Zimmerman did not and could not have known anything about Martin's previous brushes with the law any more than Mattin could have known Zimmerman was armed unless Zimmerman was brandishing.
Stand your ground does NOT require that you run away, it says you are allowed to use deadly force if you are being put in danger even if you could retreat. Zimmerman was the one who initiated ALL of this. Stand your ground does not allow you to pick a fight and then kill someone when they fight back.
Zimmerman picked the fight by stalking Martin. That is why he should be on trial. It is not a clear cut case of self-defense because it was Zimmerman who set the whole thing in motion.
The only room for question here - the only reason it might be that Zimmerman should be found innocent - is if it is deemed that his literally stalking another human being while armed with a deadly weapon and when it was suggested that he not do so by the police is not seen as sufficient provocation for Martin defending himself under SYG.
Zimmerman was following Martin around and could certainly be considered threatening in that respect. Why can't Trayvon be covered under stand your ground? Had Zimmerman not followed Martin around the incident would not have happened. I've asked this of numerous people who insist Zimmerman was obviously in the right and never got a response.
He should have a trial. He went out of his way to follow Martin and ultimately caused the incident. If he is found to have acted in self defense then good for him. And before anyone says that his life is forever changed - Trayvon is dead and the Martin family lost a loved one. Zimmerman can nut the fuck up and deal with the ramifications of his actions.
I will give you one example of something Writer cannot do:
Work with Word documents that were created using undocumented formatting/features that are only known to Microsoft.
In my work I interact with dozens of different organizations regularly and most all of them use some version of MS Office, and we regularly get stupidly complex documents with a ton of formatting weirdness that works fine in Word but absolutely cannot work in Writer.
Most of the formatting weirdness is completely unnecessary and caused by people abusing the hell out of Word, but it's there, it's a reality, and I have to deal with it frequently enough that it just isn't worth it. And much of the buggy behavior is because Microsoft fucks up their implementation of standards intentionally.
And there's nothing in those documents that, had they been made with Writer originally, couldn't be done, but that's besides the point when you're talking about how things actually get used when shared across multiple workplaces.
Word can handle Word created docs in a way that Writer cannot.
I had to bail on OOo because it didn't interact perfectly with various documents created in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 99% of the time it was fine, but that 1% of the time caused enough headache that I gave up on OOo and just used MS Office. OOo's non-identical nature wound up costing me about 4 hours of work time and teammates another 2-3 hours total of lost productivity in just one instance - that was a cost in lost time of much more than the license would cost.
I can't even migrate my team to a variant of OOo because there are dozens of different teams, agencies, groups and other organizations we deal with regularly and again - 1% of the time weird shit happening unless we have MS Office isn't going to cut it.
So, left with a choice of primarily using OOo (but keeping MS Office around just in case) or just using MS Office alone, it's a no brainer.
I help researchers assess their current processes and see the strengths and weaknesses, then work with them to develop tools to greatly reduce the weaknesses, increase the strengths, and often times build in entirely new capacities.
The way to get anyone onboard with a new system is to find the things they don't like about the current system and how they have to interact with it. They don't want to have to deal with seeing tons of old documents when they want to find new ones? Offer a way that the new system would avoid that.
To get Bob on board, you just have to find out what he doesn't like about the system and what he would fix. Make him an ally in the process. I have had clients who were deathly opposed to me coming in to work on their processes and have found ways to get them over on my side by *gasp* working with them, respecting them, and making it clear that all I want to do is help them be able to take the great stuff they're already doing and make it better/faster/more reliable.
Part of it is a type of salesmanship, getting people to buy into the idea that the time and money it takes to get and learn to use a new system will have solid benefits that vastly outweigh the cost. But if you can't give them a no-brainer value proposition, maybe the system doesn't need to be changed or you might not be the person to do it.
Because they think they need to be more conservative, more hard-line in order to appeal to the religious nuts and hard-core racist wingnuts. Seriously.
If there were a party that was fiscally conservative but didn't hate minorities and spout off bugfuck insane Ayn Rand nonsense they would probably do well.
A republican candidate who didn't repudiate science, go all Jesusy at the drop of a hat, and who was willing to say that fixating on restricting the rights of a tiny (but potent) minority was a waste of fucking time, and who was willing to actually call out wingnuts who acted like assholes would do well.
In fact, he has - Take the D for after his name and look just at his policies and Obama is pretty much an Eisenhower republican with more modersocial sensibilities.
I'm the opposite - unless I aware of some really good judgements I vote against the incumbent.
My thinking is that I live in Chicago and we have very, very, very low judicial turnover; if a sitting judge does manage to lose re-election, that means they must be more than usually corrupt.
I had swype for a year on my evo but either I never got accustomed to it or the software never picked up how I write or I do some weird kind of word shape thing because it would give me - at best - 50% error rates for each word.
There are better databases than Apple has. There are better mapping solutions than Apple has. Apple should have booth what it could and been far ahead of where they are now, and at least as good as most competitors.
Example: TomTom is pretty good. TomTom has a market cap under a billion. Apple had over 10 billion dollars in July of 2012. Apple could have bought TomTom. Apple could have made a very good offer for NavTeq or Teleatlas. Those are all profitable businesses in their own right, and they offer mature products that could have been relatively quickly added in.
My point was that Apple started far behind because they didn't spend. They could have spent - they have the money - but they didn't.
Not everyone finds spending their time geeking out on their phone to be rewarding, interesting, or something they have any real interest in doing. That isn't smoking crack, it's simply a different priority.
Most people limit the amount of cognitive overhead they have to shoulder when it comes to things they don't find terribly interesting or important. In the case of people who prefer a walled garden for their devices, this can be one of those things. One place to go for software, one pace to go for support, and they don't have to waste time thinking about all those options.
Some people do this with clothing or food. I know a lot of geeks who wear essentially the same outfit on a daily basis because they just don't care enough about clothes to bother thinking about it past "does it pass the sniff test?" I know a lot of people who eat roughly the same thing for breakfast every day because they just want fuel for their body and don't want to have to think about what they're eating. There's nothing wrong with doing this, and we all actually do this to some degree or another,
Let me throw a challenge to you: I want you to think about the clothes you're wearing. Think about the materials used - where did they come from? How are they made? Why were those materials chosen instead of some other set? What about the design - who designed each piece, and why did they make the choices they did (buttons vs. snaps, handling of seams, style of collar etc.)? What were their influences - what was the evolution of each item and how it came about from a series of iterations throughout the history of couture? What about the colors - what kind of dye did they use and why? What was your decision process when you bought it, what about your decision process when you picked it out to wear today?
Is it fair for me to say you're smoking crack because you probably don't geek out on fashion?
To you, I'm guessing clothing is just something you wear because you have to and you don't want to think about much.. To people who prefer a walled garden for their various devices, gadgets are just something they use because they need something to do that stuff, and they don't want to think about much.
Well, what I would have done, if I had a war chest the size of Apple's, is buy a maps database that is in much better shape than the one they have gone with. There are lots of companies who have great maps that don't use google...
Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash and could have eliminated most of the problems with Maps by doing this.
I've heard Android users complain that they can't tell which of thirty apps with intentionally deceptive names is the actual app they're trying to get, and that their 6 month old handset only supports a year-old version of Android.
Walled gardens and totally open platforms each have their advantages and disadvantages, and users will have different preferences based on their needs. What a shock, right?
Hang out with jocks. Hang out with arty people. Hang out with punks. Hang out with EVERYONE. Don't limit yourself to just one type of person.
Hanging out with only one type of person is a recipe for stunting one's social growth, regardless of what that type is.
When I went to college I made it a point to hang out with different types of people. I joined clubs and did activities that I had never before considered, took classes that were totally outside of my major, and did everything I could to broaden both my social and intellectual life, and I wouldn't trade those experiences and the growth I had for anything.
So, to answer your question - hang out with lots of different types of people and I guarantee that enough of them will call you on your shit. Spend your time doing things outside your comfort zone and I guarantee that you will be humbled when you realize that you aren't amazing at everything. You'll also have some amazing experiences in the process and become a better person.
Martin was unarmed and being followed by a strange man who did not, according to Zimmerman's statement, identify himself as with the neighborhood watch.
I know that if I were being stalked by someone who seemed suspicious and who refused to identify himself or who he was with I would absolutely be fearful.
According to stand your ground doctrine, wasn't Martin justified in taking steps to defend himself? Especially as it turns out, against an armed man?
Why aren't you celebrating and defending Martin's right to self-defense and instead criticizing Zimmerman for being a fucking idiot and handling this in about the worst way possible?
Martin committed no criminal activity and was not armed, and was being followed by an armed man who refused to identify himself or that he was with the watch - why are you seemingly unable to recognize the validity of Martin's fear and his reaction? Why is only Zimmerman allowed to stand his ground and not Martin? Why are you supportive of Zimmerman's seemingly going out of his way to fuck up at every step that lead to a confrontation?
Answer this for me, please: why don't you feel stand your ground applied to Martin just as much as it applied to Zimmerman?
What's fucked up about this scenario is that both sides really did seem to have misunderstood things. Unfortunately for Martin, Zimmerman was armed when this happened, and "unfortunately" for Zimmerman, when you walk around armed its probably not a good idea to fuck up in such a way that it can escalate to gunplay. Fortunately for society, Zimmerman is dealing with the fallout and hopefully this will give pause to other people who want to follow around someone while armed and refuse to identify themselves or why they're following.
Had Martin broken into Zimmerman's home and been killed there, I am sure he could have used that defense and I am sure that there would be a lot less to do about the whole case.
But Zimmerman killed Martin in circumstances tha were vastly less clear than a home invasion and key pieces of his claim of self-defense are known only to Zimmerman. Hence the investigation, grand jury indictment, and now trial.
Personally I'm glad that Zimmerman going to trial makes you and other people who carry nervous because it goddamn well should. If you're going to carry and you kill someone in unclear circumstances, then you absolutely should be nervous about the outcome of an investigation and, when warranted, criminal proceedings.
That has been my whole point: there are consequences for your actions. A criminal indictment and trial are consequences that absolutely make sense to happen after you shoot and kill someone under unclear circumstances and then claim self-defense.
One of them isn't being used with obvious relish to describe the gleeful taking of human life over a trivial matter? Both are dehumanizing and arrogant, though.
Look at the context. We're talking about cell phone mugging a and he immediately jumps to lethal force, the use of and scenarios around which he describes in gleeful detail, casting himself as a hero.
My problem is not with the idea of self-defense, but with the grandiose language being used to describe it and the rapidity with which he escalated to it, as I have said repeatedly.
Ok, chief, whatever you say. Please feel free to continue to fantasize about shooting people since that seems to be what you're into; I'm finished here.
No, you sound like a whack job just itching to blaze away because of the words you used. You speak of cattle cowering in fear rather than boldly standing up to an assailant in some ridiculous fantasy scenario. Your words.
You come off like a grandiose idiot who isn't remotely serious enough around the topic to be worthy of carrying as evidenced by the fantasy scenarios you have been spewing.
I'm not remotely afraid of guns. However, people like you and who talk about gun use like you do just make it really easy to argue for extremely stringent mental health guidelines for licensing and ownership. The language you use makes it clear that you're fetishizing gun ownership and eager for an opportunity to use one. Reasonable, rational people don't sit there and refer to people as cattle who cravenly wait to be slaughtered, nor do they talk casually about executing criminal scum (your chosen word) like they're some kind of vigilante, and certainly not over a fucking cell phone.
You brought guns up. You brought killing the thieves up. You did, not anyone else, and then you went into loving detail about these scenarios you imagine, and you think anyone who is turned off by your violent fantasy and desire for disproportionate retribution is the problem. You are e problem.
Oh, also: I never once said he broke the law by carrying a weapon while on neighborhood watch. What I did say is that he should have known that there may be consequences - of which this situation is one - of carrying a weapon while on neighborhood watch.
I don't carry a weapon when I go out because I go out of my way to make sure there is as little chance as possible I will need to engage with someone unless, as I said, they are actively in the process of harming another person. I am willing to deal with the consequences of MY choices, and I am aware of what most of those consequences could be. I assume Zimmerman was aware of the possible consequences of his choices, and I don't honestly understand why people seem to have a problem with him facing them now.
I said in another post that people got political and insane about the case, making it difficult for things to be handled in any really sensible manner. I note you don't seem to say anything negative about Zimmerman's "side" here, yet you seem to feel free to criticize me for what you imagine is a one-sided take.
Homicide means, literally, the killing of a human. That's how I used it, that's how I meant it. I don't care about the legal definition since I'm not a lawyer, and I have carefully avoided saying whether I thought he was guilty or not. If you can't wrap your head around the literal definition of it, fine, I will just use the blunt mechanical term. Zimmerman killed - by his own admission - a human being, and I believe that ANY killing of a human being should be exhaustively investigated and then put before a grand jury to see if an indictment should be handed down. It cannot be left solely to the discretion of the cops or the DA.
The "incomplete" investigation means that the evidence was not gathered by the police and then presented to a grand jury to be determined whether it was sufficient to call it self-defense or merited a trial to look at it further. THAT is what I mean about a "complete" investigation - I know that there is no legal obligation if the cops + DA don't think it would stand up in court, but I think that in the case of killings it should not be up to their discretion because killing is, shall we say, a rather serious thing.
My honest take on this whole thing is that it was fucked from the beginning because the way we handle criminal justice in this country is pretty horribly fucked, and it got political because of just how fucked our criminal justice system is, to the point where people who are members of a group often at the shit end of the stick when dealing with the system have a very legitimate gripe.
Blacks are overwhelmingly convicted of offenses compared to white defendants when factors other than race are accounted for. Blacks receive longer prison sentences than white offenders for very similar crimes. Blacks are vastly more likely to be stopped by police, and more likely to be arrested if stopped. Thus, when a black kid is killed by a white guy and the police drop the investigation extremely quickly, I think it is absolutely sensible for people to question the legitimacy of that investigation.
This does not excuse the media and other groups from trying this case in public and in so doing make it very, very difficult for the process to work without even more prejudice and bias being thrown into the mix, but to pretend like there's nothing fishy about Zimmerman's story is being intentionally obtuse.
Make something that will allow the owner to remotely permanently brick the phone (frying chips or whatever).
Of course, then all that would happen is that while cellphone thefts dwindle, the fun people would have figuring out how to remotely brick other people's phones would increase greatly. Bonus if some enterprising individual made an app that would let you scan nearby phones being used (loudly) in public spaces and brick those.
Really, the issue is that this is a very small, relatively valuable and incredibly easy to separate from the owner device that is often used in public in front of potential thieves. It should be dealt with just like the theft of any other such item - file a complaint with the appropriate people, go through the process of replacing it, and going on with your life.
In case you were wondering, you sound like someone who is either seriously mentally ill or trying to be a parody of what people often imagine an NRA member believes.
If you aren't intentionally trying to make fun of the "you can take my guns from my cold dead hands" stereotype, I sincerely hope you are not ever allowed to carry a firearm because people like you, who concoct and then publicly mention elaborate fantasies about how they would be the brave gunslinger who takes it to those criminals, just make all gun owners look bad, and you are exactly why mental health evaluations should be necessary for anyone seeking to be licensed to own a gun.
If you're just trying to parody the stereotype in order to make anti-gun folk look bad, I would suggest just making your argument directly.
Zimmerman's putting words into Martin's mouth when he says Martin made certain statements that are impossible to prove and that Zimmerman has every reason to lie about in order to save his own ass. Zimmerman and spouse have already demonstrated that they have a willingness to lie to benefit themselves, and this whole mess is sketchy enough that, as I said, it absolutely deserved to be investigated and sent to trial.
What I know is this: Zimmerman chose to be armed, he chose to put himself in a situation where he may have a confrontation with Martin, and as a result, he is now facing the consequences of those choices. Note that I am not saying he should be found guilty or innocent, but that it is absolutely the right thing that the killing was investigated and, having passed muster, is being tried.
I go on neighborhood watch myself but I never go armed and I avoid any interaction with suspicious people unless there is an immediate threat to the safety of another person. I accept the possible consequences of my choices and actions, and I am saying that Zimmerman should accept the consequences of his choices and actions. His being on trial now is one of the consequences. It sucks for him if he's innocent, but then, it sucks for Martin and Martin's family that he was killed, and that initially the investigation was not done.
Honestly, this whole thing would have had a lot less traction and been a lot less politicized had there been a FULL investigation done at the time rather than the start stop start that was done which allowed people to (rightly) question whether the cops were letting Zimmerman off without a proper investigation.
Homicides should be investigated and, if it passes grand jury muster, the person who committed the act should be tried. Zimmerman killed another person. The circumstances were such that the case passed grand jury muster. Zimmerman is being tried. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
I don't care what the circumstances around a killing are. Any taking of human life should be investigated and go to trial if it passes grand jury muster (which I meant to say in my previous post, but no edit function). Even the scenario you describe - emotionality should not influence things, and your entire argument is an appeal to emotion.
I know full well that after an interaction with the criminal justice system in this country people don't simply go on as normal. I consider that a problem with how we report the news in this country and how we politicize things. The fact that many people behave like massive assholes and try to use something like this to push an agenda is horrible, but I do not think that we should allow justice to be done or not depending on how riled up people get or how news organizations choose to drive up viewership. That is an insane stance. "We can't investigate this because reporters and people with an agenda might act irresponsibly and fuck up a possibly innocent person's life after they killed someone!"
If you take a human life, it should be investigated and go to trial as needed. Yes it sucks if you were legitimately defending yourself, and it can be traumatic, but another human being is dead at your hands, and we should never simply decide it isn't worth looking into, as was initially done in this case. I would much rather have to deal with an investigation and the fallout if it got publicity if I killed someone in self-defense than I would live in society where we let bullshit dictate our process.
With the gun, I don't honestly care if the police suggested he carry, in the same way he didn't seem to want to follow police suggestion that he not pursue Martin. My stance on the matter is that unless you are a sworn and trained officer of the law, you stay the fuck away from any interactions with possible offenders if at all possible (and it was possible here) and you do not go into it armed unless you want to run the risk that your weapon will be used. If you don't want to deal with the consequences of killing another human being, then you should take every opportunity to avoid being in a situation where you would be at risk of doing so.
I do neighborhood watch in my area and I am incredibly careful to avoid scenarios where I may be at risk of violence from people behaving suspiciously, and I go unarmed, because I am not willing to deal with the consequences of such interactions. I would only get involved in a situation where there was an absolute and immediate risk to another person. Sketchy looking black dude being in the area is not such a situation, and the absolute most I would have done is call it in.
You do not go on neighborhood watch with a gun. You do not attempt to apprehend people while on neighborhood watch. You are neighborhood WATCH, not a sworn and trained officer of the law.
Everything about this sounds like Martin was a fucking idiot kid who liked to shoot off his mouth and Zimmerman imagined himself to be some kind of law dog who was going to bust this thing wide open.
Zimmerman also is putting tons of words into Martins mouth, and many of those words sound to me like bullshit - like a very, very bad script writer tried to write a part for scary black thug #2 or something.
I don't know what happened that night - I'm actually not even sure Zimmerman knows what happened that night at this point. I do know that Zimmerman is not helping himself and has not been helping himself this entire time.
I also know that it's good that this has been investigated and is going to trial rather than just being waved off as it initially was. A man is dead at the hands of another man, under unclear circumstances, and that Deserves an investigation and trial. If Zimmerman really was acting in self-defense (or at least is found to have been acting so) then he'll be fine. If not, he will be punished according to the law. Isn't that what should happen?
I am not a gun person, though I am somewhat realistic about guns and gun culture in the US. I don't think it is unreasonable for a man who used a gun to shoot another man to stand trial for that. I don't care about the racial noise, I don't care about the politics. I just want people who kill other people to be held accountable for their actions.
I actually am somewhat surprised at the number of people who post here and seem to be pro-gun and simultaneously bothered that Zimmerman is being tried. You would think responsible gun owners would be glad that we live in a nation of laws and that a man who shot another man under incredibly unclear circumstances wouldn't just be left free to walk on his own say-so. I mean, what if things had gone differently and Martin shot Zimmerman with Zimmerman's gun? Wouldn't people want that to be investigated and tried also?
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Zimmerman did not and could not have known anything about Martin's previous brushes with the law any more than Mattin could have known Zimmerman was armed unless Zimmerman was brandishing.
Stand your ground does NOT require that you run away, it says you are allowed to use deadly force if you are being put in danger even if you could retreat. Zimmerman was the one who initiated ALL of this. Stand your ground does not allow you to pick a fight and then kill someone when they fight back.
Zimmerman picked the fight by stalking Martin. That is why he should be on trial. It is not a clear cut case of self-defense because it was Zimmerman who set the whole thing in motion.
The only room for question here - the only reason it might be that Zimmerman should be found innocent - is if it is deemed that his literally stalking another human being while armed with a deadly weapon and when it was suggested that he not do so by the police is not seen as sufficient provocation for Martin defending himself under SYG.
Question for you:
Zimmerman was following Martin around and could certainly be considered threatening in that respect. Why can't Trayvon be covered under stand your ground? Had Zimmerman not followed Martin around the incident would not have happened. I've asked this of numerous people who insist Zimmerman was obviously in the right and never got a response.
He should have a trial. He went out of his way to follow Martin and ultimately caused the incident. If he is found to have acted in self defense then good for him. And before anyone says that his life is forever changed - Trayvon is dead and the Martin family lost a loved one. Zimmerman can nut the fuck up and deal with the ramifications of his actions.
I will give you one example of something Writer cannot do:
Work with Word documents that were created using undocumented formatting/features that are only known to Microsoft.
In my work I interact with dozens of different organizations regularly and most all of them use some version of MS Office, and we regularly get stupidly complex documents with a ton of formatting weirdness that works fine in Word but absolutely cannot work in Writer.
Most of the formatting weirdness is completely unnecessary and caused by people abusing the hell out of Word, but it's there, it's a reality, and I have to deal with it frequently enough that it just isn't worth it. And much of the buggy behavior is because Microsoft fucks up their implementation of standards intentionally.
And there's nothing in those documents that, had they been made with Writer originally, couldn't be done, but that's besides the point when you're talking about how things actually get used when shared across multiple workplaces.
Word can handle Word created docs in a way that Writer cannot.
Exactly so.
I had to bail on OOo because it didn't interact perfectly with various documents created in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 99% of the time it was fine, but that 1% of the time caused enough headache that I gave up on OOo and just used MS Office. OOo's non-identical nature wound up costing me about 4 hours of work time and teammates another 2-3 hours total of lost productivity in just one instance - that was a cost in lost time of much more than the license would cost.
I can't even migrate my team to a variant of OOo because there are dozens of different teams, agencies, groups and other organizations we deal with regularly and again - 1% of the time weird shit happening unless we have MS Office isn't going to cut it.
So, left with a choice of primarily using OOo (but keeping MS Office around just in case) or just using MS Office alone, it's a no brainer.
I help researchers assess their current processes and see the strengths and weaknesses, then work with them to develop tools to greatly reduce the weaknesses, increase the strengths, and often times build in entirely new capacities.
The way to get anyone onboard with a new system is to find the things they don't like about the current system and how they have to interact with it. They don't want to have to deal with seeing tons of old documents when they want to find new ones? Offer a way that the new system would avoid that.
To get Bob on board, you just have to find out what he doesn't like about the system and what he would fix. Make him an ally in the process. I have had clients who were deathly opposed to me coming in to work on their processes and have found ways to get them over on my side by *gasp* working with them, respecting them, and making it clear that all I want to do is help them be able to take the great stuff they're already doing and make it better/faster/more reliable.
Part of it is a type of salesmanship, getting people to buy into the idea that the time and money it takes to get and learn to use a new system will have solid benefits that vastly outweigh the cost. But if you can't give them a no-brainer value proposition, maybe the system doesn't need to be changed or you might not be the person to do it.
Because they think they need to be more conservative, more hard-line in order to appeal to the religious nuts and hard-core racist wingnuts. Seriously.
If there were a party that was fiscally conservative but didn't hate minorities and spout off bugfuck insane Ayn Rand nonsense they would probably do well.
A republican candidate who didn't repudiate science, go all Jesusy at the drop of a hat, and who was willing to say that fixating on restricting the rights of a tiny (but potent) minority was a waste of fucking time, and who was willing to actually call out wingnuts who acted like assholes would do well.
In fact, he has - Take the D for after his name and look just at his policies and Obama is pretty much an Eisenhower republican with more modersocial sensibilities.
I'm the opposite - unless I aware of some really good judgements I vote against the incumbent.
My thinking is that I live in Chicago and we have very, very, very low judicial turnover; if a sitting judge does manage to lose re-election, that means they must be more than usually corrupt.
I had swype for a year on my evo but either I never got accustomed to it or the software never picked up how I write or I do some weird kind of word shape thing because it would give me - at best - 50% error rates for each word.
There are better databases than Apple has. There are better mapping solutions than Apple has. Apple should have booth what it could and been far ahead of where they are now, and at least as good as most competitors.
Example: TomTom is pretty good. TomTom has a market cap under a billion. Apple had over 10 billion dollars in July of 2012. Apple could have bought TomTom. Apple could have made a very good offer for NavTeq or Teleatlas. Those are all profitable businesses in their own right, and they offer mature products that could have been relatively quickly added in.
My point was that Apple started far behind because they didn't spend. They could have spent - they have the money - but they didn't.
Not everyone finds spending their time geeking out on their phone to be rewarding, interesting, or something they have any real interest in doing. That isn't smoking crack, it's simply a different priority.
Most people limit the amount of cognitive overhead they have to shoulder when it comes to things they don't find terribly interesting or important. In the case of people who prefer a walled garden for their devices, this can be one of those things. One place to go for software, one pace to go for support, and they don't have to waste time thinking about all those options.
Some people do this with clothing or food. I know a lot of geeks who wear essentially the same outfit on a daily basis because they just don't care enough about clothes to bother thinking about it past "does it pass the sniff test?" I know a lot of people who eat roughly the same thing for breakfast every day because they just want fuel for their body and don't want to have to think about what they're eating. There's nothing wrong with doing this, and we all actually do this to some degree or another,
Let me throw a challenge to you: I want you to think about the clothes you're wearing. Think about the materials used - where did they come from? How are they made? Why were those materials chosen instead of some other set? What about the design - who designed each piece, and why did they make the choices they did (buttons vs. snaps, handling of seams, style of collar etc.)? What were their influences - what was the evolution of each item and how it came about from a series of iterations throughout the history of couture? What about the colors - what kind of dye did they use and why? What was your decision process when you bought it, what about your decision process when you picked it out to wear today?
Is it fair for me to say you're smoking crack because you probably don't geek out on fashion?
To you, I'm guessing clothing is just something you wear because you have to and you don't want to think about much.. To people who prefer a walled garden for their various devices, gadgets are just something they use because they need something to do that stuff, and they don't want to think about much.
Well, what I would have done, if I had a war chest the size of Apple's, is buy a maps database that is in much better shape than the one they have gone with. There are lots of companies who have great maps that don't use google...
Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash and could have eliminated most of the problems with Maps by doing this.
I've heard Android users complain that they can't tell which of thirty apps with intentionally deceptive names is the actual app they're trying to get, and that their 6 month old handset only supports a year-old version of Android.
Walled gardens and totally open platforms each have their advantages and disadvantages, and users will have different preferences based on their needs. What a shock, right?
Hang out with jocks. Hang out with arty people. Hang out with punks. Hang out with EVERYONE. Don't limit yourself to just one type of person.
Hanging out with only one type of person is a recipe for stunting one's social growth, regardless of what that type is.
When I went to college I made it a point to hang out with different types of people. I joined clubs and did activities that I had never before considered, took classes that were totally outside of my major, and did everything I could to broaden both my social and intellectual life, and I wouldn't trade those experiences and the growth I had for anything.
So, to answer your question - hang out with lots of different types of people and I guarantee that enough of them will call you on your shit. Spend your time doing things outside your comfort zone and I guarantee that you will be humbled when you realize that you aren't amazing at everything. You'll also have some amazing experiences in the process and become a better person.
One last thing...
Martin was unarmed and being followed by a strange man who did not, according to Zimmerman's statement, identify himself as with the neighborhood watch.
I know that if I were being stalked by someone who seemed suspicious and who refused to identify himself or who he was with I would absolutely be fearful.
According to stand your ground doctrine, wasn't Martin justified in taking steps to defend himself? Especially as it turns out, against an armed man?
Why aren't you celebrating and defending Martin's right to self-defense and instead criticizing Zimmerman for being a fucking idiot and handling this in about the worst way possible?
Martin committed no criminal activity and was not armed, and was being followed by an armed man who refused to identify himself or that he was with the watch - why are you seemingly unable to recognize the validity of Martin's fear and his reaction? Why is only Zimmerman allowed to stand his ground and not Martin? Why are you supportive of Zimmerman's seemingly going out of his way to fuck up at every step that lead to a confrontation?
Answer this for me, please: why don't you feel stand your ground applied to Martin just as much as it applied to Zimmerman?
What's fucked up about this scenario is that both sides really did seem to have misunderstood things. Unfortunately for Martin, Zimmerman was armed when this happened, and "unfortunately" for Zimmerman, when you walk around armed its probably not a good idea to fuck up in such a way that it can escalate to gunplay. Fortunately for society, Zimmerman is dealing with the fallout and hopefully this will give pause to other people who want to follow around someone while armed and refuse to identify themselves or why they're following.
Had Martin broken into Zimmerman's home and been killed there, I am sure he could have used that defense and I am sure that there would be a lot less to do about the whole case.
But Zimmerman killed Martin in circumstances tha were vastly less clear than a home invasion and key pieces of his claim of self-defense are known only to Zimmerman. Hence the investigation, grand jury indictment, and now trial.
Personally I'm glad that Zimmerman going to trial makes you and other people who carry nervous because it goddamn well should. If you're going to carry and you kill someone in unclear circumstances, then you absolutely should be nervous about the outcome of an investigation and, when warranted, criminal proceedings.
That has been my whole point: there are consequences for your actions. A criminal indictment and trial are consequences that absolutely make sense to happen after you shoot and kill someone under unclear circumstances and then claim self-defense.
One of them isn't being used with obvious relish to describe the gleeful taking of human life over a trivial matter? Both are dehumanizing and arrogant, though.
Look at the context. We're talking about cell phone mugging a and he immediately jumps to lethal force, the use of and scenarios around which he describes in gleeful detail, casting himself as a hero.
My problem is not with the idea of self-defense, but with the grandiose language being used to describe it and the rapidity with which he escalated to it, as I have said repeatedly.
Ok, chief, whatever you say. Please feel free to continue to fantasize about shooting people since that seems to be what you're into; I'm finished here.
No, you sound like a whack job just itching to blaze away because of the words you used. You speak of cattle cowering in fear rather than boldly standing up to an assailant in some ridiculous fantasy scenario. Your words.
You come off like a grandiose idiot who isn't remotely serious enough around the topic to be worthy of carrying as evidenced by the fantasy scenarios you have been spewing.
I'm not remotely afraid of guns. However, people like you and who talk about gun use like you do just make it really easy to argue for extremely stringent mental health guidelines for licensing and ownership. The language you use makes it clear that you're fetishizing gun ownership and eager for an opportunity to use one. Reasonable, rational people don't sit there and refer to people as cattle who cravenly wait to be slaughtered, nor do they talk casually about executing criminal scum (your chosen word) like they're some kind of vigilante, and certainly not over a fucking cell phone.
You brought guns up. You brought killing the thieves up. You did, not anyone else, and then you went into loving detail about these scenarios you imagine, and you think anyone who is turned off by your violent fantasy and desire for disproportionate retribution is the problem. You are e problem.
Get help. Seriously.
Oh, also: I never once said he broke the law by carrying a weapon while on neighborhood watch. What I did say is that he should have known that there may be consequences - of which this situation is one - of carrying a weapon while on neighborhood watch.
I don't carry a weapon when I go out because I go out of my way to make sure there is as little chance as possible I will need to engage with someone unless, as I said, they are actively in the process of harming another person. I am willing to deal with the consequences of MY choices, and I am aware of what most of those consequences could be. I assume Zimmerman was aware of the possible consequences of his choices, and I don't honestly understand why people seem to have a problem with him facing them now.
I said in another post that people got political and insane about the case, making it difficult for things to be handled in any really sensible manner. I note you don't seem to say anything negative about Zimmerman's "side" here, yet you seem to feel free to criticize me for what you imagine is a one-sided take.
Homicide means, literally, the killing of a human. That's how I used it, that's how I meant it. I don't care about the legal definition since I'm not a lawyer, and I have carefully avoided saying whether I thought he was guilty or not. If you can't wrap your head around the literal definition of it, fine, I will just use the blunt mechanical term. Zimmerman killed - by his own admission - a human being, and I believe that ANY killing of a human being should be exhaustively investigated and then put before a grand jury to see if an indictment should be handed down. It cannot be left solely to the discretion of the cops or the DA.
The "incomplete" investigation means that the evidence was not gathered by the police and then presented to a grand jury to be determined whether it was sufficient to call it self-defense or merited a trial to look at it further. THAT is what I mean about a "complete" investigation - I know that there is no legal obligation if the cops + DA don't think it would stand up in court, but I think that in the case of killings it should not be up to their discretion because killing is, shall we say, a rather serious thing.
My honest take on this whole thing is that it was fucked from the beginning because the way we handle criminal justice in this country is pretty horribly fucked, and it got political because of just how fucked our criminal justice system is, to the point where people who are members of a group often at the shit end of the stick when dealing with the system have a very legitimate gripe.
Blacks are overwhelmingly convicted of offenses compared to white defendants when factors other than race are accounted for. Blacks receive longer prison sentences than white offenders for very similar crimes. Blacks are vastly more likely to be stopped by police, and more likely to be arrested if stopped. Thus, when a black kid is killed by a white guy and the police drop the investigation extremely quickly, I think it is absolutely sensible for people to question the legitimacy of that investigation.
This does not excuse the media and other groups from trying this case in public and in so doing make it very, very difficult for the process to work without even more prejudice and bias being thrown into the mix, but to pretend like there's nothing fishy about Zimmerman's story is being intentionally obtuse.
Make something that will allow the owner to remotely permanently brick the phone (frying chips or whatever).
Of course, then all that would happen is that while cellphone thefts dwindle, the fun people would have figuring out how to remotely brick other people's phones would increase greatly. Bonus if some enterprising individual made an app that would let you scan nearby phones being used (loudly) in public spaces and brick those.
Really, the issue is that this is a very small, relatively valuable and incredibly easy to separate from the owner device that is often used in public in front of potential thieves. It should be dealt with just like the theft of any other such item - file a complaint with the appropriate people, go through the process of replacing it, and going on with your life.
In case you were wondering, you sound like someone who is either seriously mentally ill or trying to be a parody of what people often imagine an NRA member believes.
If you aren't intentionally trying to make fun of the "you can take my guns from my cold dead hands" stereotype, I sincerely hope you are not ever allowed to carry a firearm because people like you, who concoct and then publicly mention elaborate fantasies about how they would be the brave gunslinger who takes it to those criminals, just make all gun owners look bad, and you are exactly why mental health evaluations should be necessary for anyone seeking to be licensed to own a gun.
If you're just trying to parody the stereotype in order to make anti-gun folk look bad, I would suggest just making your argument directly.
Zimmerman's putting words into Martin's mouth when he says Martin made certain statements that are impossible to prove and that Zimmerman has every reason to lie about in order to save his own ass. Zimmerman and spouse have already demonstrated that they have a willingness to lie to benefit themselves, and this whole mess is sketchy enough that, as I said, it absolutely deserved to be investigated and sent to trial.
What I know is this: Zimmerman chose to be armed, he chose to put himself in a situation where he may have a confrontation with Martin, and as a result, he is now facing the consequences of those choices. Note that I am not saying he should be found guilty or innocent, but that it is absolutely the right thing that the killing was investigated and, having passed muster, is being tried.
I go on neighborhood watch myself but I never go armed and I avoid any interaction with suspicious people unless there is an immediate threat to the safety of another person. I accept the possible consequences of my choices and actions, and I am saying that Zimmerman should accept the consequences of his choices and actions. His being on trial now is one of the consequences. It sucks for him if he's innocent, but then, it sucks for Martin and Martin's family that he was killed, and that initially the investigation was not done.
Honestly, this whole thing would have had a lot less traction and been a lot less politicized had there been a FULL investigation done at the time rather than the start stop start that was done which allowed people to (rightly) question whether the cops were letting Zimmerman off without a proper investigation.
Homicides should be investigated and, if it passes grand jury muster, the person who committed the act should be tried. Zimmerman killed another person. The circumstances were such that the case passed grand jury muster. Zimmerman is being tried. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
I don't care what the circumstances around a killing are. Any taking of human life should be investigated and go to trial if it passes grand jury muster (which I meant to say in my previous post, but no edit function). Even the scenario you describe - emotionality should not influence things, and your entire argument is an appeal to emotion.
I know full well that after an interaction with the criminal justice system in this country people don't simply go on as normal. I consider that a problem with how we report the news in this country and how we politicize things. The fact that many people behave like massive assholes and try to use something like this to push an agenda is horrible, but I do not think that we should allow justice to be done or not depending on how riled up people get or how news organizations choose to drive up viewership. That is an insane stance. "We can't investigate this because reporters and people with an agenda might act irresponsibly and fuck up a possibly innocent person's life after they killed someone!"
If you take a human life, it should be investigated and go to trial as needed. Yes it sucks if you were legitimately defending yourself, and it can be traumatic, but another human being is dead at your hands, and we should never simply decide it isn't worth looking into, as was initially done in this case. I would much rather have to deal with an investigation and the fallout if it got publicity if I killed someone in self-defense than I would live in society where we let bullshit dictate our process.
With the gun, I don't honestly care if the police suggested he carry, in the same way he didn't seem to want to follow police suggestion that he not pursue Martin. My stance on the matter is that unless you are a sworn and trained officer of the law, you stay the fuck away from any interactions with possible offenders if at all possible (and it was possible here) and you do not go into it armed unless you want to run the risk that your weapon will be used. If you don't want to deal with the consequences of killing another human being, then you should take every opportunity to avoid being in a situation where you would be at risk of doing so.
I do neighborhood watch in my area and I am incredibly careful to avoid scenarios where I may be at risk of violence from people behaving suspiciously, and I go unarmed, because I am not willing to deal with the consequences of such interactions. I would only get involved in a situation where there was an absolute and immediate risk to another person. Sketchy looking black dude being in the area is not such a situation, and the absolute most I would have done is call it in.
My problem:
You do not go on neighborhood watch with a gun. You do not attempt to apprehend people while on neighborhood watch. You are neighborhood WATCH, not a sworn and trained officer of the law.
Everything about this sounds like Martin was a fucking idiot kid who liked to shoot off his mouth and Zimmerman imagined himself to be some kind of law dog who was going to bust this thing wide open.
Zimmerman also is putting tons of words into Martins mouth, and many of those words sound to me like bullshit - like a very, very bad script writer tried to write a part for scary black thug #2 or something.
I don't know what happened that night - I'm actually not even sure Zimmerman knows what happened that night at this point. I do know that Zimmerman is not helping himself and has not been helping himself this entire time.
I also know that it's good that this has been investigated and is going to trial rather than just being waved off as it initially was. A man is dead at the hands of another man, under unclear circumstances, and that Deserves an investigation and trial. If Zimmerman really was acting in self-defense (or at least is found to have been acting so) then he'll be fine. If not, he will be punished according to the law. Isn't that what should happen?
I am not a gun person, though I am somewhat realistic about guns and gun culture in the US. I don't think it is unreasonable for a man who used a gun to shoot another man to stand trial for that. I don't care about the racial noise, I don't care about the politics. I just want people who kill other people to be held accountable for their actions.
I actually am somewhat surprised at the number of people who post here and seem to be pro-gun and simultaneously bothered that Zimmerman is being tried. You would think responsible gun owners would be glad that we live in a nation of laws and that a man who shot another man under incredibly unclear circumstances wouldn't just be left free to walk on his own say-so. I mean, what if things had gone differently and Martin shot Zimmerman with Zimmerman's gun? Wouldn't people want that to be investigated and tried also?