'Not at all' is as naive as your depiction of my belief:

"Hollywood creates movies based on a democratic and unbiased worldview of the aggregate U.S. viewing public"

That's an overstatement. Hollywood is in the aggregate trying to get people to watch. There output is a model. Not perfect or even very good, but that's what it is. Government has no legitimate mandate to be 'studying' it.

You are right. We can only with with models and proxies. What Hollywood believes people want to to see in the aggregate is probably the best model we have for what people want to see. They have the most data, and the most interest and the most experience in that field of inquiry. Yes, they do their pet projects, but those projects probably more closely track the views of our enlightened betters in D.C.

But the point is the same, this government mission to bring the governed in line with the prevailing notion of the good and the true espoused by those who pull its levers is the core driver behind behind a progression that may wind us up in an a tyranny. Can you see a progressive supreme court striking down laws/executive-actions/administrative curtailments of media out of line with progressive ethos? I don't. We see this stuff and it's just par for the course--yeah government studying society to figure out how to bring us into line -- ho hum, progress....

Google does what they want, they are a company and pursue what they perceive as their interests (the sick bastards), but government involvement is disturbing as it simply points, yet again..., to an entity that is so far beyond any conceivable mandate that we are dealing with a pure instrument of power, and we better hope the wrong people don't get at the levers (...)

Because here is the rub: Hollywood depiction of women is, in the aggregate, whatever the fuck the movie watching wants it be, generally, so the notion that the government need understand this, with a mind to reason about how to govern it, is nothing short of the government taking it on itself to affect the governed so as to bring them in line with what they who pull the levers of power hold as the good and true.

The republic is over. The branch of Government which most closely tracks the will of the people (Congress) is declining in power, and we are a couple of supreme court justices away from an unchecked progressive tyranny.

You been waiting how long to make that comment, really...

WTF you have to be a twit to expect that out of 40 million people 0 will do something stupid while x for almost all values of x. There are laws codifying the natural law requiring one to drive safely. The onus is on the driver to navigate the big bad world out there in ways consistent with their natural responsibilities. It is draconian to require that creators take into account all possible misuses of their creations and means nothing more than that we can't have nice things.

This is line with the increasing ability for modern man to justify any and every curtailment of human agency in the name of some social good; it's come to the point where modern people hold that the price of living in a society is the abdication of all individual agency. We are pining for Big Brother.

This means there needs to be more laws to limit human agency. Governments were instituted among men to solve all problems, it says so in the constitution. There isn't a problem that a judicious law can't solve. Let's do this!

you can't, but you can get hired, at least for now. Then if you wish you can read a algo_ds textbook and an OS text book, and after about two years you are at par with a standard graduate.

the bootcamps do what tons of theory cannot, namely, get you enough hands on to hit a entry level job running. While it lasts it's a great thing, as you can take your severance and re-tool and get into a new thing in a matter of months.

the ruby track isn't hiring anymore. the js guys however are still getting hired. one of the 3 guys I know who went to bootcamps and got hired did one for Ruby but now works in the JS world. All 3 have progressed in their knowledge. You don't stop learning when you leave the bootcamp and get hired. That's what slashdot doesn't seem to get. It's just gets you a foot in the door, then you start learning on someone elses dime. it's been a great deal, but the ROI is declining.

There are some in NY that take a percentage out of the first year's salary and no tuition. have a friend who went to one of them and it worked for him, but they are selective. The better boot camps (per my research YMMV) are full time an on-site because your literally writing code with mentors and peers for crazy hours. They probably do more coding in a month or do than a working coder will do in 5 or 6. At some point, though the starting salary will go from 60-80 to 35-50, no doubt about it. It's the new office work.

Well your taking a lot of heat, but I am a member of a large community and personally know 3 young men who went to boot camp and were hired immediately after leaving, and now after a job switch (or two) are making low six figures (in NY). Front end is very hot, now, and these guys are getting hired. They're all smart and really motivated self-learners and--this is a slashdot blindspot--they do not stop learning once they leave the bootcamp, they just learn on and off the job. There are tons of books out there to learn anything you want, and there's nothing stopping any of these guys from picking up a dusty copy of sedgwick and learning a llinearithmic search algorithm. Classic overestimation the difficulty of ones own occupation. The bootcamp just teaches you enough and gives you enough hands on to be useful day one on kinds of jobs that are available in gobs. Any of these guys can take PSD and create HTML/CSS/JS representation using a number of popular frameworks (that save time, which the jobs require) and the one I know can create and tie into a basic backend. They aren't getting hired and google or facebook but who outside of the special snowflakes who got to devote their entire selves for 8 years to maths and engineering in 50k per annum highschools and unis, are either.

And surprise, suprise, these guys don't stop learning and are able to move on from framework to framework as needed and you can read a lot books on your 100K per year salary if you think you need expert up at lower levels of abstraction.

It's a good deal right now, though I am skeptical that it will be a good deal for very much longer.

I also have no issue with them doing time, serious time for it. they are evil and deserve punishment.

I know this sounds logical...let's see where we agree and were we don't.

"... that lady was responsible for her actions that lead to her death."

"Her death is a consequence of her actions."

I agree with that, hence she is responsible...

our point of contention is the word 'alone'

I understand that you say "Her actions were not the actions of a rational person, and they were directly incited by some other people,
to stop this from ending peacefully with negotiations." to remove her agency. This is but a belief and I don't share it. I hold that she had agency.

If I were a pedantic slashdot twit I'd point out the tension between your statement "that that lady was responsible for her actions that lead to her death." and your subsequent removal of (at least some degree of) her agency.

She made a bad choice. She's dead. The other people may have influenced her choice, but the buck stop here, they are responsible for their bad behavior, she is responsible for the consequences of her choice. If you don't stop the buck, the idea has no end...her parents are responsible for her death, the media is responsible for her death, her bad boss is responsible for her death and so on...

You can of course remove human agency but then this idea of 'responsibility' is moot to begin with.

I don't hate those people any less than you do. They are evil people to the core. But they did not murder that lady. That lady is alone responsible for her death. Good riddance.

He didn't forget that. If the black man is dressed in a polo shirt and jeans no one will suspect him and if he comes in dressed like a thug then he will. So, yeah in a hoodie and baggy pants, which style reportedly originated from jail where you get pants that don't quite fit and you can't have a belt.

Guess what, replace the word black in the previous paragraph with the word white and the truth value remains the same. It's sad that we need to spell this out.

The thug-life/gangsta rap culture is degenerate. Read the lyrics, there is no two way about it. That culture isn't black or white, it's just a culture or way of life. It's is unfortunate that that culture is as pervasive as it is with the black youth but that doesn't make it any better.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."