Among other things, it says that traffic fine quotas are explicitly forbidden in most jurisdictions (USA)
Which jives perfectly with what I've always heard and assumed, so I have no reason to believe it is not true. At the same time, you don't need to have a quota in order to have a quota, if you know what I'm saying.
We tend to object to quotas because we find them sinister. "I'm going to get a ticket for a bullshit reason because some cop needs to meet his quota!" There is certainly that angle, but spin it on its head and you have a valid reason for some sort of quota: Performance evaluation.
Of course being a good police officer is not mostly or even largely based on how many tickets you write, but really, the police have three jobs: Patrol and write tickets, answer calls and show up in court to defend what you've done while writing tickets and answering calls. If you don't show up to calls it's going to be noticed extremely fast, and you're going to be out on your ass. If everything you do is constantly being thrown out because you don't bother to show up in court, that's going to be noticed too. So we can safely assume that most cops, in the vast majority of circumstances, are doing #2 and #3.
So which cops are doing a really fine job and which are wasting time? The only measure is the number of tickets they're writing. Police officers are extremely independent; most of the time they're in a patrol car alone and there is going to be a fair bit of time on any given day where there simply are no calls to answer, especially in smaller jurisdictions. Which ones are actually patrolling, looking for problems versus standing around chatting with their clerk buddy at the gas station or taking a nap or screwing around on their personal laptops? A lot of people won't care what a cop is doing if he's showing up to all his calls, but a lot of them also will. Especially insofar as police presence can help deter crime even without explicit success in the form of arrests.
So no, there's probably no "quota." They probably don't have to write at least X many tickets in an evaluation period. But you can be pretty sure somebody is looking at it, and not necessarily for nefarious purposes -- and you can also be pretty sure that the guys out on the street don't want their number to be considered "low," either numerically or comparatively.
I don't see your point. People got caught having pools that they didn't get permits to build (or aren't allowed to have) and got a fine, and they should be angry at Google for it?
It sounds kind of like being mad at a red light camera for catching you running a red light. There are plenty of reasons to be against them (from what I've seen around here they are notoriously inaccurate), but them legitimately catching you doing what you're not supposed to do is not one of them. Not in my mind.
Not really "not impacting us and improving our economy," now is it?
Not really, no. It's just because you're caught up in 12 billion being a really big number, which it is. For some perspective, it's around 1%[1] of the budget just for the federal Department of Education and about one third of one percent of the total federal budget. For comparison, illegal immigrants would be somewhere in the vicinity of 3.5% of the population and about 6.8% of the school population[2], so it seems to me that they're even under-represented in your sample. Most education funding does not come from the federal level, so its impact is actually even smaller than that.
Illegal immigrants in total are estimated to number about 11 million[3]. Even if they don't pay taxes (which I'm not defending, merely removing from the calculation for ease) do you really believe that they don't spend $1000 per person per year on average into our economy? Because if they do, they've already paid more in economic gains than we've lost in tax dollars spent educating their children. Children who are not responsible for the immigration status of their parents or themselves, by the way. It may be "leftist" of me to consider what effect these things may have on the lives of innocent children who will, in all probability, grow up to be tax-paying American adults and further work to repay their education costs, but I'm perfectly okay with that.
Of course, unless you're claiming that they are all thieves they are also paying other taxes even if they're not paying income taxes. If they're living somewhere other than under a bridge, they're either paying property taxes or rent that goes, in part, toward paying property taxes -- the main source of funding for schools. They're paying sales taxes and fuel taxes and buying things from those stores and restaurants that employ all those nice white people.
I'm not claiming that there aren't other expenses other than educating illegal immigrants. There will be health care costs and economic opportunity costs, among other things. I am stating that even if they create a deficit in terms of taxes paid versus burdens imposed on government, they may very well still be a net positive economic factor, even without factoring in the children of illegal immigrants who are now American citizens and will contribute positively in their lives to a very similar or identical extent as other Americans. Especially if we give them things like education so they're not forced to live the same conditions as their illegal immigrant parents.
Honestly, if I asked you how much illegal immigrants contributed economically would you know? Could you even give me an educated guess? Isn't it the exact opposite of your argument that they're an economic drain on society? Facts are great, but if you're claiming to make your decisions based solely on the facts you should have all of them -- including the ones that go against your own argument. Otherwise it's nothing more than emotion concealed as facts.
For what it's worth, I reject your implied argument that the only proper way of evaluating the situation is economics even though I think "lefties" could make a really strong case on that basis as well. Emotions and humanity may not be quantifiable, but they're certainly logical. In fact so much so that taking care of one another is practically hard-coded in our DNA; it's why we form societies and have instincts to take care of the weak to begin with. You're begging the question that they're one in the same or that anything that can't be measured is without (logical) value.
I have this really strange method for determining which of a genre of products to buy: I compare my needs to what they deliver, their overall quality and price. If that brings a Windows phone out on top, that's what I will buy.
I know, it's crazy. It doesn't leave much room for being an Apple fanboy or anti-Microsoft zealot, but it works for me.
"about 90 percent of persons who completed suicides in all age groups had [have] a diagnosable mental or substance abuse disorder"
That's probably true, but misleading.
For starters, I've also heard that 1 in 3 Americans has a mental issue for which they should seek counseling, according to mental health professionals. If that's the case then perhaps letting people who have a vested financial interest in the outcome make the definitions is not exactly without bias. To your point, if 1 in 3 people truly does have a mental disorder then hiring employees acting as a filter against them is not an honest assumption.
Second, it reminds me of a story I once heard. Apparently in the Jewish faith you can not receive a Jewish burial if you commit suicide, and presumably to them that's a Really Bad Thing(tm). Some time later they made an exception: If you are mentally ill and commit suicide, they will allow you to have your Jewish burial. Perfectly reasonable, I would say. But of course it didn't take long before the assumption simply became that if you committed suicide, you were mentally ill.
To what degree are we simply assuming that "wants to die without having some incurable, painful disease" automatically equates with mental illness? And to what degree are we really comfortable allowing people to post-diagnose suicides by simply talking to people and looking at medical records? People who apparenetly missed all the signs when the person was alive but now has new insight once they're dead? That's hardly responsible or scientific, even compared to however scientifically mental disorders can be diagnosed to begin with. Even if that's the correct approach, it makes stats like that rather worthless.
I do tend to agree with the rest of your post though.
Do we accept the "book on fire == hurt feelings" causality as a necessary and normal one
Certainly a normal one; necessity is too strong a word for most anything.
The reality is that they're burning these books precisely because they know it will result in people being offended, and it has nothing at all to do with the book itself, but rather the symbol. It's a gigantic "fuck you;" "THIS is what we think of your religion." If all they wanted to do was celebrate their faith or mourn the people who died or to condemn the acts of the people who caused it, there are many other, completely positive and uplifting methods of doing it. But they choose instead for the political statement.
In fact, I'm not sure when your post was written so you might have had no way of knowing this, but since this story was posted there was two more articles about the book burnings: One, saying the pastor had called it off; and another, saying he had only called it off because he was told the Mosque they were going to build near Ground Zero would be moved and if it's not, they would go ahead with the burning. (As an aside: Since they are clearly moving beyond faith and into politics, they should immediately lose their tax exempt status.)
When you choose to do something solely because of the reaction you're going to get, your defense can't be "aw shucks guys, I didn't know you'd take it so hard." It's a normal enough reaction that it has predictive value; they predicted it when they made their plans to exploit it. And indeed, while the reactions would probably be different you can bet there would be a similar outcry from Christian leaders if we were planning to burn the Bible, so it's also something that works on both sides.
Again, "necessary?" No, but very little is. Normal? Absolutely. When both sides would have the same sort of reaction to a similar situation, of course that is normal. We as a society can say whatever we want, but being upset when somebody is deliberately attacking your deeply-held beliefs is distinctly human. We can say that it's their problem if they get butthurt about it, but all we're doing is rejecting our own humanity and tilting at windmills.
It's not entirely logical, but very little about being human is.
Each philosophy (including all religions) thinks it is the right one.
Two or more cannot coexist in the same space.
I'm not sure that follows. Yes, each religion thinks it is the correct one but the only way that matters is if I have a deep-seated need for you to believe the same as I do that goes well beyond wanting you to or thinking you're wrong if you don't.
Not caring that you believe differently than I do does not mean I or my beliefs have been "assimilated." This is not the Borg, nor is it Highlander where there can be only one. It doesn't need to be some sort of massive warfare between us or between our beliefs, even if one (or both) of our beliefs claims calamity for anybody who believes differently.
What's refreshing to see is a company that actually admits it was wrong, how often does that happen?
I'm trying in vain to find where they admitted they were wrong. All I see is "we listened to our developers," which is nothing more than a nice way of saying "we think this is beginning to hurt our bottom line" and is something MOST companies do if they get to that point.
Didn't Steve Jobs make a big hullabaloo about how "intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform"[1] when asked about the rule? So is that magically no longer true, or do they just no longer care? Or is it, perhaps, that their transparently self-serving reasoning for instituting the rule in the first place has started to cost them more than it gains?
The about-face is good, don't get me wrong. But trying to frame it as some sort of benevolence instead of ANOTHER self-serving action to mitigate problems caused by the first is misguided at best.
Apple wanted to control everything, and thought they had the clout to get it done. Apparently enough developers made them nervous about it that they changed their mind. Good, but hardly some sign of a great corporate system.
If you ask the lunch lady for mac and cheese, and no chicken thank you, she's not legally bound to respect your privacy.
You're probably right, though it may not be so clear cut in public schools, paid for by the government and where attendance is mandatory.
People seem to be saying "the human element is fine, but systematic tracking of eating habits is a concern" but that doesn't make sense. Either it's protected or not, there's no sense of security in relying on people's poor memory to ensure your privacy.
Why not? The abuses possible are vastly increased by automated systems. A police car can follow you around the neighborhood and write down everywhere they see you go and that is legal. Are you saying it should also be legal to install a tracker on everybody's car? Or to install a sophisticated camera system on every corner that tracks peoples' license plates in order to provide a detailed readout of exactly where they went any given day? After all, they're out in public and it's no different than a police car following you around. Most of us would consider one to be okay and one to be a police state, and I don't find that at all unreasonable. (Why? My suspicion is because we assume that, with limited manpower, the police would be using it on people they have actual reason to believe are doing something whereas with unlimited "machinepower," they'll just watch everybody and see what sticks.)
For what it's worth, I think a child's eating habits at school is a silly thing to care very much about but I also think it's something that shouldn't be done. It's an unnecessary invasion of privacy that accomplishes very little.
Why can't the school simply have three or four or whatever different stations? Station 1: Choose a hot dog or a hamburger or a chicken taco or some pasta or a salad or whatever selection it is you have going that particular day. Station 2: Choose a fruit and/or vegetable. Station 3: A small cupcake or a fruit cup or yogurt or some such little desert entry. Station 4: Milk or water. That way you know that no matter what they actually choose, they have a decently balanced diet. You can't force them to actually EAT these things, of course, but you can't do that with some automated tracking system either. Maybe even add some sort of special treat like french fries or tater tots on (alternating?) Fridays or something. Everything in moderation and all that.
Childhood obsesity (and obesity in general!) is a big deal, and I would fully support things like removing sodas and vending machines from schools and trying, in general, to make the lunch offerings at school more healthy. That doesn't automatically mean that anybody from your parents to your principal needs to know exactly what you're eating, nor does it mean that even if we go to that exreme that we're doing anything in particular to combat the problem. The reason we're fat is because we eat wrong (including--perhaps especially--at home) and don't exercise enough. PE classes and nice school lunches are good, but the problem is societal and parental. If you're doing everything right at home and making sure your kids get out and play outside and get some exercise, it's really not going to matter very much that your kid chooses the hamburger and cupcake every day. If not, they're going to be fat even if their school lunch is salmon and green beans. Assuming they would even eat such a lunch.
That anybody's mind would automatically jump to "LET'S SPY ON THEM!" kind of disturbs me. There are simpler, less invasive, equally-or-more effective and dare I mention cheaper methods.
The leader of the free world came down from on high and told this guy to stop. The day after Obama speaks they pull his site down.
What's your point? Absent real or threatened coercion, the government is not involved and Rackspace is free to act in whatever it deems an appropriate manner, including deciding that the President speaking out against something is good enough for them. Imagined coercion? Nah, sorry, that's not enough.
Whether or not you agree with the guy you must admit that the government has no right to speak negatively about what this guy is doing, without giving equal feigned outrage at the burning of our flag, bible, constitution etc
Why must I admit that? They're not promoting a religion. In fact they're not speaking about religion at all, except to say that burning somebody's holy book is wrong, possibly dangerous to US troops (in this case) and shouldn't be done. If anything that's about religious freedom and tolerance, not elevating one religion above others. There isn't some rule that if the president speaks about Islam for two minutes that he must give two minutes to every other religion. That's not how it works.
Besides which, nobody is planning a mass burning of any American flags or Bibles that I am aware of, so the point is rather moot, and even if there were such things planned the likihood that it endangers American troops is approximately zero. Not all situations are created equal.
For what it's worth, by the way, Congress just tried once again to pass legislation making burning the American flag illegal a few years ago. If memory serves, it passed the House handily but failed to pass the Senate by one vote. It would probably pass if brought to the floor again, except it's not likely to be with the current control of the government belonging to the Democrats. So it's not exactly like they pay no attention to such things, even ignoring the fact that trying to outlaw something is VASTLY different than saying "you shouldn't do that."
Whatever happened to equal protection?
It's alive and well and has NOTHING AT ALL to do with this situation. Call me when these people are being thrown in jail for burning the Quran but not the Bible and MAYBE you have a Fourteenth Amendment case (though more likely a First). Until then, kindly stop bandying about terms you don't grasp.
If that's not government suppression of free speech rights - what is?
It is neither government nor suppression as it was not ordered or coerced by the government, nor is anybody, anywhere telling them they can't do their immature little burning session.
"You're a fucking idiot who may contribute to the death of our troops if you do this, so stop" is not the same as "we will prevent you from doing this by putting you in jail."
If the government isn't going to protect the rights of its citizens from foreign invaders what the hell good is it?
Honestly, can anybody be this stupid?
WE'RE THE FUCKING FOREIGN INVADERS. NOBODY HAS INVADED US.
If you can't get your head around so simple a fact... well, I suppose that explains your post doesn't it?
When do you say "enough bad mouthing this guy just because of how he feels about Islam."
Never. Free speech works both ways. These people get to be ignorant, self-righteous little fools and burn the Quran, and the President and anybody else in the country who damn well pleases gets to talk about what ignorant, self-righteous little fools they are. Nothing is being established or condemned other than people doing stupid things -- ah, freedom.
When a company attacks another company, however, that's a type of competition which does not benefit, and in fact harms, the consumer.
If we're talking about lawsuits, I'd tend to agree, though most of those lawsuits are about IP which I think is what really stands against free market principles; not the lawsuits per se. Lawsuits for false advertising or fraud or libel are, I think, perfectly legitimate.
Whether the rest is anti-free-market really depends on whether or not me seeing some idiot on an idiotic TV show using a particular handbag given to her by a competitor can be seen as coercion. I suppose it can be, but I would consider that to be a highly trivialized version of the word. They aren't telling you what to believe; they're giving you a situation ("ZOMG SNOOKI USES THESE HANDBAGS!") because they think you already believe something about that. If consumers being stupid is anti-free-market then I would call that an indictment of the entire philosophy.
You'd also be right in the case of "don't buy any of our competitor's product and get 10% off," but I've never actually seen that, nor would I have any idea how they can implement it.
You're right about what you say, but I actually think you're approaching it from the wrong direction.
Maybe I'm just a strange fellow, but let's say I'm a high-ranking CIA boss or somebody else who would be able to put such an assassination plot into play. I don't want to get caught, of course. I don't want their to be proof that would implicate me, any of my subordinates who carried it out or, by association, my bosses and my government.
But at the same time, I would want it to be pretty clear that he was assassinated. I wouldn't go with the undetectable poison or any such thing unless it was the absolute only way I thought I could get away with it. I'd just put one in his head execution style. Plenty of people might want Assange dead, so there's enough deniability that, if it's done competently, nobody actually gets caught. At the same time just about everybody knows what really happened.
The thing about Wikileaks is that attacking its credibility is not worthwhile, in my mind. They're posting our own documents; nobody involved has ever made any claim like "those are false" because we just can't. In other words, what they post stands on its own. (Not that they don't editorialize, of course, but they don't need to -- and shouldn't.) In that sense, discrediting Assange does little.
No, if I were the CIA what I would want is to make the NEXT Assange think twice before he decides he wants to pick up the mantle. I would want everybody involved scared to death of ever being involved again.
If I can't manage that, or I don't have the stomach for it, then I'd just bite my tongue and stew silently. There's no room for silly rape allegations.
You're begging the question. To you it's "blind, irrational panic [...with...] no reason whatsoever."
Other people look at, for example, the fact that the US has more gun deaths (per 100,000 people, so let's please not bother with the standard "ZOMG BIG COUNTRY!" claims) than any other nation in the world with available data[1], including Mexico where roving gangs of drug lords meet out vigilante justice on anybody they please. We have more than five times more gun deaths (per 100k) than our cousins in Australia and 33 times more than England, not to mention and 217 times more than they do in Japan where they have strict gun control legislation.
Now, to be sure, a significant portion of these differences are cultural and in that sense, the comparisons are not as fair as they appear. Many of the US gun deaths are also suicides[2]. I don't see that as an excuse, however. If we're more prone to using our guns as a society, on ourselves and our fellow citizens, then I fail to see how that is an indication that what we really need are more guns. The excuse that they're needed for hunting is just that; an excuse. If you want to go hunting, fine -- we'll write in an exception for rifles and shotguns for you. You don't need a handgun. In fact it's going to be less effective and less efficient if what you're really trying to do is kill an animal and not play with a handgun. So far as I am concerned, the only valid question in the debate is "is it too late to get the toothpaste back in the tube?" Have we gone too far down the road of allowing guns to back out with any measure of success?
So far as gun control being "for no reason whatsoever," that's an extremely biased view, to the point where I'm not sure it has any value whatsoever. It's an attempt at public safety in the same way that not letting you have a bomb building factory in your basement is. Maybe it's misguided (we will clearly disagree here but I'm willing to accept other viewpoints), but it's hardly without reason.
Since you mentioned blind, irrational panic, by the way, I'm compelled to say that I find "allowing guns increases gun crime" (and the corollary that outlawing guns reduces gun crime) to be far more fact-based and rational than the fear some people have that somewhere out there is a person with a gun who's going to break into their house, and only their own weapon can provide protection for themselves and their families. Of course it can happen, but the vast majority of people will never experience it. That's what I call blind, irrational panic.
I realize my post is US-centric, and you declare yourself not to be an American. It's a rather unavoidable consequence of not knowing where the hell you are from and the fact that most other western nations have considerably stronger gun control legislation. Perhaps you live somewhere where there is strong gun control legislation and yet high ratios of gun deaths? I'd be interested to hear it. Otherwise I suspect the points will hold true elsewhere or are actually reflected in the differing ratios between the US where just about anybody can get a gun and other nations where most people can't.
As an American, I'm also compelled to make an admission: I think gun control legislation here is unconstitutional. I think it's an extremely good idea, one that absolutely needs to be put forward and enforced and yet one that currently flies in the face of the Second Amendment. Then again people who get paid to decide those matters have let our current crop of gun control laws stand, so I suppose it's little more than my worthless personal interpretation.
Statements of opinion are not libel; to qualify as such, they must be malicious, knowingly false statements of "fact."
"SuperBanana is a child molester" can be libel. "I think SuperBanana is a child molester because I saw him talking to some kids on a playground" is not. (Unless of course you never did any such thing -- then it's an entirely different ballgame.)
So far as I'm concerned, "Unless proven otherwise, I'm assuming for now" is sufficiently opinion to qualify for protection, particularly when he gives his reasoning for such an opinion. It's hard to suggest that he knows what he's saying is false and that he is saying it out of malice if he gives (moderately) reasonable explanations for why he believes it. He may ultimately be right or wrong, but that is far from the determining factor in whether or not something is libel, at least in the United States.
But honestly, the funny part to me is how blatantly he copied the letter. Do you see the the state that the recipient and the law firm are from in the original? Care to guess what the "G" in O.C.G.A is? (Hint: Official Code of ___ Annotated.) Care to guess where neither entity is based? Yes, that's right: Georgia. Hilarious. Personally I hope Barry Altman gets his ass sued for copyright infringement just because he's a little twat appropriating other peoples' work and legal expertise and doing so in such a hilariously amateurish manner, but I suppose that's just me.
It's also POSSIBLE that an earthquake shakes Chicago to the ground tonight, but I don't think I'll be garnering much support for this theory if I put it forward.
The reality is that so many people are jumping on board the conspiracy theory--highly disproportionally on Slashdot as compared to any other website I've read comments on any of these charges by the way--because hating the US is one of Slashdot posters' favorite pass-times. So not only does a frankly unlikely scenario garner unreasonable support, but factors that would make an objective observer shy even further away from it--such as the completely amateurish way the whole thing is handled and the fact that much simpler and more effective means could easily be employed by entities with billions of dollars at their disposal--are seen as support for it. After all, the CIA and US military is incompetent at everything it does, and therefore a completely incompetent attempt to defame him MUST be them! Frankly I still find it much more likely that if the government wants Assange gone, they simply put a bullet in his head. How many people do you think will be clambering to take over and release secret documents when the bodies start piling up?
All in all, while I hate Assange and don't have much respect for Wikileaks in general (I supported the leak about the military attacks but found nothing of value whatsoever in the leak of the Afghan documents) I'm perfectly willing to assume he's innocent until he has his day in court. On the other hand, I'm completely unwilling to assume it's a government conspiracy just because he says so. Perhaps especially because he says so. I don't think it's unreasonable for Slashdotters to be expected to apply the same level of critical thinking to this sort of conspiracy theory that they do to, say, 9/11 conspiracy theories. The fact that the comments are 50% "ZOMG CIA CONSPIRACY!" is a ratio I consider deeply disturbing.
Yes, because most of the people on Facebook would be off composing symphonies or expanding human knowledge if they just spent less time posting on peoples' walls.
I'm getting ridiculously tired of this hyperbolic Slashdot crap toward anything some random whackjob who can't even be bothered to post under an account has to say. You don't like Facebook? Good for you. It doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't make your penis bigger, and it sure doesn't make you or your time more valuable than people who do.
Tell me, oh brilliant AC: Do you even realize the irony that if Facebook is a waste of time, bitching about how much of a waste of time Facebook is is even worse? Apparently you're one of the enlightened! Go forth and catalyze creativity and innovation! Save humanity! You're our last hope! I'll go create a Facebook page to commemorate your righteous battle. Stop by if you have a moment and leave an update on my wall about how you're doing.
Stop being a "prostitution is no initiation of force therefore it should be legal therefore it is OK" libertard and instead ask "Is it moral in general to pay for prostitutes?"
Gee, I wonder if you've made up your mind in advance at all? "Stop being a retard who disagrees with me and instead ask a question that I will only allow you to conclude the same as I do without being insulted!" Hey, thanks! If you think that position is wrong, then the onus is on you to explain why.
If your hypothesis that most women are only prostitutes because they are desperate for money and there is no viable alternative is correct, then all you have done is criminalize what even you describe as their only choice to make money. At best, in your world, you stop them from doing the only thing they can do to survive. At worst they do it anyway and are criminals in addition to paupers, with all of the stigma and danger associated with any criminal activity. At least if it were legalized, there could be some protections in place both for the prostitutes and for the Johns. When "hope you don't get beaten and robbed" or "hope your pimp is a nice guy" are your only protections, there's something wrong.
So, the six-figure-a-year celebrity hookers probably want to do it and they're making money hand-over-fist, so I don't see an argument to prevent it from that extreme. The opposite extreme (buying into your argument) is that the women don't really want to do it but have no other choice to survive, making legalizing it a slightly better alternative to a terrible situation that actually has very little to do with prostitution and more to do with hopeless economic conditions. Somewhere in the middle are women who aren't sexual millionaires but either want to do it, don't care either way or don't particularly want to do it and don't need to but consider it easier or faster money than the available alternatives. I'm seeing an entire spectrum where not a single data point would lead me to the conclusion that prostitution should be illegal.
In fact, the only reason I can think of is the one supposed by your question: Imposing my set of morality on other people. My answer to your question about whether or not it is moral to pay for sex is "why the hell should I care?" If it doesn't involve me I don't find it to be any more my business than whether or not your wife or girlfriend (or boyfriend) is kinky in the sack. If it does, then I can exercise my own morality to my own actions and relations -- exactly as it should be. I wouldn't date a hooker, whether it was legal or not. I don't respect the behavior. It doesn't mean I need it to be criminal to prove my moral superiority.
Now, legalizing prostitution isn't simple; it's something that would need to be done carefully to achieve any of the potential benefits and avoid a clusterfuck of potential problems. Very probably other laws would need to be created or changed. But all in all, if "I don't approve of what you're doing with your body" is the best I can come up with to stop you... fuck me. No pun intended.
If you complain at string theory, then PLEASE state what you are proposing. What is the use in complaining when you have no alternative?
As I read your post, and especially this part, I was struck by how wrong I consider this sentiment.
Science is about the search for answers, the search for truth, and we have spent the better part of our history refining what we think to be important in that search. "I don't know what the answer is, but that is wrong" is and should always be a perfectly valid answer.
The reason this line in particular got to me is because it struck me as the sort of response one gets when arguing against religion with a theist. They're not satisfied that you have strong responses suggesting what they believe might be wrong*, they insist that you have the answers to all things and if you don't, they walk away smugly and declare their beliefs to be superior. It's God of the gaps in argument form.
In fact, I think it is similar to this situation. God can not be disproven according to our scientific standards, because he is not falsifiable (what if there is a God who doesn't want you to discover him?). That doesn't mean he exists or that he doesn't; it means disproving him is not scientific. If String Theory can not be falsified, can not be repeatedly verified, then I feel it is right to criticize it on those grounds. Hell, maybe it turns out to be exactly and perfectly correct but it is not, at least right now, correct from a scientific standpoint. If what's going on in this article changes that going forward, great! I'm all for a (slightly) more definitive answers, one way or another. If not, then perhaps some extra energy needs to be expended in making it a proper scientific theory. Maybe that will even make it more solid and robust going forward. And if that perception is incorrect (I readily admit that my mind can not wrap around these theories) then that's what neds to be fixed.
Not having all the answers doesn't make criticisms wrong or even worthless.
On a somewhat related note, having one's own pet theory doesn't make talking against something else wrong. It's right or wrong on its merits, not its circumstances. Another way of saying "happen[ing] to have their own pet theories" is "has a theory they think fits better." They may be right or wrong, but if they didn't believe that their theory was better it wouldn't be their theory.
* Please, let's not get into a debate about religion here!
Give ME a break. I can't believe the "bug bounty hunters" would really sell a Google vulnerability for a thousand dollars
And yet they did. That must really shake your world view.
Believe it or not, when normal people discover a vulnerability and their options are "run a bonet" and "tell the manufacturer," most of them tell the manufacturer. Getting $1000 for it is an added bonus, not the incentive to action.
True, it's not going to create a whole new generation of professional bug bounty hunters living off their bounties, but that was never the intent. If they wanted to hire an army of extra bug hunters they'd put you on the payroll. If you're looking to get rich, do something else. If you're into it for the challenge or to be helpful or you happen to be mucking about with their browser as part of your day job, make a little extra money as Google's way of saying "thank you" for doing the right thing and helping them to make their free product--one you evidently use, if you're finding bugs in it--a better one.
If that's not good enough for you, well, fine. Don't look for bugs. Don't pass Go, don't collect $1,000. Your time is apparently better spent trying to get yourself a spot on Wheel of Fortune.
With all due respect, stop being a fucking moron. Nobody here has suggested killing all Christians. Nobody here has suggested burning a church, much less all churches. To not only ascribe nonsense to people but declare it to be some sort of sexual thrill for them has to make you one of the most shallow, despicable excuses for a human being I have ever seen in my life. One who obviously has nothing intelligent to say, so he just makes shit up to attack as it pleases him . I'm sure you sleep awfully well at night having defeated your invented evils, don't you? Must be awfully hard to lose an argument when you just decide what the other side thinks and says and declare it to be truth.
For example, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.
Are you truly so dense that you can't separate politics and religion? Lots of people hate Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, and it has nothing to do with their religion. It has to do with their politics.
Even if you don't desire death of every religious person, don't you think that some people deserve to be killed? [. ..] I'm sure that most of the Internet would gloat joyfully if either of those people die.
I'm sure many of them would. What the fuck is your point?
All else aside, if you can't understand the difference between not caring if somebody dies or feeling the world is better off for it and actively suggesting they should be killed or killing them... well, I was going to ask how dense you could possibly be but at this point the question is becoming rhetorical.
I would consider somebody like Rush Limbaugh dying to be one of the better things to happen to this country because of the way he simply whips people into partisan furors to serve his own set of interests. It doesn't mean I wish death on him, and it especially doesn't mean I think he should be killed. If he WERE killed, I would expect the person locked in prison for the rest of his life and declare him a murderer, not a hero.
If you anti-theists really think that the world would be better without religion, then stop bitching on the Internet and start a war with religion already.
Yes, because clearly instead of talking about things or making a logical argument ("bitching on the Internet" in your little world) the correct solution is to kill everybody who disagrees with you. Holy hell, you really are a whackjob. Do you honestly believe you're one of the "normal[s]?" Because I have a newsflash for you. You're a fool, as bad as any religious or anti-religious nutter out there.
For that matter, you need to realize that being anti-religion and anti-theist are wildly different things. Believe in god if you want, I really don't give a fuck. Vapor-lock your lips to some religion's ass without thinking thoroughly about it all and what you truly believe, tell everybody they have to believe what you and your buddies believe, and I have major problems with it and with you. And much as I might think the world is better off without you in it, that doesn't cause me to orgasm to the thought of killing you. Sorry to disappoint.
Let me clue you in, since you're obviously too feeble-minded to reach these realizations on your own. People who don't believe in religion, who don't believe in God, who don't believe in an afterlife believe that this is all there is. They don't support running off and killing people to any degree more than believers do (there are bad apples in both groups, naturally). They don't support fucking each other over. They believe you should be good and tolerant toward one another because you don't get a second chance. Making somebody's life miserable is unconscionable when you can't pretend to believe that no matter how long they live, no matter what you do to them, they'll "live" an eternity longer in perfect bliss with their creator. Not believing in eter
Hypocrisy. You can't have your cake and eat it with this argument.
Why not? "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," according to Emerson. Life is not a computer program. It is not necessarily important to get identical output when given the same sets of input, much less only similar sets of input.
Why is it wrong to denounce people who claim to own your work when they know they do not, who remove it from the public consumption you have decided for it and threaten to cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend your own property? Why is it wrong to be unconcerned when a product has an expired patent number that hurts no one and may actually be a public benefit in that it allows you to look up the patent information, see it is expired and duplicate it if you so desire--an outcome that seems perfectly in line with the original vision of patents?
A product unmarked with patent information is not protected by patent (probably--is it a legal requirement to display patent numbers? I'm not sure). If you want to duplicate it, you're left to reverse engineer it. Displaying an expired number allows them to look the patent up and see exactly how it works. Which do you find a greater public benefit? How do you see an illegal or erroneous DMCA takedown as a public benefit of any kind, by any stretch of the imagination?
Both things are technically illegal; no one disputes that. One is best-case beneficial and worst-case indifferent, the other is best-case disruptive (they take it down, you put it back up and nothing more comes of it) and worst-case outright harmful (they take it down and, despite being in the right you leave it down for fear of the consequences of fighting). We're supposed to be ashamed to treat them differently? Because you say so? No, I don't think so.
I don't find it hypocritical at all but if it is, I'm perfectly content to be so on this one.
I don't understand the problem, honestly. The plot is divulged under an enormous top-level heading "Plot," and the identity of the murderer under an also-gigantic sub-heading "Identity of the murderer." Nobody is "ruining the play" for anybody else; they're ruining it for themselves by continuing to read after it is made plainly clear what they're about to see.
The family can be angry if they want to, since apparently it was important to the author that people not publish the killer's name. Nobody else has any such right. Nobody else is being wronged, even if "being wronged" just means "having their wishes ignored despite being dead for 35 years."
However, there is sometimes the impression that US citizens know more about the geography of their own country than of others around the world
Why shouldn't we?
Geography simply is not very important. It's something that pretty much never comes up in real life except as some trivia question or when somebody finds it a good candidate to try to declare you ignorant. To whatever nearly nonexistent degree it has any value to the average person at all, the value increases based on proximity. Knowing what states border mine is significantly more important than knowing where a random state is, is significantly more important than knowing where a random country is -- none of which are terribly important at all.
The attitude of "what I know is important" is annoying - but surely there is a middle ground between listing ALL countries and having a balanced knowledge of the whole world.
Does the average person anywhere really have a balanced knowledge of the whole world, or is it just a semantic argument that, as the grandparent said, tries to make what you know more important than what somebody else knows?
Europeans know where North Korea is and Americans don't? Okay, swell -- but that's not "a balanced knowledge of the whole world." How many know anything about Africa? How many know anything about Central America? South America? These places make up a vast portion of the landmass of the world, but I doubt most people know anything about their geography. Why? Because as self-absorbed as it may be, they're just not that important--on average--to us. Knowing where countries within these landmasses are is even less important, even when a country happens to pop up on our radar. You've simply chosen some different metric for how important a country must be to care about. And in fact one might be able to make a distance argument there as well.
Geography can be important to some people. It's important to an in-depth understanding of a lot of historical (and present-day) conflicts. It's important to a lot of very practical matters like building projects, trade issues, etc. To those people it's vital; to everybody else, who really gives a damn?
As a bit of an aside, I can tell you as an American that we absolutely studied world geography in my classes growing up. Some of that information is still with me; more than is probably with the average person. Much of it is not. Why? Because knowledge that doesn't get used tends to fade away. I also took French in junior high and high school, but I've forgotten most of that as well. Congratulations to those who have the memory to store all sorts of information they never use, but for everybody else it's hardly worth looking down one's nose about.
Slashdot Mirror
Which jives perfectly with what I've always heard and assumed, so I have no reason to believe it is not true. At the same time, you don't need to have a quota in order to have a quota, if you know what I'm saying.
We tend to object to quotas because we find them sinister. "I'm going to get a ticket for a bullshit reason because some cop needs to meet his quota!" There is certainly that angle, but spin it on its head and you have a valid reason for some sort of quota: Performance evaluation.
Of course being a good police officer is not mostly or even largely based on how many tickets you write, but really, the police have three jobs: Patrol and write tickets, answer calls and show up in court to defend what you've done while writing tickets and answering calls. If you don't show up to calls it's going to be noticed extremely fast, and you're going to be out on your ass. If everything you do is constantly being thrown out because you don't bother to show up in court, that's going to be noticed too. So we can safely assume that most cops, in the vast majority of circumstances, are doing #2 and #3.
So which cops are doing a really fine job and which are wasting time? The only measure is the number of tickets they're writing. Police officers are extremely independent; most of the time they're in a patrol car alone and there is going to be a fair bit of time on any given day where there simply are no calls to answer, especially in smaller jurisdictions. Which ones are actually patrolling, looking for problems versus standing around chatting with their clerk buddy at the gas station or taking a nap or screwing around on their personal laptops? A lot of people won't care what a cop is doing if he's showing up to all his calls, but a lot of them also will. Especially insofar as police presence can help deter crime even without explicit success in the form of arrests.
So no, there's probably no "quota." They probably don't have to write at least X many tickets in an evaluation period. But you can be pretty sure somebody is looking at it, and not necessarily for nefarious purposes -- and you can also be pretty sure that the guys out on the street don't want their number to be considered "low," either numerically or comparatively.
I don't see your point. People got caught having pools that they didn't get permits to build (or aren't allowed to have) and got a fine, and they should be angry at Google for it?
It sounds kind of like being mad at a red light camera for catching you running a red light. There are plenty of reasons to be against them (from what I've seen around here they are notoriously inaccurate), but them legitimately catching you doing what you're not supposed to do is not one of them. Not in my mind.
And what company do you think exists where nobody has access to this sort of information?
If your logic is "anything than[sic] can happen, will happen" then it is happening everywhere. You're out of luck.
How is this informative? What the fuck, Slashdot?
He at least gave a link supporting his statements. What do you have? THAT would be informative.
Not really, no. It's just because you're caught up in 12 billion being a really big number, which it is. For some perspective, it's around 1%[1] of the budget just for the federal Department of Education and about one third of one percent of the total federal budget. For comparison, illegal immigrants would be somewhere in the vicinity of 3.5% of the population and about 6.8% of the school population[2], so it seems to me that they're even under-represented in your sample. Most education funding does not come from the federal level, so its impact is actually even smaller than that.
Illegal immigrants in total are estimated to number about 11 million[3]. Even if they don't pay taxes (which I'm not defending, merely removing from the calculation for ease) do you really believe that they don't spend $1000 per person per year on average into our economy? Because if they do, they've already paid more in economic gains than we've lost in tax dollars spent educating their children. Children who are not responsible for the immigration status of their parents or themselves, by the way. It may be "leftist" of me to consider what effect these things may have on the lives of innocent children who will, in all probability, grow up to be tax-paying American adults and further work to repay their education costs, but I'm perfectly okay with that.
Of course, unless you're claiming that they are all thieves they are also paying other taxes even if they're not paying income taxes. If they're living somewhere other than under a bridge, they're either paying property taxes or rent that goes, in part, toward paying property taxes -- the main source of funding for schools. They're paying sales taxes and fuel taxes and buying things from those stores and restaurants that employ all those nice white people.
I'm not claiming that there aren't other expenses other than educating illegal immigrants. There will be health care costs and economic opportunity costs, among other things. I am stating that even if they create a deficit in terms of taxes paid versus burdens imposed on government, they may very well still be a net positive economic factor, even without factoring in the children of illegal immigrants who are now American citizens and will contribute positively in their lives to a very similar or identical extent as other Americans. Especially if we give them things like education so they're not forced to live the same conditions as their illegal immigrant parents.
Honestly, if I asked you how much illegal immigrants contributed economically would you know? Could you even give me an educated guess? Isn't it the exact opposite of your argument that they're an economic drain on society? Facts are great, but if you're claiming to make your decisions based solely on the facts you should have all of them -- including the ones that go against your own argument. Otherwise it's nothing more than emotion concealed as facts.
For what it's worth, I reject your implied argument that the only proper way of evaluating the situation is economics even though I think "lefties" could make a really strong case on that basis as well. Emotions and humanity may not be quantifiable, but they're certainly logical. In fact so much so that taking care of one another is practically hard-coded in our DNA; it's why we form societies and have instincts to take care of the weak to begin with. You're begging the question that they're one in the same or that anything that can't be measured is without (logical) value.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States (the exact source you got your table from, it se
I have this really strange method for determining which of a genre of products to buy: I compare my needs to what they deliver, their overall quality and price. If that brings a Windows phone out on top, that's what I will buy.
I know, it's crazy. It doesn't leave much room for being an Apple fanboy or anti-Microsoft zealot, but it works for me.
That's probably true, but misleading.
For starters, I've also heard that 1 in 3 Americans has a mental issue for which they should seek counseling, according to mental health professionals. If that's the case then perhaps letting people who have a vested financial interest in the outcome make the definitions is not exactly without bias. To your point, if 1 in 3 people truly does have a mental disorder then hiring employees acting as a filter against them is not an honest assumption.
Second, it reminds me of a story I once heard. Apparently in the Jewish faith you can not receive a Jewish burial if you commit suicide, and presumably to them that's a Really Bad Thing(tm). Some time later they made an exception: If you are mentally ill and commit suicide, they will allow you to have your Jewish burial. Perfectly reasonable, I would say. But of course it didn't take long before the assumption simply became that if you committed suicide, you were mentally ill.
To what degree are we simply assuming that "wants to die without having some incurable, painful disease" automatically equates with mental illness? And to what degree are we really comfortable allowing people to post-diagnose suicides by simply talking to people and looking at medical records? People who apparenetly missed all the signs when the person was alive but now has new insight once they're dead? That's hardly responsible or scientific, even compared to however scientifically mental disorders can be diagnosed to begin with. Even if that's the correct approach, it makes stats like that rather worthless.
I do tend to agree with the rest of your post though.
Certainly a normal one; necessity is too strong a word for most anything.
The reality is that they're burning these books precisely because they know it will result in people being offended, and it has nothing at all to do with the book itself, but rather the symbol. It's a gigantic "fuck you;" "THIS is what we think of your religion." If all they wanted to do was celebrate their faith or mourn the people who died or to condemn the acts of the people who caused it, there are many other, completely positive and uplifting methods of doing it. But they choose instead for the political statement.
In fact, I'm not sure when your post was written so you might have had no way of knowing this, but since this story was posted there was two more articles about the book burnings: One, saying the pastor had called it off; and another, saying he had only called it off because he was told the Mosque they were going to build near Ground Zero would be moved and if it's not, they would go ahead with the burning. (As an aside: Since they are clearly moving beyond faith and into politics, they should immediately lose their tax exempt status.)
When you choose to do something solely because of the reaction you're going to get, your defense can't be "aw shucks guys, I didn't know you'd take it so hard." It's a normal enough reaction that it has predictive value; they predicted it when they made their plans to exploit it. And indeed, while the reactions would probably be different you can bet there would be a similar outcry from Christian leaders if we were planning to burn the Bible, so it's also something that works on both sides.
Again, "necessary?" No, but very little is. Normal? Absolutely. When both sides would have the same sort of reaction to a similar situation, of course that is normal. We as a society can say whatever we want, but being upset when somebody is deliberately attacking your deeply-held beliefs is distinctly human. We can say that it's their problem if they get butthurt about it, but all we're doing is rejecting our own humanity and tilting at windmills.
It's not entirely logical, but very little about being human is.
I'm not sure that follows. Yes, each religion thinks it is the correct one but the only way that matters is if I have a deep-seated need for you to believe the same as I do that goes well beyond wanting you to or thinking you're wrong if you don't.
Not caring that you believe differently than I do does not mean I or my beliefs have been "assimilated." This is not the Borg, nor is it Highlander where there can be only one. It doesn't need to be some sort of massive warfare between us or between our beliefs, even if one (or both) of our beliefs claims calamity for anybody who believes differently.
I'm trying in vain to find where they admitted they were wrong. All I see is "we listened to our developers," which is nothing more than a nice way of saying "we think this is beginning to hurt our bottom line" and is something MOST companies do if they get to that point.
Didn't Steve Jobs make a big hullabaloo about how "intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform"[1] when asked about the rule? So is that magically no longer true, or do they just no longer care? Or is it, perhaps, that their transparently self-serving reasoning for instituting the rule in the first place has started to cost them more than it gains?
The about-face is good, don't get me wrong. But trying to frame it as some sort of benevolence instead of ANOTHER self-serving action to mitigate problems caused by the first is misguided at best.
Apple wanted to control everything, and thought they had the clout to get it done. Apparently enough developers made them nervous about it that they changed their mind. Good, but hardly some sign of a great corporate system.
[1] http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/04/steve-jobs-response-on-section-3-3-1/
You're probably right, though it may not be so clear cut in public schools, paid for by the government and where attendance is mandatory.
Why not? The abuses possible are vastly increased by automated systems. A police car can follow you around the neighborhood and write down everywhere they see you go and that is legal. Are you saying it should also be legal to install a tracker on everybody's car? Or to install a sophisticated camera system on every corner that tracks peoples' license plates in order to provide a detailed readout of exactly where they went any given day? After all, they're out in public and it's no different than a police car following you around. Most of us would consider one to be okay and one to be a police state, and I don't find that at all unreasonable. (Why? My suspicion is because we assume that, with limited manpower, the police would be using it on people they have actual reason to believe are doing something whereas with unlimited "machinepower," they'll just watch everybody and see what sticks.)
For what it's worth, I think a child's eating habits at school is a silly thing to care very much about but I also think it's something that shouldn't be done. It's an unnecessary invasion of privacy that accomplishes very little.
Why can't the school simply have three or four or whatever different stations? Station 1: Choose a hot dog or a hamburger or a chicken taco or some pasta or a salad or whatever selection it is you have going that particular day. Station 2: Choose a fruit and/or vegetable. Station 3: A small cupcake or a fruit cup or yogurt or some such little desert entry. Station 4: Milk or water. That way you know that no matter what they actually choose, they have a decently balanced diet. You can't force them to actually EAT these things, of course, but you can't do that with some automated tracking system either. Maybe even add some sort of special treat like french fries or tater tots on (alternating?) Fridays or something. Everything in moderation and all that.
Childhood obsesity (and obesity in general!) is a big deal, and I would fully support things like removing sodas and vending machines from schools and trying, in general, to make the lunch offerings at school more healthy. That doesn't automatically mean that anybody from your parents to your principal needs to know exactly what you're eating, nor does it mean that even if we go to that exreme that we're doing anything in particular to combat the problem. The reason we're fat is because we eat wrong (including--perhaps especially--at home) and don't exercise enough. PE classes and nice school lunches are good, but the problem is societal and parental. If you're doing everything right at home and making sure your kids get out and play outside and get some exercise, it's really not going to matter very much that your kid chooses the hamburger and cupcake every day. If not, they're going to be fat even if their school lunch is salmon and green beans. Assuming they would even eat such a lunch.
That anybody's mind would automatically jump to "LET'S SPY ON THEM!" kind of disturbs me. There are simpler, less invasive, equally-or-more effective and dare I mention cheaper methods.
What's your point? Absent real or threatened coercion, the government is not involved and Rackspace is free to act in whatever it deems an appropriate manner, including deciding that the President speaking out against something is good enough for them. Imagined coercion? Nah, sorry, that's not enough.
Why must I admit that? They're not promoting a religion. In fact they're not speaking about religion at all, except to say that burning somebody's holy book is wrong, possibly dangerous to US troops (in this case) and shouldn't be done. If anything that's about religious freedom and tolerance, not elevating one religion above others. There isn't some rule that if the president speaks about Islam for two minutes that he must give two minutes to every other religion. That's not how it works.
Besides which, nobody is planning a mass burning of any American flags or Bibles that I am aware of, so the point is rather moot, and even if there were such things planned the likihood that it endangers American troops is approximately zero. Not all situations are created equal.
For what it's worth, by the way, Congress just tried once again to pass legislation making burning the American flag illegal a few years ago. If memory serves, it passed the House handily but failed to pass the Senate by one vote. It would probably pass if brought to the floor again, except it's not likely to be with the current control of the government belonging to the Democrats. So it's not exactly like they pay no attention to such things, even ignoring the fact that trying to outlaw something is VASTLY different than saying "you shouldn't do that."
It's alive and well and has NOTHING AT ALL to do with this situation. Call me when these people are being thrown in jail for burning the Quran but not the Bible and MAYBE you have a Fourteenth Amendment case (though more likely a First). Until then, kindly stop bandying about terms you don't grasp.
It is neither government nor suppression as it was not ordered or coerced by the government, nor is anybody, anywhere telling them they can't do their immature little burning session.
"You're a fucking idiot who may contribute to the death of our troops if you do this, so stop" is not the same as "we will prevent you from doing this by putting you in jail."
Honestly, can anybody be this stupid?
WE'RE THE FUCKING FOREIGN INVADERS. NOBODY HAS INVADED US.
If you can't get your head around so simple a fact... well, I suppose that explains your post doesn't it?
Never. Free speech works both ways. These people get to be ignorant, self-righteous little fools and burn the Quran, and the President and anybody else in the country who damn well pleases gets to talk about what ignorant, self-righteous little fools they are. Nothing is being established or condemned other than people doing stupid things -- ah, freedom.
If we're talking about lawsuits, I'd tend to agree, though most of those lawsuits are about IP which I think is what really stands against free market principles; not the lawsuits per se. Lawsuits for false advertising or fraud or libel are, I think, perfectly legitimate.
Whether the rest is anti-free-market really depends on whether or not me seeing some idiot on an idiotic TV show using a particular handbag given to her by a competitor can be seen as coercion. I suppose it can be, but I would consider that to be a highly trivialized version of the word. They aren't telling you what to believe; they're giving you a situation ("ZOMG SNOOKI USES THESE HANDBAGS!") because they think you already believe something about that. If consumers being stupid is anti-free-market then I would call that an indictment of the entire philosophy.
You'd also be right in the case of "don't buy any of our competitor's product and get 10% off," but I've never actually seen that, nor would I have any idea how they can implement it.
You're right about what you say, but I actually think you're approaching it from the wrong direction.
Maybe I'm just a strange fellow, but let's say I'm a high-ranking CIA boss or somebody else who would be able to put such an assassination plot into play. I don't want to get caught, of course. I don't want their to be proof that would implicate me, any of my subordinates who carried it out or, by association, my bosses and my government.
But at the same time, I would want it to be pretty clear that he was assassinated. I wouldn't go with the undetectable poison or any such thing unless it was the absolute only way I thought I could get away with it. I'd just put one in his head execution style. Plenty of people might want Assange dead, so there's enough deniability that, if it's done competently, nobody actually gets caught. At the same time just about everybody knows what really happened.
The thing about Wikileaks is that attacking its credibility is not worthwhile, in my mind. They're posting our own documents; nobody involved has ever made any claim like "those are false" because we just can't. In other words, what they post stands on its own. (Not that they don't editorialize, of course, but they don't need to -- and shouldn't.) In that sense, discrediting Assange does little.
No, if I were the CIA what I would want is to make the NEXT Assange think twice before he decides he wants to pick up the mantle. I would want everybody involved scared to death of ever being involved again.
If I can't manage that, or I don't have the stomach for it, then I'd just bite my tongue and stew silently. There's no room for silly rape allegations.
You're begging the question. To you it's "blind, irrational panic [...with...] no reason whatsoever."
Other people look at, for example, the fact that the US has more gun deaths (per 100,000 people, so let's please not bother with the standard "ZOMG BIG COUNTRY!" claims) than any other nation in the world with available data[1], including Mexico where roving gangs of drug lords meet out vigilante justice on anybody they please. We have more than five times more gun deaths (per 100k) than our cousins in Australia and 33 times more than England, not to mention and 217 times more than they do in Japan where they have strict gun control legislation.
Now, to be sure, a significant portion of these differences are cultural and in that sense, the comparisons are not as fair as they appear. Many of the US gun deaths are also suicides[2]. I don't see that as an excuse, however. If we're more prone to using our guns as a society, on ourselves and our fellow citizens, then I fail to see how that is an indication that what we really need are more guns. The excuse that they're needed for hunting is just that; an excuse. If you want to go hunting, fine -- we'll write in an exception for rifles and shotguns for you. You don't need a handgun. In fact it's going to be less effective and less efficient if what you're really trying to do is kill an animal and not play with a handgun. So far as I am concerned, the only valid question in the debate is "is it too late to get the toothpaste back in the tube?" Have we gone too far down the road of allowing guns to back out with any measure of success?
So far as gun control being "for no reason whatsoever," that's an extremely biased view, to the point where I'm not sure it has any value whatsoever. It's an attempt at public safety in the same way that not letting you have a bomb building factory in your basement is. Maybe it's misguided (we will clearly disagree here but I'm willing to accept other viewpoints), but it's hardly without reason.
Since you mentioned blind, irrational panic, by the way, I'm compelled to say that I find "allowing guns increases gun crime" (and the corollary that outlawing guns reduces gun crime) to be far more fact-based and rational than the fear some people have that somewhere out there is a person with a gun who's going to break into their house, and only their own weapon can provide protection for themselves and their families. Of course it can happen, but the vast majority of people will never experience it. That's what I call blind, irrational panic.
I realize my post is US-centric, and you declare yourself not to be an American. It's a rather unavoidable consequence of not knowing where the hell you are from and the fact that most other western nations have considerably stronger gun control legislation. Perhaps you live somewhere where there is strong gun control legislation and yet high ratios of gun deaths? I'd be interested to hear it. Otherwise I suspect the points will hold true elsewhere or are actually reflected in the differing ratios between the US where just about anybody can get a gun and other nations where most people can't.
As an American, I'm also compelled to make an admission: I think gun control legislation here is unconstitutional. I think it's an extremely good idea, one that absolutely needs to be put forward and enforced and yet one that currently flies in the face of the Second Amendment. Then again people who get paid to decide those matters have let our current crop of gun control laws stand, so I suppose it's little more than my worthless personal interpretation.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
[2] If we take only homicides by guns, we fall alllll the way to #10 -- worse than every western nation in the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ratios between our most closely-relate
Statements of opinion are not libel; to qualify as such, they must be malicious, knowingly false statements of "fact."
"SuperBanana is a child molester" can be libel. "I think SuperBanana is a child molester because I saw him talking to some kids on a playground" is not. (Unless of course you never did any such thing -- then it's an entirely different ballgame.)
So far as I'm concerned, "Unless proven otherwise, I'm assuming for now" is sufficiently opinion to qualify for protection, particularly when he gives his reasoning for such an opinion. It's hard to suggest that he knows what he's saying is false and that he is saying it out of malice if he gives (moderately) reasonable explanations for why he believes it. He may ultimately be right or wrong, but that is far from the determining factor in whether or not something is libel, at least in the United States.
But honestly, the funny part to me is how blatantly he copied the letter. Do you see the the state that the recipient and the law firm are from in the original? Care to guess what the "G" in O.C.G.A is? (Hint: Official Code of ___ Annotated.) Care to guess where neither entity is based? Yes, that's right: Georgia. Hilarious. Personally I hope Barry Altman gets his ass sued for copyright infringement just because he's a little twat appropriating other peoples' work and legal expertise and doing so in such a hilariously amateurish manner, but I suppose that's just me.
It's also POSSIBLE that an earthquake shakes Chicago to the ground tonight, but I don't think I'll be garnering much support for this theory if I put it forward.
The reality is that so many people are jumping on board the conspiracy theory--highly disproportionally on Slashdot as compared to any other website I've read comments on any of these charges by the way--because hating the US is one of Slashdot posters' favorite pass-times. So not only does a frankly unlikely scenario garner unreasonable support, but factors that would make an objective observer shy even further away from it--such as the completely amateurish way the whole thing is handled and the fact that much simpler and more effective means could easily be employed by entities with billions of dollars at their disposal--are seen as support for it. After all, the CIA and US military is incompetent at everything it does, and therefore a completely incompetent attempt to defame him MUST be them! Frankly I still find it much more likely that if the government wants Assange gone, they simply put a bullet in his head. How many people do you think will be clambering to take over and release secret documents when the bodies start piling up?
All in all, while I hate Assange and don't have much respect for Wikileaks in general (I supported the leak about the military attacks but found nothing of value whatsoever in the leak of the Afghan documents) I'm perfectly willing to assume he's innocent until he has his day in court. On the other hand, I'm completely unwilling to assume it's a government conspiracy just because he says so. Perhaps especially because he says so. I don't think it's unreasonable for Slashdotters to be expected to apply the same level of critical thinking to this sort of conspiracy theory that they do to, say, 9/11 conspiracy theories. The fact that the comments are 50% "ZOMG CIA CONSPIRACY!" is a ratio I consider deeply disturbing.
Yes, because most of the people on Facebook would be off composing symphonies or expanding human knowledge if they just spent less time posting on peoples' walls.
I'm getting ridiculously tired of this hyperbolic Slashdot crap toward anything some random whackjob who can't even be bothered to post under an account has to say. You don't like Facebook? Good for you. It doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't make your penis bigger, and it sure doesn't make you or your time more valuable than people who do.
Tell me, oh brilliant AC: Do you even realize the irony that if Facebook is a waste of time, bitching about how much of a waste of time Facebook is is even worse? Apparently you're one of the enlightened! Go forth and catalyze creativity and innovation! Save humanity! You're our last hope! I'll go create a Facebook page to commemorate your righteous battle. Stop by if you have a moment and leave an update on my wall about how you're doing.
Gee, I wonder if you've made up your mind in advance at all? "Stop being a retard who disagrees with me and instead ask a question that I will only allow you to conclude the same as I do without being insulted!" Hey, thanks! If you think that position is wrong, then the onus is on you to explain why.
If your hypothesis that most women are only prostitutes because they are desperate for money and there is no viable alternative is correct, then all you have done is criminalize what even you describe as their only choice to make money. At best, in your world, you stop them from doing the only thing they can do to survive. At worst they do it anyway and are criminals in addition to paupers, with all of the stigma and danger associated with any criminal activity. At least if it were legalized, there could be some protections in place both for the prostitutes and for the Johns. When "hope you don't get beaten and robbed" or "hope your pimp is a nice guy" are your only protections, there's something wrong.
So, the six-figure-a-year celebrity hookers probably want to do it and they're making money hand-over-fist, so I don't see an argument to prevent it from that extreme. The opposite extreme (buying into your argument) is that the women don't really want to do it but have no other choice to survive, making legalizing it a slightly better alternative to a terrible situation that actually has very little to do with prostitution and more to do with hopeless economic conditions. Somewhere in the middle are women who aren't sexual millionaires but either want to do it, don't care either way or don't particularly want to do it and don't need to but consider it easier or faster money than the available alternatives. I'm seeing an entire spectrum where not a single data point would lead me to the conclusion that prostitution should be illegal.
In fact, the only reason I can think of is the one supposed by your question: Imposing my set of morality on other people. My answer to your question about whether or not it is moral to pay for sex is "why the hell should I care?" If it doesn't involve me I don't find it to be any more my business than whether or not your wife or girlfriend (or boyfriend) is kinky in the sack. If it does, then I can exercise my own morality to my own actions and relations -- exactly as it should be. I wouldn't date a hooker, whether it was legal or not. I don't respect the behavior. It doesn't mean I need it to be criminal to prove my moral superiority.
Now, legalizing prostitution isn't simple; it's something that would need to be done carefully to achieve any of the potential benefits and avoid a clusterfuck of potential problems. Very probably other laws would need to be created or changed. But all in all, if "I don't approve of what you're doing with your body" is the best I can come up with to stop you... fuck me. No pun intended.
As I read your post, and especially this part, I was struck by how wrong I consider this sentiment.
Science is about the search for answers, the search for truth, and we have spent the better part of our history refining what we think to be important in that search. "I don't know what the answer is, but that is wrong" is and should always be a perfectly valid answer.
The reason this line in particular got to me is because it struck me as the sort of response one gets when arguing against religion with a theist. They're not satisfied that you have strong responses suggesting what they believe might be wrong*, they insist that you have the answers to all things and if you don't, they walk away smugly and declare their beliefs to be superior. It's God of the gaps in argument form.
In fact, I think it is similar to this situation. God can not be disproven according to our scientific standards, because he is not falsifiable (what if there is a God who doesn't want you to discover him?). That doesn't mean he exists or that he doesn't; it means disproving him is not scientific. If String Theory can not be falsified, can not be repeatedly verified, then I feel it is right to criticize it on those grounds. Hell, maybe it turns out to be exactly and perfectly correct but it is not, at least right now, correct from a scientific standpoint. If what's going on in this article changes that going forward, great! I'm all for a (slightly) more definitive answers, one way or another. If not, then perhaps some extra energy needs to be expended in making it a proper scientific theory. Maybe that will even make it more solid and robust going forward. And if that perception is incorrect (I readily admit that my mind can not wrap around these theories) then that's what neds to be fixed.
Not having all the answers doesn't make criticisms wrong or even worthless.
On a somewhat related note, having one's own pet theory doesn't make talking against something else wrong. It's right or wrong on its merits, not its circumstances. Another way of saying "happen[ing] to have their own pet theories" is "has a theory they think fits better." They may be right or wrong, but if they didn't believe that their theory was better it wouldn't be their theory.
* Please, let's not get into a debate about religion here!
And yet they did. That must really shake your world view.
Believe it or not, when normal people discover a vulnerability and their options are "run a bonet" and "tell the manufacturer," most of them tell the manufacturer. Getting $1000 for it is an added bonus, not the incentive to action.
True, it's not going to create a whole new generation of professional bug bounty hunters living off their bounties, but that was never the intent. If they wanted to hire an army of extra bug hunters they'd put you on the payroll. If you're looking to get rich, do something else. If you're into it for the challenge or to be helpful or you happen to be mucking about with their browser as part of your day job, make a little extra money as Google's way of saying "thank you" for doing the right thing and helping them to make their free product--one you evidently use, if you're finding bugs in it--a better one.
If that's not good enough for you, well, fine. Don't look for bugs. Don't pass Go, don't collect $1,000. Your time is apparently better spent trying to get yourself a spot on Wheel of Fortune.
With all due respect, stop being a fucking moron. Nobody here has suggested killing all Christians. Nobody here has suggested burning a church, much less all churches. To not only ascribe nonsense to people but declare it to be some sort of sexual thrill for them has to make you one of the most shallow, despicable excuses for a human being I have ever seen in my life. One who obviously has nothing intelligent to say, so he just makes shit up to attack as it pleases him . I'm sure you sleep awfully well at night having defeated your invented evils, don't you? Must be awfully hard to lose an argument when you just decide what the other side thinks and says and declare it to be truth.
Are you truly so dense that you can't separate politics and religion? Lots of people hate Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, and it has nothing to do with their religion. It has to do with their politics.
I'm sure many of them would. What the fuck is your point?
All else aside, if you can't understand the difference between not caring if somebody dies or feeling the world is better off for it and actively suggesting they should be killed or killing them... well, I was going to ask how dense you could possibly be but at this point the question is becoming rhetorical.
I would consider somebody like Rush Limbaugh dying to be one of the better things to happen to this country because of the way he simply whips people into partisan furors to serve his own set of interests. It doesn't mean I wish death on him, and it especially doesn't mean I think he should be killed. If he WERE killed, I would expect the person locked in prison for the rest of his life and declare him a murderer, not a hero.
Yes, because clearly instead of talking about things or making a logical argument ("bitching on the Internet" in your little world) the correct solution is to kill everybody who disagrees with you. Holy hell, you really are a whackjob. Do you honestly believe you're one of the "normal[s]?" Because I have a newsflash for you. You're a fool, as bad as any religious or anti-religious nutter out there.
For that matter, you need to realize that being anti-religion and anti-theist are wildly different things. Believe in god if you want, I really don't give a fuck. Vapor-lock your lips to some religion's ass without thinking thoroughly about it all and what you truly believe, tell everybody they have to believe what you and your buddies believe, and I have major problems with it and with you. And much as I might think the world is better off without you in it, that doesn't cause me to orgasm to the thought of killing you. Sorry to disappoint.
Let me clue you in, since you're obviously too feeble-minded to reach these realizations on your own. People who don't believe in religion, who don't believe in God, who don't believe in an afterlife believe that this is all there is. They don't support running off and killing people to any degree more than believers do (there are bad apples in both groups, naturally). They don't support fucking each other over. They believe you should be good and tolerant toward one another because you don't get a second chance. Making somebody's life miserable is unconscionable when you can't pretend to believe that no matter how long they live, no matter what you do to them, they'll "live" an eternity longer in perfect bliss with their creator. Not believing in eter
Why not? "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," according to Emerson. Life is not a computer program. It is not necessarily important to get identical output when given the same sets of input, much less only similar sets of input.
Why is it wrong to denounce people who claim to own your work when they know they do not, who remove it from the public consumption you have decided for it and threaten to cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend your own property? Why is it wrong to be unconcerned when a product has an expired patent number that hurts no one and may actually be a public benefit in that it allows you to look up the patent information, see it is expired and duplicate it if you so desire--an outcome that seems perfectly in line with the original vision of patents?
A product unmarked with patent information is not protected by patent (probably--is it a legal requirement to display patent numbers? I'm not sure). If you want to duplicate it, you're left to reverse engineer it. Displaying an expired number allows them to look the patent up and see exactly how it works. Which do you find a greater public benefit? How do you see an illegal or erroneous DMCA takedown as a public benefit of any kind, by any stretch of the imagination?
Both things are technically illegal; no one disputes that. One is best-case beneficial and worst-case indifferent, the other is best-case disruptive (they take it down, you put it back up and nothing more comes of it) and worst-case outright harmful (they take it down and, despite being in the right you leave it down for fear of the consequences of fighting). We're supposed to be ashamed to treat them differently? Because you say so? No, I don't think so.
I don't find it hypocritical at all but if it is, I'm perfectly content to be so on this one.
I don't understand the problem, honestly. The plot is divulged under an enormous top-level heading "Plot," and the identity of the murderer under an also-gigantic sub-heading "Identity of the murderer." Nobody is "ruining the play" for anybody else; they're ruining it for themselves by continuing to read after it is made plainly clear what they're about to see.
The family can be angry if they want to, since apparently it was important to the author that people not publish the killer's name. Nobody else has any such right. Nobody else is being wronged, even if "being wronged" just means "having their wishes ignored despite being dead for 35 years."
Why shouldn't we?
Geography simply is not very important. It's something that pretty much never comes up in real life except as some trivia question or when somebody finds it a good candidate to try to declare you ignorant. To whatever nearly nonexistent degree it has any value to the average person at all, the value increases based on proximity. Knowing what states border mine is significantly more important than knowing where a random state is, is significantly more important than knowing where a random country is -- none of which are terribly important at all.
Does the average person anywhere really have a balanced knowledge of the whole world, or is it just a semantic argument that, as the grandparent said, tries to make what you know more important than what somebody else knows?
Europeans know where North Korea is and Americans don't? Okay, swell -- but that's not "a balanced knowledge of the whole world." How many know anything about Africa? How many know anything about Central America? South America? These places make up a vast portion of the landmass of the world, but I doubt most people know anything about their geography. Why? Because as self-absorbed as it may be, they're just not that important--on average--to us. Knowing where countries within these landmasses are is even less important, even when a country happens to pop up on our radar. You've simply chosen some different metric for how important a country must be to care about. And in fact one might be able to make a distance argument there as well.
Geography can be important to some people. It's important to an in-depth understanding of a lot of historical (and present-day) conflicts. It's important to a lot of very practical matters like building projects, trade issues, etc. To those people it's vital; to everybody else, who really gives a damn?
As a bit of an aside, I can tell you as an American that we absolutely studied world geography in my classes growing up. Some of that information is still with me; more than is probably with the average person. Much of it is not. Why? Because knowledge that doesn't get used tends to fade away. I also took French in junior high and high school, but I've forgotten most of that as well. Congratulations to those who have the memory to store all sorts of information they never use, but for everybody else it's hardly worth looking down one's nose about.