We may cheer when mob violence is turned against targets we think deserve it (and I certainly think Scientology deserves some sort of consequences for their actions), but there is a reason mob violence has been replaced by the rule of law in most parts of the world.
Sorry for the second reply but I think a good point can be made here.
First of all, I clearly stated I didn't agree with the actions of Anonymous. That hardly qualifies as "cheering". I merely find it predictable cause-and-effect and the only surprise I see in the whole situation is that such things haven't happened more frequently. Also, to the best of my knowledge, Anonymous performed a bunch of very irritating, costly, and time-wasting activities but did not use actual violence. So I will use the term "mob action".
The best way to cause mob action is to either do nothing at all or perform only slap-on-the-wrist sanctions against an entity with (in my opinion) a long track record of repeated abuses of one kind or another. That's what allows for the possibility of a mob to form that thinks the job was left undone and that they should do something about it since no one else is going to.
The whole point of a justice system is so that the people can see that justice was done by the proper officials, that the matter has been settled and needs no further response. Fail to achieve that and what you will find is that the difference between decent people and bad people is that decent people will wait longer before taking matters into their own hands. Right or wrong, this is quite predictable.
I'm not arguing for this new law. I am arguing against the idea that all regulation is bad. Nobody actually thinks that, but they say it anyway. People just don't think of regulation they like as "regulation."
There's a seemingly small but significant difference. Usually "regulation" connotes guidelines for a practice that you do want to allow, but need to place boundaries on, like trading stocks or selling pharmaceuticals. Whereas standard law enforcement usually concerns practices you don't want to allow at all, like fraud and theft.
That's why there was only one item I actually filed under the heading of "regulation" in my previous post. That would be a simple law stating that ISPs and carriers may not discriminate on the basis of destination or origin. This would be a regulation, as we do want ISPs to transmit IP packets and this rule would set boundaries on how they may do so. Every other concern mentioned was either basic law enforcement or the difference between a responsible admin and an incompetent admin.
Speaking only for myself, I think that's a reasonable distinction that can be objectively applied. It neatly avoids any concerns about whether I happen to like something. You can have excessive law enforcement just as you can have excessive regulation. While I like to call things what they are, neither excess is desirable.
Cool, so I can break into your website and deface it?
That's what securing your systems is for. The toughest possible law in the USA against unauthorized entry/access won't stop someone outside your jurisdiction doing this as the Internet is a global network. You take resonable steps to secure your systems or you're an irresponsible admin, it really is that simple. For better or for worse, no law is going to change that.
Start a smear campaign against you claiming you are an ex Nazi who likes having sex with dead relatives?
Supposing the person is within jurisdiction, existing libel laws would already cover this. The medium (newspaper, TV, Web site) should be irrelevant. If they are out of your jurisdiction, what were you going to do about that anyway?
Break into your online bank account and steal your money?
That's fraud and/or theft. The medium should be irrelevant.
Admit it, you want at least some government regulation of the Internet.
No discrimination on the basis of destination or origin sounds good to me. For the reactionary types out there who like to knee-jerk, traffic shaping that prioritizes traffic type such as VOIP does not need to consider the destination or origin.
Unless, I don't know, maybe you want a lawless old west where groups like Anonymous can wreak havoc unmolested by evil government types.
I like that better than excessive government control. I'm not going to say that such things are perfectly fine. They aren't. They just aren't as bad as the immense distrust the federal government has soundly earned.
Incidentally, if you refer to an attack Anonymous made against a certain "church" then it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people. While I don't agree with the methods used, some groups seem to think they're untouchable and an occasional reminder that they aren't isn't a completely bad thing.
To be fair, the article on MIT's site is dated "September 7, 2010."
Naturally the only logical conclusion for the dupe is that MIT News hired some Slashdot editors.
That's not possible. The grammar of MIT's articles is far too good. It doesn't contain spelling errors that a basic spellchecker would have fixed. It doesn't have links to stories that are behind a paywall when freely accessible ones are also available. It doesn't needlessly link to someone's blog when articles a bit closer to the primary source are readily available. If it has the occasional blatant factual error that the slightest and most basic fact-checking would have corrected, this remains to be demonstrated.
To reiterate, there's no possibility that MIT News has hired some Slashdot editors. They probably list "ability and willingness to run a quick automated spellchecker" and "familiarity with English grammar" as requirements for their editors. They have little incentive to engage in the other practices I listed.
Incidentally, it's not an instance of a "grammar nazi" when you expect paid professionals who call themselves "editors" to either correctly and consistently use basic spelling and grammar or, failing that, call themselves something other than "editors." Maybe "reposters" would be a good title. The standard and the expectations are higher for "editors" who draw a wage. It's not the same situation as the Slashdot users who post for leisure and are nit-picked over issues of grammar.
When it does happen, it will affect everyone without regard to their diplomas, and you can blame those who didn't bother doing something about it, which is 99.9% of the population.
I assure you that if there is a pandemic, poor and minorities will be the hardest hit. (or so the papers will tell us, anyway).
I propose that's mostly because they tend to live in the most population-dense urban areas. Those are definitely the last places you want to be if the shit hits the fan. Among lots of other reasons, there are many more people in such areas than the amount of food that could be grown on that land. If people start dying like flies due to a real pandemic (not this avian flu bullshit) the steady supply lines that keep dense cities fed will be immediately disrupted.
On a more opinion-based note, I have visited very large cities and I never understood the appeal. They all look like concrete shitholes to me, with people who are ruder and more pushy than anywhere else. I find them spiritually suffocating. Skyscrapers and neon lights never impressed me remotely enough to make up for that.
While this sounds nice theoretically, you would be amazed at the amount of horrible damage one idiot could cause in a single year.
I greatly prefer the horrible damage caused by genuine temporary idiocy to the immeasurable damage caused by carefully calculated incompetence in the style of "Problem, Reaction, Solution" currently perpetrated ad nauseum by our ruling class. Any day. Without question. No contest about it.
That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths.
Silly me! i thought it was a requirement.
A decadent and/or broken people won't allow reasonable people to rule. Children of divorce are unlikely to respect them. Reasonable people won't give them the phony sense of worth (the one that comes from "us and them") that they want, so reasonable people won't appeal to them. They aren't sexy. They haven't spent a good portion of their lives learning how to manipulate and market and tell you what you want to hear (how to cater to your base nature, your ego). They haven't mastered the art of doing one thing while saying another while pretending like there is no hypocrisy in it, while lying to you with a straight face as though nothing were amiss. Reasonable people don't have glitter and pizzaz and charisma. They just have their reason.
Reasonable people are outgunned, out-classed and out-ruthlessed (if such can be a word) by those who will say or do anything, absolutely anything to get your support. Reasonable people won't whore themselves out to the highest bidder, to appeal to the most powerful. They tend to be anonymous and/or marginalized. They tend not to make a big production, a huge public spectacle, of their reason. They just see what is right and do it according to their reason.
So yeah, sociopathy is a requirement when most of the electorate is governed by fear, ego, gratification, and a failure to be fulfilled by the way they live their own private lives. It's a requirement when so many families are broken and so many people are so overwhelmed by their own existence that they cannot see beyond their own immediate personal concerns. It's a requirement when politics becomes all about charisma and allure and not about sound policy rooted in solid reason. Most of all, it's a requirement when government has become totally out of control and unaccountable to the people and this is accepted as normal.
Like I said, the cure is prevention. Otherwise it's a very large downward spiral from there. Otheriwse it gets much, much worse before it has a hope of getting even slightly better. Once these self-reinforcing, feedback-loop processes are set in motion, it's hell itself to have a chance at breaking their momentum and returning to something more... well, reasonable.
The Cold War was a dangerous game (and we're not out of the woods yet: many of those weapons still exist and so do the ideological differences for that matter) but the leaders of both sides weren't willing to die for their ideology. That basic rationality is no longer a given, as these weapons proliferate to less politically stable nations.
I'm confident the leaders of major world powers wouldn't ever have to die for their ideology. The days of the king having the balls to lead his troops into war and have his sons fight alongside him are long over. No, they'd be sheltered in a bunker somewhere with years and years of stored non-perishable supplies.
It is the general population that would die. As there is no political power or tax money to be obtained from a mass of dead people, the leaders would lose the only things they ever cared about. It would possibly be a fate worse than death for them. That's why they displayed some rationality when confronted with concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction.
This (badly mistaken) idea that it's acceptable for anyone to steal nuclear weapons technology because, well, heck, they'll get it eventually is just wrong. Yes, they might get it eventually, but the odds of that happening are reduced if they aren't forced to make the same investment that we and the Soviets made. And you never know: if it comes down to that, they may decide they have better uses for the money. And if not, if they do get nukes but have to take a few years to figure out how, well, that's a few more years of relative safety for the rest of us.
Right there you seem to acknowledge yourself that sustained ignorance of how to build such weapons is not a long-term solution. It must be assumed that at some point some very dangerous and very crazy people are going to obtain a nuke. Keeping such information out of their hands serves only one purpose and that is to buy us time. We should be using that time to come up with better long-term solutions, like detecting the facilities used to build such things or tracking the transportation of the required materials or rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.
That assumes that everyone is equally rational, which we know is not the case. It would only take one psychopath to end the world and laugh as everything around him burned to the ground.
That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths. The preferred cure is prevention. If they somehow achieve power and show signs of being psychopaths, and nuclear weapons might be involved, then the people of Venezuela should understand that sometimes a rabid dog needs to be put down.
It's not like there is any shortage of politicians. There are plenty more where that one came from.
A better long-term solution would be to institute a system like the US Constitution except that all political offices are limited to one short term, assigned by lottery from a random selection of all adult citizens, and conducted like a military draft in that refusing to serve could result in imprisonment. Anyone who has ever held office at any level of government is disqualified from ever being selected again either voluntarily or involuntarily. There would still be popular elections occurring at every quarter of a term of office (so every year if it's a 4-year term), but they'd be for the purpose of deciding whether someone holding office should be removed prematurely and replaced by a new random selection. Corporations and organizations would be strictly forbidden from participating in this process at any level, backed by the penalty of having the entity dissolved and all assets seized and sold off at auction. That's because with the elimination of a need to campaign, any participation by them must be corruption and cannot be called a *wink wink nudge nudge* campaign contribution.
Maybe that idea is flawed and maybe it isn't. The point though is to remove "politician" as a career and to recognize that the people who want power so badly that they'll campaign, accept corruption, etc. in order to obtain it are not to be trusted with it. It would remove the notion of a ruling class and replace it with a notion of civic duty, much like the way we view jury duty. I think what we'd find is that average working people are not eager to obtain nuclear weapons and play silly games based around flirting with utter destruction.
Reading comprehension? or perhaps it required writing clarity. If you want to insert sarcastic remarks, how about i insert a remark on good manners.
When complaining about what Palm did, why link in MSFT? Or is it just a goal to take a free kick at MSFT whenever some other company does something he thinks is stupid.
"Sounds like" means "reminds me of [this other thing]" or "is analogous to". The failure to understand that is indeed a matter of reading comprehension.
Now, I said that tongue-in-cheek, another thing you apparently did not comprehend. That's why I said "insert sarcastic remark here" instead of actually making a sarcastic remark. If you are that easily offended and your skin is that thin, you may want to reconsider participating in open Internet forums.
And for what it's worth, Microsoft is no angel. Microsoft has indeed done a non-zero number of stupid things. The GP post likened what he perceived as Palm's stuidity to what he perceived as Microsoft's stupidity. Either prove right now beyond a possible doubt that Microsoft has never ever done a stupid thing during its entire existence, or admit that there's nothing wrong with saying so. See my point?
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
It's all too rare that I get a reply that is so useful, relevant, and informative. I was aware of most of these practices (in fact I consider the crisis to be engineered in the style of the Hegelian dialectic -- one must engage in both "follow the money" and "follow the cronyism/power") but nowhere have I seen it summed up so succinctly. Thank you for that sir.
Are you advocating more regulation? Wasn't the sub prime meltdown the result of too much regulation in the wrong area? Instead of regulating prudence, the government basically forced banks to support untenable inner city mortgages which should have never been approved in the first place.
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages and did not force banks to give out loans to people who were high risk.
It's more a question of what kind of regulation is in place.
The subprime deal was the wrong kind. It was based on some abstract idea of "fairness". That idea wasn't even self-consistent because no one is born with a poor credit history. They had the chance to be responsible with their money and to punctually repay any debts they incurred and have demonstrated a track record of overextending themselves and failing to do so. "Fair" would mean let them sleep in the bed they have made for themselves and, if they so choose, work towards a higher credit score until such time that they are credit-worthy for a mortgage. That would be objective fairness.
Regulation was used to enforce a subjective fairness based on some idealized fairy-tale notion of how things should be that had little contact with reality. It caused massive credit to be issued to people who were not credit-worthy. It led to failures that should have been predictable.
Regulation can also be used to clearly define business practices which are abusive or unsound based on objective criteria. I am not familiar with Canadian businesses but from your description it sounds like that's what happened there. It's not so much a matter of "more" or "less" regulation. It's a matter of "just enough" of the right kind.
I don't know if the insistence on dividing all of political thought into a one-dimensional line defined by "left" and "right" is solely responsible for encouraging and legitimizing this either-or type of thinking, but it tends towards myopia.
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
They still have competition. You can get other devices that use other platforms. That's true for iPhones and it's also true for iPads, especially if the tasks for which you would use a tablet can be done on a netbook. In any case, there is a market here that they could price themselves out of. They don't wish to shoot themselves in the foot, that's all. At this point it's not evidence of some kind of benevolence, though it doesn't rule that out either. It's merely consistent with the business practices that have gotten them to where they are today.
The equation doesn't change until and unless they obtain a monopoly on such a market that is comparable to the dominance of Windows on the desktop.
Additionally I'm not sure if it would be "price gouging" when it's a luxury item and the customers knew or could easily have informed themselves that they were investing in a platform that is not open and is under the control of a single vendor. Those who really care about this possibility tend to insist on open platforms that are not subject to vendorlock.
In other words, they are throwing more hardware at the problem (graphics cards AND multiple processor cores) instead of actually producing a faster or more resource efficient browser. Anyone else read that the same way?
The resources present in a PC that can run Windows 6.x Aero include multiple cores and an integrated stream processor (also called a GPU). So yes, IE is being more efficient by using the resources that are there instead of ignoring them.
This word "efficiency"... it does not mean what you think it means. Hint: they increased the speed but the way they did so gives no reason to believe that they have improved the efficiency. It's abundantly possible that they have worsened it, in fact.
IE may still be the slowest browser in terms of the quality of its code and its failure to avoid bloat. It's just that now it can place more of a burden on the hardware to make up for this. I mean, the GPU *and* multiple cores? That damned well better be faster than a single-threaded/single-process browser with no GPU acceleration. That still doesn't say anything about efficiency or code quality.
Bottom line: if other browsers started using the same resources, would IE still be the slowest? Because you can expect it's only a matter of time before most browsers start doing this or at least offer the option, and many of them will do so in a cross-platform way. Where's the reason to believe that IE is inherently better or more well-designed, that any speed advantage it enjoys now isn't merely a transient and meaningless effect of implementing this idea first?
I'm really hoping that IE9 brings Internet Explorer up to speed and injects some more competition into the browser wars. Still, due to the stigma put on IE, gaining back market share will be tough...
One thing amused me. In a way the story or at least the summary is doublespeak. If so, it won't be helping that stigma:
Internet Explorer has long been the slowest browser by a wide margin. IE9 has turned that around in dramatic fashion, using hardware acceleration and a new JavaScript engine it calls Chakra, which compiles scripts in the background and uses multiple processor cores.
In other words, they are throwing more hardware at the problem (graphics cards AND multiple processor cores) instead of actually producing a faster or more resource efficient browser. Anyone else read that the same way?
Who is this "our"? Do you own the land illegal immigrants are standing on?
Are you dense? "Our" is the majority rule of the citizens and taxpayers who have expressed their will through electing representatives in our republic. "Our" is the overwhelming popular support laws like Arizona's have every single time they are put to a referendum (that is, a vote in which citizens can participate), laws that by the way only seek to enforce existing federal laws.
If it isn't our land then you don't own your home, since after all it is the government and its police power that would protect your home from anyone who tried to take it away from you. Likewise it is the government and its police power that is supposed to protect our national borders.
If you can get over your emotionalism long enough to stop asking me stupid questions, you might start advocating that our immigration laws be changed. Until then, yes it's our land and yes I don't want criminals coming here.
Is this a joke? Because I can't believe you think an analogy to Rosa Parks is good argumentation. It's just emotional fluff.
I'll easily explain that for you. Racism is inherently wrong. There is no justification for it. A country protecting its borders is not inherently wrong. There is plenty of justification for it.
Of course the truth is it isn't THEIR right to freedom of movement we should be most worried about, it is OUR economy they will improve, directly through their hard work and indirectly through the hard work of their progeny. One of their children could be the world's next Linus.
We can "what if" all day. For that matter, what about all the illegals who are involved in the drug cartels and conducting drug, gun, and even human trafficking? We should tolerate that because the next good programmer *might possibly* come about? Please. I can make up scenarios with no evidence too, I just don't use them to justify my arguments.
It is unlikely their children could be the next Linus if their kid is born in a small town in Mexico.
If that's true, then Mexico has serious problems that the Mexican people need to solve. That doesn't give them the right to break our laws.
You're doing a good job of exposing the lack of rational basis for the supporters of illegal immigration. This is the kind of faux "reasoning" that justifies such a belief because there is no real justification for it. If there were a solid basis for supporting illegal immigration you'd use that instead of wasting time with this non-logic. It's a great example of people who form an emotional belief and then try to rationalize it, rather than letting solid rationality determine what they believe. Cart before horse.
That's it. Now where exactly does leave the honest, hardworking people who don't fit into those categories?
What makes us responsible for their lot in life?
If we are responsible for that, then why do we discriminate? Why stop at the Mexicans? Why not assume the full burden of the entire human population which is downtrodden in some way and wants a better life elsewhere? It would be hard but hey, we could find some way to fit a few more billion people into the continental USA. Then you'd feel really good about yourself, right?
I'm betting that if you were having money troubles, you would not approach your slightly wealthier neighbor and demand that this is his problem and tell him that whether he wants to or not, he's going to help you out. I'm guessing you understand why that would be wrong. What makes this so acceptable to you on a national scale? The fact that the effects are spread out among large numbers of people? That changes the fundamental right-and-wrong of it for you?
Literally nobody in this subthread has claimed any of that. Good job Jose!
What they have claimed is that it's okay for people to come here illegally, that there's anything wrong with opposing this, that it's our fault for having immigration laws and not the fault of those who break them, and otherwise that there is a moral equivalence between the sovereign nation that has immigration laws over its own territory and those who break those laws whenever convenient.
All of those are false. All of those revolve around an entitlement mentality. You have to look at the essence, at what's behind those ideas, to understand the mentality that drives them. Or you can be willfully blind to that and think that your bit of sarcasm there overrides the point I was making. Your call.
"Aren't you embarrassed about how many people are fleeing your country?"
And yet, for their credit, they have done nothing to stop people from leaving. That's better than quite certain states can boast.
There's more to it than that. The Mexican government has been known to actually provide information to assist its citizens who want to enter the US illegally. That isn't because their motives are great and altruistic. It's because many of those illegal aliens want to earn money in the USA and then send it back to Mexico, enhancing the Mexican economy.
Is it such a surprise that Mexican politicians won't take action to stop activities that effectively transfer wealth from the USA to Mexico? I don't care what language they speak; politicians are politicians.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..."
It was this notion that built the most powerful country on the Earth. It's abandoning it that has caused said country to decline. People trying to improve their lot usually end up improving plenty of other people's lot too; the worse off they were to begin with, the more driven they are. What the heck happened to you to forget that? Megacorps?
The difference is that those people weren't breaking our laws to be here. Additionally, they came to America because they wanted to be Americans. They were willing to learn our language, follow our laws, and participate in our culture. It was the "great melting pot". The German immigrants did not insist that our signs and documents be written in both English and German. The Chinese immigrants did not insist that our signs and documents be written in both English and Chinese. They knew they were moving to an English-speaking country and expected to adapt because they were reasonable and didn't possess the sense of entitlement you see so much of today.
Bloody Hell! I can understand selfish psychopaths - and will argue with them from the understanding that they only care of themselves - but I'll never, ever, understand people who are acting against their own interests, despite presumably being intelligent enough to understand them.
The selfish ones are the people who insist on being here against our wishes. An analogy to the personal level makes this easier to illustrate: who's the selfish one -- the uninvited trespasser or the homeowner who asks him to leave? I'd say the trespasser is the selfish one, and if you disagree then surely you'd have no problem letting anyone occupy your home anytime they want even against your wishes? What's against our interests is to ignore all of the trespassers on a national scale and all of the problems they are causing.
The real way to fix this is to reduce the demand. That can be arranged by cracking down on businesses who operate on US soil and hire illegal immigrants, by getting rid of bi-lingual everything and declaring the national language to be English, and by requiring proof of citizenship before... once you get here there's nothing for you
And at the end of that process USA will become a 'regular' country like Belarus or
North Korea, where people will be desperate to sneak out instead of in.
I'll state up-front that I disagree with you. However, I'm willing to listen to you and entertain your idea but I need more information. Why do you think that would be the outcome?
I'll make one correction to my previous statement. When I said that proof of citizenship should be required, I should have said "proof of citizenship or proof that you are here legally, i.e. a green card". If someone has come here legally, followed and respected our laws, then I have no problem with them or their children going to a public school. For natural-born citizens, a driver's license should be good enough for most purposes.
I believe that what I mentioned is reasonable. Many countries have an official national language; it does not seem to cause their destruction. The idea that benefits like welfare which are provided by the taxpaying citizens of the country should be limited to those who are here legally doesn't sound unduly harsh to me. And when I, a natural-born citizen, apply for a job at any company, I am expected to provide documents like a Social Security card in addition to forms of ID such as my driver's license and/or a birth certificate. That's been no problem for me and I don't consider it some horribly oppressive burden.
So if these ideas are inherently unreasonable, or could not be implemented in a reasonable way, can you demonstrate why that is true?
The lazy ones *do* stay the fuck out. It is the hard-working ones who try repeatedly to get into the country. To work hard, better their family, improve our cities and economy, and pay our Social Security taxes. Would it be a such a terrible thing to give people a way to do this good work legally? Bad laws reward bad behavior. Good laws reward good behavior. Our current immigration policy is one of the worst laws we have.
The second they break our laws to be here they demonstrate a belief that we owe them something. We don't. It's that simple.
An analogy can be made to your private residence. It doesn't matter if I'm the nicest most hard-working guy in the world. If you tell me that I am not welcome in your home, I don't get to stay there against your wishes because I think I should be allowed to. The term for that is trespassing. The fact that I'm willing to do your yardwork and landscaping doesn't override your wishes as the homeowner. If you think my work is valuable and decide to allow me on premises, you may do so, but I don't have the right to demand that you make that decision.
It's the same thing when a sovereign nation decides who is and is not welcome in their territory and on what terms they may be there. The problem lies in the people who don't respect its wishes and break its laws. Any good traits they have like paying taxes or doing work is completely irrelevant. I don't have the right to break the immigration laws of a sovereign nation no matter how great of a person I think I may be.
Furthermore, it's completely pathological to insist on being where you're not wanted.
Yup. Although on the plus side it is probably a good thing that people who actually contribute to society and progress are being talked about with such interest.
Agreed, though I draw a distinction here between discussion about their professional achievements and contributions, versus their private personal lives. One is useful and productive and can lead the appreciation of real advancements made by truly talented people. The other is just gossip and demeans everyone involved. It dishonors the famous person by trivializing them into just another spectacle.
Pity such attention is usually focused on people who sing songs and abuse substances but still manage to get paid huge sums for their dubious efforts.
Empty people with little significant meaning or enduring purpose in their lives can't help but to love, in an unhealthy way, those who entertain/amuse them and make them feel better about themselves. It's why the entertainment isn't enough; they have to form a cult of celebrity around the entertainer. They do that because they are looking for a more refined form of their opiate.
As I like to say it, "you can only be addicted to a poison". So this tends to happen with singers and drug abusers who are terrible role models and not with truly outstanding citizens who have really advanced society with their contributions. By comparison to them, the doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous figure. He or she won't appeal to the empty masses quite like the people who have it all and still manage to lead some fucked up lives.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry for the second reply but I think a good point can be made here.
First of all, I clearly stated I didn't agree with the actions of Anonymous. That hardly qualifies as "cheering". I merely find it predictable cause-and-effect and the only surprise I see in the whole situation is that such things haven't happened more frequently. Also, to the best of my knowledge, Anonymous performed a bunch of very irritating, costly, and time-wasting activities but did not use actual violence. So I will use the term "mob action".
The best way to cause mob action is to either do nothing at all or perform only slap-on-the-wrist sanctions against an entity with (in my opinion) a long track record of repeated abuses of one kind or another. That's what allows for the possibility of a mob to form that thinks the job was left undone and that they should do something about it since no one else is going to.
The whole point of a justice system is so that the people can see that justice was done by the proper officials, that the matter has been settled and needs no further response. Fail to achieve that and what you will find is that the difference between decent people and bad people is that decent people will wait longer before taking matters into their own hands. Right or wrong, this is quite predictable.
There's a seemingly small but significant difference. Usually "regulation" connotes guidelines for a practice that you do want to allow, but need to place boundaries on, like trading stocks or selling pharmaceuticals. Whereas standard law enforcement usually concerns practices you don't want to allow at all, like fraud and theft.
That's why there was only one item I actually filed under the heading of "regulation" in my previous post. That would be a simple law stating that ISPs and carriers may not discriminate on the basis of destination or origin. This would be a regulation, as we do want ISPs to transmit IP packets and this rule would set boundaries on how they may do so. Every other concern mentioned was either basic law enforcement or the difference between a responsible admin and an incompetent admin.
Speaking only for myself, I think that's a reasonable distinction that can be objectively applied. It neatly avoids any concerns about whether I happen to like something. You can have excessive law enforcement just as you can have excessive regulation. While I like to call things what they are, neither excess is desirable.
That's what securing your systems is for. The toughest possible law in the USA against unauthorized entry/access won't stop someone outside your jurisdiction doing this as the Internet is a global network. You take resonable steps to secure your systems or you're an irresponsible admin, it really is that simple. For better or for worse, no law is going to change that.
Supposing the person is within jurisdiction, existing libel laws would already cover this. The medium (newspaper, TV, Web site) should be irrelevant. If they are out of your jurisdiction, what were you going to do about that anyway?
That's fraud and/or theft. The medium should be irrelevant.
No discrimination on the basis of destination or origin sounds good to me. For the reactionary types out there who like to knee-jerk, traffic shaping that prioritizes traffic type such as VOIP does not need to consider the destination or origin.
I like that better than excessive government control. I'm not going to say that such things are perfectly fine. They aren't. They just aren't as bad as the immense distrust the federal government has soundly earned.
Incidentally, if you refer to an attack Anonymous made against a certain "church" then it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people. While I don't agree with the methods used, some groups seem to think they're untouchable and an occasional reminder that they aren't isn't a completely bad thing.
To be fair, the article on MIT's site is dated "September 7, 2010." Naturally the only logical conclusion for the dupe is that MIT News hired some Slashdot editors.
That's not possible. The grammar of MIT's articles is far too good. It doesn't contain spelling errors that a basic spellchecker would have fixed. It doesn't have links to stories that are behind a paywall when freely accessible ones are also available. It doesn't needlessly link to someone's blog when articles a bit closer to the primary source are readily available. If it has the occasional blatant factual error that the slightest and most basic fact-checking would have corrected, this remains to be demonstrated.
To reiterate, there's no possibility that MIT News has hired some Slashdot editors. They probably list "ability and willingness to run a quick automated spellchecker" and "familiarity with English grammar" as requirements for their editors. They have little incentive to engage in the other practices I listed.
Incidentally, it's not an instance of a "grammar nazi" when you expect paid professionals who call themselves "editors" to either correctly and consistently use basic spelling and grammar or, failing that, call themselves something other than "editors." Maybe "reposters" would be a good title. The standard and the expectations are higher for "editors" who draw a wage. It's not the same situation as the Slashdot users who post for leisure and are nit-picked over issues of grammar.
I assure you that if there is a pandemic, poor and minorities will be the hardest hit. (or so the papers will tell us, anyway).
I propose that's mostly because they tend to live in the most population-dense urban areas. Those are definitely the last places you want to be if the shit hits the fan. Among lots of other reasons, there are many more people in such areas than the amount of food that could be grown on that land. If people start dying like flies due to a real pandemic (not this avian flu bullshit) the steady supply lines that keep dense cities fed will be immediately disrupted.
On a more opinion-based note, I have visited very large cities and I never understood the appeal. They all look like concrete shitholes to me, with people who are ruder and more pushy than anywhere else. I find them spiritually suffocating. Skyscrapers and neon lights never impressed me remotely enough to make up for that.
While this sounds nice theoretically, you would be amazed at the amount of horrible damage one idiot could cause in a single year.
I greatly prefer the horrible damage caused by genuine temporary idiocy to the immeasurable damage caused by carefully calculated incompetence in the style of "Problem, Reaction, Solution" currently perpetrated ad nauseum by our ruling class. Any day. Without question. No contest about it.
That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths.
Silly me! i thought it was a requirement.
A decadent and/or broken people won't allow reasonable people to rule. Children of divorce are unlikely to respect them. Reasonable people won't give them the phony sense of worth (the one that comes from "us and them") that they want, so reasonable people won't appeal to them. They aren't sexy. They haven't spent a good portion of their lives learning how to manipulate and market and tell you what you want to hear (how to cater to your base nature, your ego). They haven't mastered the art of doing one thing while saying another while pretending like there is no hypocrisy in it, while lying to you with a straight face as though nothing were amiss. Reasonable people don't have glitter and pizzaz and charisma. They just have their reason.
Reasonable people are outgunned, out-classed and out-ruthlessed (if such can be a word) by those who will say or do anything, absolutely anything to get your support. Reasonable people won't whore themselves out to the highest bidder, to appeal to the most powerful. They tend to be anonymous and/or marginalized. They tend not to make a big production, a huge public spectacle, of their reason. They just see what is right and do it according to their reason.
So yeah, sociopathy is a requirement when most of the electorate is governed by fear, ego, gratification, and a failure to be fulfilled by the way they live their own private lives. It's a requirement when so many families are broken and so many people are so overwhelmed by their own existence that they cannot see beyond their own immediate personal concerns. It's a requirement when politics becomes all about charisma and allure and not about sound policy rooted in solid reason. Most of all, it's a requirement when government has become totally out of control and unaccountable to the people and this is accepted as normal.
Like I said, the cure is prevention. Otherwise it's a very large downward spiral from there. Otheriwse it gets much, much worse before it has a hope of getting even slightly better. Once these self-reinforcing, feedback-loop processes are set in motion, it's hell itself to have a chance at breaking their momentum and returning to something more... well, reasonable.
I'm confident the leaders of major world powers wouldn't ever have to die for their ideology. The days of the king having the balls to lead his troops into war and have his sons fight alongside him are long over. No, they'd be sheltered in a bunker somewhere with years and years of stored non-perishable supplies.
It is the general population that would die. As there is no political power or tax money to be obtained from a mass of dead people, the leaders would lose the only things they ever cared about. It would possibly be a fate worse than death for them. That's why they displayed some rationality when confronted with concepts like Mutually Assured Destruction.
Right there you seem to acknowledge yourself that sustained ignorance of how to build such weapons is not a long-term solution. It must be assumed that at some point some very dangerous and very crazy people are going to obtain a nuke. Keeping such information out of their hands serves only one purpose and that is to buy us time. We should be using that time to come up with better long-term solutions, like detecting the facilities used to build such things or tracking the transportation of the required materials or rendering non-fissile as much nuclear material as possible.
That assumes that everyone is equally rational, which we know is not the case. It would only take one psychopath to end the world and laugh as everything around him burned to the ground.
That's why you don't give political power to psychopaths. The preferred cure is prevention. If they somehow achieve power and show signs of being psychopaths, and nuclear weapons might be involved, then the people of Venezuela should understand that sometimes a rabid dog needs to be put down.
It's not like there is any shortage of politicians. There are plenty more where that one came from.
A better long-term solution would be to institute a system like the US Constitution except that all political offices are limited to one short term, assigned by lottery from a random selection of all adult citizens, and conducted like a military draft in that refusing to serve could result in imprisonment. Anyone who has ever held office at any level of government is disqualified from ever being selected again either voluntarily or involuntarily. There would still be popular elections occurring at every quarter of a term of office (so every year if it's a 4-year term), but they'd be for the purpose of deciding whether someone holding office should be removed prematurely and replaced by a new random selection. Corporations and organizations would be strictly forbidden from participating in this process at any level, backed by the penalty of having the entity dissolved and all assets seized and sold off at auction. That's because with the elimination of a need to campaign, any participation by them must be corruption and cannot be called a *wink wink nudge nudge* campaign contribution.
Maybe that idea is flawed and maybe it isn't. The point though is to remove "politician" as a career and to recognize that the people who want power so badly that they'll campaign, accept corruption, etc. in order to obtain it are not to be trusted with it. It would remove the notion of a ruling class and replace it with a notion of civic duty, much like the way we view jury duty. I think what we'd find is that average working people are not eager to obtain nuclear weapons and play silly games based around flirting with utter destruction.
Reading comprehension? or perhaps it required writing clarity. If you want to insert sarcastic remarks, how about i insert a remark on good manners. When complaining about what Palm did, why link in MSFT? Or is it just a goal to take a free kick at MSFT whenever some other company does something he thinks is stupid.
"Sounds like" means "reminds me of [this other thing]" or "is analogous to". The failure to understand that is indeed a matter of reading comprehension.
Now, I said that tongue-in-cheek, another thing you apparently did not comprehend. That's why I said "insert sarcastic remark here" instead of actually making a sarcastic remark. If you are that easily offended and your skin is that thin, you may want to reconsider participating in open Internet forums.
And for what it's worth, Microsoft is no angel. Microsoft has indeed done a non-zero number of stupid things. The GP post likened what he perceived as Palm's stuidity to what he perceived as Microsoft's stupidity. Either prove right now beyond a possible doubt that Microsoft has never ever done a stupid thing during its entire existence, or admit that there's nothing wrong with saying so. See my point?
Palmpilot wasn't from MSFT. It was from Palm.
Thus the AC said it "sounds like" a Microsoft practice. That means this practice by Palm reminded him/her of another practice by Microsoft.
Insert sarcastic remark like "reading comprehension is your friend" here.
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
It's all too rare that I get a reply that is so useful, relevant, and informative. I was aware of most of these practices (in fact I consider the crisis to be engineered in the style of the Hegelian dialectic -- one must engage in both "follow the money" and "follow the cronyism/power") but nowhere have I seen it summed up so succinctly. Thank you for that sir.
Just wondering.
Are you advocating more regulation? Wasn't the sub prime meltdown the result of too much regulation in the wrong area? Instead of regulating prudence, the government basically forced banks to support untenable inner city mortgages which should have never been approved in the first place.
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages and did not force banks to give out loans to people who were high risk.
It's more a question of what kind of regulation is in place.
The subprime deal was the wrong kind. It was based on some abstract idea of "fairness". That idea wasn't even self-consistent because no one is born with a poor credit history. They had the chance to be responsible with their money and to punctually repay any debts they incurred and have demonstrated a track record of overextending themselves and failing to do so. "Fair" would mean let them sleep in the bed they have made for themselves and, if they so choose, work towards a higher credit score until such time that they are credit-worthy for a mortgage. That would be objective fairness.
Regulation was used to enforce a subjective fairness based on some idealized fairy-tale notion of how things should be that had little contact with reality. It caused massive credit to be issued to people who were not credit-worthy. It led to failures that should have been predictable.
Regulation can also be used to clearly define business practices which are abusive or unsound based on objective criteria. I am not familiar with Canadian businesses but from your description it sounds like that's what happened there. It's not so much a matter of "more" or "less" regulation. It's a matter of "just enough" of the right kind.
I don't know if the insistence on dividing all of political thought into a one-dimensional line defined by "left" and "right" is solely responsible for encouraging and legitimizing this either-or type of thinking, but it tends towards myopia.
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
They still have competition. You can get other devices that use other platforms. That's true for iPhones and it's also true for iPads, especially if the tasks for which you would use a tablet can be done on a netbook. In any case, there is a market here that they could price themselves out of. They don't wish to shoot themselves in the foot, that's all. At this point it's not evidence of some kind of benevolence, though it doesn't rule that out either. It's merely consistent with the business practices that have gotten them to where they are today.
The equation doesn't change until and unless they obtain a monopoly on such a market that is comparable to the dominance of Windows on the desktop.
Additionally I'm not sure if it would be "price gouging" when it's a luxury item and the customers knew or could easily have informed themselves that they were investing in a platform that is not open and is under the control of a single vendor. Those who really care about this possibility tend to insist on open platforms that are not subject to vendorlock.
In other words, they are throwing more hardware at the problem (graphics cards AND multiple processor cores) instead of actually producing a faster or more resource efficient browser. Anyone else read that the same way?
The resources present in a PC that can run Windows 6.x Aero include multiple cores and an integrated stream processor (also called a GPU). So yes, IE is being more efficient by using the resources that are there instead of ignoring them.
This word "efficiency" ... it does not mean what you think it means. Hint: they increased the speed but the way they did so gives no reason to believe that they have improved the efficiency. It's abundantly possible that they have worsened it, in fact.
IE may still be the slowest browser in terms of the quality of its code and its failure to avoid bloat. It's just that now it can place more of a burden on the hardware to make up for this. I mean, the GPU *and* multiple cores? That damned well better be faster than a single-threaded/single-process browser with no GPU acceleration. That still doesn't say anything about efficiency or code quality.
Bottom line: if other browsers started using the same resources, would IE still be the slowest? Because you can expect it's only a matter of time before most browsers start doing this or at least offer the option, and many of them will do so in a cross-platform way. Where's the reason to believe that IE is inherently better or more well-designed, that any speed advantage it enjoys now isn't merely a transient and meaningless effect of implementing this idea first?
I'm really hoping that IE9 brings Internet Explorer up to speed and injects some more competition into the browser wars. Still, due to the stigma put on IE, gaining back market share will be tough...
One thing amused me. In a way the story or at least the summary is doublespeak. If so, it won't be helping that stigma:
In other words, they are throwing more hardware at the problem (graphics cards AND multiple processor cores) instead of actually producing a faster or more resource efficient browser. Anyone else read that the same way?
Are you dense? "Our" is the majority rule of the citizens and taxpayers who have expressed their will through electing representatives in our republic. "Our" is the overwhelming popular support laws like Arizona's have every single time they are put to a referendum (that is, a vote in which citizens can participate), laws that by the way only seek to enforce existing federal laws.
If it isn't our land then you don't own your home, since after all it is the government and its police power that would protect your home from anyone who tried to take it away from you. Likewise it is the government and its police power that is supposed to protect our national borders.
If you can get over your emotionalism long enough to stop asking me stupid questions, you might start advocating that our immigration laws be changed. Until then, yes it's our land and yes I don't want criminals coming here.
Is this a joke? Because I can't believe you think an analogy to Rosa Parks is good argumentation. It's just emotional fluff.
I'll easily explain that for you. Racism is inherently wrong. There is no justification for it. A country protecting its borders is not inherently wrong. There is plenty of justification for it.
We can "what if" all day. For that matter, what about all the illegals who are involved in the drug cartels and conducting drug, gun, and even human trafficking? We should tolerate that because the next good programmer *might possibly* come about? Please. I can make up scenarios with no evidence too, I just don't use them to justify my arguments.
If that's true, then Mexico has serious problems that the Mexican people need to solve. That doesn't give them the right to break our laws.
You're doing a good job of exposing the lack of rational basis for the supporters of illegal immigration. This is the kind of faux "reasoning" that justifies such a belief because there is no real justification for it. If there were a solid basis for supporting illegal immigration you'd use that instead of wasting time with this non-logic. It's a great example of people who form an emotional belief and then try to rationalize it, rather than letting solid rationality determine what they believe. Cart before horse.
What makes us responsible for their lot in life?
If we are responsible for that, then why do we discriminate? Why stop at the Mexicans? Why not assume the full burden of the entire human population which is downtrodden in some way and wants a better life elsewhere? It would be hard but hey, we could find some way to fit a few more billion people into the continental USA. Then you'd feel really good about yourself, right?
I'm betting that if you were having money troubles, you would not approach your slightly wealthier neighbor and demand that this is his problem and tell him that whether he wants to or not, he's going to help you out. I'm guessing you understand why that would be wrong. What makes this so acceptable to you on a national scale? The fact that the effects are spread out among large numbers of people? That changes the fundamental right-and-wrong of it for you?
Literally nobody in this subthread has claimed any of that. Good job Jose!
What they have claimed is that it's okay for people to come here illegally, that there's anything wrong with opposing this, that it's our fault for having immigration laws and not the fault of those who break them, and otherwise that there is a moral equivalence between the sovereign nation that has immigration laws over its own territory and those who break those laws whenever convenient.
All of those are false. All of those revolve around an entitlement mentality. You have to look at the essence, at what's behind those ideas, to understand the mentality that drives them. Or you can be willfully blind to that and think that your bit of sarcasm there overrides the point I was making. Your call.
And yet, for their credit, they have done nothing to stop people from leaving. That's better than quite certain states can boast.
There's more to it than that. The Mexican government has been known to actually provide information to assist its citizens who want to enter the US illegally. That isn't because their motives are great and altruistic. It's because many of those illegal aliens want to earn money in the USA and then send it back to Mexico, enhancing the Mexican economy.
Is it such a surprise that Mexican politicians won't take action to stop activities that effectively transfer wealth from the USA to Mexico? I don't care what language they speak; politicians are politicians.
The difference is that those people weren't breaking our laws to be here. Additionally, they came to America because they wanted to be Americans. They were willing to learn our language, follow our laws, and participate in our culture. It was the "great melting pot". The German immigrants did not insist that our signs and documents be written in both English and German. The Chinese immigrants did not insist that our signs and documents be written in both English and Chinese. They knew they were moving to an English-speaking country and expected to adapt because they were reasonable and didn't possess the sense of entitlement you see so much of today.
The selfish ones are the people who insist on being here against our wishes. An analogy to the personal level makes this easier to illustrate: who's the selfish one -- the uninvited trespasser or the homeowner who asks him to leave? I'd say the trespasser is the selfish one, and if you disagree then surely you'd have no problem letting anyone occupy your home anytime they want even against your wishes? What's against our interests is to ignore all of the trespassers on a national scale and all of the problems they are causing.
And at the end of that process USA will become a 'regular' country like Belarus or North Korea, where people will be desperate to sneak out instead of in.
I'll state up-front that I disagree with you. However, I'm willing to listen to you and entertain your idea but I need more information. Why do you think that would be the outcome?
I'll make one correction to my previous statement. When I said that proof of citizenship should be required, I should have said "proof of citizenship or proof that you are here legally, i.e. a green card". If someone has come here legally, followed and respected our laws, then I have no problem with them or their children going to a public school. For natural-born citizens, a driver's license should be good enough for most purposes.
I believe that what I mentioned is reasonable. Many countries have an official national language; it does not seem to cause their destruction. The idea that benefits like welfare which are provided by the taxpaying citizens of the country should be limited to those who are here legally doesn't sound unduly harsh to me. And when I, a natural-born citizen, apply for a job at any company, I am expected to provide documents like a Social Security card in addition to forms of ID such as my driver's license and/or a birth certificate. That's been no problem for me and I don't consider it some horribly oppressive burden.
So if these ideas are inherently unreasonable, or could not be implemented in a reasonable way, can you demonstrate why that is true?
The lazy ones *do* stay the fuck out. It is the hard-working ones who try repeatedly to get into the country. To work hard, better their family, improve our cities and economy, and pay our Social Security taxes. Would it be a such a terrible thing to give people a way to do this good work legally? Bad laws reward bad behavior. Good laws reward good behavior. Our current immigration policy is one of the worst laws we have.
The second they break our laws to be here they demonstrate a belief that we owe them something. We don't. It's that simple.
An analogy can be made to your private residence. It doesn't matter if I'm the nicest most hard-working guy in the world. If you tell me that I am not welcome in your home, I don't get to stay there against your wishes because I think I should be allowed to. The term for that is trespassing. The fact that I'm willing to do your yardwork and landscaping doesn't override your wishes as the homeowner. If you think my work is valuable and decide to allow me on premises, you may do so, but I don't have the right to demand that you make that decision.
It's the same thing when a sovereign nation decides who is and is not welcome in their territory and on what terms they may be there. The problem lies in the people who don't respect its wishes and break its laws. Any good traits they have like paying taxes or doing work is completely irrelevant. I don't have the right to break the immigration laws of a sovereign nation no matter how great of a person I think I may be.
Furthermore, it's completely pathological to insist on being where you're not wanted.
Agreed, though I draw a distinction here between discussion about their professional achievements and contributions, versus their private personal lives. One is useful and productive and can lead the appreciation of real advancements made by truly talented people. The other is just gossip and demeans everyone involved. It dishonors the famous person by trivializing them into just another spectacle.
Empty people with little significant meaning or enduring purpose in their lives can't help but to love, in an unhealthy way, those who entertain/amuse them and make them feel better about themselves. It's why the entertainment isn't enough; they have to form a cult of celebrity around the entertainer. They do that because they are looking for a more refined form of their opiate.
As I like to say it, "you can only be addicted to a poison". So this tends to happen with singers and drug abusers who are terrible role models and not with truly outstanding citizens who have really advanced society with their contributions. By comparison to them, the doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous figure. He or she won't appeal to the empty masses quite like the people who have it all and still manage to lead some fucked up lives.