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Comment Re:I feel he should've gotten life no parole. (Score 1) 649

Looking around a crowd, and setting a shrapnel bomb on the sidewalk next to children...that's murder

It is but ONE form of murder, ONE of MANY.

Executing a death sentence as punishment for that cold, calculated act of deliberate cruelty and murder isn't murder.

Yet, if his parents had executed him when he got home, for precisely the same reason: "as punishment for that cold, calculated act [...]" it would be murder again, right? So... apparently that "reasoning" isn't what makes it "not murder". What makes it "murder" is the trappings of legality and due process... its purely semantics.

murder is premeditated homicide that the state has declared illegal
execution is a specific premeditated homicide that the state has declared legal

Make no mistake the ONLY difference between them is the writing on paper that makes one legal and the other not. The writing is the difference. In some cases it is a sufficient difference to justify it being different.

If we execute an innocent person... though... is there any difference at all?

. It's self defense

After he's captured, in handcuffs, in prison, and under guard... Any threat he poses is well and truly neutralized. So, no, killing him at that point is NOT self defense.

Comment Re:I feel he should've gotten life no parole. (Score 3, Insightful) 649

I wasn't even going to attempt addressing the morality of the death penalty. I personally think the death penalty should be abolished because innocents are killed. I don't really object to it in principal as system of removing dangerous criminals that cannot be rehabilitated from society... but since there is no way of reliably determining those put to death are even actually GUILTY it is senseless to use it on anybody.

But its really beside the point.

The point of prison IS... no... scratch that... SHOULD BE to rehabilitate the prisoner, and to protect the public from prisoners who cannot be rehabilitated.

Desiring the imprisonment to be physically or mentally cruel to the prisoners serves no legitimate purpose; only sadism.

Comment Re:I feel he should've gotten life no parole. (Score 5, Insightful) 649

Tsarnaev should be made to know these things.

Why? To inflict as much anguish, stress, despair, and pain on him as you legally can get away with? That says more about YOU than anything else.

If he is imprisoned for life it should be simply because he is a threat to society.

Comment On my keychain (Score 1) 278

One leather key fob with manufacturer's crest.
One car key.

I have a 2nd keychain with house key, mailbox key, spare car key, wife's car key, but I don't generally go out with it. And I usually use my wife's keys to drive her car or get the mail; so it mostly sits on my bedside table.

Comment Re:It's weird... (Score 2) 258

And yet, we don't feel we are secure enough to allow people to vote? How the fuck does that make any sense?

Voting should be simple. And by simple I mean low-tech. Canada's system is nearly perfect. Everyone can understand it. Everyone can see how the votes are counted. An observer can watch the voting, can watch the counts. Recounts are easy.

As soon as you make it online, it becomes inscrutable. Even if you design a system with open hardware, open software, etc most people still can't understand it, and can't verify it. And even if they verify the software and hardware, they can't know that's the software and hardware that was actually used, or that it wasn't remotely patched with new software the day of the election, and then patched back after the election. There are ways of securing it... but they are themselves inscrutable, crytopgraphy, digital signatures, ... might as well be using more magic to show the original magic was right. The system should be something everyone can understand intuitively.

Paper voting is that. You have X paper ballots, each person is handed a ballot, person goes into a booth marks it, and then turns it in. You can see for yourself that the number of voters matches the number of ballots. You can see for your self that the voter puts the ballot in the box. You can watch the box yourself to see its not tampered with. At the end you can watch them take the ballots out of the box, you can watch them be counted, and recounted.

Democracy should be THAT transparent.

NOTHING beats the ease-of-use of and time saving of online voting.

But why on earth would "ease of use" and "time saving" be the most important aspects of choosing the system by which we select our governement?

You propose giving up a voting system even a child can understand and verify for a system that only the elite could even begin to understand, and which would be all but impossible to prove was operating correctly on election day.

Comment Re:An Old Story (Score 2) 386

But in the right hands they are the best and fastest solution to a problem.

Sure. Provided the "right hands" acknowledges that they are not usually the the right solution to a problem chosen at random.

Plenty of people code, and plenty more people think they can code. Someone who knows what they are doing will not get into trouble in ASM, much less in C or C++. But there are lots of people who claim they know what they are doing when actually they know squat.

Sure those completely worthless people do exist and most developers do overestimate their own abilities.

Q: Do you know how many really good ASM/ C / C++ devs are out there that you wouldn't dream of saying that they "don't know squat" that still produce and release code with subtle to obvious bugs in it?

A: All of them.

Yeah, maybe THOSE people should avoid these languages.

Nobody is perfect. And nobody gets better at something by not doing it. You learn by doing.

I agree some developers simply shouldn't be developers, and that others are way out of their proper depth. But no developers live up to your standards. Unintended things affect all of us; edge cases we didn't consider, api/library/hardware specs we didn't fully or correctly understand but thought we did, requirements we didn't fully or correctly understand but thought we did... that affects all of us.

Comment Re:Not for animals or locations (Score 3, Funny) 186

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

That is a bit much too. Nobody wants to be 'Mr. & Mrs. Alzheimer' ... and asking whole family trees to change their name is no more onerous than renaming a river.

I propose drawing on fantasy and science fiction for memorable disease names. Nazgul-flesheating-disease, Tatooine-Fever, Targaryen-herpes...

Comment Re:Uber isn't collecting GST? (Score 1) 125

, but in Canada, you don't have to charge GST (same name, who would have guessed) if you make less than $30,000 in revenue.

You also lose the ability to claim ITCs input tax credits. Given that anybody driving regularly for uber is buying gas, paying for maintenance and repairs... it would probably actually boost their net take home slightly to collect the tax.

The revenue is also going to include any money uber keeps for itself. The only way the CRA only looks at the revenue uber pays the driver is if the CRA decides the driver is really an employee... and then the 30k excemption is moot, because it will at that point be considering uber total revenues for the purposes of whether or not it has to collect GST.. which of course, it would.

Comment Re:This seems batshit crazy. (Score 1) 216

Where you are is somewhat the same thing and is probably protected in the same way.

One big difference, they can track my location even if I don't make a phone call. So if I have a phone on me, they can track all my movements in real-time.

Your expectations may be off, then.

They may be off relative to the law, but they are what they are and i suspect they're shared by most. The law should generally reflect the expectations/desires of the majority of its citizens*, not the other way a round.

(* emphasis on generally. I'm not advocating for true democracy)

Comment Re:This seems batshit crazy. (Score 1) 216

It's not "no expectation of privacy". It's "no expectation that your location is kept private". Different thing.

Same difference. I expect that my location is kept private too.

If you call me on the phone, and the police asks me what you said, I can tell them. I don't know what rights I have to refuse to tell them if I don't want to, but you have no right to stop me if I decide to tell them.

Difference being that I am not friends with my telco. I can choose one from two or forego a modern convenience. The latter is an option, but runs against the freedom to pursue happiness. I want to be able to choose simple modern luxuries and conveniences without agreeing the government gets to know every where I go.

The phone company has no right to know what we were talking about, but the have the right to know your location.

Yes. They have the necessity to know it to fullfill the service.

but I expect they have the right to give it to the police.

Bingo. They should't. Just as I have attorney/client priviledge and have dr./patient priviledge ... so too should I have ISP/carrier client priviledge. Enough private and personal information about me is recorded by the ISP/carrier in their legitimate fullfillment of service that special privliledge should apply.

The fault here lies not with the judges who are applying the law as it is written. The problem lies with the legislators who need to pass laws recognizing the privilege should exist.

Comment Re:Home PCs are fast disappearing (Score 1) 141

Maybe one day eventually. But students and people who actually do any work are still buying them. Usually in the form of a laptop, but often desktops if they value power and performance and longevity over portability.

There is a large exodus sure... grandma might not need a PC now that she has a tablet. But nobody is giong to write a 10 page essay on a tablet if they dont have to.

The keyboard can be worked around with bluetooth... but the ability to multi-task-- collaborate with you friends in skype, while having not one, not two, but three browser windows open at the same time various sites with information your citing, plus your editor, plus excel for that graph your working on...

Doing any real work on a tablet is a JOKE. Tablets etc might one day catch up... let you attach a keyboard, monitor, and mouse... and run your desktop apps. Yeah... that could happen.

But so what... that's still a home pc with a desktop OS, with a tablet mode... why its almost like your inventing Windows 8 / Windows 10....or Ubunutu Unity...

Comment Re:Technically C++ (Score 1) 230

Hmmm.... typed this; using 2 spaces using regular spacebar as indents:


{
    This
        is
            a
        test
}

Simply copy and pasted this from wikipedia


; Uses S-C Assembler variant.
; .or is origin
; .as is ASCII String
; .hs is Hex String .or $300
main ldy #$00 .1 lda str,y
                beq .2
                jsr $fded ; ROM routine, COUT, y is preserved
                iny
                bne .1 .2 rts
str .as "HELLO WORLD" .hs

Then Using preview and viewing the page source I get:


<code>
{
    This
        is
            a
        test
}
</code>

and

<code>
; Uses S-C Assembler variant.
; .or is origin
; .as is ASCII String
; .hs is Hex String .or $300
main ldy #$00 .1 lda str,y
                beq .2
                jsr $fded ; ROM routine, COUT, y is preserved
                iny
                bne .1 .2 rts
str .as "HELLO WORLD" .hs
</code>

I'm not getting nbsp entities nor am i getting TT tags?! I'm using Firefox on Windows 7; not sure what else to say?!!

Comment Re:Morse Code (Score 1) 144

And the texter wasn't "the world champion" just some dude who won some local texting contest. Still fast, but lets not go nuts.

Oh, and it was Leno not Letterman.

There was simililar race in Australia at the time and the morse guy won there too.

10 years ago the phones they were using had those press 1 once for A, 1 twice for B, 1 three times for C, 1 for times for 1, 1 five times for !. press 2 once time for D, press 2 twice for E.... systems.

It wasn't a competition between morse and a smartphone with swyft etc.

I still give the edge to a morse expert... but not by nearly as much.

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