Don't forget the way they used jackbooted thugs to buy McMansions we couldn't possibly afford, and then callously neglected to invalidate the contracts we signed regarding variable rates...oh, wait, Congress is taking care of that last part.
I dunno - having John Dingell investigate someone for government fraud is like Typhoid Mary accusing someone of not covering their mouth when they sneeze.
"release a nanomachine (admittedly different from a nanomaterial) that eats a particular kind of plastic. You want to be around when that problem gets out of control?"
"Not so much the 'trying to cover up his actions' stuff, more the expectation that the reasons he put forward for his actions were in some way plausible. He didn't come across as someone who had a sound grasp on reality."
There is a difference between mentally ill and having a grip on reality. The subprime mortgage mess in the US shows that there are whole large swathes of the population with irrational expectations and wildly overestimated personal capabilities - that doesn't mean there are million of candidates for therapy.
"do you think that makes him an evil person?"
No, actually I don't; I think very few people actually qualify as evil. But note that I said "bad or evil".
"Do you think a few years in prison is going to change him for the better, or do you think the idea is for him to 'pay for' his crime?"
There are 4 theories of punishment: retribution, rehabilitation, removal, and deterrence. I do not subscribe to the the theory of rehabilitation; pick any of the other three, and that will do.
"I used to have an attitude like that, but by definition anyone who behaves that way is obviously mentally ill, and probably a jail term is only going to make things worse for him. I'm not sure there is alternative though..."
Bullshit. WHAT definition? The one that says "People can't simply be bad, or evil; there must be something wrong with them that is out of their control, because no REASONABLE person would kill/rape/rob/whatever".
Read "A Clockwork Orange" - it's fiction, but far more real than some of the theories spouted to excuse the behavior of criminals.
"Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce!"
Yeah, because bitter divorces overwhelmingly lead to murder.
Wait...they don't? The vast majority of people involved in bitter divorces simply go on with their lives with some varying degree of contact with their ex spouse? That's impossible! That would mean that Hans Reiser is simply a murderer! That just can't be!
"Wrongful death or similar are all that's probably likely to result. Sorry, but that's how it is - otherwise, you'd be liable if you insulted someone and then they had a heart attack because they got red in the face."
Not necessarily. If I knew that that person had a heart condition, and I set out purposefully to give that person a heart attack, that is clearly homicide, and likely murder.
The defendant in this case clearly wished to do her victim harm, and (iirc), knew that she had attempted suicide before. Her actions were clearly an attempt to cause harm to her victim, and just because the medium was a computer doesn't make it any less than a crime.
As for my bias, I believe the facts of the situation bear out my assessment of her worth as a person. It's not like there is any controversy over what she did; only whether it was illegal. A *grown woman*, of sound mind, hid her identity in order to emotionally manipulate and then abandon a thirteen year old girl for the purpose of revenge against a perceived slight against her own daughter. She is, at least, a bitch.
Well, let's see...the statute involved basically punishes people who use a computer system under false pretenses to do something they shouldn't be doing and that the computer system owner doesn't want them doing.
Lori Drew used the Myspace computer system with a false identity for the sole purpose of causing grievous harm to a girl, and Myspace very specifically doesn't want stuff like that to happen.
The point about fake names is a red herring - fake names are perfectly legal, AS LONG AS they are NOT being used to defraud or commit a crime. But that is EXACTLY what Lori Drew did - she used a fake name to deceive a girl about her identity, for the purpose of harming her, and used the Myspace computers to do it.
Sounds like a perfectly legal and sane use of the law, flamebait headline aside. She should consider herself lucky it is the government going after her - maybe the family of her victim will decide that is enough and not pursue an extra judicial death sentence. (Not that the bitch doesn't deserve it).
"This case belongs in civil court, not criminal. Let the dead girl's parents sue Lori Drew, prove their case, if possible, and collect monetary damages."
Oh, it's going to wind up in criminal court one way or another - either the bitch gets charged for what she did, or one of the girl's relatives will get charged for killing the bitch.
I had the opposite experience, to my benefit. I went to a Catholic HS which was very traditional, and the highest level math class was "Elementary Mathematical Analysis", which was heavy trig with some differentials near the end. No calculators allowed except for particular items. Mightily we bitched, not being able to take "Pre-Calc", but the nun said "Trust me - this will better prepare you for what you will face in college calculus". So we learned what all the trig functions meant from the most basic level: First day "This is a circle".
Fast forward 1 year, and I get to Lehigh for engineering and am in Calc 21. First third of the course is...analytical trig, and the test started with "Put away your calculators; if you know what you are doing you should not need them." Followed by wails of protest, and a few smiles from me and some fellow classmates.
Similar was 7th and 8th grade math - we memorized decimal equivalents of ever fraction from 1/2 to 1/12, and selected ones up to 1/32. We hated it at the time, but I probably use those more than any other bit of grade school math.
The ACLU is widely seen by conservatives as a thinly veiled political organization with far left/communist leanings. The fact that they have not changed their stance on the Second Amendment after the Heller decision is seen as final confirmation of this: their policy has been to defend individual rights, not collective rights, therefor they didn't see it as their purview to defend the Second Amendment. Now that the Supreme Court has stated that the Second describes an individual right, the ACLU's response has been "The Supreme court is wrong, it's still a collective right, and we won't pursue any gun cases".
As for the less conservative and/or less politically aware, the ACLU has defended some astoundingly distasteful people and organizations - NAMBLA, Neo Nazis, Westboro Baptist. They also take the most extreme interpretation of any given right; for instance, Spam is free speech, and prisoners should have the right to solicit for "penpals and jobs" (read "pussy and drug couriers) online. Their logic is that they need to defend the most extreme so that the more mundane rights will be secure; while this has a certain logic, when combined with the fact that they routinely refuse to take cases that aren't "important enough" leads to charges that they are simply grandstanding and glory hounds.
Personal opinion? The national ACLU is filled with political whores who are into it only to get their names in the news and bring down "the man". My understanding is that the local units are much more in touch with real life issues, but are quite underfunded and their mission gets undercut by the national organizations stunts.
I'm reminded of the last company I worked for, where the Kiss of Death was the QA Manager on a project. Ostensibly a real, *mandated* position of Govt. construction projects, it turned into a holding position for the incompetent, malcontents, and out of favor. The phrase "we're slotting you into the QA manager's slot on the XYZ job" is universally interpreted to mean "You have until the project ends to find a new job, or convince someone in another division to take you".
I got copied on the letter to the Navy giving formal notice of the change in management moving me to QAM and the VP's bootlicker to PM. I handed in my notice the next day - I had been given a heads-up long before. I even signed my own pink slip.
"I'd say there's an important difference in there. If person A wants to take a part of their personal life and make it public, that's up to them. The problem is when person A wants to keep something private and entity B decides that person A doesn't have a say in the matter."
I think what the GP had in mind were not those people who are concerned about vountary vs. involuntary exposure, but the situation where a person wants their information to be concealed from only SOME people - eg. getting upset at employers who read Facebook profiles. Folks now have wider circles of people they are comfortable sharing privledged information with, but still don't want that information known by specific others. So where once a "secret" was information shared by a small number of trusted people, now we have information that is to be HIDDEN from a small number of UNTRUSTED people. This is a patent impossibility, but still people expect to be able to do it.
My wife is a substitute teacher, and got a Facebook profile and added her nieces and nephews as friends. And now she knows to within a few days the exact time that one of them lost her virginity. How on EARTH she expected to keep that information from her family, while simultaneously allowing access to everyone who wanted to be her "friend" is beyond me, but I do know that she wanted it kept secret - her profile page was sanitized shortly after my wife joined.
Hey, here's a simple policy - just don't give out personal info on yourself unless you are sure it's required.
I made a doctor's appointment today, and the receptionist was taking my info - name, address, etc. Then she said "Social Security Number?" I simply said "I'd rather not give that out over the phone." She didn't skip a beat, and went to the next question.
Why didn't I give it to her? Because I'm not really sure she needed it to set up the appointment, and I'm trying to get into the habit of limiting my info output. Same with "Zip Code?" when I check out at a hardware store. If I cultivate the habit with triial things, it will be second nature when it REALLY matters.
The question isn't "should parents do this" - they will. The real dilemna will come when children with genetic problems start suing there obstetricians - or parents - for "wrongful birth" or "wrongful life".
"Dr. Whatisface was negligent in not compelling Mr. And Mrs. Doofus to take a genetic test prior to young Jimmy Doofus being born; Jimmy is under the average height for a male, which is obviously a genetic defect, and therefore the embryonic Jimmy should never have been implanted and brought to term. We therefor ask the court to find for the plaintiff and compell the defendant to support poor, short Jimmy for the rest of his life."
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget the way they used jackbooted thugs to buy McMansions we couldn't possibly afford, and then callously neglected to invalidate the contracts we signed regarding variable rates...oh, wait, Congress is taking care of that last part.
I dunno - having John Dingell investigate someone for government fraud is like Typhoid Mary accusing someone of not covering their mouth when they sneeze.
"None more bottom."
Hey, bitch - buy your daughter a damned dictionary and have her look up the meaning of the word "publish".
Then you look up the word "parent" and do your fucking job (hint - it doesn't involve suing a third party when your spawn does something stupid).
"release a nanomachine (admittedly different from a nanomaterial) that eats a particular kind of plastic. You want to be around when that problem gets out of control?"
If it's engineered to eat pleather, then yes.
Naked Hot Vegan Chicks FTW!
"I suspect win 3.11 is licensed for POS devices "
I believe that it is the installation of Win 3.11 itself that transforms a device into a piece of shit.
"Not so much the 'trying to cover up his actions' stuff, more the expectation that the reasons he put forward for his actions were in some way plausible. He didn't come across as someone who had a sound grasp on reality."
There is a difference between mentally ill and having a grip on reality. The subprime mortgage mess in the US shows that there are whole large swathes of the population with irrational expectations and wildly overestimated personal capabilities - that doesn't mean there are million of candidates for therapy.
"do you think that makes him an evil person?"
No, actually I don't; I think very few people actually qualify as evil. But note that I said "bad or evil".
"Do you think a few years in prison is going to change him for the better, or do you think the idea is for him to 'pay for' his crime?"
There are 4 theories of punishment: retribution, rehabilitation, removal, and deterrence. I do not subscribe to the the theory of rehabilitation; pick any of the other three, and that will do.
"I used to have an attitude like that, but by definition anyone who behaves that way is obviously mentally ill, and probably a jail term is only going to make things worse for him. I'm not sure there is alternative though..."
Bullshit. WHAT definition? The one that says "People can't simply be bad, or evil; there must be something wrong with them that is out of their control, because no REASONABLE person would kill/rape/rob/whatever".
Read "A Clockwork Orange" - it's fiction, but far more real than some of the theories spouted to excuse the behavior of criminals.
"Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce!"
Yeah, because bitter divorces overwhelmingly lead to murder.
Wait...they don't? The vast majority of people involved in bitter divorces simply go on with their lives with some varying degree of contact with their ex spouse? That's impossible! That would mean that Hans Reiser is simply a murderer! That just can't be!
"Wrongful death or similar are all that's probably likely to result. Sorry, but that's how it is - otherwise, you'd be liable if you insulted someone and then they had a heart attack because they got red in the face."
Not necessarily. If I knew that that person had a heart condition, and I set out purposefully to give that person a heart attack, that is clearly homicide, and likely murder.
The defendant in this case clearly wished to do her victim harm, and (iirc), knew that she had attempted suicide before. Her actions were clearly an attempt to cause harm to her victim, and just because the medium was a computer doesn't make it any less than a crime.
As for my bias, I believe the facts of the situation bear out my assessment of her worth as a person. It's not like there is any controversy over what she did; only whether it was illegal. A *grown woman*, of sound mind, hid her identity in order to emotionally manipulate and then abandon a thirteen year old girl for the purpose of revenge against a perceived slight against her own daughter. She is, at least, a bitch.
Well, let's see...the statute involved basically punishes people who use a computer system under false pretenses to do something they shouldn't be doing and that the computer system owner doesn't want them doing.
Lori Drew used the Myspace computer system with a false identity for the sole purpose of causing grievous harm to a girl, and Myspace very specifically doesn't want stuff like that to happen.
The point about fake names is a red herring - fake names are perfectly legal, AS LONG AS they are NOT being used to defraud or commit a crime. But that is EXACTLY what Lori Drew did - she used a fake name to deceive a girl about her identity, for the purpose of harming her, and used the Myspace computers to do it.
Sounds like a perfectly legal and sane use of the law, flamebait headline aside. She should consider herself lucky it is the government going after her - maybe the family of her victim will decide that is enough and not pursue an extra judicial death sentence. (Not that the bitch doesn't deserve it).
"This case belongs in civil court, not criminal. Let the dead girl's parents sue Lori Drew, prove their case, if possible, and collect monetary damages."
Oh, it's going to wind up in criminal court one way or another - either the bitch gets charged for what she did, or one of the girl's relatives will get charged for killing the bitch.
I had the opposite experience, to my benefit. I went to a Catholic HS which was very traditional, and the highest level math class was "Elementary Mathematical Analysis", which was heavy trig with some differentials near the end. No calculators allowed except for particular items. Mightily we bitched, not being able to take "Pre-Calc", but the nun said "Trust me - this will better prepare you for what you will face in college calculus". So we learned what all the trig functions meant from the most basic level: First day "This is a circle".
Fast forward 1 year, and I get to Lehigh for engineering and am in Calc 21. First third of the course is...analytical trig, and the test started with "Put away your calculators; if you know what you are doing you should not need them." Followed by wails of protest, and a few smiles from me and some fellow classmates.
Similar was 7th and 8th grade math - we memorized decimal equivalents of ever fraction from 1/2 to 1/12, and selected ones up to 1/32. We hated it at the time, but I probably use those more than any other bit of grade school math.
The ACLU is widely seen by conservatives as a thinly veiled political organization with far left/communist leanings. The fact that they have not changed their stance on the Second Amendment after the Heller decision is seen as final confirmation of this: their policy has been to defend individual rights, not collective rights, therefor they didn't see it as their purview to defend the Second Amendment. Now that the Supreme Court has stated that the Second describes an individual right, the ACLU's response has been "The Supreme court is wrong, it's still a collective right, and we won't pursue any gun cases".
As for the less conservative and/or less politically aware, the ACLU has defended some astoundingly distasteful people and organizations - NAMBLA, Neo Nazis, Westboro Baptist. They also take the most extreme interpretation of any given right; for instance, Spam is free speech, and prisoners should have the right to solicit for "penpals and jobs" (read "pussy and drug couriers) online. Their logic is that they need to defend the most extreme so that the more mundane rights will be secure; while this has a certain logic, when combined with the fact that they routinely refuse to take cases that aren't "important enough" leads to charges that they are simply grandstanding and glory hounds.
Personal opinion? The national ACLU is filled with political whores who are into it only to get their names in the news and bring down "the man". My understanding is that the local units are much more in touch with real life issues, but are quite underfunded and their mission gets undercut by the national organizations stunts.
There's a guy at work that still has his set to 60Hz; I can't look at it for more than 5 seconds but he swears he can't see any flicker.
Green on black, 80 columns.
Now get off my lawn!
"I just hope it's as exhaustive as their investigation into the Valerie Plame leak "
You mean how they found the source of the leak (Richard Armitage), but didn't prosecute him?
"I always thought it was Career Is Over ..."
I'm reminded of the last company I worked for, where the Kiss of Death was the QA Manager on a project. Ostensibly a real, *mandated* position of Govt. construction projects, it turned into a holding position for the incompetent, malcontents, and out of favor. The phrase "we're slotting you into the QA manager's slot on the XYZ job" is universally interpreted to mean "You have until the project ends to find a new job, or convince someone in another division to take you".
I got copied on the letter to the Navy giving formal notice of the change in management moving me to QAM and the VP's bootlicker to PM. I handed in my notice the next day - I had been given a heads-up long before. I even signed my own pink slip.
"I'd say there's an important difference in there. If person A wants to take a part of their personal life and make it public, that's up to them. The problem is when person A wants to keep something private and entity B decides that person A doesn't have a say in the matter."
I think what the GP had in mind were not those people who are concerned about vountary vs. involuntary exposure, but the situation where a person wants their information to be concealed from only SOME people - eg. getting upset at employers who read Facebook profiles. Folks now have wider circles of people they are comfortable sharing privledged information with, but still don't want that information known by specific others. So where once a "secret" was information shared by a small number of trusted people, now we have information that is to be HIDDEN from a small number of UNTRUSTED people. This is a patent impossibility, but still people expect to be able to do it.
My wife is a substitute teacher, and got a Facebook profile and added her nieces and nephews as friends. And now she knows to within a few days the exact time that one of them lost her virginity. How on EARTH she expected to keep that information from her family, while simultaneously allowing access to everyone who wanted to be her "friend" is beyond me, but I do know that she wanted it kept secret - her profile page was sanitized shortly after my wife joined.
Hey, here's a simple policy - just don't give out personal info on yourself unless you are sure it's required.
I made a doctor's appointment today, and the receptionist was taking my info - name, address, etc. Then she said "Social Security Number?" I simply said "I'd rather not give that out over the phone." She didn't skip a beat, and went to the next question.
Why didn't I give it to her? Because I'm not really sure she needed it to set up the appointment, and I'm trying to get into the habit of limiting my info output. Same with "Zip Code?" when I check out at a hardware store. If I cultivate the habit with triial things, it will be second nature when it REALLY matters.
I hope.
Nobody gives a rats ass about where you are when you tell the world what you are doing...Unless it's hilariously unintentional.
"JUST BANGED A HAWT GURL BEHIND THE CLUB!!!!!"
Location: Mom's basement
"If you lied on your profile, should we trust you?"
"Why were you looking at all?"
If you are having this conversation with HR, that means that
1) you are already employed
2) you are soon not to be employed
Don't bother with the defensive crap - it's too late.
The question isn't "should parents do this" - they will. The real dilemna will come when children with genetic problems start suing there obstetricians - or parents - for "wrongful birth" or "wrongful life".
"Dr. Whatisface was negligent in not compelling Mr. And Mrs. Doofus to take a genetic test prior to young Jimmy Doofus being born; Jimmy is under the average height for a male, which is obviously a genetic defect, and therefore the embryonic Jimmy should never have been implanted and brought to term. We therefor ask the court to find for the plaintiff and compell the defendant to support poor, short Jimmy for the rest of his life."
"Internet Bubble Economic Theory found Fallacious, News at 11:00"
That storm was obviously caused by Global Warming, and therefore was the fault of the US.