Ezra

I think that it also exposes some of the crazy group think going on here, so maybe it wasn't all bad.

I mean, You're an idiot isn't supposed to be a +5 comment on this site.

And reasoned discourse like It doesn't really matter what the Justin.tv CEO said. He pasted some boiler plate because there's nothing more to be said; the deed had been done. What do you want? An apology for not finding the video? For not policing the Internet? Prosecution of anybody "egging him on?" Come on.

Someone broadcast their suicide. That fact doesn't make it any more tragic than any other suicide. It also doesn't mean anybody more than usual was responsible. There's really no story here which is why I chose to make a comment that didn't acknowledge there was. shouldn't be -12. At least not in my mind.

Not to mention all the equally pithy and/or distasteful rejoinders that were upvoted.

This is really the most honest response here.

I guess I'm the only other person who can't see why a pseudo-sentimental canned response is so much superior to any other canned response.

When Pepsi, or the Whitehouse, the police, or whoever else (aside from those who knew the person, weeping or outraged) gives the canned response about caring, does anybody actually believe them when they say "all of us are deeply saddened...", or whatever you're proposing?

By now, people are immune to any type of official response to anything tragic[1], and don't expect (and really wouldn't want) a candid response of any type.

I know it was broadcast live on the internet, which is why it made the news at all but no normal well-adjusted adult (or child, for that matter) will go from "happy go lucky" to killing themselves live on the internet over the course of an afternoon flame war on bodybuilding.com, of all places.

[1]except perhaps missing child, axe murderer on the loose type thing... and then only in Podunk, really.

Neither Stallman nor Torvalds are scrambling to pay rent.

So it depends if you want to be "well off" (Stallman), "obscenely rich" (Torvalds), "shockingly rich" (Jobs), or "embarassingly rich" (Gates).

And I think that most would, given the choice, rather be the BDFL of a project they obviously enjoy (Torvalds), than spend all day in meetings, or managing management, or whatever Gates has done for the last decade. Unless you're a masochist, or a megalomaniac.

And besides that, lightning has to strike the same place 200 times before you make it to the 99.9th percentile.

"I'm trying to make a living; if you're trying to make a killing then you're stuck in the system."

It's trivial to design and build a nuclear weapon.

The trick, as others have mentioned, is getting the Uranium.

You do not need billions in R&D, or a crack team of scientists.

A working bomb was actually designed by two (ableit, smart) students... in 30 months... in 1964. It would be far easier today.

Check: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science

"You could have taken any number of classes at Beloit with Professor Dobson, until his recent retirement, without having any reason to know that in his mid-20s, working entirely as an amateur and equipped with little more than a notebook and a library card, he designed a nuclear bomb.

Today his experiences in 1964 - the year he was enlisted into a covert Pentagon operation known as the Nth Country Project - suddenly seem as terrifyingly relevant as ever. The question the project was designed to answer was a simple one: could a couple of non-experts, with brains but no access to classified research, crack the "nuclear secret"? In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, panic had seeped into the arms debate. Only Britain, America, France and the Soviet Union had the bomb; the US military desperately hoped that if the instructions for building it could be kept secret, proliferation - to a fifth country, a sixth country, an "Nth country", hence the project's name - could be averted. Today, the fear is back: with al-Qaida resurgent, North Korea out of control, and nuclear rumours emanating from any number of "rogue states", we cling, at least, to the belief that not just anyone could figure out how to make an atom bomb. The trouble is that, 40 years ago, anyone did."

It's safer on the bases than "over the wire", obviously.

If you're hanging out in the slums of Baghdad by yourself, that's another story.

According to http://www.icasualties.org/oif/Details.aspx 3 of the last 500 American deaths in Iraq have been on a base. None of them were classified as hostile. Those deaths go back over a year, to Aug/07.

Compare that to your hometown (be it Vegas, Silicon Valley, Cambridge, or Boise), and it probably stacks up favourably.

3 deaths per year is a mortality rate of 2 per 100 000. The rate for the US total is ~900 per 100K, for 15-24 year olds is ~90, and for 24-45 year olds it's about 200.

...I'm just saying, is all.

Where'd you get 25K?

I did similar work out there in 2006 (I was at Abu Ghraib) in a similar role, and I didn't make 25K a month.

I made four, with no OT, and I got a pretty nice contract-ending bonus. For the record, I considered $4K a month to be an impressive salary for someone my age... I was 19.

When I was out there, we had to wear our body-armour at all times, except when in the DEFAC (cafeteria), or asleep.

The note that they only have to wear it in transit makes me think that he's at Camp Victory aka "Camp Cupcake". Or, for the uninitiated, where Saddam used to live. It's probably (a lot) nicer than your hometown.

If it's honestly 25K, the dude must be Cheney's nephew, or that figure is in Rupees. Or I want to go back more than I thought I did.

And (from what I understand) most of the mercenaries get paid (relatively) shit money, because they're wackos from shit countries. Sure, there are some Blackwater execs, and ex-SEALs that make nice money, but most of them are there because they need somebody who's willing to be shot at, and whose almost inevitable death won't contribute much to what's already a shitstorm on the home front.

I think to be the "google" of anything, you pretty much have to be good at search. That's what I thought the comparison would be.

It's kind of like saying x is the Bill Gates of 1000. There are any number of things that could mean, but having more money than anyone else is the comparison that most would make. It's the one I'd expect most people to come up with.

Personally, I'd more closely relate it to Bell Labs, or Xerox PARC if I had to make a tech analogy. ie. they have someone to take care of the money, and all the associated stuff, and they just had to do heavy intellectual lifting, with no pressure to do things in a certain way, or be necessarily profitable, or directed.

But even that might be disingenuous, as I'm not sure what Cluny's hours of prayer have done for me, while Bell and PARC did incredible (tangible) things.