Sorry, I should have said "no one in government or the state" thinks it's "terrorism". The only people who think anyone believes this to be "terrorism" are bloggers who don't understand that "terroristic threat" and "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat" are legally not the same thing. And, at this point, no one thinks it's anything at all, since the police investigated it (correctly following up on a complaint of a threat), and found there to be no threat.
So yeah, when I said "no one thinks it is", I meant "no one who actually has the power to charge him with a crime", not bloggers who want to ride it as another example of how the "post 9/11 war on terror world" has gone so horribly wrong, when it's utterly unrelated.
Well, I must be some kind of psychic then, because I've never met him and yet I was somehow convinced that he wasn't planning to murder people when I saw that comic.
*Sigh*.
Ok, I'll explain this to you.
Without respect to his comic at all, someone at his place of work overheard him talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a.22 to kill them. A coworker, who most likely didn't know him, or know him well since he's a contractor, reported this incident to their supervisor.
He was released from his contract position (which the employer has every right to do) for the incident.
If you can't understand that was a stupid or at least marginally unwise thing for him to do, then I don't know what to say. Of course it sucks that he got "fired"/released from his contract position for it, but then, this is why we say that actions have consequences.
At this point, the comic isn't involved. At all.
Are you serious? The "presumed an insane killer until proven otherwise" attitude from his employers and the local police isn't enough to get in a huff about?
Uh, I couldn't possibly care less about his employer. They acted correctly, given the complaint and the situation. You just simply don't say something like that unless you know everyone around you knows you're joking.
Remember, the web comic still has not come into play yet.
AFTER he was fired, he humorously recounted it in his comic, which someone at some point must have seen, and in which he made what someone determined to be a threat, even if it was 100% in jest and humor. The police followed up on said complaint, which it is their JOB to do - no "guilty until proven innocent" yet - and then determined there was no actual threat (which again, is their job).
Words and actions have meaning, and consequences. Yes, there is all sorts of nuance, but we can't have this "have it both ways" collective mentality we do where we think "gee, maybe we could have stopped the Virginia Tech shootings" but then allow people to make what can be interpreted by some to be verbal or written threats. Yes, I get the comic. Haha, funny, etc. But his phone conversation about shooting someone in the face multiple times with a.22 to kill them, which was a gun he just bought, was interpreted by someone who probably didn't know him to be a threat. Which she reported. While it would be great if the employer could parse through things and say, hey, we realize you were joking, it's possible his employer didn't know him that well either, since he was a contract employee. And frankly, they can release a contractor at any time regardless, so that point is moot.
This is a non-story, and yes I'm serious. But people started confusing "terroristic threat" with "terrorism", so I'm sure this will have a nice, long life on many a blog.
Uh, it doesn't have anything to do with grammar. "Terroristic threat" is a very old and specific legal concept, and when someone is suspected of issuing a "terroristic threat", it doesn't mean someone thinks they're a "terrorist" or planning anything related with "terrorism", as we talk about those in the modern vernacular. They are unrelated concepts. It's actually unfortunate that "terroristic threat" was codified in many jurisdictions with those words in particular, because whenever anyone is suspected of committing such a threat, it always gets misinterpreted as someone thinking it is "terrorism", which no one does (except the people who blog about it).
And yes, these obviously all root from the same words, but when we say "terroristic threat", those are the exact words that define a behavior where someone is, or is suspected of, threatening another person with violence, calling in a bomb threat, etc. It is NOT what we think of as "terrorism" (e.g., a suicide bombing, 9/11, etc.), and no one thinks it is.
He didn't "get" anything. If you mean probation with respect to his work, that's between him and his employer. It most absolutely is not the government's role in a situation like this to mandate that he keep a contract job that he can be removed from, legally, at any time.
A "terroristic threat" has zero to do with political change.
Did you even read my post? Or maybe do a little research?
"Terroristic threat" doesn't really have anything to do with "terrorism" or "terrorist threats" as we talk about them. Yes, they're very similar words, but from a legal standpoint, "terroristic threat", which is codified in many states, doesn't have anything to do with the modern usage of "terrorism". When someone makes a threat against another person, or calls in a bomb threat, or threatens to perform an act of violence, etc., that is, in many jurisdictions, a "terroristic threat", and has been classified as such for a long, long time.
It's not the "US" that's fearful. Someone overheard him talking about how many times you'd need to shoot someone in the face to kill them with a.22. Someone who probably doesn't know him personally at all (or at least well) overheard this and reported it. On the day of the biggest mass shooting in the US to boot (which was admittedly why he was even talking about it in the first place).
Then he got released from a position that he can, as a contractor, be released from at any time, for any reason.
Then he humorously recounted his "firing" the next day in his comic, which someone felt threatened by, and which they reported to the police. It is, in turn, the police's job to follow up on such a complaint, which they did, and after which he himself said the detectives determined that he wasn't actually a threat, and viewed samples of his work.
And yeah, there were a bunch of things that coalesced to make this happen, but all that means is that actions have consequences, and no matter how unfair you might think they are sometimes, it doesn't make it any less true. The government didn't do anything to him, he is not charged with any crime, and no one "censored" him (as is especially evidenced by the fact that the comics are exactly where they've always been: still up on the web).
Come back down to reality, here. Whenever there's a school or workplace shooting, everyone always rants about the "warning signs" and "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?" (and NO, no one will necessarily know that he's joking, especially if they don't know him personally - that's stupid to talk about in a setting like work at all, much less one where you don't know everyone around you personally).
2. He was released from a contract position that he can be released from at any time for talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a.22 to kill them, probably within earshot of someone who doesn't know him personally, on the day of the nation's worst mass shooting no less.
3. The police followed up after receiving a complaint when he recounted his firing in his comic implying that he now would have a reason to "go postal" (even if it was 100% a joke), which is their job, and determined that there was no threat, which he himself says in the interview.
Unless you know everyone around you, this probably isn't an appropriate conversation for the workplace, which Boyd says is a verbatim transcript of what got him fired^H^H^H^H^Hreleased from a contract position that he can be released from at any time.
And this, even if joking, is probably not, all things considered, the wisest response. Only he, or people who know him well, knows he's not serious, frankly. Yeah, it's funny. But he already got fired for talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a.22 to kill them, and then makes light of it to the point where someone got scared again. Do you think the police are monitoring his comic? Someone obviously complained, and it's the police's job to follow up, who then determined he's not actually a threat, according to his own description of the meeting with the detectives.
Can we find something else to get all in a huff about? I'm sure there's another story we can run about how the 2004 election was stolen.
The term "terroristic threat" has been around a long time, and has nothing to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat", as it is used in the vernacular.
The term and legal notion of "terroristic threat" has been around for a long time, and has nothing to do with the "war on terror", 9/11, the Bush administration, or censorship.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Even Boyd himself in his interview correctly notes that "a terroristic threat is an old legal concept".
He is also not charged with any crime (though technically he could be), but that's always true. He says the "detectives at least seem satisfied" that he was "harmless", and showed samples of his work to one of the detectives.
It would be better to read his interview, instead of believing someone thinks this has anything to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat" (no one does; remember, "terroristic threat is a legal concept that has been around a long time).
Uh, Camino is not ghetto. Many people who work on it are the same people who also work on Firefox. The lead Camino developers already work for the Mozilla Foundation. And since its purpose is to take the preexisting Mozilla/Gecko codebase and simply add the Mac OS X-specific functionality, I can't see any logic in your answer: most of what makes up Camino is what you're already using in Firefox.
And since when do we denigrate open source software as "ghetto" if everyone on the project isn't paid (which is frankly the same as a lot of the work product that goes into Firefox)? How did this even get modded up? Have you ever even used Camino?
Isn't this what Camino is for? Like, the very reason for its existence?
I.e., taking the Mozilla/Gecko codebase, and making a lean, fast browser with Mac widgets, tight Mac OS X integration, Keychain support, and so on?
I understand the goal of trying to get more Mac-specific functionality into Firefox, but with a fundamentally cross-platform browser, inasmuch as it goes, it's been harder to integrate platform-specific features and functionality into Firefox proper. That's the reason Camino was born: to be a more agile project that is focused on making such a browser for Mac OS X using Mozilla/Gecko. For folks who don't need specific Firefox functionality or Firefox extensions, Camino is already the answer.
Uh, no one "had" anyone "switch DNS", as if it was some underhanded thing, and there definitely wasn't any "man-in-the-middle" anything to do with this at all.
SmartTech was the contractor that ran the web services for the elections web site, which only runs during and around elections, and if you ask the state of Ohio, it's no secret. The only place the elections web server ever existed was at SmartTech; it's not like the "real" one was run on another state web server and they hijacked DNS on election day.
The server is not in "RNC" IP space. RNC's IP space is also within the (large) block of addresses assigned to SmartTech. As an IT services company with Republican ties, this is hardly surprising.
It's not "linking" to anything, and you apparently don't understand what happened. And they didn't "link their elections" to anything.
They contracted with a web services company that specializes in this sort of thing to host the server that disseminates the election results. It doesn't make up the election results itself. The elections web site only exists during elections. Otherwise it points to the normal Secretary of State web site, which is hosted in Ohio Supercomputing Center IP space.
The firm that the Republican-controlled Secretary of State contracted with is a specialty firm that does this sort of thing, and itself has ties to the Republican party. Partisans control the process. Not just "Republicans". That's how it's always been, and how it always will be. But the process is a tad bit more complex than you seem to think.
And even if "Rove" (or anyone, for that matter) did see some early election result numbers from Ohio, what could he have done with them? Oh, that's right, you think that the Republicans were actually rigging the election, too, and having access to the results was part of that process. Oh boy.
I'm not saying that it doesn't scream "appearance of impropriety" to have a firm with strong Republican ties hosting the election results web server, in RNC IP space to boot (!). But you can probably go ask Ohio right now who they contracted with for this. It's not like it's a secret. External contractors are used for this thing all the time, and it's no surprise that a tech firm that specializes in everything related to electoral politics is hosting a web service that disseminates election results.
Partisans are involved in the process. As I said, the key is having enough oversight and enough people involved to keep everyone honest, and not let any one or a small number of people corrupt the process.
The "change" is because the elections web site is only in operation for elections. Its operation was contracted to SmartTech by the Ohio Secretary of State. There was no "hack". Partisans and partisan companies are involved in the elections and voting process. The key is having enough oversight to keep everyone honest.
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
The allegations of a silent right wing conspiracy in media is just as ridiculous as the "liberal media" assertions.
For every "editor" somewhere in the machinations of News Corp that has some political leaning, there are plenty of others in News Corp and other large news organizations elsewhere who have the opposite slant, constant rips on FOX News aside.
But if it makes you feel better to think Rupert Murdoch is at the help of an unstoppable right wing conservative mediaopoly bent on getting Republicans into office, by all means, don't stop to think that reality is much more complicated - and usually not quite as simple - as fantasy.
As as for powerful people influencing things? Welcome to the real world.
And "ultimately your recommended stories could be influenced by the likes and dislikes of your friends/heroes"?
All in the same paragraph as "MySpace"?
Hold the phone...where do I sign up?
After all, it worked marvelously for Digg!
And instead of taking contributions everyone - which works out famously on Digg, by the way - or instead of using intelligent algorithms to uniformly aggregate news from a wide variety of news outlets around the world, this instead filters down to the existing membership and intellectual level of MySpace?
What could go wrong?
...
More like "the collective whim of whatever quasi-viral story du jour interests MySpace users at the moment".
Yeah, I realize News Corp owns MySpace. But give me a break.
I didn't say it was 100% analogous; obviously it's not.
I'm aiming for a larger examination of what kind of infrastructure would have been required at VT to provide the kind of response people think they should have been able to, which necessarily would have included canceling classes and clearing the campus, and having a capability to inform people NOT near computers en masse. That means a lot more police, a lot more centralized cameras/monitoring/PA systems, extremely costly central locking and door control systems for hundreds of buildings and literally thousands of doors, a reactionary response whenever a possibility of a threat exists (there was NO REASON whatsoever to believe there was going to be another shooting - zero), etc. I do agree that if we're going to try to draw direct analogies, I'd agree that your point about the longer term gun control debate is a correct one.
This is not on-topic for this exact story, no, but it is spot-on for the larger issue of "school violence" and the kind of security environment we want to have in the nation at large.
And yes, I guess I do have an agenda: it's logical consistency of thought on issues like this. If there are people out there who think that this daylight savings story is ridiculous and the school went way overboard and acted without thinking, and ALSO are the same people who think that VT could have easily prevented this tragedy by doing X, Y, or Z, those views are diametrically opposed.
I want those people - which there are probably quite a few of here - who would instantly dismiss this school's reaction to a bomb threat as ridiculous and ignorant to understand that advocating for an environment where VT could have responded any differently (which would have required, for lack of a better phrase, a massive police-state like infrastructure on campus[1] and a very reactionary attitude to any possible threat) to understand that they also implicitly need to support just this type of behavior on the part of schools.
There might be a threat? Overreact.
Oh, I know, you and others will say it's not the same. It's intensely the same, and in fact, that line of thinking with VT is even worse. Throwing the wrong kid in jail for a few days is a small price to pay for safety, right? I mean, we have people thinking that what is essentially a 35000-person *city* should be able to be locked down in literally minutes when there *might* be a threat, especially before you have all the information. So not realizing the daytime savings difference came into play is just another one of those kinds of little oversights we'll get if we advocate an act-without-due-consideration mentality like so many of the SAME people want with VT. And yes, they are out there, en masse. If you're not one of them, congratulations. I'm not talking to you, then.
I am glad, though, that the thread/thought police seem to be out in full force on slashdot.
If there is anything I've learned on slashdot, it's that you need to preemptively argue against every possible ridiculous counter argument, or else the salient points get lost in a sea of followups and responses; attempting to include rebuttals to most of the (quite frankly, nonsense) replies, on for example, this topic, cannot be done briefly. The three blurbs of text I included in my initial post cover nearly all of the common issues people have with seeming to think that VT could have done something differently and had a largely different outcome; they're actually merely footnotes to my initial, actually "comment" on this story, and had I not included them, I guarantee there would have been dozens of followups raising objections as to why VT "could have" done something differently, that were instead covered in explanatory text I already had, which I did acknowledge were previous slashdot posts of mine.
It "adds to the debate" because it's relevant, and prevents a barrage of ridiculous objections that can be quashed by simply explaining why the objections are invalid in advance. I suppose I could have a disclaimer that everything below is a footnote, but I've found that if I just link to previous posts or other information, the vast majority of people who post followup comments are virtually guaranteed to not have read them. Thus, the decision to include them in the post. It's not a filibuster at all, as no one is required to read it and it does not delay anyone's capability to respond to this article or any other, or to participate in the discussion. If people DO choose to read it, hopefully they will either get something valuable out of it, or not post the asinine followup they were about to about how something could have been done "differently" (when it really couldn't have in any real or practical sense).
The larger point is that thinking VT should have done something "differently" necessarily implies the kind of reactionary knee-jerk security response - action without thinking - against possible school violence, that is exactly the subject of this story.
Yeah, uh, that's not how it works, or even should work, on a campus of this size. Oh, policies will be changed now to allow for a lot lower echelon people to have a technical mechanism to initiate a mass email to a distribution address for the entirety of the campus. (Hint: that is NOT how it works now. Like, at all. It's not just something like all-campus@vt.edu, and yeah, cue the responses saying "but they could just have their smtp server xyz do this and that and only accept from such and such and blah blah blah cuz I do that with my home Linux box and yammer yammer yammer"...that's not how these kinds of things are done. There is a bureaucratic and technical process that takes place when you initiate an email to 30000+ people, and it's not just a "To" address.)
And even if that email had gone out the second the first responding officer notified the dispatch center that there was indeed a shooting, what would have been different?
And canceling classes probably wasn't anything they had even considered, and even if they wanted to, they'd still have thousands of students who didn't know, and no practical way to clear and lock buildings (which would have been the only way to keep people out of classrooms). And even if they didn't do that, you'd still have thousands of people on campus milling around.
If people would just think about this for a few minutes, instead of imagining that an email could have magically been fired off at 7:20am and classes canceled on a 30000+ person research campus for a shooting in a dorm room, they'd realize there was nothing VT could have really done to prevent this.
And please, tell me what my "agenda" is. I'm dying to hear it.
(And no, I don't do it "all the goddamn time". It's probably 1 in 40 of my posts, if that, and only when I've *just written* something that is exactly what I want to say.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I should have said "no one in government or the state" thinks it's "terrorism". The only people who think anyone believes this to be "terrorism" are bloggers who don't understand that "terroristic threat" and "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat" are legally not the same thing. And, at this point, no one thinks it's anything at all, since the police investigated it (correctly following up on a complaint of a threat), and found there to be no threat.
So yeah, when I said "no one thinks it is", I meant "no one who actually has the power to charge him with a crime", not bloggers who want to ride it as another example of how the "post 9/11 war on terror world" has gone so horribly wrong, when it's utterly unrelated.
Well, I must be some kind of psychic then, because I've never met him and yet I was somehow convinced that he wasn't planning to murder people when I saw that comic.
.22 to kill them. A coworker, who most likely didn't know him, or know him well since he's a contractor, reported this incident to their supervisor.
.22 to kill them, which was a gun he just bought, was interpreted by someone who probably didn't know him to be a threat. Which she reported. While it would be great if the employer could parse through things and say, hey, we realize you were joking, it's possible his employer didn't know him that well either, since he was a contract employee. And frankly, they can release a contractor at any time regardless, so that point is moot.
*Sigh*.
Ok, I'll explain this to you.
Without respect to his comic at all, someone at his place of work overheard him talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a
He was released from his contract position (which the employer has every right to do) for the incident.
If you can't understand that was a stupid or at least marginally unwise thing for him to do, then I don't know what to say. Of course it sucks that he got "fired"/released from his contract position for it, but then, this is why we say that actions have consequences.
At this point, the comic isn't involved. At all.
Are you serious? The "presumed an insane killer until proven otherwise" attitude from his employers and the local police isn't enough to get in a huff about?
Uh, I couldn't possibly care less about his employer. They acted correctly, given the complaint and the situation. You just simply don't say something like that unless you know everyone around you knows you're joking.
Remember, the web comic still has not come into play yet.
AFTER he was fired, he humorously recounted it in his comic, which someone at some point must have seen, and in which he made what someone determined to be a threat, even if it was 100% in jest and humor. The police followed up on said complaint, which it is their JOB to do - no "guilty until proven innocent" yet - and then determined there was no actual threat (which again, is their job).
Words and actions have meaning, and consequences. Yes, there is all sorts of nuance, but we can't have this "have it both ways" collective mentality we do where we think "gee, maybe we could have stopped the Virginia Tech shootings" but then allow people to make what can be interpreted by some to be verbal or written threats. Yes, I get the comic. Haha, funny, etc. But his phone conversation about shooting someone in the face multiple times with a
This is a non-story, and yes I'm serious. But people started confusing "terroristic threat" with "terrorism", so I'm sure this will have a nice, long life on many a blog.
Uh, it doesn't have anything to do with grammar. "Terroristic threat" is a very old and specific legal concept, and when someone is suspected of issuing a "terroristic threat", it doesn't mean someone thinks they're a "terrorist" or planning anything related with "terrorism", as we talk about those in the modern vernacular. They are unrelated concepts. It's actually unfortunate that "terroristic threat" was codified in many jurisdictions with those words in particular, because whenever anyone is suspected of committing such a threat, it always gets misinterpreted as someone thinking it is "terrorism", which no one does (except the people who blog about it).
And yes, these obviously all root from the same words, but when we say "terroristic threat", those are the exact words that define a behavior where someone is, or is suspected of, threatening another person with violence, calling in a bomb threat, etc. It is NOT what we think of as "terrorism" (e.g., a suicide bombing, 9/11, etc.), and no one thinks it is.
Huh?
He didn't "get" anything. If you mean probation with respect to his work, that's between him and his employer. It most absolutely is not the government's role in a situation like this to mandate that he keep a contract job that he can be removed from, legally, at any time.
A "terroristic threat" has zero to do with political change.
Did you even read my post? Or maybe do a little research?
"Terroristic threat" doesn't really have anything to do with "terrorism" or "terrorist threats" as we talk about them. Yes, they're very similar words, but from a legal standpoint, "terroristic threat", which is codified in many states, doesn't have anything to do with the modern usage of "terrorism". When someone makes a threat against another person, or calls in a bomb threat, or threatens to perform an act of violence, etc., that is, in many jurisdictions, a "terroristic threat", and has been classified as such for a long, long time.
"Terroristic threat" != "terrorism" or "terrorist threat"
.22. Someone who probably doesn't know him personally at all (or at least well) overheard this and reported it. On the day of the biggest mass shooting in the US to boot (which was admittedly why he was even talking about it in the first place).
It's not the "US" that's fearful. Someone overheard him talking about how many times you'd need to shoot someone in the face to kill them with a
Then he got released from a position that he can, as a contractor, be released from at any time, for any reason.
Then he humorously recounted his "firing" the next day in his comic, which someone felt threatened by, and which they reported to the police. It is, in turn, the police's job to follow up on such a complaint, which they did, and after which he himself said the detectives determined that he wasn't actually a threat, and viewed samples of his work.
And yeah, there were a bunch of things that coalesced to make this happen, but all that means is that actions have consequences, and no matter how unfair you might think they are sometimes, it doesn't make it any less true. The government didn't do anything to him, he is not charged with any crime, and no one "censored" him (as is especially evidenced by the fact that the comics are exactly where they've always been: still up on the web).
Come back down to reality, here. Whenever there's a school or workplace shooting, everyone always rants about the "warning signs" and "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?" (and NO, no one will necessarily know that he's joking, especially if they don't know him personally - that's stupid to talk about in a setting like work at all, much less one where you don't know everyone around you personally).
1. The government didn't do anything to him.
.22 to kill them, probably within earshot of someone who doesn't know him personally, on the day of the nation's worst mass shooting no less.
2. He was released from a contract position that he can be released from at any time for talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a
3. The police followed up after receiving a complaint when he recounted his firing in his comic implying that he now would have a reason to "go postal" (even if it was 100% a joke), which is their job, and determined that there was no threat, which he himself says in the interview.
4. Get a life.
Unless you know everyone around you, this probably isn't an appropriate conversation for the workplace, which Boyd says is a verbatim transcript of what got him fired^H^H^H^H^Hreleased from a contract position that he can be released from at any time.
.22 to kill them, and then makes light of it to the point where someone got scared again. Do you think the police are monitoring his comic? Someone obviously complained, and it's the police's job to follow up, who then determined he's not actually a threat, according to his own description of the meeting with the detectives.
And this, even if joking, is probably not, all things considered, the wisest response. Only he, or people who know him well, knows he's not serious, frankly. Yeah, it's funny. But he already got fired for talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a
Can we find something else to get all in a huff about? I'm sure there's another story we can run about how the 2004 election was stolen.
The term "terroristic threat" has been around a long time, and has nothing to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat", as it is used in the vernacular.
The term and legal notion of "terroristic threat" has been around for a long time, and has nothing to do with the "war on terror", 9/11, the Bush administration, or censorship.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Even Boyd himself in his interview correctly notes that "a terroristic threat is an old legal concept".
He is also not charged with any crime (though technically he could be), but that's always true. He says the "detectives at least seem satisfied" that he was "harmless", and showed samples of his work to one of the detectives.
It would be better to read his interview, instead of believing someone thinks this has anything to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat" (no one does; remember, "terroristic threat is a legal concept that has been around a long time).
Actually, I take that back. There are people painting this as allegedly being thought of as "terrorism". It's people who want to get all indignant about it.
By the way: anyone who thinks Virginia Tech could have "prevented" this shooting somehow, this is exactly what you get.
Probably why I said:
For folks who don't need specific Firefox functionality or Firefox extensions, Camino is already the answer.
I understand that for many, the lack of Firefox extensions is a killer. But, for other groups of people, it's not.
Uh, Camino is not ghetto. Many people who work on it are the same people who also work on Firefox. The lead Camino developers already work for the Mozilla Foundation. And since its purpose is to take the preexisting Mozilla/Gecko codebase and simply add the Mac OS X-specific functionality, I can't see any logic in your answer: most of what makes up Camino is what you're already using in Firefox.
And since when do we denigrate open source software as "ghetto" if everyone on the project isn't paid (which is frankly the same as a lot of the work product that goes into Firefox)? How did this even get modded up? Have you ever even used Camino?
Isn't this what Camino is for? Like, the very reason for its existence?
I.e., taking the Mozilla/Gecko codebase, and making a lean, fast browser with Mac widgets, tight Mac OS X integration, Keychain support, and so on?
I understand the goal of trying to get more Mac-specific functionality into Firefox, but with a fundamentally cross-platform browser, inasmuch as it goes, it's been harder to integrate platform-specific features and functionality into Firefox proper. That's the reason Camino was born: to be a more agile project that is focused on making such a browser for Mac OS X using Mozilla/Gecko. For folks who don't need specific Firefox functionality or Firefox extensions, Camino is already the answer.
Uh, no one "had" anyone "switch DNS", as if it was some underhanded thing, and there definitely wasn't any "man-in-the-middle" anything to do with this at all.
SmartTech was the contractor that ran the web services for the elections web site, which only runs during and around elections, and if you ask the state of Ohio, it's no secret. The only place the elections web server ever existed was at SmartTech; it's not like the "real" one was run on another state web server and they hijacked DNS on election day.
Sheesh.
I can see why your story wasn't accepted.
The server is not in "RNC" IP space. RNC's IP space is also within the (large) block of addresses assigned to SmartTech. As an IT services company with Republican ties, this is hardly surprising.
It's not "linking" to anything, and you apparently don't understand what happened. And they didn't "link their elections" to anything.
They contracted with a web services company that specializes in this sort of thing to host the server that disseminates the election results. It doesn't make up the election results itself. The elections web site only exists during elections. Otherwise it points to the normal Secretary of State web site, which is hosted in Ohio Supercomputing Center IP space.
The firm that the Republican-controlled Secretary of State contracted with is a specialty firm that does this sort of thing, and itself has ties to the Republican party. Partisans control the process. Not just "Republicans". That's how it's always been, and how it always will be. But the process is a tad bit more complex than you seem to think.
And even if "Rove" (or anyone, for that matter) did see some early election result numbers from Ohio, what could he have done with them? Oh, that's right, you think that the Republicans were actually rigging the election, too, and having access to the results was part of that process. Oh boy.
I'm not saying that it doesn't scream "appearance of impropriety" to have a firm with strong Republican ties hosting the election results web server, in RNC IP space to boot (!). But you can probably go ask Ohio right now who they contracted with for this. It's not like it's a secret. External contractors are used for this thing all the time, and it's no surprise that a tech firm that specializes in everything related to electoral politics is hosting a web service that disseminates election results.
Partisans are involved in the process. As I said, the key is having enough oversight and enough people involved to keep everyone honest, and not let any one or a small number of people corrupt the process.
The "change" is because the elections web site is only in operation for elections. Its operation was contracted to SmartTech by the Ohio Secretary of State. There was no "hack". Partisans and partisan companies are involved in the elections and voting process. The key is having enough oversight to keep everyone honest.
Your own submission answers your question.
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
Call me a conspiracy theorist
Done and done.
And that's not "ignoring a nagging issue".
The allegations of a silent right wing conspiracy in media is just as ridiculous as the "liberal media" assertions.
For every "editor" somewhere in the machinations of News Corp that has some political leaning, there are plenty of others in News Corp and other large news organizations elsewhere who have the opposite slant, constant rips on FOX News aside.
But if it makes you feel better to think Rupert Murdoch is at the help of an unstoppable right wing conservative mediaopoly bent on getting Republicans into office, by all means, don't stop to think that reality is much more complicated - and usually not quite as simple - as fantasy.
As as for powerful people influencing things? Welcome to the real world.
And "ultimately your recommended stories could be influenced by the likes and dislikes of your friends/heroes"?
All in the same paragraph as "MySpace"?
Hold the phone... where do I sign up?
After all, it worked marvelously for Digg!
And instead of taking contributions everyone - which works out famously on Digg, by the way - or instead of using intelligent algorithms to uniformly aggregate news from a wide variety of news outlets around the world, this instead filters down to the existing membership and intellectual level of MySpace?
What could go wrong?
...
More like "the collective whim of whatever quasi-viral story du jour interests MySpace users at the moment".
Yeah, I realize News Corp owns MySpace. But give me a break.
I didn't say it was 100% analogous; obviously it's not.
I'm aiming for a larger examination of what kind of infrastructure would have been required at VT to provide the kind of response people think they should have been able to, which necessarily would have included canceling classes and clearing the campus, and having a capability to inform people NOT near computers en masse. That means a lot more police, a lot more centralized cameras/monitoring/PA systems, extremely costly central locking and door control systems for hundreds of buildings and literally thousands of doors, a reactionary response whenever a possibility of a threat exists (there was NO REASON whatsoever to believe there was going to be another shooting - zero), etc. I do agree that if we're going to try to draw direct analogies, I'd agree that your point about the longer term gun control debate is a correct one.
Yeah. And I posted there.
This is not on-topic for this exact story, no, but it is spot-on for the larger issue of "school violence" and the kind of security environment we want to have in the nation at large.
And yes, I guess I do have an agenda: it's logical consistency of thought on issues like this. If there are people out there who think that this daylight savings story is ridiculous and the school went way overboard and acted without thinking, and ALSO are the same people who think that VT could have easily prevented this tragedy by doing X, Y, or Z, those views are diametrically opposed.
I want those people - which there are probably quite a few of here - who would instantly dismiss this school's reaction to a bomb threat as ridiculous and ignorant to understand that advocating for an environment where VT could have responded any differently (which would have required, for lack of a better phrase, a massive police-state like infrastructure on campus[1] and a very reactionary attitude to any possible threat) to understand that they also implicitly need to support just this type of behavior on the part of schools.
There might be a threat? Overreact.
Oh, I know, you and others will say it's not the same. It's intensely the same, and in fact, that line of thinking with VT is even worse. Throwing the wrong kid in jail for a few days is a small price to pay for safety, right? I mean, we have people thinking that what is essentially a 35000-person *city* should be able to be locked down in literally minutes when there *might* be a threat, especially before you have all the information. So not realizing the daytime savings difference came into play is just another one of those kinds of little oversights we'll get if we advocate an act-without-due-consideration mentality like so many of the SAME people want with VT. And yes, they are out there, en masse. If you're not one of them, congratulations. I'm not talking to you, then.
I am glad, though, that the thread/thought police seem to be out in full force on slashdot.
If there is anything I've learned on slashdot, it's that you need to preemptively argue against every possible ridiculous counter argument, or else the salient points get lost in a sea of followups and responses; attempting to include rebuttals to most of the (quite frankly, nonsense) replies, on for example, this topic, cannot be done briefly. The three blurbs of text I included in my initial post cover nearly all of the common issues people have with seeming to think that VT could have done something differently and had a largely different outcome; they're actually merely footnotes to my initial, actually "comment" on this story, and had I not included them, I guarantee there would have been dozens of followups raising objections as to why VT "could have" done something differently, that were instead covered in explanatory text I already had, which I did acknowledge were previous slashdot posts of mine.
It "adds to the debate" because it's relevant, and prevents a barrage of ridiculous objections that can be quashed by simply explaining why the objections are invalid in advance. I suppose I could have a disclaimer that everything below is a footnote, but I've found that if I just link to previous posts or other information, the vast majority of people who post followup comments are virtually guaranteed to not have read them. Thus, the decision to include them in the post. It's not a filibuster at all, as no one is required to read it and it does not delay anyone's capability to respond to this article or any other, or to participate in the discussion. If people DO choose to read it, hopefully they will either get something valuable out of it, or not post the asinine followup they were about to about how something could have been done "differently" (when it really couldn't have in any real or practical sense).
The larger point is that thinking VT should have done something "differently" necessarily implies the kind of reactionary knee-jerk security response - action without thinking - against possible school violence, that is exactly the subject of this story.
Hopefully this clears things up.
LOL!
Yeah, uh, that's not how it works, or even should work, on a campus of this size. Oh, policies will be changed now to allow for a lot lower echelon people to have a technical mechanism to initiate a mass email to a distribution address for the entirety of the campus. (Hint: that is NOT how it works now. Like, at all. It's not just something like all-campus@vt.edu, and yeah, cue the responses saying "but they could just have their smtp server xyz do this and that and only accept from such and such and blah blah blah cuz I do that with my home Linux box and yammer yammer yammer"...that's not how these kinds of things are done. There is a bureaucratic and technical process that takes place when you initiate an email to 30000+ people, and it's not just a "To" address.)
And even if that email had gone out the second the first responding officer notified the dispatch center that there was indeed a shooting, what would have been different?
Yes, I understand that, but I don't know what would have happened differently.
I just followed up on your points in another post here.
I simply don't know how even an earlier notification would have led to any different outcome at all, or whether a much "earlier" notification was really even possible or practical.
And canceling classes probably wasn't anything they had even considered, and even if they wanted to, they'd still have thousands of students who didn't know, and no practical way to clear and lock buildings (which would have been the only way to keep people out of classrooms). And even if they didn't do that, you'd still have thousands of people on campus milling around.
If people would just think about this for a few minutes, instead of imagining that an email could have magically been fired off at 7:20am and classes canceled on a 30000+ person research campus for a shooting in a dorm room, they'd realize there was nothing VT could have really done to prevent this.
Those are my words.
And please, tell me what my "agenda" is. I'm dying to hear it.
(And no, I don't do it "all the goddamn time". It's probably 1 in 40 of my posts, if that, and only when I've *just written* something that is exactly what I want to say.)