>Do you believe rehabilitation is impossible or do you want revenge?

I don't believe that someone who commits mass murder can be rehabilitated, no. It isn't about revenge; it's about public safety.

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

This is precisely why I lost all interest in Oculus the instant I heard that it had been acquired by Facebook.

As a member of the local hackerspace, I receive a ton of emails via their mailing list. There was recently a lot of discussion about acquiring some liquid nitrogen for some experiments. Fast-forward a couple days, now I get banner ads on Youtube for sementanks.com which isn't embarrassing at all.

I fixed this sentence:

According to this report from Seculert Research the makers of Citadel, a variant of the Zeus Trojan, are using open source models to hone their code and make the Trojan more dangerous.

The original sentence made it out to sound like Seculert Research were the makers of Citidel, and a variant of the Zeus Trojam was using open source models.

One day I had the interesting observation on the New York Subway that the recorded voices with informational statements were female, and the statements asking the passenger to do something ("Please stand clear of the door") were all male.

I went to a Waldorf preschool as a kid. They are nutty. I was an early reader which was something the school wasn't too happy with. I also really liked technology at a young age, which was also discouraged. I remember going to friends houses and having computer games, electric guitar, etc, be a taboo, even though all the kids were doing those things.

And yeah, besides educational practices, there's a certain amount of psuedoscience and woo, for example the belief that the phase of the moon determines a good time to plant crops. (See biodynamic farming.)

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

Last time I returned my mail rental for an in-store rental the lady at the counter told me about the changes. My initial reaction was that the changes made sense. Now, if they take away my two free in-store game rentals, I'll be pissed, because that's like a $10/mo value.

This is why my motto (and fundamental rule for life) is Don't be a dick: it's simple to understand, and reasonable people can agree on what it means.