wickedbass

Hey, I recognize what you're saying and agree with it. I too have been in that unfortunate and TERRIBLE cold cell once in my life and know what it feels like to have your freedom stripped from you (and mine ended up costing 10k+ in the end).

No one will ever know why Aaron killed himself fully, and that is unfortunate. Most of us only learned of him fully through his suicide. When I watch youtube videos of the guy, he seems so damn intelligent, eloquent, literate... It's hard to imagine that he wasn't smart enough or brave enough to truly ask the community for help.

That all said, one of the main things I've learned through my own past escapades and more so through tragic news like this, is that the justice system is inherently fucked up. It is designed to destroy the plaintiff. I have lived through this and it was the most miserable experience of my life (thanks ex gf I used to love for 5 years). Once you are in the 'system', or they are after you, if they have a reason (in their own mind), you are fucked.

Unless you are a multi-millionaire who can afford to pay your way out, and even still, you're most likely getting fucked from one direction or the other.

I think that is what this entire thing boils down to. Overreach of the Federal Government. Punishment does not fit the alleged and unconvicted crime.

Aaron might have had depression issues (a whole different beast in itself), but from all the empirical evidence available to the public, it seems like he was truly pushed into a corner and a high risk for suicide - and unfortunately he fulfilled that presumption.

I hope we as a society can learn from this.

While it is nice that she is passing blame to Congress, if it were only a "6 month low security setting" being discussed, why wouldn't Aaron have been told of this? Why the additional and ultimately 13 felony charges when he was MOST concerned with not being labled a felon. Why hold that 50 year sentence above his head with no HOPE in his own mind because he was left in the dark. "As a parent and sister", would you want your child to be stranded for two years with the full weight of the federal government and their impending punishment upon you hidden behind a dark veil? As a human, I both recognize that she is probably saddened and shocked that he took his life (and probably freaking out bc of the white house petition), but at the same time, it's clear that this shouldn't be allowed to happen, so if it means she loses her job - tough luck.

Wow, I don't know how I'd react if I was led on by some gay guy and thought I was meeting a woman... Not because I'm homophobic but because I know that these types of people exist. When I was in college I used craigslist one drunken night and something similar happened and it creeped me out hardcore...

Just order the lobster and steak and you'll be fine...

With a weak magnetic field, wouldn't something such as a solar flare, which the Earth has more sufficient protection against, possibly wipe out any part of the surface it touched on Mars?

Hah, I too got excited (and almost mad) when I just saw this as I just spent the past week building a django-based ecommerce solution for a custom project... This might have potential but I'm not convinced. It is interesting though. I'm also using stripe for my project and excited to try them out:)

Being touted as the biggest IPO of all time and then losing half it's value almost instantly is a pretty gigantic failure.

It's really disturbing that it doesn't get more flack for this.

I never said I don't like it, I just think it's a sham. It has no real value and it's been shown time and again. Targeted marketing doesn't work and that was their linchpin. They have 1 billion users but that is contorted, that is not active users. Even still, why should a company that has no regard for it's users of which it's entire value is established, have real legitimacy? The fact that they are now charging to "promote" posts is a clear sign of things to come.

when you have to fall back to charging for relevant content, I think it's fair to say that your model is broken.

There is an extra <head> tag in their site, I hope that isn't indicative of their programming talent! :x

> Nobody wants to go back through that process on an upstart network. Nobody has the energy or motivation.

I disagree. Firstly, you make it sound as if filling out some information about yourself (don't we do that all the time anyways?), posting some pictures, and updating your status is some overwhelming endeavor. For those of us old enough to have started on myspace and switched to facebook, it really was pretty seamless.

I'm not saying anyone should rush to develop the "next facebook", but I do think that the new entrants you speak of could easily become significant later on.

I agree that facebook seems pretty much stagnant when it comes to the user experience. I'm actually eager to see the new myspace once it debuts for that reason...

Touche! Some of these css frameworks are getting ridiculous... CSS is easy, why do we need frameworks for it?

And wow I hope this is not the direction web design is headed!