...but the SEND/RECEIVE pins between modem and computer are always named from the perspective of the computer. There's precedent to use server-centric nomenclature.

...That is an excellent point.

Well, Toronto just finished its mayoral election, which was decided by a margin of almost 100K people (out of the roughly 500K votes that seemed to be counted for the mayor's office). My showing up (to vote not for the guy I thought would do the best job, but in typically Canadian fashion, against the guy I thought would do the worst) feels like it was a waste of my time, other than councillor, where i did vote for the winner. School board trustee, they gave me the wrong ballot, so I had to abstain there.

Basically, I don’t think showing up and spoiling your ballot is a waste of time; it’s speaking up and registering your discontent. I know they’re counted the same as uncast ballots, but maybe they shouldn’t be.

I disagree. I think that abstaining is a vote of "I don't care", but actually spoiling your ballot is a way to indicate you have no confidence in any of the candidates--and *those* ballots should be counted toward the overall total.

Of course, I also think that an election should be won by a majority of eligible voters, rather than a simple plurality of voters who turned up... But that's just me. And I'm aware that those are kind of contradictory statements... it's hard to explain. More just of a case of what I think abstentions and ballot-spoils mean in terms of intent.

THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!

I can think of worse people than undertakers to describe as “scummy bottom-feeders”&hellip personal-injury lawyers who encourage people to sue their own elderly parents, just for one example. Undertakers provide a fairly valuable service—they work with death on a daily basis, so they can help the bereaved through what has to get done. Anyone who encourages someone to sue family for their own carelessness they need to be introduced to the business end of a hot poker.

I feel that the use of Leviticus and Deuteronomy to provide the original basis of the majority of Western law is the problem here.

If it weren't for lawyers, gay men and women wouldn't be allowed to marry in Canada. Tell me, honestly, that you believe that providing equal rights doesn't create value for society.

Can, sure, but it sounds like that isn’t the default action. While the default’s safer, and I’m all for safety in my systems, too many end users have become too dependent on email for it to suddenly go away because of a package failure like that. It’s especially disturbing, reading TFA, to find that a lot of high-profile spam services abruptly shut down as a result. Those guys should have been ready for it.

That’s a very good thing to point outstill, though, it’s certainly not fair that having ClamAV get administratively killed from afar means that your email service coughs and dies.

It could be a long-dormant genetic thing. My mother’s brother and his entire family look like they have a great tan, at all times. Because that side of the family is Irish through and through, we’re guessing that there’s some Black Irish in our family—long-since descendants of Spanish and Portuguese settlers in Ireland—and my uncle, for whatever reason, wound up with a phenotype that expresses it.

Of course, how that would come through Hong Kong and a Latvian Jew, I can’t explain, but I’m also not a geneticist maybe your mother has some ancient Australian Aboriginal ancestors?

It's anonymous at the time that it happens. You can walk up to a total stranger, in a foreign city, and punch them in the mouth, and it's completely anonymous, despite the fact that ultimately, your identity hasn't been hidden.

You make a good point, and I'll admit that I responded hastily, and didn't properly explain my objection. It's not that I think women who game should be protected from these asshats, it's that these asshats shouldn't be acting like this, but a service like these just kind of encourages it, by giving them an anonymous way to do it privately. That's why it bugs me; it allows dickheads to continue being dickheads, and encourages their behaviour.

Oh, all right, I'll bite.

That feminist is my wife. Good try, though. Better luck next time.

It bothers me because it tacitly encourages the continued objectification and marginalisation of women within gaming circles. I don't doubt for a minute that people will people will pay for the privilege of going onto the system and berating the women on the other end of the line for being women, because now they know who they're talking to. If there was a way to police the behaviour of the users of the system, that would be one thing. There can't be, though, so all this is is a perfect avenue for misogynistic gamers to hurt people.

I'll put it this way: even if there were no pimps anywhere in the world, and every prostitute in the field did it because they enjoyed what they did, there would still be people out there who would pay for the ability to beat the shit out of them. Even if the women involved aren't being coerced into it, there's a significant number of men who will abuse the system in order to abuse women.

And even there was, it still doesn't excuse all the disgusting, misogynistic comments on this article.

...but it's not.

Shame on you, CmdrTaco, for posting this. Shame on the organisation behind it for creating it. And every one of you assholes who immediately started joking about it, you disgust me.