Well, I'm kinky, but not into the whole anal bit. Give me a hot, tattooed chick with a sharp razor and we can have some fun, but I'll skip the anal probe, thank you very much.
Well, since wolves can be domesticated (I have two friends that have raised wolves from cubs, and they're smart animals and extremely loyal), I don't think the analogy is entirely inaccurate. I consider myself a civilized wolf, after a fashion.
But I get your point. But wouldn't another breed of dog, like a mastiff, be a better example if one is encouraging people to stop acting like sheep?
Actually, I have had police try to remove my clothing to give me a full body search (which includes the finger up the ass bit). All what resulted was a brawl that ended up with everyone injured to one degree or another and me fully clothed and hogtied.
And don't talk to me about cops. I've dealt with more of those fucks than you could imagine. My last girlfriend was the daughter of high-ranking Gang Task Force member. I came within a cunt's hair of getting into a fight with him for him threatening her in front of me. He had a long history of beating her and her younger brother, and she had the scars to prove it. I've known one cop in my life that I liked, and that's because she knew me and looked out for me when I was a teenager. She was cool. Never frisked me, bought me food, tried to get me to go home when I hadn't been home in weeks (not even getting into that), the works. One cop out of hundreds. Those aren't very good odds, are they?
And, for the record, I'm polite to everyone until they're rude to me. Most cops are assholes, deal with it. Just because you're friends with a few doesn't mean that they're not dicks. Actually, from the way you like to sling accusations and insults, I suspect I know why they're friends with you. Do they give you a nice little reach-around too?
And another one for the record - I don't need anyone to protect me. I'm perfectly capable of that myself. So, move along.
My apologies for being a bit short here, but I'm running out of time before I need to get about my day.
As for your comment about police and shootings, do you know what Google Alerts are? I maintain several, one of which has to do with police and shootings. Yes, I did a rough calculation on the numbers. But they're accurate enough. And I had a personal friend's brother get shot in the back by cops when I was a teenager. Of course, he had a gun. Not. I knew the kid. He was an exceptional student, didn't get into trouble, and damn sure didn't pack a piece (his brother was a prominent Southwest Cholo leader in SW Houston, so everyone steered clear of his little brother). So I both keep up with the news and have personal experience with cops and their idea of "upholding the law".
As for the case I quoted about the "generally" part, it's happened here in Houston a few years ago. Cops arrested some youngster, didn't search him properly before they put him in the car, and he had a piece on him and shot one of them. That's besides the news I pick up from various sources, a lot of them not mainstream. Don't even get me started on Black-on-White crime rates and lack of media coverage.
The rest of your post I pretty much agree with, except for the bit about anarchy. I do not believe in anarchy. I believe in reduced government and personal responsibility. Someone jacked you for your bike? Well, sorry to hear it, but you choose to live in a state that has all kinds of firearms restrictions. People don't just walk up to someone and rob them in Texas, most of the time. I've worked and lived in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods we have here (it's cheap to build a college or a datacenter in the middle of a ghetto), places that make most of L.A. and San Francisco look like Disneyland, and I carried a gun at all times. A lot of people do. Which is an excellent deterrent for crime. To quote someone who I don't have time to look up "an armed society is a polite society".
Oh, and studying history (as I have) tends to make one less trusting of authority, not more. An educated mind questions everything, rather than taking things as fact without proof.
Take care, have a good day, and watch out for your bike.
You might not be a lawyer, but you are technically correct. Once you are arrested, you don't fight back. Let your lawyer do that. That's what they get paid for.
The man that this article is about was not arrested, unless I'm delirious from lack of sleep. He was detained. You can be searched, you can be detained for questioning, but it's a violation of one's personal rights without probable cause (and I'd love to see any DA try to argue this case) and that is against the law.
And, personally, I don't care about suing the government for false arrest. I don't have the time and it changes nothing in my mind. But if you try to stick a finger up my ass, or unlawfully detain me (oh, I'll sit there for hours until they get tired of me staring at the wall, but don't manhandle me unless you're arresting me), you're going to have a fight on your hands. Yes, I'll go to jail. But I'll get out, and my lawyer will finish what they began. Been there, done that.
I've made it a point to know my legal rights, both from a dry law standpoint and from how things can be twisted by the officers or the DA. I know where the line of the law lies, and I know where the line of my honor lies. I can't say I enjoy it when the two happen to cross, but it's just temporary incarceration or a beating. If you can't take that, then you're weak.
Right on, brother. Why post as an AC? Be proud of what you did, and what you just said. I'd buy you a pint or twenty, but I doubt we're within a hundred miles of each other.
Kind of funny when someone posting as an "Anonymous Coward" shows more guts and backbone than anyone else I've seen post in response to my initial one.
That's what I mean by having honor and standing on principle. When the rest of you gentleman and ladies get that straight, maybe we can all start moving on towards a better future.
Well, I'm back, since you requested my presence. I have been tasered. Three times, in fact. I've lost count of the number of times I've had mace sprayed in my face (well, pepper spray, but it amounts to the same thing).
As for protection against unreasonable search and seizure (another Constitutional right), you're dead wrong. They can search you, then can seize your property, but they cannot make it stick unless you're actually doing something against the law. I don't care if they pat me down, or search my bag. I have to go through almost that much just to get on an airplane. But I do object to cavity searches. I've never had one successfully performed on me in my life. I've never had a cop manage to do more than rip my shirt off, and I was in cuffs at the time. And him and his buddies had to fight to do that. The last cop that tried to take my property away on the way to jail ended up getting knocked on his ass when I picked it up from under his boot (with my hands cuffed behind my back, I might add). And while they smashed my head against the hood of the car until they split my lip wide open, they never did manage to get me to release my property nor could they even force my arms from my sides.
I let my lawyer fight in the courtroom. Outside of that, I know my rights and I fight for them. Even if it means that I get injured or the living shit beat out of me. I still win in the end, since I preserve my honor.
So, at your request, my hand is raised. And I'm keeping it up. Live for something, or die for nothing. You're going to die one of these days anyways, so you might as well do it on your feet.
Wow, circle, I missed this post. You almost prove my points here, in your naive and insulting manner (telling people who disagree with you that they're full of teenage bullshit and need to grow the fuck up suggests to me that they are not the ones who need to grow up). Also, capital letters, punctuation, and proper grammar would go a long way towards establishing your credentials as a cognizant adult.
Let's address each of these statements, in a slightly different light.
if no one believes corruption can be fixed, corruption is the status quo
And what exactly are you doing to fix it? I have already stated what I am doing to fix it. I can't change the world, but I can choose how I live. If everyone else stood by their principles, then corruption would not be the status quo!
if people demand corruption be fixed, it tends to get a little more fixed
And when those demands are ignored? What will you do then? When you ask the wolves to not take your child to jail because he or she wanted to smoke a joint while out on a date, or because they missed a court appearance, or because the "officer" in question just didn't like the way they looked, do you think that demand will be heeded? If you do, then you are the fool here. You can demand all you want, but if you lack the courage to stand up and do something, if you cannot live your life in such a way that you provide an example for others, what good do your feeble demands actually do?
It took nothing short of the ACLU, NAACP, and a few other organizations suing the shit out of Harris County, Texas (which Houston is in, my home town) just to get the county to clean and disinfect the jail about 3-4 years ago (it was so filthy and overcrowded that half the inmates had staph infections, people were dying from improper medical treatment, and even if you were bonded out in 24 hours, you more than likely caught staph just from sitting on the concrete waiting for the lazy bastards to handle your paperwork). Yet when I was falsely arrested (all charges dismissed, but I still had to spend over 7000 USD on bail and a lawyer) about 9 months ago, the same conditions had returned. Luckily, I didn't catch staph that time. But I did get to watch another inmate in my holding tank go into convulsions and die after repeatedly informing the guards that he had a medical condition that required treatment, and they refused to even let him talk to a nurse. I was one of the people who dragged him off the table he fell onto when he seized up, so I was asked my name (probably because I was one of the few White guys in the tank, and heavily tattooed to boot, so it was easy for them to remember me). Needless to say, I made it clear that if they wanted me to give a statement, I would tell anyone exactly what happened, including their negligence. Also needless to say, I haven't heard from them yet, nor do I expect to. Guilty until proven innocent, right? Except this fellow got the death penalty before he even got a bond hearing. How you like them apples? I picked up the paper and read an article about the rising number of inmate deaths due to improper medical conditions and "accidents" just last month.
So much for corruption being a "little more fixed", eh?
of course corruption is never going to go away...it also must not be accepted
Oh, really? I gave you the answer to the first part of this statement above. The second part of this statement...well, in Texas, we call that "crawfishing". Back-pedalling. While I would sincerely like to believe that you magically grew a spine in a few hours, I think you're just conceding defeat in the best manner possible. Saving face.
So, I ask you again : what are you going to do about it?
we all have tolerance levels for certain levels of bullshit, then we get outraged
I am sorry, my dearly mistaken friend, but this is a question that the human race has been wrestling with since the dawn of civilization. I'm sure you've heard the expression "who guards the guards"? Or something equivalent in meaning? It is a dilemma that has no answer in society as you see it. Also, remember how slippery slopes operate.
However, there is an answer out there. A simple one. And it hinges upon the keystones of the Hobbes vs. Locke argument about the role of government in citizens' lives (which was essentially that either men are by nature evil, and thus any authority will be evil, or men are by nature good, and thus need no governance to ensure their cooperation; a drastic oversimplification, but I'm sure that you can look up far more erudite scholars on sociopolitical theory than myself...for me, it's just a part of one of my hobbies, namely philosophy). While I don't think we need to completely dissolve all government, I think it is high time that governments serve their people, and not the other way around.
Would you like to hear that answer? Since you invited me to provide it, I will. In the interest of the freedom of all men and women, in the interest of evolution itself (for you have built a dam in that river, and you will choke on it eventually), you must become your own guardians.
Here, on Slashdot, of all places, I would expect that answer to be most appropriate. The majority of readers here are not simple-minded fools who are incapable of being multi-faceted human beings (actually, some of the most physically fit and combat-ready civilians that I know are in IT). I am a systems administrator by trade, and a half-way decent programmer as well. But, amongst other skills and hobbies, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat, the use of almost any kind of close-quarters weapon, firearms, and some explosives and small munitions. And I am experienced as well. I was a soldier, and remain one in my heart. I give no quarter, and ask for none. I am willing to die so that others may live, that we may have a future where every man, woman, and child can live without fear of others. I have survived beatings, torture, multiple stabbings, and been shot at more times than you've been laid, I do not doubt. Both in service and in the streets. I live near and work in one of the most crime-ridden cities in America, yet I have no reason to fear any other man who walks these streets, because I am capable of protecting myself and those dear to me. I have done it before at great cost to myself, and I will do it again if necessary.
I believe in the innate goodness of most of the human race. I believe that every adult human can teach or be taught how to defend their own. I believe that those who would do evil unto others are ultimately more afraid than those who would defend their own. Without that, we have nothing and will be nothing in the end. I have seen women beaten by male police officers. I have never seen a single officer fight someone one-on-one. I have never seen a police officer risk his or her life for a fellow citizen. Nowhere in the US have I seen the callous disregard for the human condition outside of a jail. All of these ugly, cowardly things I have seen or experienced have been in this country. Not by someone I fought, not by criminals or terrorists (speaking of terrorists, look to the example of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001; where were your precious guardians then? Nowhere. But the men and women on that flight chose to die on their feet rather than ride helplessly to a flaming death that might have killed others as well), but by police. Lives are lost in battles, prisoners are executed and tortured, true. But to turn against those you have sworn to protect? That is more than corrupt - it is dishonourable and deserves nothing but contempt. Yet you choose these scum to protect you? It's laughable at best.
So, in answer to your question, yes, there is a way to have a society without police. It requires a high price, and it will be paid in blood and
So far, the larger part of the comments here have dealt with the fact that this might be a scam.
IMHO, it's probably not. If you've heard some of the stupid shit from cops and other government bureaus that I have, this is right up their alley. Remember - these guys by and large aren't really trying to do the job they say they're out to do. And they're nowhere near as competent and knowledgeable as they imagine they are. I've been told before that the fact that the devil chicks I have tattooed on my forearms have some meaning in these exact words : "Don't think we don't know what those horns mean! We're not stupid!". Uh, yes, you are. They're devil chicks. What, you expect them to be wearing garland wreaths on their heads? Get real. There is no hidden meaning behind that, and I know what most gang and prison-related tattoos in Texas mean.
If you're a chickenhawk bureaucrat on a power trip, who are you likely to pick out as a target? A comic book artist? Or someone who does have actual ties to known and dangerous terrorist organizations? Let me repeat that, just in case you missed it : known and dangerous. Despite all the spoon-fed drivel that gets funnelled straight into your living room, courtesy of your brand-new digital TV, these guys are bureaucrats. They don't want to break a sweat, let alone get their asses shot off or some other form of retaliation. They're not heroes, except the extremely rare exception (think about it - you hear ten times as many stories about cops shooting unarmed civilians as you do an armed civilian shooting a cop...yet the cop is always painted as the "hero who died in the line of duty"; generally through their own stupidity, like not searching someone they just antagonized and arrested...now if the supposedly unbiased news puts those figures forth, what do you think the real numbers are?). They don't go out of their way or risk their lives to protect citizens. They don't do anything other than collect their check, do as little as possible, and then go home to fuck their middle-class fat-arsed wives and scream at their subnormal children. If they can skip out on doing their "duty" for a few hours by harassing some artist whom they had to have known has no affiliation or even a tenuous connection within an hour, you bet your bottom dollar they will be doing just that for as long as they can.
And a cavity search? Oh, I'd love to see those fuckers try that one of me. You ain't getting my clothes off unless you've already arrested me and have me full restraints (which makes it pretty hard to get someone's clothes off without cutting them off). Because I can and will fight, and there's only so many people that can gang up on one man, and that is not enough to get my clothes off me without beating me unconscious, which is pretty hard to do. Oh, sure, I'll get some kind of charge slapped on me. But you know what - it's not resisting arrest or assault if there's nothing to arrest you for!
You, as a society, have become sheep. And you have chosen wolves to protect you. Is it any wonder that the herd gets culled by their so-called guardians quite often? Here's Tom with the weather...
Pardon me? I'd like to bring a few points to your attention.
Firstly, I spent 4 years of my life (when I was younger) where no one with any kind of legal authority knew where I lived, what I owned, what I drove, et al. I won't go into much more detail than to say that I did have a job, did attend college, and made quite good money from both legal and not so legal methods. But the best that anyone who wanted to find me could hope for was to catch me at class. Which I'm sure some government agencies could have done, but no one in the IRS and very few outside of heavy-duty Federal agencies. I just didn't work at a place where my boss reported his employees, his actual income, or what he paid his employees (and it wasn't a crappy job either, I could count on at least 800 USD on a decent day, sometimes up to 1200, and that was over ten years ago, when 800 could cover your rent and utilities for a month in a fairly nice apartment). That changed when I got into IT, but I could just as easily slip back into that if I wanted to. The police still can't find me when they're looking for me. None of my legal documents, mail, or anything else has my actual address on it. Oh, I suppose they could trace this IP address, but it's just not worth it for them. I'm a relatively law-abiding citizen these days, so there's no reason for anyone to look for me other than the occasional traffic warrant or something silly like that. Not the kind of stuff that you get the Feds involved for.
Take that one step further. If I could do that when I was younger, and still do it to a certain extent (without breaking any laws that cross the level of a class C misdemeanor), think about what I could do if I really wanted to disappear. Fake IDs can be bought for as little as a 100 USD. Spend a 1000 USD and you can get a full identity change, except for your fingerprints. While there's really nothing that can beat that if they have you in custody, if you're walking around free, there's a really easy way to beat that. Just coat your hands (fingers, palm, and the sides - those are what get recorded any time you are incarcerated) in super glue. Almost impossible to see and leaves no trace of your prints. None of this is James Bond shit. Any person in the US can do it as easily as I described. Admittedly, even if I didn't have my prints on file, there's no way I could do it without major laser surgery since I have a lot of tattoos (which are extensively photographed and documented in Federal databases and are available to any police agency...I can't get a public intoxication charge without getting interrogated about at least 3 things that I had nothing to do with, simply because some of my tattoos link me to various organizations) that can't be covered up unless I plan on walking around with nothing but part of my face visible (which sort of defeats the point). But that's just me. I don't have any need to conceal my identity. The minimal level of paranoia that I maintain is simply so that if I miss a traffic court or forget to pay a fine for a PI or whatever I don't have cops knocking on my door.
But think about the ramifications of people that do not exist whatsoever in any concrete manner in the "system". And you wonder why we have so many problems with border-jumping parasites that eat up the resources (jobs, health care, housing - all of which are major issues in the current state of our economy, and will always be an issue until we do something about those fucks; if I had a dollar for everyone I know or have known who got laid off from their primary occupation due to economic woes and then can't even get a job digging ditches because a bunch of scumbags would rather exploit a bunch of unwelcome parasites to save a few dollars, then I'd be eating steak at a 5-star restaurant tonight) of the US? Or people that have never been arrested because, even though they're sick in the head, they're smart enough to get away with committing vicious, unwarranted crimes (compare the statistics on how many children disappear a year in
I agree wholeheartedly with you on this. Unfortunately, you will not find anything even remotely resembling that philosophy in any public school that I've attended or even heard of.
Instead, you'll find schools where a lot of kids are afraid to take advanced classes or be on accelerated-learning tracks because the other students taunt, revile, and even physically assault them. One of the reasons that I'm so good with my hands is because I attended Houston's so-called "Magnet Program" in middle school. I went into sixth grade at 4'11" and about 80 lbs., and discovered that I had two strikes against me : I was one of about 5 White kids at a predominantly Black/Mestizo school (seriously, we had race riots between the two groups; I fought on the Black side because most of my friends were Black) and I was in the above-mentioned program (which didn't even bother putting me in separate classes or teaching me different material, so I - to this day - don't understand what the damn point of it was). All what I got out of middle school was the ability to knock out kids that were 16 and still in middle school. If you forgot my name, you could say "the cool White kid", because I was the only one of the Magnet students (who were predominantly White and Asian and totalled about 30, of which 5 were White) who would fight back. So I guess I learned something.
By high school, I was completely disillusioned with the educational system and didn't even bother trying to learn anything (from the teachers, that is) other than Shop classes (which turned out to be useful in the long run, as I can do all kinds of interesting stuff with metal and wood that most CS people can't). I dropped out after my fourth trip through the ninth grade (not due to poor academic performance, but because I was constantly thrown out schools, including the ones for "at-risk" students that I'd get sent to each year), technically while it was still illegal for me to do so (but the school district was so tired of my shit that they turned a blind eye).
Got my GED a few months later, as soon as the law allowed me to take the test. Enrolled in college classes a few weeks later...and discovered a whole new world!
One where the principles you quote were actually practiced. Since I'd still read my school texts, even when I was expelled, and have always been an avid learner, there was very little catch-up for me. School became a much more pleasant experience (even though I attended a university in the middle of Houston's 3rd Ward).
The moral of the story? Public schools suck. They're useless, the teachers are incompetent, the administrators are even more so, and with all this "Politically Correct" bullshit going around now (not to mention draconian "Zero Tolerance" policies), my children (if and when I have any) will be home-schooled. Sure, I'll teach them the same stuff that I learned in school (like how to fight and how to not get caught smoking or selling drugs at school), but I'll teach them what they need to go on to college with open eyes and ears, ready to learn.
I wish I could say that things will be different by the time I have children, but I doubt it. From my friends and colleagues, I've learned that their children have it even worse than I did (my friend's daughter was arrested - yeah, you heard correctly, arrested - for bringing a pair of regular, sharp scissors to school, and she was about 10 or so; another friend of mine went ballistic and pulled his son out of public school when he discovered that his son spent most of his time sitting there doing nothing while the teacher tried to teach baby books to kids that didn't speak English). So until schools stop catering to the lowest common denominator and start hiring qualified teachers (neither of which I see happening in my lifetime), public (and a lot of private) schools will always be useless.
I was involved with IBM's "Compute On Demand" initiative about 6 years ago, and people have been renting time on systems for quite some time (no pun intended).
Sure, it's been refined many times over since the initial concept of time-sharing, but it's not a radical concept. What strikes me as humorous is that any time India does something, it's an innovation. I have news for you, my dear friends - there's just as many smart (and stupid) Indians as there are Americans. Their emergence into the mainstream IT world isn't a technological breakthrough, it's a social one. So stop patting them on the heads like little children, stop shipping American jobs overseas to India to save a buck, and just deal with it.
Amen to that. Even though I generally buy the dead-tree versions of all D&D stuff (hey, I love books), it would be nice to be able to download (purchased or not) old adventures and whatnot that are no longer available anywhere.
Why is it that every company that owns the D&D line seems to up and shoot itself in the foot every few years? TSR, WoTC, etc. (I don't feel like digging through my bookshelves to see who had it before TSR - I have manuals dating back to the early 80's).
Oh well...I guess whenever a company starts to do well, they feel obligated to commit the corporate version of seppuku.
Well, to be honest, I wasn't aware that most states had a 3-4 year allowance now. I was speaking from my experience when I was a minor in Texas, and I honestly haven't kept up with the laws (as I don't have anything to do with anyone significantly younger than me; I learned my lesson from twice dating a 21 year-old, and found that these women were way too immature...I expected them to be similar to where I was at 21, and was sadly disappointed).
As far as rape and child molestation (the things that I consider sex crimes, as they involve actual physical violation of someone's person...I don't think that a flasher is a big menace, and definitely not someone who urinates in public; if the latter were the case, I could be considered one, as if I'm drunk and there's no bathroom around, I'll piss anywhere), hell yes I support killing them. If a woman or child that I knew had that done to them while I knew them, there wouldn't even be a trial. Just one missing sick fuck. Almost any other crime can be justified to one extent or another, depending upon the situation, but those two crimes there can be no sane excuse for. Period.
As far as "mental advantages", it depends upon the person. Like I said above, when I was somewhat younger, I dated/was involved with (one after another) two 21 year-old women. In each case, I was disappointed by their lack of anything resembling maturity. On the other hand, I and former partners were able to practice safe sex and have relatively stable relationships when we were as young as 13. What gives there? Sure, some of the emotional maturity wasn't there, but I can tell from experience that it isn't there with most people anyways (my ex-wife was 9 years older than me, and she was less mature than chicks I was with as a teenager).
Oh, and "under-age porn"? It's called child pornography. Public execution by torture. There's no excuse for consensual possession of child pornography. Any discerning individual can tell the difference between someone in their later teen's or early twenties and someone who is underage (note that I also proposed lowering the age of consent). For example, when I was about 20 (give or take a few years), I would download porn from P2P networks (or the equivalent before P2P), and often search for strings such as "young" (because I didn't like seeing a bunch of women in their 30's with sagging fake tits and pussies you can park a semi in). I didn't download anything that suggested that it might contain child pornography, and if I accidentally got something that did contain images that were obviously questionable, I would immediately use the "shred" utility to wipe the file from my HDD.
So you did have a point about the "sex crimes" I overlooked, like indecent exposure or urinating in public. But it really didn't cross my mind to think of those. But I think the rest of what I said was pretty much spot-on. I tend to go from personal experience rather than looking at cases in which I have no personal knowledge of, for the simple fact that I know for a fact what my personal experience has taught me.
Also note that I advocated a much higher degree of substantial evidence. There's a lot of "date rape" cases out there that were based on nothing other than the accuser's word. While I don't know the personal truth of those incidents, I can tell you for a fact that if I had a male friend and a female friend, both of whom I had equal respect and trust for (whether those factors were equally high or low), and the woman told me that the man had raped her, I'd want to see the bruises or hear some other evidence before I believed her. Because I've seen too much shady shit (from both genders) to place much stock in someone's word. It's far too easy for someone to get loaded (which is their own choice, and they need to take responsibility for), fuck someone, and then not want to take responsibility for it later on (for whatever reasons - I've heard everything from "well, I was upset and drunk, he should have known better" - yeah, whatever...if two people are drunk and fooling around, how is the guy supposed to "know better" - to convoluted bullshit that basically amounted to not wanting be perceived as a "slut").
And that, my friend, is exactly what is wrong with the way politicians think.
"If I can move the sex offenders somewhere else, then I'll look good and it's someone else's problem! Yeah!"
Simple solution that I've been advocating for years :
1) Change the age of consent to 14 or 15 for anyone under the age of 18. I mean, come on - I can't speak for most/.er's, but I had already lost count of the number of chicks I'd been with by the time I was 18 (I can still count "significant relationships" on my fingers, but I have no clue how many women I've slept with in my life). And, yes, some of them we took pictures (hey, my crowd was a pack of kinky little bastards...pictures, whips, handcuffs, threesomes, razors, etc.). So I guess that would technically make me a "sex offender", even though I have an incredible amount of respect for women and children, and hate real sex offenders. It used to be (at least in Texas) that as long as there wasn't more than 2 years age difference, it was legal under 18. If one party is over 18, then parental consent is required (two friends of mine, one 19 and the other 17, required a legal consent document so I know the old laws well).
2) Require strict proof in "date rape" cases. I've seen both sides of it - beat the shit out of a guy who was a good friend because he took advantage of a girl at a party (she was damn near comatose and got caught taking her clothes off), but also had the same finger pointed at me (chick spent all day teasing myself and a group of my friends - we were packing and moving my friend's mother's apartment, and she would sit around fingering herself and talking about how she couldn't wait until we were done working so she could fuck us all; things went as planned in the then-empty apartment, then I got a call from a female friend that I was close with the next day hysterically crying and saying "how could you do that?"...turned out the bitch had second thoughts, knew people would find out, so she "confided" in this chick that we'd forced her to have sex with us; the funny part was that a few of the guys didn't want anything to do with her, I only copped a BJ, so she only actually had intercourse with 2 or 3 guys - but I lost a damn good friend over it, because the girl she "confided" in never talked to any of us again). I don't see why a guy should be labeled as a rapist because some chick had second thoughts, or was too wasted to think clearly. On the other hand, I loathe guys who take advantage of women, feed them drugs just to fuck them (yeah, I party hard and so do a lot of people I know, but it's one thing to be trashed and do your thing - it's another to intentionally feed some girl pills or whatever until she's so out of it that she doesn't know if she's getting laid or laid out on the couch), and similar behavior.
3) For actual, verifiable rapes (forced or "date"), public hanging. Plain and simple. No tolerance for that shit. And by verification, I mean witnesses, evidence (like if a woman has a gun held to her head is raped in a private place by some fucking sicko who's smart enough to use lubrication, then finding the gun might be the only proof available besides DNA), DNA, medical examination, etc. Place a certain weight to each variable (for example - it's possible to have DNA evidence and rough sex without rape, just ask anyone who has spent 2 days high on meth and fucking non-stop), and if the evidence weight sum passes a certain watermark, it's verifiable.
4) For anyone who abuses a child (I don't care if you're 14 or 40, if you fuck a 10 year-old, you're a sick fuck), public execution by torture. I'd be happy to volunteer a couple of days a month to the cause. Oh, and that includes anyone who possesses child pornography as well (of course, have it verified by independent, non-biased computer forensics experts so it's proven that the user wasn't just p0wned).
That solves the problem right there. No false convictions (hell, I remember my ex-wife freaking out when we checke
No kidding. I often don't hear back from some recruiters, and I wondered why, when they were initially all hot and bothered to get me in for an interview.
Then I had one recruitment firm who was professional enough to tell me (after I was professional enough to warn them that I had a few old DWIs - I was 19 and 21, respectively - and a few other misdemeanors before they put me forth to a prospective client that required a high-level security clearance) that the reason why they couldn't represent me wasn't because of the things I'd been convicted of, but the things I'd been arrested for (but not convicted of). Apparently, if the grand jury accepts a case, but the D.A. throws it out without you ever going to trial, that still shows up as an arrest in an extensive background check. Despite the fact that all of these cases were dismissed for good reason - because they were ridiculous and the D.A. didn't stand a chance in hell of prosecuting them. It's going to cost me a fortune to get a lawyer to expunge all of those cases.
I've noticed that larger firms that actually look at the difference between arrests and convictions don't care about the arrests, just the convictions. I've actually been complimented on my honesty by one company after I told them up-front about those arrests and they proceeded with the interviewing process.
And bear in mind that these were all misdemeanors (all my felonies have been dismissed by grand juries, as they all involved use of justified force with credible witnesses - though I was pretty ticked when they slapped a hate crime charge on me in one instance, simply because I'm White and the other fellow was Asian...they didn't bother to check that I had several Asian colleagues who were also fairly good friends, so that was so ridiculous that I'd be laughing if it weren't my life and freedom).
You're probably an Enron exec who is hiding somewhere, posting pictures of his penis pump and use thereof on facebook, writing crappy web pages, and also the next Unabomber.
Did I miss anything?
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Just kidding...sucks to be you. Sure, companies won't judge you on that (unless they really, really want to get the shit sued out of them), but if you do any kind of online dating, someone you meet might. That's why I use multiple mail accounts (business, personal, crap mail, and crappy personal mail), aliases/handles, and even go so far as to extend that level of paranoia into the real world. I'm a hard man to find unless I want to be.
...if no other (at times it seems that way). My name is the same as a rather famous (or at least prolific) actor, so any Google results for me return his movies and bio rather than anything about me.
Unless you know where to look. And I'm incredibly paranoid about my identity anyways, due to some dodgy past relations with certain individuals that led to a full-scale raid on my house, as well as the fact that I constantly have people trying to find me to collect bills that my junkie ex-wife racked up (and I can't find her to get a legal divorce, so I need to wait X amount of time in order to file an absentee one).
Foundry Networks, Force10, Juniper (barely), anything but Cisco. The only place that Cisco occasionally wins out is in feature-set, but that's rare and the other vendors almost always catch up a month or two later.
Cisco's always have problems, they're the Microsoft of the networking world (relying on sales and entrenchment rather than performance and stability), and they never perform up to spec. Hell, even their specs never have the backplane bandwidth necessary to facilitate full-speed connections with a fully populated chassis. They're universally hated in the HPC world.
Actually, I think you're right. I was beyond frustrated yesterday and not quite thinking straight. Though I could have sworn that I received some 404's, but they might not have been from/. - I wasn't in a very sane state of mind yesterday.
Perhaps I should have made it a little clearer for people that don't know that I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
I did not say that this caused me to not be able to access said directory. Standard *nix permissions caused that. What this did cause was an endless series of headaches in trying to contact the admin in question who has root on the system. The system is not part of the college's IT structure (not even going into that bitch-fest), so it took a while to find the lady in question who has root on the goddamn system.
After finding said lady, she mucked up my damn password, then fixed it, then I spent some time customizing my environment and looking into a secure login option (believe it or not, I can telnet into the system, but SSH is restricted to users running VPN software - USER painehope WHACKS HEAD AGAINST WALL), confident in my ability to finish my piss-ant assignment (it's a joke, really - a simple C program as a "warm-up assignment" for the class) in under an hour.
Throughout the course of this affair, I had hell sending mail or doing anything else. But I chalked that up to my usual ISP routers (kid you not, if my ISP got any dumber, they'd be contracting out to Guatemala, not India). No big deal, right? I'm in the system.
Then I discover that I can't access the directory where the assignment is stored. Still not sweating...I should be able to get a mail in and either be added to the appropriate group or get the permission bits changed to allow access. Worse case - just get the admin to tarball the files to me.
Except this time I can't get to my mail for a few hours. Which places me past the time wherein I can get ahold of said admin.
Gee, you only described about half the mistakes that incompetent network admins could possibly make (buying a fucking Cisco, not updating their NOS, and not limiting AS paths).
That covers half the ISPs in Texas (including mine - these fuckwits can barely configure their routers correctly on a good day, let alone deal with a crisis brought about their own incompetence). YMMV.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I'm kinky, but not into the whole anal bit. Give me a hot, tattooed chick with a sharp razor and we can have some fun, but I'll skip the anal probe, thank you very much.
Well, since wolves can be domesticated (I have two friends that have raised wolves from cubs, and they're smart animals and extremely loyal), I don't think the analogy is entirely inaccurate. I consider myself a civilized wolf, after a fashion.
But I get your point. But wouldn't another breed of dog, like a mastiff, be a better example if one is encouraging people to stop acting like sheep?
Actually, I have had police try to remove my clothing to give me a full body search (which includes the finger up the ass bit). All what resulted was a brawl that ended up with everyone injured to one degree or another and me fully clothed and hogtied.
And don't talk to me about cops. I've dealt with more of those fucks than you could imagine. My last girlfriend was the daughter of high-ranking Gang Task Force member. I came within a cunt's hair of getting into a fight with him for him threatening her in front of me. He had a long history of beating her and her younger brother, and she had the scars to prove it. I've known one cop in my life that I liked, and that's because she knew me and looked out for me when I was a teenager. She was cool. Never frisked me, bought me food, tried to get me to go home when I hadn't been home in weeks (not even getting into that), the works. One cop out of hundreds. Those aren't very good odds, are they?
And, for the record, I'm polite to everyone until they're rude to me. Most cops are assholes, deal with it. Just because you're friends with a few doesn't mean that they're not dicks. Actually, from the way you like to sling accusations and insults, I suspect I know why they're friends with you. Do they give you a nice little reach-around too?
And another one for the record - I don't need anyone to protect me. I'm perfectly capable of that myself. So, move along.
My apologies for being a bit short here, but I'm running out of time before I need to get about my day.
As for your comment about police and shootings, do you know what Google Alerts are? I maintain several, one of which has to do with police and shootings. Yes, I did a rough calculation on the numbers. But they're accurate enough. And I had a personal friend's brother get shot in the back by cops when I was a teenager. Of course, he had a gun. Not. I knew the kid. He was an exceptional student, didn't get into trouble, and damn sure didn't pack a piece (his brother was a prominent Southwest Cholo leader in SW Houston, so everyone steered clear of his little brother). So I both keep up with the news and have personal experience with cops and their idea of "upholding the law".
As for the case I quoted about the "generally" part, it's happened here in Houston a few years ago. Cops arrested some youngster, didn't search him properly before they put him in the car, and he had a piece on him and shot one of them. That's besides the news I pick up from various sources, a lot of them not mainstream. Don't even get me started on Black-on-White crime rates and lack of media coverage.
The rest of your post I pretty much agree with, except for the bit about anarchy. I do not believe in anarchy. I believe in reduced government and personal responsibility. Someone jacked you for your bike? Well, sorry to hear it, but you choose to live in a state that has all kinds of firearms restrictions. People don't just walk up to someone and rob them in Texas, most of the time. I've worked and lived in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods we have here (it's cheap to build a college or a datacenter in the middle of a ghetto), places that make most of L.A. and San Francisco look like Disneyland, and I carried a gun at all times. A lot of people do. Which is an excellent deterrent for crime. To quote someone who I don't have time to look up "an armed society is a polite society".
Oh, and studying history (as I have) tends to make one less trusting of authority, not more. An educated mind questions everything, rather than taking things as fact without proof.
Take care, have a good day, and watch out for your bike.
You might not be a lawyer, but you are technically correct. Once you are arrested, you don't fight back. Let your lawyer do that. That's what they get paid for.
The man that this article is about was not arrested, unless I'm delirious from lack of sleep. He was detained. You can be searched, you can be detained for questioning, but it's a violation of one's personal rights without probable cause (and I'd love to see any DA try to argue this case) and that is against the law.
And, personally, I don't care about suing the government for false arrest. I don't have the time and it changes nothing in my mind. But if you try to stick a finger up my ass, or unlawfully detain me (oh, I'll sit there for hours until they get tired of me staring at the wall, but don't manhandle me unless you're arresting me), you're going to have a fight on your hands. Yes, I'll go to jail. But I'll get out, and my lawyer will finish what they began. Been there, done that.
I've made it a point to know my legal rights, both from a dry law standpoint and from how things can be twisted by the officers or the DA. I know where the line of the law lies, and I know where the line of my honor lies. I can't say I enjoy it when the two happen to cross, but it's just temporary incarceration or a beating. If you can't take that, then you're weak.
Right on, brother. Why post as an AC? Be proud of what you did, and what you just said. I'd buy you a pint or twenty, but I doubt we're within a hundred miles of each other.
Kind of funny when someone posting as an "Anonymous Coward" shows more guts and backbone than anyone else I've seen post in response to my initial one.
That's what I mean by having honor and standing on principle. When the rest of you gentleman and ladies get that straight, maybe we can all start moving on towards a better future.
Well, I'm back, since you requested my presence. I have been tasered. Three times, in fact. I've lost count of the number of times I've had mace sprayed in my face (well, pepper spray, but it amounts to the same thing).
As for protection against unreasonable search and seizure (another Constitutional right), you're dead wrong. They can search you, then can seize your property, but they cannot make it stick unless you're actually doing something against the law. I don't care if they pat me down, or search my bag. I have to go through almost that much just to get on an airplane. But I do object to cavity searches. I've never had one successfully performed on me in my life. I've never had a cop manage to do more than rip my shirt off, and I was in cuffs at the time. And him and his buddies had to fight to do that. The last cop that tried to take my property away on the way to jail ended up getting knocked on his ass when I picked it up from under his boot (with my hands cuffed behind my back, I might add). And while they smashed my head against the hood of the car until they split my lip wide open, they never did manage to get me to release my property nor could they even force my arms from my sides.
I let my lawyer fight in the courtroom. Outside of that, I know my rights and I fight for them. Even if it means that I get injured or the living shit beat out of me. I still win in the end, since I preserve my honor.
So, at your request, my hand is raised. And I'm keeping it up. Live for something, or die for nothing. You're going to die one of these days anyways, so you might as well do it on your feet.
Wow, circle, I missed this post. You almost prove my points here, in your naive and insulting manner (telling people who disagree with you that they're full of teenage bullshit and need to grow the fuck up suggests to me that they are not the ones who need to grow up). Also, capital letters, punctuation, and proper grammar would go a long way towards establishing your credentials as a cognizant adult.
Let's address each of these statements, in a slightly different light.
if no one believes corruption can be fixed, corruption is the status quo
And what exactly are you doing to fix it? I have already stated what I am doing to fix it. I can't change the world, but I can choose how I live. If everyone else stood by their principles, then corruption would not be the status quo!
if people demand corruption be fixed, it tends to get a little more fixed
And when those demands are ignored? What will you do then? When you ask the wolves to not take your child to jail because he or she wanted to smoke a joint while out on a date, or because they missed a court appearance, or because the "officer" in question just didn't like the way they looked, do you think that demand will be heeded? If you do, then you are the fool here. You can demand all you want, but if you lack the courage to stand up and do something, if you cannot live your life in such a way that you provide an example for others, what good do your feeble demands actually do?
It took nothing short of the ACLU, NAACP, and a few other organizations suing the shit out of Harris County, Texas (which Houston is in, my home town) just to get the county to clean and disinfect the jail about 3-4 years ago (it was so filthy and overcrowded that half the inmates had staph infections, people were dying from improper medical treatment, and even if you were bonded out in 24 hours, you more than likely caught staph just from sitting on the concrete waiting for the lazy bastards to handle your paperwork). Yet when I was falsely arrested (all charges dismissed, but I still had to spend over 7000 USD on bail and a lawyer) about 9 months ago, the same conditions had returned. Luckily, I didn't catch staph that time. But I did get to watch another inmate in my holding tank go into convulsions and die after repeatedly informing the guards that he had a medical condition that required treatment, and they refused to even let him talk to a nurse. I was one of the people who dragged him off the table he fell onto when he seized up, so I was asked my name (probably because I was one of the few White guys in the tank, and heavily tattooed to boot, so it was easy for them to remember me). Needless to say, I made it clear that if they wanted me to give a statement, I would tell anyone exactly what happened, including their negligence. Also needless to say, I haven't heard from them yet, nor do I expect to. Guilty until proven innocent, right? Except this fellow got the death penalty before he even got a bond hearing. How you like them apples? I picked up the paper and read an article about the rising number of inmate deaths due to improper medical conditions and "accidents" just last month.
So much for corruption being a "little more fixed", eh?
of course corruption is never going to go away...it also must not be accepted
Oh, really? I gave you the answer to the first part of this statement above. The second part of this statement...well, in Texas, we call that "crawfishing". Back-pedalling. While I would sincerely like to believe that you magically grew a spine in a few hours, I think you're just conceding defeat in the best manner possible. Saving face.
So, I ask you again : what are you going to do about it?
we all have tolerance levels for certain levels of bullshit, then we get outraged
Well, yours must be remarkably high. Eithe
I am sorry, my dearly mistaken friend, but this is a question that the human race has been wrestling with since the dawn of civilization. I'm sure you've heard the expression "who guards the guards"? Or something equivalent in meaning? It is a dilemma that has no answer in society as you see it. Also, remember how slippery slopes operate.
However, there is an answer out there. A simple one. And it hinges upon the keystones of the Hobbes vs. Locke argument about the role of government in citizens' lives (which was essentially that either men are by nature evil, and thus any authority will be evil, or men are by nature good, and thus need no governance to ensure their cooperation; a drastic oversimplification, but I'm sure that you can look up far more erudite scholars on sociopolitical theory than myself...for me, it's just a part of one of my hobbies, namely philosophy). While I don't think we need to completely dissolve all government, I think it is high time that governments serve their people, and not the other way around.
Would you like to hear that answer? Since you invited me to provide it, I will. In the interest of the freedom of all men and women, in the interest of evolution itself (for you have built a dam in that river, and you will choke on it eventually), you must become your own guardians.
Here, on Slashdot, of all places, I would expect that answer to be most appropriate. The majority of readers here are not simple-minded fools who are incapable of being multi-faceted human beings (actually, some of the most physically fit and combat-ready civilians that I know are in IT). I am a systems administrator by trade, and a half-way decent programmer as well. But, amongst other skills and hobbies, I am trained in hand-to-hand combat, the use of almost any kind of close-quarters weapon, firearms, and some explosives and small munitions. And I am experienced as well. I was a soldier, and remain one in my heart. I give no quarter, and ask for none. I am willing to die so that others may live, that we may have a future where every man, woman, and child can live without fear of others. I have survived beatings, torture, multiple stabbings, and been shot at more times than you've been laid, I do not doubt. Both in service and in the streets. I live near and work in one of the most crime-ridden cities in America, yet I have no reason to fear any other man who walks these streets, because I am capable of protecting myself and those dear to me. I have done it before at great cost to myself, and I will do it again if necessary.
I believe in the innate goodness of most of the human race. I believe that every adult human can teach or be taught how to defend their own. I believe that those who would do evil unto others are ultimately more afraid than those who would defend their own. Without that, we have nothing and will be nothing in the end. I have seen women beaten by male police officers. I have never seen a single officer fight someone one-on-one. I have never seen a police officer risk his or her life for a fellow citizen. Nowhere in the US have I seen the callous disregard for the human condition outside of a jail. All of these ugly, cowardly things I have seen or experienced have been in this country. Not by someone I fought, not by criminals or terrorists (speaking of terrorists, look to the example of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001; where were your precious guardians then? Nowhere. But the men and women on that flight chose to die on their feet rather than ride helplessly to a flaming death that might have killed others as well), but by police. Lives are lost in battles, prisoners are executed and tortured, true. But to turn against those you have sworn to protect? That is more than corrupt - it is dishonourable and deserves nothing but contempt. Yet you choose these scum to protect you? It's laughable at best.
So, in answer to your question, yes, there is a way to have a society without police. It requires a high price, and it will be paid in blood and
So far, the larger part of the comments here have dealt with the fact that this might be a scam.
IMHO, it's probably not. If you've heard some of the stupid shit from cops and other government bureaus that I have, this is right up their alley. Remember - these guys by and large aren't really trying to do the job they say they're out to do. And they're nowhere near as competent and knowledgeable as they imagine they are. I've been told before that the fact that the devil chicks I have tattooed on my forearms have some meaning in these exact words : "Don't think we don't know what those horns mean! We're not stupid!". Uh, yes, you are. They're devil chicks. What, you expect them to be wearing garland wreaths on their heads? Get real. There is no hidden meaning behind that, and I know what most gang and prison-related tattoos in Texas mean.
If you're a chickenhawk bureaucrat on a power trip, who are you likely to pick out as a target? A comic book artist? Or someone who does have actual ties to known and dangerous terrorist organizations? Let me repeat that, just in case you missed it : known and dangerous. Despite all the spoon-fed drivel that gets funnelled straight into your living room, courtesy of your brand-new digital TV, these guys are bureaucrats. They don't want to break a sweat, let alone get their asses shot off or some other form of retaliation. They're not heroes, except the extremely rare exception (think about it - you hear ten times as many stories about cops shooting unarmed civilians as you do an armed civilian shooting a cop...yet the cop is always painted as the "hero who died in the line of duty"; generally through their own stupidity, like not searching someone they just antagonized and arrested...now if the supposedly unbiased news puts those figures forth, what do you think the real numbers are?). They don't go out of their way or risk their lives to protect citizens. They don't do anything other than collect their check, do as little as possible, and then go home to fuck their middle-class fat-arsed wives and scream at their subnormal children. If they can skip out on doing their "duty" for a few hours by harassing some artist whom they had to have known has no affiliation or even a tenuous connection within an hour, you bet your bottom dollar they will be doing just that for as long as they can.
And a cavity search? Oh, I'd love to see those fuckers try that one of me. You ain't getting my clothes off unless you've already arrested me and have me full restraints (which makes it pretty hard to get someone's clothes off without cutting them off). Because I can and will fight, and there's only so many people that can gang up on one man, and that is not enough to get my clothes off me without beating me unconscious, which is pretty hard to do. Oh, sure, I'll get some kind of charge slapped on me. But you know what - it's not resisting arrest or assault if there's nothing to arrest you for!
You, as a society, have become sheep. And you have chosen wolves to protect you. Is it any wonder that the herd gets culled by their so-called guardians quite often? Here's Tom with the weather...
Pardon me? I'd like to bring a few points to your attention.
Firstly, I spent 4 years of my life (when I was younger) where no one with any kind of legal authority knew where I lived, what I owned, what I drove, et al. I won't go into much more detail than to say that I did have a job, did attend college, and made quite good money from both legal and not so legal methods. But the best that anyone who wanted to find me could hope for was to catch me at class. Which I'm sure some government agencies could have done, but no one in the IRS and very few outside of heavy-duty Federal agencies. I just didn't work at a place where my boss reported his employees, his actual income, or what he paid his employees (and it wasn't a crappy job either, I could count on at least 800 USD on a decent day, sometimes up to 1200, and that was over ten years ago, when 800 could cover your rent and utilities for a month in a fairly nice apartment). That changed when I got into IT, but I could just as easily slip back into that if I wanted to. The police still can't find me when they're looking for me. None of my legal documents, mail, or anything else has my actual address on it. Oh, I suppose they could trace this IP address, but it's just not worth it for them. I'm a relatively law-abiding citizen these days, so there's no reason for anyone to look for me other than the occasional traffic warrant or something silly like that. Not the kind of stuff that you get the Feds involved for.
Take that one step further. If I could do that when I was younger, and still do it to a certain extent (without breaking any laws that cross the level of a class C misdemeanor), think about what I could do if I really wanted to disappear. Fake IDs can be bought for as little as a 100 USD. Spend a 1000 USD and you can get a full identity change, except for your fingerprints. While there's really nothing that can beat that if they have you in custody, if you're walking around free, there's a really easy way to beat that. Just coat your hands (fingers, palm, and the sides - those are what get recorded any time you are incarcerated) in super glue. Almost impossible to see and leaves no trace of your prints. None of this is James Bond shit. Any person in the US can do it as easily as I described. Admittedly, even if I didn't have my prints on file, there's no way I could do it without major laser surgery since I have a lot of tattoos (which are extensively photographed and documented in Federal databases and are available to any police agency...I can't get a public intoxication charge without getting interrogated about at least 3 things that I had nothing to do with, simply because some of my tattoos link me to various organizations) that can't be covered up unless I plan on walking around with nothing but part of my face visible (which sort of defeats the point). But that's just me. I don't have any need to conceal my identity. The minimal level of paranoia that I maintain is simply so that if I miss a traffic court or forget to pay a fine for a PI or whatever I don't have cops knocking on my door.
But think about the ramifications of people that do not exist whatsoever in any concrete manner in the "system". And you wonder why we have so many problems with border-jumping parasites that eat up the resources (jobs, health care, housing - all of which are major issues in the current state of our economy, and will always be an issue until we do something about those fucks; if I had a dollar for everyone I know or have known who got laid off from their primary occupation due to economic woes and then can't even get a job digging ditches because a bunch of scumbags would rather exploit a bunch of unwelcome parasites to save a few dollars, then I'd be eating steak at a 5-star restaurant tonight) of the US? Or people that have never been arrested because, even though they're sick in the head, they're smart enough to get away with committing vicious, unwarranted crimes (compare the statistics on how many children disappear a year in
Now I have an excuse for my general demeanor and telling the really, really bad users "because you're a fucking idiot, to be honest!".
? /Wipes sweat away from brow, spills beer...damnit
I agree wholeheartedly with you on this. Unfortunately, you will not find anything even remotely resembling that philosophy in any public school that I've attended or even heard of.
Instead, you'll find schools where a lot of kids are afraid to take advanced classes or be on accelerated-learning tracks because the other students taunt, revile, and even physically assault them. One of the reasons that I'm so good with my hands is because I attended Houston's so-called "Magnet Program" in middle school. I went into sixth grade at 4'11" and about 80 lbs., and discovered that I had two strikes against me : I was one of about 5 White kids at a predominantly Black/Mestizo school (seriously, we had race riots between the two groups; I fought on the Black side because most of my friends were Black) and I was in the above-mentioned program (which didn't even bother putting me in separate classes or teaching me different material, so I - to this day - don't understand what the damn point of it was). All what I got out of middle school was the ability to knock out kids that were 16 and still in middle school. If you forgot my name, you could say "the cool White kid", because I was the only one of the Magnet students (who were predominantly White and Asian and totalled about 30, of which 5 were White) who would fight back. So I guess I learned something.
By high school, I was completely disillusioned with the educational system and didn't even bother trying to learn anything (from the teachers, that is) other than Shop classes (which turned out to be useful in the long run, as I can do all kinds of interesting stuff with metal and wood that most CS people can't). I dropped out after my fourth trip through the ninth grade (not due to poor academic performance, but because I was constantly thrown out schools, including the ones for "at-risk" students that I'd get sent to each year), technically while it was still illegal for me to do so (but the school district was so tired of my shit that they turned a blind eye).
Got my GED a few months later, as soon as the law allowed me to take the test. Enrolled in college classes a few weeks later...and discovered a whole new world!
One where the principles you quote were actually practiced. Since I'd still read my school texts, even when I was expelled, and have always been an avid learner, there was very little catch-up for me. School became a much more pleasant experience (even though I attended a university in the middle of Houston's 3rd Ward).
The moral of the story? Public schools suck. They're useless, the teachers are incompetent, the administrators are even more so, and with all this "Politically Correct" bullshit going around now (not to mention draconian "Zero Tolerance" policies), my children (if and when I have any) will be home-schooled. Sure, I'll teach them the same stuff that I learned in school (like how to fight and how to not get caught smoking or selling drugs at school), but I'll teach them what they need to go on to college with open eyes and ears, ready to learn.
I wish I could say that things will be different by the time I have children, but I doubt it. From my friends and colleagues, I've learned that their children have it even worse than I did (my friend's daughter was arrested - yeah, you heard correctly, arrested - for bringing a pair of regular, sharp scissors to school, and she was about 10 or so; another friend of mine went ballistic and pulled his son out of public school when he discovered that his son spent most of his time sitting there doing nothing while the teacher tried to teach baby books to kids that didn't speak English). So until schools stop catering to the lowest common denominator and start hiring qualified teachers (neither of which I see happening in my lifetime), public (and a lot of private) schools will always be useless.
End of story. Class dismissed.
I was involved with IBM's "Compute On Demand" initiative about 6 years ago, and people have been renting time on systems for quite some time (no pun intended).
Sure, it's been refined many times over since the initial concept of time-sharing, but it's not a radical concept. What strikes me as humorous is that any time India does something, it's an innovation. I have news for you, my dear friends - there's just as many smart (and stupid) Indians as there are Americans. Their emergence into the mainstream IT world isn't a technological breakthrough, it's a social one. So stop patting them on the heads like little children, stop shipping American jobs overseas to India to save a buck, and just deal with it.
End of story.
Amen to that. Even though I generally buy the dead-tree versions of all D&D stuff (hey, I love books), it would be nice to be able to download (purchased or not) old adventures and whatnot that are no longer available anywhere.
Why is it that every company that owns the D&D line seems to up and shoot itself in the foot every few years? TSR, WoTC, etc. (I don't feel like digging through my bookshelves to see who had it before TSR - I have manuals dating back to the early 80's).
Oh well...I guess whenever a company starts to do well, they feel obligated to commit the corporate version of seppuku.
Well, to be honest, I wasn't aware that most states had a 3-4 year allowance now. I was speaking from my experience when I was a minor in Texas, and I honestly haven't kept up with the laws (as I don't have anything to do with anyone significantly younger than me; I learned my lesson from twice dating a 21 year-old, and found that these women were way too immature...I expected them to be similar to where I was at 21, and was sadly disappointed).
As far as rape and child molestation (the things that I consider sex crimes, as they involve actual physical violation of someone's person...I don't think that a flasher is a big menace, and definitely not someone who urinates in public; if the latter were the case, I could be considered one, as if I'm drunk and there's no bathroom around, I'll piss anywhere), hell yes I support killing them. If a woman or child that I knew had that done to them while I knew them, there wouldn't even be a trial. Just one missing sick fuck. Almost any other crime can be justified to one extent or another, depending upon the situation, but those two crimes there can be no sane excuse for . Period.
As far as "mental advantages", it depends upon the person. Like I said above, when I was somewhat younger, I dated/was involved with (one after another) two 21 year-old women. In each case, I was disappointed by their lack of anything resembling maturity. On the other hand, I and former partners were able to practice safe sex and have relatively stable relationships when we were as young as 13. What gives there? Sure, some of the emotional maturity wasn't there, but I can tell from experience that it isn't there with most people anyways (my ex-wife was 9 years older than me, and she was less mature than chicks I was with as a teenager).
Oh, and "under-age porn"? It's called child pornography. Public execution by torture. There's no excuse for consensual possession of child pornography. Any discerning individual can tell the difference between someone in their later teen's or early twenties and someone who is underage (note that I also proposed lowering the age of consent). For example, when I was about 20 (give or take a few years), I would download porn from P2P networks (or the equivalent before P2P), and often search for strings such as "young" (because I didn't like seeing a bunch of women in their 30's with sagging fake tits and pussies you can park a semi in). I didn't download anything that suggested that it might contain child pornography, and if I accidentally got something that did contain images that were obviously questionable, I would immediately use the "shred" utility to wipe the file from my HDD.
So you did have a point about the "sex crimes" I overlooked, like indecent exposure or urinating in public. But it really didn't cross my mind to think of those. But I think the rest of what I said was pretty much spot-on. I tend to go from personal experience rather than looking at cases in which I have no personal knowledge of, for the simple fact that I know for a fact what my personal experience has taught me.
Also note that I advocated a much higher degree of substantial evidence. There's a lot of "date rape" cases out there that were based on nothing other than the accuser's word. While I don't know the personal truth of those incidents, I can tell you for a fact that if I had a male friend and a female friend, both of whom I had equal respect and trust for (whether those factors were equally high or low), and the woman told me that the man had raped her, I'd want to see the bruises or hear some other evidence before I believed her. Because I've seen too much shady shit (from both genders) to place much stock in someone's word. It's far too easy for someone to get loaded (which is their own choice, and they need to take responsibility for), fuck someone, and then not want to take responsibility for it later on (for whatever reasons - I've heard everything from "well, I was upset and drunk, he should have known better" - yeah, whatever...if two people are drunk and fooling around, how is the guy supposed to "know better" - to convoluted bullshit that basically amounted to not wanting be perceived as a "slut").
And that, my friend, is exactly what is wrong with the way politicians think.
"If I can move the sex offenders somewhere else, then I'll look good and it's someone else's problem! Yeah!"
Simple solution that I've been advocating for years : /.er's, but I had already lost count of the number of chicks I'd been with by the time I was 18 (I can still count "significant relationships" on my fingers, but I have no clue how many women I've slept with in my life). And, yes, some of them we took pictures (hey, my crowd was a pack of kinky little bastards...pictures, whips, handcuffs, threesomes, razors, etc.). So I guess that would technically make me a "sex offender", even though I have an incredible amount of respect for women and children, and hate real sex offenders. It used to be (at least in Texas) that as long as there wasn't more than 2 years age difference, it was legal under 18. If one party is over 18, then parental consent is required (two friends of mine, one 19 and the other 17, required a legal consent document so I know the old laws well).
1) Change the age of consent to 14 or 15 for anyone under the age of 18. I mean, come on - I can't speak for most
2) Require strict proof in "date rape" cases. I've seen both sides of it - beat the shit out of a guy who was a good friend because he took advantage of a girl at a party (she was damn near comatose and got caught taking her clothes off), but also had the same finger pointed at me (chick spent all day teasing myself and a group of my friends - we were packing and moving my friend's mother's apartment, and she would sit around fingering herself and talking about how she couldn't wait until we were done working so she could fuck us all; things went as planned in the then-empty apartment, then I got a call from a female friend that I was close with the next day hysterically crying and saying "how could you do that?"...turned out the bitch had second thoughts, knew people would find out, so she "confided" in this chick that we'd forced her to have sex with us; the funny part was that a few of the guys didn't want anything to do with her, I only copped a BJ, so she only actually had intercourse with 2 or 3 guys - but I lost a damn good friend over it, because the girl she "confided" in never talked to any of us again). I don't see why a guy should be labeled as a rapist because some chick had second thoughts, or was too wasted to think clearly. On the other hand, I loathe guys who take advantage of women, feed them drugs just to fuck them (yeah, I party hard and so do a lot of people I know, but it's one thing to be trashed and do your thing - it's another to intentionally feed some girl pills or whatever until she's so out of it that she doesn't know if she's getting laid or laid out on the couch), and similar behavior.
3) For actual, verifiable rapes (forced or "date"), public hanging. Plain and simple. No tolerance for that shit. And by verification, I mean witnesses, evidence (like if a woman has a gun held to her head is raped in a private place by some fucking sicko who's smart enough to use lubrication, then finding the gun might be the only proof available besides DNA), DNA, medical examination, etc. Place a certain weight to each variable (for example - it's possible to have DNA evidence and rough sex without rape, just ask anyone who has spent 2 days high on meth and fucking non-stop), and if the evidence weight sum passes a certain watermark, it's verifiable.
4) For anyone who abuses a child (I don't care if you're 14 or 40, if you fuck a 10 year-old, you're a sick fuck), public execution by torture. I'd be happy to volunteer a couple of days a month to the cause. Oh, and that includes anyone who possesses child pornography as well (of course, have it verified by independent, non-biased computer forensics experts so it's proven that the user wasn't just p0wned).
That solves the problem right there. No false convictions (hell, I remember my ex-wife freaking out when we checke
prove you've been wronged
No kidding. I often don't hear back from some recruiters, and I wondered why, when they were initially all hot and bothered to get me in for an interview.
Then I had one recruitment firm who was professional enough to tell me (after I was professional enough to warn them that I had a few old DWIs - I was 19 and 21, respectively - and a few other misdemeanors before they put me forth to a prospective client that required a high-level security clearance) that the reason why they couldn't represent me wasn't because of the things I'd been convicted of, but the things I'd been arrested for (but not convicted of). Apparently, if the grand jury accepts a case, but the D.A. throws it out without you ever going to trial, that still shows up as an arrest in an extensive background check. Despite the fact that all of these cases were dismissed for good reason - because they were ridiculous and the D.A. didn't stand a chance in hell of prosecuting them. It's going to cost me a fortune to get a lawyer to expunge all of those cases.
I've noticed that larger firms that actually look at the difference between arrests and convictions don't care about the arrests, just the convictions. I've actually been complimented on my honesty by one company after I told them up-front about those arrests and they proceeded with the interviewing process.
And bear in mind that these were all misdemeanors (all my felonies have been dismissed by grand juries, as they all involved use of justified force with credible witnesses - though I was pretty ticked when they slapped a hate crime charge on me in one instance, simply because I'm White and the other fellow was Asian...they didn't bother to check that I had several Asian colleagues who were also fairly good friends, so that was so ridiculous that I'd be laughing if it weren't my life and freedom).
I call bullshit!
You're probably an Enron exec who is hiding somewhere, posting pictures of his penis pump and use thereof on facebook, writing crappy web pages, and also the next Unabomber.
Did I miss anything?
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Just kidding...sucks to be you. Sure, companies won't judge you on that (unless they really, really want to get the shit sued out of them), but if you do any kind of online dating, someone you meet might. That's why I use multiple mail accounts (business, personal, crap mail, and crappy personal mail), aliases/handles, and even go so far as to extend that level of paranoia into the real world. I'm a hard man to find unless I want to be.
Unless you know where to look. And I'm incredibly paranoid about my identity anyways, due to some dodgy past relations with certain individuals that led to a full-scale raid on my house, as well as the fact that I constantly have people trying to find me to collect bills that my junkie ex-wife racked up (and I can't find her to get a legal divorce, so I need to wait X amount of time in order to file an absentee one).
Foundry Networks, Force10, Juniper (barely), anything but Cisco. The only place that Cisco occasionally wins out is in feature-set, but that's rare and the other vendors almost always catch up a month or two later.
Cisco's always have problems, they're the Microsoft of the networking world (relying on sales and entrenchment rather than performance and stability), and they never perform up to spec. Hell, even their specs never have the backplane bandwidth necessary to facilitate full-speed connections with a fully populated chassis. They're universally hated in the HPC world.
Actually, I think you're right. I was beyond frustrated yesterday and not quite thinking straight. Though I could have sworn that I received some 404's, but they might not have been from /. - I wasn't in a very sane state of mind yesterday.
Actually, I'm still having problems with /. as well. No other problems, but /. was throwing 404's right and left a few minutes ago. Hmm...
Perhaps I should have made it a little clearer for people that don't know that I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
I did not say that this caused me to not be able to access said directory. Standard *nix permissions caused that. What this did cause was an endless series of headaches in trying to contact the admin in question who has root on the system. The system is not part of the college's IT structure (not even going into that bitch-fest), so it took a while to find the lady in question who has root on the goddamn system.
After finding said lady, she mucked up my damn password, then fixed it, then I spent some time customizing my environment and looking into a secure login option (believe it or not, I can telnet into the system, but SSH is restricted to users running VPN software - USER painehope WHACKS HEAD AGAINST WALL), confident in my ability to finish my piss-ant assignment (it's a joke, really - a simple C program as a "warm-up assignment" for the class) in under an hour.
Throughout the course of this affair, I had hell sending mail or doing anything else. But I chalked that up to my usual ISP routers (kid you not, if my ISP got any dumber, they'd be contracting out to Guatemala, not India). No big deal, right? I'm in the system.
Then I discover that I can't access the directory where the assignment is stored. Still not sweating...I should be able to get a mail in and either be added to the appropriate group or get the permission bits changed to allow access. Worse case - just get the admin to tarball the files to me.
Except this time I can't get to my mail for a few hours. Which places me past the time wherein I can get ahold of said admin.
That's the problem.
Gee, you only described about half the mistakes that incompetent network admins could possibly make (buying a fucking Cisco, not updating their NOS, and not limiting AS paths).
That covers half the ISPs in Texas (including mine - these fuckwits can barely configure their routers correctly on a good day, let alone deal with a crisis brought about their own incompetence). YMMV.
I'd mod you up but I already posted.