"Can you believe that in early 1999 gas cost less than $1 a gallon? Kobain died in '94."
Dude...It's "Cobain", as in Kurt Cobain. And...while he did die, he ate a shotgun shell. Let's call it what it is. Fuckhead committed suicide because he was a freakin' moron and drug addict. And...we're glad except for his daughter's loss and that he didn't take Courtney with him. He had lots of potential and the unplugged gig I saw on MTV was great but he threw it all away and he screwed his daughter by offing himself instead of being a man and father. Heroin is no excuse. There are plenty of people who had the strength to rehab and go on with their lives.
And...gas prices in 1999 were less than $1 only until March. After that they were over $1 (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mg_tt_usw.htm).
Damn, I actually previewed and seem to be a little harsh. Let me say with all sincerity that I'm sure rehabbing is tough. The thing is he hit bottom and killed himself instead of seeking help and left his daughter to be brought up by someone who probably has more issues than he did. Frances (his daughter) deserves better. What a shame.
"I was hoping there would be something behind the hype and atleast one improvement over MS Server 2003 and a few more improvements over XP."
I agree with you 100%. I have for the last ten years or so said that I have grudging respect for MS server OS's. Constant improvement is a good thing. With regard to desktop I had also seen consistent improvement and therefore have said that I have grudging respect there also. Here's where things fall apart. Win2000 desktop was pretty much rock solid on release. WinXP was released with no real driver support and was totally lacking as a new release. Then, after SP releases things got a whole lot better for XP. Okay, now we've got something we can deal with. Then they release Vista and make the same fucking mistakes they've made over and over again. Why should anyone have to upgrade to a new PC to run the new OS? Mac is backwards compatible for a couple of generations. Linux can run on antiquated hardware. Sure, MS fanboys will say "apples and oranges" but my point is that a new OS release should run on current hardware, moderately past hardware, and some short time of future hardware. What is improved if I have to get a new system to run a new OS? As another question, where is the big, obvious improvement? Eye candy doesn't cut it. Any piece of crap can look good but function like shit.
Well, like I said, they were very infrequent. The few occasions I saw an apps related issue it was a specialty app for the legal field. The company that sold the app was giving us new replacement files for their app pretty regularly for a while. Sucks to a to be treated as a beta tester for what is supposed to be a production app. The hardware issue is ongoing on 2003 servers and involves multiport serial cards that sometimes cause spontaneous reboots when devices are attached or removed from the serial ports. It's too early to tell for sure but a new driver from the manufacturer may provide a fix. Oddball stuff.
"Hackers in the USA shouldn't be put out of business, they should be 'recruited' into cushy salaried jobs working for the Govt... One day they'll be the ones we HAVE to trust to defend us from attack."
How about we lock them away for ten to twenty years or so while they are forced to work for the government and then let them out with a nice pension and lifelong monitoring? If we supply them with hookers and Mountain Dew while they're locked up they might not even care (or notice) that they're in prison.
"Oh just go away with the no more BSOD's on windows XP ec. bullshit. Yeah, like random reboots are all that much better. Yes, we all know, there is now a windows service that initiates at boot and monitors the system for a crash that would initiate a BSOD, so instead this service reboots the system, like really fucking cool and useful that, a genuine marketdroid M$=B$ exercise in marketing (same number of crashes you only choose whether you BSOD by disabling the service or random reboot)."
Wow, who pissed in your Cheerios? I didn't think I said anything that warranted being treated like a MS fanboy. How did XP find its way into the discussion? I was talking about servers and the servers I ran were mostly rock solid with negligible BSOD or random reboots that were always traceable to the applications they ran or flaky hardware like PCI serial boards or the serial devices that attach to them.
"In Windows, I had to reboot on almost a weekly basis at least..."
Just anecdotal experience but the Windows 2000 and 2003 boxes I've administered have been rock solid other than the occasional box which was running a flaky application. It never surprised me to see a random blue screen with Windows NT boxes but a blue screen on a 2000 or 2003 server was always a surprise. Having said that, I'm not sorry at all to see a major, high visibility implementation of Linux. I hope they have much success.
"Climate change: Did you fall for the "science has nothing to do with consenus" meme? "
I haven't fallen for anything. My biggest concern is the CO2 saturation of the oceans reaching the point where organisms can't create the shells and other exoskeletons they need for survival. I expect that to cause an almost complete collapse of ocean ecosystems.
"Way to understate the importance of confirming theories. Heh."
Well, of course no "proven" theory has later been found to wrong either has it? Such as spontaneous generation, perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
I'm not sure the importance of this "confirmation" ranks as front page news. Honestly, I'd much rather see some, any theory of our current climate changes proven. At least then we might be able to start effectively making some changes. For that matter, proving the theory of cold fusion would go a long way to improving our lives.
Bah, I guess I'm a little overly critical at the moment...I'm having a bad week.
"It has however been left behind by more recent window managers, making it something of mainly historical interest."
Yes, some of us moderately clueless sods have to do research to understand the jokes... And, if you're not joking then you need to get a life and join modern society.:)
"Funny thing; I have a Mac Powerbook with the latest revs of everything, and it still has random flakinesses in its suspend and sleep modes."
Well Windows suspend and sleep modes are flaky too. I really kinda chalked it up to flakiness in suspend and sleep modes in general. I wonder if the new solid state drives will make a difference. I won't know for some time yet. Cool technology but very, very expensive.
Feisty install on my IBM T41 laptop was flawless and amazingly fast. Video, wired and wireless network, everything works great and took no tinkering. The only flaw I have seen at all was a quirk in the suspend mode which doesn't matter as I hadn't intended to use it anyway.
Dude, I know...I was trying to be funny. I pulled in time travel due the disparities in time of 13,000 years ago versus 35,000 years ago. And, the third ingredient for gunpowder would be charcoal and...wait for it...the projectiles for his cannon were raw diamonds if I remember correctly.
Wasn't that when the Enterprise went back in time and Captain Kirk made a hand held cannon that used primitive gunpowder and meteor fragments to blast the bad alien beasties?
"However, you don't need the shirt to pull that off . . . I get asked if I'm a manager (or people assume that and launch straight into asking a store question) at virtually every large store in which I shop."
Dude, it most sooo suck looking like a retail manager. That's almost as bad as looking like a burger flipper. I'm glad I THINK I look like someone about to go postal. My wife thinks I'm cute and don't look like the nerd that I am. Hmmm...book, cover, and judging seem to fit here somehow.
"I'm sorry, but that's a dangerous attitude to have. The Government is not some parent that gets to dole out 'privileges' to it's children as long as they behave. The state has a legitimate interest in making sure that everybody who drives meets some standard of skill (which is why we have road tests and learners permits) but that's where it should end."
If feel the same way but the reality doesn't fit how I feel. The same legitimate interest in making sure that everybody who drives meets a standard of skill gives them the same right to require you submit to physical testing for impairment if they have probable cause to suspect impairment. Some states require physical alcohol and/or drug testing in any case of severe injury due to an accident. That is their law. If you don't like the law, don't put yourself into a position of having to comply (don't drive) or get it changed. It is the same thing that gives them the right to force you to submit your vehicle for an inspection for safety and emissions purposes in order to register the vehicle. It is the same reasoning that forces you to have liability insurance and wear a seatbelt or have children in safety seats. Driving on public roads is a privilege. There is no inalienable right to drive. In my ideal world we wouldn't need a granny state to ensure that we can drive without getting creamed by some drunk or some idiot with bald tires. Unfortunately we don't live in that world and as such I'd rather our granny state force the idiots to abide by the common sense I already follow and punish them (even more severely in most cases) if they don't.
I've been mostly agreeing with everything you've posted in this thread thus far (especially the drug law issue) but I've got to nitpick one issue...
"...Another pet topic of mine is DWI laws. All well and good to keep drunks off the street, right? But I have serious problems with "implied consent" laws (i.e: drive in our state and you HAVE TO GIVE EVIDENCE AGAINST YOURSELF). When I try to explain that to people I either get "we have to keep the drunks off the road", or (a more enlightened, but still wrong IMHO answer) "you don't have a right to drive and it's only a civil penalty" (what happened to the 10th amendment again?)"
Driving is a privilege. No one forces you to get a driver's license. You have the choice to agree to the terms of the license or to not have one. You can drive drunk on your own property without a license all you want. If you want to drive on public, state and federal roads, you must have a license and abide by the terms required to have a license. Also, keep in mind, I don't think any state can force you to blow, piss, or give a blood sample without actually getting a search warrant. You'll lose your license if you don't, but that is pretty clearly stated as a requirement for getting a license in the first place.
Thank you very much for a well stated response. I should have put as much thought into mine and I probably flew off the handle a little...a couple beers under my belt and I certainly saw your post as stating that no crime has been committed if no one gets hurt.
Your drunk driving analogy is, with all due respect, a bit off. In reference to your Tokyo experience, that's a good cop versus the some fraction of bad cops out there...especially here in the US. If you had been driving I think his response would have been different. If I remember correctly, and I may not, the first drunk driving conviction in Japan is mandatory loss of license for life. As it was, you weren't a danger to anyone else and probably only minimally to yourself. My case is that driving drunk and not hurting anyone is still a violation of law. Just because no one got hurt doesn't mean that the potential wasn't there and the likelihood is significantly greater than the likelihood of California stop causing damage. Driving drunk is a much different animal. I can do a California stop, speed by a few miles an hour, or not stop right on the line all day long and guarantee that I won't cause an accident or kill someone. No drunk driver can say the same. The difference is a rational, observant, and calculated decision versus a mentally and physically compromised ability.
I can certainly agree that the US justice system and political systems are probably almost irreparably broken. Sign me up for the next tea party. Their failures are too numerous to list here but basically boil down to the ability to buy the best lawyers and the ability to buy politicians' influence for your cases and causes without real moral and just conclusions.
You do a good job with bringing electricity generation and use into the discussion. While I have to say I regrettably agree with the global warming naysayers that increased CO2 has not been PROVEN to cause global warming, I also know that is their way of throwing doubt into the situation. There is no doubt in my mind that drastic climate change is underway. I feel that CO2 levels have a significant influence, proven or not. Once our ocean ecosystems are wrecked because CO2 saturated water chemistry doesn't allow shrimp, crabs, and shellfish to build exoskeletons, it will be too late regardless of where the world temperatures are headed. By the same token, sure some glaciers are growing, but most are shrinking. I expect a system as large as world climate to have some anomalies even in the face of an overall drastic change such as global warming. As far as China goes, I can see they don't give a crap about their environment so why would they care how they affect anyone else's?
I don't see any real down side as long as nuclear is being used as an interim solution until we solve the problem of finding a renewable, ecological friendly energy source. Waste storage is a necessary evil with nuke power but it sure as hell beats oil or coal. CO2 as a byproduct of our energy production has the potential to kill our planet and in my opinion is already doing so. At least nuke plants don't generate CO2.
"And this is where you have been brainwashed. To use an extreme example, if someone drinks until they are falling-down drunk, drives to the nearest liquor store and buys more booze and drives back home without hurting anyone, what crime has been committed?
It is thought crime."
Whoa! The crime committed is drinking and driving. Just because you aren't caught doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed. The law says if you drive at.08 or higher you are driving drunk. You committed the crime, you just didn't get caught. The law was still broken.
""Endangering other people" is such a nebulous concept that it can be applied to anything and that makes it worthless as a criteria for determining criminal intent."
I'm sitting here responding to your post. There is your anything. Now, try and apply it as "endangering other people" in any shape, form, or context under existing US laws. Bet you can't even if you try and pull into the issue my using electricity or bandwidth for the post.
If you think that breaking the law doesn't happen unless you get caught then you have some serious morality issues. I sure wouldn't hire you for even walking my dog.
"But people are more likely to be murderers than spammers because murder most often involves a momentary lapse of reason or good sense. Spammers are professionally out to get whatever they can, as often as they can at anyone's expense using lies, deceit and misdirection. I find murder to be a lot easier to forgive. Murderers are less likely to have character flaws. Murderers are people like you or your neighbor. They are your boyfriends and girlfriends... husbands and wives... most of the time someone they know is the victim... and often times, there is something resembling deserving or cause!"
Huh? Just because someone becomes emotionally upset enough to kill someone does not make the act forgivable. Murderers are less likely to have character flaws? Hello, I'd consider murder a serious character flaw.
"Murderers are people like you or your neighbor." No, murderers are not like me. I respect life. If I have to kill someone in defense of myself or someone else, that's a different story and not murder.
"most of the time someone they know is the victim... and often times, there is something resembling deserving or cause!" Please, explain to me a deserving cause other than defending yourself or someone else for killing someone.
"The millions if not billions of dollars being spent and/or lost due to spams and scams, security compromises and all the problems caused by spammers. You may idealistically claim to think that no amount of money is worth a single human life, but the facts are not in your favor."
What facts? The first sentence is a fragment so I can't know where you were going. But the second...dude, you're telling me you can put a price on a human life? What is your life worth, your mom's?
You are out of your fucking mind. While I'll agree that someone is more likely to be murderer than spammer...spamming takes technical knowledge while murder takes only a weapon and opportunity, you must be an amoral, naive, moron to think that murder can be more forgivable than spamming.
Let's put it this way. If someone murders your mother, will you forgive them more quickly than you would forgive someone who spams your mom? Try putting things in perspective. Spam sucks but you can delete it. Murder sucks worse, you can't bring someone back.
"It is a statistical certainty that some people have been affected in a life threatening way, whether it be a naive person who wastes time on a useless medicine or a person who misses an important life-or-death email because it's been spam-filtered."
Life or death email? Who would send an email in a life or death situation? What if your ISP is down, what if a backhoe operator got drunk, what if you use Lotus Notes?
Please, get a grip, any life or death situation is dealt with by phone or in person unless you consider death to be an acceptable result.
"is nice, but until they're hoisted on a gallows (or facing a firing squad, in a pinch), it's not quite good enough, but a step in the right general direction. Hang 'em high--after all, they can then say their penis pills caused them to he hung (yeah, hanged, I know, I know)."
Yay! Grammar knowledge goodness.
But, I can't agree with them being hanged as an appropriate punishment. Let's save life ending punishment for the truly worst criminals. I'm also not really sure that longer sentences will be a deterrent. Let's put them to work deleting spam flagged by the major ISP's for the rest of their lives. Supervise them appropriately while they are serving their sentence and allow them no other computer access. A swift kick to the ass on a daily basis might make some spam recipients feel better too.
Slashdot Mirror
"Can you believe that in early 1999 gas cost less than $1 a gallon? Kobain died in '94."
Dude...It's "Cobain", as in Kurt Cobain. And...while he did die, he ate a shotgun shell. Let's call it what it is. Fuckhead committed suicide because he was a freakin' moron and drug addict. And...we're glad except for his daughter's loss and that he didn't take Courtney with him. He had lots of potential and the unplugged gig I saw on MTV was great but he threw it all away and he screwed his daughter by offing himself instead of being a man and father. Heroin is no excuse. There are plenty of people who had the strength to rehab and go on with their lives.
And...gas prices in 1999 were less than $1 only until March. After that they were over $1 (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mg_tt_usw.htm).
Damn, I actually previewed and seem to be a little harsh. Let me say with all sincerity that I'm sure rehabbing is tough. The thing is he hit bottom and killed himself instead of seeking help and left his daughter to be brought up by someone who probably has more issues than he did. Frances (his daughter) deserves better. What a shame.
"I was hoping there would be something behind the hype and atleast one improvement over MS Server 2003 and a few more improvements over XP."
I agree with you 100%. I have for the last ten years or so said that I have grudging respect for MS server OS's. Constant improvement is a good thing. With regard to desktop I had also seen consistent improvement and therefore have said that I have grudging respect there also. Here's where things fall apart. Win2000 desktop was pretty much rock solid on release. WinXP was released with no real driver support and was totally lacking as a new release. Then, after SP releases things got a whole lot better for XP. Okay, now we've got something we can deal with. Then they release Vista and make the same fucking mistakes they've made over and over again. Why should anyone have to upgrade to a new PC to run the new OS? Mac is backwards compatible for a couple of generations. Linux can run on antiquated hardware. Sure, MS fanboys will say "apples and oranges" but my point is that a new OS release should run on current hardware, moderately past hardware, and some short time of future hardware. What is improved if I have to get a new system to run a new OS? As another question, where is the big, obvious improvement? Eye candy doesn't cut it. Any piece of crap can look good but function like shit.
Well, like I said, they were very infrequent. The few occasions I saw an apps related issue it was a specialty app for the legal field. The company that sold the app was giving us new replacement files for their app pretty regularly for a while. Sucks to a to be treated as a beta tester for what is supposed to be a production app. The hardware issue is ongoing on 2003 servers and involves multiport serial cards that sometimes cause spontaneous reboots when devices are attached or removed from the serial ports. It's too early to tell for sure but a new driver from the manufacturer may provide a fix. Oddball stuff.
"Hackers in the USA shouldn't be put out of business, they should be 'recruited' into cushy salaried jobs working for the Govt... One day they'll be the ones we HAVE to trust to defend us from attack."
How about we lock them away for ten to twenty years or so while they are forced to work for the government and then let them out with a nice pension and lifelong monitoring? If we supply them with hookers and Mountain Dew while they're locked up they might not even care (or notice) that they're in prison.
"Oh just go away with the no more BSOD's on windows XP ec. bullshit. Yeah, like random reboots are all that much better. Yes, we all know, there is now a windows service that initiates at boot and monitors the system for a crash that would initiate a BSOD, so instead this service reboots the system, like really fucking cool and useful that, a genuine marketdroid M$=B$ exercise in marketing (same number of crashes you only choose whether you BSOD by disabling the service or random reboot)."
Wow, who pissed in your Cheerios? I didn't think I said anything that warranted being treated like a MS fanboy. How did XP find its way into the discussion? I was talking about servers and the servers I ran were mostly rock solid with negligible BSOD or random reboots that were always traceable to the applications they ran or flaky hardware like PCI serial boards or the serial devices that attach to them.
Get a grip dude.
"In Windows, I had to reboot on almost a weekly basis at least..."
Just anecdotal experience but the Windows 2000 and 2003 boxes I've administered have been rock solid other than the occasional box which was running a flaky application. It never surprised me to see a random blue screen with Windows NT boxes but a blue screen on a 2000 or 2003 server was always a surprise. Having said that, I'm not sorry at all to see a major, high visibility implementation of Linux. I hope they have much success.
"Climate change: Did you fall for the "science has nothing to do with consenus" meme? "
I haven't fallen for anything. My biggest concern is the CO2 saturation of the oceans reaching the point where organisms can't create the shells and other exoskeletons they need for survival. I expect that to cause an almost complete collapse of ocean ecosystems.
"Way to understate the importance of confirming theories. Heh."
Well, of course no "proven" theory has later been found to wrong either has it? Such as spontaneous generation, perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
I'm not sure the importance of this "confirmation" ranks as front page news. Honestly, I'd much rather see some, any theory of our current climate changes proven. At least then we might be able to start effectively making some changes. For that matter, proving the theory of cold fusion would go a long way to improving our lives.
Bah, I guess I'm a little overly critical at the moment...I'm having a bad week.
"* Designed to be primarily used from the keyboard."
What about my foot pedal?
"Except TWM. Bow before the TWM gods!!!!!"
:)
from http://xwinman.org/vtwm.php
"It has however been left behind by more recent window managers, making it something of mainly historical interest."
Yes, some of us moderately clueless sods have to do research to understand the jokes... And, if you're not joking then you need to get a life and join modern society.
Well that's comforting. We've confirmed a theory that was already pretty well accepted as being fact.
Next...?
Global climate change?
Evolution?
Silent but deadly versus loud and fruity?
Move on folks, nothing to see here.
"Funny thing; I have a Mac Powerbook with the latest revs of everything, and it still has random flakinesses in its suspend and sleep modes."
Well Windows suspend and sleep modes are flaky too. I really kinda chalked it up to flakiness in suspend and sleep modes in general. I wonder if the new solid state drives will make a difference. I won't know for some time yet. Cool technology but very, very expensive.
Feisty install on my IBM T41 laptop was flawless and amazingly fast. Video, wired and wireless network, everything works great and took no tinkering. The only flaw I have seen at all was a quirk in the suspend mode which doesn't matter as I hadn't intended to use it anyway.
"Or ordinary coal."
Right, but not extraordinary coal.
Dude, I know...I was trying to be funny. I pulled in time travel due the disparities in time of 13,000 years ago versus 35,000 years ago. And, the third ingredient for gunpowder would be charcoal and...wait for it...the projectiles for his cannon were raw diamonds if I remember correctly.
Wasn't that when the Enterprise went back in time and Captain Kirk made a hand held cannon that used primitive gunpowder and meteor fragments to blast the bad alien beasties?
"However, you don't need the shirt to pull that off . . . I get asked if I'm a manager (or people assume that and launch straight into asking a store question) at virtually every large store in which I shop."
Dude, it most sooo suck looking like a retail manager. That's almost as bad as looking like a burger flipper. I'm glad I THINK I look like someone about to go postal. My wife thinks I'm cute and don't look like the nerd that I am. Hmmm...book, cover, and judging seem to fit here somehow.
"I'm sorry, but that's a dangerous attitude to have. The Government is not some parent that gets to dole out 'privileges' to it's children as long as they behave. The state has a legitimate interest in making sure that everybody who drives meets some standard of skill (which is why we have road tests and learners permits) but that's where it should end."
If feel the same way but the reality doesn't fit how I feel. The same legitimate interest in making sure that everybody who drives meets a standard of skill gives them the same right to require you submit to physical testing for impairment if they have probable cause to suspect impairment. Some states require physical alcohol and/or drug testing in any case of severe injury due to an accident. That is their law. If you don't like the law, don't put yourself into a position of having to comply (don't drive) or get it changed. It is the same thing that gives them the right to force you to submit your vehicle for an inspection for safety and emissions purposes in order to register the vehicle. It is the same reasoning that forces you to have liability insurance and wear a seatbelt or have children in safety seats. Driving on public roads is a privilege. There is no inalienable right to drive. In my ideal world we wouldn't need a granny state to ensure that we can drive without getting creamed by some drunk or some idiot with bald tires. Unfortunately we don't live in that world and as such I'd rather our granny state force the idiots to abide by the common sense I already follow and punish them (even more severely in most cases) if they don't.
I've been mostly agreeing with everything you've posted in this thread thus far (especially the drug law issue) but I've got to nitpick one issue...
"...Another pet topic of mine is DWI laws. All well and good to keep drunks off the street, right? But I have serious problems with "implied consent" laws (i.e: drive in our state and you HAVE TO GIVE EVIDENCE AGAINST YOURSELF). When I try to explain that to people I either get "we have to keep the drunks off the road", or (a more enlightened, but still wrong IMHO answer) "you don't have a right to drive and it's only a civil penalty" (what happened to the 10th amendment again?)"
Driving is a privilege. No one forces you to get a driver's license. You have the choice to agree to the terms of the license or to not have one. You can drive drunk on your own property without a license all you want. If you want to drive on public, state and federal roads, you must have a license and abide by the terms required to have a license. Also, keep in mind, I don't think any state can force you to blow, piss, or give a blood sample without actually getting a search warrant. You'll lose your license if you don't, but that is pretty clearly stated as a requirement for getting a license in the first place.
Thank you very much for a well stated response. I should have put as much thought into mine and I probably flew off the handle a little...a couple beers under my belt and I certainly saw your post as stating that no crime has been committed if no one gets hurt.
Your drunk driving analogy is, with all due respect, a bit off. In reference to your Tokyo experience, that's a good cop versus the some fraction of bad cops out there...especially here in the US. If you had been driving I think his response would have been different. If I remember correctly, and I may not, the first drunk driving conviction in Japan is mandatory loss of license for life. As it was, you weren't a danger to anyone else and probably only minimally to yourself. My case is that driving drunk and not hurting anyone is still a violation of law. Just because no one got hurt doesn't mean that the potential wasn't there and the likelihood is significantly greater than the likelihood of California stop causing damage. Driving drunk is a much different animal. I can do a California stop, speed by a few miles an hour, or not stop right on the line all day long and guarantee that I won't cause an accident or kill someone. No drunk driver can say the same. The difference is a rational, observant, and calculated decision versus a mentally and physically compromised ability.
I can certainly agree that the US justice system and political systems are probably almost irreparably broken. Sign me up for the next tea party. Their failures are too numerous to list here but basically boil down to the ability to buy the best lawyers and the ability to buy politicians' influence for your cases and causes without real moral and just conclusions.
You do a good job with bringing electricity generation and use into the discussion. While I have to say I regrettably agree with the global warming naysayers that increased CO2 has not been PROVEN to cause global warming, I also know that is their way of throwing doubt into the situation. There is no doubt in my mind that drastic climate change is underway. I feel that CO2 levels have a significant influence, proven or not. Once our ocean ecosystems are wrecked because CO2 saturated water chemistry doesn't allow shrimp, crabs, and shellfish to build exoskeletons, it will be too late regardless of where the world temperatures are headed. By the same token, sure some glaciers are growing, but most are shrinking. I expect a system as large as world climate to have some anomalies even in the face of an overall drastic change such as global warming. As far as China goes, I can see they don't give a crap about their environment so why would they care how they affect anyone else's?
Thanks again, cheers,
al
I don't see any real down side as long as nuclear is being used as an interim solution until we solve the problem of finding a renewable, ecological friendly energy source. Waste storage is a necessary evil with nuke power but it sure as hell beats oil or coal. CO2 as a byproduct of our energy production has the potential to kill our planet and in my opinion is already doing so. At least nuke plants don't generate CO2.
"And this is where you have been brainwashed. To use an extreme example, if someone drinks until they are falling-down drunk, drives to the nearest liquor store and buys more booze and drives back home without hurting anyone, what crime has been committed?
.08 or higher you are driving drunk. You committed the crime, you just didn't get caught. The law was still broken.
It is thought crime."
Whoa! The crime committed is drinking and driving. Just because you aren't caught doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed. The law says if you drive at
""Endangering other people" is such a nebulous concept that it can be applied to anything and that makes it worthless as a criteria for determining criminal intent."
I'm sitting here responding to your post. There is your anything. Now, try and apply it as "endangering other people" in any shape, form, or context under existing US laws. Bet you can't even if you try and pull into the issue my using electricity or bandwidth for the post.
If you think that breaking the law doesn't happen unless you get caught then you have some serious morality issues. I sure wouldn't hire you for even walking my dog.
"But people are more likely to be murderers than spammers because murder most often involves a momentary lapse of reason or good sense. Spammers are professionally out to get whatever they can, as often as they can at anyone's expense using lies, deceit and misdirection. I find murder to be a lot easier to forgive. Murderers are less likely to have character flaws. Murderers are people like you or your neighbor. They are your boyfriends and girlfriends... husbands and wives... most of the time someone they know is the victim... and often times, there is something resembling deserving or cause!"
Huh? Just because someone becomes emotionally upset enough to kill someone does not make the act forgivable. Murderers are less likely to have character flaws? Hello, I'd consider murder a serious character flaw.
"Murderers are people like you or your neighbor." No, murderers are not like me. I respect life. If I have to kill someone in defense of myself or someone else, that's a different story and not murder.
"most of the time someone they know is the victim... and often times, there is something resembling deserving or cause!" Please, explain to me a deserving cause other than defending yourself or someone else for killing someone.
"The millions if not billions of dollars being spent and/or lost due to spams and scams, security compromises and all the problems caused by spammers. You may idealistically claim to think that no amount of money is worth a single human life, but the facts are not in your favor."
What facts? The first sentence is a fragment so I can't know where you were going. But the second...dude, you're telling me you can put a price on a human life? What is your life worth, your mom's?
You are out of your fucking mind. While I'll agree that someone is more likely to be murderer than spammer...spamming takes technical knowledge while murder takes only a weapon and opportunity, you must be an amoral, naive, moron to think that murder can be more forgivable than spamming.
Let's put it this way. If someone murders your mother, will you forgive them more quickly than you would forgive someone who spams your mom? Try putting things in perspective. Spam sucks but you can delete it. Murder sucks worse, you can't bring someone back.
"It is a statistical certainty that some people have been affected in a life threatening way, whether it be a naive person who wastes time on a useless medicine or a person who misses an important life-or-death email because it's been spam-filtered."
Life or death email? Who would send an email in a life or death situation? What if your ISP is down, what if a backhoe operator got drunk, what if you use Lotus Notes?
Please, get a grip, any life or death situation is dealt with by phone or in person unless you consider death to be an acceptable result.
"is nice, but until they're hoisted on a gallows (or facing a firing squad, in a pinch), it's not quite good enough, but a step in the right general direction. Hang 'em high--after all, they can then say their penis pills caused them to he hung (yeah, hanged, I know, I know)."
Yay! Grammar knowledge goodness.
But, I can't agree with them being hanged as an appropriate punishment. Let's save life ending punishment for the truly worst criminals. I'm also not really sure that longer sentences will be a deterrent. Let's put them to work deleting spam flagged by the major ISP's for the rest of their lives. Supervise them appropriately while they are serving their sentence and allow them no other computer access. A swift kick to the ass on a daily basis might make some spam recipients feel better too.