There's a LOT less light coming into your eyes than there is in daylight - it's not pure darkness or starlight, but night vision matters for nighttime driving.
It's anecdotal evidence, but my mother has had decreased night vision due to age and a radial keratotomy, and it's definitely impacted her ability to see while driving.
I'm going to assume that you mean that in the rhetorical sense of the word, in which case, you're wrong. It's not a tautology - there is no redundancy. He's saying that the level of intelligence shown by tech support calls is lower than would be average in the population, because less intelligent people call tech support more often.
Because quality control, editing, and advertising isn't free, on-demand publishing is vastly more expensive per-book and doesn't scale well, the author's time is a significant investment from the standpoint of the author, and, frankly, you're only paying attention to one of the many claimed benefits of copyright.
To deal with these in order:
You are completely incorrect in your statement on the capital expense required for producing a book (or album) of saleable quality. Period. Self-publishing to a level where you can compete with a commercially published book is ludicrously hard, and then you still need a decent distribution chain if you ever want to make real, "I can live as a writer" money off of it.
Copyright has other purposes; for that matter, it is a fairly complex branch of law, which will not reduce to the space of a single post, much less the two sentences you give it. Also, copyright is, in fact, largely concerned with the rights of rightsholders, who are, by default, the creators of properties. So, well, it's not "stuck in the back door," it's the whole point. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of U.S. copyright law (particularly the Disney Extension Syndrome), but your statement on it here is worthlessly reductionist where it's not just false.
Copyright is, at least under the current system, a big part of how the process of how writing (and other creative processes) are turned into a possible source of income. Without the ability to be a full time writer, both quality and quality decline.
This whole discussion is stupid, of course, because, even in the sampling community, what the 17 year old author did would be considered stealing, because she didn't (until called on it) acknowledge that she was taking stuff from the original author.
No, if true, that means that the guards are endemically abusing their position.
By "intended as punishment" I mean exactly that - that it is part of the sentence passed down onto the prisoners, an intended part of the correctional experience.
This is like saying "The majority of rapes in schools are done by teachers and staff, therefore rape is a school disciplinary procedure."
I'm not paying them. The prisoner's paying them, as a prior condition to be able to file the action. I would suggest aggregating all complaints from prisoners once every 3 months, and convening a jury for that purpose.
Sooooo.... you're saying that prisoners should have their ability to complain about mismanagement linked to their ability to pay?
And only actual constitutional challenges, or claims of torture, physical abuse, wreckless endangerment, or other claims of grave threats to prisoner welfare get priority treatment, a determination that can be made by the clerk who enters the paperwork into the computer, when they specify the "category".
So, a clerk, with no legal standing other than "clerk," is going to be empowered to decide the severity of the complaint?
Also, I love how your solution involves a jury PRE-consideration phase (once you've bought your chance at justice, of course). What do you think "the courts" means?
Honestly, your plan is utterly valueless. It's just thought out enough to seem logical on the surface, but doesn't have any real depth of thought in it. Stop thinking you can replace complicated legal systems with some sort of magical homebrew thought-experiment.
It's pretty ignorant to claim that I ever said anything remotely like "prisons should be resorts." I said that not all prisoners are conscience-free monsters who never want to be better people.
It's not innocence, it's a different view on what constitutes psychological damage. Rape and bigoted violence aren't sane responses, and anyone who would rape or violently attack someone under the influence of alcohol, stress, or peer pressure has either a weak personality, or miswired, violent social conditioning. I'm not saying that they are crazy - I'm saying that they aren't stable personalities.
We probably have a difference of opinion there, but it's not naivete.
I just fail to see what harsher sentences are supposed to do to fix the problem. Deterrance doesn't work as a strategy, and negative reinforcement without a coherent positive reinforcement strategy isn't effective either. That being said, it's certainly a reasonable position - I was specifically responding there to the "GITMO POWER" tactics proposed earlier.
You think that people get to the point of gay-beating and rape without being massively psychologically damaged? Really?
Theft, etc, maybe. But violent crime and sexual assault don't tend to be perpetrated by psychologically stable individuals.
I understand where you're coming from - but real and permanent re-socialization does not and cannot come from this sort of psychological warfare.
The whole "break them down, then rebuild them" myth of psychological restructuring is a terrible, ill-founded idea, that has been discredited time and time again.
No, it's really not debatable. In no state in the union is rape a sentence legally permissible to be meted out for a criminal offense, felony or misdemeanor.
Legally, prisoners are as entitled to protection from rape as any other citizen.
Well, I'd say that it moves into cruelty well before sleep deprivation and other intense disorientation tactics.
Moral issues aside, it's a bad idea. You're dealing largely with damaged and anti-social psychologies to begin with - "organized" crime being a tiny minority of those crimes sentenced in the U.S.
So, you take people who are already psychologically damaged, and subject them to high stress for an extended period of time. Not actually going to help build a stable personality. You might successfully brainwash them, but that's both unethical, and has other lasting problems.
The modern prison system IS relatively new. It's distinct from the debtor's prison model it is loosely preceded by (as represented by, say, Newgate prison in London), which in turn is distinct from justice systems in earlier eras in Britain.
Which, by the way, is distinct from other justice systems in different states of its time.
I'm not an expert, but please, let's not make sweeping generalizations across vast historical and geographical stretches with no information backing them up.
A) Incarceration is hard. Loss of income is hard. Social stigmatization is hard. Plus, we've been doing fuck-all about the endemic rape problem and prisoner-on-prisoner violence. Prison is ALREADY HARD. It hasn't lowered crime rates, and it's increased repeat offending (recidivism).
B) Cruel. And. Unusual. Punishment. Is. Forbidden. By. The. Eighth. Amendment. To. The. Constitution.
Those people are ignoring several facts, notably that negative reinforcement loses power when the object is out of sight, and that people in prison will eventually get out in all but the most severe of cases.
The pure deterrent model doesn't work. In fact, once sentences become uniformly harsh, it actually serves to increase criminal activity. Once you're locked up for twenty years whether you've stolen a loaf of bread or a car, you can logically rationalize stealing big, since the punishment is the same. And once punishment passes a certain point, what does it matter if it's 35 or 45 years - it's such a huge THING that the difference doesn't matter.
This has been seen in places that make extensive use of the death penalty - once most crimes are punishable by death, dangerous, high-impact crime goes UP sharply.
And, let's say that we turn prison into a nightmare punishment (honestly, our lack of proper management does this most times, anyway, by turning a blind eye to endemic abuse and rape problems). So, ten years later, Jimmy comes out of prison traumatized, unable to connect socially to his peers, stigmatized as a criminal, etc, etc. What the hell does he do?
Well, if you want wall-to-wall riots, that's one way to go.
Inmates need outlets for energy. Even people who are very into educational reading and meditation can't maintain them and only them over multiple months or years.
Also, what level of prison are we discussing - minimum, maximum security? Which wards get all the possibility of any entertainment removed - does the guy in there with multiple DUIs, or three years for possession of pot, get the same enforced boredom as Hannibal Lector?
It's thinking like this (on a much more brutal scale and level, mind you) that produced the horrifying nightmare that was the Attica system.
So we should throw the whole basis of appeals by wrongfully sentenced prisoners out the window? Or just their ability to protest abuses and mismanagement of the system. Sure, maybe this doesn't constitute those, but your suggestion would cut those down just as severely.
who should these "outsiders" be? How do you decide whether they are being impartial? What are you paying them?
I agree with you on principle, but I'd like to make one side point - prison rape is not intended as part of the punishment/rehabilitation program, and is a huge PROBLEM, one that modern U.S. culture in particular insists on treating as a joke.
It's not funny - people don't deserve to be raped, regardless of their crimes; and given that the worst offenders tend to be the ones most prone to violent, impulsive behavior, it's usually the less violent inmates that bear the brunt of it.
Oh, wait! We have a fallible legal system, that falsely imprisons people all the time!
Because imprisoned automatically means "monstrous anti-social demon."
Oh, wait! We have a variety of laws that are punishable by prison time, meaning that such things as repeated misdemeanors, "victimless" crimes like drug use unconnected to other crime, and all sorts of other crimes not involving violence or high theft can result in incarceration.
But strict deterrence both doesn't work and isn't the only legal motivation for imprisonment. Theoretically, we have a criminal justice system interested in rehabilitation (that's why it's the department of "corrections").
Honestly, it's a lot better for them to be doing something as basically harmless and pro-social as D&D, than to be passing meth recipes, or learning how to make the best shiv out of soap.
Also, treating people horribly for multiple months/years doesn't actually ever make them better people, and prisoners still have human rights (albeit limited in some respects according to their crimes. So, of course it's tied up in court - any issue of what power the state has to control human behavior and conditions is a matter for the courts.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a LOT less light coming into your eyes than there is in daylight - it's not pure darkness or starlight, but night vision matters for nighttime driving.
It's anecdotal evidence, but my mother has had decreased night vision due to age and a radial keratotomy, and it's definitely impacted her ability to see while driving.
Well, your expectations are incorrect, and based on a lack of understanding of any of the science involved.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that people drive at night.
I'm going to assume that you mean that in the rhetorical sense of the word, in which case, you're wrong. It's not a tautology - there is no redundancy. He's saying that the level of intelligence shown by tech support calls is lower than would be average in the population, because less intelligent people call tech support more often.
Or The Blob? I mean, we don't have Steve McQueen and his pal, officer Dave this time.
Because quality control, editing, and advertising isn't free, on-demand publishing is vastly more expensive per-book and doesn't scale well, the author's time is a significant investment from the standpoint of the author, and, frankly, you're only paying attention to one of the many claimed benefits of copyright.
To deal with these in order:
This whole discussion is stupid, of course, because, even in the sampling community, what the 17 year old author did would be considered stealing, because she didn't (until called on it) acknowledge that she was taking stuff from the original author.
No, if true, that means that the guards are endemically abusing their position.
By "intended as punishment" I mean exactly that - that it is part of the sentence passed down onto the prisoners, an intended part of the correctional experience.
This is like saying "The majority of rapes in schools are done by teachers and staff, therefore rape is a school disciplinary procedure."
Sooooo.... you're saying that prisoners should have their ability to complain about mismanagement linked to their ability to pay?
So, a clerk, with no legal standing other than "clerk," is going to be empowered to decide the severity of the complaint?
Also, I love how your solution involves a jury PRE-consideration phase (once you've bought your chance at justice, of course). What do you think "the courts" means?
Honestly, your plan is utterly valueless. It's just thought out enough to seem logical on the surface, but doesn't have any real depth of thought in it. Stop thinking you can replace complicated legal systems with some sort of magical homebrew thought-experiment.
It's pretty ignorant to claim that I ever said anything remotely like "prisons should be resorts." I said that not all prisoners are conscience-free monsters who never want to be better people.
Care to address my actual point?
It's not innocence, it's a different view on what constitutes psychological damage. Rape and bigoted violence aren't sane responses, and anyone who would rape or violently attack someone under the influence of alcohol, stress, or peer pressure has either a weak personality, or miswired, violent social conditioning. I'm not saying that they are crazy - I'm saying that they aren't stable personalities.
We probably have a difference of opinion there, but it's not naivete.
I just fail to see what harsher sentences are supposed to do to fix the problem. Deterrance doesn't work as a strategy, and negative reinforcement without a coherent positive reinforcement strategy isn't effective either. That being said, it's certainly a reasonable position - I was specifically responding there to the "GITMO POWER" tactics proposed earlier.
Sort of a half-way house for D&D? The Halfling house, we'll call it.
We are both kidding, right?
You think that people get to the point of gay-beating and rape without being massively psychologically damaged? Really?
Theft, etc, maybe. But violent crime and sexual assault don't tend to be perpetrated by psychologically stable individuals.
I understand where you're coming from - but real and permanent re-socialization does not and cannot come from this sort of psychological warfare.
The whole "break them down, then rebuild them" myth of psychological restructuring is a terrible, ill-founded idea, that has been discredited time and time again.
No, it's really not debatable. In no state in the union is rape a sentence legally permissible to be meted out for a criminal offense, felony or misdemeanor.
Legally, prisoners are as entitled to protection from rape as any other citizen.
Well, I'd say that it moves into cruelty well before sleep deprivation and other intense disorientation tactics.
Moral issues aside, it's a bad idea. You're dealing largely with damaged and anti-social psychologies to begin with - "organized" crime being a tiny minority of those crimes sentenced in the U.S.
So, you take people who are already psychologically damaged, and subject them to high stress for an extended period of time. Not actually going to help build a stable personality. You might successfully brainwash them, but that's both unethical, and has other lasting problems.
OH! You must be the other rational person on Slashdot!
I've been looking for you, you know. I've got some of your mail ;-)
Oh GOD no.
Don't expose such a basically harmless, innocent lot as PRISONERS to the inmates of Slashdot!
We want them coming out socialized, not brutalized!
The modern prison system IS relatively new. It's distinct from the debtor's prison model it is loosely preceded by (as represented by, say, Newgate prison in London), which in turn is distinct from justice systems in earlier eras in Britain.
Which, by the way, is distinct from other justice systems in different states of its time.
I'm not an expert, but please, let's not make sweeping generalizations across vast historical and geographical stretches with no information backing them up.
A) Incarceration is hard. Loss of income is hard. Social stigmatization is hard. Plus, we've been doing fuck-all about the endemic rape problem and prisoner-on-prisoner violence. Prison is ALREADY HARD. It hasn't lowered crime rates, and it's increased repeat offending (recidivism).
B) Cruel. And. Unusual. Punishment. Is. Forbidden. By. The. Eighth. Amendment. To. The. Constitution.
So, torture, followed by brainwashing.
Repeat after me - "Cruel and unusual punishment is outlawed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 8."
Those people are ignoring several facts, notably that negative reinforcement loses power when the object is out of sight, and that people in prison will eventually get out in all but the most severe of cases.
The pure deterrent model doesn't work. In fact, once sentences become uniformly harsh, it actually serves to increase criminal activity. Once you're locked up for twenty years whether you've stolen a loaf of bread or a car, you can logically rationalize stealing big, since the punishment is the same. And once punishment passes a certain point, what does it matter if it's 35 or 45 years - it's such a huge THING that the difference doesn't matter.
This has been seen in places that make extensive use of the death penalty - once most crimes are punishable by death, dangerous, high-impact crime goes UP sharply.
And, let's say that we turn prison into a nightmare punishment (honestly, our lack of proper management does this most times, anyway, by turning a blind eye to endemic abuse and rape problems). So, ten years later, Jimmy comes out of prison traumatized, unable to connect socially to his peers, stigmatized as a criminal, etc, etc. What the hell does he do?
Well, if you want wall-to-wall riots, that's one way to go.
Inmates need outlets for energy. Even people who are very into educational reading and meditation can't maintain them and only them over multiple months or years.
Also, what level of prison are we discussing - minimum, maximum security? Which wards get all the possibility of any entertainment removed - does the guy in there with multiple DUIs, or three years for possession of pot, get the same enforced boredom as Hannibal Lector?
It's thinking like this (on a much more brutal scale and level, mind you) that produced the horrifying nightmare that was the Attica system.
So we should throw the whole basis of appeals by wrongfully sentenced prisoners out the window? Or just their ability to protest abuses and mismanagement of the system. Sure, maybe this doesn't constitute those, but your suggestion would cut those down just as severely.
who should these "outsiders" be? How do you decide whether they are being impartial? What are you paying them?
I agree with you on principle, but I'd like to make one side point - prison rape is not intended as part of the punishment/rehabilitation program, and is a huge PROBLEM, one that modern U.S. culture in particular insists on treating as a joke.
It's not funny - people don't deserve to be raped, regardless of their crimes; and given that the worst offenders tend to be the ones most prone to violent, impulsive behavior, it's usually the less violent inmates that bear the brunt of it.
Ah, but then they're addicted to D&D... and where are these ex-cons going to get the scratch to buy the latest books and gaming supplements.
Crime. You steal to feed the habit.
Because imprisoned automatically means guilty.
Oh, wait! We have a fallible legal system, that falsely imprisons people all the time!
Because imprisoned automatically means "monstrous anti-social demon."
Oh, wait! We have a variety of laws that are punishable by prison time, meaning that such things as repeated misdemeanors, "victimless" crimes like drug use unconnected to other crime, and all sorts of other crimes not involving violence or high theft can result in incarceration.
Basically, you're full of crap.
But strict deterrence both doesn't work and isn't the only legal motivation for imprisonment. Theoretically, we have a criminal justice system interested in rehabilitation (that's why it's the department of "corrections").
Honestly, it's a lot better for them to be doing something as basically harmless and pro-social as D&D, than to be passing meth recipes, or learning how to make the best shiv out of soap.
Also, treating people horribly for multiple months/years doesn't actually ever make them better people, and prisoners still have human rights (albeit limited in some respects according to their crimes. So, of course it's tied up in court - any issue of what power the state has to control human behavior and conditions is a matter for the courts.