Nicci Stevens’s Techdirt Profile

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  • Dec 3rd, 2015 @ 7:46am

    (untitled comment)

    #Truth
  • Oct 2nd, 2015 @ 2:20pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    We can hope the cops will stop the bad guy. Cops are often ill trained in crisis management and in marksmanship. Some of the best people are citizens.
  • Oct 2nd, 2015 @ 2:07pm

    (untitled comment)

    The media and the politicians do not want to ask any questions beyond "why guns?" (why not more this less that etc all about guns) The question, while important, does not address real issues. The hard questions that need to be asked require real solutions that cost money and mean that politicians do more than keep their lobbyists happy and long further beyond their elected term, their fundraising and their zeal to keep special interest happy. Why do people shoot up schools, theaters and malls? For the same reason they beat up their wives/partners, friends, abuse horrible drugs like meth a korocodil? There is an element of uncared for mental illness. Nobody wants to pay for it but its a public health hazard. Most people with even serious mental illness can be both well cared for and productive if given the right treatment but I guarantee you that that treatment doesnt come at the hand of a psychiatrist who prescribes a handful of meds each costing $25 / pill, where the patient spend 15 minutes with the doctor 4 times a year. This isn't treatment it's a chemical straight jacket. Modern psych meds can also make the patient fat and give them diabetes. Some of these patients choose to stop taking their meds and be "crazy" rather than be dead and fat. Still .. mentally ill people are far more likely to be the victims of abuse and violence than the perpetrators.

    Two of the metrics used to tell us the economy is doing well are unemployment and DJIA. The dow is meaningless to the poor, and the unemployment numbers lie. If you have been unemployed for years, you're not part of that figure. If you're raising a kid with a spouses but the only paycheck is for 100 hours a month, you're employed but you're not even treading water. Or say you just got out of school only to find you cannot make more than $30k a year which is 1/4 of your student debt? Good luck with that. Consciously or no people with not enough to get by often choose illegal activities to either placate themselves or supplement their income. Using or dealing hard drugs may seem victim-less but at some point somewhere in there is violent crime. Other people simply crack under the pressure of too much to do with nothing to do it with. There are large numbers of socio-economic problems that can lead to violent outburst. It doesn't, of course, make it right and leaves people dead in the wake. That, however, leaves politicians on both sides of the aisle pointing, mostly, to inanimate objects and otherwise bellowing at the wind to win their next election. Until we can have meaning healthcare (including mental health) and economic reforms that dont simply make the rich's wallets fatter but doing nothing to manage a health and economic crisis this shit will keep happening and the left and right will keep blaming each other ad nauseum
  • Sep 17th, 2015 @ 7:11am

    We heard from the Mayor, how about the Police Chief?

    "We have always had an outstanding relationship with the Muslim community," Irving Police Department chief Larry Boyd said on Wednesday. "Incidents like this present challenges. We want to learn how we can move forward and turn this into a positive".

    Let me be sure I get this straight: This kid with brown skin named Ahmed created a challenging incident to law enforcement for wanting to show his skills at electronics.

    Mr. Boyd, the way you move forward is to stop thinking that brown skinned kids are terrorists. There are 7bn people on this planet and most of them are non-white. They are not all terrorists, communists, illegal aliens, muslims, hindus, catholics, they are merely people who go on living their lives. Some live here in the good ole US of A and some *gasp* even in Iriving, TX. You're contributing to the fear that is being sold to us by the government and the media and this fear gets more people killed than you could possibly imagine so long as you're so closed minded to think a 14 year old boy is a threat because he created technology.

    Mr. Boyd, I would remind you of another Texas resident, not from Irving, but he lived down around Houston. In the late 1960s and 1970s he worked with NASA. He helped determine landing sites on the moon, trained astronauts in lunar geology and geological observance from high lunar orbit. He was an intelligent and gregarious man with great sense of humor. Of course in the late 50's and 60's, when he attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology, nobody would have been afraid of young Farouk El-Baz, with his arab accent or that he was born in Egypt.

    There are very bad people out there who want to do very bad things, Mr. Boyd, I agree. When you start handing out fear to people on a daily basis, however, at some point you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys.

    Until 9/11, sir, I might remind you, also, the greatest act of terrorism in USA, in any time any of us can remember, was not perpetrated by foreign nationals. Should we have been suspicious of people in rented moving trucks? Before that, I believe it was when the British set the president's residence ablaze forcing it to later be painted white.
  • Jul 8th, 2015 @ 6:54am

    Um ...

    MSNBC reported last week that LePage was facing a legislature investigation and possible impeachment.
  • Jul 8th, 2015 @ 6:54am

    Um ...

    MSNBC reported last week that LePage was facing a legislature investigation and possible impeachment.
  • Jul 2nd, 2015 @ 10:39am

    (untitled comment)

    I have X1 with voice control -- not sure I am keeping it because its UI is slow and unpredictable. The voice control tho is push-to-talk as opposed to my tv listening to my clandestine meetings about ball jointed dolls and my little pony.
  • Jul 2nd, 2015 @ 10:32am

    Costas is a hypocrite

    Costas doesn't like the scrutiny given him by the public that he gave someone else. Sorry, pal, you're a public figure, you put yourself in place to be scrutinized. Don't like it? Give up your millions in salary and retire. Pedro Strop put himself in the same position. So far I haven't heard any complaints from him or his agent. A rabid anti-gun person he, while not hiring them himself, avails himself of armed league security (you can decline this, Bob). He doesn't seem to understand that the first amendment which allows himself to be a sawed-off buffoon allows the guns he so richly despised. Costas may once have been a decent sportscaster he has long since done this and seems to like the sound of his head rattling when he speaks.
  • Jun 17th, 2015 @ 4:52pm

    (untitled comment)

    The destruction of the video cameras cannot be considered 'arresting' the object and there might be an argument for destruction of evidence. Was the DVR turned in with its evidence intact or did someone take home a nice piece of equipment?

    While the local DA might not want to discipline these thugs, the stores insurance company might go to town on them.

    The OC DA was already removed, along with dozens of prosecutors, from a different case due to things like paying for witnesses, tampering and other misconduct. Why should we expect them to do "the right thing" now, other than to exonerate the cops?
  • Jun 12th, 2015 @ 8:49am

    (untitled comment)

    If this were, indeed, a legitimate tact of government, then, for example, a conservative Muslim country could force Google and other search engines to say, prohibit pages that involve alcohol advertising, birth control, civil rights, etc, or, other countries could limit speed that they would deem dissent to their government even if that speech did not actually include references to their government. In countries where it is illegal to say bad things about their [insert head of state here]. The chilling effects could be a sweeping "magnificence" of prior restraint throughout the world.

    How do these issues get solved in a truly fair and equitable way? One country cannot rule the Internet, though many keep trying. Perhaps there needs to be a world body that can adjudicate these things?

    The real answer, of course, is to reduce litigiousness, prevent courts form holding third party responsible for the bad acts of people those third parties have no control or responsibility over. Like that's gonna happen.
  • Apr 23rd, 2015 @ 7:12am

    Re: All I see is Powell calmly comparing, and this Techdirt minion EXAGGERATING.

    Techdirt fanboys and Google shills are already out in force! -- Accusing others of being shills. That's called projection, and it's the first resort of actual shills, at least the more clumsy low-level ones..


    Even if that were 100% true, the fact that Comcast and TWC are two of the worst hated companies is also true. Those reputations (reported by Forbes) are well earned. I have a lot of personal experience with Comcast bullpucky. From poorly trained telephone support people, to ignorant installer/field techs. I have had them tell me it would cost me hundreds for them to come fix their problems because they insisted they were my problems only to come back later and say they didn't need to rerun cables it was a modem provisioning problem. I have no choice for internet other than Comcast, satellite (not reasonable) dialup or perhaps carrier pidgeon so while the cable industry purports there is a choice, there, effectively, is not. Yet they pose that the gatekeepers are platforms for which there are many choices.
  • Mar 27th, 2015 @ 6:51am

    (untitled comment)

    As cases involving child pornography have been getting thrown out of courts due to improper, inadequate, or non-existent warrants or probable cause documents, one really has to wonder about the counter claim used by LEOs and others who say that imposing the safeguards of the Bill of Rights means those who do so are in favor of sexual abuse or exploitation of children. When courts throw these cases out the usual "think of the children" bs is thrown about, however it is those who usurp the law and the rights of everyone else to impose their idea of justice on the perpetrators.

    Anyone with any degree of sense believes that sexual exploitation of children is repugnant but, as we have seen over and over, law enforcement and overzealous prosecutors can and do fabricate probable cause and even evidence in an effort to convince the public who trust them that they are taking down these dangerous criminals when, as we have seen lately, they're simply putting the public on notice that they cannot prosecute because they cannot uphold and abide the laws and rights they have sworn to do so.
  • Mar 19th, 2015 @ 5:23pm

    Re:

    Really? So if I visit Chicago I am not to expect to be safe from police abuses?
  • Mar 19th, 2015 @ 5:21pm

    Re: Re: Re: That word "civilians"

    So if I am visiting from UK or elsewhere I have no rights only those with natural or naturalized citizenship? This is a good distinction, sir, as I will inform any potential visitors from abroad ahead of time they have no rights. (that does sort of make these inalienable human rights alienable.)
  • Jan 30th, 2015 @ 9:18am

    Re:

    Sadly, I believe that the police and some of the media will play the "small price to pay for public safety" and a lot of idiots will buy into it.
  • Jan 14th, 2015 @ 1:37am

    Why

    Why are critical systems on the public internet at all? When I have worked at power plants and on medical gear in hospitals its not even on unroutable addresses. Madness.
  • Jan 13th, 2015 @ 4:14pm

    (un)Civil?

    Not only is this a bad law but the remedies for such are equally bad and part of a large trend that really bothers me. While the "victim" can bring a civil action against the perpetrator so, also, can the state. It seems to me that there are serious 6th amendment problems here and with other civil actions taking by the state or federal governments. How convenient it is for an action for a crime to be taken against someone when the requirements for verdict are lower and the respondent is stuck having to pay not only his or her own legal bills but also the bills of those prosecuting. Once it is a civil action the respondent no longer has a right to counsel so if they cannot afford $300/hr or much more, they're stuck to pro se representation and we all know what sort of a client they then have.
  • Nov 21st, 2014 @ 12:29pm

    Correct me if I am wrong but ...

    Didn't the courts rule it does not violate 4th and 5th amendments to require a suspect to decrypt their devices?

    It would seem that there is a lot of pressure that can be mounted that way without violating public privacy on a whole.. Even with a material witness order the person can be compelled to show that information because doing so, in the eyes of the court anyway, is not self incriminating.

    Or have the LEOs just gotten lazy?

    People who use technology to commit crimes will find another way, rather rapidly. Even if the device does not have it by default does not mean it cannot be added through some other app.

    I only know of once case where there was information that LEOs could not get that had to do with a child being killed. That child was already killed an another brutalized. (Joseph E Duncan III). I would love to know if there are actual cases like the ones Comey is using to attempt to force his rules.
  • Nov 21st, 2014 @ 8:20am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    At any time for any reason Mr. Cosby can be tried in court if a Judge allows the case to be heard.


    In the Dickenson case, no, he cannot.
  • Nov 21st, 2014 @ 8:01am

    Re:

    Also how do you fight such a claim? There's little to no evidence this far down the line...


    Fortunately or not, therein lies the problem. If Ms. Dickenson's claim is true, it cannot be prosecuted either in California (Cal. Penal Code § 800) (Nev. § 171.085) (I am not sure which side of Tahoe the allegations are made on)

    The larger issue here is even if her claim is legitimate, it is up to her, her attorneys or prosecutors to allege and prove the rape, not for Cosby to fight it. It seems that Mr. Jello himself is making the right move by being silent but that his lawyers are being stupid by invoking the Streisand effect.

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