Look at, iirc, Kennesaw, Georgia. They passed a law ~30years ago mandating that every head of household must own and maintain a firearm, and within a year crime became almost nonexistant.
The Kennesaw law was passed in 1982 in response to a gun ban in Morton Grove.
Interestingly enough, although burglaries and crimes against individuals dropped rather dramatically in the first couple of years after the passing of the law, over a 10 year span the number of burglaries in Kennesaw remained about the same as before the law, while the number of burglaries in Morton Grove actually dropped. It's also worth noting that it's pretty normal for a city's per capita crime rate to drop when the total population rises from 5000 to 30,000 as it has in Kennesaw.
Kennesaw is an interesting talking point, but it's hardly conclusive. It is, however, interesting to note that Morton Grove has since dropped the handgun ban.
Or use one that's been built by and for the community with all the source code visible for all to see. Proprietary binaries? You don't know what's squirrelled away in there...
Absolutely. And be sure to compile the OS from source, using a compiler that you personally wrote in assembly language. Never trust any binary.
I don't believe for a minute those rules will be enforceable and I truly think as soon as they have access to these machines and their boss aint looking they're going to start rummaging like crazy.
Right. Because police tracking down criminal networks are more than willing to risk their careers to sneak a peak at some random person's emails to their grandmother, pictures of their friends, and last year's Christmas wish list.
I'm not saying that nobody will ever overstep their snooping mandate, but I think we can all loosen the tinfoil hats just a bit. If your computer is one of these zombies, I'd be more concerned about the snooping that may have been done by the people who zombified it in the first place than that of the cops.
No one suggested blind removal of code. The original point was that an undocumented easter egg may have gotten through the testing process because the testers assumed it was harmless. My point was that it's not necessarily a valid assumption.
The larger point is that, by putting an easter egg into your code, you're creating additional unnecessary work -- more test cases to make sure the easter egg didn't break some other code, as well as a code review to ensure that nothing else was buried in there.
Basically, any developer who sneaks extra code into an application is a developer who has shown that they aren't to be trusted.
I don't know about "enterprise" marketing, but in retail marketing that's called false advertising.
First, they're not advertising it. In fact, this very article is about them preventing it from being advertised.
Second, "false advertising" really refers to the product, not the price. Prices are almost always variable. If a commercial comes on TV and says "buy product X for only $29.99", but your particular favourite store has it on sale for $19.99, do you complain that it was false advertising?
In this case, the point is that there really isn't a true list price. There is just a starting point from which to negotiate the actual price.
Because on Slashdot, a mod of "troll" means "I disagree with you", and as you can tell by the responses, many disagree with me.
I don't normally complain about Slashdot moderation -- maybe because my karma has been capped at "Excellent" for years and I mostly get positive mods -- but this is pretty clearly an example of an abuse of the moderation system. People can disagree if they want, but there is no way that post was a troll.
No one here is suggesting that CF only affects men. The argument is about whether or not the university's decision was racist/sexist based on the information that they had. The information that they had was, of course, completely inaccurate, which is why they have now reversed their decision.
The point isn't to benefit the students directly. The point is to benefit the communities to which they belong.
An example: Slashdot decides to have a fund raising event. They want to benefit the nerd community, so they decide to give to research into Asperger's Syndrome -- not because every Slashdotter has Asperger's, but because it's quite common in the nerd community.
They weren't locking anything out, and they don't have any problem with funds being raised for CF, even if it were true that it only affected white men.
The point of the decision was simply this: they wanted their orientation week fund raising to benefit the various communities to which their students belong. If CF were, in fact, a white man's disease, and given that their students are not all white men, it follows that funds donated to CF are not benefiting the various communities to which the students belong, but rather only a subset, therefore CF is not a good candidate for this particular fund raising event.
It isn't a racist and sexist attitude. It's not that they don't like white men, it's that they wanted orientation week's fund raising to benefit an organization that represents the entire student body, not just a certain segment of it. Therefore, if it were true that CF only affected white men, it would be absolutely logical to choose a different recipient. The same would be the case if CF only affected black women.
Re:I see what they did there
on
Evolving Rocks
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· Score: 1
Thereby neatly summarizing why it's idiotic to call this process "evolution".
But, holy shit! Earth's mineral composition changes over time?
Thereby neatly summarizing why it's idiotic to say that it's idiotic to call this process "evolution".
"Changing over time" is the very definition of evolution. Changing over time as a result of mutation, reproduction, and competition is the definition of biological evolution. This is not evolution by natural selection, but it's still evolution.
So why is it a problem if some rapists and murderers get their hands on drugs?
Well, mostly because they're illegal.
The purpose of prison isn't to say, "hey, you broke the law, so now we're going to send you somewhere where you're allowed to break the law". That's not how it works. Especially when the laws that most of the inmates are guilty of breaking are drug laws (less than 25% of State prisoners and 4% of Federal prisoners are "rapists and murderers", while under 20% of State prisoners and more than 53% of Federal prisoners are in on drug charges). That would really be brilliant. Lock someone up for possession of drugs, and then allow them to possess drugs in prison.
They have access to landlines, but the access is tightly controlled and monitored.
Not only is it tightly controlled and monitored, but it's also a privilege that can be revoked as a punishment. The threat of losing privileges is essential to running a peaceful prison.
We are talking CRIMINALS here. CONVICTED criminals. They do illegal stuff for a living. And, they don't tend to be "nice".
As an aside, I'd just like to point out that not all convicted criminals are career criminals, nor are they necessarily not nice. The violent psychos are actually a minority in most prisons.
I have a laptop I bought in April, 4GB RAM, and Vista (preinstalled) has always just been obscenely slow when doing anything like logging in, switching users, etc. Absolutely ridiculous.
I suspect this is not purely a problem with Vista, as I have not experienced any obscenely slow activity on my laptop with 2GB RAM running Vista Home Basic, nor on an older desktop (XP 2800) with 2GB RAM running Vista Ultimate.
You thow someone in for a victimless "crime", and he gets educated to do real crime when he's released.
You're preachin' to the choir, brother.
Although, even if the prison population was reduced to only those who really need to be removed from society, there would still be a market for contraband in the prison, and there would still be shady opportunistic guards willing to supply it.
Regarding your second point, I suspect that part of the problem is that, while guards are supposed to be the ones enforcing the rules, the sad reality is that guards are often part of the problem. It's well known that much of the prison drug supply comes from guards selling to prisoners, so it's not much of a stretch to think that guards might be supplying cell phones to prisoners as well.
The way you describe it, all suicides essentially become murders then, (no I'm not defending this piece of filth's actions) as anyone who does this has some reason, caused by some thing, action, person, wording, whatever that drove them to it.
First of all, I didn't say that the girl's suicide should be treated as a murder. In fact, I specifically said that the woman did not kill her, just that she contributed to her decision to commit suicide. And yes, it is often the case that people have some responsibility in other people's suicides. An important factor is whether or not their role was intentional. In this case, the woman's role was definitely intentional. Not that she was intentionally trying to drive the girl to commit suicide (although that is possible, since she knew about her psychological problems), but that she was intentionally trying to cause her harm.
Where do you draw the line, where do we stop? I don't have a good answer.
Neither do I. But looking at intent is a starting point. This woman intended to hurt the girl. It's possible that she didn't intend to hurt her that much, but that's the risk you take when you try to hurt someone. If I swing a baseball bat at your head, intending to wound you, but I end up killing you by mistake, I am fully responsible for causing your death. Ms. Drew intended to hurt the girl, but drove her to suicide instead. She clearly shares some responsibility in the girl's death.
Is the question of whether or not it is okay to kill anything other than a moral question?
Legislation against murder is not purely moral, as killing someone definitely infringes on their right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Ah, but murder laws predate your Declaration of Independence. Also, I didn't say that laws are based only on morality, just that morality is part of it, whereas you had stated that morality is not legislated at all.
For example, prostitution laws. Or how about laws against consensual oral and/or anal sex that exist in some States?/p>
These are state laws and as such are a reflection of the local constituency's beliefs, although it could be argued that there are medical reasons for such legislation, and not simply prudish ones.
A reflection of the local constituency's beliefs, or, in other words, local morality. Medical reasons? You're really grasping at straws.
Or, to delve into an issue of contemporary civil law, how about the law preventing people from marrying members of the same sex?
My interpretation of those statutes is that they are for tax purposes, since civil unions are not prohibited, but the tax benefitting status of marriage is, which should be reserved for a family unit capable of reproduction, as the tax benefits are intended to support a continuance of the species.
Tax reasons rarely, if ever, come up in the same-sex marriage debate. It always comes down to religious beliefs. Besides, couples with no intention or ability to reproduce are allowed to marry.
What I've noticed all too often is that Americans seem brainwashed by their symbols. Nothing matters as much to an American as their American symbols, of which the flag is one of the most important.
For example, the question of burning the flag. In Canada, where I live, if someone wants to burn a Canadian flag, I couldn't care less. The flag is just a symbol of the country. It's the country that I love, not the symbol. If you try to do something that hurts a flag, I won't stop you. If you try to do something that hurts the country, prepare for a fight.
Same goes for leadership. In the U.S., the Office of the President is another sacred symbol. It seems it doesn't matter what the President does, many Americans insist on supporting him simply because of who he is, even if he happens to be hurting the country. His job, as a symbol, is important, so he must be supported in his actions to destroy the country. Meanwhile, in Canada, if our Prime Minister does something that hurts the country, Canadians will kick his ass. We don't care about some idiot we hired for a few years to run our country, we care about the country.
I think this is why so many non-Americans get confused about all the flag waving in the U.S. Obviously, I don't mean to suggest that everyone who waves/displays/salutes a flag doesn't really care about their country. But it seems to the rest of us that you're more devoted to your symbols than to what those symbols are supposed to represent.
I'm reminded of a line from an old Dead Kennedys song: "Tell me who's the real patriot, the Archie Bunker slobs waving flags, or the people with the guts to work for some real change?"
It's not that you can't wave a flag and work for some real change, it's just that it seems too few do.
You can't blame the bully for the suicide unless you happen to have PERFECT evidence that the person in question would never have committed suicide at any point in the future EVER.
And by that logic, you can't blame a murderer for a death unless you happen to have PERFECT evidence that the person in question would never have died at any point in the future EVER.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this thread full of silly semantic quibbles?
Because it's on Slashdot.
To put it another way, you must be new here. :)
That's not stupidity. You said it yourself, the problem is a sense of entitlement.
Pretty much all of the world's problems can be traced back to that.
Look at, iirc, Kennesaw, Georgia. They passed a law ~30years ago mandating that every head of household must own and maintain a firearm, and within a year crime became almost nonexistant.
The Kennesaw law was passed in 1982 in response to a gun ban in Morton Grove.
Interestingly enough, although burglaries and crimes against individuals dropped rather dramatically in the first couple of years after the passing of the law, over a 10 year span the number of burglaries in Kennesaw remained about the same as before the law, while the number of burglaries in Morton Grove actually dropped. It's also worth noting that it's pretty normal for a city's per capita crime rate to drop when the total population rises from 5000 to 30,000 as it has in Kennesaw.
Kennesaw is an interesting talking point, but it's hardly conclusive. It is, however, interesting to note that Morton Grove has since dropped the handgun ban.
Or use one that's been built by and for the community with all the source code visible for all to see. Proprietary binaries? You don't know what's squirrelled away in there...
Absolutely. And be sure to compile the OS from source, using a compiler that you personally wrote in assembly language. Never trust any binary.
I don't believe for a minute those rules will be enforceable and I truly think as soon as they have access to these machines and their boss aint looking they're going to start rummaging like crazy.
Right. Because police tracking down criminal networks are more than willing to risk their careers to sneak a peak at some random person's emails to their grandmother, pictures of their friends, and last year's Christmas wish list.
I'm not saying that nobody will ever overstep their snooping mandate, but I think we can all loosen the tinfoil hats just a bit. If your computer is one of these zombies, I'd be more concerned about the snooping that may have been done by the people who zombified it in the first place than that of the cops.
Edsger Dijkstra, the greatest computer scientist to never own a computer...
So, his Macintosh wasn't a computer?
No one suggested blind removal of code. The original point was that an undocumented easter egg may have gotten through the testing process because the testers assumed it was harmless. My point was that it's not necessarily a valid assumption.
The larger point is that, by putting an easter egg into your code, you're creating additional unnecessary work -- more test cases to make sure the easter egg didn't break some other code, as well as a code review to ensure that nothing else was buried in there.
Basically, any developer who sneaks extra code into an application is a developer who has shown that they aren't to be trusted.
Surely there isn't something malicious about having a buried feature to display some info about the software's developer(s)?
No, but it raises the question: what else is buried in there?
In fact, if I were trying to bury something malicious in code, I might consider hiding it in a seemingly harmless easter egg.
I don't know about "enterprise" marketing, but in retail marketing that's called false advertising.
First, they're not advertising it. In fact, this very article is about them preventing it from being advertised.
Second, "false advertising" really refers to the product, not the price. Prices are almost always variable. If a commercial comes on TV and says "buy product X for only $29.99", but your particular favourite store has it on sale for $19.99, do you complain that it was false advertising?
In this case, the point is that there really isn't a true list price. There is just a starting point from which to negotiate the actual price.
Not sure why you got modded down as a troll.
Because on Slashdot, a mod of "troll" means "I disagree with you", and as you can tell by the responses, many disagree with me.
I don't normally complain about Slashdot moderation -- maybe because my karma has been capped at "Excellent" for years and I mostly get positive mods -- but this is pretty clearly an example of an abuse of the moderation system. People can disagree if they want, but there is no way that post was a troll.
No one here is suggesting that CF only affects men. The argument is about whether or not the university's decision was racist/sexist based on the information that they had. The information that they had was, of course, completely inaccurate, which is why they have now reversed their decision.
I'm sorry for your loss.
The point isn't to benefit the students directly. The point is to benefit the communities to which they belong.
An example: Slashdot decides to have a fund raising event. They want to benefit the nerd community, so they decide to give to research into Asperger's Syndrome -- not because every Slashdotter has Asperger's, but because it's quite common in the nerd community.
This is sort of what they were aiming for.
They weren't locking anything out, and they don't have any problem with funds being raised for CF, even if it were true that it only affected white men.
The point of the decision was simply this: they wanted their orientation week fund raising to benefit the various communities to which their students belong. If CF were, in fact, a white man's disease, and given that their students are not all white men, it follows that funds donated to CF are not benefiting the various communities to which the students belong, but rather only a subset, therefore CF is not a good candidate for this particular fund raising event.
It isn't a racist and sexist attitude. It's not that they don't like white men, it's that they wanted orientation week's fund raising to benefit an organization that represents the entire student body, not just a certain segment of it. Therefore, if it were true that CF only affected white men, it would be absolutely logical to choose a different recipient. The same would be the case if CF only affected black women.
Thereby neatly summarizing why it's idiotic to call this process "evolution".
But, holy shit! Earth's mineral composition changes over time?
Thereby neatly summarizing why it's idiotic to say that it's idiotic to call this process "evolution".
"Changing over time" is the very definition of evolution. Changing over time as a result of mutation, reproduction, and competition is the definition of biological evolution. This is not evolution by natural selection, but it's still evolution.
Or, simply put, think "small e" evolution versus "big e" Evolution.
So why is it a problem if some rapists and murderers get their hands on drugs?
Well, mostly because they're illegal.
The purpose of prison isn't to say, "hey, you broke the law, so now we're going to send you somewhere where you're allowed to break the law". That's not how it works. Especially when the laws that most of the inmates are guilty of breaking are drug laws (less than 25% of State prisoners and 4% of Federal prisoners are "rapists and murderers", while under 20% of State prisoners and more than 53% of Federal prisoners are in on drug charges). That would really be brilliant. Lock someone up for possession of drugs, and then allow them to possess drugs in prison.
They have access to landlines, but the access is tightly controlled and monitored.
Not only is it tightly controlled and monitored, but it's also a privilege that can be revoked as a punishment. The threat of losing privileges is essential to running a peaceful prison.
We are talking CRIMINALS here. CONVICTED criminals. They do illegal stuff for a living. And, they don't tend to be "nice".
As an aside, I'd just like to point out that not all convicted criminals are career criminals, nor are they necessarily not nice. The violent psychos are actually a minority in most prisons.
Correction to my previous post:
...my laptop with 2GB RAM running Vista Home Basic...
I meant Vista Home Premium, not Basic.
I have a laptop I bought in April, 4GB RAM, and Vista (preinstalled) has always just been obscenely slow when doing anything like logging in, switching users, etc. Absolutely ridiculous.
I suspect this is not purely a problem with Vista, as I have not experienced any obscenely slow activity on my laptop with 2GB RAM running Vista Home Basic, nor on an older desktop (XP 2800) with 2GB RAM running Vista Ultimate.
You thow someone in for a victimless "crime", and he gets educated to do real crime when he's released.
You're preachin' to the choir, brother.
Although, even if the prison population was reduced to only those who really need to be removed from society, there would still be a market for contraband in the prison, and there would still be shady opportunistic guards willing to supply it.
Regarding your second point, I suspect that part of the problem is that, while guards are supposed to be the ones enforcing the rules, the sad reality is that guards are often part of the problem. It's well known that much of the prison drug supply comes from guards selling to prisoners, so it's not much of a stretch to think that guards might be supplying cell phones to prisoners as well.
The way you describe it, all suicides essentially become murders then, (no I'm not defending this piece of filth's actions) as anyone who does this has some reason, caused by some thing, action, person, wording, whatever that drove them to it.
First of all, I didn't say that the girl's suicide should be treated as a murder. In fact, I specifically said that the woman did not kill her, just that she contributed to her decision to commit suicide. And yes, it is often the case that people have some responsibility in other people's suicides. An important factor is whether or not their role was intentional. In this case, the woman's role was definitely intentional. Not that she was intentionally trying to drive the girl to commit suicide (although that is possible, since she knew about her psychological problems), but that she was intentionally trying to cause her harm.
Where do you draw the line, where do we stop? I don't have a good answer.
Neither do I. But looking at intent is a starting point. This woman intended to hurt the girl. It's possible that she didn't intend to hurt her that much, but that's the risk you take when you try to hurt someone. If I swing a baseball bat at your head, intending to wound you, but I end up killing you by mistake, I am fully responsible for causing your death. Ms. Drew intended to hurt the girl, but drove her to suicide instead. She clearly shares some responsibility in the girl's death.
Is the question of whether or not it is okay to kill anything other than a moral question?
Legislation against murder is not purely moral, as killing someone definitely infringes on their right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Ah, but murder laws predate your Declaration of Independence. Also, I didn't say that laws are based only on morality, just that morality is part of it, whereas you had stated that morality is not legislated at all.
For example, prostitution laws. Or how about laws against consensual oral and/or anal sex that exist in some States?/p>
These are state laws and as such are a reflection of the local constituency's beliefs, although it could be argued that there are medical reasons for such legislation, and not simply prudish ones.
A reflection of the local constituency's beliefs, or, in other words, local morality. Medical reasons? You're really grasping at straws.
Or, to delve into an issue of contemporary civil law, how about the law preventing people from marrying members of the same sex?
My interpretation of those statutes is that they are for tax purposes, since civil unions are not prohibited, but the tax benefitting status of marriage is, which should be reserved for a family unit capable of reproduction, as the tax benefits are intended to support a continuance of the species.
Tax reasons rarely, if ever, come up in the same-sex marriage debate. It always comes down to religious beliefs. Besides, couples with no intention or ability to reproduce are allowed to marry.
What I've noticed all too often is that Americans seem brainwashed by their symbols. Nothing matters as much to an American as their American symbols, of which the flag is one of the most important.
For example, the question of burning the flag. In Canada, where I live, if someone wants to burn a Canadian flag, I couldn't care less. The flag is just a symbol of the country. It's the country that I love, not the symbol. If you try to do something that hurts a flag, I won't stop you. If you try to do something that hurts the country, prepare for a fight.
Same goes for leadership. In the U.S., the Office of the President is another sacred symbol. It seems it doesn't matter what the President does, many Americans insist on supporting him simply because of who he is, even if he happens to be hurting the country. His job, as a symbol, is important, so he must be supported in his actions to destroy the country. Meanwhile, in Canada, if our Prime Minister does something that hurts the country, Canadians will kick his ass. We don't care about some idiot we hired for a few years to run our country, we care about the country.
I think this is why so many non-Americans get confused about all the flag waving in the U.S. Obviously, I don't mean to suggest that everyone who waves/displays/salutes a flag doesn't really care about their country. But it seems to the rest of us that you're more devoted to your symbols than to what those symbols are supposed to represent.
I'm reminded of a line from an old Dead Kennedys song: "Tell me who's the real patriot, the Archie Bunker slobs waving flags, or the people with the guts to work for some real change?"
It's not that you can't wave a flag and work for some real change, it's just that it seems too few do.
You can't blame the bully for the suicide unless you happen to have PERFECT evidence that the person in question would never have committed suicide at any point in the future EVER.
And by that logic, you can't blame a murderer for a death unless you happen to have PERFECT evidence that the person in question would never have died at any point in the future EVER.