"broadband saturation" is a meaningless unit of measurement without some carefully defined terms. Personally, I'd rather see them not use it, and instead use some form of [price / speed] measurement to determine the overall health of our nation's internet service.

Just as a side note, a friend just moved into a wealthy suburban neighborhood here (near Memphis, TN). The only options available for internet access are Bellsouth DSL: $20/mo for 768k down / 128 up, or $34/mo for 1.5m down / 768 up. Or Comcast, which no matter how you slice it seems to run about 60 bucks just for the ISP, although the speed is much better. Do you have any idea how much it makes my blood boil to hear about our nation's "broadband saturation" in the same string of comments with other people claiming to get 10Mbps down/up for cheap?

Don't forget US v. Salerno. The "perceived evil" stipulation. Because Christ knows, down here in the south a black man that rapes a white woman won't be perceived as any more evil than a white man that does it. White, wealthy tech guys won't be perceived as any more evil than the beer swilling schleps in the jury box. Yeah, we're all equal in the eyes of the law, seriously! We are! And the judges can tell for sure how evil you are when using preventive detention as a punishment. They're not doing anything wrong! They're just living in their own little la-la land of assumptions and gut-reactions and intuition that makes the whole thing a sham.

Perceived evil... what a bunch of fucking nutcases. The entire criminal justice system in the US needs to be reworked from the ground up, and many of the people currently in positions of power need to be digging ditches somewhere in the southwest. Small but deep ditches. With a nice man with a gun behind them.

Old SCARY Joke!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examination_Day

INCORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobeî Photoshopî software.

CORRECT: SHOOP DA WHOOP!!!

You've outlined the best way to fight those groups, too. All they're after is money, so when it becomes unprofitable they will leave. When their little pay boxes start getting filled with gasoline and set on fire, for instance. Or when their agents start getting killed. They are slugs who are in the business simply because it's easy money, so when it quits being easy they'll quit going after it.

I would assume he's pretty anal about his personal security; political wingnuts usually are.

That's part of what makes this man so dangerous. He's such a fringe character with such extremist views, he doesn't have anywhere else to go politically. He probably doesn't even want to advance that way. He is in a position where he can surround himself with extremely loyal yes-men and function with little oversight.

It's typical small-town-sheriff garbage, except for this guy has amassed a lot more power than the typical southern headcase. If he ever does retire he'll probably write some kind of self-serving fluff piece, blaming his sadism on Mexicans and pot heads and justifying it in any under-handed manner his ghost writer can dream up. Oh, wait! He already did. http://www.amazon.com/Joes-Law-Immigration-Everything-Threatens/dp/0814401996/

Here in Memphis the feds (under that notorious civil liberties champion John Ashcroft) took control of our jails after reported civil rights violations. The federal government is the appropriate agency to step in by means of the USDOJ, and should likewise step in on behalf of the people incarcerated under that maniac's supervision. It would disgust me if we treated prisoners of war the way that "law man" has been treating his charges.

Dostoyevsky said that any society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners. I sure as hell don't want this man standing as a representative of our civilization.

And you thought Wikipedia edit wars were bad?

This just in: the military command structure has decided to put ARPANET to use as originally intended a scant 40 years after development!

On a (slightly) more serious note, the rank and file and upper brass have differing views on how their opinions are going to be received by the other side. Of course they do! The higher level officers have always expected their suggestions to be taken seriously and responded to with a prompt, "Yes, sir!" They see no problem here. The grunts have a long history of learning exactly how much their input is both required and appreciated by those men, especially when it comes unsolicited. This is one of those rare situations in the military where both sides' reactions are perfectly understandable and even... rational.

I meant OriginalSolver (552648)... God, I'm sorry betterunixthanunix. :( Stupid cut-and-paste happy fingers.

10 years? Here you go.

http://voice-of-reason.pbworks.com/f/CA-Ten%20year%20recidivism%20study%20CDCR%206-17-08.pdf

We bounce these guys back to jail for nitpicky violations of parole pretty much exclusively. A 3.38% cumulative recidivism rate for sex offenses is INSANELY low. The odds are probably much better that a slashdotter will commit a sex crime during that same time period.

betterunixthanunix (980855) is willfully spreading misinformation either because he's a massive idiot or because he has some kind of agenda.

"'As I've said before, my concept of a business model has to treat customers like products to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their traditions of controlling everything people see and hear,' Murdoch said. 'Creating fictional news is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply making us look like greedy control freaks who want to rape the hearts and minds of Americans.'"

There, fixed that for you.

To a business, losing money is the ONLY criminal offense.

That's just the way it goes when you have an intersection of tort law and criminal law. These problems, if they're problems at all, should be problems that civil courts handle in an effort to root out damages. It's how things used to be before the DMCA and even though it was far from a perfect system it still made more sense. You can't rape a company. You can't violate a company's civil rights. The only damage you can do to a corporate entity is monetary in nature, and crimes against that company should be measured and prosecuted as such.

He knew it was a demon the moment he saw it. He knew it, just as he knew the place was Hell. There was nothing else that either of them could have been.

[...]

As the demon raised its arm to deliver the first blow, it said, âoeIn time you will remember even this moment with fondness.â

"You are a liar."

"No," said the demon. "The next part," it explained, in the moment it brought down the cat, "is worse."

Then the tines of the cat landed on the manâ(TM)s back with a crack and a hiss, tearing through the expensive clothes, burning and rending and shredding as they struck, and, not for the last time in that place, he screamed.


-Neil Gaiman, "Other People"

Dear Mister Holder,

I have recently come into possession of a list containing the names of hundreds of little girls who have been sexually assaulted after school. For a modest fee of 20 quid, along with your daughter's name and school schedule, our dedicated research staff will promptly deliver results. No uggos please.