The fact that a particular communist country committed crimes and posed a threat does not make communism an invalid viewpoint. Does the fact that a capitalist country (you can pick from several if you know any history at all) did similar things mean that capitalism is an invalid viewpoint?
If you can't read history, at least try to think logically.
Pretty simple, actually. You have the right to free speech as long as you're not infringing on someone else's civil liberties. This isn't something I'm making up myself, you know - the right to free speech is not and never has been absolute. Hate speech is already illegal under many circumstances in the United States, and in most other "progressive" countries. I don't have a problem with that.
I do have a problem with some of the "obscenity" laws, because they trample on the free speech of people who are not harming anyone else, except perhaps in their sensibilities. If I'd been around in HUAC times, I'd have objected to McCarthy - not because I am a Communist (I'm not) but because that was and is a legitimate viewpoint, even though I disagree with it.
My point is that it's naive to try and see the issue as being simply "free speech" vs. "total censorship"; it is not now, nor has it ever been that simple. The question is not whether but how much free speech is allowed.
Tell me this: were you not anonymous, would I be justified in telling the world that you kidnap and rape children, or roast kittens on a dark alter? If not, am I justified in saying that, say, Jews do those things in secret ceremonies?
I disagree, actually. I once held this point of view, because it's easier to maintain absolutes (NO! Never! Under no circumstances shall we inhibit free speech in any way!) than to be realistic.
No country has totally free speech - if nothing else, it is not legal to advocate armed rebellion in any country I'm aware of. The U.S. (where I live) comes closer than most, but even here you can't advocate violent rebellion; you also can't slander or libel an individual (including corporations), nor can you engage in inflammatory "hate speech" in situations where this is likely to cause harm to others, i.e. cause a riot.
Forbidding people to tell lies about "races" of people strikes me as a reasonable extension of forbidding them to tell lies about individuals or corporations. Forbidding people from advocating genocide and/or the re-institution of chattel slavery strikes me as something which should be prevented, whether the speaker is in the immediate presence of a potential race riot or miles away from it.
As I said, there's no such thing as free speech, any more than there's such a thing as a free lunch. What we get is lunch included in the price of something else, and the cost of "free" speech is to my mind the same as the cost of allowing citizens to freely arm themselves: if the "right" (which is actually a privelege) is abused and turned toward the harm of others in the society, then you lose the right. There's a difference between stifling free expression of ideas and stamping out a memetic disease like racism.
If there was a Mr. (or Ms.) Qwerty Keyboard I doubt he's bragging on it. I mean, a device with inefficiency actually deliberately built into it?
If there's anyone unfamiliar with the story, the qwerty was designed in the days of manual typewriters to *slow down* typists, so that the keys on their long metal arms wouldn't get stuck together.
With the advent of the electric typewriter (much less the word processor) this was no longer a concern.
A. Dvorak came up with a more rational design which made some headway because of its inherently superior design, but by that time all the secretarial schools had developed 'efficient' touch-typing methods.
So there was this compatibility problem as all the typewriters out there were qwerty and it was a pain to switch back and forth... so the inferior design won out due to its pre-existing market share.
One generally uses VCRs for the purpose of playing movies, even though they can be used for copyright violation. Shall we outlaw VCRs? They can, after all, not only play back but also record or copy movies, audio tracks and even digital information (back in the dim and murky past, I actually used an old Betamax as a storage device for my BBC Micro).
Gotta love that image of the crowbar-wielding hacker breaking open the MPAA's desk drawers, though I'd say it was probably more along the lines of a screwdriver and a bent coat hanger!;)
If the problem is that the keys are too random, all that is necessary is to make them arbitrary instead. Rather than a key string of "qliyufg;erqvb qfiyfiv b(&^$E*O11 651" use "the azure frog, jealous of a new day"Or, to get a bit more sophisticated (albeit while reducing the opportunity for creative writing), use an actual section of code as a key.
You want an issue: this is it. Law & Order is not an excuse for unreasonable search and seizure.
This is the issue. Okay, under the law this stuff may be illegal & maybe the law should be rewritten (for clarity if nothing else). Maybe the federal police will take good care of the stuff, maybe not. Maybe not! That's the point!
A handwritten inventory sheet without identifiers, signatures, et cetera, and without the owner of the properties even being allowed to check them against the list? I'm absolutely astonished that Mr. Violanti considers this adequate documentation; apart from the missed opportunity to establish chain of custody, it is an open invitation to corruption on the part of the seizing officials.
Note that I'm not saying these officers, or indeed any officers in particular, are corrupt; I'm saying that if this is the way they conduct raids then there is no accountability. The police have enormous powers; without accountability how can we rely on those powers being used with commensurate responsibility?
Well, I'm proud to be a Mick, or Paddy if you prefer. My British buddies don't generally mind Limey much anymore, though why they should is beyond me anyway (the reference is to the days when theirs were the only sailors without scurvey, as they carried limes on long voyages). Boy oh boy, though, do people in the Southern US get irked when they find out the rest of the world calls them yanks too! As in so many things, it ain't what you say it's the way that you say it! "We're geeks, we're perspicacious, we can spell it and we know what it means!"? Nah, doesn't scan does it?
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't read history, at least try to think logically.
I do have a problem with some of the "obscenity" laws, because they trample on the free speech of people who are not harming anyone else, except perhaps in their sensibilities. If I'd been around in HUAC times, I'd have objected to McCarthy - not because I am a Communist (I'm not) but because that was and is a legitimate viewpoint, even though I disagree with it.
My point is that it's naive to try and see the issue as being simply "free speech" vs. "total censorship"; it is not now, nor has it ever been that simple. The question is not whether but how much free speech is allowed.
Tell me this: were you not anonymous, would I be justified in telling the world that you kidnap and rape children, or roast kittens on a dark alter? If not, am I justified in saying that, say, Jews do those things in secret ceremonies?
No country has totally free speech - if nothing else, it is not legal to advocate armed rebellion in any country I'm aware of. The U.S. (where I live) comes closer than most, but even here you can't advocate violent rebellion; you also can't slander or libel an individual (including corporations), nor can you engage in inflammatory "hate speech" in situations where this is likely to cause harm to others, i.e. cause a riot.
Forbidding people to tell lies about "races" of people strikes me as a reasonable extension of forbidding them to tell lies about individuals or corporations. Forbidding people from advocating genocide and/or the re-institution of chattel slavery strikes me as something which should be prevented, whether the speaker is in the immediate presence of a potential race riot or miles away from it.
As I said, there's no such thing as free speech, any more than there's such a thing as a free lunch. What we get is lunch included in the price of something else, and the cost of "free" speech is to my mind the same as the cost of allowing citizens to freely arm themselves: if the "right" (which is actually a privelege) is abused and turned toward the harm of others in the society, then you lose the right. There's a difference between stifling free expression of ideas and stamping out a memetic disease like racism.
If there's anyone unfamiliar with the story, the qwerty was designed in the days of manual typewriters to *slow down* typists, so that the keys on their long metal arms wouldn't get stuck together.
With the advent of the electric typewriter (much less the word processor) this was no longer a concern.A. Dvorak came up with a more rational design which made some headway because of its inherently superior design, but by that time all the secretarial schools had developed 'efficient' touch-typing methods.
So there was this compatibility problem as all the typewriters out there were qwerty and it was a pain to switch back and forth... so the inferior design won out due to its pre-existing market share.
Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?
Gotta love that image of the crowbar-wielding hacker breaking open the MPAA's desk drawers, though I'd say it was probably more along the lines of a screwdriver and a bent coat hanger! ;)
If the problem is that the keys are too random, all that is necessary is to make them arbitrary instead. Rather than a key string of "qliyufg;erqvb qfiyfiv b(&^$E*O11 651" use "the azure frog, jealous of a new day"Or, to get a bit more sophisticated (albeit while reducing the opportunity for creative writing), use an actual section of code as a key.
This is the issue. Okay, under the law this stuff may be illegal & maybe the law should be rewritten (for clarity if nothing else). Maybe the federal police will take good care of the stuff, maybe not. Maybe not! That's the point!
A handwritten inventory sheet without identifiers, signatures, et cetera, and without the owner of the properties even being allowed to check them against the list? I'm absolutely astonished that Mr. Violanti considers this adequate documentation; apart from the missed opportunity to establish chain of custody, it is an open invitation to corruption on the part of the seizing officials.
Note that I'm not saying these officers, or indeed any officers in particular, are corrupt; I'm saying that if this is the way they conduct raids then there is no accountability. The police have enormous powers; without accountability how can we rely on those powers being used with commensurate responsibility?
Well, I'm proud to be a Mick, or Paddy if you prefer. My British buddies don't generally mind Limey much anymore, though why they should is beyond me anyway (the reference is to the days when theirs were the only sailors without scurvey, as they carried limes on long voyages).
Boy oh boy, though, do people in the Southern US get irked when they find out the rest of the world calls them yanks too!
As in so many things, it ain't what you say it's the way that you say it!
"We're geeks, we're perspicacious, we can spell it and we know what it means!"? Nah, doesn't scan does it?