Remorse is possible for a bad decision made in the heat of the moment. This man, on the other hand, was deliberate and meticulous in his abuse of several people that lasted over a *decade*. These are not the actions of someone who made a mistake, these are the actions of a sociopath.
We don't know that. The problem is that past decisions affect how you see the world. Admitting you made a bad decision has considerable emotional cost, which is why people try to avoid doing so. In the right circumstances this can lead to more bad decisions, and pretty soon the cost becomes unbearable. Nazi Germany is perhaps the most famous example, but this certainly can and does happen to individual people too.
Just because someone commits unspeakable atrocities does not mean they're a psychopath. They can be a perfectly ordinary person who simply gave the Devil their little finger and then lacked the strength to exit the ride. And it's important to understand how this mechanism works, because otherwise there's a temptation to think: "I'm not a psychopath, thus I could never do such things." Yes, you could, become a concentration camp guard or Unabomber II. It doesn't take psychopathy, it only takes willingness to indulge in the power of the Dark Side once.
2. Is a true statement. Abortion comes from the word abortio and aborior which both have the meaning of miscarriage. And "abortion" as people refer to in pro-choice arguments, etc is an induced abortion, i.e. an induced miscarriage.
And in modern English as commonly used "abortion" means a purposefully induced miscarriage, just like you yourself state above, while "miscarriage" means an unintended one. Etymology of words is fascinating, but it does not make a statement that is false by their current meaning any less so. And it definitely does not excuse someone who's purposefully trying to deceive.
Or you forced departments to pay back double or triple plus court costs for improper seizures.They'd suddenly be much more careful.
They'd be careful to ensure you get shot resisting arrest and find a bag of cocaine from your car or corpse. Or, if you're lucky, you'll get away with a tasing and a prison sentence.
It's not a good idea to give a mugger reason to want you dead.
This is such an embarrassing failure of our ideals, and there's really no excuse.
Is it? Because it seems to me that it's perfectly in line with the actual ideals US has embraced for its entire existence: to the victor go the spoils.
"Land of the Free" has never existed, except in the same realms of propaganda "Worker's Paradise" did. All that's happening now is that oppression is being doled out somewhat more equally than in the past. But this has always been the real face of America to anyone who's not powerful enough to defend themselves from it: a predator.
I have a guy who works for me who did time in prison for a drunk driving conviction. Good person but an alcoholic who has been sober for 10 years now. He got his act together and is a reliable and valued employee. He screwed up and served his punishment but it wouldn't be right to never give him a second chance.
The problem is, his second chance came at the cost of endangering innocent people. We aren't talking about a shoplifter or even a vandal. We're talking about someone who endangers everyone else on the road should he "screw up" again.
It isn't right that your life is ruined because of a single screwup, but it also isn't right that someone else has to risk their life being ruined to avoid that.
There used to be such a thing as training. Companies once did that.
And they still do. They just want to pretend new recruits are up to speed right away. That looks better on the balance sheet, I guess.
It's all about the appearance of efficiency, rather than actual efficiency. You get the former by measuring and micro-managing everything, and the latter by ensuring your employees want you to succeed and then cooperating with them. Yet companies insist on re-enacting Soviet Union in their own structures and practices, with predictable results. So I gues it's true that enemies will always end up resembling each other...
Sounds like my experience having to keep 4-5 Java runtime environments on UNIX systems to support older code that nobody had the time to rewrite to be compatible with the runtime du jour.
That's an important lesson for any future language designers: if you have requirements (don't pass references to the object being constructed away from the constructor or start new threads there), you also have to enforce them, otherwise programmers will ignore your rules and write code that only works with particular runtime (or particular garbage collector options, in some cases).
And with all the costs of obtaining Internet access wherever you want to spend money, such as upgrading from a dumb phone with a voice plan to a smart phone with a voice and data plan.
Why? Is there some reason you can't use euros/dollars/whatever in meatspace and Bitcoin as "Internet cash"?
The legitimacy you speak of is the courts exercising the rule of law. The courts in all 3 countries established that existing laws put foreign companies operating inside territorial borders in a meaningful way (example: amazon.ca or attempting to earn profit from people in the territory) are subject to the laws of that territory.
Courts are claiming jurisdiction. Since the courts do not have magical powers, what if any effect the claim has depends on whether the people needed to enforce it, or in positions to hinder it, consider it legitimate. Look at how impotent law is in regards to the Pirate Bay for a good example.
Basically, governments are afraid that the next time they try to order their subjects attack some place they'll be quietly escorted to a padded cell rather than sieg heiled, if their subjects continue making friends over national borders. In other words, they're afraid being seen as legitimate authority becomes dependent on getting along with their neighbours, just like it nowadays depends on not genociding their own subjects. That's already happening, which is why every war is accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign attempting to excuse it. And it'll eventually be enshrined in law as the world continues to evolve.
Nations will be dragged from the current semi-feudal state of international affairs to a more stable, just and efficient democratic one, kicking and screaming if need be. The only real question is whether humanity requires a third solid kick in the rear to finish the process, or if World Wars part I and II were enough.
Courts in the US, Canada, and the UK all disagree with your statement. Operating in a country does not require you to have a physical presence anymore, just "meaningful ties".
The British disagreed with their Empire breaking up, but it did anyway. Nor was Soviet leadership capable of keeping power through force despite controlling the military. Or perhaps we should as Gaddafi how it's going?
Nations are held together by a nebulous thing called legitimacy. Totalitarianism is a system where the state's legitimacy is absolute: it can do whatever it pleases. The other end of the spectrum is constitutionalism, where the state earns legitimacy by safeguarding the interests of its citizens. Nowadays we see an emergence of a third "pole", where a state's legitimacy depends from not just how it treats its citizens but also from how it behaves as a part of the international community. We are seeing the rise of an world system, a "city of nations", so to say. Sadly, just as humans are prone to self-centered megalomania, so are our social systems. Thus we should expect jealous attempts to claim "their" people's loyalty through, for example, nationalism and censorship.
Of course the irony is that a properly working world system will be a far safer place with more opportunity than the violent chaos of ages past for nations, just like a nation is a safer place with more opportunity than a jungle for humans. But that doesn't stop people from bitterly complaining how they're robbed by taxes, even as the only reason they have any income to tax besides whatever berries they managed to grap while running from lions is the very infrastructure maintained by said taxes. And of course would-be tyrants see their window of opportunity slipping away, and have every reason to delay the inevitable as long as possible by stirring up trouble and creating resentment. They'll fail, but time will tell how long it'll take.
All renewables have high enviromental impact, due to requiring huge areas dedicated to gathering disperse energy. The only even theoretically low-impact one is geothermal, since the gathering area is deep beneath what's usually considered environment, but sadly we lack drilling technology needed to utilize it in non-volcanic areas.
The only low-impact way of generating energy we currently have is nuclear, and that's dead in the water, so the future looks dark, but at least it'll be warm.
Likewise, the Canadian government is not just impotent but incompetent to think they could actually control foreign entities.
They don't want to control foreign entities, they want to control the cultural inputs their subjects are exposed to. We're going to keep seeing more and more such efforts as the Internet threatens to create non-geographic groups for people to identify with, which in the extreme would make local powers into little more than regional managers.
After all, the idea that people owe allegiance to a distant capital rather than a particular city is relatively new one. Who's to say loyalty to a web forum couldn't end up outweighting loyalty to a nation?
So just because a bunch of really smart people who have spent their adult lives studying something say that something is so, doesn't make it so.
No, but does strongly suggest that it is so. You can always explain away all evidence you don't like because yes, it's possible that all climate scientists of the world are involved in a conspiracy aimed at destroying your standard of living, just like it's possible that Obama is a reptilian overlord from Regulus or that the Soviet Union actually never fell and media has been lying to you all these years. It's just not very likely.
People like John Oliver, trotting out a bunch of people in lab coats saying, "look how many people say your wrong" is not an argument; funny yes, but not a valid argument.
Yes, but the corporations don't come and shoot you if you don't choose to give them your money.
They don't have to. All the resources of the world and nature's bounty are claimed by them, and those claims are backed by violence, paid for by your taxes of course. So you get to choose between giving them your money, or dying in the dark.
I ended up in the United States of America because back then the U. S. of A. was the epitome of liberty, freedom and democracy (at least to a Chinese refugee)
Every place looks like the epitome of good things to a newcomer, since they haven't been around long enough to catch a glimpse of the grinning skull behind the happy smile. US marketed itself as beacon of freedom but was willing to use morally bankrupt tactics in its fight with the Soviet Union; it was inevitable that the national security apparatus built for that fight would eventually turn against its host. Institutions don't just quietly vanish after their job is done, nor does the spirituality - the mess of justifications, excuses, cynicism and outright delusions - that allowed them to replace democratically elected governments with dictators "for freedom".
That's something to remember as we watch the US plummet into the abyss: it's reaping what it sowed. Karma can be a bitch.
You know what? The vast majority of people just don't care. Some even support it.
People care, they just don't think they can change it. It's learned helplessness, a reign of terror that keeps people bound in delusions of powerlessness. Some identify with the oppressor - an entity which ultimately exists only in our collective imagination - either because it lets them pretend they're not chained, or gives gives them material privilege, or often both. Some cover in fear from the horrible thing slithering in their midst, hoping they will be devoured last, and some are "just doing their jobs", since someone else will do it otherwise, treating mere cultural norms as unchangeable constants of nature. And so the monster we've created continues its scorched-earth march through time, claiming new host bodies through acclimatization into twisted cultural values and oppressive social expectations and casting them aside when they're used up. It's like a real-world zombie apocalypse, and like one the real threat is fear, panic and hopelessness before the sheer mass of accumulated evil.
Or, as a dude called John once put it: "Who is like the Beast, and who can fight against it?" This has been going on for a long time, possibly since the dawn of civilization. Which also nicely explains some of the weirder theologies that keep coming from the Religious Right: they're attempts to overlook the fact that their holy book is talking about them, and not in the role of heroes.
Re:bringing in more H1Bs will solve this problem
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IT Job Hiring Slumps
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· Score: 1
It's easier here and now to "tap into Capitalism for reasonable income" than most times and places.
Capitalism didn't exist in most places and times, so naturally. But it's getting harder to get or keep a job, and if you have one, it pays less than it used to. Which is perfectly logical from Capitalism's point of view - why pay people when you can invest in machines? - but the lack of disposable cash is slowly strangling the entire system.
Starting a business is still pretty straightforward - sure, health care requirement are more complex, and some industries just have to many regulations for small players, but that's not the norm.
Starting a business is a matter of creating a legal entity. Now what are you going to produce, who are you going to sell to, and how are you going to afford the capital to get started? You can't compete with multi-billion dollar companies on price, quality doesn't matter to people already starved for disposable income, and while you could take a loan most new businesses fail - and the banks know it too.
Or if, like me, you like passive investing, it's trivially easy to invest online with only small amounts to start with now.
Investing requires disposable income to begin with, and actually makes the systemic problem worse since it further lowers demand for end products.
"Capitalism" just means that the means of production are acquired by buying then, vs military conquest or cronyism.
Capitalism, as it's commonly used, also implies that production is demand-driven: people buy the products they want, this changes their relative profitability, which in turn shifts production resources to increase or decrease supply as needed. The problem is, as more and more people are made unemployed or fall into poverty despite having jobs, they no longer have the means (money) to communicate their desires, and the system breaks down. And to make matters worse, as demand slumps unemployment increases and wages fall, which drives demand down further, leading to a vicious circle - a tailspin, really.
The most painless way to fix the situation would be to institute an unconditional minimum income - citizen wage - to ensure demand stays up and even the unemployed can communicate their desires. However, as the prevailing ideal is still the "hero of labour" of the Industrial Era, this is unlikely to be politically feasible. Thus I suspect we'll be seeing a full-blown economic apocalypse - an utter collapse of Capitalism - before things start looking up.
If 3D printers ever mature, owning your chunk of the means of production will be easier still.
Not really. It simply means "end products" will be electricity and ink-equivalent.
Power dynamics, bro. How do you think it (might) have went down? "I'll bend over for a review" or "I can do a lot for your project, what can you do for me?"
This has already been debated out by professionals. Giving a bribe makes makes you just as guilty whether you offered one or the other party requested one.
Trying to reframe a clear case of bribery as a helpless victim of teh patriarchy being unjustly blamed for submitting to the greesy gasp of a dick-wielding overlord for desperately needed publicity doesn't work for the simple reason that sure she would had gotten all the advertisement she wanted simply by publishing such advances. And I suppose you know this too, hence you tagging "bro" there.
The companies say there aren't enough IT workers. The IT workers say there aren't enough jobs. It really comes down to there being huge numbers of IT workers but very few good ones.
Or, alternatively, very few companies willing to pay for good work. Minimum wage = minimum effort. This is not limited to IT, but extends to every industry and occupation. Yet for some strange reason the notion that table scraps entitle you to heroic efforts rather than hatred and resentment persists.
Re:bringing in more H1Bs will solve this problem
on
IT Job Hiring Slumps
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· Score: 1
A rising tide lifts all boats!
The next rising tide will come with the next economic system, at least in the West. Capitalism was the system of Industrial Age, and is defunct now that everything's getting automated (except in countries that a still industrializing), since ordinary folks no longer have ways to tap into it for reasonable income.
I wonder what the Information Age economic system will be called, and what equivalent to Communism will its inevitable abuses spawn?
Gays always had the same rights to marry that everyone else has had- to marry someone of legal age of the opposite sex who was not closely related to them.
And blacks always had the same rights as everyone else on same terms as everyone else: that they needed to be white to have any.
Look into Eugenics to find more but it was the same line of thinking of nazies and the aryan race.
Yes, it is. And frankly, those of us who aren't Nazis are starting to get a bit tired of having this exact same conversation over every single group you wish to take your problems out on. So please follow your fuhrer to the wastebin of history already.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't know that. The problem is that past decisions affect how you see the world. Admitting you made a bad decision has considerable emotional cost, which is why people try to avoid doing so. In the right circumstances this can lead to more bad decisions, and pretty soon the cost becomes unbearable. Nazi Germany is perhaps the most famous example, but this certainly can and does happen to individual people too.
Just because someone commits unspeakable atrocities does not mean they're a psychopath. They can be a perfectly ordinary person who simply gave the Devil their little finger and then lacked the strength to exit the ride. And it's important to understand how this mechanism works, because otherwise there's a temptation to think: "I'm not a psychopath, thus I could never do such things." Yes, you could, become a concentration camp guard or Unabomber II. It doesn't take psychopathy, it only takes willingness to indulge in the power of the Dark Side once.
And in modern English as commonly used "abortion" means a purposefully induced miscarriage, just like you yourself state above, while "miscarriage" means an unintended one. Etymology of words is fascinating, but it does not make a statement that is false by their current meaning any less so. And it definitely does not excuse someone who's purposefully trying to deceive.
Light is gaseous, ideal gas in fact: photons don't interact with each other but will simply bounce off the walls of a container.
They'd be careful to ensure you get shot resisting arrest and find a bag of cocaine from your car or corpse. Or, if you're lucky, you'll get away with a tasing and a prison sentence.
It's not a good idea to give a mugger reason to want you dead.
Is it? Because it seems to me that it's perfectly in line with the actual ideals US has embraced for its entire existence: to the victor go the spoils.
"Land of the Free" has never existed, except in the same realms of propaganda "Worker's Paradise" did. All that's happening now is that oppression is being doled out somewhat more equally than in the past. But this has always been the real face of America to anyone who's not powerful enough to defend themselves from it: a predator.
The problem is, his second chance came at the cost of endangering innocent people. We aren't talking about a shoplifter or even a vandal. We're talking about someone who endangers everyone else on the road should he "screw up" again.
It isn't right that your life is ruined because of a single screwup, but it also isn't right that someone else has to risk their life being ruined to avoid that.
And they still do. They just want to pretend new recruits are up to speed right away. That looks better on the balance sheet, I guess.
It's all about the appearance of efficiency, rather than actual efficiency. You get the former by measuring and micro-managing everything, and the latter by ensuring your employees want you to succeed and then cooperating with them. Yet companies insist on re-enacting Soviet Union in their own structures and practices, with predictable results. So I gues it's true that enemies will always end up resembling each other...
High frequency trading is not about allocating capital, it's about bleeding the people who are seeking to reallocate it.
That's an important lesson for any future language designers: if you have requirements (don't pass references to the object being constructed away from the constructor or start new threads there), you also have to enforce them, otherwise programmers will ignore your rules and write code that only works with particular runtime (or particular garbage collector options, in some cases).
Why? Is there some reason you can't use euros/dollars/whatever in meatspace and Bitcoin as "Internet cash"?
Photography? Recording a film set is called "shooting" for a reason.
Courts are claiming jurisdiction. Since the courts do not have magical powers, what if any effect the claim has depends on whether the people needed to enforce it, or in positions to hinder it, consider it legitimate. Look at how impotent law is in regards to the Pirate Bay for a good example.
Basically, governments are afraid that the next time they try to order their subjects attack some place they'll be quietly escorted to a padded cell rather than sieg heiled, if their subjects continue making friends over national borders. In other words, they're afraid being seen as legitimate authority becomes dependent on getting along with their neighbours, just like it nowadays depends on not genociding their own subjects. That's already happening, which is why every war is accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign attempting to excuse it. And it'll eventually be enshrined in law as the world continues to evolve.
Nations will be dragged from the current semi-feudal state of international affairs to a more stable, just and efficient democratic one, kicking and screaming if need be. The only real question is whether humanity requires a third solid kick in the rear to finish the process, or if World Wars part I and II were enough.
The British disagreed with their Empire breaking up, but it did anyway. Nor was Soviet leadership capable of keeping power through force despite controlling the military. Or perhaps we should as Gaddafi how it's going?
Nations are held together by a nebulous thing called legitimacy. Totalitarianism is a system where the state's legitimacy is absolute: it can do whatever it pleases. The other end of the spectrum is constitutionalism, where the state earns legitimacy by safeguarding the interests of its citizens. Nowadays we see an emergence of a third "pole", where a state's legitimacy depends from not just how it treats its citizens but also from how it behaves as a part of the international community. We are seeing the rise of an world system, a "city of nations", so to say. Sadly, just as humans are prone to self-centered megalomania, so are our social systems. Thus we should expect jealous attempts to claim "their" people's loyalty through, for example, nationalism and censorship.
Of course the irony is that a properly working world system will be a far safer place with more opportunity than the violent chaos of ages past for nations, just like a nation is a safer place with more opportunity than a jungle for humans. But that doesn't stop people from bitterly complaining how they're robbed by taxes, even as the only reason they have any income to tax besides whatever berries they managed to grap while running from lions is the very infrastructure maintained by said taxes. And of course would-be tyrants see their window of opportunity slipping away, and have every reason to delay the inevitable as long as possible by stirring up trouble and creating resentment. They'll fail, but time will tell how long it'll take.
If you can afford to pay $70k for a car, you're rich. Fame isn't necessary, though.
All renewables have high enviromental impact, due to requiring huge areas dedicated to gathering disperse energy. The only even theoretically low-impact one is geothermal, since the gathering area is deep beneath what's usually considered environment, but sadly we lack drilling technology needed to utilize it in non-volcanic areas.
The only low-impact way of generating energy we currently have is nuclear, and that's dead in the water, so the future looks dark, but at least it'll be warm.
They don't want to control foreign entities, they want to control the cultural inputs their subjects are exposed to. We're going to keep seeing more and more such efforts as the Internet threatens to create non-geographic groups for people to identify with, which in the extreme would make local powers into little more than regional managers.
After all, the idea that people owe allegiance to a distant capital rather than a particular city is relatively new one. Who's to say loyalty to a web forum couldn't end up outweighting loyalty to a nation?
No, but does strongly suggest that it is so. You can always explain away all evidence you don't like because yes, it's possible that all climate scientists of the world are involved in a conspiracy aimed at destroying your standard of living, just like it's possible that Obama is a reptilian overlord from Regulus or that the Soviet Union actually never fell and media has been lying to you all these years. It's just not very likely.
It's a perfectly valid probabilistic argument.
They don't have to. All the resources of the world and nature's bounty are claimed by them, and those claims are backed by violence, paid for by your taxes of course. So you get to choose between giving them your money, or dying in the dark.
Every place looks like the epitome of good things to a newcomer, since they haven't been around long enough to catch a glimpse of the grinning skull behind the happy smile. US marketed itself as beacon of freedom but was willing to use morally bankrupt tactics in its fight with the Soviet Union; it was inevitable that the national security apparatus built for that fight would eventually turn against its host. Institutions don't just quietly vanish after their job is done, nor does the spirituality - the mess of justifications, excuses, cynicism and outright delusions - that allowed them to replace democratically elected governments with dictators "for freedom".
That's something to remember as we watch the US plummet into the abyss: it's reaping what it sowed. Karma can be a bitch.
People care, they just don't think they can change it. It's learned helplessness, a reign of terror that keeps people bound in delusions of powerlessness. Some identify with the oppressor - an entity which ultimately exists only in our collective imagination - either because it lets them pretend they're not chained, or gives gives them material privilege, or often both. Some cover in fear from the horrible thing slithering in their midst, hoping they will be devoured last, and some are "just doing their jobs", since someone else will do it otherwise, treating mere cultural norms as unchangeable constants of nature. And so the monster we've created continues its scorched-earth march through time, claiming new host bodies through acclimatization into twisted cultural values and oppressive social expectations and casting them aside when they're used up. It's like a real-world zombie apocalypse, and like one the real threat is fear, panic and hopelessness before the sheer mass of accumulated evil.
Or, as a dude called John once put it: "Who is like the Beast, and who can fight against it?" This has been going on for a long time, possibly since the dawn of civilization. Which also nicely explains some of the weirder theologies that keep coming from the Religious Right: they're attempts to overlook the fact that their holy book is talking about them, and not in the role of heroes.
Capitalism didn't exist in most places and times, so naturally. But it's getting harder to get or keep a job, and if you have one, it pays less than it used to. Which is perfectly logical from Capitalism's point of view - why pay people when you can invest in machines? - but the lack of disposable cash is slowly strangling the entire system.
Starting a business is still pretty straightforward - sure, health care requirement are more complex, and some industries just have to many regulations for small players, but that's not the norm.
Starting a business is a matter of creating a legal entity. Now what are you going to produce, who are you going to sell to, and how are you going to afford the capital to get started? You can't compete with multi-billion dollar companies on price, quality doesn't matter to people already starved for disposable income, and while you could take a loan most new businesses fail - and the banks know it too.
Investing requires disposable income to begin with, and actually makes the systemic problem worse since it further lowers demand for end products.
Capitalism, as it's commonly used, also implies that production is demand-driven: people buy the products they want, this changes their relative profitability, which in turn shifts production resources to increase or decrease supply as needed. The problem is, as more and more people are made unemployed or fall into poverty despite having jobs, they no longer have the means (money) to communicate their desires, and the system breaks down. And to make matters worse, as demand slumps unemployment increases and wages fall, which drives demand down further, leading to a vicious circle - a tailspin, really.
The most painless way to fix the situation would be to institute an unconditional minimum income - citizen wage - to ensure demand stays up and even the unemployed can communicate their desires. However, as the prevailing ideal is still the "hero of labour" of the Industrial Era, this is unlikely to be politically feasible. Thus I suspect we'll be seeing a full-blown economic apocalypse - an utter collapse of Capitalism - before things start looking up.
Not really. It simply means "end products" will be electricity and ink-equivalent.
This has already been debated out by professionals. Giving a bribe makes makes you just as guilty whether you offered one or the other party requested one.
Trying to reframe a clear case of bribery as a helpless victim of teh patriarchy being unjustly blamed for submitting to the greesy gasp of a dick-wielding overlord for desperately needed publicity doesn't work for the simple reason that sure she would had gotten all the advertisement she wanted simply by publishing such advances. And I suppose you know this too, hence you tagging "bro" there.
Or, alternatively, very few companies willing to pay for good work. Minimum wage = minimum effort. This is not limited to IT, but extends to every industry and occupation. Yet for some strange reason the notion that table scraps entitle you to heroic efforts rather than hatred and resentment persists.
The next rising tide will come with the next economic system, at least in the West. Capitalism was the system of Industrial Age, and is defunct now that everything's getting automated (except in countries that a still industrializing), since ordinary folks no longer have ways to tap into it for reasonable income.
I wonder what the Information Age economic system will be called, and what equivalent to Communism will its inevitable abuses spawn?
And blacks always had the same rights as everyone else on same terms as everyone else: that they needed to be white to have any.
Yes, it is. And frankly, those of us who aren't Nazis are starting to get a bit tired of having this exact same conversation over every single group you wish to take your problems out on. So please follow your fuhrer to the wastebin of history already.