Parent is one of the best posts I've seen in a long time (complete with links) outling how much closer to 1984 we're getting and how few people are noticing. More chilling, it also outlines how much less relevant it is that we are noticing--little can be done about the concentrations of power we're seeing. Million person marches on Washington used to have an effect. Now the march sizes are dwindling and those in power simply leave town for the day. They no longer care what we know and object to. They don't need to. They have the media and they can feed any disinformation they want into it, thereby fooling most of the people most of the time. (e.g. "Obama is an elitist who hates America", etc.)
yes, we want laws to be 100% enforced Speak for yourself. I certainly don't want that. Laws that are 100% enforced completely ignore extenuating circumstances, which are all too common because the world is an analog place, not boolean. Real life almost never fits the vague, incorrect, or incomplete wording of the laws and it's simply not feasible to expect the laws to always cover every situation. Therefore justice requires that when a law is only being slightly violated or nobody is being hurt or a greater malfeasance would be incurred by enforcing the law, the law not be enforced. I could go on for days with examples just off the top of my head (running a stop sign on your bike if there are no cars in sight, loitering when waiting for a friend who is tardy, playing tennis for 5 minutes past the park closing time to finish the set, exceeding 55MPH to get safely past a 53MPH driver, etc.) Your draconian interpretation of laws and their enforcement is thankfully not followed and I rue the day it is.
Why is the burden put on my family that I am an idiot? Who says he was an idiot? He was not doing anything specifically risky this time, like flying an experimental plane or balloon. It was a normal plane in normal VFR conditions. OK, granted he did not file a flight plan. But dude, this was not extraordinarily risky behavior that you're jumping on him for. I guess next time you go out for a drive and disappear, nobody should look for you either? That's a really nice society (or lack thereof) you're advocating there. Glad I'm not stuck living in it.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. I know many people who delete messages as or soon after they receive them. It's also quite possible that the deceased would not have recently (or ever) e-mailed the individual with the power of attorney. And even if they had, what the heck does an e-mail header prove? This is a bizarre requirement and one I'd think any decent attorney could get around, so I cannot fathom why it's in there.
Am I the only one having problems with the new Reply box? No. It doesn't hang for me but it also will not allow me to enter multiple paragraphs--all CR's and LF's are removed and my posts become one long run-on paragraph.
(This, for example, should be two lines down.)
If you saw your friend again, would you be able to explain why you did it?
First of all, why are you pondering a moot question? Because it is certain he will not see his friend again, fettering his actions with this impossible scenario is illogical and obfuscative.
But for a moment let's consider the question as if it weren't moot: If he did see his friend again, it's the friend who would have answering to do, considering how selfish an act suicide without a note is. Going thru his e-mails, even if it is immoral which I do not grant, pales in comparison to the suicide act. Further, going through the e-mails is a direct consequence of the suicide--if the friend didn't want those e-mails gone through he could have deleted them before killing himself or just maybe not killed himself.
Yes God forbid we try to solve problem on our own first without seeking the nanny state.
After what happened with Yahoo and the fallen soldier, the "nanny state" (nice loaded term there) is very much necessary. Yahoo told the family to go pound sand. Repeatedly. Even after public outcry. Dude, the government exists to help us when we need help, and this is one of those cases. That your extremist mind applied "nanny" to it is sad.
If there is some grounds to suspect some kind of criminal activity, or that his death might be murder, a subpoena might be issued
But suicide is still considered a crime--just ask Jack Kevorkian. As such, anything relating to the incident can be investigated. It should not take much lawyering along these lines to get those e-mail accounts opened up.
Equipment that will handle sensitive data should be purchased by the Government only from manufacturers who make it within our borders. Yes, this would increase costs. But it would help ensure that no "special" Chinese chips get inserted into the devices. It would also bring a few manufacturing jobs back to our shores. Of course, I'm assuming here that the very last of our electronics manufacturing infrastructure has not been dismantled...
Actually, I think it is. A "strong" opinion means your opinion is highly resistant to change, regardless of what new data emerges to challenge it. A simple "opinion" is one borne of facts alone and would not need a "strong" qualifier. The only reason to bring "strong" into the mix is to include desire for a certain outcome, which would lead one to resist changing that opinion, which would make it bias. QED.
Most of the sites referenced by the study seem not necessarily to be "pro" but simply making the information available. While this may seem heinous and "pro" to anyone adamantly against suicide, it is a fallacy of logic to presume those sites are "pro suicide." A parallel of this fallacy would be to believe any site that discusses Hitler would be "pro Nazi". To make information available can very much be a neutral or impartial act, and needs to be differentiated from sites (of which there certainly were also some cited by the study) that said you "should" kill yourself. Those I think we should condemn, but for us to condemn simple availability of information is a very dangerous censorship line to cross.
If I damage my car, my insurance company doesn't just take my word for it that it's totalled and hand me a check. They send an assessor out and THEY decide if the car is salvageable or a total loss. Why in this case is the insurance company so willing to pay up? Why don't they tell SES "Um, you need to at least try to contest that patent before we're paying. We'll cover court fees, but we think that will be much less costly than building and launching a whole new bird." They beancounter the average citizen to death on any/all claims but are willing to fork over $50 million without so much as a word of objection?? Something does indeed sound fishy here.
Not true. There are no damages or awards to either side regardless of the outcome. Further, it is rather insulting of you to decry Apple for making use of a normal procedure set forth by law and which is in place for a very good reason.
Will you next claim it is a "big deal" when someone contests a traffic ticket in court? After all, it's a "court proceeding" which involves a judge and an official record. How dare they exercise their rights?
What we have here is a non-story that only gained notoriety because of the many Apple-haters about. And it, ironically, proves their existence by its persistence and prevalence across so many sites and blogs today.
They're not suing. Read the real article, not the incorrect summary. Oh, wait, that would deny you the chance to spout off loudly about something you didn't know anything about...
more about giving them the best experience possible
I guess that explains why they went with AT&T.
That's a cheap shot. Apple went with Cingular (now AT&T) because they had no choice--all other major carriers told them to go pound sand when Apple insisted on controlling the user interface. So yes, it really WAS a case of bringing the best experience possible to the user that stuck us all with AT&T.
I do not feel sorry for this guy and don't think anyone should, you can't be stupid and expect my sympathy.
You and those who agree with you are the reason we are all losing our rights to free speech. He did absolutely nothing wrong. He exercised his First Amendment rights and you somehow defend the employer who revokes his living as punishment. You, sir, are an enjoyer (and abuser) of the rights gained by people who did exactly what this guy did--speak up against authority. How dare you decry his actions? If you hate freedom so much, how about you go to North Korea and then get back to us how nice it is to submit to immoral authority?
For the past half year, I've been getting calls "For any credit card holder with outstanding balances, press 9 for more information." So once I pressed 9 to tell the person they were breaking the law by calling me. The lady on the other end denied that their activities were illegal because I agreed to the call by pressing 9. Seems like circular logic to me, but they keep calling.
I still have an e-mail from a seller in which he threatened to leave me negative feedback if I left him negative feedback, after I e-mailed him 2 weeks into a transaction asking where my merchandise was. eBay is right to make this move--I didn't touch their site for a year after that experience. I'm sure there are bad buyers out there and that this will correspondingly anger sellers, but as an occasional seller myself, I simply do not ship merchandise until I receive payment. The seller does have more power due to this option.
Specific uses for tax dollars can increase productivity, but that increase is usually not as much as the productivity that a firm could gain by just spending the money itself.
That very wrongly assumes that tax savings by a corporation would be used to increase productivity. Many times it goes to pay large bonuses to members of the board. The stories about this are very easy to find on an almost daily basis.
I've not decided which of the two to vote for, but I do agree with something I heard John Grisham say last week: That having them pair up for a "super ticket" would probably be more negative than positive. Any voters who would not have voted for a woman AND any voters who would not vote for a black would BOTH be turned away and McCain would slide into the presidency.
I'm in my own private union. I'm the only union member.
Your post was meant to be (and was) funny, but it brings up a serious point: We each really ARE our own union. If you think of it like that, you'll be less likely to take crap from your employer. I know people that let themselves be walked all over at their jobs, constantly taking concessions. They need to realize that employment is a TWO WAY agreement. Employers act as if it's a one way deal--they call all the shots. If you act as if you're a union and remind your employer that you're allowed to veto outrageous demands, you'll do better. There is a cost to firing and replacing an employee, and employers know this, but won't let on that they know it. This gives you the leverage to say "When we agreed to have me work here, that was not part of the agreement and I do not agree to it now. I will be glad to perform reasonable duties for reasonable pay as we originally agreed." Don't be a footstool every time the employer treats you like crap. Be your own best union!
Unions provide practically nothing of value to companies
They aren't meant to provide value to companies, they are meant to provide value to employees. They HURT companies but they tend to hurt companies that deserve hurting because they've already hurt the employees so much the workers chose to unionize. Perhaps it's not the original poster who doesn't know what the fsck he's talking about....
Slashdot Mirror
Parent is one of the best posts I've seen in a long time (complete with links) outling how much closer to 1984 we're getting and how few people are noticing. More chilling, it also outlines how much less relevant it is that we are noticing--little can be done about the concentrations of power we're seeing. Million person marches on Washington used to have an effect. Now the march sizes are dwindling and those in power simply leave town for the day. They no longer care what we know and object to. They don't need to. They have the media and they can feed any disinformation they want into it, thereby fooling most of the people most of the time. (e.g. "Obama is an elitist who hates America", etc.)
Is it possible to moderate a post "classless"? Oh, wait, it'd get used too much to be of any use...
Equipment that will handle sensitive data should be purchased by the Government only from manufacturers who make it within our borders. Yes, this would increase costs. But it would help ensure that no "special" Chinese chips get inserted into the devices. It would also bring a few manufacturing jobs back to our shores. Of course, I'm assuming here that the very last of our electronics manufacturing infrastructure has not been dismantled...
Prove it. Give us links, dates, and names, or I call shenanigans.
Most of the sites referenced by the study seem not necessarily to be "pro" but simply making the information available. While this may seem heinous and "pro" to anyone adamantly against suicide, it is a fallacy of logic to presume those sites are "pro suicide." A parallel of this fallacy would be to believe any site that discusses Hitler would be "pro Nazi". To make information available can very much be a neutral or impartial act, and needs to be differentiated from sites (of which there certainly were also some cited by the study) that said you "should" kill yourself. Those I think we should condemn, but for us to condemn simple availability of information is a very dangerous censorship line to cross.
If I damage my car, my insurance company doesn't just take my word for it that it's totalled and hand me a check. They send an assessor out and THEY decide if the car is salvageable or a total loss. Why in this case is the insurance company so willing to pay up? Why don't they tell SES "Um, you need to at least try to contest that patent before we're paying. We'll cover court fees, but we think that will be much less costly than building and launching a whole new bird." They beancounter the average citizen to death on any/all claims but are willing to fork over $50 million without so much as a word of objection?? Something does indeed sound fishy here.
Not true. There are no damages or awards to either side regardless of the outcome. Further, it is rather insulting of you to decry Apple for making use of a normal procedure set forth by law and which is in place for a very good reason. Will you next claim it is a "big deal" when someone contests a traffic ticket in court? After all, it's a "court proceeding" which involves a judge and an official record. How dare they exercise their rights? What we have here is a non-story that only gained notoriety because of the many Apple-haters about. And it, ironically, proves their existence by its persistence and prevalence across so many sites and blogs today.
They're not suing. Read the real article, not the incorrect summary. Oh, wait, that would deny you the chance to spout off loudly about something you didn't know anything about...
For the past half year, I've been getting calls "For any credit card holder with outstanding balances, press 9 for more information." So once I pressed 9 to tell the person they were breaking the law by calling me. The lady on the other end denied that their activities were illegal because I agreed to the call by pressing 9. Seems like circular logic to me, but they keep calling.
I still have an e-mail from a seller in which he threatened to leave me negative feedback if I left him negative feedback, after I e-mailed him 2 weeks into a transaction asking where my merchandise was. eBay is right to make this move--I didn't touch their site for a year after that experience. I'm sure there are bad buyers out there and that this will correspondingly anger sellers, but as an occasional seller myself, I simply do not ship merchandise until I receive payment. The seller does have more power due to this option.
I've not decided which of the two to vote for, but I do agree with something I heard John Grisham say last week: That having them pair up for a "super ticket" would probably be more negative than positive. Any voters who would not have voted for a woman AND any voters who would not vote for a black would BOTH be turned away and McCain would slide into the presidency.
(power to the people, rah rah, etc. etc.)