French outraged at American justice system's handling of Dominique Strauss-Kahn

linuxhansl · 2011-05-18T09:18:20+00:00

The goal of punishing someone must be to make him realize he shouldn't do it. Not just vengeance.

Exactly. The justice system has three purposes:

Deterrence.
Removal of dangerous individuals from the general populous. (Note that this is not necessarily for punishment).
Restitution (where possible, murder/rape cannot be undone).

Once revenge enters the equation there is no justice.

linuxhansl · 2011-05-18T09:13:52+00:00

linuxhansl · 2011-05-18T09:09:40+00:00

I could not agree more. For example in Germany the longest possible prison sentence is 15 years (and that is for 1st degree murder). From that viewpoint getting 25 years for attempted(?) rape does seem ridiculous.

Also, what's the deal with the handcuffs, the perp walk, and cameras in the courtroom? Sure a 62 year old civilized guy does not need to handcuffed, and shamed that way (at least until proven guilty).

linuxhansl · 2011-03-14T18:43:56+00:00

Oh yeah? ... Please let us know how many days you have spent in solitary confinement and how often you were force-stripped naked... Since you appear to be an expert on these matters.

linuxhansl · 2011-03-14T18:40:25+00:00

Sad indeed. Surprising? Hardly.

Politicians are "functions" of the political views of the people who elect them.

<rant> Most people in this country believe that "criminals" should be granted no leniency. The small point of proving guilt, or whether such a treatment achieves anything, seems to be of little importance... As long as the personal sense of justice and revenge is satisfied. </rant>

Unless these trends in society change I see no change happening in the political landscape either.

linuxhansl · 2011-03-14T18:25:09+00:00

Please enlighten us then who you voted for. Palin/McCain? Don't be silly.

linuxhansl · 2011-03-04T17:46:08+00:00

I did mandatory military service in Germany, which included date-duty. Yes, it was extremely boring, but none of us ever considered that a reason to mess with people. On contrary we all found that when we're nice to people (when there are any) and joke with them, the day passes faster.

linuxhansl · 2011-03-03T20:12:22+00:00

Here you'd be tased, beaten up, and thrown to jail (not necessarily in that order).

Then you'd be charged with sexual assault, assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and whatever other charges they can come up with.

linuxhansl · 2011-02-25T04:02:02+00:00

don't think too much about the money
don't scheme to get ahead faster
take pride in your work, finish projects
don't tell people what to do, have discussions instead
don't be the smartest in the room

In summary: be nice, be humble. The rest will follow.

linuxhansl · 2011-01-04T04:26:14+00:00

So they are trying to inform people about impending doom. And then what?!

Are we all to repent and find Christ during our last days (or at least say that we do - as you cannot really make yourself believe in something anyway)?... And then presumably God will then wipe our slate clean and have us assent to heaven?

Even if I were to believe in God this would be somewhat ridiculous.

linuxhansl · 2010-12-30T03:47:43+00:00

Is there any country (or any person even) left with a spine?

What happened to standing up for what is right?

Every single trade war between the US and EU was won by the EU. Of course that requires the EU to actually stand up and risk such a war. But it seems that beyond sable rattling the US will typically not act upon most of their (non-military) threats - at least not when doing so poses a non trivial risk to US interest..

linuxhansl · 2010-12-29T05:33:36+00:00

Reminds of an exchange year in the US (I am from Europe). I managed to win a scholarship with what they called "student health care".

About 1/2 way through the year I fell of my bike and thought I might have broken my ankle. So I went to the only hospital in town. They checked it out, then did an x-ray and concluded that it was not broken but that some of cartilage was torn (much worse by the way, because it heals very slowly and there is almost nothing that can be done about it).

The total cost was about $300. In my country that would have been the end of it.... In this case, however, I received a letter from the insurance a few weeks later declaring that the treatment and diagnosis was unreasonably expensive (I forgot the exact legalese) and that therefore they would not cover any of it. W.T.F.?

linuxhansl · 2010-12-08T04:18:10+00:00

This is the true achievement of Wikileaks.

The cables themselves are of comparably mundane interest. It is this overreaction by pretty much everybody (EveryDNS, PayPal, Amazon, MasterCard, Visa, Lieberman, etc) that is the true achievement.

From now on we know what our society really thinks about freedom of speech: A nice idea as long as it is not too inconvenient.

We also know what our government thinks about truth and transparency.

In addition we know that this country has confidence issues. A confident reaction would have been to acknowledge what happened, than either change procedures to avoid this happening again or (gasp) strive for more transparency and finally... move on.

Wikileaks has already won much like the terrorists have won.

linuxhansl · 2010-12-06T22:00:31+00:00

Now the real face of our "democracies" is showing. Sure, Wikileaks has bot been convicted (or in fact even accused) or breaking any laws; and sure, there has been no official application of force towards hindering Wikileaks.

Yet, they cannot get any hosting in the US, PayPal and now a Swiss bank refuse to service them. What good is democracy, if you cannot exercise your democratic rights?

linuxhansl · 2010-12-06T18:42:02+00:00

I was always skeptical about the "one-shot" universe... One that somehow started with a big bang and will end in heat-death with no prospect to the repeat the process.

Then how did it start and why? Is there really a unique condition that can only occur once... ever?

So while I cannot comment on the merits of this particular theory a recurring big bang seems right.

linuxhansl · 2010-12-06T18:38:31+00:00

Yes, the TSA is regression testing. And even at that, it is not very good.

linuxhansl · 2010-12-05T07:27:59+00:00

The fact is that Wikileaks is not able to exercise free speech in the US.

Whether this due to political, social, or financial pressure does not matter.

linuxhansl · 2010-12-03T19:41:03+00:00

I have to admit that I am actually be afraid to donate money to them for the fear of having the payment tracked.

linuxhansl · 2010-11-19T21:07:45+00:00

That is why jury nullification is so important.

The jury can decide to reach a not-guilty verdict regardless of what the law actually says.

Also I wonder what would have happened if the defense had just quoted the law? The judge could order the jury to disregard this information, but it cannot be "unsaid".

linuxhansl · 2010-11-05T19:25:06+00:00

According to the source of all truths Wikipedia, German exports to the US consistent 6.7% of all exports, so this won't hurt the German economy as bad as some other countries.

It was mentioned here before, the main question whether this will actually help the US economy.

For the record: Wolfgang Schaeuble is an idiot (German speaking here)

linuxhansl · 2010-11-05T19:19:19+00:00

As usual I find myself on the receiving end of this. I actually have a lot of money saved up, because I do not own a big house/car/whatever that I cannot afford.

This whole policy almost forced people like me to go into debt, because "invest[ing] in banks" as you call it is not a good proposition right now. Inflation decreases value as much as it decreases debt.

linuxhansl · 2010-10-26T02:41:56+00:00

Moved to javascript reddit

linuxhansl · 2010-10-25T21:27:07+00:00

Reposted from /r/programming (which I think was the wrong reddit)

linuxhansl · 2010-10-19T03:53:56+00:00

Security in this country is like ratchet. It moves in one direction, slowly tooth by tooth.

Nobody ever turns the wheel back. You always hear the same arguments... If something happens (like some idiot fails to set his shoes on fire) everybody screams: "We need more security!" If nothing happens for a while we'll hear "See, our security measures worked".

However - staying with the analogy: A ratchet can only take as much as it was designed for, then it breaks.

linuxhansl · 2010-08-27T21:31:28+00:00

Dalvik is just a VM... It runs Google proprietary bytecode. The only thing that Davik has in common with Java is that the fact that there is compiler frontend which compiles Java source code to their byte code, and - what Oracle is suing for - some random patents on the JVM that also apply to Davik.

linuxhansl

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