an especially horrifying insight into what its like to live with a phantom itch:
"But I was desperate," M. told me. She let them operate on her, slicing the supraorbital nerve above the right eye. When she woke up, a whole section of her forehead was numb--and the itching was gone. A few weeks later, however, it came back, in an even wider expanse than before. The doctors tried pain medications, more psychiatric medications, more local anesthetic. But the only thing that kept M. from tearing her skin and skull open again, the doctors found, was to put a foam football helmet on her head and bind her wrists to the bedrails at night.
She spent the next two years committed to a locked medical ward in a rehabilitation hospital--because, although she was not mentally ill, she was considered a danger to herself. Eventually, the staff worked out a solution that did not require binding her to the bedrails. Along with the football helmet, she had to wear white mitts that were secured around her wrists by surgical tape. "Every bedtime, it looked like they were dressing me up for Halloween--me and the guy next to me," she told me.
"The guy next to you?" I asked. He had had shingles on his neck, she explained, and also developed a persistent itch. "Every night, they would wrap up his hands and wrap up mine." She spoke more softly now. "But I heard he ended up dying from it, because he scratched into his carotid artery."
I met M. seven years after she'd been discharged from the rehabilitation hospital. She is forty-eight now. She lives in a three-room apartment, with a crucifix and a bust of Jesus on the wall and the low yellow light of table lamps strung with beads over their shades. Stacked in a wicker basket next to her coffee table were Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," People, and the latest issue of Neurology Now, a magazine for patients. Together, they summed up her struggles, for she is still fighting the meaninglessness, the isolation, and the physiology of her predicament.
She met me at the door in a wheelchair; the injury to her brain had left her partially paralyzed on the left side of her body. She remains estranged from her children. She has not, however, relapsed into drinking or drugs. Her H.I.V. remains under control. Although the itch on her scalp and forehead persists, she has gradually learned to protect herself. She trims her nails short. She finds ways to distract herself. If she must scratch, she tries to rub gently instead. And, if that isn't enough, she uses a soft toothbrush or a rolled-up terry cloth. "I don't use anything sharp," she said. The two years that she spent bound up in the hospital seemed to have broken the nighttime scratching. At home, she found that she didn't need to wear the helmet and gloves anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
what exactly does that amount to?
and no, i am not talking about "extreme dictatorships", i am talking about the bulk of world societies. indonesia, for example, is a democracy. its also pretty conservative. i'm glad in your mind they completely don't matter for that reason. which tells us more about your exclusive nature and your willful desire to not matter to the rest of the world. which is pretty odd, since you have your sites on comparing world countries
its an ideological divide, and the only judgment you can make from a global perspective is that, in truth, on the global stage, the usa is pretty dead moderate. such that, yes, the republicans are to the true right (globally), and yes, the democrats are to the true left (globally). these are judgments from a truly global perspective. a perspective you do not represent. meaning your perspective is invalid in its judgments
now you may ignore me, and continue involving yourself in comparing the usa with norway and denmark. wow, you're views are so incredibly useful
is aliens probing us rectally?
is beer causing global warming farts?
how is babby formed?
issues are the complicated. i try to thinks hard abouts them when i'm on the toilets. and i push reals hard and out come deep thoughts like: pubs cause global warming
i am the smarts type person with the deeply thinking type stuff
compared to the netherlands, the usa is conservative, compared to saudi arabia, the usa is liberal. in fact, from a saudi perspective, republicans are left, and democrats are far left. so which is superior? the dutch viewpoint? or the saudi?
doesn't matter, its an ideological divide, and the only judgment you can make from a global perspective is that, in truth, on the global stage, the usa is pretty dead moderate. such that, yes, the republicans are to the true right (globally), and yes, the democrats are to the true left (globally). these are judgments from a truly global perspective. a perspective you do not represent. meaning your perspective is invalid in its judgments
i guess you consider the world outside the usa to be nothing more than northwestern euorope. compare the usa to a place like saudi arabia, and it is radically liberal. the truth is, the usa is at a truly moderate spot in the world
the problem is sexual exploitation of teens and children by adults. the reason for this is that children and teenagers are still in the formative stages of their sexuality and their identity, and to be used sexually alters their self-perception negatively and interferes with their ability to develop a healthy happy adult sexuality. an adult and a child can not consent to sexual behavior in the same way. if you don't understand this, please stop commenting on a topic you haven't given enough thought to
your entire rant is blissfully perhaps willfully ignorant of people who use other people. who use them in ways that demean them and psychologically hurt them, intentionally or unintentionally. this includes picture taking. do you really want to be so facetious that you need the obvious reality of such scenarios explained to you?
of course the world is full of pinheaded prudes. of course you can be a hysterical overprotective twit with your children. you are right on both points. but to put forth the idea that only pinheaded prudes or hysterical twits are against child pornography is like saying that only osama bin laden is against imperialism: an incredibly blind one sided and flat out wrong statement
the topic is complex. don't think by ignoring 75% of the psychological and social issues involved and applying a simplistic band aid, a false sense of complacency on the topic of fucking child pornography for crying out loud, that you in any way get to the truth of the matter. no, all you do is prove to be just another clueless fool in the debate, along with your fellow fools the prudes and hysterics: you, the willful ignorant
as for handling affairs locally, what some local yokel calls justice might be a worse crime than the crime they are punishing, if it is even a crime they are punishing, and not hysteria or he said she said. if a more national system is more complicated, as long as it also more just, i can deal with that trade off. and please don't try to press the lie that local yokels doling out justice can be called more just, according to any fanciful stretch of creative reasoning
as for your other benefits and complaints of historical agrarian societies, i see a whole bunch of other downsides you don't mention. i think its better we have less kids. and yes, societies who have more children therefore inherit the earth, but if immigration is diffuse enough, european values are impressed on children of muslim immigrants just as much as if the euros had their own kids, so its not THAT awful
if a conservative ranted, they would be +5 and i would be -1 troll
the country swing left to right, right to left, back and forth, forever
currently, conservative ideology is at a nadir, and so my rant actually IS insightful
but don't worry, give liberals 10-20 years, then they will screw up as awful as convervatives just have
the point is, it was made possible by republican/conservative ideology: privatize and deregulate everything, even things that shouldn't be dergulated and privatized. like utilities, prisons, the stock market
society swings, from left to right, left to right, back and forth, forever. right now, after the utter failures of conservative ideology under the bush administration under all fronts, domestic and foreign, now, under obama, we are having a huge swing left. and, frankly, the conservatives have no one to blame for this except themselves and the utter bankrupcty of their current ideology
conservatives will go into the wilderness for years or decades, retool, and come back with some ideology and some new hero just in time for when the democrats are the ones fucking things up for a change...
but right now, across the conservative landscape, there is nothing but smoking wreckage, all of their ideas bankrupt, and absolutely noone without egg on their face
it will JUST be the toilet paper supplier that is corrupt
rather than the fucking judge, sending kids to prison who shouldn't be there
in EVERY legal and fiscal environment there are certain incentives to do certain rotten things. its just that when you privatize and deregulate, you essentially add a myriad more avenues for such graft, and you also increase the scope and potential massive harm and criminality of such graft
fiscal and social conservatives operate under the rubrick of personal accountability and self-regulation. and this is an absolutely valid concept. except when you put a few people in charge of facets of society- prisons, utilities, the stock market- that can have wide ranging and hardcore adverse affects, beyond the individual who makes the mistake/ commits the crime
in other words, personal accountability and self-regulation are completely valid concepts when it comes to putting things on the line that only you can take damage from. for example: you crash your car, you have no insurance. tough luck. the one who takes most of the damage is you. conservative principles in full effect
but when those individuals do things like pad the books of privatized utilities, get kickbacks to send kids to private prisons (the very existence of pirvate prisons is a horrible shame on american society), give $1,000,000 housing loans to waitresses, etc., then you are abrogating your responsibilities in such a way that way more than just yourself is adversely affected when the shit hits the fan
in other words, personal responsiblity and self regulation are ideologically and philosophically unsound concepts when it comes to running aspects of society that have wideranging and dangerous affects
here's an allegory: should we privatize the nuclear icbm silos? obviously not. too much is at stake to let someone other than those with the ultimate reponsibility, the government, the representatives of the people, to take full charge. if you understand that, why don't you understand that the same concept applies to prisons, utilities, and the stock market
but conservatives have this completely airhead notion, and i don't know where it comes from, perhaps out of an overriding fear of bureaucracy, red tape, taxes, etc., that you can just privatize everything, and nothing bad will come of that
conservatives: it is more expensive to privatize some things, in terms of the shit hitting the fan, then the expense of the red tape, the bureaucracy, the extra taxes, that you loathe
absolutely 100% true
learn that from recent history
evolve your boneheaded ideology
witness the term "crotchfruit" and the way people who have kids are looked down upon
and the general trend among all developed nations, not just the west, to stop having children
they are just too messy, too much to bother
of course, they are also your replacement after you are dead, but i guess that's a minor detail, somehow
its better to leave the door wide open and stand there with a gun, than it is to just a put a damn lock on the door and go about your business
you are telling me what we have now is superior... because we have "many eyes" (meaning: we have to work our asses off to maintain a baseline of civility)
hey: howabout the protocol provide some barrier of entry, so you don't have to work so hard? how's that wacky idea strike you?
(btw, it happened in PENNSYLVANIA, not new jersey):
http://prisonpost.com/blog/2009/02/20/pennsylvania-judges-plead-guilty-in-juvenile-center-kickback-scheme_227.html
why was the judge so harsh?
because he was getting kickbacks from the privately run prison
let me repeat that: in the usa, children, who did not deserve to be sent to prison, were being sent to prison for minor offenses. why? because the prisons were being run PRIVATELY, there was a PROFIT MOTIVE. enter: one crooked judge eager to line his pockets, and you have a cash machine
how evil is that? i mean really, how utterly shameful on us as americans that this took place? how shameful on us that we allowed the fiscal and legal environment in which PRIVATE PRISONS even fucking exist!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14judge.html?fta=y
ok, so we have enron, we have this gem, we have the recent stock market crash
dear fiscal conservatives and republitards: why exactly do you want to privatize and deregulate everything?
i await your stunning insight as to how its all the democrats fault, when this private prison debacle and something like enron and the recent stock market meltdown are clear and obvious indications as to why, no, some things in this world you actually do not want to privatize and deregulate, that you actually want to keep utlities and prisons in the hands of the government, and you want to regulate the markets, for their own good. i now await your usual regurgitated kneejerk drivel about tax and spend democrats and socialism. well yes, actually, democrats are tax and spend. as opposed to republicans, who are just spend (all deficits climb sky high under republicans and are reduced under democrats: study past administrations). and as for socialism: yes, democrats actually do care enough to say gee, maybe its wrong middle class hardworking folks have to declare bankruptcy when they get a serious illness
"bloated government bureaucracy... blah blah blah... welfar
nothing will stop spam
my point:
i agree. but it means something if the protocol makes spamming harder. there will be a lot less
the point with nntp and smtp in the same thought is that both protocols were designed in a kindler gentler time, in which spam, literally, did not exist yet
absolutely will spammers always do their thing. any system designed by a man, can be broken by a man. but there is a difference between breaking into fort knox, and strolling into the local 7-11. smtp was not designed without any security, really, whatsoever. any protocol designed with security in mind, meanwhile, will still get spam, but no where near the degree and with such ease as we see on our old naive protocols from the dawn of the internet
could you scoot over in that coffin there? thanks
time to shuffle off this mortal cat cable
jeff atwood is proposing a nonsolution to a nonproblem
for historical reasons, english has become the de facto language of business worldwide, and programming as a global profession simply follows this proclivity, no questions asked, no need to underline the point
a non-english speaking programmer knows he or she is limiting their options career-wise simply by ignoring the largest resource available to them: other programmers, who are undoubtedly speaking english, even if they themselves are not native english speakers. and so there is no need to insist programmers speak english, as it is self inclusivity (of those who choose to speak english freely) that is the prime motivator here, not esternally applied exclusivity (insisting someone speak english... that already knows its important)
if a programmer self-excludes by choosing not to speak english, who cares? its there choice. let them program in english language isolation. how does that effect you? its not like you are going to an english language symposium and run into someone who insists you speak hindi to them, or comment on an english language programming tip site, and run into a comment in mandarin, or sit next to a programmer in the office, who only speaks spanish. the hindi speaker would have never gone to the symposium in the first place: its in english, announced up front. the mandarin speaker would not comment in the english language programming site: all the other content is a sea of english, what's the point? and the spanish-only speaker would never have been hired in the most probably english-speaking place of business in the first place, you would never run into such a person
in other words, jeff is pointing out a nonexistent problem, that even if it existed, has a solution proposed which is pointless
and reminds you that there is an ongoing chicken holocaust worldwide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead
but i will say that nothing, absolutely nothing, protects you from petty local politicians, anywhere in the world
the previously anonymous can make a legal case of it, if there is grounds to proceed, but that's about your only protection
some people have this odd attitude towards the government, that as soon as you are some sort of official, you become some sort of monolithic alien "them". no, mostly the government is composed of the same amount of virtuous people and sleazy people that you encounter in the general public, with an additional dose of well-meaning but bumbling fools, because, at least in a democracy, the government IS the general public
so its not like once someone becomes a politician, they become robotic overlords of perfect constitutional expediency. no, they go right on screwing things up at the same rate before they were elected. which with some politicians can be quite spectacular, especially in the murky world of local politics. the only difference is, with us law at least, is that you might have some recourse for grievance and punitive damages in a court of law
when you deal with the feds, you'll find things to be more fair, simply because there's usually nothing personal going on at a distance, not because the feds are any more capable. meanwhile, when you deal with the local mayor, or the local police, you sometimes get the same sort of overly personal bickering and nasty and shocking abuses as you would get with two neighbors arguing over the placement of a fence or a loud barking dog
you really have to indict the abuses of the local politician, not the entire government. and this goes for any country, not just the usa. the abuses of local politicians does not reflect on the country as a whole, for the usa, canada, mexico... any country in the world
who fucking cares
you can own all the bits you want. just keep them on a cd in a safe in your office. but when you put something on the web, whether music, software, writing, whatever: you don't own it anymore. no one does
how's that for a coherent legal argument?
yeah, i know, intellectual property blah blah blah
how about:
1. anywhere besides the west, no one fucking cares
2. anyone below a certain age, no one fucking cares
intellectual property law is not going to evolve. it's going to be the vicitm of revolution. no storming of the bastille or anything like that. just an incredibly rapid obsolescence. intellectual property law is not morality, despite some of the rhetoric and tone you see and hear. intellectual property is a gentleman's agreement forged in oak paneled rooms smelling of cigar smoke when publishers were few and rich. now every pimply faced teenager with a dwl conneciton is a publisher. the gentleman's agreement is null and void
there's just no benefit to ip law anymore. no benefit at all. all it does is protect entrenched interest. it doesn't protect creators. it doesn't do anything except create artifical roadblacks to progress
ip law is simply archaic and defunct in the internet age
ip law is damge, to route around. its bogus. its history. all of it. the whole rotten bullshit load of it
just ignore ip law. as if it can be enforced anymore
Then it would proba%ly alter not just one byte, b%t a chain of them. The cha%n of modified bytes would be stru%g out, in a regular patter%. Now if only there were so%e way to read memory in%a chain of bytes, as if it w%re a string, to visu%lize the cosmic ray mod%fication. hmmm...
and phantom limbs, i have a theory about ghosts:
social contact is extremely important psychologically for human beings, especially in regard to close friends and family. we form social bonds with a small group of other humans who can finish our sentences and wordlessly engage in complex tasks with us. that our social connection with others in this small group can be said to be as strong and vital and deep and as complex and important for our survival as our psychological connection with our own hand or foot
such that to lose a loved one can be said to be virtually psychologically the same as to lose an arm or a leg, at least in terms of dramatic traumatic impact. that people's perceptions of ghosts might be the exact same psychological phenomenon as the perception of phantom limbs. the important person who has passed away is like their phantom limb they still perceive, that important psychological connection that carries on in denial after being severed from traumatically
in other words, ghosts are completely "real" in the sense that the person perceiving them might not be making them up at all, and are being completely psychologically honest when they see or hear their phantom loved one. assuming, and this is a big assumption, that the loss of a loved one and the perception of ghosts can be said to be the exact same psychological circuit as the loss of a limb and the perception of phantoms. which is a huge psychological if, but is not entirely out of the question, at some level of the mind
i've never heard this idea before, but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't already thought of it. but i would be excited to find out that this idea is original to me, so here this slashdot post stands as posterity as a possible original idea on my part. so mod me up for my historical posterity! ;-P
although i can see how in a demented mind that can only view it through the lens of racism, that if i argue against religious extremism, whether christian, jewish, or muslim, that this makes me somehow anti-arab
you're a simple idiot. you can only see the world in simple stupid ways. you can only process my words according to your retarded proclivities
what information is gleaned?
i overhear a bit of a conversation? i see a file? what the hell can be gleaned from random exposure to bits of detritus?
either you are a spy with a target and a purpose, or you are what, exactly?
i'd like to be more diplomatic, but i have to be honest: you are of low intelligence and highly xenophobic. i have not yet been described a coherent threat to american national security from random chinese people doing random things. nor do i see how there could be
i mean, you couldn't even describe to me an entertaining b-grade hollywood movie from this fantasy life of yours. how does it work, you read them a robert frost poem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefon
jesus christ, people believe the most severely retarded things
consider this new yorker piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
basically, this poor woman's condition has bolstered neurologists rethinking of the itch sensation as something completely unrelated to pain. she had an incredibly rare "phantom itch". how disabling was it? she scratched THROUGH HER SKULL, until she was scratching brain matter
she survived, in a debilitated condition, but she did better than her roommate, who, with a similar phantom itch, scratched through to his carotid, and killed himself
read, for an especially horrifying insight into what its like to live with a phantom itch: