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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.
Obesity kills far more humans than "rifles" ever will, and yet you see no artists blocking food emojis, and no companies worrying about what do to when someone posts a cake emoji.
Gotta love the logic surrounding this bullshit argument.
In simpler terms: Apple saved us a bunch of bullshit like a student being expelled over a rifle emoji.
Here's a fun fact about emoji: Emoji are artistically re-rendered usually per the brand of the device, resulting in different interpretations of how they're used vs. how they're intended. This has already landed people in hot water. There's an emoji of a someone laughing so hard they're in tears. There are quite a few people out there that see it as someone hysterically crying. On their device it may actually appear that way because of how the artist designed it. Imagine that little misinterpretation happening during a comment made about the recent shooting in Orlando!
All I'm going to say is: Thank you, Apple.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
Obesity kills far more humans than "rifles" ever will, and yet you see no artists blocking food emojis, and no companies worrying about what do to when someone posts a cake emoji.
Gotta love the logic surrounding this bullshit argument.
Cakes aren't designed with the express purpose of killing things.
Bullshit argument indeed.
I stole this Sig
So, if I were to use a rifle emoji on /., you'd feel threatened? Really?
Or perhaps you'd only feel threatened if the guy in the next cubicle used one in an email? Seriously, I hope you know the guy in the next cubby well enough to know whether he'd want to shoot you. And if he did (want to shoot you), I'd hope he'd use a real gun rather than an emoji....
C'mon, people, when you start finding a few characters in an email threatening, there's a problem. And the problem isn't the arrangement of the characters....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
Obesity kills far more humans than "rifles" ever will, and yet you see no artists blocking food emojis, and no companies worrying about what do to when someone posts a cake emoji.
Gotta love the logic surrounding this bullshit argument.
Boobs have never killed anybody, all that boobs have ever done is feed babies and put smiles on the lips of men all over the planet, the bigger and bouncier the boobs the bigger the smile. I say all of us slashdotters should unite and lobby Unicode for a set of boobs emojis in all cup-sizes...
Yes, I can definitely see how a rifle emoji would be threatening, but a dagger, crossed swords, skull and crossbones, a bomb , or even a pistol clearly aren't.
There's already a pistol emoji. There's no reason not to add a rifle emoji for completeness sake.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Last time I trusted a promise of cake, I got burned alive.
Cakes aren't designed with the express purpose of killing things.
Neither are emoji's.
How many apps/games/etc are there where guns, violence, etc are possible, if not the goal?
"The usual road to (digital) slavery is that first they take away your gun (emoji's), then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it." -- James A. Donald
this is the US, where guns are easy and cheap to get, and people get routinely shot over the dumbest shit
Your argument is invalid. There is no linkage between email and guns in the US. And while it may be true that people get "routinely shot" (I don't know what you mean by that), this is not because guns are "cheap and easy to get". The US has more guns now than ever before, yet violent crime has been decreasing over the past decades. Look, here's some graphs.
If the simple availability of legal guns really caused violence, then now that we have more guns than ever before, we ought to have more violence than ever before. Yet we don't.
In fact, one could make an argument that the increase in the number of guns reduced the violence in the US. I don't make that argument because correlation does not prove causation. However, you are making a causation claim and there isn't even a correlation to back you up.
I invite you to read the book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy which explores why different countries have different amounts of violence. Spoiler: it's more cultural factors than anything else.
In most countries, you'd be right to heap scorn on anyone feeling threatened by an emoji or an email.
But this is the US, where guns are easy and cheap to get, and people get routinely shot over the dumbest shit. Dude might be a bit of scaredy cat, but he's certainly not insane.
Gun violence is at an all time low
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://www.cnsnews.com/comment...
I know, pesky facts. Who cares about'em
Gun violence is at an all time low.
Compared to the rest of the developed world, gun violence in the USA is still at appalling levels.
Just some friendly advice. Every male in Switzerland has to perform military service and so gun ownership is big. Yet you just said their homicide rate by firearms was low. You're making the argument it's culture not quantity of firearms.