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Comment Re:Oh, the delicious irony! (Score 1) 923

Try and look at this from the other point of view, leaving emotions aside for a minute.

You have a man accused of committing sexual crimes in Sweden. Sweden wants that one man to return to the country for questioning, in the country where he's accused.

That man says screw you, instead you have to figure out the logistics and spend a lot of taxpayer money to send over a whole team of interviewers to an entirely different country, so they can then enter a third country's embassy to suit his desires. This will invoke a whole host of legal, territorial, and logistical questions, based on who has sovereignty at what point, as well as cost a lot of money.

So... to avoid a situation that "will invoke a whole host of legal, territorial, and logistical questions, based on who has sovereignty at what point, as well as cost a lot of money", we now have him holed up in an embassy of a country that's granting him asylum, with the host country threatening to revoke diplomatic privileges in what may or may not be a treaty violation with far reaching implications on the sovereignty of embassies worldwide. While their lawyers figure out whether that's legal, the police are surrounding the building to make sure he doesn't get out and to keep the protesters at bay. Until they figure out an answer, diplomats on all sides are rattling their sabers vying for the upper hand. Meanwhile there's talk of whether it's legal to smuggle him out in a diplomatic bag as a way of crossing the British sidewalk that stands between the foreign soil of the embassy and its sovereign embassy car. All this coming after months of legal proceedings and requests between countries.

If Sweden's goal in not questioning him abroad was to avoid complication and expense, it seems like they failed miserably.

If you let go of your emotions for a moment, there are plenty of valid reasons for Sweden to want him to return to Sweden to be interviewed about a crime he's alleged to have committed in Sweden against Swedish women.

I'm all for having him interviewed and charged if there were crimes committed, but surely provoking an international incident isn't the most effective way to do that.

Comment Re:yay! (Score 1) 184

But in this case, it's horribly wrong.

This will effectively KILL the do-not-track project.

Perhaps. But that reveals the underlying flaw in the do no track (DNT) idea (even if companies want to honor it): It doesn't work if everyone opts not to be tracked. There's just too much perceived value from tracking users. When it's less than 1% of the total users asking not to be tracked, marketers don't really lose anything by honoring the system. But setting IE 10 to use DNT by default means 95+% of IE 10 users will be using DNT. That's a huge market share gone,

And maybe more importantly, DNT becomes no longer opt-in. It's now an opt out system for nearly half of the users. That adds a pretty powerful argument to ignore the opt out request: nearly all of the users didn't really choose to opt-out of tracking, they just selected the default setting. So tracking them doesn't really violate their wishes. Out of 20 people who say "don't track me", maybe one actually means it. If you're a web company, even with the best of intentions, it's hard to give up tracking 20 people just to honor the wishes of one.

(This post brought to you by a six pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.)

Comment Re:Good on them (Score 3, Insightful) 141

I am an Aussie and I am glad if this will get these companies off facebook and run their own services. I am sick and tired of companies blackmailing their customers for a "like" to get their advertising.

Well now you've got a way to blackmail them back. If they force you to 'like' their page, just hop over and post a comment describing how their product is the perfect way to give people the energy needed to oppress minorities (or whatever it is that will get them in trouble). Then file a complaint with the appropriate government agency. Be sure to send a note to the company letting them know that you'll stop if they stop.

Comment Re:a 'fun' way sounds like a bad idea (Score 1) 1127

some simple, fun ways — anyone who [acts inappropriately] will have to wear an embarassing tie, etc. — instead of swear jar, having a sexual innuendo jar

This does not sound like a good idea to me. It makes it seem like some kind of American college comedy film, where you wink and tsk tsk the naughty fratboys for their inevitable innuendos and they smirk and promise to behave better.

That's exactly what I thought when i read it. It's like he's making this into a joke. If they use these sorts of policies and ever end up defending against a harassment suit, it's not going to end well. The accuser is going to be on the stand testifying about all the harassment she suffered "...and then i complained to my manager, and all he did was make the offender wear a pink polka tie. Everybody got a big laugh out of that, like this was all a big joke to them." Any halfway decent lawyer is going to make that look like he was encouraging it, He's gonna get crucified.

I get that the guy asking is trying not to make a huge thing out of this so he can avoid destroying what i guess he thinks is a good work environment among the team, but he's clearly in over his head on this one.

Submission + - Jack Daniels Shows How to Write a Cease and Desist Letter (mashable.com) 2

NormalVisual writes: When the Jack Daniels distillery recently became aware of a book whose cover they felt substantially infringed their trademark, they didn't go into instant "Terminator mode" — instead, they wrote a very thoughtful, civil letter to the infringing party, and even offered to help defray the costs of coming into compliance. I believe plenty of other companies (and many in the tech world) could use this as an example of how *not* to alienate people and come off looking like a bunch of greedy jerks.
Twitter

Submission + - Tweet Lands Sexual Assault Victim In Trouble With Court (ibtimes.com)

Empresz writes: Savannah Dietrich, a 17-year-old Kentucky girl who was the victim of a sexual assault last August, could face contempt-of-court charges for outing her two juvenile attackers on Twitter. "I'm at the point, that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it," Dietrich said. "If they really feel it's necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don't understand justice."

Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 1) 184

This is very confusing. I wish someone would just make a plot of horniness versus day of the year so we could see whether there was a spike around Ramadan. This is slashdot, surely there's enough horny geeks to be able to pull this off. And now that i've mentioned it, i wonder if there's some way to objectively measure horniness?

Comment Re:YES! (Score 1) 278

One of my biggest issues with corporate culture is the ending to so many disputes where the misbehaving corporation "admits no fault" for the situation.

They should always have to post a "we did wrong" letter after they get shown the door.

Maybe selling ad space to publish "we did wrong" letters can be the new business model for newspapers? They can make it into a racket and charge exorbitant fees for 'our bad' space. Since the companies have been order to post the ad by the courts, they'll have to pay the fees. If they charge enough, they won't even need subscribers.

Comment Re:Who knew that naming a rocket... (Score 4, Funny) 121

Coming up with a name is easy. The hard part is making that name into an acronym for something. That's a new rule: all names have to be an acronym as well. For example, the unnamed rocket linked to in the summary is called Falcon and it stands for Force Application and Launch from CONtinental United States. I'm sure they spent a lot of time trying to get that right.

Comment Re:It's unfortunate ! (Score 4, Insightful) 606

The way for geeks to survive is to ally themselves with people much badder than lawyers or politicians: professional assassins. For all the power that a lawyer or politician has, they're nearly powerless against a professional assassin. Only the highest-ranking officials get security details, most politicians don't, and I don't think I've ever heard of a lawyer with a bodyguard.

I don't know if this is a joke or not, but the underlying idea is that there are some people who can get away with being scumbags. Many of them happen to also have the ability to screw over large numbers of other people for personal gain without any real consequences. That's a bad combination. I wouldn't encourage anyone to follow the OP's advice, but it has always surprised me that there aren't more people getting shot for the crap they pull.

Comment Re:Open source... (Score 2) 332

What about open source babies(whatever that means)?

Well... I assume in most cases it means someone had an idea of how a baby should behave, but he couldn't make changes to existing babies, so thought it'd be a good idea to create his own baby, possibly much like many other babies out there, although different because he could make it behave the way he wanted it to. He had all kinds of grand ideas and greatly enjoyed the process of making the baby. But after it was made, he realized that it actually takes a lot of work to keep it running. The baby relies on volunteers to get it going and fix problems - sometimes that happens, other times it doesn't. Lots of people want to do the easy and fun things (like play peek-a-boo), but no one wants to do the hard work (like changing the poopy diaper). Few, if any, are willing to donate money to offset the costs of developing the baby. But they will definitely tell him how to manage his baby. Many are rude in doing so. The whole thing becomes a big hassle and he starts to lose interest in his baby. Eventually the baby ends up abandoned waiting for someone else to take interest in it and keep it alive.

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