I don't think it's that simple. Typically what happens is business needs something in a short period of time in order to exploit an opportunity, but then development needs time to return the code to a well ordered state rather than the hacky (albeit working) mess left after the rush-job is delivered. Typically your average PHB has no clue what they are asking for in terms of human effort and often even the dev team don't appreciate the full extent of the impact of a change to the system like this.
Good programmers continually fix and improve code as they work on it. Usually compensating for weaker team mates, refactoring as they go, improving overall maintainability without spending vast amounts of time. Micromanage these good programmers at your peril, you'll just frustrate them and reduce the quality of your product, making it harder and harder to get those quick changes your business values so much.
I think you're quite right... most of it made up, some small bits of truth wrapped in fantasy for political gain. He's not the messiah... he's a very naughty boy!
Noah was born pre-Flood. And if you follow the geneologies, they lifespans increasingly shorten with each successive generation; thus not an immediate effect but something that took a few generations to take in.
Also... the bible is not a trusted reference source. It was written by people who weren't there, repeatedly re-written by people with poor translation skills (not to mention political agendas to achieve). Each new interpretation of "The word of God" heralded as an unchanging, perfect holy text. Codswallop!
You are quite right of course, however as we have no reliable way to tell 'asshole' from emergency, we should refrain from prejudice, and choose to drive safely; This includes not obstructing traffic, moving over to allow others to pass that are going faster than us, and making sure we don't break the speed limit. It's not our place to judge other drivers, we don't have all the facts, we are not police or judiciary and we cause more problems by behaving as though we are. People behave like spoilt children when they drive, they get all entitled and territorial about the bit or tarmac they occupy and forget that their juvenile hissy-fit could kill someone because they're not in full control of the two tons of metal hurtling along at over seventy miles an hour that they're supposed to be responsible for.
There are always exceptions! The guy behind you is not always a dick. I got held up by a inconsiderate asshat while I was rushing a bleeding woman to the emergency room. Even though I had my hazard lights on, briefly flashed my headlights, and eventually honked my horn. He decided that the fast lane was his tarmac and that I was not entitled to pass him. There was nothing stopping him from moving over other than his attitude. There were no other cars on the road (it was about 1am). I eventually went round him on the inside after about 30 seconds or so, and only after checking it was safe to do so. Alas, the idiot swerved over, trying to prevent me from passing on the inside. I leaned on the horn and drove at/past him accelerating away and onwards to the hospital.
You don't always know what is going on in the car behind, just follow the rules of the road, don't impede traffic, it's not your job to enforce speed limits by being a rolling blockade. It also goes without saying that speeding is wrong and dangerous but sometimes it is the lesser of two evils and the choice to speed lies with the driver doing the speeding not the guy in front. It's best to drive defensively, just move over, it doesn't hurt. I do it every day that I'm not rushing someone to hospital.
Last time I checked, most embedded development is done using C especially on low power devices. We are getting more of these devices added to our world every day, not less. The PC on the other hand is in decline in terms of numbers. I don't think the world is moving away from C, but I do think that C is in decline on the PC.
Not much competes with C in the embedded space. While Java is having some limited success on the bigger embedded systems; Those that have enough space to install it and still have room left for your code that is. As I stated earlier, embedded development is growing rapidly. With regard to C on the PC though... it's easier to work in other more forgiving languages at the expense of having slower code because modern machines are so fast very few people actually care that much about the overhead. I think the basic problem is that our industry is has a large number of computer programmers that are quite bad at what they do. We found out through painful experience that we don't want these people working in C because the damage they can do in it is very large and costly, compared to the damage they can do in something like Java where idiocy is much easier to detect early in a project.
I imagine you can as long as you 'scavenge' for longer than you 'broadcast' and you have somewhere to keep your scavenged energy in between transmissions.
I see, understand (and even agree with parts of) the argument you're making in your original post above... "If the code is clear, comments are superfluous"; The trouble is that code is often not clear to the reader, and it's really hard for the writer to make a judgement call on the reader's behalf, as to what constitutes "clear". Therefore, I would always advise commenting the intent of code in case you get it wrong, and some poor guy with a different definition of "clear" has to fix it in the future. This way, he can read your commented intentions, compare them what the code actually does and have a chance of applying a working fix.
Your conveniently simple example in the previous post would likely not require a comment, however, the code INSIDE of your isEmployeeEligibleForBenefits() method would likely need clear comments to explain why it works in the particular way it does.
Comments are only superfluous in this situation if they are paraphrasing your code. Comments should document the code's intent not it's actions. Assume the reader knows little about the problem domain and document WHY your code is doing something not WHAT it is doing and then they'll always be useful to those who come after you (or yourself in 12 months)
hehe, sorry but you made me laugh now I have to say why...
neigh: a characteristic high whinnying sound made by a horse.
motorboating (slang): The act of placing one's head between a woman's breasts and making the sound of a motorboat with one's lips whilst moving the head from side to side.
cruising (slang): wandering about a place in search of a casual sexual partner.
As it happens, while I didn't mention the Jews I did happen to cast my eye over their estimated contribution to the overall percentage of people on earth that believe in "God" and their inclusion in the figure still did not increase the figure to a majority (or "most") of people as indicated in your claim.
Know is right,
You imply 100%
No I did not. Had I done so you would have known by my use of words like "all" or "always" or "without exception". I made no claim regarding the extent of the harm religion causes, only that it does indeed cause harm.
based on... what? It's the classic circular argument, isn't it?
Empathy, a trait observable in many creatures. We don't need an imaginary friend to tell us that killing another being is "bad" we _know_ this because we don't want to be killed ourselves. This is not a great mystery of the universe, this is not hard to understand, this is not something that requires a teacher. We can use the word "most" to describe how many people know right from wrong.
Maybe the bomb was doing an unwanted Windows 10 update in the middle of the mission! This caused things to not work for a while and the bloody thing went poof in the wrong place?
um... no. Around a third of people believe God (with a capital G) is real. About 85% of humans have some sort of religious belief, but most of these are not Christians.
Furthermore, religion does cause harm. It conditions people to blindly accept the instruction of others as divine will. This leads to all sorts of manipulation of the masses. It is used (and abused) by politicians and power mongers to get people to do what they are told to do. Rather than people thinking for themselves and doing what they know is right.
I for one would like to see people think before they act and take responsibility (in this life) for the good and bad things they do. It's lazy and irresponsible to blame ones behaviour on ones imaginary friend whether that behaviour is good or bad.
I disagree, I think that "inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows" is "a large direct consequence" of both the few cops that partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the few people who claim all cops partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the latter group tends to make less sweeping claims when the former group tends to be smaller or partakes in less criminal behaviors
I totally agree with your above comment regarding the "large direct consequence", I will also say that plenty of evidence exists to suggest that some police deserve to be in prison as they are criminals. I also think we have similar feelings when confronted with evidence of crime being committed by the police. I would add to this though; All the negative press about the police whether accurate or exaggerated, real or imagined amplifies and encourages negative feelings in the public mind. While I think it is right that we the public should get to hear about this sort of news, I think that the media tries to turn everything they report into as big a story as they can in order to make money out of us rather than to report cold hard (often boring) facts. The negative image does not benefit the public, or the police.
I think it's fair to say that in order to remedy the situation the police need to be utterly transparent about what they do and what they get wrong. But equally, I think they need to be allowed to do this by the media without being damned as an organization when an individual has done something unforgivable
I suspect this would work for about a week... then most people would probably stop paying attention to the big shiny spike, maybe even hang a hat on it or something.
Indeed, that is exactly what I said. Police brutality is wrong and criminal and should be treated as such. I was very clear about that. I ALSO think however that it is incorrect to judge ALL police on the actions of a few criminal individuals.
Let me explain this really simply. Every single cop who pulled over the preacher that I talked about is a violent felon. Yes, it's that simple.
It's not legal to point a gun at someone unless you have a reasonable belief that they are going to immediately cause great harm to you or someone else. Period.
Allow me to be equally simple. One guy's experience, however wrong and traumatic for him, is not statistically relevant, or in any way representative of an entire data set.
It's frightening how easily you ignore that.
I do not ignore, nor do I endorse the police brutality. You seem to have missed that fact however so I'll say again, it is wrong, criminal, and should be dealt with as such.
This is entirely separate from the "trial by media" of the entire US police force. The majority of the 1.1 million police are CLEARLY not behaving this way and not doing the terrible things that have happened to the man in your example. Yes bad cops exist, yes they should be dealt with appropriately. Are all cops bad? NO.
You yourself used the phrase "A staggering number have killed multiple times". Really? "A staggering number" how many is that? Why did you choose those particular emotionally charged words? Why not actually quote the number of serial killer cops on the force instead? You also used the phrase "We have a pretty big problem..." how big? in relation to what? You highlight my point beautifully, humans prejudge the shit out of everything, you're doing it about cops, some cops are doing it about black people (and others I might add). Take a moment and ask yourself, what is the cause of the problem and what should I do to solve it. You may not find the answer or even provide a solution, but maybe just maybe you'll stop being part of the problem. Prejudice in all of it's guises has negative repercussions.
...Beyond that, yes, police don't actually kill that many people. But what we've found is that when they do, the others tend to cover up their bad behavior. A staggering number have killed multiple times. Given that half of all LEOs in the US don't ever draw their sidearm during their entire career, you get the picture that some guys just don't need to be police officers.
The media in the US does seem to be pointing out a problem with some police officers. I imagine that the police force is likely to contain similar levels of unstable individuals as the public at large does. In other words, some bad/brutal/improper behaviour is inevitable and needs to be dealt with appropriately when it occurs.
Sweeping brutality under the carpet or trying to cover it up is indeed wrong (possibly criminal in itself) and should be robustly discouraged. However the culture of secrecy is by in large a direct consequence of trying to avoid the inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows.
I didn't understand it until I went to a mixed-race church with a black preacher years ago. One Sunday he gently explained it to us white folks in the audience. This is a guy with no criminal history, college educated, etc. He started out by explaining that every single time he had been pulled over he had a gun pointed at him, sometimes touched to his bald head.
We have a pretty big problem with that stuff in this country, and the Tamir rices are just the tip of the iceberg.
This sort of behaviour is often the result of fear on the police's part. Fear in itself is not an excuse, however if someone is afraid for their own safety they will be more likely to not-take-chances with someone they perceive to be a threat. You can't tell just by looking at someone if they are a respected peace-loving graduate or a gun-toting looney but humans (yes all humans) are hard-wired to pre-judge situations biased by prior experience whether or not that "experience" is grounded in fact (what they have seen happen) or fantasy (what they were told happens). If cops go to work "believing" that they are going to be shot by a black guy then then their fear is rational (to them at least).
In short, I think most cops in the US (like most people everywhere) are doing a job and doing it reasonably well. That is not "news" however and as such your media won't be telling you that any time soon. I've been lead to believe that a disproportionate number of "criminals" in the US are from non-white communities (if the stats quoted in the media are correct). If most criminals in a police jurisdiction are from a single ethnic background then it is human nature to pattern-match others of this ethnicity and associate them with potential criminal behaviour. While this is totally incorrect in individual cases, it is no more than ALL HUMANS do. You only have to read the rest of this page to find fine examples of irrational prejudice exhibiting general hatred of "all police".
labelling an entire group like "all police are scum" or "all black people are criminals" is equally incorrect and unhelpful to us all. A better use of our time would be to ask; is the ratio of financial disadvantage proportional to the crime rate when compared along race lines? If so, then the policing problem is not "black" or "white"... it's "green"... i.e. sort of the poverty and the crime related problems will fix themselves?
That looks an awful lot like a dangerous generalization.
I don't live in the US and I've never met a US police officer. Also, I do not support or defend police brutality in any way, it is crime and should be treated as such, however looking at the numbers of police officers in the US (around 1.1 million personal allowed to conduct arrests) you'd think that if they were ALL "scum" as you put it that you'd have a significantly higher rate of incidences of police brutality and deaths in police custody.
According to the ARD (Arrest-Related Deaths) Bureau of Justice stats; between 2003 and 2009 police in the US killed a total of 2,931 people they were attempting to arrest, of which 75% were being arrested for violent crimes. This sounds like a big number (about 419 people per year), but if viewed in terms of the number of violent crimes committed in the US (116,440,350,000 in 2013 for instance, taken from the FBI violent crime statistics of 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013) you realise just how tiny a drop in the ocean this number is.
More people die in traffic accidents over the Easter weekend DRIVING to the coast in South Africa between Johannesburg and Durban than are killed by the cops in the US in a year
Incidentally, around 143 US police are killed each year in the line of duty. Considering 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured. I think it's a safe assumption that being a cop in the US is a dangerous job that brings you into contact with a violent criminals. Clearly violent criminals exist, they shoot at each other, the public in general and the police, some of them are going to be stupid enough to try to shoot their way out of an arrest and get shot in return. Clearly not all of the people killed by the police fall into this category, but I don't think we should judge ALL police on the fact that a tiny minority of their 1.1 million staff are brutal, but we should judge them instead on how they deal with those individuals and what they do to weed them out of their ranks.
So while the media may tell millions of us every day about how savage the police are in order to get us to buy their papers and tune-in to their news programs, I don't believe the hype is proportional to the size or nature of the problem. But hey, even-handed and rational news never sold any news papers or advertising spots, so I guess the chances of us ever seeing it are really slim.
Incidentally, how many cops have you had interactions with and why are they scum in your opinion?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's that simple. Typically what happens is business needs something in a short period of time in order to exploit an opportunity, but then development needs time to return the code to a well ordered state rather than the hacky (albeit working) mess left after the rush-job is delivered. Typically your average PHB has no clue what they are asking for in terms of human effort and often even the dev team don't appreciate the full extent of the impact of a change to the system like this.
Good programmers continually fix and improve code as they work on it. Usually compensating for weaker team mates, refactoring as they go, improving overall maintainability without spending vast amounts of time. Micromanage these good programmers at your peril, you'll just frustrate them and reduce the quality of your product, making it harder and harder to get those quick changes your business values so much.
I think keeping the cats fed was the biggest challenge to the feline-toast turbine wasn't it?
except he didn't because he's erm... imaginary and stuff
I think you're quite right... most of it made up, some small bits of truth wrapped in fantasy for political gain. He's not the messiah... he's a very naughty boy!
Noah was born pre-Flood. And if you follow the geneologies, they lifespans increasingly shorten with each successive generation; thus not an immediate effect but something that took a few generations to take in.
Also... the bible is not a trusted reference source. It was written by people who weren't there, repeatedly re-written by people with poor translation skills (not to mention political agendas to achieve). Each new interpretation of "The word of God" heralded as an unchanging, perfect holy text. Codswallop!
... (which I assume you read) ...
Hehe... you must be new here :P
You are quite right of course, however as we have no reliable way to tell 'asshole' from emergency, we should refrain from prejudice, and choose to drive safely; This includes not obstructing traffic, moving over to allow others to pass that are going faster than us, and making sure we don't break the speed limit. It's not our place to judge other drivers, we don't have all the facts, we are not police or judiciary and we cause more problems by behaving as though we are. People behave like spoilt children when they drive, they get all entitled and territorial about the bit or tarmac they occupy and forget that their juvenile hissy-fit could kill someone because they're not in full control of the two tons of metal hurtling along at over seventy miles an hour that they're supposed to be responsible for.
There are always exceptions! The guy behind you is not always a dick. I got held up by a inconsiderate asshat while I was rushing a bleeding woman to the emergency room. Even though I had my hazard lights on, briefly flashed my headlights, and eventually honked my horn. He decided that the fast lane was his tarmac and that I was not entitled to pass him. There was nothing stopping him from moving over other than his attitude. There were no other cars on the road (it was about 1am). I eventually went round him on the inside after about 30 seconds or so, and only after checking it was safe to do so. Alas, the idiot swerved over, trying to prevent me from passing on the inside. I leaned on the horn and drove at/past him accelerating away and onwards to the hospital.
You don't always know what is going on in the car behind, just follow the rules of the road, don't impede traffic, it's not your job to enforce speed limits by being a rolling blockade. It also goes without saying that speeding is wrong and dangerous but sometimes it is the lesser of two evils and the choice to speed lies with the driver doing the speeding not the guy in front. It's best to drive defensively, just move over, it doesn't hurt. I do it every day that I'm not rushing someone to hospital.
Last time I checked, most embedded development is done using C especially on low power devices. We are getting more of these devices added to our world every day, not less. The PC on the other hand is in decline in terms of numbers. I don't think the world is moving away from C, but I do think that C is in decline on the PC.
Not much competes with C in the embedded space. While Java is having some limited success on the bigger embedded systems; Those that have enough space to install it and still have room left for your code that is. As I stated earlier, embedded development is growing rapidly. With regard to C on the PC though... it's easier to work in other more forgiving languages at the expense of having slower code because modern machines are so fast very few people actually care that much about the overhead. I think the basic problem is that our industry is has a large number of computer programmers that are quite bad at what they do. We found out through painful experience that we don't want these people working in C because the damage they can do in it is very large and costly, compared to the damage they can do in something like Java where idiocy is much easier to detect early in a project.
I imagine you can as long as you 'scavenge' for longer than you 'broadcast' and you have somewhere to keep your scavenged energy in between transmissions.
I see, understand (and even agree with parts of) the argument you're making in your original post above... "If the code is clear, comments are superfluous"; The trouble is that code is often not clear to the reader, and it's really hard for the writer to make a judgement call on the reader's behalf, as to what constitutes "clear". Therefore, I would always advise commenting the intent of code in case you get it wrong, and some poor guy with a different definition of "clear" has to fix it in the future. This way, he can read your commented intentions, compare them what the code actually does and have a chance of applying a working fix.
Your conveniently simple example in the previous post would likely not require a comment, however, the code INSIDE of your isEmployeeEligibleForBenefits() method would likely need clear comments to explain why it works in the particular way it does.
Comments are only superfluous in this situation if they are paraphrasing your code. Comments should document the code's intent not it's actions. Assume the reader knows little about the problem domain and document WHY your code is doing something not WHAT it is doing and then they'll always be useful to those who come after you (or yourself in 12 months)
hehe, sorry but you made me laugh now I have to say why...
neigh: a characteristic high whinnying sound made by a horse.
motorboating (slang): The act of placing one's head between a woman's breasts and making the sound of a motorboat with one's lips whilst moving the head from side to side.
cruising (slang): wandering about a place in search of a casual sexual partner.
you forgot about Jews
As it happens, while I didn't mention the Jews I did happen to cast my eye over their estimated contribution to the overall percentage of people on earth that believe in "God" and their inclusion in the figure still did not increase the figure to a majority (or "most") of people as indicated in your claim.
Know is right,
You imply 100%
No I did not. Had I done so you would have known by my use of words like "all" or "always" or "without exception". I made no claim regarding the extent of the harm religion causes, only that it does indeed cause harm.
based on... what? It's the classic circular argument, isn't it?
Empathy, a trait observable in many creatures. We don't need an imaginary friend to tell us that killing another being is "bad" we _know_ this because we don't want to be killed ourselves. This is not a great mystery of the universe, this is not hard to understand, this is not something that requires a teacher. We can use the word "most" to describe how many people know right from wrong.
Maybe the bomb was doing an unwanted Windows 10 update in the middle of the mission! This caused things to not work for a while and the bloody thing went poof in the wrong place?
Most people believe God is real.
um... no. Around a third of people believe God (with a capital G) is real. About 85% of humans have some sort of religious belief, but most of these are not Christians.
Furthermore, religion does cause harm. It conditions people to blindly accept the instruction of others as divine will. This leads to all sorts of manipulation of the masses. It is used (and abused) by politicians and power mongers to get people to do what they are told to do. Rather than people thinking for themselves and doing what they know is right.
I for one would like to see people think before they act and take responsibility (in this life) for the good and bad things they do. It's lazy and irresponsible to blame ones behaviour on ones imaginary friend whether that behaviour is good or bad.
I disagree, I think that "inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows" is "a large direct consequence" of both the few cops that partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the few people who claim all cops partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the latter group tends to make less sweeping claims when the former group tends to be smaller or partakes in less criminal behaviors
I totally agree with your above comment regarding the "large direct consequence", I will also say that plenty of evidence exists to suggest that some police deserve to be in prison as they are criminals. I also think we have similar feelings when confronted with evidence of crime being committed by the police. I would add to this though; All the negative press about the police whether accurate or exaggerated, real or imagined amplifies and encourages negative feelings in the public mind. While I think it is right that we the public should get to hear about this sort of news, I think that the media tries to turn everything they report into as big a story as they can in order to make money out of us rather than to report cold hard (often boring) facts. The negative image does not benefit the public, or the police.
I think it's fair to say that in order to remedy the situation the police need to be utterly transparent about what they do and what they get wrong. But equally, I think they need to be allowed to do this by the media without being damned as an organization when an individual has done something unforgivable
I suspect this would work for about a week... then most people would probably stop paying attention to the big shiny spike, maybe even hang a hat on it or something.
well... I suppose something has to pop the airbag otherwise how would the passenger get out? :)
Indeed, that is exactly what I said. Police brutality is wrong and criminal and should be treated as such. I was very clear about that. I ALSO think however that it is incorrect to judge ALL police on the actions of a few criminal individuals.
Sorry, you are quite right... finger trouble. My bad.
Let me explain this really simply. Every single cop who pulled over the preacher that I talked about is a violent felon. Yes, it's that simple.
It's not legal to point a gun at someone unless you have a reasonable belief that they are going to immediately cause great harm to you or someone else. Period.
Allow me to be equally simple. One guy's experience, however wrong and traumatic for him, is not statistically relevant, or in any way representative of an entire data set.
It's frightening how easily you ignore that.
I do not ignore, nor do I endorse the police brutality. You seem to have missed that fact however so I'll say again, it is wrong, criminal, and should be dealt with as such.
This is entirely separate from the "trial by media" of the entire US police force. The majority of the 1.1 million police are CLEARLY not behaving this way and not doing the terrible things that have happened to the man in your example. Yes bad cops exist, yes they should be dealt with appropriately. Are all cops bad? NO.
You yourself used the phrase "A staggering number have killed multiple times". Really? "A staggering number" how many is that? Why did you choose those particular emotionally charged words? Why not actually quote the number of serial killer cops on the force instead? You also used the phrase "We have a pretty big problem..." how big? in relation to what? You highlight my point beautifully, humans prejudge the shit out of everything, you're doing it about cops, some cops are doing it about black people (and others I might add). Take a moment and ask yourself, what is the cause of the problem and what should I do to solve it. You may not find the answer or even provide a solution, but maybe just maybe you'll stop being part of the problem. Prejudice in all of it's guises has negative repercussions.
...Beyond that, yes, police don't actually kill that many people. But what we've found is that when they do, the others tend to cover up their bad behavior. A staggering number have killed multiple times. Given that half of all LEOs in the US don't ever draw their sidearm during their entire career, you get the picture that some guys just don't need to be police officers.
The media in the US does seem to be pointing out a problem with some police officers. I imagine that the police force is likely to contain similar levels of unstable individuals as the public at large does. In other words, some bad/brutal/improper behaviour is inevitable and needs to be dealt with appropriately when it occurs.
Sweeping brutality under the carpet or trying to cover it up is indeed wrong (possibly criminal in itself) and should be robustly discouraged. However the culture of secrecy is by in large a direct consequence of trying to avoid the inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows.
I didn't understand it until I went to a mixed-race church with a black preacher years ago. One Sunday he gently explained it to us white folks in the audience. This is a guy with no criminal history, college educated, etc. He started out by explaining that every single time he had been pulled over he had a gun pointed at him, sometimes touched to his bald head.
We have a pretty big problem with that stuff in this country, and the Tamir rices are just the tip of the iceberg.
This sort of behaviour is often the result of fear on the police's part. Fear in itself is not an excuse, however if someone is afraid for their own safety they will be more likely to not-take-chances with someone they perceive to be a threat. You can't tell just by looking at someone if they are a respected peace-loving graduate or a gun-toting looney but humans (yes all humans) are hard-wired to pre-judge situations biased by prior experience whether or not that "experience" is grounded in fact (what they have seen happen) or fantasy (what they were told happens). If cops go to work "believing" that they are going to be shot by a black guy then then their fear is rational (to them at least).
In short, I think most cops in the US (like most people everywhere) are doing a job and doing it reasonably well. That is not "news" however and as such your media won't be telling you that any time soon. I've been lead to believe that a disproportionate number of "criminals" in the US are from non-white communities (if the stats quoted in the media are correct). If most criminals in a police jurisdiction are from a single ethnic background then it is human nature to pattern-match others of this ethnicity and associate them with potential criminal behaviour. While this is totally incorrect in individual cases, it is no more than ALL HUMANS do. You only have to read the rest of this page to find fine examples of irrational prejudice exhibiting general hatred of "all police".
labelling an entire group like "all police are scum" or "all black people are criminals" is equally incorrect and unhelpful to us all. A better use of our time would be to ask; is the ratio of financial disadvantage proportional to the crime rate when compared along race lines? If so, then the policing problem is not "black" or "white"... it's "green"... i.e. sort of the poverty and the crime related problems will fix themselves?
That looks an awful lot like a dangerous generalization.
I don't live in the US and I've never met a US police officer. Also, I do not support or defend police brutality in any way, it is crime and should be treated as such, however looking at the numbers of police officers in the US (around 1.1 million personal allowed to conduct arrests) you'd think that if they were ALL "scum" as you put it that you'd have a significantly higher rate of incidences of police brutality and deaths in police custody.
According to the ARD (Arrest-Related Deaths) Bureau of Justice stats; between 2003 and 2009 police in the US killed a total of 2,931 people they were attempting to arrest, of which 75% were being arrested for violent crimes. This sounds like a big number (about 419 people per year), but if viewed in terms of the number of violent crimes committed in the US (116,440,350,000 in 2013 for instance, taken from the FBI violent crime statistics of 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013) you realise just how tiny a drop in the ocean this number is.
More people die in traffic accidents over the Easter weekend DRIVING to the coast in South Africa between Johannesburg and Durban than are killed by the cops in the US in a year
Incidentally, around 143 US police are killed each year in the line of duty. Considering 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured. I think it's a safe assumption that being a cop in the US is a dangerous job that brings you into contact with a violent criminals. Clearly violent criminals exist, they shoot at each other, the public in general and the police, some of them are going to be stupid enough to try to shoot their way out of an arrest and get shot in return. Clearly not all of the people killed by the police fall into this category, but I don't think we should judge ALL police on the fact that a tiny minority of their 1.1 million staff are brutal, but we should judge them instead on how they deal with those individuals and what they do to weed them out of their ranks.
So while the media may tell millions of us every day about how savage the police are in order to get us to buy their papers and tune-in to their news programs, I don't believe the hype is proportional to the size or nature of the problem. But hey, even-handed and rational news never sold any news papers or advertising spots, so I guess the chances of us ever seeing it are really slim.
Incidentally, how many cops have you had interactions with and why are they scum in your opinion?
Nobody made any promises regarding Linux. As per the quote in the summary...
Canonical and Ubuntu are crystal clear. "We will never backdoor Ubuntu; we will never weaken encryption," he said.