My personal best was when I was writing the firmware for a customer's laser marker system. It was a big industrial machine that moved the laser head on a very expensive gantry using 15-pound servos that could generate ungodly amounts of torque. I had a bug in the code that drove the servos, and I issued a command to home the gantry, after which the X-axis went zipping across as fast as it would go. Wouldn't have been a problem except there was a faulty limit switch on that end of the axis, so the 25-pound laser head got slammed into the stops at what we estimated was about 100 inches per second. Totally destroyed the laser head (there's nothing more disheartening to hear than the tinkling of broken steering mirrors and seeing a cracked flat field lens as a bonus), and caused some severe mechanical damage to the rest of the assembly. Fortunately the motors shut down automatically when the temperature sensor tripped, but it wasn't fun explaining to the boss that we had to replace about $30,000 of hardware.

My favorites are those I thankfully had nothing at all to do with - where I am now, we write and maintain the warehouse management software for a very, very large snack food vendor, and we have a VPN link to all of the plants to maintain and monitor what's going on. It's happened before where co-workers haven't paid close enough attention and have connected to live plants instead of the test systems, and accidentally shut down the warehouse, which means production gets shut down too since there's nowhere to put those thousands and thousands of bags of chips until the warehouse system comes back up, and it takes them hours to get stuff restarted and settled once that happens. I don't know how much it costs, but it can't be cheap. I'm also not sure why we don't have some kind of two-factor system with a unique key for each plant to keep that from happening. [shrug]

I don't have anything nearly that bad - my worst only cost me data. A friend taught me (while I was still learning Linux) a trick, how you could play music with dd by outputting the sound to /dev/dsp. But as I said, I was still learning Linux and hadn't quite gotten all of the device names into my head, and I mixed /dev/dsp up with /dev/sda...

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.

There is one thing where the UK would have had a role even if he hadn't fled bail, in that the UK would have been the EAW "sending state". Under an EAW surrender, the sending state has certain rights and responsibilities - for example, if a request comes for extradition to a third party, it has to not only go through the receiving state's judiciary system, but also the sending state's judiciary system; the receiving state can't just hand off someone that they received under an EAW at will. Which is one of the things that makes the whole thing even more ridiculous - Assange had so much faith in Sweden's independence against the UK (such as their ban on extradition for intelligence crimes and 2006 Swedish special forces raids to shut down the US's rendition flights secretly moving through their territory) that he called it his "shield" and was applying for a residence permit there. But suddenly, practically overnight, Sweden transformed into Evil US Lackeys(TM) when he was accused of rape. So then he went to the UK where he talked about his great respect for their independence and impartiality and promised to abide by whatever rulings their judicial system made. Until he ran out of appeals, wherein the UK also turned into Evil US Lackeys(TM). Funny how he felt just fine walking around freely in both of these countries all this time, having only one of the two countries as barriers against US extradition, but adamantly fought the situation that would make them both be barriers to extradition.

Which is, of course, false. AA has accused Assange of lesser sexual crimes, and SW has accused him of rape. There are no counts of rape against Assange concerning AA on the EAW, only three lesser counts (2x molestation and 1x unlawful sexual coersion). There is one count of rape on the EAW (count #4) concerning SW, in line with what the women have accused him of and also in line with what the Svea Court of Appeals has found probable cause for. Both women sought and retained legal representatives who have pushed the case forward for them (initially, both of them retained Claes Borgström, who was the one whose appeal got the closed portion of the investigation re-opened. More recently AA fired Claes because she thought he wasn't doing a good enough of a job with the case and was more focused on self aggrandizement; her new legal representative since started a new push to get Assange handed over to Sweden).

There's a lot more detail on these topics and more here.

The Assange-echo-chamber meme "Neither of the women involved have ever accused Assange of rape" is based on a simple distortion of a key element. SW (the one who the rape charge is concerned) didn't want to have to file charges - she only wanted to force Assange to take a STD test. She didn't want the thing to turn into a giant media circus that basically ruined her life and forced her into hiding from angry Assange fans. But there's a difference between not wanting to file charges and not accusing Assange of rape. She did accuse Assange of rape - first in conversations with her friends while coming to grips with what happened, and then went to the police station, where they told the officer on duty that they wanted advice on how to report a rape (see the statement by Linda Wassgren, the on-duty officer on the 20th). They were then interviewed separately where she described being raped, and after the interview she took a rape kit and sought a legal advocate (getting, ultimately, Claes). Since the leak of the Memoria file (a scummy act on Assange's side, I should add, as it's full of identifying personal details about his accusers and their families that have been used to harrass them - and we know it came from Assange's side because the cover page has a note to Assange's attorney telling him that it's confidential and must not be released), there have been a number of other followup interviews and investigations, and at no point have any objections from AA or SW been recorded. There is absolutely nothing in the record supporting a claim "Neither of the women involved have ever accused Assange of rape". SW has pretty much had to disappear after the event; AA went into hiding for a while but has since resumed taking part in some of the old forums that she used to; last fall she mentioned the case for the first time since the one brief statement she had given to the press after going to the police, mentioning offhand in an unrelated thread that a couple years ago she was the victim of a sex crime and that the perpetrator still hasn't been brought to justice, but rather she's still attacked by his fans for daring to report it. She didn't mention Assange by name, but it's obvious who she was referring to.

Most people who are raped don't want to file charges. They don't want the viscious attacks that come with it and want to shove the event in the past and not have to keep reliving it. A hundred times over when the accused is someone famous who has a lot of loyal fans. But claiming "not wanting to file charges" means "wasn't raped" is a massive distortion.

So Assange ordered the plane stopped?? Or did the US with a bunch of countries bending the knee?

Assange planted a rumour, but stoping the plane was not his doing in any way.

Hey, let's not forget the Wikleaks Funnies while we're at it, such as when they presented a Nigerian scam email as proof of US military corruption. ;)

It's not an "IF" as to whether Assange cherry picks things for political reasons. He does. There are lots of things he's deliberately kept back with threats to release if certain things happen that he doesn't want (unredacted cables, files against NewsCorp, etc). The most famous was his "insurance file" which was to be released "should anything happen to him", which was left vague enough that it wasn't clear whether he was talking about "being killed" or simply "being sent to Sweden" (the statement being made during his fight to avoid surrender to Sweden). The scummiest blackmail on his part, IMHO, was his threatening to release unredacted documents that could get various aid/human rights organizations' employees killed if said organizations didn't provide him money (most famously his $700k shakedown of Amnesty International).

He refers to the leaks in Wikileaks' possession as his "property", and made all Wikileaks staffers sign an onerous NDA imposing ridiculous fines if they do anything to reduce the monetary value of said property, such as by leaking it.

Speaking of stopping Morales's plane, that was actually Assange's doing. Largest "SWATting" prank in world history.

After making a few tweaks to the circuitry in an attempt to reduce noise, I powered on the Commodore and immediately fried the motherboard.

Don't be too hard on yourself. At least the noise was no longer a problem, so I'd call it a success!