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Comment It's also just stuck in the past (Score 3, Interesting) 950

In particular with regards to gender roles.

So, time was women were for making babies and raising said babies. Men were for protecting and providing for the women. That was the roles society prescribed and there wasn't a lot of deviation from it. You did see outliers that didn't conform, but by and large that's how things were basically due to necessity. You notice many animals follow a similar structure. It is what is needed for the survival of the species.

Well that all changed, of course. We now have the problem of too many humans, not too few. Also many of the household tasks that used to take a ton of time are now automated (try washing clothes by hand, it is a full time job almost). So society changed. Women didn't need to place their worth in their offspring anymore. They could choose to be what the wanted, do what they wanted, and still be valuable. It wasn't about popping out babies.

Well, this is the other side of that: Men's value now no longer needs to be in providing for a family. They can have a family, or not, they work, they can stay at home, etc, etc. For some men, that means staying single.

However, some people, like this dude, have a problem with that. They think that men should be required to be providers to be considered "real men", should be required to fill a particular role in society.

Comment Any skilled labour basically (Score 1) 420

Mike Rowe has given some good talks about the shortage of skilled labour in the US and what a problem it is. This kind of thing can't be outsourced since, well, the labour is needed in the US. I suppose it could be replaced with H1Bs but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Most of it is stuff like plumbing that isn't glamorous, and even can be dirty, but it is necessary and will continue to be necessary. Eventually robotics may advance to the point of replacing it, but not in the foreseeable future.

Comment Not sure where you live (Score 2) 142

Here manslaughter is a Class 2 Felony. That means 4 years minimum sentence (or 3 years minimum if there are mitigating circumstances), 10 year maximum (12.5 if there are aggravating circumstances). This is presuming first time offence, and only one count. A repeat offence can bring it up to as much as 35 years.

So no, doesn't look higher to me. Remember there's a difference between maximum and minimum. When a sentence is "up to" that means "the absolute maximum a court may sentence for a given offence." Usually, there's a fair bit of range in a sentence since the idea is a judge will consider the factors of the individual case.

Comment Same amount you get for your lax home security (Score 2, Insightful) 142

I mean when someone breaks in to your house, you should go to jail right? After all, your home security sucks. I don't care if you think it is good, it sucks. Virtually nobody bothers with good home security.

So you should go to jail if someone breaks in... ...or maybe you should reexamine this "blame the victim" attitude so many geeks have with regards to hacking.

Comment Why don't you leave? (Score 1) 509

Serious question here. I mean if things are truly as bad as you claim they are, where police just arrest and beat people regularly for no reason, then why don't you move somewhere that is not the norm? I mean I can understand staying if you wish to work to make things better, but you imply in your post that you do not, that you wish to not fight back. Fair enough. However the fact that you can freely and without worry post this on a public forum means you live in a place free enough not to restrict you from leaving. So why stay?

Were I in such a situation where I feared the police to that point, and believed I could not affect change (or didn't wish to try), I'd get out ASAP. I'd work on getting a job and moving as soon as circumstances allowed.

So why do you choose to stay, if it is that bad?

Comment Not only goes a long way but frustrates jerks (Score 1) 509

When you are polite and friendly this not only makes things smoother with people who are nice, but it really annoys the jerks who are looking for an excuse to cause you trouble because they don't have one.

A minor story about that: I was coming back from Canada from visiting my parents. I made the mistake of declaring on the customs form that I had meat, which I did, a pack of beef jerky fully sealed, manufactured in the US. So instead of going right through the automated line, I had to go see an agent. This dude had a huge chip on his shoulder. It was pretty clear to me he'd like nothing better than for someone to get annoyed and belligerent with him so he could make their life suck. No such luck here, I smiled, was polite answered the questions and after a bit, was on my way to the next segment.

He'd marked to have my bags searched (at airports in general, and the border especially they can search your bags for any or no reason). So I had to head to the search area. Well I was nice and polite to the agent there who clearly thought this was moronic and gave my bag the most half-assed quick search ever before saying "Thanks you are good to go."

I got to go through with a minimal inconvenience (10 minutes max) and got the satisfaction of him getting to be frustrated with being able to do nothing. I'm not saying it always work, of course, but it works more often than not. Makes your life easier and you get the added satisfaction of making jerks sad.

Comment Ummmm (Score 3, Insightful) 1097

You really can't see any difference? Then you are just being obtuse. Yes if you tried to trespass in a religious building and be offensive, there'd be a response. In particular, they'd tell you to leave and call the police. However this was not in a Mosque, no Muslims were forced to attend. This was something people were doing on their own. However the crazies felt the need to respond.

I've heard about precisely zero cases of Jews going after pig BBQs in the US. Seems they are not very concerned about what you are doing on your own. If you don't respect their religion, oh well, so it goes.

Stephen Fry put it very well:

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

Comment No, probably not (Score 5, Interesting) 1097

You might recall that during the whole "draw Mohammad" controversy South Park took it on. While the were not allowed to show Mohammad at all, they did show people literally shitting on Jesus, the American flag, and so on. They received zero threats in relation to that, there was no action taken against them.

It's not like Christians didn't know either, it is a major syndicated TV show that is produced in the US.

Comment Well in some cases you can't have one (Score 1) 317

I won't be getting this Tesla battery, for a number of reasons, but I'd like a home battery system. I live in a condo and I haven't have a backup generator. Nowhere I'd be allowed to put it. A battery system though, that I could have.

If I had my choice, I'd get a Generac whole house system but there are tradeoffs that you have to make when you want to live certain places.

Comment Also it seems to me it might be necessary (Score 1) 105

I guess it depends on who you believe, but there have been climate scientists that have said we are beyond the tipping point, that even if we reduce emissions warming will happen. Ok well if that's true, and if it is true that the warming will be a net harmful thing, then some kind of geo engineering would be necessary. You can't very well say "Reducing CO2 won't fix the problem, but let's do as much of that as we can and only do that and then cry about the problem!"

Comment No shit (Score 1) 253

If the problem is that the Argentine currency is unstable... well then Bitcoin is the WRONG answer. It is exceedingly unstable, it would be unstable even for a stock, never mind a currency, it moves like a thinly traded penny stock. So trying to use it for some kind of stability is just about the dumbest thing you can do.

To me, this seems like more Bitvertisement by which ever of Slashdot's editors is heavily invested in them and trying to drum up interest.

Comment Yep, usually "bad class" means "bad professor" (Score 2) 355

Bad students are certainly a thing but any time I've seen a professor talk about how bad a whole class is (and I've seen it, I do IT support at a university) is the PROFESSOR who is the bad one.

We had a guy who only lasted one semester before being told to leave. He disrespected his students, did a shit job teaching anything, and expected everyone to have advanced processor design knowledge that was PhD level or beyond. He gave them an impossible project and then raged at them when they couldn't do it.

While there may well have been a few lazy and/or disrespectful students in his class, the overwhelming problem was him. He expected everyone to kiss his ass all the time, not expect anything from him, and have education far beyond their years. With unrealistic expectations like that, of course he was disappointed in his class.

Everyone "failed" his class by raw numbers but he just curved it so in the end grades were a representation of intelligence, not mastery of the subject.

Comment And for that kind of money there should have been (Score 4, Insightful) 239

I mean if you are going to take a 75% cut, well then you can afford to spend the fucking time curating your shit. If they are going to charge that kind of cut, they can afford to have people review the content. Given that they are taking a much larger cut than the dev, it should stand to reason that goes to paying for some work on their part.

Have it where you submit a form to Valve with what your mod is, what it does, etc. They screen it to make sure it sounds like a reasonable idea, and then send you stuff to sign where you declare that this is your work, you aren't violating copyright, you've paid commercial licenses for software used on it, etc. Once they have that, mod gets submitted and then it goes off to Bethesda for QA. They test it to make sure that it does what it says, doesn't crash the game, and so on. Maybe even help fix bugs possibly. If that's all good Valve does a final check to make sure they don't see any copyright violation (maybe an automated system that flags and then a human checks i there are flags to see if it is legit) and it then gets posted.

If they were doing something like that, then ok maybe there's some justification of the price. Ya there's a big cut getting taken, which means higher prices, but you are getting something more along the lines of paid DLC. QA like that might be worth it.

However they were just letting anything and everything get posted. They were treating it with the same indifference as the rest of Steam, which is just not ok.

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