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Thanks To Apple's Influence, You're Not Getting A Rifle Emoji (buzzfeed.com)
Charlie Warzel, reporting for BuzzFeed News: Unicode, the technical organization in charge of selecting and overseeing emojis, debated and ultimately decided to remove a rifle from its list of new emoji candidates in 2016, according to multiple persons who attended its quarterly meeting last May. The decision was led and championed by one of tech's biggest companies: Apple. Apple is one of Unicode's largest member companies and not only has voting rights, but also holds considerable influence. Millions of people use emojis on Apple's software platforms. According to sources in the room, Apple started the discussion to remove the rifle emoji, which had already passed into the encoding process for the Unicode 9.0 release this June. Apple told the consortium it would not support a rifle on its platforms and asked for it not to be made into an emoji. "I heard Apple speak up about it and also Microsoft," one member present at the discussions told BuzzFeed News.
It actually makes sense not to have such an emoji, because it creates a dilemma whether someone using such an emoji in a message is making a threat, and whether the company, becoming aware of such a threat, has a duty to do something about it.
The
/me gets AIDS
Emoji are for idiots anyways. Intelligent people put on their big boy pants and use their grown up words to communicate.
the fits emoji and knife emoji to help perpetuate violence... Look at their keynote... they use emoji signifying a desire to punch hindi people!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What strikes me is that all of the glyphs in the article depict a white male or female.
The destruction of words is a beautiful thing comrade Cook. This years unicode has 100 fewer symbols than 2015 it's doubleplusgood.
The world was once again safe from bad people who murder innocents with emojis.
I would prefer that there be no emojis in unicode.
Seeing as how the proposed images are primarily hunting rifles(1 is in fact a target shooting rifle and the other appears to be a Winchester-type lever action rifle which has historical significance and connotations), which are generally legal even in cities and countries with very strict firearm legislation, isn't this a bit of an overreaction? It is important to note that it appears to be in a set of Olympic-themed emojis, of which target shooting has been a participating sport for over a century. And of course hunting with firearms has been a hobby if not vital means of survival for centuries as well.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's probably fewer characters to type than invoking the right emoji.
...only outlaws will have codepoints.
Okay, and anybody who understands how to look things up in a character set.
Hypersensitive. I can use the poo emoji in a way that could be a threat to someone. There are so many that could be used in a threatening way that is already there.
There's already a gun emoji. Windows sidesteps the issue a bit by displaying it a cartoon raygun:
http://emojipedia.org/microsof...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
These fucking idiotic emojis are the best argument against Slashdot ever supporting Unicode in comments.
The last thing an English-centric site like Slashdot needs is for comments that contain emojis or other fancy emoticons made using Unicode characters.
Just look at how awful YouTube and Twitter comments tend to be, and a big part of this is due to emojis being used instead of real words.
It's better for Slashdot not to support fancy quotes or other useful characters if it means keeping this site free from emojis.
Emoticons using common ASCII characters are bad enough. Emojis would absolutely ruin the commenting here.
If you can't express your idea using English words, then it probably isn't worth expressing here at Slashdot to being with!
Bambi will be thrilled at this decision!
What a shit idea those are. 💩 (pile-of-poo, not chocolate-icecream, in case you were wondering)
Research proves the idiocy that is using emojis.
So, removal of pistol-emoji is next? And swords and dagger? How about the mosque and the star-and-crescent — a majority of Muslims in the US today would prefer for Sharia to replace the Constitution.
If only we could have the unpleasant facts of life disappear by banning the symbols related to them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Another brutal attempt at gun control >:-)
And just when I thought it was impossible for me to hate Apple any more than I already do...they exceed my expectations and manage to make me hate them even more.
dead people don't buy computers
Really? "I feel like shooting something"? If you do then fucking _type_it_ instead of inserting a graphical symbol no one knows what it is supposed to represent and may look strange on the recipient(s) machine(s).
So when should we expect the "I stubbed my toe and want to comfort myself with chocolate ice-cream with opium topping to be washed down with vodka" emoji to appear?
is this something anyone should care about?
i mean, its a thing, and apple is involved, but really. did anyone know of or care about the existence of a governing body for emojis
Censoring an ideogram just because a few retards misuse it is the height of stupidity and Cowardice. Instead of focusing on inanimate objects we should be focusing on allowing precise communication.
Cars kill more people then guns yet we don't "ban" the pictograph of cars.
--
USA Election 2016 Solution: Add [ ] None of the above to the ballot. If it gets more votes then all the current candidates are banned from running for this election. Choosing between a scammer (Trump) and a lier (Hillary) isn't a smart way to run a country.
...this will prevent further mass shootings in chat rooms.
You know, they say the guy was gay. You all know what that implies.. Apple has some questions to answer.
I'm just waiting for the day when the government forces us all to wear pastels...
DERKA DERKA ALLAHU AKBAR
Fuck you Apple, you fucking hypocrites.
U+FE3B U+2533 U+30C7 U+2550 U+2014
where is the emoji for that?
Those fearful of terrotist and other like minds won't give them tools to identify making it harder to orgamize.
Though the use of it could render it moot since it wouldn't take long for it to be monitored.
Conversely, this protects you from having your tweets or whatever being used against you. Whether you are innocent or not, would you want to be on a govetnment database because you liked the emojii ehen you were thirteen?
How do we get rid of the rest of the emoji?
Twinstiq, game news
Double-plus ungood!
I don't know whether or not someone is threatening me with... safe sex or not?
Apple could have just replaced them with walkie-talkies on iOS. :p
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I'm thinking about moving back to Android, as well. It's just too bad Apple gets many things so right and others so blatantly wrong...
May we have a politician-being-bribed emoticon?
Requiem for the American Dream
Say hello to my little friend. /`````
Yes, that will solve societies ills, removing a rifle emoji from a character set. Next I assume we'll remove the smiling emoji because it discriminates against depressed people, the glass of milk emoji because it upsets people with lactose intolerance, the clown face emoji because it scares people with clown phobias.
7
.
>--x
Slashdot:"Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art." Captcha: oddness
As I understand it, Apple was lobbying for the "Vibrating Butt Plug" emoji.
That's fine... take the gun. But, good Lord, give us a hippo!
it was impossible to hear.
But you can read about it on Fartdot. Has it really come to this?
Other than the times you make threat to someone's life.
The US's gun loving mentality is ridiculous.
It's the gay mafia
"This is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting this is for fun".
because bombing and killing 100,000 of thousands into democracy is ok. http://emojipedia.org/bomb/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
A thought said poorly
Artless, a sentence is like
Children's stupid emoji.
If you can't say it in blank verse, your prose
is sad-ly much too terse. You dumb Slash-dot
down with text UNconSTRAIN'd. You shall know this:
With-out rhy-thm your words are turds. Asshole.
Sorry I had to throw that last word in. I didn't mean it, but rules are rules.
How about they just stop putting all emjois in the damned character sets. I don't want 1GB of unused icons because someone somewhere thought it would be funny to have a choking-his-chicken emoji.
As long as I can still have my flamethrower emoji.
I guess the "designers" at Apple felt it would be redundant on their product.
we already have a number of different weapon type emojis. what is the difference?
..and is invading our life... we need rifles for our protection.
I haven't read the detailed reports but it would make sense that the guards were the first targets. If random unidentified citizens had been armed, any one of them could have stepped in and put a stop to the event.
Really? In the chaos of a few hundred running around panicking, someone (you?) will be able to identify the actual gunman and pick them off?
And how do you know if the person you're aiming for is the actual gunmen or another ' Good Samaritan'? How do the Good Guys identify themselves to each other versus the Bad Guy? In this instance, in a club with loud thumping music and flashing lights in the midst of a mob panic? What if the attacker tosses in some smoke and/or tear gas for added effect like in Aurora?
I think you've seen "Die Hard" a few too many times.
You have a right to bear arms (U+1F4AA). And bare arms. So join a boxing club and put your fists (U+1F44A) to good use.
So Apple doesn't like men with rifles? How about gay men with children?
http://blog.jim.com/culture/ga...
http://blog.jim.com/culture/th...
https://winteryknight.com/2013...
Gays with children are far, far more likely to be raping said children than normal people with rifles are likely to use them to commit murder.
And yes, Apple includes emoji of two gay men with a child.
Insignia appropriated by National Socialism:
Which emoji should I use when I write about hunting, then?
1) it's a bipod, not a tripod
2) a scope is a perfectly reasonable attachment for any 5.56/.223 rifle - effective range can go out to 100 to 200m, and a good scope is helpful at those ranges
3) whether or not it uses a drum magazine, or a simple double stack magazine, the weapon still functions like any other semi-automatic rifle -> one trigger pull, one shot.
Now, you can choose to define an "assault weapon" as something black and scary looking, but nothing you've pointed out is any different than the much kinder, gentler looking mini 14 (http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14/images/line-top.jpg). During the san bernardino terrorist attack, you can see LEOs using it: http://media.gettyimages.com/p... - it's functionally identical to the AR15 style weapons the terrorists were using, chambering the same round, firing at the same rate.
A common sense definition of an "assault weapon" is a fully automatic (not semi-automatic) belt fed machine gun...something like the m60 (http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/guns/images/5/58/M60.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20070330224515)
But you really weren't looking for the truth, now were you? :)
It's interesting. About twice as many people die from alcohol related issues than guns in the U.S. Per year, yet, the "socially responsible" people who have jumped in the anti-gun bad wagon do not utter one, single peep about this. They do not refuse to make emoji about the topic, and in fact, some seem to be there. Funny how that works. It almost as if there is a large group of people who want to appear to care about things, than really care. Almost...
Before I forget, here are the links proving what I said: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fac...
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_...
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
ðY"
Let's specifically NOT make any judgement here about absolutes or actual morals, or cultures etc for the purpose of simply examining the basic argument.
In both the gun case and the gays with children case, some see the emoji and/or the subject matter possibly implied by the visual very positively and some see it very negatively, and when you add-in personal interpretations of an image the mess gets even messier.
If the argument is that some people think a particular subject which is absolutely related to a particular emoji is "bad", or if the argument is that some people might interpret the emoji to mean something it's not intended to mean and which is bad, then your argument it spot-on and there are probably many others that are similar depending on the cultures of the people creating/viewing the little emoji images.
THINGS, whether physical or virtual, do not kill.
PEOPLE use things to kill.... many things. Guns, knives, pressure cookers, poisons, balconies, staircases, rope, wire, pointy sticks, bare hands, and eventually even robots....
The problem is ALWAYS the person. NOT words. Not STUFF.
The current crop of cowardly politicians who want to be popular always want to attack stuff; we wage wars on terror (not terrorists and their ideology), drugs (not EVER the people who endanger others while using drugs), obesity (not people who eat too much) corruption (not the government employees and politicians people taking the bribes), income inequality (not government people messing with the economy or greedy bastards outsourcing jobs and using illegal labor) guns (not violent gang members and criminals and terrorists) etc.
Sadly, the educators are now turning-out a generation of stupid, gullible, sheltered morons who need "safe spaces" and cannot tolerate anything they have been programmed to reject (I'd say "hate", but it's like the modern version of "racism"... it only applies in one direction). Unlike the left of past decades who pretended to prefer liberty and were always ranting about "the man" and resisting the demands of the big government, these fools are happy in the warm fuzzy embrace of totalitarianism and massive government, just like happy little Hitler Youth and Young Pioneers.
http://chris.com/ascii/index.p...
Not sure how to get consistent spacing or I'd post some here.
Thankfully, one can put them in place of what does go in there.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Waiting patiently at the side until this emoji hype dies down when the current teens decide that they're no longer cool and someone at the Unicode consortium comes to work not on drugs that day and asks himself "why the fuck we did this?"
Can't wait to see the fireworks when we realize that it's not so easy to get rid of the shit.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You win!
It is physically impossible for a human being to be more wrong on any posting. Was this out of dishonest malice, or fundamental ignorance? It does not matter as the effect is the same, but I have a certain intellectual curiosity.
Anybody with even the slightest clue, or a tiny fragment of intellectual curiosity, about the two groups you mentioned would know how certifiably insane your statement is. The people you label as "Right Wing Conservatives" are the ones who are absolutely opposed to Sharia and are often attacked by Democrats for being opposed to Sharia. Those right wingers are the ones demanding that Sharia not be allowed to infect the United States, and have been denounced by Obama and Hillary for their tendency to cling to the Constitution and demand it not be displaced by Sharia. Democrats have been importing Sharia-loving Muslims into the country as fast as they can (over 1 million since Obama took office) from parts of the world where support for Sharia is over 90% (what percent who have immigrated do you suppose are Sharia supporters????) and bragging that they now have gotten several Muslims elected to fairly high elected office where they have been demanding support for Sharia-compliant changes to US laws.
Trying to explain meaningful gun control measures to most Americans is like trying to explain supermarkets to North Koreans.
It's a pointless exercise they are not equipped to understand.
Save your breath.
ðYðY
ðYðY"
ðY-ââsðY'
It's the new form of superstition.
"Guns are around bad things happening, therefore gun have evil spirits in them. Therefore if you have guns the evil spirits will get into you. So destroy all of the guns, and people that have touched them!!!"
Yeah, real smart... 8-P
Real men make their own damn emojis from the existing character set.
When gun emojis are criminal, only criminals will have them! We law-abiding citizens must have a way to defend ourselves from those marauding criminals who send us rifle emojis from criminal platforms! Oh the horrors!
On the flipside, think of how many emoji-based mass slaughters that won't be happening...
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Apple has helped us decide who to vote for by not supporting Trump's campaign.
... which jobs we shall have ... where we can live. Just like the USSR helped people make these choices not long ago.
This helps because voters don't have to make their own choices and can't be misled.
Now Apple is helping us decide what kind of emoji's we can use and how we should think about guns.
These guys are just so helpful.
What will the future hold for us? We will soon have the luxury of having our clothes picked out for us
That the Russians/Soviets of old risked their lives to flee their collapsing country is, of course, highly irrelevant because there are some crucial technicialities they weren't following that makes the negative aspects unrelated to what is possible.
Hey, let's add a few important caveats too! All of these numbers are pretty much self-report numbers--I actually got to sit through somebody checking their hometown's murder rate on the Uniform Crime Report...and, in the year she found (part of) a murder victim, they reported a grand total of no murders.
This applies internationally, too. The US usually goes off of the number of people who were ruled homicides by the medical examiner--and the definition they use is "when death results from an injury or poisoning caused by the intentional acts of another human being" [Source, PDF] with there being no requirement that the death itself be intended, which is what's being claimed when somebody's charged with homicide.
Other countries use other definitions for reporting their homicide rates--such as how many got counted as such by the police as homicides, or how many actually reach trial on homicide charges...and I've heard a few reports of countries that only count those where the trial results in a homicide conviction.
If you want a good example of a situation where Twain's quip about statistics is quite true, as well as an object lesson in why it's utterly essential for all statistics to be verified as using the same basis for their count before attempting to compare them.