While I'm as big a fan of Alton as anyone around here, I'll decide for myself what tools to buy thanks. There is nothing wrong with buying a unitasking device provided it meets a couple of conditions. 1) You actually will use it a meaningful amount and 2) It saves time or results in a better product. There is a lot to be said for having the right tool for the job. Sometimes specialty tools exist for very good reasons.

If they want to work as an engineer, sure. But if they just are a tinkerer or someone trying to get some stuff done, I don't really care unless safety is involved. I am an engineer and I run a company that makes wire harnesses. A LOT of the products we make were not designed by people with a background in electrical engineering. And that doesn't matter and I don't look down my nose at them for it. As long as what they do works it doesn't matter. If someone can play music beautifully I don't care if they can't read sheet music.

Whether that matters or not depends on how much you care about the opinion of "old-school pitmasters". Personally I don't really care much. I have no ambition to do what they do or do it the way that they do it. I don't compete in BBQ competitions and I don't have anyone to satisfy but myself and my family and friends. I don't own a restaurant either. So if someone wants to use a device to get good results without spending half their life learning esoteric BBQ techniques, who am I to care how they do it?

Actions have persistent consequences?

I didn't realize that.... I thought we were entitled to always get forgiveness or at least a do-over if we needed it, no matter what we did?

Signed,
All of modern culture.

Modern culture? Isn't that the core message of Christianity, which is around 2000 years old? And at least some parts of Judaism can also be interpreted that way - Jubilee, sacrifice to pay off sins, etc.

The Unions were a necessary phase in worker's rights, but now they are holding us back and they need to go away and be replaced by rights for all workers. If the Union leaders spent half as much effort to raise the minimum wage on a meaningful schedule as they do on padding their own pockets I might feel differently.

If unions are obsolete, what does it matter what they spend their time on? They aren't preventing you from lobbying for those rights, are they?

A history of sexual predation should never be erased from the public memory. I don't give a rip if this particular guy is "living a new life" -- if your brain is broke in such a way as to be attracted to kids then you should no more be allowed to walk the streets than a lion who thinks kids are tasty.

The difference between lions and humans is that lions can't reconsider their life, while humans can. So it comes down to the risk: what are risking if we trust this person to be changed? What are we risking if we don't?

But perhaps the risk is too high in the case of child molesters, or we simply decide they deserve to suffer. In that case, that needs to be spelled out explicity in the form of a life sentence. Pretending the sentence is, say, 5 years while letting the "unofficial" system inflict a de facto life sentence is dishonest and against the rule of law. Society should have the balls to admit its own true character to itself and then change if it can't live with it.

we hardly care

This says you do.

He's shown wikileaks is about his ego, not truth.

Right. So did he lie?

Yes. Repeatedly and publicly (ex: his acceptance of bail conditions before fleeing justice), yet somehow for the true believers like you, every instance can be argued away.

Read the original quote. Notice how it talks about Wikileaks not being about truth. The issue is not whether Assange has ever told a lie in his life (because everyone has, and frankly it doesn't matter except for a smear campaign), it's whether the leaks he published on Wikileaks are lies.

Sure, not sharing your messianic opinion of Assange and wanting him to be judged like a normal person is capitulating...

Right. So do you think a normal person would be judged like this for not wearing a condom? Because that is what the Swedish lawsuit is nominally about.

But ultimately, what does it matter? Even if you proved mathematically that Assange is the Devil himself, that still wouldn't change the fact that Wikileaks merely unmasks the sins of the powerful. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?

First off, thats a request even if you continue your typical bullshit lying Assange.

Speaking of bullshit and lying...

The only reason he's not in jail in Sweden already is because Ecuador feels like trying to be a dick to the US.

So you agree that it's the US, not Swedish law, that wants him imprisoned and made an example of? Because your assertion doesn't really make sense otherwise.

Whether or not Assange is personally admirable or even likable, it's the US and its allies who're the villains in this story. Wake up and see the skulls on your caps, or they'll be the only thing you'll be remembered by, since they'll take over everything you do, and then get you killed.

He's shown wikileaks is about his ego, not truth.

Right. So did he lie?

He's shown he thinks he's above the law and that he thinks EVERYONE else is corrupt and out to get him.

And you're proving him right.

He's a douche, so much a douche that even France thinks he's a douche. How sad do you have to be when even France doesn't capitulate?

But France is capitulating, again, to the skull-caps.

Alice posts a video using music that Bob owns the copyright to. Carol posts a video that uses music Bob falsely claims to also hold the copyright for. Unfortunately Bob's false claim against Carol doesn't change the fact that he actually does have a legitimate legal claim against Alice's video. So kicking him off the system means he's going to issue a takedown against Alice. The whole point of bringing him into the system was to give him an incentive to leave Alice alone.

The problem here isn't Bob and Alice -- that part of the scenario is working fine. The problem is Bob and Carol. There's no incentive for Bob not to make false claims against Carol. That's the bit that has to be fixed.

Malcolm is no friend of the MAFIAA.

Mafia has no friends, just enemies and slaves.

Well, it may interest you to know that courts judging "emotional distress" is not some new Internet fad. In the year 1348 an innkeeper brought suit against a man who had been banging on his tavern door demanding wine. When the innkeeper stuck his head out the doorway to tell the man to stop, the man buried the hatchet he was carrying into the door by the innkeeper's head. The defendant argued that since there was no physical harm inflicted no assault had taken place, but the judged ruled against him [ de S et Ux. v. W de S (1348)]. Ever since then non-physical, non-financial harm has been considered both an essential element of a number of of crimes, a potential aggravating factor in others, and an element weighed in establishing civil damages.

This does *not*, however, mean that hurt feelings in themselves constitute a crime. It's a difficult and sometimes ambiguous area of the law, but the law doesn't have the luxury of addressing easy and clear-cut cases only.

As to why a new law is need now, when the infliction of emotional distress has been something the law has been working on for 667 years, I'd say that the power of technology to uncouple interactions from space and time has to be addressed. Hundreds of years ago if someone was obnoxious to you at your favorite coffeehouse, you could go at a different time or choose a different coffeehouse. Now someone intent on spoiling your interactions with other people doesn't have to coordinate physical location and schedule with you to be a persistent, practically inescapable nuisance.

Does this mean every interaction that hurts your feelings on the Internet is a crime? No, no more than everything that happens in your physical presence you take offense at is a crime.

As a human being, I'm the highest power known to fucking exist. As we all are.

Except for market forces. Those certainly seem to be beyond the control of mere mortals. For that matter, laws of nature not only determine your environment, but through evolution your entire being: you want things you've evolved to want. Your main advantage as a human is that the process is much quicker with cultural rather than biological evolution, and your culture-derived traits can be updated during your lifetime.

And one of the things people have been evolved to want is to get high. That's not limited to humanity, but can be found in animals so low as bees. Such a widespread tendency strongly suggests this is not mere accident, but reflects some inherent aspect of the universe - a "higher power" - but even if it's not, it's definitely a pattern of human existence. Some people once called this particular power Dionysos. Whether it has an ego - whether it's what we'd call a "person" - is irrelevant to someone caught in its grip. Whether breaking such a grip throuh sheer willpower is possible depends mainly on how strong it is, but often requires help from another higher power, which can range from perception of divine power to fear of death to the team spirit of a support group. Heck, getting chewed out by your boss - an agent of the employer, itself in turn an agent of the Invisible Hand - for turning up hungover might be enough in some cases.

Sure I am. Other companies sell hardware that is comparably nice and that if you sold a Macbook Air with Windows on it that nobody would pay extra for it compared to equivalent Dell or HP units. There are Android phones that are just as nicely designed as the iPhone or at least near enough as makes no difference. I've seen laptops that are just as nice as the Macbook Air. The nice hardware is really just a form of marketing. Make no mistake, it's very nice and it no doubt contributes measurably to Apple's success but it isn't the core reason why people buy Apple products.

What makes a Mac special is OS X. What makes an iPhone special is iOS. Take those away and you'll see Apple's profit margins evaporate faster than you can say "shareholder lawsuit".