jgeorge

Appreciating civil liberties and appreciating civil servants are two unrelated things. If I appreciate one, there's no reason why that should force me to appreciate the other. More specifically, civil servants like the president who chide me for "fetishizing my phone" over the needs of law enforcement are not aligned with the civil liberty goals that I hold dear.

And frankly, I have no intention of showing /anyone/ that I appreciate them as a civil servant because there's not one elected civil servant today that appreciates civil liberties in the way I do, and tearful pleas to the contrary will not easily convince me that they mean what they say. And if I could humbly suggest a life lesson to you as a student from someone who's likely been alive a number of decades longer than you have, they shouldn't easily convince you either.

Oh, I hesitate to get into this discussion but... :-)

Almost by definition though child pornography requires the exploitation of someone who can't consent to it - that's really the crux of the illegal part (the non-consentuality), not the pornography part. Once the participants are of consentual age, the pornography part is completely legal.

[Yes, I know there are issues surrounding drawn/animated images of children, and of-age adults portraying themselves as children, but the point I'm trying to make is geared toward the free speech issues WRT ISIS and not the flaming hairball that is pornography law.]

What bothers me most about this article is the completely serious tone in which Slate decides that we're so afraid of a foreign enemy attacking us that it's only natural for us to seriously consider dismantling the very foundation of what these enemies hate about us. Think ISIS is a big supporter of free expression? Of course not. Think that governmental limitation of freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc., is something that ISIS would like to have in their own little Sharia world? They do indeed, and demonstrate that interest often and in brutally medieval ways.

The answer to "our enemy hates us because of the freedoms we have" is NOT "...so we should give up those freedoms", the answer is that we should exercise those freedoms MORE. Free speech? Tell the world what you think of ISIS. Why hide it? Religious freedom? Pick a deity and pray to one, just for the heck of it. Pick a different one every week, not because you believe in anything those deities stand for, but because you can do so without persecution. Make macaroni art of Buddha, invite Robert Mappelthorpe to fingerpaint Jesus on the side of your home. Go nuts. Do it because you CAN, and because ISIS doesn't WANT you to.

Why we feel the need to placate ISIS is beyond me - what do they stand for that makes so many of us collectively want to prostrate ourselves in front of them, so as to not hurt their feelings?

If they attack us, but we've been sensitive to their beliefs and have given up chunks of our own freedoms to try to placate them, what do you think will happen? Maybe they'll let us all off by only killing us a little bit?

I really hope Slate is trolling us all and will laugh at people like me who take them seriously - enough of the "news" nowadays is some sort of trolling that it may actually be the case. But judging from Slate's typical slant, I don't think they're trolling.

I still have a Mt. Xinu poster they put out in the mid 80s with a BSD X-Wing fighter attacking the AT&T System V Death Star.

A more elegant poster, from a more civilized time.

The title makes me immediately think of Robert McElwaine.

"REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED"

I remember being an FE at the time and having to work on these beasts. FE uniform at the time was a dress shirt and tie, and working inside one of these things resulted being covered in a cloud of toner dust in most cases. I'd buy oxford dress shirts almost in bulk, because the day you worked on a 3800, you went home and threw the shirt out.

Great. It's not like politics in the US doesn't already have a critical issue with being an echo chamber, here now you can ensure your avoidance of co-workers with scary political opinions that don't match yours.

As a society, we're screwed.

9.0.2 does indeed fix it. I don't have a watch; I almost electrocuted myself a number of years ago wearing a watch with a metal band, so I don't wear one anymore. :)

My iPhone clock is 2 minutes fast. My project is with network timing, so I'm acutely aware of clocks being off, and its driving me crazy.

Why do I get the feeling that secure, easy-to-set-up wifi includes some friendly and numerous connections to google's analytics backends?

I don't like google sniffing my search terms much less every packet traversing their router, which I would be shocked to find out this /didn't/ do.

I refuse to be made to feel quilty because Amazon treats their employees like crap.

If Amazon charged more for their products, they wouldn't treat their employees any better than they do now. It's a cultural problem (or a bad management problem), not a revenue problem.

Amazon treats its employees the way it does because it chooses to do so, not because of it's customers.

Same here. The Episode IV laserdisc is almost as close as you can easily get to unedited, and even that version has edits. But the two biggies, "Han Shot First" and the stormtrooper that whacks his head walking through a doorway are there.

86% of my business calls are unanswered because I don't want to talk to you. So no, I don't want you texting me instead. :)

Tell me where to vote and I will.

I was asking myself the same question. Windows is by far not my primary OS, and I used to know what those variants were, but I don't remember anymore.