This is probably not be true for all markets or industries, of course, but I think that (and availability regarding prices) is relevant to not shifting it back onto individual consumer responsibility.
"In the case of most crimes, the prosecutor has what is known as an absolute duty to prosecute.
This means that the prosecutor is obliged to initiate a prosecution if he or she considers there to be sufficient evidence to prove that a crime has been committed and that a certain person has committed it.
This in turn means that not even the victim of the offence can decide what is to happen in connection with the investigations. In other words, there is nothing on the lines of “withdrawing the charges”. The prosecutor must make sure that the crime is investigated, irrespective of the feelings or wishes of those involved.
The reason for this is that society has an interest in ensuring that the perpetrators of the crime are also tried for it. Exceptions are made for certain offences where it may be felt that the interests of the general public in instigating legal proceedings are not strong enough. Examples of such offences are defamation, breach of domiciliary peace and crimes of unlawful appropriation, or stealing, within the family (i.e. theft etc.)."
Being a Nazi isnt a mental illness.
Sane people were nazis.
Last time Nazis were in power they, in fact, murder quite a lot of mentally ill people.
Nazis also dont need to be in power to kill people. Nazis already kill people.
Being organized and in sufficent numbers is enough.
Being in power mainly means they have less resistance and more ability to do so.
It's my (uninformed and second-hand) impression that tipping-culture is often defined whether the waiters\servers are given minimum livable salary or whether the tip is the larger income.
I use gEdit for both text and programming for a couple of languages.
The Cobalt theme is the best dark theme\colorlayout I've ever experienced, and I'm yet to find any others which I find as pleasant to the eyes while simultaneously allowing me (I am colorblind) to pick out the various things gedit highlight.
If I'm not going with black-on-white I'll have to roll my own color layout based on Cobolt whenever I use anything else.
I'm admittedly a newb, but I find that a lot of my programming includes trying to think in a good way and then reading documentation to figure out how to implement it.
So far it has applied to every technology I've used. :p
Possibly irrelevant, but adding my experience anyway:
It might be niche experience, but twitter is awesome for me.
My swedish twitter-bubble is boiling with discussions, humor and interesting links and topics every day.
Some politicians even keep an active presence and respond\discuss in tweets when they can or even in blog-posts arguing their point or explaining a difficult topic.
I don't know if it's an English quote originally, or if it's confined to Swedish twitter, but there's a saying that goes "facebook makes you hate people you know, twitter makes you love people you don't." which I find quite apt.
There's a general positive attitude and a lot of people enjoy the every day struggles and joys of others rather than the self-censorship or inane postings often found on facebook. Admittedly, I'm sure that exists on twitter too, but in my twitter-bubble it's rare.
Some brave companies use it to give\encourage support for complaining users and to notify problems or errors rather than try to sell stuff. Even if few manage to actually _inform_ rather than try to sell things.
Journalists sadly tend to mostly only follow journalists, and social media experts follow social media experts, so their experience tend to be quite different and closed off.
While I, and most others I follow (so I guess it's equally 'closed'!) follow various people from various stratas of society, politicians, sick people, journalists and even homeless people.
It's quite alive, active and enjoyed, but I suspect it's quite easy to find relevant and amusing twitter-users when there's only a few thousand (Swedish tweeps) of them and the interesting\fun\literate ones follow other interesting\fun\literate ones.
[edit]It's also been described as "a competition in one-liners" and "a collection of lovable narcissists", which I also find very accurate.[/edit]
I'm afraid you're confused about the kind of rape-crime that he's allegedly been part of, and I'm not sure the 'typical' rape-responses can be considered when it's not a typical rape, but a matter of conditional consent.
Even though I agree there are many questonable aspects: Unless I'm mistaken, in Sweden prosecutors are duty bound to attempt to investigate and possibly prosecute if a crime has been reported to them, sort of.
Wikileaks sadly lost a lot of respect from me and many people I know when some of their comments and many of their followers weren't about Assange's innocence, but instead in defense of rape, both directly and through criticism of conditional consent.
Even if only some zealous defenders had done so rather than wikileaks (most likely) accidentally doing so, it would still taste quite bitter.
While I wholeheartedly agree it's not been handled well at all by the Swedish prosecutors and government, and that there are irregularities and that Wikileaks and Assange should* criticize and question this, seeing people defend rape to defend them is bizarre. Although I am well aware this happens whenever rape is discussed.
Conditional consent IS a legal concept in Sweden, and one I personally agree with.
This saddens me, as I'm a rather big fan of Wikileaks and since I am also a fan of Assange I hope he's innocent.
*Conditional Consent:
While you might argue that there may be a need for different words for varying degrees and types of sexual crimes.
Rape, at least for now, is defined solely by the presence of consent, as far as I understand.
If my consent hinges on a condition, and this was explained, my consent is nullified if the person willfully lies about this condition to be able to have sexual contact with me.
Ex: A woman lies about being on birth-control or a man lies about condom or being sterile.
With the Swedish pirate party, this is a choice of strategy. They purposefully focus their politics and votes with whoever votes with them, as it usually is with coalitions between political parties.
They did exactly what they promised once they got into the EU parliament, which actually suprised the Swedish newspapers who accused them of 'not taking it seriously' when they focused entirely on their area of expertise rather than pay lip service to other issues.
It's how they become the greenest party in the green coalition, despite not being a green party.
It was a nice change to experience someone doing exactly what they said they would once they'd been voted in.
It wasn't 'it'. It was hen, which comes from a mix of hon (her) and han (him), often used in litterature and online to avoid assumption about gender online. It has a very different meaning from it, since it obviously refers to a person of either gender. :)
I'd say that it's all ABOUT cherishing the differences.
Whether people like to or not, they force a whole bunch of assumptions and expectations on children about gender, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to think or notice that they pick up on it.
These people just try to decide and control what notions and expectations about gender and identity they give.
As an example, they had the 'boy' toys with the 'girls' toys to try and remove the notion that such things existed, to avoid that those children both don't have normal gender-identities but who wants to follow the expectations of adults and authorities would feel comfortable, and ideally not even think of feeling uncomfortable, with their choices or preferences.
They didn't force the children to play with all the toys if they didn't want to, they just tried to remove barriers created by society to allow them to be different or themselves, if that ended up being a stereotypical pink-princesses loving girl, or a boy who loves soldiers and trucks: that's perfectly fine.
But not EVERY child are these. I at least believe we should try to let those who aren't be what they are, just as we should allow those who are to be what they are.
[edit] added a smiley so it would come off as less aggressive. [/edit]
If the US or Israel is responsible for Stuxnet, would that be considered an act of war towards Iran? I'm sadly not well-read in either stuxnet or the requirements for it to be considered a cyber-attack.
As I understand it, and in part how it is for myself; reading books can be a meditative practice.
Having a physical book can help someone focus and get in the mood, as well as help them create the enviroment around the book itself as they consume the contents.
An ipad or computer also has other purposes than reading, but a book does not.
Some people can do this with an ipad or a computer monitor, but I think the people who say there's no replacing a good book might prefer the in-part ritual around reading an actual book.
[edit]
You might be right in that people will eventually create these things around their ipad, but I still think there might be a value in, even if not more valuable than having grep for a book, the single-purpose existence of books.
I apologize for not addressing the main question, but I'd just like to express that I disagree that you're not very smart.
It might be a knee-jerk reaction on my end when it comes to to the whole "maybe I'm not smart enough", but you're showing awareness of your own (current) limits, which isn't something to speak lightly of.
What are your experiences with problem solving? It's something you learn, like most things. You might not be able to 'think' in that fashion now, but I know quite a few people who swear their brains and perspectives have been reprogrammed through forcing themselves to study math despite lack of talent, and in my own experience you can learn to flex and twist your mind much like you can your body, even if just like with your body it might be easier or harder in some directions.
You might however lack the aptitude which make it more fun to engage in or otherwise lead many more savvy to programming and CS, and only you can decide wheter this is something that slows you down or stops you dead.
When I did martial arts, I had some students who were dismissive towards their less sports-savvy comrade since they took longer or had a harder time to learn the basics; but what they forgot were that they'd already learned all the periphery skills of using their body from other sports, for them it was a simple matter of learning one more skill atop their experience and skill at already using their bodies, the ones who were having troubles were learning several more skillsets at once since they hadn't up to that point.
The same could apply to you, people have the opportunity to learn or understand different things at different points in their lives; some lessons some of my friends learned when they were 12 which other friends learned when they were 60, partially since they hadn't had the opportunity to truly learn or understand them until then.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, try not to be discouraged because it's hard; it can sometimes mean you're not aware of all the things on your plate at the moment, and even if it feels you're failing you're probably learning something else that's also beneficial while you do.
Sorry for semi-rant, but that's the part I felt remotely competent to comment on.
I do however agree that projects are the way to go if you wish to learn or remember. I and my friends learn more from our personal pet projects than we've ever done at our University.
I couldn't play my legally purchased copy of KOTOR II thanks to the DRM without cracking it.
I'd argue that cracks, even if not KeyGens, have legal applications. Especially now when some companies include DRM which might cripple your game should they go out of business and their servers go down.
Even though I can see why this is a flawed argument, I feel the need to make it anyway: Cracks aren't illegal some countries, either.
[edit: replaced an 'or' with an 'and'. This mistake happens when I code too, sadly!)
This is probably not be true for all markets or industries, of course, but I think that (and availability regarding prices) is relevant to not shifting it back onto individual consumer responsibility.