It doesn't break down at all in reality, only in law. That's not because the balance of blame shifts; but because our laws tend to reflect our ideals, and it is our ideals which are most often disconnected from reality, for better or for worse. It would be great if the world were perfect, but knowing that it's not, I can take steps to prevent becoming a victim for who I am or what I do. Those steps may not agree with my ideals, but they agree perfectly with reality.
That's simply wrong, both reasonably AND legally. What you're describing is a victim mentality, which is neither productive, healthy, nor sensible. The fact that we are restrained in placing responsibility on the victim of a crime does not mean that they were not at all responsible, just that in most cases it's neither necessary nor productive to do so. But it's not always the case that zero blame is assigned, and it's certainly not applicable in the private sector. If you leave the keys in the door when you lock up your employer's place of business and someone notices and takes all the valuables, it's a safe and reasonable assumption that you *will* get fired for it. If you leave your car running, your insurance almost definitely will *not* compensate you for theft.
But even in the legal realm there are consequences:
If a store makes alcohol or tobacco accessible to a minor, whether or not they knew the person was a minor, then they are guilty of an offense. The minor may have defrauded the store, but the store is still to blame for falling for the (relatively obvious in most cases) fraud. Clearly this is an extreme example -- stores have a vested interest in selling merchandise, and absolutely none in enforcing age limits, so controls had to be put in place -- but it acknowledges the fact that blame is not absolute, and it's not the only example.
In some states and localities, it is actually *illegal* to leave your car running unattended, because recovering stolen cars takes a toll on the resources of law enforcement, and taking the slightest bit of personal responsibility can prevent these crimes of opportunity, by simply removing the opportunity.
So to your original question: Is the scantily clad woman asking to be raped? Of course not. But dressing in such a manner does invite sexual attention, and as in the above examples, we know that 100% of people will not be able to resist temptation. Dressing like a slut isn't asking to be raped, but it's partially encouraging it, and certainly doing little to prevent it unless the only thing you're wearing is a chastity belt.
The difference between legal blame and actual cause-effect chains of responsibility are not always the same. You can argue about what the difference *should* be, but the fact remains that criminals cannot exist without victims. Even removing an opportunity doesn't erase your portion of the cause; it just reduces it.
OT, where are you from and how do you like living there? It seems like a place with a fairly solid tech industry and a completely different culture from the US, which sounds like a place I might want to experience, but I haven't really researched it much.
It is also justification for the viewpoint that copyright as it stands now is more than adequate to ensure more production of works. Were it not, they would have produced LESS each year.
I believe you meant "fewer", but semantics aside, not all growth is healthy growth. Many industries exhibit growth right up to the point where they collapse.
Increased revenue and decreased profits are not mutually exclusive events. If I increase the price of a can of soda by 10% then my revenue goes up, assuming that sales remain constant or decrease by less than 10%. But if my cost to provide that can of soda went up by 12%, then my profit goes *down* in the same scenario, perhaps even negative.
Also, the profit can increase in absolute terms for the industry as a whole while each player experiences decreased profit individually. This can happen simply by increasing the number of players. And before you infer that increased participation indicates healthy growth, consider the real estate market.
In short, these figures are meaningless without context, and certainly not worth using as the basis for any rational argument.
I wouldn't say not to lend friends money, but certainly don't lend money if you're not prepared to lose it. Lending is legal gambling, no different than any other investment.
Also, a contract needn't be notarized to be legally binding. Notarizing is nothing more than "proof" (evidence) of a signature. It doesn't make the contract any more or less binding, just more difficult to say that it was forged, and a judge isn't likely to dismiss a promissory note just because it's not notarized.
If punishment is not proportional to both intent AND damages, then it opens both unintentionally severe damages and intentionally minimized damages to maximum penalties, which serves only to remove credibility from the justice system.
In a perfect world, we could sort out those who were skilled enough to inflict a nonfatal gunshot wound from those who were simply a bad shot, but in reality it's very difficult to prove one way or the other, and quite frankly not worth the time. Both acts are heinous, but the damages simply are not the same as actual murder, and for that reason, shooting at someone and missing, even intentionally, is attempted murder plain and simple.
Additionally, if we lower the standards for a more severe punishment, then the law of unintentional consequences may end up provoking people to see their crimes through, even when some obstacle might otherwise cause them to rethink their course of action. Consider someone who poisons their spouse, but then admits their actions at the hospital in time to administer lifesaving treatment. If they're facing the same penalty either way, then we've removed any legal incentive for them to rethink their actions. In other words, if I'm getting the full penalty of murder for shooting at you, then I'll damn well make sure you're dead, along with anyone who saw it or might have seen it. Such a system may actually end up *increasing* the murder rate.
Finally, incarceration is not free, either in terms of real dollars spent or potential wages not taxed on the incarcerated individual. Taking a zero tolerance approach to crime does not reduce crime -- particularly that performed in the heat of the moment -- it only increases the cost of administering justice, which is already quite high.
Funny, but adding weight *would* increase the energy of the impact as an alternative to going faster. But as others have said, 54MPH is apparently appropriate for simulating a severe crash.
Why, exactly? I can try to sue you for anything and everything.. that doesn't mean I'll be successful. I'm withholding any dancing until (and probably beyond) there is a judgment against the defendants.
Yeah, not necessarily. Most people brush their teeth, get haircuts, and perform a multitude of other grooming tasks, and yet these things are still desirable. I doubt health will ever go out of fashion, regardless of its predominance.
Moreover, obesity was (allegedly) desirable at one point only because it indicated a social status that allowed for a sedentary lifestyle. More likely, as today, it wasn't *desirable*, but rather tolerated because of the associated wealth that came with it.
Not really... The body is the way it is because no alternative genetic mutations occurred which were permitted to thrive through selective pressures. Success doesn't imply perfection, or even an ideal design; just that something was good enough to survive. Certainly seeing outside of the so-called "visible range" of light would be beneficial, but we haven't biologically evolved with that ability. It doesn't mean that there's necessarily a good reason we can't see IR. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
As for myostatin "deficiency", maybe the trait existed before, and all the weaker people were forced to develop their intelligence and gang up on the stronger people, wiping them out. Maybe food supply was an issue. Maybe there was a natural disaster that killed all the people in a specific region; people who had an inherent lack of myostatin.
I'm not implying that this modification is either beneficial or not, just that there's no guarantee that things are as they are for any *good* reason.
Well, you'd also have 40% more muscle weight to propel, so it really depends on how it affects the thrust to weight ratio. Does 40% more muscle translate to >=40% more thrust and/or endurance? Probably not, which means you're getting diminishing returns at best, or possibly even negative returns in the realm of self-propulsion. Weightlifting is an entirely different story, but there you need to worry about torn ligaments and tendons. Does myostatin play any role in regulating the growth of this connective tissue?
Well even the computer portion seems to be a huge overestimate. 26.97% of 34GB/day = 9.1GB/day, or 3.3TB/year. It's also -- and this is key -- 275GB per month, which is 25GB over the cap on Comcast's "unlimited" service.
I've *seen* usage charts for my ISP (not Comcast) and 275GB/mo would place you squarely in the top 2%, and after the top 5% there's a very long and shallow tail. Either these numbers were simply pulled out of somebody's rectum, or if they did an actual study with very flawed methodology.
Irritated and reassured are not mutually exclusive. Most people are irritated by medical treatments like chemotherapy or surgery, but reassured by the hope they provide. If you actually talk to your fellow cattle, you'll probably notice that a good portion *like* the (perceived) security, regardless of the irritation it provides.
Aside from that, perception is reality. If you're perceived as a hard target, an attacker will move on to a softer target. Houses with alarm stickers, for example, are burglarized at the same rate as houses with *actual* alarms, which is about 3 times lower than houses with neither. In that respect, the security dramatics are far from worthless.
Good dystopia, bad science. Oxygen doesn't get you high, and euphoric effects are almost certainly attributable to the placebo effect. Further, if calm passengers were the real goal, it would be much easier/cheaper to simply depressurize the cabin at high altitude, or fill it with CO2 at low altitude, and let everybody black out. As an added bonus, it would help extinguish any cabin fires rather than potentially contributing to them.
If they feel you're incompetent, but a hard worker, then they might be trying to do you a favor by moving you into a different role where they feel you're better suited. Your chances of keeping your existing position in this case are not very good.
Otherwise, you should be asking your boss, not Slashdot. He's the only one who knows where he stands. Try to find a middle ground between being a pussy and being a dick. Tell him you appreciate the offer, but that you find a great deal of satisfaction in your current position. Tell him you'd prefer to remain in that role, and ASK HIM "hypothetically, how would you feel if I declined the offer?"
Just like people who are actually trying to get promotions, the odds of getting what you want are much better if you actually ask.
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, welcome our new fusion-powered cephalords.
It doesn't break down at all in reality, only in law. That's not because the balance of blame shifts; but because our laws tend to reflect our ideals, and it is our ideals which are most often disconnected from reality, for better or for worse. It would be great if the world were perfect, but knowing that it's not, I can take steps to prevent becoming a victim for who I am or what I do. Those steps may not agree with my ideals, but they agree perfectly with reality.
That's simply wrong, both reasonably AND legally. What you're describing is a victim mentality, which is neither productive, healthy, nor sensible. The fact that we are restrained in placing responsibility on the victim of a crime does not mean that they were not at all responsible, just that in most cases it's neither necessary nor productive to do so. But it's not always the case that zero blame is assigned, and it's certainly not applicable in the private sector. If you leave the keys in the door when you lock up your employer's place of business and someone notices and takes all the valuables, it's a safe and reasonable assumption that you *will* get fired for it. If you leave your car running, your insurance almost definitely will *not* compensate you for theft.
But even in the legal realm there are consequences:
If a store makes alcohol or tobacco accessible to a minor, whether or not they knew the person was a minor, then they are guilty of an offense. The minor may have defrauded the store, but the store is still to blame for falling for the (relatively obvious in most cases) fraud. Clearly this is an extreme example -- stores have a vested interest in selling merchandise, and absolutely none in enforcing age limits, so controls had to be put in place -- but it acknowledges the fact that blame is not absolute, and it's not the only example.
In some states and localities, it is actually *illegal* to leave your car running unattended, because recovering stolen cars takes a toll on the resources of law enforcement, and taking the slightest bit of personal responsibility can prevent these crimes of opportunity, by simply removing the opportunity.
So to your original question: Is the scantily clad woman asking to be raped? Of course not. But dressing in such a manner does invite sexual attention, and as in the above examples, we know that 100% of people will not be able to resist temptation. Dressing like a slut isn't asking to be raped, but it's partially encouraging it, and certainly doing little to prevent it unless the only thing you're wearing is a chastity belt.
The difference between legal blame and actual cause-effect chains of responsibility are not always the same. You can argue about what the difference *should* be, but the fact remains that criminals cannot exist without victims. Even removing an opportunity doesn't erase your portion of the cause; it just reduces it.
From TFA: This could turn into the Roomba of e-readers, only it won't suck.
Let me guess.. it will blow?
OT, where are you from and how do you like living there? It seems like a place with a fairly solid tech industry and a completely different culture from the US, which sounds like a place I might want to experience, but I haven't really researched it much.
It is also justification for the viewpoint that copyright as it stands now is more than adequate to ensure more production of works. Were it not, they would have produced LESS each year.
I believe you meant "fewer", but semantics aside, not all growth is healthy growth. Many industries exhibit growth right up to the point where they collapse.
Increased revenue and decreased profits are not mutually exclusive events. If I increase the price of a can of soda by 10% then my revenue goes up, assuming that sales remain constant or decrease by less than 10%. But if my cost to provide that can of soda went up by 12%, then my profit goes *down* in the same scenario, perhaps even negative.
Also, the profit can increase in absolute terms for the industry as a whole while each player experiences decreased profit individually. This can happen simply by increasing the number of players. And before you infer that increased participation indicates healthy growth, consider the real estate market.
In short, these figures are meaningless without context, and certainly not worth using as the basis for any rational argument.
I wouldn't say not to lend friends money, but certainly don't lend money if you're not prepared to lose it. Lending is legal gambling, no different than any other investment.
Also, a contract needn't be notarized to be legally binding. Notarizing is nothing more than "proof" (evidence) of a signature. It doesn't make the contract any more or less binding, just more difficult to say that it was forged, and a judge isn't likely to dismiss a promissory note just because it's not notarized.
If punishment is not proportional to both intent AND damages, then it opens both unintentionally severe damages and intentionally minimized damages to maximum penalties, which serves only to remove credibility from the justice system.
In a perfect world, we could sort out those who were skilled enough to inflict a nonfatal gunshot wound from those who were simply a bad shot, but in reality it's very difficult to prove one way or the other, and quite frankly not worth the time. Both acts are heinous, but the damages simply are not the same as actual murder, and for that reason, shooting at someone and missing, even intentionally, is attempted murder plain and simple.
Additionally, if we lower the standards for a more severe punishment, then the law of unintentional consequences may end up provoking people to see their crimes through, even when some obstacle might otherwise cause them to rethink their course of action. Consider someone who poisons their spouse, but then admits their actions at the hospital in time to administer lifesaving treatment. If they're facing the same penalty either way, then we've removed any legal incentive for them to rethink their actions. In other words, if I'm getting the full penalty of murder for shooting at you, then I'll damn well make sure you're dead, along with anyone who saw it or might have seen it. Such a system may actually end up *increasing* the murder rate.
Finally, incarceration is not free, either in terms of real dollars spent or potential wages not taxed on the incarcerated individual. Taking a zero tolerance approach to crime does not reduce crime -- particularly that performed in the heat of the moment -- it only increases the cost of administering justice, which is already quite high.
Funny, but adding weight *would* increase the energy of the impact as an alternative to going faster. But as others have said, 54MPH is apparently appropriate for simulating a severe crash.
Why, exactly? I can try to sue you for anything and everything.. that doesn't mean I'll be successful. I'm withholding any dancing until (and probably beyond) there is a judgment against the defendants.
You are technically correct, but for practical purposes, the acronym UFO refers to alien craft for non-scientists and non-technical people.
Apparently those magnetic domes...help the solar winds blow off more air than if Mars had no magnetic field whatsoever. That's really gotta suck.
I thought we just established that it blows..
I guess your really hate that using a computer no longer requires programming knowledge as well?
Totally.
Yeah, not necessarily. Most people brush their teeth, get haircuts, and perform a multitude of other grooming tasks, and yet these things are still desirable. I doubt health will ever go out of fashion, regardless of its predominance.
Moreover, obesity was (allegedly) desirable at one point only because it indicated a social status that allowed for a sedentary lifestyle. More likely, as today, it wasn't *desirable*, but rather tolerated because of the associated wealth that came with it.
The body is the way it is for good reasons.
Not really... The body is the way it is because no alternative genetic mutations occurred which were permitted to thrive through selective pressures. Success doesn't imply perfection, or even an ideal design; just that something was good enough to survive. Certainly seeing outside of the so-called "visible range" of light would be beneficial, but we haven't biologically evolved with that ability. It doesn't mean that there's necessarily a good reason we can't see IR. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
As for myostatin "deficiency", maybe the trait existed before, and all the weaker people were forced to develop their intelligence and gang up on the stronger people, wiping them out. Maybe food supply was an issue. Maybe there was a natural disaster that killed all the people in a specific region; people who had an inherent lack of myostatin.
I'm not implying that this modification is either beneficial or not, just that there's no guarantee that things are as they are for any *good* reason.
Well, you'd also have 40% more muscle weight to propel, so it really depends on how it affects the thrust to weight ratio. Does 40% more muscle translate to >=40% more thrust and/or endurance? Probably not, which means you're getting diminishing returns at best, or possibly even negative returns in the realm of self-propulsion. Weightlifting is an entirely different story, but there you need to worry about torn ligaments and tendons. Does myostatin play any role in regulating the growth of this connective tissue?
You'll need to eat more.
I don't think I can eat more...
I don't always have sex with monkeys, but when I do.. I prefer dos condoms.
Well even the computer portion seems to be a huge overestimate. 26.97% of 34GB/day = 9.1GB/day, or 3.3TB/year. It's also -- and this is key -- 275GB per month, which is 25GB over the cap on Comcast's "unlimited" service.
I've *seen* usage charts for my ISP (not Comcast) and 275GB/mo would place you squarely in the top 2%, and after the top 5% there's a very long and shallow tail. Either these numbers were simply pulled out of somebody's rectum, or if they did an actual study with very flawed methodology.
Irritated and reassured are not mutually exclusive. Most people are irritated by medical treatments like chemotherapy or surgery, but reassured by the hope they provide. If you actually talk to your fellow cattle, you'll probably notice that a good portion *like* the (perceived) security, regardless of the irritation it provides.
Aside from that, perception is reality. If you're perceived as a hard target, an attacker will move on to a softer target. Houses with alarm stickers, for example, are burglarized at the same rate as houses with *actual* alarms, which is about 3 times lower than houses with neither. In that respect, the security dramatics are far from worthless.
Good dystopia, bad science. Oxygen doesn't get you high, and euphoric effects are almost certainly attributable to the placebo effect. Further, if calm passengers were the real goal, it would be much easier/cheaper to simply depressurize the cabin at high altitude, or fill it with CO2 at low altitude, and let everybody black out. As an added bonus, it would help extinguish any cabin fires rather than potentially contributing to them.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1469432&cid=30356888
Two times in as many days.. What is this, a hoedown?
I heard they're going to call it "View a Jew"...
It depends why you're getting "promoted."
If they feel you're incompetent, but a hard worker, then they might be trying to do you a favor by moving you into a different role where they feel you're better suited. Your chances of keeping your existing position in this case are not very good.
Otherwise, you should be asking your boss, not Slashdot. He's the only one who knows where he stands. Try to find a middle ground between being a pussy and being a dick. Tell him you appreciate the offer, but that you find a great deal of satisfaction in your current position. Tell him you'd prefer to remain in that role, and ASK HIM "hypothetically, how would you feel if I declined the offer?"
Just like people who are actually trying to get promotions, the odds of getting what you want are much better if you actually ask.