TheRiov wrote:
a) your imagination is limited because by your own admission you "can't imagine any other reason"
Am I supposed to ahve a perfect imagination?
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Perhaps I am involved in a donation drive.
And you somehow think it's likely this guy would even know about your donation drive? It would be very lucky if he just so happened to live in your area.
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Perhaps I know people who work with kids in schools who don't even have books, let alone computers.
In which case the loss of this single computer is unlikely to have meaningful effect.
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Perhaps I have an issue with people using violence to make a point to children.
Again, no violence has occurred.
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No, no you must be right. Its that I don't like guns. Yup. Ladies and Gentlemen, DiamondEye has solved the riddle.
No amount of sarcasm can overcome the fact that you continue to insist that violence has occurred when it has not.
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And for the record, simply because I don't always throw pearls before swine doesn't mean the pearls don't exist. Or maybe I don't always want to get drawn into a "lets whip them out and measure" type argument.
Or maybe you were just trying to buy time to imagine a reason. If you didn't want to get into a discussion, why did you get into a discussion?
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b)No, actually you stated that "As for purging.. lots of work" demonstrating you don't actually know whats involved in wiping a hard drive cleanly.
Again, I do know how much work is involved in the requirements for purging prior to connecting a classified system to an unclassified network. Specifically, it's 7 repetitions of what you described. That's a lot of work in my book. No matter how much you insist I "don't know what I'm talking about" you won't be able to change the fact that I don't need to know anything at all about how the purging actually works; I do know how much time it takes to do it to a level I would consider adequate for my personal data.
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I'm sure you went out and looked up the data security policy AFTER the discussion got technical. (no shame, so did I, just to confirm the points I was making with Khross) but the point you were making was NOT that data wiping was insecure, but rather that you felt it was a somehow laborious task.
Then you're quite wrong. I knew it well before, because it was the standard required to reconnect computers we had used as classified in Iraq to unclassified networks upon our return, and the time involved proved a serious burden on our commo section because it was understrength. It was, in fact, a laborious task for them, and while they had more than one computer to do as well as other things, we're also talking about ONE guy who doubtless has other things to do with his time as well, and may not know how to do it, nor know anyone who can easily do it for him.
Of course you were "sure" that I only looked it up afterwords because you are just aching to find a reason I'm wrong about how much work it takes.
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And no, systematically disassembling a hard drive with a screwdriver would be acceptable because it is not violent.
Why exactly is disassembling it with a screw driver not violent, but hitting it with a batseball bat or shooting it is violent?
But since you seem to have problems with this definition we'll just go straight to a dictionary:
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/violent
vi·o·lent
[vahy-uh-luhnt]
adjective
1.acting with or characterized by uncontrolled, strong, rough force: a violent earthquake.
2.caused by injurious or destructive force: a violent death.
3.intense in force, effect, etc.; severe; extreme: violent pain; violent cold.
4.roughly or immoderately vehement or ardent: violent passions.
5.furious in impetuosity, energy, etc.: violent haste.
Take your pick.
1 Does not fit; the force was not "uncontrolled". It accomplished exactly what was intended and no more.
2 Using the screwdriver is also "violent" by that definition; the end result is that the computer is destroyed. One must exert force on the screwdriver to make it work, and disassembly destroys the computer.
3 highly subjective, but I see nothing terribly severe or extreme about a few bullets hitting a laptop in a controlled setting
4 might describe the man's feelings, but not his actions towards the computer
5 does not really apply at all; it refers to "violence" as a synonym for "intense" or "great".
What you're doing is objecting to violence that is supposedly objectionable to children, claiming this fits, and then use far more general definitions of violence in order to get it in there. In order to do this, you're having to use the broadest definition possible, but this results in absurdity: Shooting a paper target is, by that definition, "violent" as well. So is crushing a car in a car crusher. Neither of these is objectionable to children; they are orderly, controlled processes that might be considered "violent" in terms of "applying destructive force" but not in any way similar to the types of "violence" that are objectionable to children which (here's a clue) generally include
violence against another human being.
The only reason you're doing this is because a gun was used, and you are associating guns with violence against people; because guns can be and are used for that purpose, you are transposing the qualities of a human onto the computer. This is silly; it is no more inherently objectionable to shoot up a computer than a paper target or a clay pidgeon. The only possible objection was one you made already; it could be donated and be useful elsewhere, but that would undermine the force of the point he was trying to make and be counterproductive to his purpose. The same applies to the baseball bat; you object to hitting it with a bat or an axe because you are equating that with hitting a human. Screwdrivers, on the other hand, are rarely used as weapons, very difficult to employ effectively in that role, and utilized in an entirely different manner as a tool than as a weapon; while you hit things with a bat when using it both as a tool and a weapon, the same is not true of a screwdriver. The screwdriver is therefore less objectionable to you because it does not bring connotations of violence against people to your mind - connotations that are not relevant.
In fact, even violence against other human beings is not automatically considered objectionable to "children"; we allow children to participate in sports like ice hockey, football, and martial arts, and while all of these have parameters for what kind of violence is acceptable and what isn't, the fact remains that "violence + children = bad" is not a valid equation; in point of fact, in at least the first two, children who participate are often criticized by their coaches when they do not use
enough violence.
So, your complaint of violence makes no sense:
A) The computer is not a human being
B) The "Child" in question is only a child legally; she is not a child in the sense of development. She is an adolescent. Even legally speaking, adolescents are not the same as small children; they can be held to greater levels of accountability and even tried as adults in serious cases. By using the term "child" you are objecting to what this father did as a means of teaching a lesson to a far broader age range, not the one specific child in question. The fact that a much younger child might be alarmed, frightened, or unable to understand the difference between shooting an inanimate object and shooting a person does not somehow allow you to object to using the same technique for an adolescent simply because they are both legally "children".