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Comment Re:Liberal? (Score 3, Insightful) 437

The media bias is evident when you look at who and why they attack certain individuals. Biden has gotten away with a lot of stuff. He basically groped a woman in public, in front of cameras, and the reaction was "Oh, Biden....", but when Dan Quayle only accepted a different spelling of potato at a spelling bee, he was vilified. Another example of bias is look at DHS funding: some media outlets are blaming Republicans of denying funding, yet it's Dems that are blocking the vote through parliamentary measures because they don't have the votes to outright block it.

As I've seen it, the Koch brothers are not for gay marriage, one has said he's basically fine with it and doesn't get why everyone's in a big fuss about it.

I, for one, tend to be fiscally conservative, yet socially liberal or, rather, laissez faire. I don't care to subsidize others lifestyles, but I won't comment on or condemn others' lifestyle choices. However, I'm willing to state that marriage is not a constitutional right, and as such, should be left as an issue of states' rights. I'm also willing to state that the primary reason this is an issue is because the federal government grants certain privileges (nominally in the form of tax breaks) to such qualifying "couples". The argument to extend such protections is under the 14th Amendment "equal protection" clause, yet neither sexual orientation nor marital status is listed, under that amendment, as protected classes. Thus, if you extend that qualification to same-sex couples, you're still alienating another class: single individuals and still violating the spirit of the 14th Amendment. What it boils down to, if you treated all people equally, as individuals, regardless of marital status, gay or otherwise marriage would be a non-existent issue.

Comment Re:adria richards (Score 1) 126

I picked a singular, complete, quote from her, directly, that appears to be very telling of her mindset. I'm not assuming anything, I'm exercising literacy and understanding words of the English language. "could have offended" is not the same as "offended". I didn't try and reconstitute what I thought I heard someone behind me said at conference after I heard the word "dongle". Walk down the street or mingle among any large crowd of people. You'll likely, in very short order, hear a lot of things taken out of context may be offensive. Even if you heard the sentence "I want to give her my dongle", so what? You don't, without context, know who "her" is, what the dongle is, or why the dongle should be given to her. Yeah, you can make anything sexual. I want to her in the . Done. In today's society, we jump to the worst conclusions, publicly shame and convict in the media, nevermind whether what we perceive has any actual bearing on reality.

Comment Re:adria richards (Score 1) 126

So she heard something, figured it's a sex-related joke, deemed it sexist, got outraged, snapped a pic and posted a snarky comment on twitter.

Yes, it snowballed, but someone had to get that snowball rolling down the hill to begin with, and that was someone was Adria Richards.

If you read the interview in the article, she claims to have empathy towards "Hank", but her past and present actions reek of her being a sociopath. Even her own remarks insinuate that she wasn't offended, but she made a shit-storm because they could appear to be offensive to her. In her mind, and she states this in the interview, that because she is a black Jewish woman, and he is a white male, that she basically decided he needed to made an example of and that they got what was coming to them, because they don't understand where she comes from. She took racist and sexist actions by assuming things about these two because of parts of a private conversation she eavesdropped on because they are white and male, and she is black and female. She made no attempt to even privately or discretely address her perceived transgression, instead immediately publicly shamed them with a he-said/she-said allegation. I'd wager if she knew any personally identifying info when she snapped the photo & tweeted it, she'd have included that, as well. She has no remorse, and considering how public and detailed this whole incident has been and her (re)actions along the way, I don't see it as a surprise she's still unemployed. I don't see very many companies wanting to take on that legal time bomb. I'm sure there are companies where she'd be welcome (probably certain media/political outlets targeting certain niche demographics), but after this, I think she'll be hard-pressed to find a job in "normal" corporate environment.

Comment Re:adria richards (Score 3, Insightful) 126

Yeah, the interview doesn't exactly paint her in any better of a light than people already hold her in. In her own words she basically states she's racist and sexist with a possible religious bias:

“Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me, sitting in front of him.

(emphasis mine). The way that's phrased, to me, states that she was not offended, but chose to manufacture offense via the photo & tweets, and that resulted in real world damage to peoples lives. Not just to the two men, but their families, as well.

While I do think that a lot of the stuff that was done and said to her after this incident are despicable, it doesn't make her any less of a hurtful, spiteful, vindictive, hypocritical, hateful excuse of a human being. Additionally, her comment about Downs Syndrome is just...disturbing.

Comment Re:Since when is AMT controversial? (Score 1) 179

Not to be pedantic or argumentative, but how are you sure your open hardware design isn't manipulated or back-door'd after you hand it over to a 3rd party for manufacturing? There is no single person in the world that build a useful general purpose (in today's standards) computer from hardware to software, guaranteeing that no one else has had an opportunity along the way to manipulate it in some fashion. At some point, you have to start trusting people/organizations/companies. The fewer involved, the greater level of trust you can reasonably assume. We've already seen how the "many eyes" postulation may be flawed (see: openssl). I chalk that up more to human nature: everyone assumes everyone else is looking, so until you personally have a problem, you don't look, you just assume & trust. I know I do this; I only read others' code when I'm bored or have to. Once I'm sufficiently bored by reading others' code that I'm not paid to read, I get back to my regular job.

Comment Re:Nobody read the law, huh? (Score 1) 323

Fair enough, I did read it several times, but managed to miss, each time, the "and require" part under Section 15. I'd suggest that it wouldn't withstand a challenge under the 4th or 5th Amendments, but seeing as how the SCOTUS has previously ruled the 1st Amendment doesn't (always) apply during public school, I'm not sure how well that would fare.

Comment Re:Nobody read the law, huh? (Score 1) 323

I don't follow your interpretation of the law you linked to.

Section 10. Prohibited inquiry. (a) It is unlawful for a post-secondary school to request or require a student or his or her parent or guardian to provide a password or other related account information in order to gain access to the student's account or profile on a social networking website or to demand access in any manner to a student's account or profile on a social networking website.

That seem's pretty straight forward: it is unlawful to request or require dissemination of a password.

What I suspect you object to is this:

(2) monitor usage of the post-secondary school's electronic equipment and the post-secondary school's electronic mail without requesting or requiring a student to provide a password or other related account information in order to gain access to the student's account or profile on a social networking website.

What I read this to mean (and I'm not a lawyer, of course), is without approval or consent, they may monitor school-provided equipment and provided email. i.e., if you utilize your school's email service, they may read that at will, without your consent. Note the possessive in "post-secondary school's electronic mail". This seems pretty plain to me they are not allowed to monitor, say your gmail access (unless they have a man-in-the-middle setup and you access it utilizing the school's network, read: electronic equipment).

Comment Re:Nobody read the law, huh? (Score 1) 323

As an Illinois resident, I read through it several times, just on the chance I missed something. Like you, I see no where that anyone, either the victim or the accused are being compelled to provide even so much as a screen name, let alone full on credentials for any sort of account. Another misleading click-bait headline just to rile everyone up.

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