"Coffee shops can install cameras or hire security."
You have never run a coffee shop. The margins are thin enough in most cases that having to replace the leg of a broken table is often a stretch.
So, again, that would be a situation of "no way to prevent it" as cameras and security guards are totally infeasable.
But the point I was making is that no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter how careful you are, you will be a party in something bad that happens and if you simply quit whatever it is you're doing that caused you to be a party to that, then you will end up sitting in your basement staring, frightened, at the wall.
There are many things you could have done. First, contacting the men in question and telling them that they will not be tolerated and they will be watched carefully. Second, contacting the 13 year old girls and telling them that they are being taken and perhaps threatening to contact their parents (hollow threats, but usually very effective)
Perhaps even posting publically on the site about these 3 guys that are causing trouble.
I'm glad everyone isn't so sensitive. We would be living in caves and there definately woudln't be a place like slashdot to come share opinions.
I'm sorry, you shut down a site where 20,000 people communicated because 3 bad guys did something creepy?
This in my eyes is sort of like:
"I shut down my convenience store because this creepy guy used to come in once or twice a month and oogle random women"
I'm sorry... what?
"I closed down my airline company because someone was once assaulted in the toilet"
"I shut down my coffie shop because a woman and a man met there and later she was raped"
Do any of these make ANY sense to anyone?
*confused*
There are bad people everywhere. They are uncommon, but if you collect 20,000 people, you can almost guarantee there will be 3-4 bad people. Go to a parade or a sporting event. There are 5 or 6 bad people there. They are thinking bad things. Should we shut down the parade? No!
This is sort of like the prosecutor who arrested two guys for the same murder and then tried each one of them at the same time.
In each case, he told the jury "my theory is... xxxxx" basically saying that this guy did the murder alone, himself, for his own reasons.
When both of them were convicted of the same murder, by the same prosecutor, who claimed he "knew" how it went down (but in two different ways for each guy), both convictions were thrown out and the DA got re-elected the next term.
He KNEW damn well one of them was innocent. They couldn't possibly have both done the crime seperately, alone, as they knew it was carried out... but he argued that both were guilty with enough fire that they were both convicted.
Scary.
If he really really believes a guy is guilty, fine, I guess he can argue that, but this guy stood in front of two different juries and said "I know this guy is guilty" and he basically lied because he couldn't possible believe that they both were.
Scary.
When questioned, he actually claimed that he did the right thing and that both men should remain in jail because a jury found them both guilty.
Height changes are more likely related to diet and environment than to genetics. Same with hormonal levels in the blood, the average age of puberty and the number of people getting heart disease. They're not genetic evolution, but a change in envrionment.
That is to say, it is likely that if a family line who has been seeing an increase in average height for 200 years were placed in an environment similar to the 16th century, they would likely be of similar height and stature to their 16th century ancestors (on average, of course).
It would be absolutely irrelevant to try to compare a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 against a 2.6GHz Pentium 4.
The 2.6GHz Athlon 64 roundly beats even the 3.5GHz Pentium 4 by a substantial margin in "real world" applications. For example, on the "Multimedia Winstone" real world benchmark, the 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX60 beats the Pentium "Extreme Edition" at 3.5GHz (both a dual-core and are top of the line chips in their respective lineups). The benchmark shows that the Athlon is fully 20% faster than the Pentium 4 despite having a clock speed that's 35% slower.
Clock speed is meaningless to CPU performance today in the days of speculative operations and Out of Order Execution units and parallel pipeline processing, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean that "Intel has a perceived advantage in speed they can't fully exploit", because as we know, the P4 was designed to sacrifice performance to try to reach high clock speeds and that approach has failed to scale as well as Intel expected. AMD designed the Athlon to increase the work done per cycle and this approach has worked.
Intel has followed suit and based their next line of desktop processor development on the Pentium-M chip which was designed independently of the P4 (it is architecturally closer to the Pentium 3) because they realized the folly of their approach with their current chips.
I often shoot 3000 photos at an event. When I'm doing youth sports, I often shoot 400 photos in an hour, seeing that I am shooting maybe 25-30 participants per game and my "most bang for buck" area is to get about 6-8 decent photos of each person. Figure 30% "throwaway" and we're already surpassing my numbers above.
When people did this sort of thing with film, they targeted 2-3 shots per participant, sure, but would still burn 20-25 rolls of 36 exposure film.
I have to shoot at JPG settings and STILL carry 3GB worth of cards around with me, with a laptop for dumping at lunchtime (we're talking 12 hours of shooting).
Just because it doesn't fit into what you're doing TODAY doesn't mean it doesn't fit into what someone else is doing or what you WILL do tomorrow. Go get a 1DS MK-II and notice that RAW files are what, 50MB each. Are you ok with 80 pictures per card? Or would you desire more storage in that case?
Besides, microdrives are fragile, but flash memory isn't so. Higher density chips bring the cost of higher volume storage down by decreasing die size and decreasing the number of chips per unit. These are all good things!!
Well, I was purposefully excluding the middle ages, lest the need to mention the inquisition or uhhh the crusades or the any number of really absurd things people do in the name of religion and power.
I would like (hope) (wish) to think that we have grown beyond that, but I hate being proven wrong...
I wasn't laying into the puritans. I was merely pointing out that they were a very strict and uppity group in relationship to the the majority of the US over the last 250 years. I was making reference to US tradition being staunchly pro-feedom, secular and hands-off for the most part, minus a few exceptions, namely puritans, uh maybe mccarthyists (prohibitionists?) and today... Pat Robertsonians? lol
Still, in US tradition, punishments that far oustrip the crimes haven't been "institutionalized" (we skirt 'mob rule' such as lynch mobs, organized crime and rape gangs, etc) really at all since at least the 19th century if not the 17th century. It's sad to be a part of the generation that will have to "fix" the mistakes of those in power today, because "fixing" is much easier than "wrecking" Osama and his cronies taught us that in 2001... I wish we could learn from their harsh lessons.
Thanks for this post. I especially appreciated this line, but not for it's intended purpose. Frankly, it made me cringe....
The terrorists who struck The World Trade Center want a world run by an archaic, theocratic totalitarianism with eye-for-an-eye style justice meted out by them and their hand-picked like-minded sociopaths.
You know why? Because from my perspective, those hard line "conservatives" (very large air quotes) who run our government speak about this daily...
A slogan of the Texas republican party (of whom George W Bush is the most prominent member) states "The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States is a Christian nation." Several right-wing organizations actively state "Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government." Among other things, the push for Christian Theocracy is more thinly veiled at the top reaches of our power structure (and actually spoken openly in some circles) than it has been since 15th century Puritans.
In addition, today's "conservatives" are leading the push to increased usage of the Death penalty and increasing mandatory sentences while reducing or in some cases completely removing the judiciary's ability to diverge from these mandatory requirements due to extenuating circumstances. This is the first time in America, at least since the Salem Witch trials where the punishment for certain crimes far outstrips the damage or harm caused by that crime. One great example involves "crimes against children". While there are serious crimes perpetrated, the sentencing for such crimes has grown significantly out of proportion with actual research findings showing harm and danger to children. A simple pat on the butt or even a hand on the shoulder can net a mandatory minimum sentence of more than 10 years, though studies show that non-penetrative abuse is statistically shown to have very small long term effects on children when the issue is treated with open discussion, trust and patience.
Small-time drug usage also has been shown to have statistically very little negative effect on society as a whole, but is punished with ever-increasing sentences that far outstrip the crime.
On top of this, top officials in our government often speak of the courts or opposition parties as "getting in the way of progress" when they strike down things like the patriot II and DMCA or the Internet Decency Act... when in reality they are struck down because they grossly infringe on our rights as citizens and people. The proper reaction is to be embarassed that they would make the MISTAKE of outstripping their power,but instead they vow revenge and simply re-write the bills with more "sneaky" language to see if they can get them passed in a second round of voting.
Then, they push laws giving the executive branch power to overrule (war powers act) and oversee (2001 PROTECT act) the legislative branch and judicial branch. Soon, they are appointing chairmen sympathetic to their cause regardless of their qualifications to handle the job and instituting collective organizations through wich they can better consolidate the power base and coordinate covert activities and actions. And a small bit of trivia, KGB loosely translates to "Comittee for Motherland Security" through which most Soviet intelligence and covert operations took place. That was Stalin's equivalent to consolidate his power into a single state entity that reported directly to him rather than to other arms of his power base.
I won't even go into the list of seven countries who have directly violated UN resolutions in the last 5 years (S Korea, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, US) or the countries that have executed minors in the last 25 years (Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, US) or the first-world countries that currently prisioners without trial and without recourse (uhhh US, maybe Russia, China, if they count) or should I point out that the US was the second greatest contributor to what are referred to today as "terrorist organizations", as recent
When (if?) exploits become hard to find, because true crackers protect them better, the script kiddies will return to their previous pursuits, games and porn.
And that, my friend, is why it would be so excellent.
The rate of 42% cited from that study was for "any new crimes" which would include anything from fraud to drug posession. It was also the "re-arrest" rate, where the "re-conviction" rate was closer to 20%.
More importantly, the rate for "new SEX crime" comitted by a previously incarcerated sex offender in that study was 5.3% and other studies show the rate amongst "general incarcerated population" to be convicted of a "new sex crime" is around 3%. Since the number of "criminals" in general is so much higher, criminals convicted of "other crimes" actually constitute 87% of the sex offenses comitted by "previously incarcerated" people.
Yes, convicted sex offenders are more likely than the average member of the population to be re-convicted for sex offenses. No, I don't believe it is so overwhelmingly predictable that it justifies lifetime supervision of people who would otherwise be free to go.
And You will find that 'sex offenders' is a broad category. It's hard to mix groups of sociopathic rapists with "regressed" personality pedophiles and put them on the same page as Oscar Wilde-type socially skilled "fixated" pedophiles.
The problem is that the law makes no distinction what so ever. So the punishment (because of mandatory sentencing) is the same for someone who violently anally rapes a screaming young child as it is for someone who cracks after 40 years of supressed sexual fantasies and touches a giggling 11 year old's breast area at his backyard swimming pool. Honestly, in most states, both of those crimes would be prosecuted as some sort of "felony sexual assault against a child" (a Class 2 felonly in Colorado with mandatory minimums around 8-30 years) and with all of the mandatory sentencing laws in place, would be subject to the same sentence, but obviously, they are hugely different. One man may not deserve prison at all and the other might command a life sentence, but because of knee-jerk reactions, they will get EXACTLY the same treatment.
ahhh sigh. Problem with this topic is that people already made up their minds and if they want to form a lynch mob, they will do it and nothing but guns will stop them.
Interesingly, DOJ studies indicate that sex offender recividism is the lowest of all crime categories. In fact, when you use numbers of "re-conviction" the number cuts in half, which indicates that a very large number (half) of re-arrests of sex offenders were not based on sufficient evidence to convict them.
I find that, in itself disturbing, having a friend who was falsely accused and NEARLY convicted (thak god for $50,000 lawyers). That's VERY sad.
Official DOJ reports show that recidivism amongst preferential child sexual abusers (ie pedophiles) is actually one of the LOWEST in all of the prison system.
It's an order of magnitude lower than those convicted for robbery and assault and lower than "other" types of sexual assault.
According to my reading of the settlement you DO HAVE to buy hardware and the money comes to you as a "rebate" for that hardware after you have submitted a proof-of-purchase.
Someone wanted to marry someone else... in fact, you noted they were in a relationship, perhaps a long-term one.... and he realized it would give his partner (who he probably loves) some additional benefits...
That sounds an awful lot like... well, most marriages.
I know plenty of gay folks who get married simply for the 'promise' involved, but even after that, they petition the state to recognize their marraige because of the benefits it entails. If straight folks were suddenly denied these benefits after being legally married, they would probably ask for the benefits back too!!
I don't see how that's a gay thing at all... in fact, I can see that you might have an argument against civil unions for gays (or anyone)... and would in fact PERFER them to be married, since it implies committment, love and long-term promises, rather than economic convienance (not that all civil unions are of convienance, but it seems more apt to the title).
In any case, what you say strikes me as silly because by that logic, heterosexual people shouldn't be allowed to marry unless they can PROVE to the state that they are in love... and that they care nothing about the benefits. Or do you think establishing "special" critera for gay marriages is somehow equitable?
it's bullshit no matter which way you slice it.
If you object to the "partner benefits" that a marraigs "inflicts" on society, then you are against marraiges alltogether, right? The benefits are no different whether it's a man or a woman or two men or two women.. it's one-for-one benefits to anyone who wanders into a courthouse and signs a document... the sex of the people involved is completely immaterial if you object to the nature of the benefits provided.....
You seriously think that Ted Kennedy was the first non-terrorist to get stopped by this sort of booby trap?
Perhaps it's the first case to make national news... but I can guarantee that it's not the first... or the 10th... If you think of how many people, statistically, have enough name recognition to make national headlines... Lets say it's about 0.01% of the population (that's a generous 30,000 people)... Then statistically, it's likely that 10,000 people (+/- 2,500) have been stopped in a similar manner before this issue made national news.
Figure that T. Kennedy is a very popular terrorist alias and maybe that number is only 5,000.
Boo hoo.
FYI, I know someone who operates on a fake passport and a fake social security number. Though that's for immigration reasons, not for terrorism reasons. He flys just fine. He has a job and pays taxes... He owns a small business and he speaks in front of crowds. But he "doesn't exist".:-) Ponder that while you're at it.
I thought it was going to start between 105 and 135. By my math, that's about as HIGH a price as the market would handle... so I decided that the price wouldn't rise for awhile.
But since it started at $85... I wish I had sunk some money into it!!!!!!
That's a 17% gain in 4 hours. If you had $100k into it, you would have made $17,000 in 4 hours, or roughly $4,250/hr.
The neat thing about path integrals is that the solution is the same regarldess of what path is followed, provided that the endpoints are the same and the equation is consistent over all points crossed by the function. Both of these things are usually true in finite space....
So it seems to me that he is implying that the event horizon doesnt "exist", it merely "tends to exist" at a particular location.
Uhm. the first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of energy.
Conservation of energy means that you cannot get more energy out of a system than is present in the system in the first place, or is applied to the system externally.
100% efficiency means that the input energy ie EXACTLY equal to the output energy. 110% efficiency would mean that 10% more energy exists the system than was input.
A bare wire is not 100% efficient as even pure silver wire will radiate a small amount of energy in the form of heat and thus will dissipate current over distance.
A claim of a 330% efficient electrical system is bunk. It violates pretty much every law of physics I can think of.
He's an idiot for claiming that the website cost him $300k. That I will agree on.
But... there were two links. One said he did NOT demand back-payment and just wanted forward-payment for his site. That is perfectly legal and if they refuse that, then he has the right to close it. It sux and is shitty business practice, but it's legal.
If he DID demand back-payment for that rediculous amount of money, he deserves trouble. 50 years is excessive. Give him 3 months and keep his computers...
Ever been in jail? Two nights feels like a month... trust me, he'll have plenty of time to think about it in a few months.
I think everyone should spend a weekend wrongly imprisoned in jail... just for the perspective. I did it (not by choice) and many of my opinions about the justice system changed drastically.
Slashdot Mirror
"Coffee shops can install cameras or hire security."
You have never run a coffee shop. The margins are thin enough in most cases that having to replace the leg of a broken table is often a stretch.
So, again, that would be a situation of "no way to prevent it" as cameras and security guards are totally infeasable.
But the point I was making is that no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter how careful you are, you will be a party in something bad that happens and if you simply quit whatever it is you're doing that caused you to be a party to that, then you will end up sitting in your basement staring, frightened, at the wall.
There are many things you could have done. First, contacting the men in question and telling them that they will not be tolerated and they will be watched carefully. Second, contacting the 13 year old girls and telling them that they are being taken and perhaps threatening to contact their parents (hollow threats, but usually very effective)
Perhaps even posting publically on the site about these 3 guys that are causing trouble.
I'm glad everyone isn't so sensitive. We would be living in caves and there definately woudln't be a place like slashdot to come share opinions.
But then again, that is just my *opinion*.
Stewed
I voted liberterian because I believe in their cause.
We got 0.08% of the vote.
Woohoo. "Thank you for voting, do you want a sticker?"
I got a sticker and 4 years of the Shrub.
Hard to convince me that voting makes a difference.
Stewed
I'm sorry, you shut down a site where 20,000 people communicated because 3 bad guys did something creepy?
This in my eyes is sort of like:
"I shut down my convenience store because this creepy guy used to come in once or twice a month and oogle random women"
I'm sorry... what?
"I closed down my airline company because someone was once assaulted in the toilet"
"I shut down my coffie shop because a woman and a man met there and later she was raped"
Do any of these make ANY sense to anyone?
*confused*
There are bad people everywhere. They are uncommon, but if you collect 20,000 people, you can almost guarantee there will be 3-4 bad people. Go to a parade or a sporting event. There are 5 or 6 bad people there. They are thinking bad things. Should we shut down the parade? No!
This is absurd!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stewing
This is sort of like the prosecutor who arrested two guys for the same murder and then tried each one of them at the same time.
In each case, he told the jury "my theory is... xxxxx" basically saying that this guy did the murder alone, himself, for his own reasons.
When both of them were convicted of the same murder, by the same prosecutor, who claimed he "knew" how it went down (but in two different ways for each guy), both convictions were thrown out and the DA got re-elected the next term.
He KNEW damn well one of them was innocent. They couldn't possibly have both done the crime seperately, alone, as they knew it was carried out... but he argued that both were guilty with enough fire that they were both convicted.
Scary.
If he really really believes a guy is guilty, fine, I guess he can argue that, but this guy stood in front of two different juries and said "I know this guy is guilty" and he basically lied because he couldn't possible believe that they both were.
Scary.
When questioned, he actually claimed that he did the right thing and that both men should remain in jail because a jury found them both guilty.
Scary.
Height changes are more likely related to diet and environment than to genetics. Same with hormonal levels in the blood, the average age of puberty and the number of people getting heart disease. They're not genetic evolution, but a change in envrionment.
That is to say, it is likely that if a family line who has been seeing an increase in average height for 200 years were placed in an environment similar to the 16th century, they would likely be of similar height and stature to their 16th century ancestors (on average, of course).
Stewey
It would be absolutely irrelevant to try to compare a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 against a 2.6GHz Pentium 4.
The 2.6GHz Athlon 64 roundly beats even the 3.5GHz Pentium 4 by a substantial margin in "real world" applications. For example, on the "Multimedia Winstone" real world benchmark, the 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX60 beats the Pentium "Extreme Edition" at 3.5GHz (both a dual-core and are top of the line chips in their respective lineups). The benchmark shows that the Athlon is fully 20% faster than the Pentium 4 despite having a clock speed that's 35% slower.
Clock speed is meaningless to CPU performance today in the days of speculative operations and Out of Order Execution units and parallel pipeline processing, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean that "Intel has a perceived advantage in speed they can't fully exploit", because as we know, the P4 was designed to sacrifice performance to try to reach high clock speeds and that approach has failed to scale as well as Intel expected. AMD designed the Athlon to increase the work done per cycle and this approach has worked.
Intel has followed suit and based their next line of desktop processor development on the Pentium-M chip which was designed independently of the P4 (it is architecturally closer to the Pentium 3) because they realized the folly of their approach with their current chips.
Squirrel
Misleading in regards to total market share, yes, but it has a very valud purpose.
To me, it says "where AMD and Intel chips are BOTH sold, AMD is the solid preference amongst consumers"
That's valid no matter how you slice it.
Stewed
I often shoot 3000 photos at an event. When I'm doing youth sports, I often shoot 400 photos in an hour, seeing that I am shooting maybe 25-30 participants per game and my "most bang for buck" area is to get about 6-8 decent photos of each person. Figure 30% "throwaway" and we're already surpassing my numbers above.
When people did this sort of thing with film, they targeted 2-3 shots per participant, sure, but would still burn 20-25 rolls of 36 exposure film.
I have to shoot at JPG settings and STILL carry 3GB worth of cards around with me, with a laptop for dumping at lunchtime (we're talking 12 hours of shooting).
Just because it doesn't fit into what you're doing TODAY doesn't mean it doesn't fit into what someone else is doing or what you WILL do tomorrow. Go get a 1DS MK-II and notice that RAW files are what, 50MB each. Are you ok with 80 pictures per card? Or would you desire more storage in that case?
Besides, microdrives are fragile, but flash memory isn't so. Higher density chips bring the cost of higher volume storage down by decreasing die size and decreasing the number of chips per unit. These are all good things!!
Eric
Well, actually, less than half of those "deposits" are ever returned and the remainder is given back to support this cost.
:-)
But nice try.
Not that I disagree with your point, but i wanted to quibble your example.
Stewey
Well, I was purposefully excluding the middle ages, lest the need to mention the inquisition or uhhh the crusades or the any number of really absurd things people do in the name of religion and power.
I would like (hope) (wish) to think that we have grown beyond that, but I hate being proven wrong...
I wasn't laying into the puritans. I was merely pointing out that they were a very strict and uppity group in relationship to the the majority of the US over the last 250 years. I was making reference to US tradition being staunchly pro-feedom, secular and hands-off for the most part, minus a few exceptions, namely puritans, uh maybe mccarthyists (prohibitionists?) and today... Pat Robertsonians? lol
Still, in US tradition, punishments that far oustrip the crimes haven't been "institutionalized" (we skirt 'mob rule' such as lynch mobs, organized crime and rape gangs, etc) really at all since at least the 19th century if not the 17th century. It's sad to be a part of the generation that will have to "fix" the mistakes of those in power today, because "fixing" is much easier than "wrecking" Osama and his cronies taught us that in 2001... I wish we could learn from their harsh lessons.
Stewey
Thanks for this post. I especially appreciated this line, but not for it's intended purpose. Frankly, it made me cringe....
The terrorists who struck The World Trade Center want a world run by an archaic, theocratic totalitarianism with eye-for-an-eye style justice meted out by them and their hand-picked like-minded sociopaths.
You know why? Because from my perspective, those hard line "conservatives" (very large air quotes) who run our government speak about this daily...
A slogan of the Texas republican party (of whom George W Bush is the most prominent member) states "The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States is a Christian nation." Several right-wing organizations actively state "Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government." Among other things, the push for Christian Theocracy is more thinly veiled at the top reaches of our power structure (and actually spoken openly in some circles) than it has been since 15th century Puritans.
In addition, today's "conservatives" are leading the push to increased usage of the Death penalty and increasing mandatory sentences while reducing or in some cases completely removing the judiciary's ability to diverge from these mandatory requirements due to extenuating circumstances. This is the first time in America, at least since the Salem Witch trials where the punishment for certain crimes far outstrips the damage or harm caused by that crime. One great example involves "crimes against children". While there are serious crimes perpetrated, the sentencing for such crimes has grown significantly out of proportion with actual research findings showing harm and danger to children. A simple pat on the butt or even a hand on the shoulder can net a mandatory minimum sentence of more than 10 years, though studies show that non-penetrative abuse is statistically shown to have very small long term effects on children when the issue is treated with open discussion, trust and patience.
Small-time drug usage also has been shown to have statistically very little negative effect on society as a whole, but is punished with ever-increasing sentences that far outstrip the crime.
On top of this, top officials in our government often speak of the courts or opposition parties as "getting in the way of progress" when they strike down things like the patriot II and DMCA or the Internet Decency Act... when in reality they are struck down because they grossly infringe on our rights as citizens and people. The proper reaction is to be embarassed that they would make the MISTAKE of outstripping their power,but instead they vow revenge and simply re-write the bills with more "sneaky" language to see if they can get them passed in a second round of voting.
Then, they push laws giving the executive branch power to overrule (war powers act) and oversee (2001 PROTECT act) the legislative branch and judicial branch. Soon, they are appointing chairmen sympathetic to their cause regardless of their qualifications to handle the job and instituting collective organizations through wich they can better consolidate the power base and coordinate covert activities and actions. And a small bit of trivia, KGB loosely translates to "Comittee for Motherland Security" through which most Soviet intelligence and covert operations took place. That was Stalin's equivalent to consolidate his power into a single state entity that reported directly to him rather than to other arms of his power base.
I won't even go into the list of seven countries who have directly violated UN resolutions in the last 5 years (S Korea, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, US) or the countries that have executed minors in the last 25 years (Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, US) or the first-world countries that currently prisioners without trial and without recourse (uhhh US, maybe Russia, China, if they count) or should I point out that the US was the second greatest contributor to what are referred to today as "terrorist organizations", as recent
And that, my friend, is why it would be so excellent.
Stewey
The rate of 42% cited from that study was for "any new crimes" which would include anything from fraud to drug posession. It was also the "re-arrest" rate, where the "re-conviction" rate was closer to 20%.
More importantly, the rate for "new SEX crime" comitted by a previously incarcerated sex offender in that study was 5.3% and other studies show the rate amongst "general incarcerated population" to be convicted of a "new sex crime" is around 3%. Since the number of "criminals" in general is so much higher, criminals convicted of "other crimes" actually constitute 87% of the sex offenses comitted by "previously incarcerated" people.
Yes, convicted sex offenders are more likely than the average member of the population to be re-convicted for sex offenses. No, I don't believe it is so overwhelmingly predictable that it justifies lifetime supervision of people who would otherwise be free to go.
Stewey
And You will find that 'sex offenders' is a broad category. It's hard to mix groups of sociopathic rapists with "regressed" personality pedophiles and put them on the same page as Oscar Wilde-type socially skilled "fixated" pedophiles.
The problem is that the law makes no distinction what so ever. So the punishment (because of mandatory sentencing) is the same for someone who violently anally rapes a screaming young child as it is for someone who cracks after 40 years of supressed sexual fantasies and touches a giggling 11 year old's breast area at his backyard swimming pool. Honestly, in most states, both of those crimes would be prosecuted as some sort of "felony sexual assault against a child" (a Class 2 felonly in Colorado with mandatory minimums around 8-30 years) and with all of the mandatory sentencing laws in place, would be subject to the same sentence, but obviously, they are hugely different. One man may not deserve prison at all and the other might command a life sentence, but because of knee-jerk reactions, they will get EXACTLY the same treatment.
ahhh sigh. Problem with this topic is that people already made up their minds and if they want to form a lynch mob, they will do it and nothing but guns will stop them.
Interesingly, DOJ studies indicate that sex offender recividism is the lowest of all crime categories. In fact, when you use numbers of "re-conviction" the number cuts in half, which indicates that a very large number (half) of re-arrests of sex offenders were not based on sufficient evidence to convict them.
I find that, in itself disturbing, having a friend who was falsely accused and NEARLY convicted (thak god for $50,000 lawyers). That's VERY sad.
Stewey
Official DOJ reports show that recidivism amongst preferential child sexual abusers (ie pedophiles) is actually one of the LOWEST in all of the prison system.
It's an order of magnitude lower than those convicted for robbery and assault and lower than "other" types of sexual assault.
What you say is absurd.
Stewey
According to my reading of the settlement you DO HAVE to buy hardware and the money comes to you as a "rebate" for that hardware after you have submitted a proof-of-purchase.
Wow, that's absurd.
Stewing
Since when is a 2.7GHz laptop a "lower end machine"?
I understand the lack of substantial video card bein an issue, but most of the peple I know are running sub-1GHz machines....
Stewey
But.... I think mirror balls are MUCH COOLER when they have a beam of light aimed at them. :-)
After all, mirror balls are pretty boring in the dark.
STewed
Wow...
Someone wanted to marry someone else... in fact, you noted they were in a relationship, perhaps a long-term one.... and he realized it would give his partner (who he probably loves) some additional benefits...
That sounds an awful lot like... well, most marriages.
I know plenty of gay folks who get married simply for the 'promise' involved, but even after that, they petition the state to recognize their marraige because of the benefits it entails. If straight folks were suddenly denied these benefits after being legally married, they would probably ask for the benefits back too!!
I don't see how that's a gay thing at all... in fact, I can see that you might have an argument against civil unions for gays (or anyone)... and would in fact PERFER them to be married, since it implies committment, love and long-term promises, rather than economic convienance (not that all civil unions are of convienance, but it seems more apt to the title).
In any case, what you say strikes me as silly because by that logic, heterosexual people shouldn't be allowed to marry unless they can PROVE to the state that they are in love... and that they care nothing about the benefits. Or do you think establishing "special" critera for gay marriages is somehow equitable?
it's bullshit no matter which way you slice it.
If you object to the "partner benefits" that a marraigs "inflicts" on society, then you are against marraiges alltogether, right? The benefits are no different whether it's a man or a woman or two men or two women.. it's one-for-one benefits to anyone who wanders into a courthouse and signs a document... the sex of the people involved is completely immaterial if you object to the nature of the benefits provided.....
Stewed
Woot!
:-) Ponder that while you're at it.
You seriously think that Ted Kennedy was the first non-terrorist to get stopped by this sort of booby trap?
Perhaps it's the first case to make national news... but I can guarantee that it's not the first... or the 10th... If you think of how many people, statistically, have enough name recognition to make national headlines... Lets say it's about 0.01% of the population (that's a generous 30,000 people)... Then statistically, it's likely that 10,000 people (+/- 2,500) have been stopped in a similar manner before this issue made national news.
Figure that T. Kennedy is a very popular terrorist alias and maybe that number is only 5,000.
Boo hoo.
FYI, I know someone who operates on a fake passport and a fake social security number. Though that's for immigration reasons, not for terrorism reasons. He flys just fine. He has a job and pays taxes... He owns a small business and he speaks in front of crowds. But he "doesn't exist".
Stewey
I thought it was going to start between 105 and 135. By my math, that's about as HIGH a price as the market would handle... so I decided that the price wouldn't rise for awhile.
But since it started at $85... I wish I had sunk some money into it!!!!!!
That's a 17% gain in 4 hours. If you had $100k into it, you would have made $17,000 in 4 hours, or roughly $4,250/hr.
Stewey
The stock ended the day at $100. It has NO WAY "stabilized" at $100 until it stays there for AT LEAST a week.
It lost 4% in the last 5 hours of trading. That is not "stable" by ANYONE'S standards.
Stewey
The neat thing about path integrals is that the solution is the same regarldess of what path is followed, provided that the endpoints are the same and the equation is consistent over all points crossed by the function. Both of these things are usually true in finite space....
So it seems to me that he is implying that the event horizon doesnt "exist", it merely "tends to exist" at a particular location.
Or am I imagining things?
SS
Uhm. the first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of energy.
Conservation of energy means that you cannot get more energy out of a system than is present in the system in the first place, or is applied to the system externally.
100% efficiency means that the input energy ie EXACTLY equal to the output energy. 110% efficiency would mean that 10% more energy exists the system than was input.
A bare wire is not 100% efficient as even pure silver wire will radiate a small amount of energy in the form of heat and thus will dissipate current over distance.
A claim of a 330% efficient electrical system is bunk. It violates pretty much every law of physics I can think of.
Stewey
He's an idiot for claiming that the website cost him $300k. That I will agree on.
But... there were two links. One said he did NOT demand back-payment and just wanted forward-payment for his site. That is perfectly legal and if they refuse that, then he has the right to close it. It sux and is shitty business practice, but it's legal.
If he DID demand back-payment for that rediculous amount of money, he deserves trouble. 50 years is excessive. Give him 3 months and keep his computers...
Ever been in jail? Two nights feels like a month... trust me, he'll have plenty of time to think about it in a few months.
I think everyone should spend a weekend wrongly imprisoned in jail... just for the perspective. I did it (not by choice) and many of my opinions about the justice system changed drastically.
Stewey