Not sure about the drinking, but there is a strong correlation between smoking, tattoos and stupidity.
I think it's more to do with lack of impulse control than simple stupidity.
It's why you can get high functioning alcoholics and drug addicts maintaining professional careers, at least in the short term: they can take enough of a breather to allow them to work.
There is a pretty simple rule in life that you figure out about the time you hit middle age. Anything you think is cool, actually isn't. More often than not cool means doing stupid and irresponsible stuff to prove you are daring and fun. It proves neither, takes a lot of years to realize that.
Because when you get a call, anonymous or otherwise, that a shooting has happened, someone has been killed, and hostages have been taken and are being threatened, the police are not likely to send a beat cop to ring the bell with his hat in his hands.
I agree this is a symptom of the problem with the militarization of police, though. There needs to be a middle ground for an appropriate response that doesn't include a SWAT team.
If you're going to have SWAT teams at all, surely a situation with shooting and hostages is precisely when you would call them out? I'm not sure what the middle ground would be.
Why do Americans automatically accept that kicking the door down and holding everyone at gunpoint is a reasonable response to an anonymous 911 call?
Yes. This is the question that no one asks. Why we tolerate a culture in which police are empowered to kick in doors all the time.
Clearly it has nothing to do with the fact that, in the US, there is an extremely high probability that the person on the other side of the door is armed and best taken by surprise?
Unconditional love can be a very good thing. Letting it blind you to the realities of the person you love is not - then your love is based on a lie, and sooner or later that's going to bite one or both of you in the ass. Probably harshely and repeatedly.
I don't think you understand what unconditional love means. It means you love someone even though you know the reality. The mothers of murderers don't stop loving their children once they're convicted.
It doesn't mean theycondone their crimes, simply that they can't help loving them anyway.
Unless the person doing the "swatting" was somehow described by eye witnesses (given the nature of swatting that seems reasonably unlikely) as drunk, smoking, and with a tattoo then she is an idiot for somehow thinking those three traits have anything to with his guilt or innocence.
There seem to be a lot of tattooed teenage smokers and drinkers on slashdot taking this as some sort of personal insult.
1) When people are arrested, their friends, family, and neighbors routinely say "I can't believe he did that. He seemed like such a nice guy."
I've noticed this a lot, and so told my parents that if I'm ever arrested and the media come asking you've got to say "yeah he was a real dick, I'm glad he got busted". It'd be worth it just for the reaction.
I'm also a parent and have a list of stupid quotes ready just in case my kids get caught doing something stupid (we all do stupid things, but only some of us get caught). The media are fuckwits, they don't deserve to be taken seriously.
I know you think that's funny, but all it would achieve is to prejudice the police, court, media and public opinion against you. If that results in you (or your kid) being found guilty instead of innocent, or receiving a harsher punishment, who's the fuckwit then?
the vast majority of shitty people are produced by shitty parenting
Some shitty people have shitty parents.
Some shitty people have non-shitty parents.
Some non-shitty people have shitty parents.
Some non-shitty people have non-shitty parents.
Your argument is similar to the "most criminals come from poor families, therefore most poor families are criminal" one which is both logically and morally bankrupt.
Swatting is not like killing or stealing or doing drugs, picking up a phone and making a prank phone call is not on the same level as grabbing a gun and killing someone
You tell yourself that when you're sitting in jail for a few years.
Oh for fuck's sake. Obviously I hadn't read TFA, so I assumed he was 12 or something.
19 is an adult. Blaming parents for the actions of a grown man is just pathetic. Despite what some people here seem to think, you can't expect to be treated as a grown up while simultaneously abdicating all responsibility for your actions.
Just because you had a shitty upbringing doesn't mean that all kids who get into trouble did too.
Not all criminals come from deprived backgrounds, and not everyone from a deprived background becomes a criminal.
You don't seem to realise it, but you're the one trying to gloss over the kid's behaviour. The parents are doing what normal parents would be expected to do, which is to defend their child.
She took the job. It's her responsibility. Stop making excuses.
You're the one making excuses for the little fucking psychopath who (allegedly) did this.
If you want to treat children as helpless little snowflakes, and place all the blame for their actions on their parents, you would have to lock them up until they were 18 and never let them have friends or go to school (and certainly not allow them unsupervised internet access).
Somebody seems to have his history badly messed up. The first Mainframes where sold in the last 1950s. Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945. Hence IBM never sold any Mainframes to the Nazis. The other stuff this person says is probably of similar accuracy and quality.
If he'd said "computer" some smartarse would have piped up with "but in the 1940s a computer was a person, usually a woman, doing calculations manually".
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure about the drinking, but there is a strong correlation between smoking, tattoos and stupidity.
I think it's more to do with lack of impulse control than simple stupidity.
It's why you can get high functioning alcoholics and drug addicts maintaining professional careers, at least in the short term: they can take enough of a breather to allow them to work.
These kids know what they're doing is illegal. So, it's not going to deter them when people go to jail for it.
Are you seriously suggesting that jail has no deterrent effect whatsoever?
Does it really intend a dangerous situation, or merely intend the comedy value of having armed police burst into a house on a live video stream?
There is inherent danger, but that doesn't make the danger the intent.
You have a psychopath's definition of comedy there.
I would first confirm that the visitor is actually a Jehovah's Witness before shooting him.
You're not really getting the whole "crazed gunman" thing are you?
Any job that can't accept me how I am isn't a job i want to work at.
Says every teenager who has never had to get a job to pay for their family's rent and food.
There is a pretty simple rule in life that you figure out about the time you hit middle age. Anything you think is cool, actually isn't. More often than not cool means doing stupid and irresponsible stuff to prove you are daring and fun. It proves neither, takes a lot of years to realize that.
YOLO dude.
>>>leaps off cliff
Unless it's a neck tattoo how would the employer even know?
They don't do interviews naked where you live?
Because when you get a call, anonymous or otherwise, that a shooting has happened, someone has been killed, and hostages have been taken and are being threatened, the police are not likely to send a beat cop to ring the bell with his hat in his hands.
I agree this is a symptom of the problem with the militarization of police, though. There needs to be a middle ground for an appropriate response that doesn't include a SWAT team.
If you're going to have SWAT teams at all, surely a situation with shooting and hostages is precisely when you would call them out? I'm not sure what the middle ground would be.
Why do Americans automatically accept that kicking the door down and holding everyone at gunpoint is a reasonable response to an anonymous 911 call?
Yes. This is the question that no one asks. Why we tolerate a culture in which police are empowered to kick in doors all the time.
Clearly it has nothing to do with the fact that, in the US, there is an extremely high probability that the person on the other side of the door is armed and best taken by surprise?
Unconditional love can be a very good thing. Letting it blind you to the realities of the person you love is not - then your love is based on a lie, and sooner or later that's going to bite one or both of you in the ass. Probably harshely and repeatedly.
I don't think you understand what unconditional love means. It means you love someone even though you know the reality. The mothers of murderers don't stop loving their children once they're convicted.
It doesn't mean theycondone their crimes, simply that they can't help loving them anyway.
I'm a bit more offended that Mom implies having tattoos automatically suggests a bad person in the same weird way that smoking or drinking does.
They all suggest a (potential) lack of self control, that's all. Calm down.
Unless the person doing the "swatting" was somehow described by eye witnesses (given the nature of swatting that seems reasonably unlikely) as drunk, smoking, and with a tattoo then she is an idiot for somehow thinking those three traits have anything to with his guilt or innocence.
There seem to be a lot of tattooed teenage smokers and drinkers on slashdot taking this as some sort of personal insult.
In defense of the mother:
1) When people are arrested, their friends, family, and neighbors routinely say "I can't believe he did that. He seemed like such a nice guy."
I've noticed this a lot, and so told my parents that if I'm ever arrested and the media come asking you've got to say "yeah he was a real dick, I'm glad he got busted". It'd be worth it just for the reaction. I'm also a parent and have a list of stupid quotes ready just in case my kids get caught doing something stupid (we all do stupid things, but only some of us get caught). The media are fuckwits, they don't deserve to be taken seriously.
I know you think that's funny, but all it would achieve is to prejudice the police, court, media and public opinion against you. If that results in you (or your kid) being found guilty instead of innocent, or receiving a harsher punishment, who's the fuckwit then?
swatters aren't violent people as such
Yes they are, they're just cowards too.
the vast majority of shitty people are produced by shitty parenting
Some shitty people have shitty parents.
Some shitty people have non-shitty parents.
Some non-shitty people have shitty parents.
Some non-shitty people have non-shitty parents.
Your argument is similar to the "most criminals come from poor families, therefore most poor families are criminal" one which is both logically and morally bankrupt.
Swatting is not like killing or stealing or doing drugs, picking up a phone and making a prank phone call is not on the same level as grabbing a gun and killing someone
You tell yourself that when you're sitting in jail for a few years.
The guy who was arrested was 19.
Oh for fuck's sake. Obviously I hadn't read TFA, so I assumed he was 12 or something.
19 is an adult. Blaming parents for the actions of a grown man is just pathetic. Despite what some people here seem to think, you can't expect to be treated as a grown up while simultaneously abdicating all responsibility for your actions.
Not all criminals come from deprived backgrounds, and not everyone from a deprived background becomes a criminal.
You don't seem to realise it, but you're the one trying to gloss over the kid's behaviour. The parents are doing what normal parents would be expected to do, which is to defend their child.
Children are human beings and have free will too.
In defense of the mother:
She took the job. It's her responsibility. Stop making excuses.
You're the one making excuses for the little fucking psychopath who (allegedly) did this.
If you want to treat children as helpless little snowflakes, and place all the blame for their actions on their parents, you would have to lock them up until they were 18 and never let them have friends or go to school (and certainly not allow them unsupervised internet access).
With freedom comes responsibility.
So, just to clarify, does correlation imply causation or not?
Oops, I didn't see the "pretend it's the 1980s" part. Woosh indeed.
So on slashdot, not only do we not read TFA or even TFS, we now don't even read the comments we're replying to?
Its quite easy to tell when a car is a petrol or diesel, you just need to listen to it. If the car sounds like a tractor, it's a diesel.
It also belches black smoke and leaves a trail of dying wildlife in its wake.
A "Mainframe" is a very specific thing, and punch-card handling equipment (what IBM did sell to the Nazis) is something very different.
When I was young, computers were either mainframes or desktops. And I'm fairly sure the Nazis weren't PC.
Somebody seems to have his history badly messed up. The first Mainframes where sold in the last 1950s. Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945. Hence IBM never sold any Mainframes to the Nazis. The other stuff this person says is probably of similar accuracy and quality.
If he'd said "computer" some smartarse would have piped up with "but in the 1940s a computer was a person, usually a woman, doing calculations manually".