Why do people spend so much time saying the Palestinians should forsake violence and adopt non-violent tactics and yet spend so little time saying that the Israelis (Mossad, IDF, et. al) should forsake violent tactics and adopt non-violent tactics?

The reality is that dispossession of poor Palestinians dates back to the first time Ottoman deeds were sold in the early 20th century, the mass dispossession of Palestinians dates back to 1947, and the occupation of very large Palestinian population centers dates back to 1967. The majority of Palestinians for a majority of those decades were pretty nonviolent, and the first intifada was characterized by only symbolic violence (stonethrowing) which was met with lethal force, and it's only in the last decade and a half now that we've seen organized Palestinians resist in ways that *aren't* nonviolent.

I think a sad reality is that most of the world who is suffering resists nonviolently every day, and most of the world is absolutely blind to the suffering.

I would argue that those who are concerned about offshoring (and that should be all of us in IT) should be looking towards unions. Unions are a way for workers voices to come together and be heard at the table. There are quite a few jobs that can't yet easily be offshored, and if we had an industry-wide union and thought it made (economic, political, practical) sense we could do something like demand that no more than N% of jobs be outsourced, and if they don't listen to us, ALL union workers could walk out.

To put it another way, you are implying that a union *must* attempt to alter their wages, and nothing else, and that it must attempt to raise the wages. Well, the way it should be, in my opinion, is that the union should be working for what we want: maybe that's higher wages because we think we can do that and keep our jobs, or maybe it's just a contract and a guarantee we won't be thrown out at the end of the fiscal year, or maybe it's just ergonomic chairs. The union should be working for what the workers want - if you think what the workers want isn't a productive thing to get, in a democratic union you can convince workers and make your argument rationally and if the majority agrees with you, well, hey, that's democracy.

To say nothing of the fact that workers should be responding to a globalized workforce with a globalized union! People should be paid and treated fairly, and I suspect there are a lot of workers in Mumbai who would benefit from the entire industry being union.

Now it's true that many unions aren't democratic and consequently don't really represent the workers. A lot of this is intentional and has to do with the Taft-Hartley act neutering the unions. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

They tried that already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_tests

Honestly I don't give a fuck about whether the people in jails and prisons are in there for "victimless" crimes or not, or "violent" crimes or not. Have you ever been locked up, or ever sit through arraignment court? While I wouldn't advise getting arrested for the educational value, I would recommend sitting through arraignment court for a day, so you get an idea of who the police are actually arresting and why.

I can tell you this: a very large number of people who are arrested are released without charge, at their arraignment. I've heard estimates that at times- especially when for political reasons the police have an "all hands on deck" in DC it's around half of the people who are arrested are released without charge. They arrest them to boost their statistics (part of the reason I don't worry about the statistics too much: metrics can be gamed) for arrests and to keep people off of the street for a day or two. And I can tell you of those who are charged with crimes, most of them are there for some silly probation or parole violation (I saw a woman get her probation revoked because she violated a condition of her probation that she was not allowed to be in any automobile - what a condition!), or a nonviolent drug offense (typically simple possession), and once in awhile they'll bring around some sex workers on solicitation charges.

There are people who get locked up for things that actually hurt people. There'll be a couple DUIs, and maybe a couple domestic violence cases. There may be a couple people who are there for the (nonviolent) offense of selling drugs. But, these are the minority.

I will also tell you this: I don't think I've ever seen people go to jail for crimes that others don't get away with on a daily basis. They lock up people who use heroin but people who can afford to shop for a doctor can get oxycontin, which is basically the same damn thing but in pill form. The CEOs, managers, and stockholders of Endo and Purdue make a killing off of it, but they'll never get in trouble (especially the shareholders!), and the number of doctors who get in trouble is really low relative to the number of doctors that are engaged in the process. And when any of these people get in trouble, it'll usually be civil penalties, civil damage, perhaps probation, or criminal fines. Very very rarely would any of these people get sent to prison, which is where most of the people end up in the heroin world. Lend your car to someone who may end up using it to buy or sell heroin, however - and you may find yourself getting locked up on accessory or revocation charges.

(I will add, because I'm unsure of how to work it into my post, that many people have an assumption that people turn to prescription drugs when they have a medical problem, and that therefore people who are abusing prescription drugs are more likely to have a "good" reason to be on drugs. I think that's bull: many, if not most, people who are addicted to any form of drugs turned to them as a way of medicating real physical or emotional problems. The rich can afford to find doctors who prescribe the pills. The poor are left to self-medicate. I don't believe self-medicating makes you any worse than finding a doctor who will medicate you in the way you want)

It's not just the drug war where the system reeks of hypocrisy, either. People will get locked up for weapons charges while the weapons dealers rarely come under scrutiny. To say nothing of the amount of times around the world that the US itself functions as a weapons dealer to despots and ruthless killers. And I won't even talk about the level of hypocrisy with what will get you arrested for a "violent offense" versus what the police (or military) get away with doing in every city in the world, every day.

Drug abuse and addiction is a problem, sure, and there are problems as well related to access and proliferation of weapons. But society has chosen to deal with some of these manifestations of these problems in some segments of society - typically the poor, undereducated, and minority communities - with hard time in prison, and in other forms of society the problems often go unaddressed, and when they are addressed it's with kid-glove treatment. And, the brainwashing. I'm sure you've got ten ways to explain to me why running a heroin cartel is so much "worse" than running a pharma business that is getting rich off of synthetic heroin. And that's because the people in the heroin business don't have the power and influence to launch PR campaigns, and nor do they run the public schools.

1.2 million people in state prisons, .6 million in for violent offenses, and you'll see that it's around half.

These facts and others at http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62

176k people in federal prison, 16k for violent offenses, and it's about 90% of the people who are in for non-violent offenses.

It's also very trivial to get charged with a violent offense, the sad reality is. Often police add on resisting arrest/misdemeanor assault on a police officer (in at least one jurisdiction I've lived in - DC - the crimes are the same) to just about any arrest where the person made any attempt at all to get away.

The ridiculous prison industrial system that exists also creates a culture where violence makes more sense. If you're risking going to prison for decades, life, or more, for a nonviolent offense, you might as well use violence to get away. After all, if you aren't rich enough to afford a lawyer, being a good person - or even being innocent - might not keep you out of prison.

Often the meter supports some sort of data export mechanism, and you just need to tie into it. Hacker extraordinaire Poul-Henning Kamp did this with his gas meter.

I see Jaron is taking a lot of heat for his views. That's OK, he pretty much predicted he would, but I think some folks are throwing the baby out with the bathwater in dismissing the entire article as "mere flamebait" with nothing interesting to say. The fact is, Jaron has a point, though perhaps not the point he actually made. The real point is that innovation needs both fuel and focus to truly thrive.

That fuel can take many forms, of course, but a steady paycheck (and all the qualities of life it enables) remains one of the most reliable forms of fuel yet devised. It's not a bad way of providing focus, either. In a functional commercial organization, you have very specific vision and directives for everyone to follow and the fact that developers don't need to go elsewhere to find ways of paying their mortgage means they can devote themselves exclusively to the task(s) at hand. Contrast this with the general directive to "do whatever floats your boat" in the open source world (modulo whatever organizational goals the thought-leaders may be trying to set) and the fact that, with regrettably few exceptions, its developers still need to put 40+ hours a week into making money some other way. The fact that innovation still occurs in spite of this is highly admirable, but it's definitely like rolling a marble uphill by comparison.

Another point that Jaron failed to make is that the open source world resists change, largely due to the sheer number of opinions on which direction to go in or what constitutes a good or bad idea. In order to topple an existing paradigm, you need to conform to the 10X rule and that's hard. In a closed system, all that it takes to effect change is for one person in a position of authority to say "do it!" and, within reason, it will be done. Even Linus Torvalds saying "do it!" doesn't mean it will get done in the Linux world unless he does it himself, and there's only so much one person can do. Contrast this with the commercial world, where you can have hundreds (if not thousands) of people working in concert on a single goal. Whether the goal is the "wrong" or "right" goal is academic (and largely in the eye of the beholder) - you get on board or you look for another job. Should it subsequently transpire that your goals were wrong, well, all you've wasted is some time and money. If they were right, however, then you've just created something innovative which will have a significant impact on the world at large.

The open source community spends a lot of time arguing itself to a standstill, by comparison, and that's hardly conducive to innovation, which is perhaps the point that Jaron should have made.