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Comment: Re:Savage is anti-bullying? (Score 2) 669

by dkleinsc (#39020575) Attached to: Is Santorum's "Google Problem" a Google Problem?

An experience I recommend to any member of a relatively privileged group: Spend some time in a setting where you're the odd one out. If you've been middle class or wealthier all your life, get to know people who have never known significant wealth. If you're white, go to an event run by and for non-white people (e.g. a pro-Mexican-American political rally or black Baptist church service), or work for a business where you're the only white person. If you're a guy, try to spend some time among feminists. If you're Christian, spend time with Muslims or some other minority religion. If you're straight, hang out with some gay people.

If you do this properly, you will find yourself sometimes bewildered, missing a lot of cultural references, sometimes not able to speak or understand the language, definitely left out of most of the goings-on, and viewed suspiciously at best. And you will struggle to navigate through that and try to communicate with those who you're dealing with. And then you will realize that this is exactly what all those people who are culturally different from you go through every single day they deal with you, but because of you're power and privilege you have the option of not making that effort, whereas the powerless don't have that choice.

Comment: Re:Cyberbullying (Score 5, Insightful) 669

by dkleinsc (#39018463) Attached to: Is Santorum's "Google Problem" a Google Problem?

No, it isn't.

1. Rick Santorum is a public figure. A high school kid (which is usually what "cyberbullying" refers to) is generally not. If he wanted to avoid criticism, he could have simply retired quite comfortably to his home in Pennsylvania.
2. The website and Spreading Santorum campaign were created in response to things Rick Santorum has said in his official capacity as a United States Senator on the floor of the US Senate. If you're a public official, statements like that are clearly fair game for criticism and/or satire.
3. Bullying is typically done by somewhat powerful people to a powerless or marginalized person. Rick Santorum is neither powerless nor marginalized.
4. Rick Santorum's stated position regarding homosexuality is that he would use the power of the government to try to force homosexual people to either not be gay or not exist. That a prominant gay man responded by trying to prevent him from taking power seems like self-preservation as much as anything else.

Sorry, the claim along the lines of "poor widdle Ricky getting bullied by mean Dan Savage" is simply ludicrous.

Comment: Re:Haven't they always? (Score 4, Insightful) 84

by dkleinsc (#39005365) Attached to: Bad Guys Use Open Source, Too

In addition, any code that's given away to do good can also do evil. Consider, for instance, nmap. It's great if you're trying to see how open you are to attack, or if you're trying to take down a power grid so Neo and Morpheus don't get killed, but it's also really handy if you're trying to determine the best vector for taking over a host.

Comment: Re:Wait (Score 4, Informative) 256

by dkleinsc (#38995413) Attached to: Sale Or License? Sister Sledge Sues Over ITunes

Well, as a musician with a pal who was in the music business for a while (I'm not his kind of act, so I didn't work with him), he described it like this:
"The big distributors screw the labels in a very uncomfortable place. The labels, in turn, screw the band managers, who screw the musicians. Every time you move up in the business, you basically get to shift your position so that you are more the screwer and less the screwee." He also mentioned that because of the cash involved, if he'd wanted to screw his bands he could very easily have taken most of their share of the door and told the band members (when they woke up) that they'd spent it on alcohol, hookers, and blow.

You can also read this article by Courtney Love explainin precisely how record contracts screw musicians very very badly.

If God is One, what is bad? -- Charles Manson

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