I used to work at a place that did group interviews. It was a bit stressful for the applicants, but, it did an ok job of making sure that, at least everyone in the group "meshed" and if we did hire someone who was incompetent (it happened), at least we all put in some effort.
We all pretty much agreed that well, you are right, its about problem solving ability and things like that, less than just, rote knowledge. We used to have questions like "how do you go about solving a problem that you don't already know how to solve".
I actually devised a "PERL TEST" that I was pretty proud of. It was pretty much designed to be perfectly formatted code but, that didn't lend itself, at all, to figuring out what it did (so its not like you could look at it and get an idea what it was doing and guess from there).
It made people sweat, and two people did actually run through it, on their own, and give me example inputs and outputs (one of those people, as it turned out, had his name as a co-author of an O'Reilly perl book... which I would have known if I had gotten his resume in hand BEFORE the interview)
That was great, but, it was intended to be too hard for that. The entire point of the test was just to separate the people who knew at least enough perl to talk through some of it, from the people who were just plain faking it.
Admittedly, things like this may be harder to do in some fields.
> I disagree. Some portion of students will cheat as long as (in theory):
True... but before we even look at the argument, I think I am comfortable saying that the fact that some people will cheat, isn't really the problem. Some amount of fraudulent activity is going to happen in any system. The measure of the system is not whether or not fraud can occur, but, as much as, how much of it can occur.
The main problem I see with your formula is that the terms are quite nebulous. Even if you could derive meaningful numbers for the terms, the average student doesn't. That calculation is done in a more ad-hoc way by each persons perception of the risks vs rewards.
The bigger problem, as I see it... I think cheating students are making the right choice, at least, from a certain perspective.
You have several schisms of perception here. One is the perception of the value of a degree vs the value of the "education" that the degree represents. I think students VERY RIGHTLY value the degree over the education, because that is the value that our society puts on it.
As someone who doesn't have a degree at all, I have pointed out many times that, since i was about 21, I have not held a single job that didn't "require a bachelors". Clearly, since I never lied about my education, the jobs didn't actually require it... but more and more I see people seem to WANT workers with degrees, even though there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
So, in short, the degree *IS* worth more than the education that it represents.
This reminds me of a discussion that came out of a rant of mine the other say over the word "we".
I think this is a case where you have to be very careful about that word, because "we" can mean everything from "me and my group of friends" to "the people of the country" or any number of entities within.
"Good" or "Bad" is often a matter of context. Yes, these leaks are "bad" for some groups of people... they are also "good" for other groups... and we should be honest about who those groups are, and who they represent. They would claim that they are "us"... this whole 300 million people are all "us" as they "represent us".
Clearly, if "we" and "our interests" are defined so narrowly as to be "the interests of the people in power".... then these are bad. However, if you see "we" and "our interests" as those of the people paying them their salaries and whose collective name is sullied when they act poorly, well... I would say its very good for "us" because it shows us what kind of dirty backroom dealing they engage in and how much horse shit they sell to... the people paying their salaries.
I feel as much sympathy for their arguments that this is "bad" as I do for store clerks whose defense at being shown video of them stealing from the till is "I can't believe you didn't trust me enough not to watch the videos".
As someone who has had many dealings with corporate drone types, yes. Yes I give them quite a bit of respect for the success that has been had. Very little is easy about explaining things to people who neither understand nor have any particular desire to understand.
They are just all so used to the model of having a salesman blow rainbows up their ass about the product, and then spending exorbitant amounts of money to get it all setup and configured and then for ongoing support. I have heard managers say, on many occasions, "we don't want to be going to forums for support".
What they miss is that we already use a lot of this stuff, some of it we do pay service contracts for, and most of those, we don't use. Why would we? We seldom have problems, and when we do, we fix them pretty easily.
Trying to explain this is like trying to talk paint into staying wet. Kudos to them for every inch of headway that they made but... to pretend like "Open Source" was just made up 12 years ago is not really true... it was a re-branding of what people had already been doing.
12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source", in an attempt to rebrand the much older "Free Software" movement, and launched what initially seemed like a quixotic exercise, to convince corporate drones who can't look past the CYA service contract, without having to admit that good work can be done by people without a profit incentive, and the whole world is not beholden to their stock market god.
No, actually thats the lie. The purpose of the constitution was to create a central authority which could effectively put down peasant revolts, slave revolts, and deal with the Indians who were not happy about us moving into their lands.
At least, or at least, thats what some of the letters going around between the founding fathers were saying, right around the time of Shay's rebellion here in MA... you know, the one that happened after veterans of the revolution complained that they fought and many died and they got a raw deal, the new government eventually agreed to give them some land, and then taxed them for the land and tried to take it away from them.
If they wanted to limit government, they could have stayed with the, far superior, Articles of Confederation.
Do you mean in the purely participatory act of choosing which collection of puppet figure heads we wanted?
This government was formed by the aristocracy for the aristocracy for one purpose... to make the peasants FEEL like they have a voice, and basically, to use the same logic that you just did to shut up and take whatever they give us.
At least state government is small enough for the people to have some effect on them, if still not much. Secession would go a long way towards making the governments actually listen to the people
Regaining the illusion of control *IS* becoming increasingly more difficult and messy... and we should be thankful for that.
All of their so called "control" is now, and always was, based on one thing: People believed in them. PFC after PFC was given access to more and more information, and few ever abused and, and nobody so pubically as now.
However, anyone could have, the ability to spill secrets was always there, always will be. Now some illusions have slipped. Less and less people are duped into believing that the Aristocracy is actually a manifestation of the peoples will, less are people willing to believe that their government is anything but a product to be purchased by the highest bidder.
Without that lie, its going to get harder and harder for them to keep secrets. It has been publically acknowledged, even before this, that the US government and its agents have participated in kidnapping and torture, all the way up to the HIGHEST LEVELS.
Their credibility is utterly shot, and I say, good.
Was that what "Operation Midnight Climax" was? Or, more recently, the kidnapping and torture of foreign nationals? Maybe thats what the attempted assassination attempts on Fidel Castro were?
The CIA are one thing and one thing only: Criminals In Action.
I just bought my first batch of bitcoins. After I saw the EFF was taking them I decided to read up on them...and I like the system alot. I figured, why not toss a few bucks in (couple of hundred $$ actually, figured if I want people to use them, I should have a few to sell off to people).
My verizon rebate card wouldn't work with the exchange that takes cards, so I ended up sending a check and some cash to some guy who was offering an exchange service personally. Worked like a charm though, I was a bit nervous about it.
Last week when I locked in the deal, the rate was about $.23 per bitcoin, it looks like the average trade price is now up to about $.25 though.
Of course, that means I now have to post my obligatory sponsorship link to the bitcoin ponzi scheme... its only 1 bitcoin to join:) http://fxnet.co.cc/?ref=257
Anyway, I love the system, I hope more people start to use it.
> Awww -- just two weeks? Any chance you permanently fucked up some other kids' > lifetimes during your two weeks? How do their parents feel about you? Would > they prefer that you be snuffed instead of their kids?
Who said anything about kids? Why bring kids into this? Ridiculous. Consenting adults in the privacy of their own home. I resent the implication that I would have even known anyone else... I can't stand kids. Dealing with them would have meant... knowing them and spending time with them. I avoid that whenever possible.
The rest well.... your anecdote is sad but, N=1 is not a study. It says nothing about the average case. I never said thievery was great, or condonable.... just that people change.
Your story doesn't seem to mention what happened to those thieves/murders. Do they still thieve and murder? How many times since then? Way to totally ignore the actual point.
I would feel no differently if this happened to my friends or family. I would probably want to kill the bastards myself.
Let me turn it around another way... if the husband said that he wanted them set free immediately with no punishment, and be let to spend the rest of their lives feeling guilty for what they did and knowing that a better man then them forgave them.... would you be mad at the state for locking them up anyway?
Afterall... if its what makes him feel better... isn't that the point?
Also.... I really don't feel that ALL of the petty crimes and dangers of modern American life add up to even a fraction of the cost to society as the crimes pushed by central governments.
By people who insist on raising armys and turning other peoples homes into war zones. You want to talk about a paultry 20,000 murders, 40,000 auto accidents... things that are mostly random and unplanned, or the work of impulsive kids.
Central governments kill hundreds of thousands with their wars, rob from millions. You know how big the Social Security Trust Fund is? I will tell you what, at least the simple theives that have robbed me over the years total maybe 10 grand. The US government has been telling me it wants 6% of my income so it can write IOUs to itself. You really think petty thieves and gangs come CLOSE?
Honestly, yes, those are facts of life. I honestly don't believe you will lower the number of auto deaths per year much below what it is... or... even here keep it from rising in step with population growth... so long as humans are behind the wheel. Possibly by making cars, themselves, safer, sure.
No amount of laws is going to change this, the best you will do is grind more lives through the legal system, to nobodies ultimate benefit. You are going to chew up tax dollars to ruin peoples lives, and, for what.... to delay a few peoples deaths? 40,000 really isn't that many in a country of 300 million.
Seriously, life is 100% fatal, get over it. I don't want to live in the world that you envision, at all. Such a system is too easily bent towards evil. We should not allow a central authority to have so much power over us and what we do.
Honestly, fascism scares the shit out of me. The last thing is I want to see is it to come back.
Citation would be where I read about this was "More Sex is Safer Sex" by some economist whose name could easily be looked up from that. (its friday man). I believe that he devoted a whole chapter to LoJack.
While its true that dead people don't commit crimes, the courts don't always punish the right person. Several people have been put to death for "heinous crimes" that it was later shown that they did not commit.
Also, as I said, people change. I have heard it noted, a few times, by people who have studied or interviewed death row inmates who have said that it seemed like many of these people had changed significantly from when they comited their crime (often many years ago) and, by the time they were executed, didn't seem like a real danger to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, there are really broken people out there. I don't think anyone is going to be rehabilitating serial rapist/killers. There probably are a, very few, that will never be ok to be released to the public again... but, so few that whats the harm of just housing them forever in a jail? (give them a rope or something... I do believe suicide should be considered a right... if they choose to die thats another story) In terms of the HUGE cost of running prison systems, I doubt the difference here is more than.... fractions of a penny on the hundred dollars.
As for making the victim FEEL better... why not? I ask why? You don't know that what you do will definitely make them feel better. How about, all this "justice" is expensive. You don't get everything you want. Actually.... I have a better example.....
I know that some things would make me feel better. I would like to see political crimes get the death penalty. I rant and rave all the time about what groups of people should be curb stomped/swinging above the ground/etc.... but... if this organization wants to earn (still waiting) the right to have me call them "my government" then I don't want them to be acting in the impuslive ways that I do, I want them to be better and more reasoned, and not so quick to jump to outlandish and draconian ideas like an individual (even myself) would.
Not because I feel much sympathy for thieves... believe it or not, I have been robbed. In fact, some barbarian got into my car, went through the glove box, and stole my GPS, just last weekend. Not to mention the time my old apartment got broken into and laptop stolen, or the few other times I have been taken, robbed, etc. Hell about 10 years ago I was a drug dealer for all of 2 weeks.... got shut down and put out of business by a box that was supposed to be filled with weed, and instead ended up being the most expensive pack of marshmallows that I ever bought.
So why would I not be in favor of just killing them? Well... I have a friend who used to be a thief. He stole cars, he did all manner of bad things. What does he do now? Well... he spent the past 15 years turning his life around. He has been working as a professional Carpenter for almost 8 years before an unfortunate accident with a saw sent him home and back to school. (and showed him and all our friends that insurance companies can be bigger crooks than outright thieves.... seriously... the games they play are downright abusive)
People grow up, people change. Killing one doesn't stop the next one, its not even a particularly good deterrent (actually severity of punishment is easy to show is not a good deterrent) on the other hand, increasing the likelyhood of being caught, even with relatively minor punishment, turns out to be a far more effective deterrent. (lojack is more effective, for example, than long jail sentences at reducing theft rates).
So.... in the end, harsh punishments are really just petty attempts to make the victim FEEL better. They don't really lessen crime rates. Which makes them perfect for justification of increasing budgets.... a bureaucratic wet dream... an ineffective and expensive remedy that people like, and keep coming back for.... it is political crack.
How about a hybrid? Sell ads, but offset with user donations. As the user donation pool grows, the amount of advertising available, goes down.
Similar to what WBUR does. They schedule a week long fundraiser with a goal. Then before the fundraiser they start telling people "the fund raiser ends when we reach our goal".... now they are starting to even let people donate towards that goal before the fundraiser starts!
Ever since they staryed doing this, maybe 2 years ago? The fundraisers have been... reaching their goals and getting shorter! I think, at this point, they have nearly cut them in half!
Could create paid subscriptions with a value add. Maybe some new features that are a bit server intensive or require storage... like letting you keep a set of private annotations on pages, or a real time chat feature.
Look at OKCupid. There are many "A-List" members, even though the majority, and indeed the most important basic functions of the site, are all available for free.
> By living in this society you have "signed a contract" agreeing to be bound by > its laws. If you choose to break any of those laws and are caught, you will be > punished, regardless of if it is a "good law" or a "stupid law which infringes > on our inalienable rights".
Yup "this is our turf, you see? You live here you live by our rules, you see? If we say you don't do it, you don't do it, you see?
> You're not seriously suggesting that you have the right to break certain laws > and not be punished, are you? I could be mistaken, but haven't you stated in > the past that anyone who supports freedom should be willing to spend time in > jail?
Actually, I don't really believe in rights as much other than an abstract concept. So as such, I do believe I have that right, but, I don't believe that anybody is going to recognize that right, and I fully expect I would be punished, regardless of my own belief as to whats right or what the government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
They are not me, they will do what they want, and I will put up with what they do to me, same as it ever was. That doesn't mean I support them. I don't even like to call them "the government"... just a gang working for aristocrats, which I am enough afraid of to obey their laws... so long as they are watching.
I encourage nobody to give them an ounce more respect than the respect which a loaded gun in the hands of a violent sociopath is always due.
I love how you talk about the union government as if its some ideal organization that follows some sort of ideals in a perfect manner. If they decide otherwise, they will alienate you from your claimed rights. If you don't believe me, try converting one property (dried cannabis flowers) into another property (dollars) and see what the local DA has to say about it, I garauntee he will start converting some of your property (dollars) into public benefit (fines)
Seriously man, I actually want to live in the world you think this is. However, years of the people in power believing that their powers shouldn't be so limited has worn away what actually flimsy material the original machine was made from... it is hard to call it a serious gesture when the document which begins "We the people" defined a government where, from the beginning, only a small percentage of the real population could even vote.
It is true that this man broke his contract, and the law. However, lots of people fulfill contracts and break them for all manner of reason. Actually doing it because you believe its the right thing to do, I have a much harder time blaming someone for, and, when doing it means doing so at extreme personal risk of being made to spend many years in prison, yah... that breech of contract was pretty damned heroic.
You can call him that, I call him the only hero I can remember hearing about in recent history, and the only member of that military doing anything that I support. Period.
That aside, the point is the same. What he did was illegal, he did it anyway. he got caught, just like you technically could. He is being punished, just like you could. Or I could... I speed too.
The law is just a bunch of arbitrary rules enforced by a few men, for their own benefit. Its nothing that anyone should feel in any way bound to follow.
Meh... all it means is thats the law they will enforce. Its not like there is anything actually stopping you from selling it. You can sell anything you want, even stuff they ban. All they can do is pubnish you or rule against you in the highly unlikely event that you end up in court over it.
Like most of their silly rules, you can ignore this all you want, as long as you don't get caught.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work at a place that did group interviews. It was a bit stressful for the applicants, but, it did an ok job of making sure that, at least everyone in the group "meshed" and if we did hire someone who was incompetent (it happened), at least we all put in some effort.
We all pretty much agreed that well, you are right, its about problem solving ability and things like that, less than just, rote knowledge. We used to have questions like "how do you go about solving a problem that you don't already know how to solve".
I actually devised a "PERL TEST" that I was pretty proud of. It was pretty much designed to be perfectly formatted code but, that didn't lend itself, at all, to figuring out what it did (so its not like you could look at it and get an idea what it was doing and guess from there).
It made people sweat, and two people did actually run through it, on their own, and give me example inputs and outputs (one of those people, as it turned out, had his name as a co-author of an O'Reilly perl book... which I would have known if I had gotten his resume in hand BEFORE the interview)
That was great, but, it was intended to be too hard for that. The entire point of the test was just to separate the people who knew at least enough perl to talk through some of it, from the people who were just plain faking it.
Admittedly, things like this may be harder to do in some fields.
-Steve
oh...and by right I don't mean ethically or morally, I mean strictly economically.
> I disagree. Some portion of students will cheat as long as (in theory):
True... but before we even look at the argument, I think I am comfortable saying that the fact that some people will cheat, isn't really the problem. Some amount of fraudulent activity is going to happen in any system. The measure of the system is not whether or not fraud can occur, but, as much as, how much of it can occur.
The main problem I see with your formula is that the terms are quite nebulous. Even if you could derive meaningful numbers for the terms, the average student doesn't. That calculation is done in a more ad-hoc way by each persons perception of the risks vs rewards.
The bigger problem, as I see it... I think cheating students are making the right choice, at least, from a certain perspective.
You have several schisms of perception here. One is the perception of the value of a degree vs the value of the "education" that the degree represents. I think students VERY RIGHTLY value the degree over the education, because that is the value that our society puts on it.
As someone who doesn't have a degree at all, I have pointed out many times that, since i was about 21, I have not held a single job that didn't "require a bachelors". Clearly, since I never lied about my education, the jobs didn't actually require it... but more and more I see people seem to WANT workers with degrees, even though there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
So, in short, the degree *IS* worth more than the education that it represents.
-Steve
The Oracle at Corn-Hole.
Now your ass is a quantum computer? :)
This reminds me of a discussion that came out of a rant of mine the other say over the word "we".
I think this is a case where you have to be very careful about that word, because "we" can mean everything from "me and my group of friends" to "the people of the country" or any number of entities within.
"Good" or "Bad" is often a matter of context. Yes, these leaks are "bad" for some groups of people... they are also "good" for other groups... and we should be honest about who those groups are, and who they represent. They would claim that they are "us"... this whole 300 million people are all "us" as they "represent us".
Clearly, if "we" and "our interests" are defined so narrowly as to be "the interests of the people in power".... then these are bad. However, if you see "we" and "our interests" as those of the people paying them their salaries and whose collective name is sullied when they act poorly, well... I would say its very good for "us" because it shows us what kind of dirty backroom dealing they engage in and how much horse shit they sell to... the people paying their salaries.
I feel as much sympathy for their arguments that this is "bad" as I do for store clerks whose defense at being shown video of them stealing from the till is "I can't believe you didn't trust me enough not to watch the videos".
As someone who has had many dealings with corporate drone types, yes. Yes I give them quite a bit of respect for the success that has been had. Very little is easy about explaining things to people who neither understand nor have any particular desire to understand.
They are just all so used to the model of having a salesman blow rainbows up their ass about the product, and then spending exorbitant amounts of money to get it all setup and configured and then for ongoing support. I have heard managers say, on many occasions, "we don't want to be going to forums for support".
What they miss is that we already use a lot of this stuff, some of it we do pay service contracts for, and most of those, we don't use. Why would we? We seldom have problems, and when we do, we fix them pretty easily.
Trying to explain this is like trying to talk paint into staying wet. Kudos to them for every inch of headway that they made but... to pretend like "Open Source" was just made up 12 years ago is not really true... it was a re-branding of what people had already been doing.
Does that translate to "You pull numbers out of your ass"?
12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source", in an attempt to rebrand the much older "Free Software" movement, and launched what initially seemed like a quixotic exercise, to convince corporate drones who can't look past the CYA service contract, without having to admit that good work can be done by people without a profit incentive, and the whole world is not beholden to their stock market god.
No, actually thats the lie. The purpose of the constitution was to create a central authority which could effectively put down peasant revolts, slave revolts, and deal with the Indians who were not happy about us moving into their lands.
At least, or at least, thats what some of the letters going around between the founding fathers were saying, right around the time of Shay's rebellion here in MA... you know, the one that happened after veterans of the revolution complained that they fought and many died and they got a raw deal, the new government eventually agreed to give them some land, and then taxed them for the land and tried to take it away from them.
If they wanted to limit government, they could have stayed with the, far superior, Articles of Confederation.
-Steve
ROTFL did "we"?
Do you mean in the purely participatory act of choosing which collection of puppet figure heads we wanted?
This government was formed by the aristocracy for the aristocracy for one purpose... to make the peasants FEEL like they have a voice, and basically, to use the same logic that you just did to shut up and take whatever they give us.
At least state government is small enough for the people to have some effect on them, if still not much. Secession would go a long way towards making the governments actually listen to the people
No, they lost the illusion of control.
Regaining the illusion of control *IS* becoming increasingly more difficult and messy... and we should be thankful for that.
All of their so called "control" is now, and always was, based on one thing: People believed in them. PFC after PFC was given access to more and more information, and few ever abused and, and nobody so pubically as now.
However, anyone could have, the ability to spill secrets was always there, always will be. Now some illusions have slipped. Less and less people are duped into believing that the Aristocracy is actually a manifestation of the peoples will, less are people willing to believe that their government is anything but a product to be purchased by the highest bidder.
Without that lie, its going to get harder and harder for them to keep secrets. It has been publically acknowledged, even before this, that the US government and its agents have participated in kidnapping and torture, all the way up to the HIGHEST LEVELS.
Their credibility is utterly shot, and I say, good.
-Steve
The CIA uplholds the law?
Was that what "Operation Midnight Climax" was? Or, more recently, the kidnapping and torture of foreign nationals? Maybe thats what the attempted assassination attempts on Fidel Castro were?
The CIA are one thing and one thing only: Criminals In Action.
-Steve
I just bought my first batch of bitcoins. After I saw the EFF was taking them I decided to read up on them...and I like the system alot. I figured, why not toss a few bucks in (couple of hundred $$ actually, figured if I want people to use them, I should have a few to sell off to people).
My verizon rebate card wouldn't work with the exchange that takes cards, so I ended up sending a check and some cash to some guy who was offering an exchange service personally. Worked like a charm though, I was a bit nervous about it.
Last week when I locked in the deal, the rate was about $.23 per bitcoin, it looks like the average trade price is now up to about $.25 though.
Of course, that means I now have to post my obligatory sponsorship link to the bitcoin ponzi scheme... its only 1 bitcoin to join :) http://fxnet.co.cc/?ref=257
Anyway, I love the system, I hope more people start to use it.
-Steve
> Awww -- just two weeks? Any chance you permanently fucked up some other kids'
> lifetimes during your two weeks? How do their parents feel about you? Would
> they prefer that you be snuffed instead of their kids?
Who said anything about kids? Why bring kids into this? Ridiculous. Consenting adults in the privacy of their own home. I resent the implication that I would have even known anyone else... I can't stand kids. Dealing with them would have meant... knowing them and spending time with them. I avoid that whenever possible.
The rest well.... your anecdote is sad but, N=1 is not a study. It says nothing about the average case. I never said thievery was great, or condonable.... just that people change.
Your story doesn't seem to mention what happened to those thieves/murders. Do they still thieve and murder? How many times since then? Way to totally ignore the actual point.
I would feel no differently if this happened to my friends or family. I would probably want to kill the bastards myself.
Let me turn it around another way... if the husband said that he wanted them set free immediately with no punishment, and be let to spend the rest of their lives feeling guilty for what they did and knowing that a better man then them forgave them.... would you be mad at the state for locking them up anyway?
Afterall... if its what makes him feel better... isn't that the point?
-Steve
Also.... I really don't feel that ALL of the petty crimes and dangers of modern American life add up to even a fraction of the cost to society as the crimes pushed by central governments.
By people who insist on raising armys and turning other peoples homes into war zones. You want to talk about a paultry 20,000 murders, 40,000 auto accidents... things that are mostly random and unplanned, or the work of impulsive kids.
Central governments kill hundreds of thousands with their wars, rob from millions. You know how big the Social Security Trust Fund is? I will tell you what, at least the simple theives that have robbed me over the years total maybe 10 grand. The US government has been telling me it wants 6% of my income so it can write IOUs to itself. You really think petty thieves and gangs come CLOSE?
-Steve
Honestly, yes, those are facts of life. I honestly don't believe you will lower the number of auto deaths per year much below what it is... or... even here keep it from rising in step with population growth... so long as humans are behind the wheel. Possibly by making cars, themselves, safer, sure.
No amount of laws is going to change this, the best you will do is grind more lives through the legal system, to nobodies ultimate benefit. You are going to chew up tax dollars to ruin peoples lives, and, for what.... to delay a few peoples deaths? 40,000 really isn't that many in a country of 300 million.
Seriously, life is 100% fatal, get over it. I don't want to live in the world that you envision, at all. Such a system is too easily bent towards evil. We should not allow a central authority to have so much power over us and what we do.
Honestly, fascism scares the shit out of me. The last thing is I want to see is it to come back.
-Steve
Citation would be where I read about this was "More Sex is Safer Sex" by some economist whose name could easily be looked up from that. (its friday man). I believe that he devoted a whole chapter to LoJack.
While its true that dead people don't commit crimes, the courts don't always punish the right person. Several people have been put to death for "heinous crimes" that it was later shown that they did not commit.
Also, as I said, people change. I have heard it noted, a few times, by people who have studied or interviewed death row inmates who have said that it seemed like many of these people had changed significantly from when they comited their crime (often many years ago) and, by the time they were executed, didn't seem like a real danger to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, there are really broken people out there. I don't think anyone is going to be rehabilitating serial rapist/killers. There probably are a, very few, that will never be ok to be released to the public again... but, so few that whats the harm of just housing them forever in a jail? (give them a rope or something... I do believe suicide should be considered a right... if they choose to die thats another story) In terms of the HUGE cost of running prison systems, I doubt the difference here is more than.... fractions of a penny on the hundred dollars.
As for making the victim FEEL better... why not? I ask why? You don't know that what you do will definitely make them feel better. How about, all this "justice" is expensive. You don't get everything you want. Actually.... I have a better example.....
I know that some things would make me feel better. I would like to see political crimes get the death penalty. I rant and rave all the time about what groups of people should be curb stomped/swinging above the ground/etc.... but... if this organization wants to earn (still waiting) the right to have me call them "my government" then I don't want them to be acting in the impuslive ways that I do, I want them to be better and more reasoned, and not so quick to jump to outlandish and draconian ideas like an individual (even myself) would.
I happen to disagree entirely.
Not because I feel much sympathy for thieves... believe it or not, I have been robbed. In fact, some barbarian got into my car, went through the glove box, and stole my GPS, just last weekend. Not to mention the time my old apartment got broken into and laptop stolen, or the few other times I have been taken, robbed, etc. Hell about 10 years ago I was a drug dealer for all of 2 weeks.... got shut down and put out of business by a box that was supposed to be filled with weed, and instead ended up being the most expensive pack of marshmallows that I ever bought.
So why would I not be in favor of just killing them? Well... I have a friend who used to be a thief. He stole cars, he did all manner of bad things. What does he do now? Well... he spent the past 15 years turning his life around. He has been working as a professional Carpenter for almost 8 years before an unfortunate accident with a saw sent him home and back to school. (and showed him and all our friends that insurance companies can be bigger crooks than outright thieves.... seriously... the games they play are downright abusive)
People grow up, people change. Killing one doesn't stop the next one, its not even a particularly good deterrent (actually severity of punishment is easy to show is not a good deterrent) on the other hand, increasing the likelyhood of being caught, even with relatively minor punishment, turns out to be a far more effective deterrent. (lojack is more effective, for example, than long jail sentences at reducing theft rates).
So.... in the end, harsh punishments are really just petty attempts to make the victim FEEL better. They don't really lessen crime rates. Which makes them perfect for justification of increasing budgets.... a bureaucratic wet dream... an ineffective and expensive remedy that people like, and keep coming back for.... it is political crack.
-Steve
Man what do you do when the fiber blocks you up? Drink more water? Maybe google needs an enema?
How about a hybrid? Sell ads, but offset with user donations. As the user donation pool grows, the amount of advertising available, goes down.
Similar to what WBUR does. They schedule a week long fundraiser with a goal. Then before the fundraiser they start telling people "the fund raiser ends when we reach our goal".... now they are starting to even let people donate towards that goal before the fundraiser starts!
Ever since they staryed doing this, maybe 2 years ago? The fundraisers have been... reaching their goals and getting shorter! I think, at this point, they have nearly cut them in half!
Could create paid subscriptions with a value add. Maybe some new features that are a bit server intensive or require storage... like letting you keep a set of private annotations on pages, or a real time chat feature.
Look at OKCupid. There are many "A-List" members, even though the majority, and indeed the most important basic functions of the site, are all available for free.
-Steve
> By living in this society you have "signed a contract" agreeing to be bound by
> its laws. If you choose to break any of those laws and are caught, you will be
> punished, regardless of if it is a "good law" or a "stupid law which infringes
> on our inalienable rights".
Yup "this is our turf, you see? You live here you live by our rules, you see? If we say you don't do it, you don't do it, you see?
> You're not seriously suggesting that you have the right to break certain laws
> and not be punished, are you? I could be mistaken, but haven't you stated in
> the past that anyone who supports freedom should be willing to spend time in
> jail?
Actually, I don't really believe in rights as much other than an abstract concept. So as such, I do believe I have that right, but, I don't believe that anybody is going to recognize that right, and I fully expect I would be punished, regardless of my own belief as to whats right or what the government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
They are not me, they will do what they want, and I will put up with what they do to me, same as it ever was. That doesn't mean I support them. I don't even like to call them "the government"... just a gang working for aristocrats, which I am enough afraid of to obey their laws... so long as they are watching.
I encourage nobody to give them an ounce more respect than the respect which a loaded gun in the hands of a violent sociopath is always due.
-Steve
I love how you talk about the union government as if its some ideal organization that follows some sort of ideals in a perfect manner. If they decide otherwise, they will alienate you from your claimed rights. If you don't believe me, try converting one property (dried cannabis flowers) into another property (dollars) and see what the local DA has to say about it, I garauntee he will start converting some of your property (dollars) into public benefit (fines)
Seriously man, I actually want to live in the world you think this is. However, years of the people in power believing that their powers shouldn't be so limited has worn away what actually flimsy material the original machine was made from... it is hard to call it a serious gesture when the document which begins "We the people" defined a government where, from the beginning, only a small percentage of the real population could even vote.
It is true that this man broke his contract, and the law. However, lots of people fulfill contracts and break them for all manner of reason. Actually doing it because you believe its the right thing to do, I have a much harder time blaming someone for, and, when doing it means doing so at extreme personal risk of being made to spend many years in prison, yah... that breech of contract was pretty damned heroic.
You can call him that, I call him the only hero I can remember hearing about in recent history, and the only member of that military doing anything that I support. Period.
That aside, the point is the same. What he did was illegal, he did it anyway. he got caught, just like you technically could. He is being punished, just like you could. Or I could... I speed too.
The law is just a bunch of arbitrary rules enforced by a few men, for their own benefit. Its nothing that anyone should feel in any way bound to follow.
-Steve
Meh... all it means is thats the law they will enforce. Its not like there is anything actually stopping you from selling it. You can sell anything you want, even stuff they ban. All they can do is pubnish you or rule against you in the highly unlikely event that you end up in court over it.
Like most of their silly rules, you can ignore this all you want, as long as you don't get caught.
-Steve