If it's really an issue and the supplements don't seem to be helping, there are some lamps that can be used as a substitute for sunlight, as well - talk to your doctor and see what he/she recommends.
Funny, I show you a study that showed in a randomized, double-blind study, that Vitamin D supplementation was shown to be a statistically significant treatment for seasonal-related depressive symptoms. In response, you say "nuh-uh," and link a study that is a review of many studies and attempts to draw conclusions about Vitamin D's efficacy across all types of depression.
The fact that Vitamin D appears to be an effective treatment for one type of depression, but not all, does not negate its usefulness as a treatment - for that type of depression. Nobody said "Vitamin D will cure all your depressionz forEVAR!" It's a halfway clever straw man, but a straw man nonetheless.
To offer a similar example, penicillin doesn't work on the common cold - because the cold is caused by something that penicillin isn't effective against. That doesn't mean penicillin is useless in treating every sore throat - it means it's useless in treating SOME KINDS of sore throat, and that adequate diagnostic technique is called for before the doctor writes a prescription.
So,out of curiosity - do you ask the same question whenever somebody says, "My doctor recommended this treatment for me, and it worked very well," or were you just going for "+5, Smug and Willfully Ignorant"?
In fairness, it can help dramatically - just 10 minutes in direct sunlight wearing shorts & a t-shirt is generally enough exposure for your daily Vitamin D needs, at least during the summer.
In winter, the UVB radiation doesn't penetrate the atmosphere as well / at all, depending on where you live, which means that an artificial lamp with the proper spectrum and/or supplementation might be helpful.
Indeed I do, and nothing I said is at odds with what you've said. My post was not a defense of "the patent system as it exists today." My post was a commentary on the foolishness of the "information wants to be free" argument.
Any argument that fails to acknowledge the inherent cost of producing novel information - and thus the inherent value that information has - is destined for irrelevance. An argument that fails to acknowledge this amounts to an assertion that "information has no value," and is, therefore, objectively incorrect.
I'm struggling to understand how ANYTHING you just said is relevant.
I said, "The cost of COPYING information once it's been produced is dropping in price each and every day. The cost of CREATING novel information still has a minimum cost floor."
Meaning - you will NEVER drive the cost of "novel creation" to zero. The cost of creating "one copy of instructions" is still significant, and non-zero. And in fact, in molecular terms, the cost of creating copies is also significant, and non-zero, in terms of energy & materials required. In fact, your entire biological tangent is rather bizarre and un-enlightening because you're trying to draw an analogy that really doesn't work, because it requires physical ingredients to produce tangible copies.
The barriers are not "all in my mind," the barriers are very real - creating something new and worthwhile has a cost, regardless of how expensive or cheap it is to produce additional copies after the original is created. For everybody who can *create* the Mona Lisa - who has the skills, tools, training, and aptitude - there's millions of people who'd love to hang a copy in their living room. Without a painter with the aptitude, tools, training, and time to create a desirable work of art, those millions of people end up with copies of poker-playing dogs hanging on their wall, instead.
There's no law that prevents me from going to a Chick-Fil-A and standing in line, and when I get up to the front to order saying "I'd like... hrm... um.. I would liiiike.... oh yeah, I'd like marriage equality for homosexuals."
Indeed, there's no law preventing you from doing that. Though why you'd do that, I'm not sure - is Chick-Fil-A part of the federal government now? I guess I missed that article of the Constitution where all laws are made & enforced by a fast food chain.
What you're blithely ignoring in this foolishness is that there ARE laws against loitering and trespass, which they can easily have you arrested under if you refuse to leave the store when you're invited to do so by management after it becomes clear that your goal is simply to disrupt their business operations.
To your "information wants to be free," I respond, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
The cost of COPYING information once it's been produced is dropping in price each and every day. The cost of CREATING novel information - be it scientific research, music, film, a book, or anything else - but still has a minimum cost floor: the value of the time required for a person to produce it + the cost of tools + development of the skills required + time & cost of training required to be able to create it. That cost will never be "zero" for useful, desirable information.
Funny you say this, and them bemoan your girlfriend's decision to look for a pink laptop, because it sounds like she's doing exactly what you just recommended - she's looking for what she likes, and doesn't care about all the "NOW WITH GINGERBREAD 4.2 MICROSD RETINA DISPLAY iOS6 GOODNESS!" She's not allowing a bunch of hype to distract her from what matters: that she wants a pink laptop.
Perhaps you should try to convince her to go with the hype in this case, so she buys a new device she doesn't really want, based on raw performance stats that marketers have convinced her she absolutely needs if she wants to be cool. It won't be pink like she wants, but surely it'll live up to all the marketing hype!
The reason for that is that evolution doesn't give a shit what your definitions of "good" or "bad" are. In terms of evolution, "good" equals "well-suited to survival given the environment," and "bad" means "not well suited to survival, given the environment."
Evolution happens in a context - if you don't take into account that context, then you will fail to understand evolution, and you will see evolution as a bizarre, random "blessing" bestowed upon some species/products, and a "curse" for others to be afflicted by - possibly meted out by an angry god who demands propitiation.
Firefly - a niche market, with limited appeal in the mainstream. Jersey Shore - a train wreck, with broad appeal in the mainstream.
The context: television, where the most number of eyeballs watching a show and generating buzz about the show is what wins, because viewers = advertising money, and advertising money = profitable show, and profitable show = keep funding seasons, because people want to watch this.
By that measure, Jersey Shore is FAR more "fitter" (in the evolutionary sense) than Firefly ever was - Jersey Shore is lowest common denominator television designed to attract (and retain) watchers. Firefly was an fun "what if" that was designed to appeal strongly to a VERY small slice of the market. The result? Jersey Shore is a hit TV show with 6 seasons under its belt, and lots of advertising revenues, while Firefly had one season, tepid advertising revenues, and an fairly quick cancellation. Don't get me wrong - I loved Firely... but it wasn't "good" in a way that was materially relevant to its continued existence.
The sad part is tablets and their simplistic interfaces with bright colors and shiny buttons are seen as a toy to most computer operators today
Well, the smug condescending ones, at least.
we know how to operate a real computer.
I like how you slyly inserted yourself into the class of "knowledgeable users." That was so smooth I almost didn't notice it.
I fear the day when we are deploying such interfaces out of necessity instead of childish simplicity because users have been deemed too stupid by manufacturers to learn anything else.
Why would you ever fear that? The fact that most people want dumbed-down interfaces for their computers means nothing about the average level of intelligence of computer users. I guarantee you that there are lots of people who are a lot smarter than you who buy and use tablets and other "dumbed down" devices, and absolutely love that they have that choice.
Why? Because they spend their brainpower doing the work that they've decided to specialize in. Doctors aren't "dumb" because they didn't decide to spend their time learning how to work a computer. And the fact that there are billions of people out there yearning for a simple, cut down interface on a device like a tablet means that you, and every other computer operator, will continue to have a job - programming the devices & interfaces that people want, and will buy.
So what you're saying is that Lanza would have done the same amount of damage as fast as he did without the use of a semi-automatic assault rifle?
Sadly, yes, he probably would have. They found discarded 30-round magazines with as few as 15 rounds fired from them, and reports are that he "reloaded frequently." He started shooting about 9:35 a.m., and stopped shooting 11-14 minutes later. He fired 50-100 rounds, meaning he fired 4-9 rounds per minute, or one round every 7-15 seconds, on average.
If you're familiar with a weapon, you can swap a magazine in seconds. Lanza was familiar with these weapons, they were owned by his mother, who took him to the gun range where he fired them. Reducing the capacity of the magazines he had access to would have had little to no effect on the "amount of damage" he would have done - he wasn't emptying magazines to begin with.
The US has almost double the rate of any other industrialized nation when it comes to gun related crime. The reasons for that are fairly simple: a) it's too easy to buy a gun, b) the cultural insanity that calls itself the "gun culture" has put weaponized assault on the forefront of everyone's mind.
That's a vast oversimplification of the problem. Much of our gun violence is drug related. In fact, it's incredibly rare, statistically speaking, that a mass murder is committed like this. handguns are the tool of choice for most gun homicides, to the extent that "other guns" are involved at a rate roughly similar to knives and blunt objects.
In fact, murders like what happened at Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech or Columbine are mostly caused by mental health problems. These are surprisingly rare. The other crimes
People outside major cities are perfectly happy to reap the rewards they bring to our society, but when it comes to gun violence, the non-city dwellers say "Screw you, we're keeping our guns. You're on your own".
The irony of you making this statement is delicious. For all of your hand-wringing, the solutions being proposed to "stop crimes like this" do nothing to stop the vast majority (i.e., inner city poor & drug trafficking-related) gun violence in the least. But, because suburban white kids were killed at Sandy Hook, AR-15s are evil and need to be banned today - nevermind that handguns kill vastly more people, and that those people are vastly inner city young men who are involved in gangs and drug trafficking. They're not as photogenic, being brown inner city folks, but if you truly cared about "violence," you'd stop focusing on the statistical aberration that occurred at Sandy Hook, and start focusing on the vastly larger problem of handgun violence related to gang and drug trafficking. It's very clear that you're one of the comfortable suburban middle classers opining about how we're going to "keep our kids safe."
You are good at linking laws. Horribly bad at understanding them, though.
The law, and reality, disagree with you.
He entered illegally a space he had no right to be, with the express intention of committing a felony. Redistribution of the files is irrelevant - he accessed the MIT network and the JSTOR servers in a manner which he was not authorized to do. If we can agree he did that, then he's guilty of at least a few of the charges that were leveled at him - and those charges are felonies.
No matter HOW hard you try to spin this, under the law as it exists and as it is written he did far more than "trespass." And what's really amusing to me is that you don't see the irony in your own claims that I don't understand the laws I've explained to you.
There's a difference between "what I, fredprado, think the laws should be!" and "what the laws, on the books, are." Your wishes and preferences don't change the laws on the books.
You'd have a great point, if anything you said were even remotely true under the law.
Breaking & entering to access someone else's property with the intent of committing another crime inside is most certainly not trespass. Given the steps he took to cover his tracks and disguise his access, it's clear that he knew he was not "authorized" to access the server closet, network, and JSTOR servers in the way he did. He went in there with a specific intent, and that specific intent was to commit a crime. In this case, the crime was a felony, even if he really wished it wasn't a felony. Ignorantia juris non excusat, and deliberately ignoring the law that you know exists is even less of an alibi.
Section 16. Whoever, in the night time, breaks and enters a building, ship, vessel or vehicle, with intent to commit a felony, or who attempts to or does break, burn, blow up or otherwise injures or destroys a safe, vault or other depository of money, bonds or other valuables in any building, vehicle or place, with intent to commit a larceny or felony, whether he succeeds or fails in the perpetration of such larceny or felony, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than twenty years or in a jail or house of correction for not more than two and one-half years.
Section 16A. Whoever in the nighttime or daytime breaks and enters a building, ship, vessel or vehicle with intent to commit a misdemeanor shall be punished by a fine of not more than two hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than six months, or both.
Section 17. Whoever, in the night time, enters without breaking, or breaks and enters in the day time, a building, ship, vessel, or vehicle, with intent to commit a felony, the owner or any other person lawfully therein being put in fear, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than ten years. Whoever commits any offense described in this section while armed with a firearm, rifle, shotgun, machine gun or assault weapon shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than five years or in the house of correction for not more than two and one-half years.
Even under the most liberal reading, Massachusetts state law does not suggest he would "only" face 30 days. Given the nature of what he did (that is, commit a felony once he broke & entered a non-residential building), Mass laws would suggest he'd be on the hook for a maximum of 10-20 years per offense.
In the state of Massachusetts, if you use a crowbar to gain entry to someone else's property, it is known as burglary (or breaking & entering), and carries a 2 - 10 year sentence (per offense), in the best case of B&E during the day, without a weapon, and not "putting anybody lawfully therein in fear." (Source: Mass. General Laws.)
Depending on the circumstances - i.e., you do it armed, at night, and/or threaten occupants of the building - it can easily carry up to a 20 year sentence.
Where you're getting this "30 day" number from, I don't know, but simple breaking & entering in Massachusetts will get you a lot more than that.
If you're going to try and draw parallels, at least draw realistic ones.
Yes, and that one, single law says that "once you achieve a dominant market share, you must abide by certain rules that prevent you from abusing your dominant market share to neutralize competition."
That one law applies to both Apple and Microsoft. It's just that Microsoft achieved a dominant market share, and abused it; Apple hasn't achieved a dominant market share, but if they do (let's say Android implodes tomorrow and all the devices running it disappear in some sort of amazing electronic Rapture), they will be required to abide by the same rules. If Apple reached the same amount of market dominance MSFT had, you'll see the complaints of their practices (esp. wrt their App Store policies) get a lot more traction.
Yet: 1) These mass murders are pretty rare. 2) The bulk of the weapons used in these crimes are handguns (not "assault weapons"). 3) The bulk of the weapons used in these mass murders are acquired legally.
Also, compare and contrast - Switzerland's ~50 guns per 100 households, and the US' ~88 guns per 100 household ownership rates, which are much, much higher than most of the rest of Europe's averages, with the great disparity in gun violence rates in the two countries. Perhaps the difference is due to some practical regulations and policies that we could enact here, as well?
You know, rather than shouting about "ban all teh guns all teh timez," why not have a constructive conversation about how to: 1) Sensibly regulate gun ownership; 2) Deliver mental health care to the people who need it; 3) Address the root issue of poverty inherent to many of the gun crimes in the US which contribute heavily to the shockingly high firearm murder rates here?
In it, she outlines what she calls "minimal" benefits (with no studies apparently having been conducted in hospitals yet). She also points out that by making the administration of the vaccine mandatory, it forces the caregivers to forfeit their right to choose what procedures and medications they will allow to be administered to them - rights which are afforded to all recipients of medical care. (And which, I would further add, should not be trampled on lightly - with little or no evidence to support the claim that mandatory influenza vaccinations increase patient safety.)
Far from conclusive - Dr. Orient wrote the article, and is the one saying "they shouldn't be forced to," but I think it's certainly something that needs serious further study; In general, I like the idea of "if you want to work as a healthcare professional, you have to do these things which are proven to improve the health of your patients." However... it doesn't sound like there's a lot of evidence to support the idea that this particular measure will result in much of a difference in overall health of patients.
Homespun, conventional wisdom ain't always so wise. In most US jurisdictions, you're going to be hard-pressed to find forced, non-consensual penetration of the vagina or anus - whether with a penis, a finger, or anything else - NOT be defined as "rape."
United States Federal Law [Title 10, Subtitle A, Chapter 47X, Section 920, Article 120] defines rape as: “ (a) Rape.— Any person subject to this chapter who causes another person of any age to engage in a sexual act by— (1) using force against that other person; (2) causing grievous bodily harm to any person; (3) threatening or placing that other person in fear that any person will be subjected to death, grievous bodily harm, or kidnapping; (4) rendering another person unconscious; or (5) administering to another person by force or threat of force, or without the knowledge or permission of that person, a drug, intoxicant, or other similar substance and thereby substantially impairs the ability of that other person to appraise or control conduct.
It's an 8-page article in my browser at least - make sure you look at the other 6 pages, wherein they detail: that she was passed out and at least two of the players "slipped a finger" inside, in addition to taking her clothes off, inviting other people to urinate on her, and flashing her breasts while she was passed out. And they recovered two photos from one of the suspects' phones, one of which shows the girl "face down on the floor, naked, with her arms tucked beneath her," and the other which they don't describe.
Here's the single-page version of the NYTimes story, and it's got plenty of details to support *allegations* of a gang rape. Whether or not these allegations are true is what will be determined at trial.
If management wants your opinion of your coworkers, they'll ask for it.
Correct. But that doesn't mean you can't approach your boss with a suggestion for improving things. If your goal is simply to bust your co-worker's balls, you're going to look like a smug asshole no matter how nicely you put it. If your goal is truly the betterment of your team's product, then there is a way to approach this that won't make you look like an asshole, and in fact, will make you look like a huge team player who really wants to make things work better.
Consider the difference between this:
"Hey, Boss - I gotta bitch to you about Bob. He writes the shittiest code ever committed to electronic storage in the history of the world - hand to god, that's no exaggeration. This asshole thinks he's clever, and I really want to see him get his shit taken down a couple pegs, because frankly, I don't like old people - they smell funny. What do you say I just ride his ass for the next six months until he snaps and kills us all in a fit of murderous rage?"
And this: "Hey, Boss. I have a suggestion. We have coding standards, but people don't really follow them very well; I'd like to suggest that we review & update the coding standards, and then implement a regular code review policy to make sure people are following those standards. There's lots of documentation showing that this practice saves time and results in better code, so I think this could be a really big win for us. If we spend a few weeks updating those standards, and then put an ongoing code review in place, we should produce more & better code as a result, which'll mean more bandwidth for new and exciting projects, and more vacation time to party on the yachts management will buy for us with all the bonuses they shower on us! Whaddya say?"
The first is personal, and very clearly targeted at your singular distaste for a single person's work style. This is a bad idea, because it makes you look like an asshole. The second is constructive, and should clearly include yourself in the 'needs improvement too' category - meaning, you're not strutting around talking about how everybody else is shit, but you're perfect - you're acknowledging that nobody's perfect, and everybody could improve, and you're offering a suggestion as to how you can go about improving.
Do the first, and you're an asshole. Do the second, and you're just a straight shooter with upper management written all over you.
Something being very popular does not de-facto make it a monopoly.
Actually, under the law, it pretty much does, at the scale Youtube has: if these numbers are to be believed, nearly 44% of worldwide online video viewing.
Compare that with the second place, Youku, in China, which has 2.3% of the viewership. Facebook makes the top 5, at 1.3% of global views. Considering that #2 and #5 are in China & Japan, it's very likely that Youtube represents a MUCH higher percentage of US-based video viewing than those global numbers would indicate, which would probably confer monopoly status on Youtube here in the US, even if it's not as popular somewhere abroad.
When you are 20-40 times the size of your second, third, fourth, and fifth place competitors... it's pretty hard to claim that you're perched precariously on top of a hill, ready to be knocked off by any errant breeze that comes your way. Youtube is not an underdog. Google is not an underdog. All of their competitors you are claiming are "very large," and poised to destroy Youtube at a moment's notice, are microscopic also-rans in Youtube's market, and pose no substantial threat to Youtube unless Youtube mysteriously goes offline for a year.
Why not just sell the device with user-loadable "retractable reels" then?
Most of these devices come with a charging cable... why not just build your "retractable reels" to support the charging cables that are included with the devices?
Slashdot Mirror
If it's really an issue and the supplements don't seem to be helping, there are some lamps that can be used as a substitute for sunlight, as well - talk to your doctor and see what he/she recommends.
Funny, I show you a study that showed in a randomized, double-blind study, that Vitamin D supplementation was shown to be a statistically significant treatment for seasonal-related depressive symptoms. In response, you say "nuh-uh," and link a study that is a review of many studies and attempts to draw conclusions about Vitamin D's efficacy across all types of depression.
The fact that Vitamin D appears to be an effective treatment for one type of depression, but not all, does not negate its usefulness as a treatment - for that type of depression. Nobody said "Vitamin D will cure all your depressionz forEVAR!" It's a halfway clever straw man, but a straw man nonetheless.
To offer a similar example, penicillin doesn't work on the common cold - because the cold is caused by something that penicillin isn't effective against. That doesn't mean penicillin is useless in treating every sore throat - it means it's useless in treating SOME KINDS of sore throat, and that adequate diagnostic technique is called for before the doctor writes a prescription.
Why yes, yes it does.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9539254
So,out of curiosity - do you ask the same question whenever somebody says, "My doctor recommended this treatment for me, and it worked very well," or were you just going for "+5, Smug and Willfully Ignorant"?
In fairness, it can help dramatically - just 10 minutes in direct sunlight wearing shorts & a t-shirt is generally enough exposure for your daily Vitamin D needs, at least during the summer.
In winter, the UVB radiation doesn't penetrate the atmosphere as well / at all, depending on where you live, which means that an artificial lamp with the proper spectrum and/or supplementation might be helpful.
Indeed I do, and nothing I said is at odds with what you've said. My post was not a defense of "the patent system as it exists today." My post was a commentary on the foolishness of the "information wants to be free" argument.
Any argument that fails to acknowledge the inherent cost of producing novel information - and thus the inherent value that information has - is destined for irrelevance. An argument that fails to acknowledge this amounts to an assertion that "information has no value," and is, therefore, objectively incorrect.
I'm struggling to understand how ANYTHING you just said is relevant.
I said, "The cost of COPYING information once it's been produced is dropping in price each and every day. The cost of CREATING novel information still has a minimum cost floor."
Meaning - you will NEVER drive the cost of "novel creation" to zero. The cost of creating "one copy of instructions" is still significant, and non-zero. And in fact, in molecular terms, the cost of creating copies is also significant, and non-zero, in terms of energy & materials required. In fact, your entire biological tangent is rather bizarre and un-enlightening because you're trying to draw an analogy that really doesn't work, because it requires physical ingredients to produce tangible copies.
The barriers are not "all in my mind," the barriers are very real - creating something new and worthwhile has a cost, regardless of how expensive or cheap it is to produce additional copies after the original is created. For everybody who can *create* the Mona Lisa - who has the skills, tools, training, and aptitude - there's millions of people who'd love to hang a copy in their living room. Without a painter with the aptitude, tools, training, and time to create a desirable work of art, those millions of people end up with copies of poker-playing dogs hanging on their wall, instead.
Indeed, there's no law preventing you from doing that. Though why you'd do that, I'm not sure - is Chick-Fil-A part of the federal government now? I guess I missed that article of the Constitution where all laws are made & enforced by a fast food chain.
What you're blithely ignoring in this foolishness is that there ARE laws against loitering and trespass, which they can easily have you arrested under if you refuse to leave the store when you're invited to do so by management after it becomes clear that your goal is simply to disrupt their business operations.
To your "information wants to be free," I respond, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
The cost of COPYING information once it's been produced is dropping in price each and every day. The cost of CREATING novel information - be it scientific research, music, film, a book, or anything else - but still has a minimum cost floor: the value of the time required for a person to produce it + the cost of tools + development of the skills required + time & cost of training required to be able to create it. That cost will never be "zero" for useful, desirable information.
Put that in your ribosomes and translate it.
So, "buying the hype" = "your criteria for purchase don't match what I think they should be." Got it.
Funny you say this, and them bemoan your girlfriend's decision to look for a pink laptop, because it sounds like she's doing exactly what you just recommended - she's looking for what she likes, and doesn't care about all the "NOW WITH GINGERBREAD 4.2 MICROSD RETINA DISPLAY iOS6 GOODNESS!" She's not allowing a bunch of hype to distract her from what matters: that she wants a pink laptop.
Perhaps you should try to convince her to go with the hype in this case, so she buys a new device she doesn't really want, based on raw performance stats that marketers have convinced her she absolutely needs if she wants to be cool. It won't be pink like she wants, but surely it'll live up to all the marketing hype!
The reason for that is that evolution doesn't give a shit what your definitions of "good" or "bad" are. In terms of evolution, "good" equals "well-suited to survival given the environment," and "bad" means "not well suited to survival, given the environment."
Evolution happens in a context - if you don't take into account that context, then you will fail to understand evolution, and you will see evolution as a bizarre, random "blessing" bestowed upon some species/products, and a "curse" for others to be afflicted by - possibly meted out by an angry god who demands propitiation.
Firefly - a niche market, with limited appeal in the mainstream.
Jersey Shore - a train wreck, with broad appeal in the mainstream.
The context: television, where the most number of eyeballs watching a show and generating buzz about the show is what wins, because viewers = advertising money, and advertising money = profitable show, and profitable show = keep funding seasons, because people want to watch this.
By that measure, Jersey Shore is FAR more "fitter" (in the evolutionary sense) than Firefly ever was - Jersey Shore is lowest common denominator television designed to attract (and retain) watchers. Firefly was an fun "what if" that was designed to appeal strongly to a VERY small slice of the market. The result? Jersey Shore is a hit TV show with 6 seasons under its belt, and lots of advertising revenues, while Firefly had one season, tepid advertising revenues, and an fairly quick cancellation. Don't get me wrong - I loved Firely... but it wasn't "good" in a way that was materially relevant to its continued existence.
Well, the smug condescending ones, at least.
I like how you slyly inserted yourself into the class of "knowledgeable users." That was so smooth I almost didn't notice it.
Why would you ever fear that? The fact that most people want dumbed-down interfaces for their computers means nothing about the average level of intelligence of computer users. I guarantee you that there are lots of people who are a lot smarter than you who buy and use tablets and other "dumbed down" devices, and absolutely love that they have that choice.
Why? Because they spend their brainpower doing the work that they've decided to specialize in. Doctors aren't "dumb" because they didn't decide to spend their time learning how to work a computer. And the fact that there are billions of people out there yearning for a simple, cut down interface on a device like a tablet means that you, and every other computer operator, will continue to have a job - programming the devices & interfaces that people want, and will buy.
Sadly, yes, he probably would have. They found discarded 30-round magazines with as few as 15 rounds fired from them, and reports are that he "reloaded frequently." He started shooting about 9:35 a.m., and stopped shooting 11-14 minutes later. He fired 50-100 rounds, meaning he fired 4-9 rounds per minute, or one round every 7-15 seconds, on average.
If you're familiar with a weapon, you can swap a magazine in seconds. Lanza was familiar with these weapons, they were owned by his mother, who took him to the gun range where he fired them. Reducing the capacity of the magazines he had access to would have had little to no effect on the "amount of damage" he would have done - he wasn't emptying magazines to begin with.
That's a vast oversimplification of the problem. Much of our gun violence is drug related. In fact, it's incredibly rare, statistically speaking, that a mass murder is committed like this. handguns are the tool of choice for most gun homicides, to the extent that "other guns" are involved at a rate roughly similar to knives and blunt objects.
In fact, murders like what happened at Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech or Columbine are mostly caused by mental health problems. These are surprisingly rare. The other crimes
So, let me rephrase your argument: "If he had done something completely different from what he's accused of, the penalty would be way less!"
By jove, I think you've got an amazing legal career ahead of you.
Seriously, don't quit your day job.
The law, and reality, disagree with you.
He entered illegally a space he had no right to be, with the express intention of committing a felony. Redistribution of the files is irrelevant - he accessed the MIT network and the JSTOR servers in a manner which he was not authorized to do. If we can agree he did that, then he's guilty of at least a few of the charges that were leveled at him - and those charges are felonies.
No matter HOW hard you try to spin this, under the law as it exists and as it is written he did far more than "trespass." And what's really amusing to me is that you don't see the irony in your own claims that I don't understand the laws I've explained to you.
There's a difference between "what I, fredprado, think the laws should be!" and "what the laws, on the books, are." Your wishes and preferences don't change the laws on the books.
You'd have a great point, if anything you said were even remotely true under the law.
Breaking & entering to access someone else's property with the intent of committing another crime inside is most certainly not trespass. Given the steps he took to cover his tracks and disguise his access, it's clear that he knew he was not "authorized" to access the server closet, network, and JSTOR servers in the way he did. He went in there with a specific intent, and that specific intent was to commit a crime. In this case, the crime was a felony, even if he really wished it wasn't a felony. Ignorantia juris non excusat, and deliberately ignoring the law that you know exists is even less of an alibi.
Mass General Laws, Part IV, Title I, Chapter 266, Section 16 has this to say about it, and it very specifically does NOT limit itself to residences, while outlining a maximum penalty of 20 years:
Doing so with the intent of only committing a misdemeanor carries with it a 6 month maximum:
And daytime B&E with intent to commit felony will get you up to 10 years per offense:
Even under the most liberal reading, Massachusetts state law does not suggest he would "only" face 30 days. Given the nature of what he did (that is, commit a felony once he broke & entered a non-residential building), Mass laws would suggest he'd be on the hook for a maximum of 10-20 years per offense.
In the state of Massachusetts, if you use a crowbar to gain entry to someone else's property, it is known as burglary (or breaking & entering), and carries a 2 - 10 year sentence (per offense), in the best case of B&E during the day, without a weapon, and not "putting anybody lawfully therein in fear." (Source: Mass. General Laws.)
Depending on the circumstances - i.e., you do it armed, at night, and/or threaten occupants of the building - it can easily carry up to a 20 year sentence.
Where you're getting this "30 day" number from, I don't know, but simple breaking & entering in Massachusetts will get you a lot more than that.
If you're going to try and draw parallels, at least draw realistic ones.
Yes, and that one, single law says that "once you achieve a dominant market share, you must abide by certain rules that prevent you from abusing your dominant market share to neutralize competition."
That one law applies to both Apple and Microsoft. It's just that Microsoft achieved a dominant market share, and abused it; Apple hasn't achieved a dominant market share, but if they do (let's say Android implodes tomorrow and all the devices running it disappear in some sort of amazing electronic Rapture), they will be required to abide by the same rules. If Apple reached the same amount of market dominance MSFT had, you'll see the complaints of their practices (esp. wrt their App Store policies) get a lot more traction.
There's a whole lot of mentally ill people in the US.
There are hundreds of millions of guns in the US.
Yet:
1) These mass murders are pretty rare.
2) The bulk of the weapons used in these crimes are handguns (not "assault weapons").
3) The bulk of the weapons used in these mass murders are acquired legally.
Discuss.
Also, compare and contrast - Switzerland's ~50 guns per 100 households, and the US' ~88 guns per 100 household ownership rates, which are much, much higher than most of the rest of Europe's averages, with the great disparity in gun violence rates in the two countries. Perhaps the difference is due to some practical regulations and policies that we could enact here, as well?
You know, rather than shouting about "ban all teh guns all teh timez," why not have a constructive conversation about how to:
1) Sensibly regulate gun ownership;
2) Deliver mental health care to the people who need it;
3) Address the root issue of poverty inherent to many of the gun crimes in the US which contribute heavily to the shockingly high firearm murder rates here?
There's a link in the other story, to this article, written by Dr. Orient:
http://www.jpands.org/vol17no4/orient.pdf
In it, she outlines what she calls "minimal" benefits (with no studies apparently having been conducted in hospitals yet). She also points out that by making the administration of the vaccine mandatory, it forces the caregivers to forfeit their right to choose what procedures and medications they will allow to be administered to them - rights which are afforded to all recipients of medical care. (And which, I would further add, should not be trampled on lightly - with little or no evidence to support the claim that mandatory influenza vaccinations increase patient safety.)
Far from conclusive - Dr. Orient wrote the article, and is the one saying "they shouldn't be forced to," but I think it's certainly something that needs serious further study; In general, I like the idea of "if you want to work as a healthcare professional, you have to do these things which are proven to improve the health of your patients." However... it doesn't sound like there's a lot of evidence to support the idea that this particular measure will result in much of a difference in overall health of patients.
Homespun, conventional wisdom ain't always so wise. In most US jurisdictions, you're going to be hard-pressed to find forced, non-consensual penetration of the vagina or anus - whether with a penis, a finger, or anything else - NOT be defined as "rape."
Here's an excerpt from the relevant federal law:
It's an 8-page article in my browser at least - make sure you look at the other 6 pages, wherein they detail: that she was passed out and at least two of the players "slipped a finger" inside, in addition to taking her clothes off, inviting other people to urinate on her, and flashing her breasts while she was passed out. And they recovered two photos from one of the suspects' phones, one of which shows the girl "face down on the floor, naked, with her arms tucked beneath her," and the other which they don't describe.
Here's the single-page version of the NYTimes story, and it's got plenty of details to support *allegations* of a gang rape. Whether or not these allegations are true is what will be determined at trial.
Correct. But that doesn't mean you can't approach your boss with a suggestion for improving things. If your goal is simply to bust your co-worker's balls, you're going to look like a smug asshole no matter how nicely you put it. If your goal is truly the betterment of your team's product, then there is a way to approach this that won't make you look like an asshole, and in fact, will make you look like a huge team player who really wants to make things work better.
Consider the difference between this:
"Hey, Boss - I gotta bitch to you about Bob. He writes the shittiest code ever committed to electronic storage in the history of the world - hand to god, that's no exaggeration. This asshole thinks he's clever, and I really want to see him get his shit taken down a couple pegs, because frankly, I don't like old people - they smell funny. What do you say I just ride his ass for the next six months until he snaps and kills us all in a fit of murderous rage?"
And this:
"Hey, Boss. I have a suggestion. We have coding standards, but people don't really follow them very well; I'd like to suggest that we review & update the coding standards, and then implement a regular code review policy to make sure people are following those standards. There's lots of documentation showing that this practice saves time and results in better code, so I think this could be a really big win for us. If we spend a few weeks updating those standards, and then put an ongoing code review in place, we should produce more & better code as a result, which'll mean more bandwidth for new and exciting projects, and more vacation time to party on the yachts management will buy for us with all the bonuses they shower on us! Whaddya say?"
The first is personal, and very clearly targeted at your singular distaste for a single person's work style. This is a bad idea, because it makes you look like an asshole. The second is constructive, and should clearly include yourself in the 'needs improvement too' category - meaning, you're not strutting around talking about how everybody else is shit, but you're perfect - you're acknowledging that nobody's perfect, and everybody could improve, and you're offering a suggestion as to how you can go about improving.
Do the first, and you're an asshole. Do the second, and you're just a straight shooter with upper management written all over you.
Actually, under the law, it pretty much does, at the scale Youtube has: if these numbers are to be believed, nearly 44% of worldwide online video viewing.
Compare that with the second place, Youku, in China, which has 2.3% of the viewership. Facebook makes the top 5, at 1.3% of global views. Considering that #2 and #5 are in China & Japan, it's very likely that Youtube represents a MUCH higher percentage of US-based video viewing than those global numbers would indicate, which would probably confer monopoly status on Youtube here in the US, even if it's not as popular somewhere abroad.
When you are 20-40 times the size of your second, third, fourth, and fifth place competitors... it's pretty hard to claim that you're perched precariously on top of a hill, ready to be knocked off by any errant breeze that comes your way. Youtube is not an underdog. Google is not an underdog. All of their competitors you are claiming are "very large," and poised to destroy Youtube at a moment's notice, are microscopic also-rans in Youtube's market, and pose no substantial threat to Youtube unless Youtube mysteriously goes offline for a year.
Why not just sell the device with user-loadable "retractable reels" then?
Most of these devices come with a charging cable... why not just build your "retractable reels" to support the charging cables that are included with the devices?