And the irony of "obamacare" is that it's an invention of the Heritage Foundation.

They're the ones that designed it.

That Obama, implementing the plans of communist sympathizers like the Heritage Foundation.

--
BMO

>read article
>2/3rds goes to retirees

The baby boomers are retiring?

YOU DON'T SAY!

And you are surprised at this? If you are, you're a moron.

"Social security is going broke!!!#$#!@$@#%11ON#"

No it isn't you stupid fuck, not if the legislature tweaks it A LITTLE BIT. But no, we have teabaggers and corporatists crying about the "47 percent that don't pay taxes" lie.

Hurr.

Fuck all of you.

--
BMO

Eh. It kinda works. If your goal is to invade Amazon accounts using the method laid out in the strip, it's that much easier to do because by allowing you to use anything for a password, they're more likely to have people using simple repeat passwords that, even if not common for everyone, are common for the user. If those sites had more stringent requirements, you couldn't use your childhood dog's name as a password like you've been doing for various account passwords since high school.

But yeah -- this xkcd was probably the more applicable strip.

Only seven/7? ;)

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think I mostly agree with what you're saying, I just have a slightly different emphasis/vantage point. Basically, you're probably technically correct in marginal cases that there is a handful of behaviors and choices that likely mitigate risk as a matter of pure statistics. I simply think that's not really a useful thing to add to conversation, largely because based on my experience, most people aren't intellectually savvy enough to insulate the technical observation from common human reactionary responses. And thus, as a matter of common parlance, I think it's generally best to avoid talking about such specific observations about risk and responsibility in those terms at all -- in other words, I suppose, the risk in acknowledging the underlying truth there in public conversation is that people will fail to limit that truth to its proper application and will instead expand its reach. And, to me, it's a pretty high risk -- so my risk calculation here compels me to avoid taking the action in question. I rarely see it adding value to a conversation but frequently see it fueling the flames of actual sexism.

Thanks God for my Flash blocker. :)

I completely disagree. To the contrary, I'd suggest that cultural acceptance of victim-blaming type mentalities rather tends to reinforce in the minds of wrongdoers that their active wrongdoing involves less culpability than it truly does. Consider the treatment of women in countries like the United States where formal legal equality is for the most part the norm, and where we at least pay lip service to the notion that women who go to certain places or dress a certain way aren't "asking" to be raped. Where we don't pretend that wearing the "wrong" clothing constitutes assumption of the risk, women's freedoms and movements are relatively less restricted by cultural convention. Conversely, in countries that adhere to religious norms holding women responsible for their rapists' behavior, unsurprisingly, we see that women are mistreated in countless other contexts as well, and that they "choose" greater restrictions to their own freedoms essentially out of a self-preservation instinct.

Victim blaming -- and the attendant conflation of the distinct concepts of foreseeability and causation -- normalizes the wrongdoers and puts the cultural onus on those at risk to engage in ultimately impotent behaviors to protect themselves. Why impotent? You yourself noted that some amount of wrongdoing is inevitable. But now, on top of the unfortunate fact of wrongdoing, we've also created a culture in which innocent people are expected (and thereby de facto required) to restrict their own lifestyles and behavior, because we have decided to hold people responsible for avoiding their own inevitable victimization -- rather than do our part, collectively, to minimize its occurrence, we've opted for the psychological narcotic of shifting blame from perpetrators to victims, in order to ease our own uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability.

Even leaving untouched the host of unpalatable classist implications in your comment, exactly what has the second woman "sown"? And why on earth would you deem her undeserving of sympathy? Have you never done something unsafe in your life? And don't play the "I'd accept it if something unspeakable happened to me" card, because it's the rhetorical equivalent of a null hypothesis put forth as an affirmative factual statement in the absence of usable data.

If you've done something unsafe, unless you're an extremely irrational person (and if you are, there's no point in trying to have a discussion with you anyway), you did that unsafe thing because you performed a risk calculation in your head and concluded that the risk of [bad thing] occurring was sufficiently low as not to override the value to you of doing [unsafe thing]. Thus, you're in essence suggesting that, instead of encouraging us all to behave as rational actors, our culture ought instead to inculcate a fear of shame to override our rational impulses when the risk of certain kinds of victimization are thrown into the calculus. Why would you prefer to live in a society in which people make decisions based primarily on fear instead of logic?

LOL. You know what? Okay, let's try it your way. Let's see if your comment was actually about pointing out a factual inaccuracy because of your deep abiding loyalty to the Truth, having nothing whatsoever to do with any attempts to derail the conversation from my real point.

Okay. Ya got me. Mea culpa, I am ashamed, I apologize to my mother and all of my teachers who taught me better than this. You have caught me in a hyperbole, good sir, and we all deserve better than that. Thank you for your service to this community.

Yes, you are indeed correct that I cannot say with absolute certainty that literally no single person on the face of this planet refers to mere advice-giving as "victim-blaming." I made a sweeping statement, and I hang my head in shame at its presumptuous over-inclusive nature, to which you have expertly drawn attention. I shall rub ashes into my forehead if it will help to ameliorate the severe wrong I have done to you all with my false, fraudulent, misleading characterization.

Now that we've dealt with your thorough rhetorical lashing of my feeble overstatement, would you care to address any of the actual content of my comment? Or was that all you had to contribute?

If the point of a discussion is to apportion responsibility among various parties, though, it isn't irrelevant. The phrase "victim blaming" isn't exactly confusing. Most people would read that as a rather obvious objection to what they perceive as your blaming of persons when you seem to be saying that you actually aren't. Seems to me if you sincerely don't care about assigning blame you could really easily just say "I'm not concerned with who's at fault. Throw everyone in prison for all I care. Hackers and providers and victims alike. Just get rid of the whole lot of them and the problem will go away."

I mean, for that matter, let's just destroy the communications infrastructure that makes the internet possible. That'll stop the bad forms of hacking -- since you seem to think blame is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is solving a problem, and by definition no solution is susceptible to an objection that it unfairly places responsibility and/or undue restrictions on people who shouldn't have to bear them.

Because look guys, we're just being solutions-oriented. Why do you keep making us out to be bad guys? Do you hate solutions? Do you LIKE people being able to steal your identity? Then hey, by all means, keep the internet. But don't complain when people use it to steal your stuff.

So why bother arguing with anyone about anything? Someone will always disagree with you. For that matter, why bother doing anything at all, or trying to effect any change of any kind?

I'm glad there are people like you in the world to make sure we all focus on the truly important parts of meaningful dialogue. Without useful contributions like yours, people might see forests instead of trees, or fresh, youthful faces instead of a small pimple. Thank you, brave soldier!

Same for Arizona.

... railed the Anonymous Coward.

Good to see you've got your priorities straight, responsible citizen.

How refreshing to read a comment demonstrating the capability to separate actual arguments from straw men.

Come now, let's not be PC. You don't need to say "certain neighborhoods." We all know you mean neighborhoods with "those people."