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A PhD student who shot and killed a professor before killing himself claimed that the professor had stolen his code:
The student who shot and killed his engineering professor and then himself at a Los Angeles university had accused the professor of stealing his code.
In a blog post on March 10, Mainak Sarkar, 38, said Professor William Klug, 39, "is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy." He continued: "I was this guy's PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy." The post has since been taken down.
On Wednesday, nearly three months after posting it, and seemingly upset at poor grades, Sarkar drove from his home in Minnesota to Los Angeles where he confronted and gunned down Professor Klug at the university's engineering complex. Sarkar then turned the gun on himself and killed himself. The Los Angeles Times quoted an unnamed UCLA source as saying the allegation that Klug stole his student's code was "absolutely untrue."
The professor's name was found on a "kill list" written by Sarkar, along with another professor who wasn't on campus at the time of the shooting and has been confirmed to be safe. Sarkar reportedly killed his estranged wife in Minnesota before traveling to UCLA. Also at Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , CNN.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @07:34PM
Sounds like the typical "grudge collector" - someone who just can't let go of perceived wrongs (legit or not).
My impression is that describes a lot of these mass-shooters who aren't just outright suicidal. Some of them have specific people they target for payback and some of them are just so stressed out by constantly ruminating on the wrongs done to them that they end up taking it out on whomever is handy, the proverbial "last straw" that triggers them to lose it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @08:04PM
Sounds about right. You hold on to hate it's only going to fester. If you can do something about a wrong, do something about it. If you can't, let it go [youtube.com] (if it's going to be stuck in my head, it's going to be stuck in yours too).
If we could get people to apply that philosophy to their daily lives not only would there be far less mass shootings, there'd also be nothing left of the Democratic party as we know it today (come on, they're "you're owed something" merchants and you know it) and a Republican party someone might actually be proud of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:06PM
Yes democrats are mass shooters.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday June 03 2016, @08:26PM
Yes democrats are mass shooters.
Meh. Not so much [examiner.com].
Not that I really give a rats ass about what political party some whack job who kills a bunch of folks (and hopefully themselves as well), but why don't we stick to reality?
I know, I know, that's just crazy talk. Why deal in reality when we can create rich fantasy lives where those who don't march in lockstep with us are evil?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:49PM
I imagine the previous AC was going for sarcasm, if so they should have at least used a ...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday June 03 2016, @09:32PM
I had a similar thought, but I figured I'd go for it since someone was bound to take it seriously.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @08:49PM
Reading comprehension, get some.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:51PM
Yeah, he's a dumbass.
We all know democrats just cause mass shootings.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @09:00PM
Right, because I said something relating Doucheocrats to shootings. Oh, wait, no I didn't. In any way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:08PM
Correct!
In a thread about mass shootings no one mentioned democrats because political party is totally unrelated.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @09:11PM
Oh my sweet baby jebus, did I make an off-topic remark within an on-topic reply? How shall I live with myself?!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:19PM
How can you say its off-topic?
Its obviously all related.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @09:23PM
Thank you, Svlad Cjelli...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:28PM
Just sticking up for your integrity, don't let anyone besmirch it.
The internet is an echo chamber of liberal lies, you can't let them browbeat you into giving up on your principles.
In the end, that's all you've got.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @09:33PM
My webcam has electrical tape over it. I could be taking it in the end nightly, you don't know. Stop oppressing me!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday June 03 2016, @10:40PM
I know. Those fucking democrats always lie and lie and lie! Geez, Louise!
No Republican would ever stoop that low.
http://patriotupdate.com/mass-murderers-democrats/ [patriotupdate.com]
http://www.allenbwest.com/analytical-economist/one-fact-about-basically-every-mass-shooting-proves-liberals-wrong-about-guns [allenbwest.com]
http://freedomrollcall.tumblr.com/post/40894206750/fun-fact-five-worst-american-mass-shootings-were [tumblr.com]
And all of this has been confirmed here [examiner.com].
Fucking liberals! They're intellectually bankrupt so they go around shooting real Americans! Sheesh!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @10:56PM
Oh they're both full of nothing but corrupt asshats who're only in it for money and power. The Dems were only more relevant here because "you been done wrong/are owed something" is their entire stated platform.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 04 2016, @12:05AM
But is two people a "mass" shooting?
Back to the original tangent, the D/RNC "both" suck because really, they are one party with same owners who play this Red v. Blue game with two or three hot button issues to distract people and think they're different from each other. Or as Gore Vidal would say, paraphrasing, "America doesn't have a two party system. It has one party, the Property Party, with the Democrat and Republican wings."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 04 2016, @12:27AM
You ain't wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday June 03 2016, @08:19PM
Sounds about right. You hold on to hate it's only going to fester. If you can do something about a wrong, do something about it. If you can't, let it go (if it's going to be stuck in my head, it's going to be stuck in yours too).
Agreed. I guess I'm lucky in that I can't really stay angry (at a perceived or real slight) for more than ten minutes or so. Add that to being very easily amused, and I have a pretty darn good life. :)
I wonder what makes someone hold on to anger like that. Perhaps they just don't have an outlet for it? Or maybe they have to confirm their own importance (read: ego) by being angry at those who have wronged them? Or maybe they just don't see others as people, just objects to manipulate?
It's sad, really. As my sister used to say, "hurt people hurt people."
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:35PM
I think its more tied back to our primitive roots. If two people had a problem they'd fight over it and come to a resolution one way or another. Nowadays there is not always a way to resolve conflicts and people are forced to deal / get over it, but that doesn't remove the biological drive, and so such anger can fester.
I think your perspective is skewed by having a "pretty darn good life". Everyone deals with some amount of bullshit, but if you have a good support system it is easier to let things slide off and go away. At least in the US our culture has become very divisive and judgmental, and if you are outside the social norms and cliques then you can expect to have a hard time with few to no people to help you out.
Letting go of the anger is best, but my point is that not all people have been taught how to do so, or have had the support structure to help accomplish letting go.
Maybe we need a new form of social service workers: conflict resolution experts. Some basic therapy and support might be worth the public cost.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 03 2016, @08:48PM
You wanna know a secret? We're all outside of the social norms and have a hard time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:10PM
Duh, we're on SN...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 03 2016, @08:55PM
I wonder what makes someone hold on to anger like that. Perhaps they just don't have an outlet for it? Or maybe they have to confirm their own importance (read: ego) by being angry at those who have wronged them? Or maybe they just don't see others as people, just objects to manipulate?
I suspect the sane can not really understand or have a clear idea of what goes on in the head of the truly crazy.
Maybe MDC can tell us, but I doubt it. He's not that crazy.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Saturday June 04 2016, @07:53AM
I don't think it's something they consciously have control over. Possibly a combination of stress, pressure to meet objectives or standards, high expectations from friends and family, being surrounded by people with strong negative emotions, no free time to relax or get enough sleep, high blood pressure, depression, too much sugar and/or caffeine in the diet, constant headaches or various other factors.
It's probably hard for people going through any of this to appear likeable, but it may be that they just need some positive human interaction and time to relax, and get some happiness in their life. Sometimes that's easier said than done.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 03 2016, @11:40PM
Troll level: meh
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 04 2016, @12:28AM
They can't all be gems. Sometimes you just gotta go with what you got at the moment or the moment passes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday June 03 2016, @08:45PM
Well, that explains the problem right there. I'm pretty sure he was supposed to have implemented a garbage collector....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday June 05 2016, @07:48AM
...and he totally forgot about the release at the end of each collection sweep....
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Username on Friday June 03 2016, @08:53PM
Sounds more like an honor killing and jihad, thought I doubt that would make the news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:10PM
Yeah, fox news would totally sweep that shit under the rug.
Those libtards are such big muslim apologists. Traitors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:17PM
Fox news is primarily financed by a shit load of Islamic investors from oil rich middle east nations.
Can you say, "Controlled Opposition"? How about "Noob"? Because you are one.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:26PM
Nope. I'm just a guy who watches fox news a lot and they never miss a chance to connect the dots.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Lets see one case where a muslim was involved in a crime and fox didn't make sure we all knew he was a muslim.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 03 2016, @11:19PM
It isn't just that. Nobody wants to really stir em up at FNC. Hannity is pretty much the only one left that even tries and it is clear they have him on a choker chain and keep it yanked pretty tight. Beyond the Saudi investors basic fear does the job of silencing people.
Glenn Beck's book "It is about Islam" is notable. Like most folks like him, most his stuff is mostly created by a staff of writers, researchers, etc. Except that book. He was clear in discussing the issue, that he wasn't bogarting all of the credit. All of the other books appearing under his name list all of the other contributors but every one of the people who worked on that book asked to have their name deleted for personal security reasons. Mark Steyn notes that when they celebrate anniversaries of certain 'free speech' events (hint: Religion of Peace involved) it often is down to him and some other guy.., everyone else from the original event either being dead or in hiding.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tractatus_techno_philosophicus on Friday June 03 2016, @09:19PM
I knew a grudge collector just like this in college. He was a fellow Computer Science student and one of the biggest egomaniacs I and my friends ever knew. He couldn't handle being criticized, and was under ludicrous amounts of additional stress because he was also in the University Honors Program. He constantly retold stories of teachers who had "wronged him" in high school (and even younger), and it was clear that he had never once been able to let go of any criticism of him in his entire life up to that point. He perceived any form of criticism, even the constructive criticism of a good teacher, to be a direct assault on him. I would have felt sorry for him, had he not also been a colossal creep and an asshole to everyone around him. He collected years worth of criticisms and held on to them as grudges. Eventually, spurred by an existential crisis related to his fundamentalist-Christian view of the world, he completely lost his mind.
Where the story takes an interesting turn is via an incident which he caused in February of 2011 (we were all Juniors at the time). Apparently, all of the stress and mental anguish he had been building inside himself for years, courtesy of his inability to admit he was a normal human being like everyone else, caused him to have a mental breakdown. He went insane at the Computer Science building, running from room to room, switching the lights on and off, climbing on top of vending machines, typing on random students' laptops and sticking his feet on people. Within minutes the campus police were called, and he was strapped down in the back of an ambulance. There was never an incident like that at the Computer Science building before, and there hasn't been one since. Although a stray outlier at the time, I believe this guy is a symptom of a much bigger problem, and that more people like him are coming soon to a college campus near you.
This guy, I believe in my heart of hearts, has the potential to be a mass shooter, as he fits the psychological profiles of multiple, past mass shooters pretty well. This guy needed and still needs help, and he isn't getting it from his church, his idiot parents or anyone else. He is part of the coddled "trophy generation", of which I am also. The difference between he and I is that I know I'm flawed and constantly strive to improve myself. I've had my ass handed to me multiple times throughout my life, and it was usually due to unrealistic or completely warped expectations I had of the world. I learned from those mistakes, and changed my thinking to suit a real and unfair world. Life is tough, brutal even, and I know I deserve nothing other than what I work for. I'm entitled to nothing, and that's totally alright. The reason I believe that progressively more people like him are coming is due to the coddling and complete lack of hardship which American kids today enjoy courtesy of lazy, suburban life. That kind of upbringing doesn't prepare you for a job, a family or anything else difficult and rewarding to acquire and maintain.
Paying attention to the world and my relation to it, as well as admitting my inadequacies, has helped to reshape my ego into one which will actually benefit me and those around me. My old classmate, on the other hand, has an ego so large and poisoned by laziness and fundamentalism that he will never be able to learn the lessons in life which are the most important, will continually attempt to enforce his insane and unrealistic view of the world onto everything around him and he will fail every time. Moral of the story: Embrace humility and relish sanity; reject it, and become an asshole and/or a lunatic.
No moral system can rest solely on authority. ~A.J. Ayer
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday June 04 2016, @01:32AM
That seems a narcissist. You are right in associating the trophy generation with narcissism, even if it the objective would be to promote equality (which is evil, on entering the real world the student is even more shocked), a narcissist mind filters out everybody else, so the equalizing part gets lost.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @09:55PM
Here's another one [wikipedia.org] from 20+ years ago.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Friday June 03 2016, @08:06PM
But I think this guy took it too literally.
(Score: 2) by snick on Friday June 03 2016, @08:34PM
yeah ... definitely too soon.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 03 2016, @10:06PM
I doubt we'll have an article about this guy next year, might as well get the jokes out now while the wounds are fresh.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:13PM
RMS Responds - GRsecurity is Preventing Others From Redistributing Source Code [UPDATED]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/06/02/214243 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 03 2016, @08:41PM
Seems to be a consensus that the aggrieved party was full of it and didn't have any legit complaint. I wouldn't be so sure. I've heard of professors taking credit for grad students' work all the time. There's a Jack Chalker series, Changewinds, with that grievance as central to the motive driving the "bad" wizard to make war, to get back at the "good" wizard who stole his work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Friday June 03 2016, @08:47PM
Wait, did you just say this happens all the time and then reference a science fiction work as an example?
Much like the shooter, you seem to have a problem determining actual events from stories you've read.
You don't by chance have any weapons do you?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @03:43AM
yes, i do, its my god given right, thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:50PM
Of X university degree graduation tales I heard about, X/3 had wrongfully credited work appropriated by someone up the ladder.
Of X music works I have been involved with, X*2/3 had appropriated credits and I think not even one of them was 100% accurate in credits.
Thankfully I am in a barely first world country (ITALY), so your stats may be better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @01:08AM
Italy is a special place where people in nice academic jobs get there not by competence but by connections. Once in place, they need students to do their work for them. Half the professors are utterly worthless. The ones with brains emigrate, because they'll never get anywhere in life otherwise. It's not so much a brain-drain as an almost willing brain-expulsion.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday June 03 2016, @08:54PM
Perhaps, but there's all sorts of reasonable ways it might have gone down, too. For example, the student could have written code in the same spirit as the teacher -- what students typically do, after all -- and then saw the teacher later writing code the same way the teacher always had as "evidence" that the teacher was now copying the student. Or the teacher could have drawn inspiration from the student and adapted one of the student's innovations the same way we all adapt each others's innovations. The student could even have written a library explicitly intended from the start to be shared by the department and gotten upset when people later did exactly that.
And, of course, the teacher could have plagiarized the student or the student could have been completely off his rocker.
Lacking specifics, I wouldn't get too hung up on the copying question since, regardless...
MURDER IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER TO PLAGIARISM!
If the student's claims actually had merit, he could have ended his teacher's career. Academic dishonesty is even less tolerated when faculty do it than when students do it. All he had to do was prove his case, even just in the court of public opinion, and the teacher's career would have been over.
But killing the guy?
Seriously. WTF!?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @05:21AM
A PhD student cannot claim "intellectual property" on code developed for the project. Unless it's code that's obviously not related to his project and field, it belongs to the department anyway, because it's written in the interest of the PhD project.
I assume in very specific circumstances, e.g. the student not being paid, they could claim copyright, but even in that case if the code came about after discussions with the teacher it's shared work...
As far as plagiarism is concerned, that's harder to assess, although in 2016 there should already be some checking mechanisms in place at universities.
In any case, I fully agree that killing the offender is not a solution for plagiarism/copyright infrigement. My personal opinion is that the concept of copyright is flawed in any case, but that's another discussion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:56PM
> Seems to be a consensus that the aggrieved party was full of it and didn't have any legit complaint. I wouldn't be so sure.
The dude killed his wife too for some unspecified wrong she did him.
When everybody else is the problem, it usually means you are the problem.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:46PM
Was that the only reason? Why'd he also murder his girlfriend then?
Also, it's funny how the media stopped reporting the race of this evil White man as soon as they were told he was actually an Indian Muslim. Oops.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:48PM
So, let me get this straight. This UCLA shooter was a Muslim immigrant here on a student visa. [breitbart.com] He had a list of people to kill, and is now linked to the past murder of a woman on his kill list, in addition to the latest murder of the professor... [bbc.com] But we're supposed to ignore these details and focus on one of his many "grievances" used as rationalization for his Jihad (religious struggle against non-Muslims), and we're not supposed to think this is a distraction? In fact he was reported initially as being a crazy "white male", but now his race and religion won't be mentioned because those details are not Politically Correct. [youtube.com]
Damn the leftist disinformationists and the propaganda TFA rode in on. Distractions like this often have a small bit of truth that leads you towards flawed conclusions or otherwise mask the reality of the situation. You better start believing in shill threads, because you're in one.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @08:57PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad [wikipedia.org]
Apparently we need to stop throwing the term around as if it always equates to violence. There doesn't seem to be any religious overtones to this story except for him being a Muslim. There are no great truths to be unmasked, no big conspiracy, unless we are missing a LOT more information. How is anyone ignoring his kill list or previous behavior? Personally I find it quite possible that the experience of extreme amounts of prejudice could have tipped this guy over the edge into crazyland, and if that is the case then comments like yours that try and blow his religion out of proportion are partially to blame. Everyone gets it, some people are terrified or angry about 9/11 and don't want Muslims anywhere near them because they can't use the left and right sides of their brains at the same time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:13PM
You just don't understand.
When muslims behave badly its because of their violent religion.
When someone else behaves badly, there is always an underlying cause like mental health or greed.
And when some brownie with a funny name behaves badly, he's a muslim.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:06PM
This UCLA shooter was a Muslim immigrant here on a student visa.
Cultural illiteracy FTL!
Sarkar [ancestry.com] is a Bengali Hindu family name.
Mainak [indiachildnames.com] is also a Hindu name.
So he's probably not muslim. But there are like 1.3 billion muslims in the world, sooo it wouldn't have been very relevant if he were either.
Damn the leftist disinformationists and the propaganda TFA rode in on. Distractions like this often have a small bit of truth that leads you towards flawed conclusions or otherwise mask the reality of the situation. You better start believing in shill threads, because you're in one.
Uh, OK.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday June 03 2016, @08:52PM
I obviously don't know the truth of this case, but sometimes odd stuff happens. People go for the low-hanging fruit, and sometimes two people grasp at the same apple.
Anecdote: Back when I was a grad student, a colleague and I wrote a paper about an automatic "reverse engineering" of an analysis system, let's call it the ASDF system. The idea was - in light of the newest AI techniques - an obvious thing to do, and the name of our system was called FDSA (the reverse of ASDF). Another student at another school had the exact same idea, using exactly the same name, but our paper was published first. He was utterly convinced that he had mentioned his idea to our professor at a conference, who then stole it and passed it on to us. Complete nonsense; it was just an idea whose time was ripe. We got lucky, the other guy was unlucky.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:26PM
This is very true.
I was one of the early M2M (IoT) guys. You see and probably see and use my 'ideas' all the time. However, my ideas are not terribly innovative. Anyone versed in the field could have come up with them. I was just one of the early guys. I became versed and a 'thought leader' in the field because of location and timing not because of being anything special. I have seen my 'ideas' re-implemented and re-discovered all the time in that field. I am not mad or jealous (well sometimes when they do it better ;) ). Many of my 'ideas' were just variations on older ideas. In fact many of my ideas in the field came about because of poor implementations that I had to fix from previous misunderstood business requirements by previous contractors.
The biggest problem I had was fighting management off because they wanted all the ideas all at once. But with no business backing. Which turned them into rabbit hole explorations with no money coming in to fund the next round of innovation. This created ideas that were half formed and did not fit customer needs. Meanwhile being technically cool and management bonus worthy. But no customers... :(
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @09:19PM
Biggest twist that the shooter wasn't White. If you only had read the comment section of Gawker before the identity of the shooter was revealed you could see the retards falling over themselves in proclaiming it as "yet another TERRORIST act by a lone White male!" Those fuckin retards. I would pity them if I didn't hate them so much. The classic disease of the mind resulting from an internet echo-chamber: idiots using their fore-gone biased conclusions to paint a missing narrative with fabricated details.
I wonder how many heads exploded when the identity was revealed! Before devolving to usually tirade about gun violence.
For fun here is a link to stupidity: http://gawker.com/at-least-two-people-killed-in-ucla-shooting-where-gunma-1779892425 [gawker.com]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday June 04 2016, @12:36AM
No worries, Gawker will be gone soon. Of course the clickbait crowd will simply move on to another site.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @10:48PM
Had the shooter not been killed by police, I can imagine his day in court where all the SN'ers in the audience corrected the defendant's lawyer opening and closing statements by yelling "infringed".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday June 03 2016, @10:57PM
One of our local unis had a semi-crazy person hanging around the business school, with the idea he thought would both make him rich and save the world (he was the only person who thought this). He would come onto campus and use as many of the public lab computers as he could, without ever logging in or saving anything, so unsurprisingly his work would be cleared off the lab computers once he left.
The guy got it in his head that the system administrator for the school was stealing his work and I think turning it over to the Illuminati or whatever grand conspiracy he decided was behind the fact that his work was disappearing. He'd even filed a lawsuit to try to stop this, which was of course dismissed. So he decided to engage in some good old-fashioned lethal violence, walked into the school, and opened fire, hunting for the administrator in question. The adminstrator was among those who got shot at, but managed to get into a locked back room with the students and staff, and hid in a not-at-all-safe darkened room.
Final count: 1 dead, 2 wounded, none of them the targets but just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The administrator in question had a serious mental breakdown, and dropped out of a local organization I'm now involved with, so he qualifies as a friend-of-a-friend. I sometimes think about that: He was just some dude doing his job, and before he knew it was dodging bullets and felt semi-responsible for a 30-year-old's death, so I'm not surprised he decided to rethink his life.
I wish I knew what switch gets flipped in somebody's brain that convinces themselves to go out guns blazing. But there's no question it happens, and it's often over really stupid stuff.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2016, @11:16PM
> I wish I knew what switch gets flipped in somebody's brain that convinces themselves to go out guns blazing.
Here's an interesting theory:
A 3 minute video about mental illness and 'capture.' [vimeo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @01:05AM
People get crazy and do stupid things. Sometimes they're sick, sometimes they're assholes. That's the real lesson of gun control. Easy access to guns makes these people more lethal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04 2016, @05:35AM
I'm sorry, but that's a clear instance of society (and the particular institution) failing to engage someone who is obviously crazy. Since there was even a lawsuit from this person, it's obvious he believed what he was saying, and I would have at least had security accompany him every time he showed up.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 04 2016, @10:36AM
Hard to do that when the way he got in was to bust down one of the doors with a mallet he'd brought along for that specific purpose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Saturday June 04 2016, @01:22AM
He didn't steal his code.
He merely copied it.
Account abandoned.