Is this another name for .Net? I've never heard of "MS Stack". Maybe it's too arcane to have much demand for it. Keep in mind that LA is the 2nd biggest metro area in the USA so finding work there using some little in demand technology is a lot different than going to a smaller area and trying to find a job using it. If it's .Net, well, that does have its users, but if anything it seems to me that .Net is dying not thriving.

I've been to the Pacific Northwest in the lengthy rainy season, several times in fact, and all I can say is it's not for everybody. If you've never really experienced it for a week or more at a time, you can't just assume that you'll be OK with it. Having said that, if you can actually put up with it, I do understand why this part of the country appeals to some people.

...then gay-conversion therapy has a rational basis.

Look, if people can be naturally different in sexual proclivity, then people can be naturally different in interests and career choices. To pretend like the only reason that women participate in varying percentages in various industries is due to cultural factors is opening the gate to the assertion that the only reason men are attracted to men in varying percentages is due to cultural factors, not inherent biological ones.

Of course bro-gramming harassment is bad. Of course some women have crappy, unfair experiences. But simply because a black teenager plays the knockout game and assaults a jewish grandma doesn't mean that every black teenager is a thug.

I expect men and women to be different. The question is, are you able to appreciate those differences, or are you determined to override them by any means necessary?

I'd be interested to know if you have, as per this brain scan study, a more feminine brain.

If you do, I'm liable to accept your struggle as something with natural, legitimate origins.

If you don't, I'm liable to consider your struggle as something more akin to a disease.

No offense intended - of course your problems are no doubt very real to you, just commenting on how we might discern between mental "isness" and mental illness.

You are right that this is a deterrence. I posted yesterday a much longer comment about this in the thread about the guy who got a huge fine and 2 years probation for participating for a very short time in the DOS. Basically US law allows for punitive damages in some cases and the system allows them to be exorbitant and perhaps even illogical. Sometimes these get reduced on appeal, but not always. The point is indeed to provide a deterrent against others doing the same thing in the future. It's not at all about fairness. If you are American and don't like it, work to change the system (probably not possible though) or complain all you want, but it's not going away. If you're not American, you can complain all you want about it but you can't change it.

I mentioned this in my post yesterday too, but some of it is that jury members in general know little about technology and some are almost Luddites. Judges and lawyers in general also know little about technology. This leads to prosecutors and judges overreacting against things they don't understand very well and juries overreacting to punish people due to not really understanding what they did.

Wow. You sure are full of yourself. So you really believe that there is not one person here in all of Slashdot who makes more in an hour than your customized servers do? Anyway, congratulations I guess on finding the only way possible to use NT and make it work, but I bet you have to reboot everything every couple of months or earlier anyway because NT sucks. And anyway, the fact that your one specialized set of circumstances make you or your company company a lot of money (assuming you are telling the truth) does not prove that XP is not dying.

I'm American, so I speak from experience. The US legal system allows punitive damages. Eric Rosol didn't have to actually go to jail - that was the fair part of the sentence. But US verdicts with insane monetary awards are not unusual. There's the infamous "McDonald's coffee" case which eventually got settled out of court for a never disclosed amount after a jury awarded what almost everybody in the US considered an unreasonable and probably insane amount of money in punitive damages. Jammie Thomas, the last person you'd ever want to fight the RIAA, has gotten a series of shocking judgements against her, far in excess of any real damage that was done by her. I served on a jury once that awarded punitive damages and they're meant to send a lesson to the guilty party and others (this part is key) that there are very real financial costs to certain actions. In this case, the message is clear that people should not do DOS activities or they too may be facing ruinous financial penalties. I haven't followed this case at all, so for all I know like Jammie Thomas, Rosol may be his own worst enemy and perhaps his demeanor in court led to this outcome. Juries really don't like arrogant defendants who insist that they did nothing wrong when the jury feels otherwise. I can tell you from experience that the vast majority of jurors are non-techies and some are actually tech hostile. These kinds of people also get easily swayed by prosecutor arguments that some great evil just happened that must be prevented in the future because they don't really understand what happened. Juries also sometimes get this subgroup of people (roughly 10% of the population by my estimation) who see the entire world in black and white and are obsessed with punishing rule breakers as they see them. These are the people who want draconian punishments for trivial offenses (ie. they'd support the death penalty for people who let a parking meter expire as "That will teach them not do that again!"). Sometimes on juries they are adamant that the "evil doer" has to get a very harsh sentence and if the other jurors really don't care, want to go home, and agree at least that the defendant really is guilty, the other jurors will just agree to large punitive damages so they can get on with their lives. It's difficult to get punitive damages reduced and there's no incentive in the US system for juries to really find a fair verdict. The system just wants them to all agree on the verdict and if 11 people give in to 1 stubborn crazy person, the US system accepts this as the cost for how the system works. The prevailing dogma that gets drilled into all law students and the American public in general is that the US jury system is the greatest of all possible systems and is the cornerstone of our democracy, so nobody on the legal side dares to question whether it really works as it is supposed to or not.

Let me be blunt here. So an indie band that nobody has heard of (Grizzly Bear) and a different indie band that nobody has heard of and which broke up over 20 years ago (Galaxie 500) are complaining that they aren't getting enough money via Spotify. Gee, I don't know, is there any chance that maybe not enough people give a crap about their music to actually listen to it? Grizzly Bear and Galaxie 500 have their supporters, but the truth is that they just aren't all that big. They were mentioned earlier, so I'll use them as an example. If Iron Maiden wants to complain about what Spotify pays them, I'll listen, but if two no name indie bands, one of whom has been disbanded for over 20 years, want to cry about their payments, well, I'm not so interested. Groups like Grizzly Bear and Galaxie 500 are going to starve if they have only royalties to survive on. It's harsh but true.

I work in IT for a US based Fortune 500 company. I am internal support but sometimes I have to talk to customers when they issues related to one specific product I support. I deal with your type of company all the time. Too much actually. When you have to ask here how to convince the top dog that ONE person is insufficient for a company your size, the war is over before you began and you have lost. Even if by some miracle you do convince the CEO to hire one more guy, I can promise you that your CEO places zero value on your work and it's just a matter of time before you are looking for another job anyway. If your CEO valued your work or was smart enough to at least somewhat understand it, he would already have thought of the "What if I get hit by a bus?" scenario and would long ago have gotten a backup to work with you and learn the job. You'll either be outsourced (yes, your CEO may be stupid enough to try that) or replaced by some work visa holder who will be half the worker you are but he'll work for half the money you get too. You're done here, buddy. If your company placed any value on its IT staff, you would already have the help you need. Let me guess this too because I've seen this too many times as well - you love (well, you did when you started at least) working for a smaller company because they have made you some pie in the sky promises about future stock options (they probably won't pan out) and you have nothing good to say about large companies because you can't take the bureaucracy. Honestly, most small companies aren't all that great to work for. Some are for sure. But I see your type of company all the time in my work because we sell our software to companies like yours. The odds are about 90% that things are never going to get better or that if you do get another person and your company grows, two of you won't be enough to handle the growth and you won't get a third person.

I think they were probably speeding but I'm not sure it's obvious.

For one thing, 45 mph is REALLY REALLY fast.

Not by driving standards of course, but when you actually think of the forces involved it's quite a bit of speed.

From the other comments it sounds like the car was really hard to handle at a normal speed, possibly so hard that he would lose control rounding a corner (or maybe trying to dodge a squirrel).

As for the damage, I suspect that it's a lot less sturdy than ordinary vehicles. Between the fire and the barebones structure it might not have taken much to completely total it.

I don't think anybody is going to play GTA, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.

I don't think anybody is going to watch a gang movie, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.

But I do think a lot of people are going to go out, watch a movie about how awesome and cool street racing is, then go out and drive at unsafe speeds (and some of them will die), some in actual street races.

I don't think it should be banned or censored, but it's sure as hell not a genre I'm going to endorse.

There's no start of the epidemic.

Assume the traditional, you get bit you turn.

Ok, city at ground zero turns, and maybe one or two other cities where someone was bit and fled the city. Either way the whole city turns and then.... the zombies hop on a car and drive to the next city? You'd have a lot of zombie free cities watching what was happening and having a chance to prepare, so no apocalypse.

Even the Walking Dead scenario where everybody turns on death the virus won't infect the entire planet at once. No matter what happens you have cities, countries full of unzombified people preparing for the onslaught.

And elephants are very small if you only look at one of their hairs.

Maybe Fox News is fair if you take out all the commentary. But if you take out the commentary it's not really Fox News.

I was thinking this too. Also, I shudder at the thought of some, say, 14 year old kids getting their hands on a cheap device that can do this and thinking it's "fun" to stop random cars while hiding behind a bush with no thought given to the consequences. I've read about kids throwing heavy and dangerous objects from heights onto unsuspecting people/cars below them. I'm sure this will appeal to the same people.

If you search for X, and get confronted with an adversarial opinion, the contrary information is being pushed at you which is threatening and probably responsible for the negative emotional reaction.

If you search for X, see where the adversarial opinions are, but don't actually have to see them when you want to, that's more a pull mechanism and you feel much less threatened as a result.

From what I can tell glancing at the paper their system is very much a pull mechanism which probably lowers the negative response.

Germans were a bad example, corporations have legal personhood and they don't have to go to school, or pay taxes in a lot of cases but that's another debate entirely :)

But also relevant is people who are legally incompetent. Legally incompetent people don't have the ability to enter contracts or do any of the things you're worried about, they have a legal guardian who controls their affairs.

If the suit succeeded and they were declared legal persons I suspect the change would be the current owners of Chimpanzees would turn from owners into legal guardians. The main difference is instead of the Chimps being property to use as they wished (as long as they weren't abused) the responsibilities of that guardian would now be to ensure the welfare of the Chimpanzees.

True but the fact it isn't really in the article doesn't mean they haven't thought it out. Sooner or later we're going to have to deal with animal welfare in a serious way, I find it really hard to believe that future generations won't look back at our current farming practices with extreme disapproval. As for our treatment of cognitively advanced animals like primates, elephants, dolphins, and possibly pigs, I suspect they'll also look down on that with strong disapproval.