Well, personally, I don't give a fuck about getting stabbed. The only time I've had a knife wound that I considered a big deal was when this dickhead stuck a switchblade into my shoulder and it got stuck between a couple of bones. Though I'd say it was worth it for the look at the hospital when I walked in w/ a knife sticking out of my shoulder, bleeding all over the place, and calmly asked if someone could please get this fucking thing out? It was really jammed in there and I couldn't have ripped it out w/out doing more damage than it was worth, even though I hate doctors and hospitals.
But I think you're right about the experienced fighter - in most cases. In my experience most fights happen because someone's drunk, disrespectful, or all of the above. I have a habit of not taking any shit from anyone (inside or the free world), so I don't start shit but I often end up in fights because someone else has shit for brains. Oh well...
It's pleasant to have an intelligent response to one of my posts. One point I need to clarify though is that my friends all understand that I will hurt them if we're fighting. Almost everyone I interact with on a personal basis (outside of work) has the same kind of mindset that I do - we're violent by nature. Even this woman (she's my ex-gf and has known me for 12 years) understands that if I think picking her up by the neck and holding her against a wall until she cries uncle will help her understand that an assailant could do much worse to her if he wanted to, then I'll do it. And I don't like hurting women at all. Even my last ex, who was completely batshit and a blackout drunk who tried to stab me, got off easy - all what I did was twist her wrist (taking a stab wound in the process; as you said, it's better to get stuck once and disarm your opponent than the back off...which I can attest, since I've been in about a dozen fights that started out with someone pulling a blade on me and ended with me tearing them off the chain; one guy was in a coma for three months after I got done with him, on top of the broken bones) and brace her against a wall until she realized it was useless to keep fighting.
Well, speaking personally, the people I associate with don't get fucked in the ass in prison - they tend to be a good deal more capable of taking care of themselves than that. Prison is bad, but as long as you stand up for yourself (that means fight), keep your wits about you, and stick with your own race you'll be fine. Sure, it's not as much fun as being in the free world, but you have to take the good parts of life with the bad.
The point I was making was simply about the laws about retaliation. I gave an example in which it was misused, but also made the point that any any attempt to retaliate against a witness or a 'victim' of a crime is treated extremely harshly. As for being on parole, it doesn't mean that you should live your life scared to do anything that might violate parole. If a parolee lived by all the dictates of parole and the law in general, such a person would not be able to defend their selves or their loved ones, not be able to enjoy life at all, or do any of the things that make life meaningful for most people. In essence, they would have to become monastic in all manners of life. That's unreasonable and even most parole officers recognize that - it's far more common for any minor (non-felony) parole violation to be punished with a short term in county jail or state jail, rather than a return to prison to serve out the remainder of their sentence.
The situation I described could have happened to anyone. Get in an argument with your girlfriend, leave the house, she calls the police and exaggerates the event. You return, find yourself locked out of the house, and force your way in. It's your house, you pay the bills, and technically no one should be able to forbid you entrance. Of course you're mad about everything that's gone on. He didn't beat her up - to the best of my knowledge he didn't even touch her. But because of the sequence of events, he placed himself in a position whereby the cops and the DA could impose unreasonable penalties on him. It's part of what's wrong with our "justice" system.
No, she was actively fighting back - it just wasn't having any effect (my pain tolerance is well above the point required to physically incapacitate me; I've had broken bones, stab wounds, etc. and kept fighting until I won). If she would have had a gun in this case then I would have been at the least incapacitated (well, an effective gun; as long as you make a wise selection of your firearm you can take someone out w/out having to have a shotgun...I have a quite small revolver that I can easily conceal anywhere that take.38SPCL +P [the +P indicates more gunpowder for a higher velocity] hollow-points - I use Winchester XP.38SPCL +P hollow-point bullets, which some people call ".38 Magnums" since they're considerably more powerful than a.357Mag, due the better penetration and stopping power - if I shoot someone once in the torso with that pistol, they're going down, no matter how big they are or how much PCP they're on...twice and they're dead, no matter what, since a good portion of their bodily mass just got blown out their back).
She has the proper awareness of her surroundings (from martial arts and some other self-defense classes), she just lacks the physical means to take someone down. She's not the kind of person who would carry and use an effective combat knife, nor would I want her being in close-quarters combat if it can be helped (because an experienced knife fighter such as myself could quite easily disarm her). But she's a reasonably good shot and now possesses a reasonable idea of what could happen (her martial arts skills had never truly been tested previous to that occasion, and I think it was a very sobering fact to her to realize that there simply wasn't a lot she could do with them against a truly tough, determined assailant; also, she had had an unpleasant encounter at a park prior to this - which prompted me getting on her about her safety and all that - in which she and another friend were quite possibly saved from gang rape because some guys at the park overheard a group of 4 shady characters talking about rape and "finding those bitches", and the nice guys ran the asshole off).
So, in short, she'd be a perfect candidate to own a firearm.
I'm going to apologize for making this short, but I wrote a lengthy response and/. lost it in the submissions process, so I don't feel like re-typing it. Suffice to say that she was under no restrictions, was actively trying to hurt me, and didn't succeed to any degree even close to what it would take to stop me from taking her out in real life. I made my point, and she's started carrying a combat knife I gave her and some pepper spray. That's something at least. And I did teach her the attitude to a reasonable degree - as much of it as she would absorb.
Thank you for having a reasonable, intelligent response. I've already been flamed by one idiot, possibly more when I get around to checking my messages. Let me know if you have any more questions or feedback on this topic, it's always a pleasure to talk to someone who is reasonable and can discuss things w/out reverting to childish mannerisms and unnecessary shit-talking.
Actually, the dog didn't know me well at all and is extremely overprotective of the chick in question - it's just dogs are mostly a deterrent factor as opposed to stopping someone who wants to cause trouble. And since her physical skills and her dog would not protect her from one man (and most predators hunt in packs - the whole reason her and I had this discussion is because her and another female friend got into a jam while at a park in her city; they ended up hiding in a defensible spot - with a piece of wood and a pocketknife - inside a women's bathroom because a group of 4 guys were cruising around and acting suspiciously, so they grabbed what they could and then hid. Luckily for them, another group of guys who happened to be at the park and were decent people ran those fucking creeps off after they heard them talking about "finding those bitches" and various other comments, some of which were about committing rape - but if those guys hadn't been there, her and the other chick [who is also a friend of mine, albeit we're not as close] would most likely have been in trouble), the point was to get her something that would work against one or more people (though in my experience - which statistics bear out - once you start shooting, people generally run; there's very few people, relatively speaking, that are going to want to hang around and trade bullets with you, especially if they're obviously trying to commit a crime against a woman half their size and the police are most likely getting called once gunshots start popping off). And the problem with her isn't so much that she's not aware of what's immediately around her, she just doesn't have the foresight to think about "gee, I live in an apartment complex in a neighborhood that has a relatively high crime rate, I'm a single white female [SWF's and young black males make up something like 2/3 of the "victims" of violent crime, for different reasons of course], maybe I should carry some pepper spray or a gun!". She doesn't even own pepper spray, and I was trying to give her a spare pistol of mine or get her to go pick out something that she felt comfortable with (if she didn't want a.357Mag hogleg). So I demonstrated to her that you have to have the willingness and the means to defend yourself.
As for everything else you've said so far, you're a rude little shit and you wouldn't know your ass from a hole in the ground. Why I'm bothering to respond to you is beyond me, but if I had 3 wishes right now, one of them just might be to meet you in real life. I could quite easily demonstrate to you how wrong you are. But this is the Internet, so I'll just settle for not sinking to your level of ignorance and explain what the hell I mean (one more time for idiots like yourself) while not being too rude. Hell, ask any person that teaches actual self-defense classes : the most important things for protecting yourself (or, conversely, hurting someone else in a fight) is the proper mental stance and the means. I'm a 175 lb. man who is in pretty good shape and has combat training (not to mention carries a decent-sized blade and a pistol) - she's a 105 lb. short girl who is a lot of fun to hang out with but isn't particularly strong, doesn't have any extensive training, and doesn't carry any weapons. Despite the fact that you've shown yourself to be a complete and total fucking idiot, I don't even you are that stupid to mistake which one of us (between me and her, not me and you; going by your/. ID #, you're probably a fat guy who lives in his mother's basement and makes his money peddling action figures and cards on eBay) is obviously in more danger of being a "victim" of random violent crime. Especially since I'm heavily tattooed and when I'm not at work I dress like I don't have two nickels to rub together (hey, old jeans, a t-shirt, and steel-toe work boots are just comfortable...dress clothes are protective coloration in the highly dangerous world of office politics). No one in their right mind would even think about mugging me - I don't look like I have much money and I also look like it would be way to much trouble to get it from, which is absolutely correct.
Call it what you will...that example quite clearly is not either rape (where does rape even enter into your example? It's consensual sex, correct?) or abuse of a child (since the ages are so close - see my caveat about "serious, life-altering"), so it wouldn't fall underneath either of those headings (nor is it gross stupidity). No one is hurt by consensual sex between two people of those ages. Nor am I sure that it's even against the current laws in most states. It certainly is not against the law in Texas (or wasn't when I was that age, and I did check it again when I was about 21 or so because I met a very interesting chick who was a mature 17, but I didn't want to risk an irate parent). The last time I checked, the law (at least in Texas) is that if someone is over the age of 13, it's consensual, and there isn't more than a 2 year age difference, it's not considered statutory rape or any other crime. Even if there is more than a 2 year difference, parents can't press charges w/out the "child"'s testimony (I did have this happen to a friend a long while back...he was 18 or 19, his gf was 17, and she just denied having sex with him and there was nothing the police could do). Also, the parents of the younger one in the relationship can sign a consent form. Another pair of friends of mine (about 15 years ago - the girl was 16 and the guy was 20; the girl I met through a friend and I ended up becoming friends w/ the couple) did this. The girl's parents went down to the court house and filled out some sort of form saying that they approved of the relationship (which rather surprised me that this could be done - and that they were willing to, essentially, fill out paperwork authorizing the fucking of their daughter; interestingly, the relationship stayed serious and the last I heard of them they had both graduated college and were engaged).
The way I phrased things it's pretty clear that some sort of harm must be done before it's breaking the law. I think I might have been in the same situation as yourself, sort-of. I can recall being 16 and briefly dating a girl who was 13. I didn't even know she was 13 initially, since she drove her own car, worked full-time, and attended college (yes, she was very intelligent and had gotten her GED and then enrolled in college when she was 13). She was also legally considered an adult since her mother was dead (IIRC her father had murdered her mother - it's been a long time, we only dated for a few months, and she didn't like to talk about it), she lived with her grandmother, and her grandmother wasn't able to take care of her (once again, IIRC her grandmother was partially disabled and also the only living relative besides her father, who was in prison - she actually paid the rent at her grandmother's place), so they had filed in court to have her "emancipated" - I'm not sure about all the details, but it essentially allows you to be treated as if you were 18 in most regards...I don't think she was allowed to buy cigarettes, enroll in military service, or do a lot of other things you have to be 18 for, but everything that was required for her to attend college and work she was treated as an adult. I also lived the same way (I just didn't bother w/ the emancipation, since I could already legally drive and no one carded me for smokes or beer due to all my tattoos), since I got my GED, started college as soon as I was 16, and supported myself by working at a tattoo shop until I got tired of that, had some college and significant experience w/ computers (I've always tinkered and worked with them, but that's different than having to turn in large programming and/or design projects), and then went to work in IT. Back to the main point - she wouldn't have testified even if anyone had made an issue of it, so I was protected by her (come to think of it, she's probably one of the most intelligent and responsible women I've ever dated, and she was only 13 at the time). So you're completely off-base w/ saying that I'm automatically making it out be a stark, black-and-white scenar
Yep - it's called retaliation, it's a felony, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get convicted of. Seriously. If you get into a domestic dispute and come back (after you get out of jail...it's generally 1-3 days for a misdemeanor "assault by threat" [which is what you get arrested for when the cops show up, no one is hurt, and they have to haul someone off by law - it doesn't matter if anyone's really done anything...the humorous part is that I've been arrested for it several times, so have various of my exes, and so has my mother...whoever's the loudest or drunkest person in the house goes]) and there's another call, you're likely to get charged with it. I had a friend who got 10 years for ripping the door off his house. His own fucking house and he got charged, just because his girlfriend had called the police and he left, she made a statement, then he came back and she wouldn't let him in. Yes, he was drunk, yes he was an ex-convict...but he hadn't done anything other than damage his own property (because he was locked out). But he still got arrested, parole violated, and got an extra 10 years to boot. And his girlfriend felt really stupid, since he wasn't around to pay for their son or a roof over their head or anything. Dumb bitch, dumb cops.
Now this fucking creep, if he even mentioned "Gee, I'm going to do [whatever]" and someone reported it, he could be charged the same way. It's a very ambiguous law that's often abused. Not that I care what happens to this shitbag...
No, this is not how it works in the real world, hate to break it to you. I had this argument w/ a female friend recently. I was trying to get her to own a gun (since she lives alone in a dubious neighborhood and is sort of clueless about watching her ass), but she claimed her dog and knowledge of martial arts was enough to handle any situation. So the last time she had her dog (which is about 90 lbs. or so) over at my place, even w/ advance warning (which someone wouldn't have in the real world), and me holding one arm behind my back (and being careful to not hurt her or the dog), I had one foot on the dog's throat and one hand holding her off the ground and against a wall in about 5 seconds. And I'm not a huge guy either (though I do have martial arts/hand-to-hand training but I wasn't really using that, just straight-up aggression).
The way it works in the real world is (a) most real fights are over in a few seconds, (b) always try to get the first shot in, and (c) it's all about your mental stance. If you're not ready and willing to hurt someone at the drop of a hat, you will almost always lose - no matter what you're supposedly trained in. Plain and simple. Don't let your TV fantasies fool you - fights are short and nasty, and I've met very few people that have martial arts training that also have the proper attitude (that aren't ex-military or ex-cons; I'm both).
Personally, to simplify our overblown judicial and legislative system, I think there should be 3 and only 3 criminal charges, all of which are punishable by death. Rape, Abuse Of A Child (sexual or otherwise; I'm not talking 20 whacks w/ a belt, I'm talking serious, life-altering shit), and Gross Stupidity. And this guy wins on 2 out of 3. How stupid can you possibly be?
Of course, I'm continually amazed by the kind of people that (a) try to hire people (generally amateurs - most people that really have a reason and strong desire to kill someone are also the type of people that handle it themselves anyways) and (b) that try to profit from it (see my comments about amateurs, again). Logistically speaking, as a career choice it's not a very good one. Because if you're doing this for a living, you have to be employed by someone with some serious clout to make a living off it (and not end up in prison). Think about it - planning, carrying out, and cleaning up after a disposal takes at least a 3 days (possibly up to a month or more if the target is particularly well-protected or otherwise complicated). Even cleaning up after a spur-of-the-moment thing takes at least 3-4 hours to do right (if you include disposal of the body, cleaning up any blood, hairs, etc.). Doing this on a regular basis? There's no way it's even economically feasible in a risk vs. reward scenario.
I agree completely with that part of things. The burden is on consumers (or citizens, as we used to be called). Don't buy Microsoft products and the Internet will be a much safer place.
What are they smoking? They sell the buggiest, shittiest, most useless (some people find it useful...I don't; the last time I tried to use MS Office I spent 15 minutes dicking around w/ the application just to set some bullet points, and decided that 15 minutes could have been better spent downloading and installing OpenOffice - their applications have all turned into overblown, unusable pieces of shit, just like the internals of their operating systems) products, practice all kinds of shady business just to spread their crapware, and then blame the average, non-technical person for how fucked-up their operating system is and how it makes computers unusable to a significant portion of the population.
Jesus. If I sold someone a car that had as many problems as a copy of Windows, I'd be sued - possibly even imprisoned. Someone would probably end up dead fairly quickly if I made a business out of it, and then I'd be up shit creek. But they can sell shitty software and then not be held accountable when it doesn't work? Yes, the world is that strange.
Now that you mention it, you're right. Christ, can't even make a joke anymore without it getting all complicated. Must be getting old. Gotta go - fuckin' kids on my lawn!
At least it was original (except for the part about mounted lasers and the reference to Nancy's labia - the latter is from a Bill Hicks' skit that would probably cause you to break down and cry for mommy, or tearfully admit to your roommate [while he was trying to coax you out of hiding under the mattress] that she touched you "down there and it felt good but I felt bad about it later" - because something really fucked-up must have happened to you so that you can't appreciate a joke, even a "disgusting" one) , somewhat relevant, and disgusting. Put that shit up on YouTube and I'd actually navigate over to that fucking site, watch it until I went temporarily blind (either from the screen glare or the moonshine), and then go to sleep thinking humorous thoughts.
Seriously?
Mod parent down. This post is disgusting
And clouds are generally white and fluffy, children aren't cute unless they're yours, and no matter what you try, people will make gross jokes. Most people actually delight in making gross jokes. Check IMDB ratings (as well as theater and DVD revenue) for PG-13 or R-rated comedies with a predominantly disgusting sense of humor. I guarantee you they dominate "clean humor" movies across the board. Especially if they make fun of politicians.
It's called human nature. Get over it. I, for one, would watch the Sputnik launch once or twice (I've seen it before a few times), but actually save a video depicting something like what I described.
What's so different between putting a man and a woman in space? I could see the "first child conceived in space" or the "first birth in space", but why does the (astro|cosmo)naut's gender matter in this context?
Oh, yeah, I forgot. If a "man" (which can refer to either a male or female when used to refer to the species collectively) goes to space, or the moon, or Uranus, it's not fair until we get a woman up there too./. should run an "Ask Slashdot" article (or at least have a poll) about the extent to which political correctness (known as "PC bullshit" amongst us in the know) has infiltrated the scientific community.
I'm not saying you're a PC zealot, but saying something like that out of a context where it would make a scientific difference (menstrual cycles, neurobiology, etc.), which gender the lucky bastard who gets to get slung into space ahead of so-and-so many tons and tons of rocket propellant (which hopefully doesn't blow up and kill them, RIP Challenger) just says to me that irrelevant crap is penetrating deeper and deeper into our collective mindsets. Next we're going to have the NAACP suing NASA over their "Equal Opportunity" hiring practices or selection criteria to be an astronaut. I'd be tempted (just to be an asshole) to tell them that we've already sent chimps, but that's probably why I'm not the spokesperson for any large agencies or companies (because I'm a flippant guy with a crude sense of humor who thinks people take themselves too seriously given half a chance).
Now I'm being too serious and long-winded about a simple point. Time to take my happy pills and go back to drinking bourbon straight...
Forgot to mention : there can be no mistakes about time w/ Ronald Reagan, only names. For other ones, see Legion, Belial, Mammon, Shub-Niggurath, Lucifer, Dagon, et al. Any dark god in any culture stretching back to the dawn of life w/ speech capabilities is only another one of his faces. Notice how he looks thinner in pictures w/ any male of the Bush family? It's pseudopods of his unholy essence animating their lifeless sells.
On a note not dealing with the evil that slumbers behind Reagans' supposedly dead eyes, I think this is possibly one of the only good things that came out of the Cold War (I'm just hesitant to say anything good came out of the Cold War). A shame that we - as a species - can't do stuff like this without anyone being ready to go to war or destroy every living human being (Africa, Utah, and India excepted - no contributions to the human race coming from any of those locations) a damn near random lottery of destruction.
Where is simple human curiosity, drive, intellect, and ballsiness (sp?)? Oh yeah, I forgot - our schools replaced that curriculum w/ Political Correctness and How Pretend An Apple Is An Orange (Ministry Of Truth v0.3).
Newcaster shouting "We've been pwned! All our basez belong to them!"
Ronald Reagan (after finishing a menage trois w/ Ollie North and his wife, the last 15 minutes of which consist of ole Nancy rolling her 15 feet of distended labia back into it's carrying harness) responds on nationwide television "Testing...testing...we will begin nuclear attack on Russia in 5...4...3-oh shit! Just kidding. To the American people, no need to be worried about the Russkies launching a, uh, well...a something. And we think it has a dog in it - and he does not, I repeat, does not have lasers mounted anywhere on him. Gotta go! Turn that fucking thing off! Nancy - you missed a roll, hide it quick you dumb bitch, the interns are puking!"
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. And next week...and next week. Unless I get cancer like Bill Hicks, where I ripped some of this material from. All errors in time of events and who was alive or in what office are the guy w/ ID 580570, not me. I'm 580569. People get us confused a lot.
Hey, I just noticed that I have 69 in every single issued ID # that I can think of. My SSN, DL, TDC #,/. ID, everything. Fucking weird.
Which in turn leads to the question : does quantity equal quality? And by that I do not mean the quality of each individual member of their society, but rather in the quality of their lives, the quality of what they have to offer (which, at least in IT, has been very little of worth so far - please feel free to give me counterexamples, but when even people who aren't in IT [such as a young woman I was chatting with at a doctor's appointment this morning] express their frustration at the outsourced services they receive from Indians, it only further illustrates my point that most Indians' degrees and certifications they aren't worth the paper they are written upon; my own experience in IT confirms it, with some outstanding exceptions), et al.
Just because you have a large population does not mean that it is a worthwhile country. You could combine the entirety of the continent of Africa, and not come up with one worthwhile contribution to modern society (and that includes most of the Whites living there as well).
Economic theories (which may or may not hold true, and extend to the limits of your or my lifetime, unless you're 15) aside, India has very little to offer the rest of the world. It has to get it's own shit together first - something that this article suggests that it is not doing.
Try dealing with insurance companies, buying a house, even getting a simple loan on a used car that you'll pay off in 6 months. Things like that are interconnected due to your SSN being used to track you and your "credit score" (an arbitrary number that isn't affected much by any good credit actions, or payment of past debts, but is heavily penalized for the slightest failure to pay anything; I've literally had a home loan turned down because I didn't pay off the last 5 dollars on a loan for a laptop due to a billing error). While this state of affairs may or may not be the desired result of the decision to assign SSNs to citizens, it still causes more harm than good. Anyone who gets ahold of your SSN can damage you in many ways. For example, I recently went to the ER at my local hospital. I got into an argument with the head nurse about whether or not I could go outside and smoke a cigarette and wait for the pain medication to take effect before they (with my assistance, since I don't permit anyone to work on an injury that I can do myself) cleaned and dressed the gunshot wound. So instead of getting treatment, I was told that I was "discharged" upon my return from my cigarette break.
And yet they'll be hounding me for money for services rendered, despite the fact that they did nothing except look at the wound, go "yep, you've been shot, the bullet exited your body, we need to give you some pain medicine and dress that wound" (since I'd already stopped the bleeding and all that before I got to the ER). They'll try to bill my insurance company and try to bill me, despite the fact that they did nothing other than provide me with a room for an hour. If they didn't have my SSN, they would have a much harder time doing that, since my name is relatively common, I didn't give them my correct address, and I can tell my insurance company to deny the claim.
At least this is happening in India, not in a country that actually matters globally. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that have to deal with it, but if they're not willing to fight for their freedom, then this is what they'll get. At least in the U.S. we've had our experience with SSNs and the more intelligent members of our population (the ones that aren't out to dominate others - that caveat has to be added, since there's plenty of intelligent people who have no respect for freedom, responsibility, or accountability) should, mostly, be able to understand why a program like this is a very, very bad idea for those of us who value our freedom. SSNs are bad enough as-is - a government program that has become a tool of the private business sector as well, tracking every significant purchase or decision a man makes in his life. I'll undoubtedly be haunted the rest of my life by the problems I had when I was married, despite the fact that I made the best decisions that I could at the time (some of which were forced by the economy, some by personal circumstances, some by business matters gone awry)..
Actually, what bothers me the most about identification systems like this is the invasion of one's privacy. You will never have a chance to start over after losing everything, any person at all may be tracked by government agencies much easier, et al. It makes evil deeds on the behalf of so-called "authorities" (be they governing bodies, businesses, credit tracking agencies, or what-have-you) much easier to accomplish, while offering nothing in return to the citizens subjected to such measures.
Today, in an unprecedented clusterfuck,/. itself was brought to it's knees when every user posted simultaneously. The majority of the posts fell into the following range :
1) "It's Ubuntu - it rocks, it's cool, we'll finally now how many people are using it continuously!" These are the people that use Ubuntu, don't understand anything about it, and have never been in a server room in their lives. They also wouldn't understand privacy issues if said issues fell on them from any height.
2) "Does anyone think about privacy and the other ideals that we, as hackers, have promoted for so long?" These are grumpy curmudgeons that may or may not run Ubuntu, but damn sure have enough sense not to do so in their datacenter,
3) "Ubuntu sucks!" This can actually be broken down into two categories : Those who know Ubuntu sucks and trolls.
4) "I am CowboyNeal and I'm not sure why I have a huge sock over my erection, but either way, someone's going to get fucked!" Most of these people don't actually have socks over their erections, because they don't have one or the other (or a third possibility, they're rock-hard...but don't have any baby-socks handy, the others keep sliding off). Mostly Anonymous Cowards.
I fall into categories #2 and #3 (know Ubuntu sucks). I also partially fit into category 4, but that's just because I can't find my boxer shorts until I've chugged a pint of bourbon and wanted to cover my morning wood while I went out and got the paper. It didn't help when the neighbor's kids started pointing and asking their father why I had a 18" sock glued to my front, wondering why it stood straight up, or why I had "KISS IT" tattooed across my buttocks.
Well, she was my "high school sweetheart" originally (meaning she went to high school, I dropped out and went to college and worked...things fell apart when she went off to college and started studying psychology, funny that).
Then we found each other again after some like 12 years, had a brief fling, and then she got all...psychologist (for lack of a better word) on me. I mean, just cold and without any logic what-so-fucking-ever (yet insisting that she was being the logical one, since it's logical to treat someone who's supposedly one of your best friends and also the best guy you ever dated like shit because you feel like he's putting pressure on you to do...absolutely nothing; I was putting no pressure on her other than suggesting that we hang out or talk to each other, stuff that people who are just friends and nothing more do, but sh freaked out on me. It was like night and day - one day she was my old sweetheart, affectionate and loving and the most wonderful (if somewhat naive) woman in the world, the next day she slips out and almost has a nervous breakdown and pushes me out of her life almost completely (despite the fact that we live 90 minutes away from each other, were only seeing each other once every few weeks, and it's not my fault if she wasn't getting enough sleep because she'd stay up talking and flirting with me on the phone or via chat/e-mail. Christ...
Yes, I have to be crazy to have thought that anything between her and I had changed. Things had only gotten potentially worse, since both of us had only become moere of what we individually were...
Tell that to the head-shrinkers. They're the ones that diagnosed me when I was a juvenile (thankfully, I've never been diagnosed with anything like that as an adult, or else I'd be screwed when it comes to employment).
As of this date (July 28th, 2010), sociopathy is not even a diagnosable condition (it was split into psychopathy and antisocial disorder, two preexisting diagnosable conditions). Up until at least 17 years ago it was, and I was diagnosed with it (amongst other things). What no one bothered to pay attention to is the fact that I was perfectly capable of functioning as long as no one fucked with me or mine.
I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the label (frankly, I think almost all shrinks are more insane and/or have more personal issues than the people they are "treating" - and I've dated a psychologist).
What I am saying is that when it was a diagnosable condition, that was the main condition that I was "treated" for (since I was in and out of juvenile correctional facilities and reacted violently to any attempt to control me or tell me what I couldn't do; I've always lived by my own rules and see no need to indulge others' illusions of control over my person...which is probably why no matter what jail I go to in whatever state, even if it's just overnight for public intoxication, I get put in administration segregation - the modern equivalent of solitary).
Psychopaths (though the extremity does vary) cannot turn on their emotions, nor in most cases control their urges. Sociopaths vary in that they experience either selective or complete lack of emotions. I am on the lower end of the scale and that, combined with my high intellect and the fact that I'm a nice guy if I like you, means that I don't often get into situations where I have to cut off emotions in order to do something that someone else would consider inhuman.
If you want a perfect example, a guy whom I had known for over 15 years stole my medication one night while most of our group were passed out drunk. That, combined with the amount of alcohol we'd drank and the other drugs in his systems, caused an overdose. Basically, he keeled over in a parking lot and stopped breathing. I laughed in his face, put my pistol up, and left him there. Parting words? "Thanks, now I don't need to ditch this piece." (because I was about 5 seconds away from killing him - I have a policy of killing people that steal from me). I felt nothing, still feel nothing, and this was one of my oldest friends (whose life I had saved several times when he had OD'ed before in my presence, since I was the only one around who had any basic medical training and knew how to handle the situation).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, personally, I don't give a fuck about getting stabbed. The only time I've had a knife wound that I considered a big deal was when this dickhead stuck a switchblade into my shoulder and it got stuck between a couple of bones. Though I'd say it was worth it for the look at the hospital when I walked in w/ a knife sticking out of my shoulder, bleeding all over the place, and calmly asked if someone could please get this fucking thing out? It was really jammed in there and I couldn't have ripped it out w/out doing more damage than it was worth, even though I hate doctors and hospitals.
But I think you're right about the experienced fighter - in most cases. In my experience most fights happen because someone's drunk, disrespectful, or all of the above. I have a habit of not taking any shit from anyone (inside or the free world), so I don't start shit but I often end up in fights because someone else has shit for brains. Oh well...
It's pleasant to have an intelligent response to one of my posts. One point I need to clarify though is that my friends all understand that I will hurt them if we're fighting. Almost everyone I interact with on a personal basis (outside of work) has the same kind of mindset that I do - we're violent by nature. Even this woman (she's my ex-gf and has known me for 12 years) understands that if I think picking her up by the neck and holding her against a wall until she cries uncle will help her understand that an assailant could do much worse to her if he wanted to, then I'll do it. And I don't like hurting women at all. Even my last ex, who was completely batshit and a blackout drunk who tried to stab me, got off easy - all what I did was twist her wrist (taking a stab wound in the process; as you said, it's better to get stuck once and disarm your opponent than the back off...which I can attest, since I've been in about a dozen fights that started out with someone pulling a blade on me and ended with me tearing them off the chain; one guy was in a coma for three months after I got done with him, on top of the broken bones) and brace her against a wall until she realized it was useless to keep fighting.
The dog didn't know me, disliked men, and was highly defensive of this chick. So yes, the dog did attack me. You dumb fuck.
Well, speaking personally, the people I associate with don't get fucked in the ass in prison - they tend to be a good deal more capable of taking care of themselves than that. Prison is bad, but as long as you stand up for yourself (that means fight), keep your wits about you, and stick with your own race you'll be fine. Sure, it's not as much fun as being in the free world, but you have to take the good parts of life with the bad.
The point I was making was simply about the laws about retaliation. I gave an example in which it was misused, but also made the point that any any attempt to retaliate against a witness or a 'victim' of a crime is treated extremely harshly. As for being on parole, it doesn't mean that you should live your life scared to do anything that might violate parole. If a parolee lived by all the dictates of parole and the law in general, such a person would not be able to defend their selves or their loved ones, not be able to enjoy life at all, or do any of the things that make life meaningful for most people. In essence, they would have to become monastic in all manners of life. That's unreasonable and even most parole officers recognize that - it's far more common for any minor (non-felony) parole violation to be punished with a short term in county jail or state jail, rather than a return to prison to serve out the remainder of their sentence.
The situation I described could have happened to anyone. Get in an argument with your girlfriend, leave the house, she calls the police and exaggerates the event. You return, find yourself locked out of the house, and force your way in. It's your house, you pay the bills, and technically no one should be able to forbid you entrance. Of course you're mad about everything that's gone on. He didn't beat her up - to the best of my knowledge he didn't even touch her. But because of the sequence of events, he placed himself in a position whereby the cops and the DA could impose unreasonable penalties on him. It's part of what's wrong with our "justice" system.
No, she was actively fighting back - it just wasn't having any effect (my pain tolerance is well above the point required to physically incapacitate me; I've had broken bones, stab wounds, etc. and kept fighting until I won). If she would have had a gun in this case then I would have been at the least incapacitated (well, an effective gun; as long as you make a wise selection of your firearm you can take someone out w/out having to have a shotgun...I have a quite small revolver that I can easily conceal anywhere that take .38SPCL +P [the +P indicates more gunpowder for a higher velocity] hollow-points - I use Winchester XP .38SPCL +P hollow-point bullets, which some people call ".38 Magnums" since they're considerably more powerful than a .357Mag, due the better penetration and stopping power - if I shoot someone once in the torso with that pistol, they're going down, no matter how big they are or how much PCP they're on...twice and they're dead, no matter what, since a good portion of their bodily mass just got blown out their back).
She has the proper awareness of her surroundings (from martial arts and some other self-defense classes), she just lacks the physical means to take someone down. She's not the kind of person who would carry and use an effective combat knife, nor would I want her being in close-quarters combat if it can be helped (because an experienced knife fighter such as myself could quite easily disarm her). But she's a reasonably good shot and now possesses a reasonable idea of what could happen (her martial arts skills had never truly been tested previous to that occasion, and I think it was a very sobering fact to her to realize that there simply wasn't a lot she could do with them against a truly tough, determined assailant; also, she had had an unpleasant encounter at a park prior to this - which prompted me getting on her about her safety and all that - in which she and another friend were quite possibly saved from gang rape because some guys at the park overheard a group of 4 shady characters talking about rape and "finding those bitches", and the nice guys ran the asshole off).
So, in short, she'd be a perfect candidate to own a firearm.
I'm going to apologize for making this short, but I wrote a lengthy response and /. lost it in the submissions process, so I don't feel like re-typing it. Suffice to say that she was under no restrictions, was actively trying to hurt me, and didn't succeed to any degree even close to what it would take to stop me from taking her out in real life. I made my point, and she's started carrying a combat knife I gave her and some pepper spray. That's something at least. And I did teach her the attitude to a reasonable degree - as much of it as she would absorb.
Thank you for having a reasonable, intelligent response. I've already been flamed by one idiot, possibly more when I get around to checking my messages. Let me know if you have any more questions or feedback on this topic, it's always a pleasure to talk to someone who is reasonable and can discuss things w/out reverting to childish mannerisms and unnecessary shit-talking.
Actually, the dog didn't know me well at all and is extremely overprotective of the chick in question - it's just dogs are mostly a deterrent factor as opposed to stopping someone who wants to cause trouble. And since her physical skills and her dog would not protect her from one man (and most predators hunt in packs - the whole reason her and I had this discussion is because her and another female friend got into a jam while at a park in her city; they ended up hiding in a defensible spot - with a piece of wood and a pocketknife - inside a women's bathroom because a group of 4 guys were cruising around and acting suspiciously, so they grabbed what they could and then hid. Luckily for them, another group of guys who happened to be at the park and were decent people ran those fucking creeps off after they heard them talking about "finding those bitches" and various other comments, some of which were about committing rape - but if those guys hadn't been there, her and the other chick [who is also a friend of mine, albeit we're not as close] would most likely have been in trouble), the point was to get her something that would work against one or more people (though in my experience - which statistics bear out - once you start shooting, people generally run; there's very few people, relatively speaking, that are going to want to hang around and trade bullets with you, especially if they're obviously trying to commit a crime against a woman half their size and the police are most likely getting called once gunshots start popping off). And the problem with her isn't so much that she's not aware of what's immediately around her, she just doesn't have the foresight to think about "gee, I live in an apartment complex in a neighborhood that has a relatively high crime rate, I'm a single white female [SWF's and young black males make up something like 2/3 of the "victims" of violent crime, for different reasons of course], maybe I should carry some pepper spray or a gun!". She doesn't even own pepper spray, and I was trying to give her a spare pistol of mine or get her to go pick out something that she felt comfortable with (if she didn't want a .357Mag hogleg). So I demonstrated to her that you have to have the willingness and the means to defend yourself.
As for everything else you've said so far, you're a rude little shit and you wouldn't know your ass from a hole in the ground. Why I'm bothering to respond to you is beyond me, but if I had 3 wishes right now, one of them just might be to meet you in real life. I could quite easily demonstrate to you how wrong you are. But this is the Internet, so I'll just settle for not sinking to your level of ignorance and explain what the hell I mean (one more time for idiots like yourself) while not being too rude. Hell, ask any person that teaches actual self-defense classes : the most important things for protecting yourself (or, conversely, hurting someone else in a fight) is the proper mental stance and the means. I'm a 175 lb. man who is in pretty good shape and has combat training (not to mention carries a decent-sized blade and a pistol) - she's a 105 lb. short girl who is a lot of fun to hang out with but isn't particularly strong, doesn't have any extensive training, and doesn't carry any weapons. Despite the fact that you've shown yourself to be a complete and total fucking idiot, I don't even you are that stupid to mistake which one of us (between me and her, not me and you; going by your /. ID #, you're probably a fat guy who lives in his mother's basement and makes his money peddling action figures and cards on eBay) is obviously in more danger of being a "victim" of random violent crime. Especially since I'm heavily tattooed and when I'm not at work I dress like I don't have two nickels to rub together (hey, old jeans, a t-shirt, and steel-toe work boots are just comfortable...dress clothes are protective coloration in the highly dangerous world of office politics). No one in their right mind would even think about mugging me - I don't look like I have much money and I also look like it would be way to much trouble to get it from, which is absolutely correct.
Call it what you will...that example quite clearly is not either rape (where does rape even enter into your example? It's consensual sex, correct?) or abuse of a child (since the ages are so close - see my caveat about "serious, life-altering"), so it wouldn't fall underneath either of those headings (nor is it gross stupidity). No one is hurt by consensual sex between two people of those ages. Nor am I sure that it's even against the current laws in most states. It certainly is not against the law in Texas (or wasn't when I was that age, and I did check it again when I was about 21 or so because I met a very interesting chick who was a mature 17, but I didn't want to risk an irate parent). The last time I checked, the law (at least in Texas) is that if someone is over the age of 13, it's consensual, and there isn't more than a 2 year age difference, it's not considered statutory rape or any other crime. Even if there is more than a 2 year difference, parents can't press charges w/out the "child"'s testimony (I did have this happen to a friend a long while back...he was 18 or 19, his gf was 17, and she just denied having sex with him and there was nothing the police could do). Also, the parents of the younger one in the relationship can sign a consent form. Another pair of friends of mine (about 15 years ago - the girl was 16 and the guy was 20; the girl I met through a friend and I ended up becoming friends w/ the couple) did this. The girl's parents went down to the court house and filled out some sort of form saying that they approved of the relationship (which rather surprised me that this could be done - and that they were willing to, essentially, fill out paperwork authorizing the fucking of their daughter; interestingly, the relationship stayed serious and the last I heard of them they had both graduated college and were engaged).
The way I phrased things it's pretty clear that some sort of harm must be done before it's breaking the law. I think I might have been in the same situation as yourself, sort-of. I can recall being 16 and briefly dating a girl who was 13. I didn't even know she was 13 initially, since she drove her own car, worked full-time, and attended college (yes, she was very intelligent and had gotten her GED and then enrolled in college when she was 13). She was also legally considered an adult since her mother was dead (IIRC her father had murdered her mother - it's been a long time, we only dated for a few months, and she didn't like to talk about it), she lived with her grandmother, and her grandmother wasn't able to take care of her (once again, IIRC her grandmother was partially disabled and also the only living relative besides her father, who was in prison - she actually paid the rent at her grandmother's place), so they had filed in court to have her "emancipated" - I'm not sure about all the details, but it essentially allows you to be treated as if you were 18 in most regards...I don't think she was allowed to buy cigarettes, enroll in military service, or do a lot of other things you have to be 18 for, but everything that was required for her to attend college and work she was treated as an adult. I also lived the same way (I just didn't bother w/ the emancipation, since I could already legally drive and no one carded me for smokes or beer due to all my tattoos), since I got my GED, started college as soon as I was 16, and supported myself by working at a tattoo shop until I got tired of that, had some college and significant experience w/ computers (I've always tinkered and worked with them, but that's different than having to turn in large programming and/or design projects), and then went to work in IT. Back to the main point - she wouldn't have testified even if anyone had made an issue of it, so I was protected by her (come to think of it, she's probably one of the most intelligent and responsible women I've ever dated, and she was only 13 at the time). So you're completely off-base w/ saying that I'm automatically making it out be a stark, black-and-white scenar
Yep - it's called retaliation, it's a felony, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get convicted of. Seriously. If you get into a domestic dispute and come back (after you get out of jail...it's generally 1-3 days for a misdemeanor "assault by threat" [which is what you get arrested for when the cops show up, no one is hurt, and they have to haul someone off by law - it doesn't matter if anyone's really done anything...the humorous part is that I've been arrested for it several times, so have various of my exes, and so has my mother...whoever's the loudest or drunkest person in the house goes]) and there's another call, you're likely to get charged with it. I had a friend who got 10 years for ripping the door off his house. His own fucking house and he got charged, just because his girlfriend had called the police and he left, she made a statement, then he came back and she wouldn't let him in. Yes, he was drunk, yes he was an ex-convict...but he hadn't done anything other than damage his own property (because he was locked out). But he still got arrested, parole violated, and got an extra 10 years to boot. And his girlfriend felt really stupid, since he wasn't around to pay for their son or a roof over their head or anything. Dumb bitch, dumb cops.
Now this fucking creep, if he even mentioned "Gee, I'm going to do [whatever]" and someone reported it, he could be charged the same way. It's a very ambiguous law that's often abused. Not that I care what happens to this shitbag...
Sure there is. Rapist pops off, I answer...w/ a .45ACP. I think that's highly appropriate.
No, this is not how it works in the real world, hate to break it to you. I had this argument w/ a female friend recently. I was trying to get her to own a gun (since she lives alone in a dubious neighborhood and is sort of clueless about watching her ass), but she claimed her dog and knowledge of martial arts was enough to handle any situation. So the last time she had her dog (which is about 90 lbs. or so) over at my place, even w/ advance warning (which someone wouldn't have in the real world), and me holding one arm behind my back (and being careful to not hurt her or the dog), I had one foot on the dog's throat and one hand holding her off the ground and against a wall in about 5 seconds. And I'm not a huge guy either (though I do have martial arts/hand-to-hand training but I wasn't really using that, just straight-up aggression).
The way it works in the real world is (a) most real fights are over in a few seconds, (b) always try to get the first shot in, and (c) it's all about your mental stance. If you're not ready and willing to hurt someone at the drop of a hat, you will almost always lose - no matter what you're supposedly trained in. Plain and simple. Don't let your TV fantasies fool you - fights are short and nasty, and I've met very few people that have martial arts training that also have the proper attitude (that aren't ex-military or ex-cons; I'm both).
Personally, to simplify our overblown judicial and legislative system, I think there should be 3 and only 3 criminal charges, all of which are punishable by death. Rape, Abuse Of A Child (sexual or otherwise; I'm not talking 20 whacks w/ a belt, I'm talking serious, life-altering shit), and Gross Stupidity. And this guy wins on 2 out of 3. How stupid can you possibly be?
Of course, I'm continually amazed by the kind of people that (a) try to hire people (generally amateurs - most people that really have a reason and strong desire to kill someone are also the type of people that handle it themselves anyways) and (b) that try to profit from it (see my comments about amateurs, again). Logistically speaking, as a career choice it's not a very good one. Because if you're doing this for a living, you have to be employed by someone with some serious clout to make a living off it (and not end up in prison). Think about it - planning, carrying out, and cleaning up after a disposal takes at least a 3 days (possibly up to a month or more if the target is particularly well-protected or otherwise complicated). Even cleaning up after a spur-of-the-moment thing takes at least 3-4 hours to do right (if you include disposal of the body, cleaning up any blood, hairs, etc.). Doing this on a regular basis? There's no way it's even economically feasible in a risk vs. reward scenario.
I agree completely with that part of things. The burden is on consumers (or citizens, as we used to be called). Don't buy Microsoft products and the Internet will be a much safer place.
What are they smoking? They sell the buggiest, shittiest, most useless (some people find it useful...I don't; the last time I tried to use MS Office I spent 15 minutes dicking around w/ the application just to set some bullet points, and decided that 15 minutes could have been better spent downloading and installing OpenOffice - their applications have all turned into overblown, unusable pieces of shit, just like the internals of their operating systems) products, practice all kinds of shady business just to spread their crapware, and then blame the average, non-technical person for how fucked-up their operating system is and how it makes computers unusable to a significant portion of the population.
Jesus. If I sold someone a car that had as many problems as a copy of Windows, I'd be sued - possibly even imprisoned. Someone would probably end up dead fairly quickly if I made a business out of it, and then I'd be up shit creek. But they can sell shitty software and then not be held accountable when it doesn't work? Yes, the world is that strange.
Now that you mention it, you're right. Christ, can't even make a joke anymore without it getting all complicated. Must be getting old. Gotta go - fuckin' kids on my lawn!
At least it was original (except for the part about mounted lasers and the reference to Nancy's labia - the latter is from a Bill Hicks' skit that would probably cause you to break down and cry for mommy, or tearfully admit to your roommate [while he was trying to coax you out of hiding under the mattress] that she touched you "down there and it felt good but I felt bad about it later" - because something really fucked-up must have happened to you so that you can't appreciate a joke, even a "disgusting" one) , somewhat relevant, and disgusting. Put that shit up on YouTube and I'd actually navigate over to that fucking site, watch it until I went temporarily blind (either from the screen glare or the moonshine), and then go to sleep thinking humorous thoughts.
Seriously?
Mod parent down. This post is disgusting
And clouds are generally white and fluffy, children aren't cute unless they're yours, and no matter what you try, people will make gross jokes. Most people actually delight in making gross jokes. Check IMDB ratings (as well as theater and DVD revenue) for PG-13 or R-rated comedies with a predominantly disgusting sense of humor. I guarantee you they dominate "clean humor" movies across the board. Especially if they make fun of politicians.
It's called human nature. Get over it. I, for one, would watch the Sputnik launch once or twice (I've seen it before a few times), but actually save a video depicting something like what I described.
What's so different between putting a man and a woman in space? I could see the "first child conceived in space" or the "first birth in space", but why does the (astro|cosmo)naut's gender matter in this context?
Oh, yeah, I forgot. If a "man" (which can refer to either a male or female when used to refer to the species collectively) goes to space, or the moon, or Uranus, it's not fair until we get a woman up there too. /. should run an "Ask Slashdot" article (or at least have a poll) about the extent to which political correctness (known as "PC bullshit" amongst us in the know) has infiltrated the scientific community.
I'm not saying you're a PC zealot, but saying something like that out of a context where it would make a scientific difference (menstrual cycles, neurobiology, etc.), which gender the lucky bastard who gets to get slung into space ahead of so-and-so many tons and tons of rocket propellant (which hopefully doesn't blow up and kill them, RIP Challenger) just says to me that irrelevant crap is penetrating deeper and deeper into our collective mindsets. Next we're going to have the NAACP suing NASA over their "Equal Opportunity" hiring practices or selection criteria to be an astronaut. I'd be tempted (just to be an asshole) to tell them that we've already sent chimps, but that's probably why I'm not the spokesperson for any large agencies or companies (because I'm a flippant guy with a crude sense of humor who thinks people take themselves too seriously given half a chance).
Now I'm being too serious and long-winded about a simple point. Time to take my happy pills and go back to drinking bourbon straight...
Forgot to mention : there can be no mistakes about time w/ Ronald Reagan, only names. For other ones, see Legion, Belial, Mammon, Shub-Niggurath, Lucifer, Dagon, et al. Any dark god in any culture stretching back to the dawn of life w/ speech capabilities is only another one of his faces. Notice how he looks thinner in pictures w/ any male of the Bush family? It's pseudopods of his unholy essence animating their lifeless sells.
On a note not dealing with the evil that slumbers behind Reagans' supposedly dead eyes, I think this is possibly one of the only good things that came out of the Cold War (I'm just hesitant to say anything good came out of the Cold War). A shame that we - as a species - can't do stuff like this without anyone being ready to go to war or destroy every living human being (Africa, Utah, and India excepted - no contributions to the human race coming from any of those locations) a damn near random lottery of destruction.
Where is simple human curiosity, drive, intellect, and ballsiness (sp?)? Oh yeah, I forgot - our schools replaced that curriculum w/ Political Correctness and How Pretend An Apple Is An Orange (Ministry Of Truth v0.3).
Newcaster shouting "We've been pwned! All our basez belong to them!"
Ronald Reagan (after finishing a menage trois w/ Ollie North and his wife, the last 15 minutes of which consist of ole Nancy rolling her 15 feet of distended labia back into it's carrying harness) responds on nationwide television "Testing...testing...we will begin nuclear attack on Russia in 5...4...3-oh shit! Just kidding. To the American people, no need to be worried about the Russkies launching a, uh, well...a something. And we think it has a dog in it - and he does not, I repeat, does not have lasers mounted anywhere on him. Gotta go! Turn that fucking thing off! Nancy - you missed a roll, hide it quick you dumb bitch, the interns are puking!"
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. And next week...and next week. Unless I get cancer like Bill Hicks, where I ripped some of this material from. All errors in time of events and who was alive or in what office are the guy w/ ID 580570, not me. I'm 580569. People get us confused a lot.
Hey, I just noticed that I have 69 in every single issued ID # that I can think of. My SSN, DL, TDC #, /. ID, everything. Fucking weird.
Which in turn leads to the question : does quantity equal quality? And by that I do not mean the quality of each individual member of their society, but rather in the quality of their lives, the quality of what they have to offer (which, at least in IT, has been very little of worth so far - please feel free to give me counterexamples, but when even people who aren't in IT [such as a young woman I was chatting with at a doctor's appointment this morning] express their frustration at the outsourced services they receive from Indians, it only further illustrates my point that most Indians' degrees and certifications they aren't worth the paper they are written upon; my own experience in IT confirms it, with some outstanding exceptions), et al.
Just because you have a large population does not mean that it is a worthwhile country. You could combine the entirety of the continent of Africa, and not come up with one worthwhile contribution to modern society (and that includes most of the Whites living there as well).
Economic theories (which may or may not hold true, and extend to the limits of your or my lifetime, unless you're 15) aside, India has very little to offer the rest of the world. It has to get it's own shit together first - something that this article suggests that it is not doing.
Try dealing with insurance companies, buying a house, even getting a simple loan on a used car that you'll pay off in 6 months. Things like that are interconnected due to your SSN being used to track you and your "credit score" (an arbitrary number that isn't affected much by any good credit actions, or payment of past debts, but is heavily penalized for the slightest failure to pay anything; I've literally had a home loan turned down because I didn't pay off the last 5 dollars on a loan for a laptop due to a billing error). While this state of affairs may or may not be the desired result of the decision to assign SSNs to citizens, it still causes more harm than good. Anyone who gets ahold of your SSN can damage you in many ways. For example, I recently went to the ER at my local hospital. I got into an argument with the head nurse about whether or not I could go outside and smoke a cigarette and wait for the pain medication to take effect before they (with my assistance, since I don't permit anyone to work on an injury that I can do myself) cleaned and dressed the gunshot wound. So instead of getting treatment, I was told that I was "discharged" upon my return from my cigarette break.
And yet they'll be hounding me for money for services rendered, despite the fact that they did nothing except look at the wound, go "yep, you've been shot, the bullet exited your body, we need to give you some pain medicine and dress that wound" (since I'd already stopped the bleeding and all that before I got to the ER). They'll try to bill my insurance company and try to bill me, despite the fact that they did nothing other than provide me with a room for an hour. If they didn't have my SSN, they would have a much harder time doing that, since my name is relatively common, I didn't give them my correct address, and I can tell my insurance company to deny the claim.
At least this is happening in India, not in a country that actually matters globally. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that have to deal with it, but if they're not willing to fight for their freedom, then this is what they'll get. At least in the U.S. we've had our experience with SSNs and the more intelligent members of our population (the ones that aren't out to dominate others - that caveat has to be added, since there's plenty of intelligent people who have no respect for freedom, responsibility, or accountability) should, mostly, be able to understand why a program like this is a very, very bad idea for those of us who value our freedom. SSNs are bad enough as-is - a government program that has become a tool of the private business sector as well, tracking every significant purchase or decision a man makes in his life. I'll undoubtedly be haunted the rest of my life by the problems I had when I was married, despite the fact that I made the best decisions that I could at the time (some of which were forced by the economy, some by personal circumstances, some by business matters gone awry)..
Actually, what bothers me the most about identification systems like this is the invasion of one's privacy. You will never have a chance to start over after losing everything, any person at all may be tracked by government agencies much easier, et al. It makes evil deeds on the behalf of so-called "authorities" (be they governing bodies, businesses, credit tracking agencies, or what-have-you) much easier to accomplish, while offering nothing in return to the citizens subjected to such measures.
Today, in an unprecedented clusterfuck, /. itself was brought to it's knees when every user posted simultaneously. The majority of the posts fell into the following range :
1) "It's Ubuntu - it rocks, it's cool, we'll finally now how many people are using it continuously!" These are the people that use Ubuntu, don't understand anything about it, and have never been in a server room in their lives. They also wouldn't understand privacy issues if said issues fell on them from any height.
2) "Does anyone think about privacy and the other ideals that we, as hackers, have promoted for so long?" These are grumpy curmudgeons that may or may not run Ubuntu, but damn sure have enough sense not to do so in their datacenter,
3) "Ubuntu sucks!" This can actually be broken down into two categories : Those who know Ubuntu sucks and trolls.
4) "I am CowboyNeal and I'm not sure why I have a huge sock over my erection, but either way, someone's going to get fucked!" Most of these people don't actually have socks over their erections, because they don't have one or the other (or a third possibility, they're rock-hard...but don't have any baby-socks handy, the others keep sliding off). Mostly Anonymous Cowards.
I fall into categories #2 and #3 (know Ubuntu sucks). I also partially fit into category 4, but that's just because I can't find my boxer shorts until I've chugged a pint of bourbon and wanted to cover my morning wood while I went out and got the paper. It didn't help when the neighbor's kids started pointing and asking their father why I had a 18" sock glued to my front, wondering why it stood straight up, or why I had "KISS IT" tattooed across my buttocks.
Well, she was my "high school sweetheart" originally (meaning she went to high school, I dropped out and went to college and worked...things fell apart when she went off to college and started studying psychology, funny that).
Then we found each other again after some like 12 years, had a brief fling, and then she got all...psychologist (for lack of a better word) on me. I mean, just cold and without any logic what-so-fucking-ever (yet insisting that she was being the logical one, since it's logical to treat someone who's supposedly one of your best friends and also the best guy you ever dated like shit because you feel like he's putting pressure on you to do...absolutely nothing; I was putting no pressure on her other than suggesting that we hang out or talk to each other, stuff that people who are just friends and nothing more do, but sh freaked out on me. It was like night and day - one day she was my old sweetheart, affectionate and loving and the most wonderful (if somewhat naive) woman in the world, the next day she slips out and almost has a nervous breakdown and pushes me out of her life almost completely (despite the fact that we live 90 minutes away from each other, were only seeing each other once every few weeks, and it's not my fault if she wasn't getting enough sleep because she'd stay up talking and flirting with me on the phone or via chat/e-mail. Christ...
Yes, I have to be crazy to have thought that anything between her and I had changed. Things had only gotten potentially worse, since both of us had only become moere of what we individually were...
Tell that to the head-shrinkers. They're the ones that diagnosed me when I was a juvenile (thankfully, I've never been diagnosed with anything like that as an adult, or else I'd be screwed when it comes to employment).
As of this date (July 28th, 2010), sociopathy is not even a diagnosable condition (it was split into psychopathy and antisocial disorder, two preexisting diagnosable conditions). Up until at least 17 years ago it was, and I was diagnosed with it (amongst other things). What no one bothered to pay attention to is the fact that I was perfectly capable of functioning as long as no one fucked with me or mine.
I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the label (frankly, I think almost all shrinks are more insane and/or have more personal issues than the people they are "treating" - and I've dated a psychologist).
What I am saying is that when it was a diagnosable condition, that was the main condition that I was "treated" for (since I was in and out of juvenile correctional facilities and reacted violently to any attempt to control me or tell me what I couldn't do; I've always lived by my own rules and see no need to indulge others' illusions of control over my person...which is probably why no matter what jail I go to in whatever state, even if it's just overnight for public intoxication, I get put in administration segregation - the modern equivalent of solitary).
Psychopaths (though the extremity does vary) cannot turn on their emotions, nor in most cases control their urges. Sociopaths vary in that they experience either selective or complete lack of emotions. I am on the lower end of the scale and that, combined with my high intellect and the fact that I'm a nice guy if I like you, means that I don't often get into situations where I have to cut off emotions in order to do something that someone else would consider inhuman.
If you want a perfect example, a guy whom I had known for over 15 years stole my medication one night while most of our group were passed out drunk. That, combined with the amount of alcohol we'd drank and the other drugs in his systems, caused an overdose. Basically, he keeled over in a parking lot and stopped breathing. I laughed in his face, put my pistol up, and left him there. Parting words? "Thanks, now I don't need to ditch this piece." (because I was about 5 seconds away from killing him - I have a policy of killing people that steal from me). I felt nothing, still feel nothing, and this was one of my oldest friends (whose life I had saved several times when he had OD'ed before in my presence, since I was the only one around who had any basic medical training and knew how to handle the situation).
I'll live my life as I choose, thank you very much. I don't need your sympathy, pity, or hack diagnosis.
The fact that you can't handle your own self is your problem. Not mine. Have fun paying for all those head-shrinkers' bills.