whenever they're pressured to explain the success of the Wii.
Nintendo's success is easily explained. The Wii simply isn't a video game console, so it never had to compete against the "real" consoles. Sure, it has gaming hardware like a console, and it connects to a TV like a console, and it uses controllers like a console, and it plays games like a console...
...But it's different. The whole system is designed to appeal not so much to "gamers", but more to grandparents. It is a console for the masses, to entertain everybody to some degree. It's not the system you turn to for the latest pixel-pushing eye candy. It's what you use to see a silly cartoon character run amok in a fantasy world.
To the kids of the 80s, this is a betrayal. Nintendo was there from the beginning, and now it's abandoned its loyal fan base. To Nintendo, this is what it has always done best, drawing on the heritage of the NES, Game Boy, and DS lines. It makes "entertainment systems", good for quick entertainment that doesn't require much thought. Whenever it's tried to push the limits of technology (N64 and Virtual Boy come to mind), they rush the technology without considering the humans using it. The Wii is very human-centric, from its very name to the first commercials ("Wii would like to play"), so it appeals to a large market that only slightly overlaps with the True Gamers.
That's why the gaming industry often seems to have trouble understanding the Wii. It's outside of their normal world, and perhaps rightly so.
catch people posing some threat to those around him
How about the people who aren't watching the intersection they're sitting at, so when the light turns green they instinctively hit the gas, rather than looking at the slow-moving pedestrians?
So let me get this straight... you mod based on whether someone agrees with your opinions, which were not formed with expertise as to the ramifications of such opinions, but rather were formed with a heavy conflict of interest?
Yes, that's exactly the problem.
Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up.
Make Slashdot as readable as possible for as many people as possible.
Do not require a huge amount of time from any single moderator.
Do not allow a single moderator a 'reign of terror'
Ostensibly, the moderation goal is both to demote what's not worth reading and to promote good comments.
Good Comments are insightful. You read them and are better off having read them. They add new information to a discussion. They are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.
Limiting browsing to +5 doesn't reduce noise enough. It just reduces volume. Rather than getting the comments that contribute most to the discussion, you just get the extreme views - with the favorite one repeated more. You're left with 90% redundant comments (but from different threads, so they weren't modded redundant), a few humorous gems out of context, and maybe, just maybe, that one voice of reason still buried in the shouting.
Not nearly as quickly as the advertisements bragging about curing the flu.
Our flu vaccine has saved millions of lives already, and will save billions by the decade's end! Now, we've brought that same medical ingenuity to Noshits, for immediate diarrhea relief!
That's a self-sustaining mechanism of the Slashdot hivemind.
Despite our best wishes to the contrary, Slashdotters are terribly biased humans. We just know what's right, because we are all of such high intelligence and scientific mind, so we are blind to our own biases. Of course, anyone who agrees with us is probably coming to the same conclusion only because they are smart and rational, too... so we should mod them up, of course, for being such a fine, upstanding Slashdotter like ourselves. Should we then ever need to examine our own judgement, we have the karma system and our comment history showing that we were modded up, reinforcing the consensus regardless of truth.
This is painfully obvious on any thread concerning law, privacy, Big Data, religion, or economics. The hivemind has made up its mind on most aspects of these matters, so any comment parroting the approved opinion will be modded up, while any comment that opposes will be modded down, regardless of fact. Interestingly, these are fields in which the majority of Slashdotters are not experts, or even likely to be professionally involved in.
Consider law, for instance. There are very few actual lawyers regularly on Slashdot, and also very few who have any sort of legal education at all, but any story discussing the intricacies of patents or free speech is bound to have hundreds of comments, mostly along the lines of "patents are bad" or "I can say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone", and the mods will happily push such comments up to +5, Insightful. Occasionally a real lawyer will stumble in and offer some actual insight, but even if their post is well-received, it is limited to being only equal to the popular drivel, so it is quickly drowned out.
A system I've seen work well elsewhere is to have admin-promoted "top comments" for each story, where the admins doing the selection are encouraged to pick comments that are relevant, accurate, and unusual. a dozen comments repeating the same sentiment won't be picked, but one that puts forth a well-reasoned argument to the contrary is more likely.
Congress, the president, and the managers at the NSA all have conflicts of interest. The law of the land says "action X is illegal", but the NSA isn't really doing X... they're doing almost-but-not-quite-X action Y. Neither Congress or the president will stop them, because they want the results and don't care how it happens.
This position should be arranged so they have the power to say "We can't do X, because of these particular reasons", but can then approve Z which is just different enough to be legal. Whereas the rest of the NSA measures success by disrupting enemy plots and weakening enemy technology, the CLPO would measure success by the (lack of) programs that are questioned in those hearings.
Autism should be considered a permanent congenital illness, like ADHD or a deformity. Like any other illness, it doesn't mean the person is any less of a human worthy of dignity and respect. They're a person with a particular condition, but first and foremost they are a person.
There's a major difference between being capable of doing a job, and being able to hold the job. Mental illness isn't often evident in a quick interview, but after a few months on the job it may be obvious. He could then be fired for "poor attitude" or similar reason, especially if the employer doesn't understand the illness. After a few such events, his job history is full of short jobs that ended with him being fired, and that effectively ends his career.
IT specifically is a field full of outcasts. We have disproportionately high rates of several mental illnesses, especially on the autism spectrum. The people who never fit in anywhere else? They still don't fit in here, but it's okay because the rest of us don't, either.
expect a clampdown to get taxes from it, though it will be couched in verbiage of For The People they will demand government scrutiny and regulation.
It doesn't need to be. Americans are already legally obligated to report capital gains from trading in Bitcoins, and any income measured in Bitcoins must be reported as income, converted to dollars. If people aren't reporting such details, they're actually engaging in tax evasion, and can be caught just like any other evaders.
Having gone through the investigation process myself, it turns out it's not really that big of a deal. The IRS sends you a letter with a phone number, which you can call and talk to an agent about it. Being willing to correct mistakes is a big factor in resolving the issue quickly. If someone doesn't report Bitcoins because they don't realize they have to, they can just file an amendment to their return that reflects the correct figures, and send in a check to cover the difference. The IRS will check the return again, and determine whether they believe it or not. Repeat as necessary. Again, the key is to not be hostile towards the IRS. Believe it or not, they're people, too.
In my case, I got a notice saying the IRS thought I owed a few thousand dollars. I rechecked my paperwork, found that I owed about $400, and sent in an amendment and a check. They responded saying they didn't accept a certain deduction for which I had no verifiable paperwork. I sent in a signed letter attesting that it was valid. They then sent me a notice saying that they owed me a few hundred dollars, along with a check. The numbers all finally matched, so that was the end of it.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Maybe, or maybe not. If he has to do this, because he's unable to obtain any other employment even with heavy searching, then yes. If he prefers this to any other position or hasn't tried to find such a position, then no.
The biggest problem in charity is telling the difference between the two.
Bitcoin has extra marketing value. People can donate Bitcoins rather than dollars, and they feel like they're somehow working outside "the system", as though the US government couldn't see or track what's going on. Really, the government can't track cash, either, but cash is old and familiar, where Bitcoin is new and exciting.
The same problem applies in all activism scenarios, whether we're discussing nuclear power, fracking, education, human rights, politics or war.
On the one side, you have all the people who cry for an absolute stop to the activity in question, and the other side will be pushing for the absolute requirement to do whatever it is. The two extremes dominate the debate, and anyone not in an extreme is derided as not being dedicated to the particular cause. Both sides are full of PhD-holding experts in tangentially-related fields, who are certain that some particular report from several years ago is the definitive truth of the matter - and anyone unfamiliar with that particular work isn't qualified to hold an opinion.
Of course, since neither side will entertain the other's perspective, they certainly don't bother comparing notes or discussing compromises. Whenever the other side does attempt any concession, it's just an obvious ruse, since the other side is so much more argumentative and outright evil. The only solution is to fight, with all our power and budget, to stir up grassroots support for our cause, and resist all the opposition's efforts to infiltrate and undermine our endeavor.
I think the computation to turn it into a (one-color) projector would be pretty much a straight 2-D FFT times a nonliinear tweak to deal with energy-stealing among modes.
And that means a full-color high-quality laser projector is just over 3x as expensive, but still feasible. I, for one, am excited.
Type 3 buys patents from type 1, allowing type 1 to invent more (or recoup the initial investment).
That means that types 2 and 3 are effectively competitors, both trying to get the license from type 1. However, type 3 will buy from type 1 any time on speculation of future profit, whereas type 2 will only buy from type 1 when the patent is immediately useful. That's why type 3 is so often found associating with "pure research" type 1s, where profitable applications aren't clearly visible.
Those "leeches" provide the hedge bets that make invention a less-risky investment. Like any other risk-reducing entity, they take a cut of the profits in exchange for taking on the risk. It's not terribly different from buying insurance or investing with a diverse portfolio.
He made his students' research into actual working inventions. That's what patents are supposed to cover - the working form, with all of the show-stopping problems worked out enough to have a functional device. Pure research isn't patentable, because without an application it just adds to the pile of useless facts about the world.
Yes, SCOTUS exists to reconcile laws with the current views. Laws are slow to change, whereas technology and morality can change overnight.
When current societal views say [bad things] are we still okay with SCOTUS...
Just stop right there. "We" are society. If current views are in favor of censoring speech, that means that Americans generally consider such censorship to be right. Since this is a democracy, ruled by the people, it is ultimately the people's opinions that matter most, even more than the original wording of the law.
There are many good reasons to reject the morality of 1776 to suit modern tastes. Eliminating the three-fifths compromise is a glaring example, along with expanding voting rights, abolishing slavery, implementing term limits, and federating infrastructure. When the Constitution was written, society generally assumed that such changes would be unnecessary. After all, it was really only white male landowners who did anything politically anyway, so naturally they were the only ones who needed to be able to vote.
Privacy, as you so blindly pointed out, is another reason to diverge from the Constitution's original intent. In the decades leading up to the Constitution's writing, the British military had used searches as a means to deny service to colonists. If someone had annoyed the local commander, they could expect their shop to be shut down for the next week while soldiers searched/destroyed it for no particular reason, with no oversight. The Fourth Amendment was included not to ensure secrecy, but to protect only against harassment. Note that it's placed in context with the right to not quarter troops, and the right to not incriminate yourself. That's why the Fourth Amendment's applicability to third-party storage is in question, because a search that doesn't interrupt your daily business is much less likely to be harassment.
More recently, though, the expectation for a "reasonable" search has grown to include respect for secrecy as well. Society's idea of "reasonable" has now shifted enough that a SCOTUS ruling in accordance with the original intent would be outrageously wrong. Remember that in 1776, walls weren't insulated, glass windows were expensive, and gossip was the primary local news source. The only expectation of privacy happened outside the town - and somebody probably would see you leaving.
By the same principle, consider that the morality of today may not apply in the future. One opinion currently changing is how free speech applies to corporate entities. Currently, corporations are allowed to choose how they conduct business as a matter of expression. This is how companies can choose not to do business with a group they find offensive or otherwise don't like. It's also how a company can make political donations to further their own goals. There's growing controversy surrounding both of these issues, so I expect that within the next few decades, we'll see a SCOTUS ruling clarifying how much free speech corporations (along with store managers, employees, and other representatives) can actually have while operating.
They have no power to insert things into the constitution that weren't there before...
...but the SCOTUS does have the power (and the duty) to interpret the law according to the circumstances at hand, reconciling the traditional written law with the current societal views. Ideally, the judicial branch is what determines whether something that is law is also right.
That "fire in a crowded theater" case? Used to arrest war [protesters].
Or, from the perspective of American citizens in 1919, the accused (Schenck) was weakening the American war effort, indirectly threatening the lives of every American. That infringes on their inherent and inalienable right to life, which as noted earlier, generally takes precedence over freedom of expression. The key detail in the ruling, of which "falsely shouting fire in a theatre" was an illustration, was that speech intended to create a "clear and present danger" should not be protected.
However, the SCOTUS was eventually swayed by later societal focus on the right of free expression. In 1969, another case reached the court (involving a man indirectly threatening the President), but the opinion had changed. The SCOTUS opined that even though the speech was advocating violence and literally even promoting treason, it was not directly inciting "imminent lawless action", so it should indeed be protected. That test remains the standard to this day, overriding the earlier "clear and present danger" concept.
Judging from your UID, you've been around long enough to know that moderate reactions and calm consideration aren't welcome here. There is a seminar next week on proper kneejerk technique. Your attendance is mandatory.
In America, you have freedom of speech... but it's the 18th-century definition of "speech", which is more accurately described by today's use of the word "expression", because you have the freedom to claim any idea you want, rather than being required to pretend you like whatever the government likes. Speaking of government, that's the only entity offering you that freedom. The government promises you free expression, but others are equally free to express displeasure at your expression, to the extent of their other rights. Businesses can refuse to serve you, newspapers can reject your letters to the editor, and other people can even burn you in effigy... because those are all protected speech/expression as well.
Of course, in the past 237 years, people have abused that freedom of expression to curtail others' rights. The Supreme Court has determined that the right to free expression is not as important as someone else's right to life, and it doesn't override rule of law, either. Speech that incites "imminent lawless action" is not protected, even from the government.
Americans have the freedom of expression. You can post your ideas on a billboard and display them (in a lawful manner), and you are completely safe from government prosecution and persecution for holding those views. You are not safe, however, from the consequences of pissing people off.
Slashdot Mirror
The easy way to teach economics to programmers:
s/economy/total money spent/ig
My dream is to see Windows become Unix... Unix under the hood, with a built-in WINE-like compatibility layer for everything legacy.
whenever they're pressured to explain the success of the Wii.
Nintendo's success is easily explained. The Wii simply isn't a video game console, so it never had to compete against the "real" consoles. Sure, it has gaming hardware like a console, and it connects to a TV like a console, and it uses controllers like a console, and it plays games like a console...
...But it's different. The whole system is designed to appeal not so much to "gamers", but more to grandparents. It is a console for the masses, to entertain everybody to some degree. It's not the system you turn to for the latest pixel-pushing eye candy. It's what you use to see a silly cartoon character run amok in a fantasy world.
To the kids of the 80s, this is a betrayal. Nintendo was there from the beginning, and now it's abandoned its loyal fan base. To Nintendo, this is what it has always done best, drawing on the heritage of the NES, Game Boy, and DS lines. It makes "entertainment systems", good for quick entertainment that doesn't require much thought. Whenever it's tried to push the limits of technology (N64 and Virtual Boy come to mind), they rush the technology without considering the humans using it. The Wii is very human-centric, from its very name to the first commercials ("Wii would like to play"), so it appeals to a large market that only slightly overlaps with the True Gamers.
That's why the gaming industry often seems to have trouble understanding the Wii. It's outside of their normal world, and perhaps rightly so.
catch people posing some threat to those around him
How about the people who aren't watching the intersection they're sitting at, so when the light turns green they instinctively hit the gas, rather than looking at the slow-moving pedestrians?
So let me get this straight... you mod based on whether someone agrees with your opinions, which were not formed with expertise as to the ramifications of such opinions, but rather were formed with a heavy conflict of interest?
Yes, that's exactly the problem.
Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up.
-Slashdot Moderation
Ostensibly, the moderation goal is both to demote what's not worth reading and to promote good comments.
Good Comments are insightful. You read them and are better off having read them. They add new information to a discussion. They are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.
Limiting browsing to +5 doesn't reduce noise enough. It just reduces volume. Rather than getting the comments that contribute most to the discussion, you just get the extreme views - with the favorite one repeated more. You're left with 90% redundant comments (but from different threads, so they weren't modded redundant), a few humorous gems out of context, and maybe, just maybe, that one voice of reason still buried in the shouting.
Not nearly as quickly as the advertisements bragging about curing the flu.
Our flu vaccine has saved millions of lives already, and will save billions by the decade's end! Now, we've brought that same medical ingenuity to Noshits, for immediate diarrhea relief!
Wrong.
chaff(that gets modded up, no less)
That's a self-sustaining mechanism of the Slashdot hivemind.
Despite our best wishes to the contrary, Slashdotters are terribly biased humans. We just know what's right, because we are all of such high intelligence and scientific mind, so we are blind to our own biases. Of course, anyone who agrees with us is probably coming to the same conclusion only because they are smart and rational, too... so we should mod them up, of course, for being such a fine, upstanding Slashdotter like ourselves. Should we then ever need to examine our own judgement, we have the karma system and our comment history showing that we were modded up, reinforcing the consensus regardless of truth.
This is painfully obvious on any thread concerning law, privacy, Big Data, religion, or economics. The hivemind has made up its mind on most aspects of these matters, so any comment parroting the approved opinion will be modded up, while any comment that opposes will be modded down, regardless of fact. Interestingly, these are fields in which the majority of Slashdotters are not experts, or even likely to be professionally involved in.
Consider law, for instance. There are very few actual lawyers regularly on Slashdot, and also very few who have any sort of legal education at all, but any story discussing the intricacies of patents or free speech is bound to have hundreds of comments, mostly along the lines of "patents are bad" or "I can say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone", and the mods will happily push such comments up to +5, Insightful. Occasionally a real lawyer will stumble in and offer some actual insight, but even if their post is well-received, it is limited to being only equal to the popular drivel, so it is quickly drowned out.
A system I've seen work well elsewhere is to have admin-promoted "top comments" for each story, where the admins doing the selection are encouraged to pick comments that are relevant, accurate, and unusual. a dozen comments repeating the same sentiment won't be picked, but one that puts forth a well-reasoned argument to the contrary is more likely.
Congress, the president, and the managers at the NSA all have conflicts of interest. The law of the land says "action X is illegal", but the NSA isn't really doing X... they're doing almost-but-not-quite-X action Y. Neither Congress or the president will stop them, because they want the results and don't care how it happens.
This position should be arranged so they have the power to say "We can't do X, because of these particular reasons", but can then approve Z which is just different enough to be legal. Whereas the rest of the NSA measures success by disrupting enemy plots and weakening enemy technology, the CLPO would measure success by the (lack of) programs that are questioned in those hearings.
Autism should be considered a permanent congenital illness, like ADHD or a deformity. Like any other illness, it doesn't mean the person is any less of a human worthy of dignity and respect. They're a person with a particular condition, but first and foremost they are a person.
There's a major difference between being capable of doing a job, and being able to hold the job. Mental illness isn't often evident in a quick interview, but after a few months on the job it may be obvious. He could then be fired for "poor attitude" or similar reason, especially if the employer doesn't understand the illness. After a few such events, his job history is full of short jobs that ended with him being fired, and that effectively ends his career.
IT specifically is a field full of outcasts. We have disproportionately high rates of several mental illnesses, especially on the autism spectrum. The people who never fit in anywhere else? They still don't fit in here, but it's okay because the rest of us don't, either.
Amusing either way.
expect a clampdown to get taxes from it, though it will be couched in verbiage of For The People they will demand government scrutiny and regulation.
It doesn't need to be. Americans are already legally obligated to report capital gains from trading in Bitcoins, and any income measured in Bitcoins must be reported as income, converted to dollars. If people aren't reporting such details, they're actually engaging in tax evasion, and can be caught just like any other evaders.
Having gone through the investigation process myself, it turns out it's not really that big of a deal. The IRS sends you a letter with a phone number, which you can call and talk to an agent about it. Being willing to correct mistakes is a big factor in resolving the issue quickly. If someone doesn't report Bitcoins because they don't realize they have to, they can just file an amendment to their return that reflects the correct figures, and send in a check to cover the difference. The IRS will check the return again, and determine whether they believe it or not. Repeat as necessary. Again, the key is to not be hostile towards the IRS. Believe it or not, they're people, too.
In my case, I got a notice saying the IRS thought I owed a few thousand dollars. I rechecked my paperwork, found that I owed about $400, and sent in an amendment and a check. They responded saying they didn't accept a certain deduction for which I had no verifiable paperwork. I sent in a signed letter attesting that it was valid. They then sent me a notice saying that they owed me a few hundred dollars, along with a check. The numbers all finally matched, so that was the end of it.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Maybe, or maybe not. If he has to do this, because he's unable to obtain any other employment even with heavy searching, then yes. If he prefers this to any other position or hasn't tried to find such a position, then no.
The biggest problem in charity is telling the difference between the two.
Bitcoin has extra marketing value. People can donate Bitcoins rather than dollars, and they feel like they're somehow working outside "the system", as though the US government couldn't see or track what's going on. Really, the government can't track cash, either, but cash is old and familiar, where Bitcoin is new and exciting.
This is Slashdot. We keep hackers' hours. If you're lucky, 30% are awake, and 5% are functional.
The same problem applies in all activism scenarios, whether we're discussing nuclear power, fracking, education, human rights, politics or war.
On the one side, you have all the people who cry for an absolute stop to the activity in question, and the other side will be pushing for the absolute requirement to do whatever it is. The two extremes dominate the debate, and anyone not in an extreme is derided as not being dedicated to the particular cause. Both sides are full of PhD-holding experts in tangentially-related fields, who are certain that some particular report from several years ago is the definitive truth of the matter - and anyone unfamiliar with that particular work isn't qualified to hold an opinion.
Of course, since neither side will entertain the other's perspective, they certainly don't bother comparing notes or discussing compromises. Whenever the other side does attempt any concession, it's just an obvious ruse, since the other side is so much more argumentative and outright evil. The only solution is to fight, with all our power and budget, to stir up grassroots support for our cause, and resist all the opposition's efforts to infiltrate and undermine our endeavor.
I think the computation to turn it into a (one-color) projector would be pretty much a straight 2-D FFT times a nonliinear tweak to deal with energy-stealing among modes.
And that means a full-color high-quality laser projector is just over 3x as expensive, but still feasible. I, for one, am excited.
Type 3 buys patents from type 1, allowing type 1 to invent more (or recoup the initial investment).
That means that types 2 and 3 are effectively competitors, both trying to get the license from type 1. However, type 3 will buy from type 1 any time on speculation of future profit, whereas type 2 will only buy from type 1 when the patent is immediately useful. That's why type 3 is so often found associating with "pure research" type 1s, where profitable applications aren't clearly visible.
Those "leeches" provide the hedge bets that make invention a less-risky investment. Like any other risk-reducing entity, they take a cut of the profits in exchange for taking on the risk. It's not terribly different from buying insurance or investing with a diverse portfolio.
He made his students' research into actual working inventions. That's what patents are supposed to cover - the working form, with all of the show-stopping problems worked out enough to have a functional device. Pure research isn't patentable, because without an application it just adds to the pile of useless facts about the world.
Yes, SCOTUS exists to reconcile laws with the current views. Laws are slow to change, whereas technology and morality can change overnight.
When current societal views say [bad things] are we still okay with SCOTUS...
Just stop right there. "We" are society. If current views are in favor of censoring speech, that means that Americans generally consider such censorship to be right. Since this is a democracy, ruled by the people, it is ultimately the people's opinions that matter most, even more than the original wording of the law.
There are many good reasons to reject the morality of 1776 to suit modern tastes. Eliminating the three-fifths compromise is a glaring example, along with expanding voting rights, abolishing slavery, implementing term limits, and federating infrastructure. When the Constitution was written, society generally assumed that such changes would be unnecessary. After all, it was really only white male landowners who did anything politically anyway, so naturally they were the only ones who needed to be able to vote.
Privacy, as you so blindly pointed out, is another reason to diverge from the Constitution's original intent. In the decades leading up to the Constitution's writing, the British military had used searches as a means to deny service to colonists. If someone had annoyed the local commander, they could expect their shop to be shut down for the next week while soldiers searched/destroyed it for no particular reason, with no oversight. The Fourth Amendment was included not to ensure secrecy, but to protect only against harassment. Note that it's placed in context with the right to not quarter troops, and the right to not incriminate yourself. That's why the Fourth Amendment's applicability to third-party storage is in question, because a search that doesn't interrupt your daily business is much less likely to be harassment.
More recently, though, the expectation for a "reasonable" search has grown to include respect for secrecy as well. Society's idea of "reasonable" has now shifted enough that a SCOTUS ruling in accordance with the original intent would be outrageously wrong. Remember that in 1776, walls weren't insulated, glass windows were expensive, and gossip was the primary local news source. The only expectation of privacy happened outside the town - and somebody probably would see you leaving.
By the same principle, consider that the morality of today may not apply in the future. One opinion currently changing is how free speech applies to corporate entities. Currently, corporations are allowed to choose how they conduct business as a matter of expression. This is how companies can choose not to do business with a group they find offensive or otherwise don't like. It's also how a company can make political donations to further their own goals. There's growing controversy surrounding both of these issues, so I expect that within the next few decades, we'll see a SCOTUS ruling clarifying how much free speech corporations (along with store managers, employees, and other representatives) can actually have while operating.
They have no power to insert things into the constitution that weren't there before...
...but the SCOTUS does have the power (and the duty) to interpret the law according to the circumstances at hand, reconciling the traditional written law with the current societal views. Ideally, the judicial branch is what determines whether something that is law is also right.
That "fire in a crowded theater" case? Used to arrest war [protesters].
Or, from the perspective of American citizens in 1919, the accused (Schenck) was weakening the American war effort, indirectly threatening the lives of every American. That infringes on their inherent and inalienable right to life, which as noted earlier, generally takes precedence over freedom of expression. The key detail in the ruling, of which "falsely shouting fire in a theatre" was an illustration, was that speech intended to create a "clear and present danger" should not be protected.
However, the SCOTUS was eventually swayed by later societal focus on the right of free expression. In 1969, another case reached the court (involving a man indirectly threatening the President), but the opinion had changed. The SCOTUS opined that even though the speech was advocating violence and literally even promoting treason, it was not directly inciting "imminent lawless action", so it should indeed be protected. That test remains the standard to this day, overriding the earlier "clear and present danger" concept.
Judging from your UID, you've been around long enough to know that moderate reactions and calm consideration aren't welcome here. There is a seminar next week on proper kneejerk technique. Your attendance is mandatory.
In America, you have freedom of speech... but it's the 18th-century definition of "speech", which is more accurately described by today's use of the word "expression", because you have the freedom to claim any idea you want, rather than being required to pretend you like whatever the government likes. Speaking of government, that's the only entity offering you that freedom. The government promises you free expression, but others are equally free to express displeasure at your expression, to the extent of their other rights. Businesses can refuse to serve you, newspapers can reject your letters to the editor, and other people can even burn you in effigy... because those are all protected speech/expression as well.
Of course, in the past 237 years, people have abused that freedom of expression to curtail others' rights. The Supreme Court has determined that the right to free expression is not as important as someone else's right to life, and it doesn't override rule of law, either. Speech that incites "imminent lawless action" is not protected, even from the government.
Americans have the freedom of expression. You can post your ideas on a billboard and display them (in a lawful manner), and you are completely safe from government prosecution and persecution for holding those views. You are not safe, however, from the consequences of pissing people off.