Well, your ku-klux brethren commenting anonymously all around here have pretty much shown us that you have no moral basis to stand on and your "christian 10 commandments" banning you from lying aren't something you follow.
So excuse me if I don't take your falsehoods here any more seriously than I do theirs. "Christians", feh.... liars, scammers, and delusional frauds.
Actually, the problem is that "being gay" is really a choice, but only a few ultra-honest gays will actually admit that.
Whether that choice is something that society wants to promote and give benefits to (e.g. preferential treatment, tax benefits, etc) is a matter of serious debate in the US and in Europe, not so much in other countries around the world (for instance, go to a Muslim country and you're likely to be thrown in jail just for discussing it in public).
Pro-homosexuality advocates want to claim it's not a choice. They want to claim it's "inherent" because if it is, then they can claim to be a "protected class." If it's a choice, then they don't get to be a protected class any more than someone who makes bad lifestyle choices and becomes obese.
Since it is a choice, there are a large number of parents that don't want their kids recruited to. They don't want their kids told at school "this is an acceptable choice" any more than they'd be okay with their kids being told that being a drug user is an acceptable choice, or being a homeless drunk bum is an "acceptable lifestyle choice", or any other of a thousand things that are "lifestyle choices" that are not very good and not something the majority of society wants to see promoted. And these people have as much right as any other Amazon user to complain when they see what they view as inappropriate material being promoted.
Do I think Amazon was responding to genuine complaints about these books coming up in unrelated searches? Definitely. Do I then think that the usual pro-homosexuality groups pitched a fit and tried to raise a stink? Absolutely. Do I think Amazon was caught in the middle of a crappy culture-war style situation? That's an easy bet to take.
Ask yourself a simple question: if homosexuality were not a choice, why are the two most common insults directed at anyone who is against public promotion of homosexuality "well you must be in the closet" and "you must be afraid you'll try it and like it"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.
I'd trust this story a whole lot more if Slashdot had quoted the actual newspaper article rather than the frothing partisan political hackblogger's "report."
It appears that the case is not about the "Libel" of the email itself, but the fact that Staples chose (in violation of Staples' own privacy agreements, not to mention plenty of legal precedence on things like negative employment references that are the reason most companies will only give "Name, Position, Term of Service" reference these days) to not just fire the employee, but theoretically subject them to public ridicule by the manner of the firing.
And NY does have a law on the books about this sort of thing, no doubt a result of someone(s) prior to 1902 (the date of the law being on the books) having done nasty enough things to an employee(s) that the NY legislature found it necessary to amend their law to protect employees from that sort of conduct in the future.
I think someone is confusing the ability to file a lawsuit with what is considered a defense.
Though this is a basic problem of the US legal system - big corporations (MafiAA) routinely get away with lawyer-hammering someone with illegitimate lawsuits that they never should win, merely because the defendant can't afford all the court/lawyer fees necessary to defend themselves.
Reverse is also true: a large number of US workers are consistently being looked over for being "overqualified" after being dumped onto the market in favor of more and more H1-B's the past few years.
Consider the following: if you are married, if you have more than 5 years experience, you are more likely to (a) be fired and (b) be passed over for a "new grad" or H1-B.
Why? Benefits and pay grade. H1-B's at companies like Microsoft have been the latest in a series of BELL-like maneuvers (look up Continental Can Co. and the "Bell Plan" if you want to understand how insidious this kind of behavior is) by major US firms.
Up until they started announcing layoffs, Microsoft was pushing for more and more H1-B's. It's not that there weren't very qualified US workers applying for those jobs, but that they didn't want to pay the market wage for people with real experience when they could pay the H1-B's less AND get away with forcing the H1-B's to work 80-90 hour weeks because they wouldn't have family back home to complain about it.
What's the point of being consistent with a flawed methodology?
Al Gore. James Hansen. And all the other Climate Frauds who insist that (a) the sky is falling and (b) "man-made global climate change" is something we need to pay them a bunch of money to do nothing about.
Remember: Al Gore's supposed "carbon neutral businesses" are that way because he's in the business of selling so-called "carbon credits." Absent the "sky is falling" hype, as paraded by his faux documentary the Inconvenient Lie (which was actually LESS scientifically accurate than the movie The Day After Tomorrow, and we all know how accurate that was), nobody would pay money to Gore's little scam.
Using the new data would expose the fraud, which would screw the agenda of the kooks trying to use "global climate change" to scare us into paying them scam money and doing things that aren't necessary.
- Bullshit, it was plain sharpie ink (you can tell by the smell). Shit takes forever to get out of your skin. There is nothing "super secret" about it. And they were using it for plenty of stamp varieties.
Second, this is not a "my friend had this happen" story. I was FUCKING THERE, you shithead.
Have seen it happen, actually - we were on a vacation in Vegas and a friend of mine won 10 straight hands in a row at blackjack. He wasn't "card counting", he's not that smart - he was just lucky enough to be dealt 19+ every hand (he got three facecard+ace combos, the "upside" of the multi-deck shoe), and the dealer was getting to 17 and staying.
The pit bosses came down to the table with two bouncers, took his chips, dragged him to the office, "asked him questions" for an hour while the rest of us were wondering what to do and if we should call the cops. Then they pushed him out, marched him over, made him cash out his chips, and forced him to accept a "banned from blackjack" stamp on his hand before they'd let him go back to his room. Took a whole week and five good scrubbings with shop soap (the orange pumice stuff) for that mark to go away, his boss looked at him REALLY funny the first day back after vacation before hearing the story.
Really, wow - Casinos do cheat. The info on what they do (like stacking 10 decks to the 'shoe', rigging up the odds on the slot machines and dice games, etc) is available all over the net.
Gotta wonder, how many casino employees did it take logging in to find the mod points to call an honest and insightful post "flamebait"?
I was. Tacvek is right, our local one is called "EZTag", though they keep talking about how they want to "link" the local system with other municipalities like Dallas.
You're joking, right? The DMCA was a horrid idea, just like the eternal "copyright extensions" (which should have been unconstitutional as ex post facto law changes anyways) the content cartels have been buying constantly.
Think about it. Mickey Mouse - or at least Steamboat Willie, the cartoon - should have passed into the public domain DECADES ago. Meanwhile, Disney rapes and pillages the public domain with impunity; if you want to make an animated or live-action Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast, or anything else they've already done be prepared for their army of lawyers to start screaming "it's too similar, shut them down" even if you follow the original plotlines of the story/book in question.
What happened was that there was no attempt made to stop companies misusing it
Bullshit. DRM rapes the public domain AND tries to take away the fair-use rights of consumers at the same time.
Under fair use, I have the right to make a backup copy of something I purchased. There are MANY reasons to do this - fire/flood concerns, degradation of the original media (DVD's scratch, tapes wear out, etc), and of course the ever-present Small Children and My Dog That Likes To Chew On Things problems.
Under fair use, I also have the right to space-shift and time-shift content. Broadcast over the airwaves, but I'm out to dinner? No problem. Set a VCR up with a timer, watch it later. Archive it for posterity. Want to convert it for iPod, or PSP, or something else that's portable? I have the right to do so. The next round of "DRM" will be trying to push the so-called "broadcast flag" into the shortly-only-available-variety Digital TV broadcasts, which will require either (a) a recorder that ignores the flag or (b) the goodwill of the broadcaster. This is a fundamental shift that will wholly strip away people's ability to, say, record the sunday Packers game for later because they're busy volunteering as an adult chaperon for a church retreat.
With DRM, I am prevented from exercising my fair-use rights for perfectly legitimate reasons. Prior to the DMCA, if I could figure out a way around it (such as a Macrovision Stripper for VHS), I was able to get my rights back.
After the DMCA, no dice. I committed a "crime" doing what was necessary to exercise my legal right to safeguard what I had purchased.
The DMCA itself was a bad idea. Anyone who says differently needs to be slapped repeatedly.
If the money is being poured into some politician's slush fund, sure that's a problem, but reasonable use fees are exactly what's called for her.
It's always the slush fund. Houston, TX had a "toll road project" that was supposed to end the toll roads 10 years after the beltway was completed. How did they get around it? They put one little "spur" of 1/4 mile off the edge, claimed it was supposed to "eventually" be a mile long, and deliberately left it unfinished so that they can claim the project is "not completed."
Meanwhile the state funding that was SUPPOSED to be going to widening TX-290 in Houston? Oh yeah, that got embezzled to pay for lobbying efforts on the NAFTA superhighway project that nobody wanted.
Point being: it's always the slush fund that the toll road money goes to.
The other thing we have in Houston now? They did away with the posted signage telling you how much the toll is. If you drive round the beltway and you have an "EZPass", you have absolutely no idea how much money you were charged until you get your monthly statement. There are no signs saying what the toll is to get on, No early-warning with "free exits" right before each big pay-plaza, and the only way you're going to find out the toll price is by going through the pay booth and asking the attendant.
And of course there are certain areas (Westpark Tollway) that you're ONLY allowed onto if you have an EZPass. I wound up buying an EZPass just as a defensive measure because of the number of times cops have been caught forcing people over into the exit-only lane onto that toll road since it was built.
Go through those gates without a transponder? Massive fine - and there's no appeal process, no way to get before a judge to say "Here's the situation, I couldn't safely get out of the lane, I got to the first available exit but they've put a toll reader before that exit." It's all a revenue scam, nothing more.
And that the states each use different voting machine setups, each with their own error rates.
And the sheer logistics of trying to do a "national" recount - look at the amount of vote fraud pulled by the Franken camp in Minnesota - 25 counties that now show more votes than voters, selective recounting of Dem-heavy districts, fraud trying to "certify" the election even while significant challenges existed and some counties hadn't even finished their processes yet... now imagine trying to nationally recount the "national popular vote" while dealing with the fact that every state (and in some states, even different counties) have different counting standards, different voting machinery with higher or lower error rates...
Slashdot Mirror
"However, I submit that it's not false witness if the editing was not manipulative or intended to be misleading,"
But it was. So you're a liar, a fraud, and if you're a "christian", we can just admit all christians are liars and worthless frauds.
Well, your ku-klux brethren commenting anonymously all around here have pretty much shown us that you have no moral basis to stand on and your "christian 10 commandments" banning you from lying aren't something you follow.
So excuse me if I don't take your falsehoods here any more seriously than I do theirs. "Christians", feh.... liars, scammers, and delusional frauds.
Wow.
This is the first time I've seen an honest and thought-provoking post get a nasty downmod stream like that.
I wonder how many gay activists got mod points and went "OMG SOMEONE TOLD THE TRUTH STOP THEM" tonight?
Actually, the problem is that "being gay" is really a choice, but only a few ultra-honest gays will actually admit that.
Whether that choice is something that society wants to promote and give benefits to (e.g. preferential treatment, tax benefits, etc) is a matter of serious debate in the US and in Europe, not so much in other countries around the world (for instance, go to a Muslim country and you're likely to be thrown in jail just for discussing it in public).
Pro-homosexuality advocates want to claim it's not a choice. They want to claim it's "inherent" because if it is, then they can claim to be a "protected class." If it's a choice, then they don't get to be a protected class any more than someone who makes bad lifestyle choices and becomes obese.
Since it is a choice, there are a large number of parents that don't want their kids recruited to. They don't want their kids told at school "this is an acceptable choice" any more than they'd be okay with their kids being told that being a drug user is an acceptable choice, or being a homeless drunk bum is an "acceptable lifestyle choice", or any other of a thousand things that are "lifestyle choices" that are not very good and not something the majority of society wants to see promoted. And these people have as much right as any other Amazon user to complain when they see what they view as inappropriate material being promoted.
Do I think Amazon was responding to genuine complaints about these books coming up in unrelated searches? Definitely. Do I then think that the usual pro-homosexuality groups pitched a fit and tried to raise a stink? Absolutely. Do I think Amazon was caught in the middle of a crappy culture-war style situation? That's an easy bet to take.
Ask yourself a simple question: if homosexuality were not a choice, why are the two most common insults directed at anyone who is against public promotion of homosexuality "well you must be in the closet" and "you must be afraid you'll try it and like it"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.
No shit.
If you've ever listened to NPR, they're further left than the rabid frothing Keith Olbermann.
That's what you get for your tax dollars, folks - something that's not even CLOSE to honest or middle of the road.
I'd trust this story a whole lot more if Slashdot had quoted the actual newspaper article rather than the frothing partisan political hackblogger's "report."
Additional: Regarding the Massachusetts case
It appears that the case is not about the "Libel" of the email itself, but the fact that Staples chose (in violation of Staples' own privacy agreements, not to mention plenty of legal precedence on things like negative employment references that are the reason most companies will only give "Name, Position, Term of Service" reference these days) to not just fire the employee, but theoretically subject them to public ridicule by the manner of the firing.
And NY does have a law on the books about this sort of thing, no doubt a result of someone(s) prior to 1902 (the date of the law being on the books) having done nasty enough things to an employee(s) that the NY legislature found it necessary to amend their law to protect employees from that sort of conduct in the future.
I think someone is confusing the ability to file a lawsuit with what is considered a defense.
Though this is a basic problem of the US legal system - big corporations (MafiAA) routinely get away with lawyer-hammering someone with illegitimate lawsuits that they never should win, merely because the defendant can't afford all the court/lawyer fees necessary to defend themselves.
GPP got "insightful", PP got "flamebait" - further proof Slashdot's modding system is just broken, abused, and worthless.
Reverse is also true: a large number of US workers are consistently being looked over for being "overqualified" after being dumped onto the market in favor of more and more H1-B's the past few years.
Consider the following: if you are married, if you have more than 5 years experience, you are more likely to (a) be fired and (b) be passed over for a "new grad" or H1-B.
Why? Benefits and pay grade. H1-B's at companies like Microsoft have been the latest in a series of BELL-like maneuvers (look up Continental Can Co. and the "Bell Plan" if you want to understand how insidious this kind of behavior is) by major US firms.
Up until they started announcing layoffs, Microsoft was pushing for more and more H1-B's. It's not that there weren't very qualified US workers applying for those jobs, but that they didn't want to pay the market wage for people with real experience when they could pay the H1-B's less AND get away with forcing the H1-B's to work 80-90 hour weeks because they wouldn't have family back home to complain about it.
Except neil armstrong would not step onto the moon and then start spamming the chat channels with "HOW I MINE FOR FISH? HOW I MINE FOR FISH?"
sustained - jury will disregard
ROFLMAO, if you think that a jury actually DOES disregard things like that, you're a loon.
What's the point of being consistent with a flawed methodology?
Al Gore. James Hansen. And all the other Climate Frauds who insist that (a) the sky is falling and (b) "man-made global climate change" is something we need to pay them a bunch of money to do nothing about.
Remember: Al Gore's supposed "carbon neutral businesses" are that way because he's in the business of selling so-called "carbon credits." Absent the "sky is falling" hype, as paraded by his faux documentary the Inconvenient Lie (which was actually LESS scientifically accurate than the movie The Day After Tomorrow, and we all know how accurate that was), nobody would pay money to Gore's little scam.
Using the new data would expose the fraud, which would screw the agenda of the kooks trying to use "global climate change" to scare us into paying them scam money and doing things that aren't necessary.
First:
- Bullshit, it was plain sharpie ink (you can tell by the smell). Shit takes forever to get out of your skin. There is nothing "super secret" about it. And they were using it for plenty of stamp varieties.
Second, this is not a "my friend had this happen" story. I was FUCKING THERE, you shithead.
Tell me, what's your job in the casino?
Go ahead Casino rejects... the truth will be told. You can't downmod insightful, truthful posts forever.
Have seen it happen, actually - we were on a vacation in Vegas and a friend of mine won 10 straight hands in a row at blackjack. He wasn't "card counting", he's not that smart - he was just lucky enough to be dealt 19+ every hand (he got three facecard+ace combos, the "upside" of the multi-deck shoe), and the dealer was getting to 17 and staying.
The pit bosses came down to the table with two bouncers, took his chips, dragged him to the office, "asked him questions" for an hour while the rest of us were wondering what to do and if we should call the cops. Then they pushed him out, marched him over, made him cash out his chips, and forced him to accept a "banned from blackjack" stamp on his hand before they'd let him go back to his room. Took a whole week and five good scrubbings with shop soap (the orange pumice stuff) for that mark to go away, his boss looked at him REALLY funny the first day back after vacation before hearing the story.
Really, wow - Casinos do cheat. The info on what they do (like stacking 10 decks to the 'shoe', rigging up the odds on the slot machines and dice games, etc) is available all over the net.
Gotta wonder, how many casino employees did it take logging in to find the mod points to call an honest and insightful post "flamebait"?
You actually found enough people gullible enough to buy Heavy Gear 2 so that you could make a LAN game out of it?
That's a sad waste of money.
I was. Tacvek is right, our local one is called "EZTag", though they keep talking about how they want to "link" the local system with other municipalities like Dallas.
The DMCA wasn't, in itself, a bad idea.
You're joking, right? The DMCA was a horrid idea, just like the eternal "copyright extensions" (which should have been unconstitutional as ex post facto law changes anyways) the content cartels have been buying constantly.
Think about it. Mickey Mouse - or at least Steamboat Willie, the cartoon - should have passed into the public domain DECADES ago. Meanwhile, Disney rapes and pillages the public domain with impunity; if you want to make an animated or live-action Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast, or anything else they've already done be prepared for their army of lawyers to start screaming "it's too similar, shut them down" even if you follow the original plotlines of the story/book in question.
What happened was that there was no attempt made to stop companies misusing it
Bullshit. DRM rapes the public domain AND tries to take away the fair-use rights of consumers at the same time.
Under fair use, I have the right to make a backup copy of something I purchased. There are MANY reasons to do this - fire/flood concerns, degradation of the original media (DVD's scratch, tapes wear out, etc), and of course the ever-present Small Children and My Dog That Likes To Chew On Things problems.
Under fair use, I also have the right to space-shift and time-shift content. Broadcast over the airwaves, but I'm out to dinner? No problem. Set a VCR up with a timer, watch it later. Archive it for posterity. Want to convert it for iPod, or PSP, or something else that's portable? I have the right to do so. The next round of "DRM" will be trying to push the so-called "broadcast flag" into the shortly-only-available-variety Digital TV broadcasts, which will require either (a) a recorder that ignores the flag or (b) the goodwill of the broadcaster. This is a fundamental shift that will wholly strip away people's ability to, say, record the sunday Packers game for later because they're busy volunteering as an adult chaperon for a church retreat.
With DRM, I am prevented from exercising my fair-use rights for perfectly legitimate reasons. Prior to the DMCA, if I could figure out a way around it (such as a Macrovision Stripper for VHS), I was able to get my rights back.
After the DMCA, no dice. I committed a "crime" doing what was necessary to exercise my legal right to safeguard what I had purchased.
The DMCA itself was a bad idea. Anyone who says differently needs to be slapped repeatedly.
If the money is being poured into some politician's slush fund, sure that's a problem, but reasonable use fees are exactly what's called for her.
It's always the slush fund. Houston, TX had a "toll road project" that was supposed to end the toll roads 10 years after the beltway was completed. How did they get around it? They put one little "spur" of 1/4 mile off the edge, claimed it was supposed to "eventually" be a mile long, and deliberately left it unfinished so that they can claim the project is "not completed."
Meanwhile the state funding that was SUPPOSED to be going to widening TX-290 in Houston? Oh yeah, that got embezzled to pay for lobbying efforts on the NAFTA superhighway project that nobody wanted.
Point being: it's always the slush fund that the toll road money goes to.
The other thing we have in Houston now? They did away with the posted signage telling you how much the toll is. If you drive round the beltway and you have an "EZPass", you have absolutely no idea how much money you were charged until you get your monthly statement. There are no signs saying what the toll is to get on, No early-warning with "free exits" right before each big pay-plaza, and the only way you're going to find out the toll price is by going through the pay booth and asking the attendant.
And of course there are certain areas (Westpark Tollway) that you're ONLY allowed onto if you have an EZPass. I wound up buying an EZPass just as a defensive measure because of the number of times cops have been caught forcing people over into the exit-only lane onto that toll road since it was built.
Go through those gates without a transponder? Massive fine - and there's no appeal process, no way to get before a judge to say "Here's the situation, I couldn't safely get out of the lane, I got to the first available exit but they've put a toll reader before that exit." It's all a revenue scam, nothing more.
Yawn again, seeing the mod abuse continue unabated...
How many left wingnuts got mod points and confused "flamebait" with "uncomfortable truth" this morning?
You're assuming I have a "side."
I'm on the side of fair elections - one in which nobody repeats Boss Tweed's famous "it's not the votes, it's the count, so KEEP COUNTING" scenario.
That's what the Franken camp pulled. You're obviously not on the side of fair elections.
And that the states each use different voting machine setups, each with their own error rates.
And the sheer logistics of trying to do a "national" recount - look at the amount of vote fraud pulled by the Franken camp in Minnesota - 25 counties that now show more votes than voters, selective recounting of Dem-heavy districts, fraud trying to "certify" the election even while significant challenges existed and some counties hadn't even finished their processes yet... now imagine trying to nationally recount the "national popular vote" while dealing with the fact that every state (and in some states, even different counties) have different counting standards, different voting machinery with higher or lower error rates...
And before some moron screams that I'm "lying" about the Franken thing: Wall Street Journal article on it.
I smell a rat. Its name is Franken.