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Comment Re:Climate change phobia (Score 0) 341

Except that - even if you agree that climate is changing, which seems to be indisputably true - it's still rather humanocentric to assume that we "could have changed something".*

* First, you have to assume that global warming is driven largely by humans; considering that about every 120k years there's a sudden spike in temps and CO2 and the last one was...120k years ago, I think the burden of proof (that this one is caused by SUVs and Republicans, when none of the previous dozen were) is still on the AGW folks, depite the politically-driven IPCC reports.
Second, you have to assume that the warming isn't simply intrinsic to how we live in the 21st century, like the concomitant carcinogens that are consumed with cooked meat. Sure, if we killed off half of humanity it might reduce warming significantly, is that worth it? We could all live like hunter gatherers, but is it worth it?

Comment Re:What part of "Consent" Don't You Understand? (Score 1) 311

If it was unsolicited, actually, it does.
It's a widely recognized pricinple that unsolicited merchandise may be considered a gift.

In point of fact, sending email or sexts should be prosecuted every time because in practical terms they are quite clearly "unsolicited advertising material for the lease, sale, rental, gift offer or other disposition of any realty, goods, or services" without being designated as such.

Copyright belongs to the person who pressed the button to take the picture, which then poses even trickier questions if that person is not the subject. If it is the subject, then consent is clear, and sending the picture does in fact give them the picture for personal use but clearly not for commercial use. Implied consent is at play as well - if a person you're being intimate with takes your smiling picture, it's pretty clear you implied consent for the picture to be taken (which says nothing about any further usage).

Whether the subject is publicly recognizable matters as well (ie if it's just a close up of your cooter, you're going to have a hard time arguing that is 'publicly recognizable' except for the attention you yourself called to it).

Further, you're simply mistaken dragging moral 'rights' into the question at all. I agree with you that taking a nudie pic, and then later using it for revenge porn is shitty and immoral. But we're not arguing how the world SHOULD BE, we're discussing it as it IS.

And you misread me completely. Of course do whatever you want in private.
I just think that anyone RECORDING what they do in private - particularly with someone that they don't know extremely well - is a moron if they're surprised to find it on Reddit tomorrow.

Comment Re:Pull the disk (Score 1) 466

My desktop system is about 5-6 years old and it's got a built-in IDE controller, I just never used it. My suggestion would be to look on his current system (or find someone with a previous-gen desktop ), I bet there's an IDE controller there. Just turn off, plug in the IDE cabling, and fire it back up, copy over.
Or am I the only one with a drawerful of IDE cables?

And the whole "IDE has tricky settings" is a canard: if you have a single IDE (like, I suspect, this one) leave the pins on 'master'.

Comment Re:Cost of America (Score 1) 280

"A supermajority of voters favor deficit spending, so that's the policy we currently have."
So why cry about "outrageous" spending in the first place?

"Amortize the deficit across everyone, and you'll find that all households cost "the taxpayer" many thousands of dollars per year."
You apparently missed the 'net' part of my comment. If you'd RTFA, you'd see that Heritage was talking net results, meaning total contribution vs cost; And yes, that means that a giant pile of American citizens are leeches, you're saying it's ok we add more?
Personally, I'd love it if such a calculus determined your vote: if you are a net 'taker' = no vote. (Including corporate welfare for corporate officers, of course.)

Comment Re:What part of "Consent" Don't You Understand? (Score 1, Insightful) 311

If the picture was taken without consent - ie an upskirt or whatever - then I agree with you.
If the picture was taken WITH consent, then fuck you.

Free speech cannot survive if people can retract what they said, and later decide "I didn't mean to say that - you can't tell anyone I said that."

Same with pictures. If you take a picture of your junk and then send it to someone, you're GIVING them the picture, to do with as they wish. By my view, it's exactly the same as if a company sends you something unsolicited in the mail: it's yours.

Don't want pictures of your junk floating around the internet? There's a really good way to prevent that: don't take them.

Comment "Outrageous" (Score 0) 280

Usually I've found in my 47 years on this planet that people complaining about the expense of something are perfectly willing to spend that money on some other absurdity when it suits their particular bias.

In this context, for example, people are shocked that it costs $28,000 per arrest to use drones to catch illegals. Likely, the people crying about the outrageous cost are perfectly willing to spend $28000 in legal services, assistance, aid, return transport, etc for those same illegals. Heritage.org (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05/the-fiscal-cost-of-unlawful-immigrants-and-amnesty-to-the-us-taxpayer) claims that the net cost per immigrant household to the US taxpayer is about $14k/year alone.

Personally, I think immigrants are the soul of this country and always have been. It would be nice if we could simplify our immigration system to allow as many people to come here without the absurd multi-year waiting list that they have today, but it seems unfair to allow the lawbreakers - the ones coming illegally - to get a free pass.

Comment Personally (Score 1) 100

...I'd just be happy if our local news stations would share with us such basic facts as the skin color of the bloody suspect.

They seem to avoid it unless the criminals are white or asian, for reasons that likely depend on your political bias; they are failing to describe brown-skinned criminals ....
a) because they're conservative, and assume that you assume 'criminals are brown anyway', or
b) because they're liberal, and they don't want to confirm the stereotype that criminals are mostly brown

Comment Re:Personally... (Score 1) 183

I'm not saying to strip ALL information away, but certainly in the above cases, none of them would be improved, from an objective point of view, by the jury knowing the ethnicity of either party, for example?
Or by being able to tell, by a person's language, accent, or clothing what economic demographic they come from?

Obviously, some information critical to the exposition of the case would be necessary. I'm saying to use technology to strip away the inessentials as much as possible, to remove the widely recognized racial, social, and economic biases everyone brings into the jury box.

Comment Electronic music (Score 1) 305

Is this story sort of like the ones that told us how 'pirate downloaders' and 'the internet' were going to bankrupt the music industry and drive musicians into the poorhouse?

Let me call Kanye and Rihanna, see if maybe I could send them a donation and help them out a little bit? Those poor kids, just struggling to get by. Like the whole music industry....clearly, they're doomed.

Comment Personally... (Score 1) 183

...I'd like to see technology deliver a true veil of ignorance between juries and prosecutor/defendant/court.
It would be the job of prosecutor, defendant (under the eye of the judge) to present a basic outline of events with neuter models in a visualized space. Witnesses could be questioned and cross examined in real time, but with the judge having a time delay circuit allowing the to excise any non relevant information to the case...defendant would not be a white man or black woman, just "defendant", etc.

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