The placing of the word 'joke' in inverted commas in this 'story' shows that it is no story, but the ranting of one who couldn't detect a joke if it struck him on the forehead. Or maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is not aware of what inverted commas signify.
I think there's a lesson in here somewhere...oh! Here it is! "Don't threaten to kill people or request others to do so in writing, in public!" I think I'll abide by that one for the rest of my days. Actually, I think I already was, because it's, oh, I don't know, common sense? I mean, what did these people think was going to happen?
The joke is that the woman who he "said should be stoned" said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because Muslim culture allows for stoning.
He then "said she should be stoned."
The implication here is that she has no right to complain about him wanting to have someone stoned.
Hallelujah! But where's the +5 Insightful this comment deserves?
Forget that comment, where's the +5 Insightful for the councilman's twitter post? Of course, we would also have to mod it -5 criminal, but you take the good with the bad, I guess.
Dude...that's so meta...I think you just blew my mind. It's like when the Offspring sold T-shirts with the Napster logo on them, and Napster sued them for copyright infringement.
I posted this, and then realized, 50% of slashdot is probably too young to remember Napster...
The joke is that the woman who he "said should be stoned" said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because Muslim culture allows for stoning.
He then "said she should be stoned."
The implication here is that she has no right to complain about him wanting to have someone stoned.
Dude...that's so meta...I think you just blew my mind. It's like when the Offspring sold T-shirts with the Napster logo on them, and Napster sued them for copyright infringement.
On the other hand, saying "oh come on guys, it was just a joke!" seems like it could easily turn into the "insanity" plea.
Unlikely. See, what most people don't know and never bother to find out because they're too busying being incensed over people "getting off" under an insanity plea, is that while you don't go to jail if you plead insanity, you instead go to a prison mental ward... where you can be kept forever.
It's true. My Criminal Law prof. ran our state's corrections system for five years and he told us nobody in their right mind would actually want to plead insanity, because the psychiatric facilities for the criminally insane are far more unpleasant places than any of the prisons. They keep you there as long as you are deemed a threat to yourself or others, which is very unlikely to be less than the prison term you got out of and fairly likely to be more. People so far out of their right mind that they can neither function in prison nor in society are the only ones that should go there.
And even if it were a purposeful incitement to violence --
Who is truly responsible there -- the person urging violence, or the people who actually take it upon themselves to commit the violence that is urged??
Ummm, the law is pretty clear on this. People who take it upon themselves are responsible for murder or manslaughter or battery, people who incite the violence in a manner like this are responsible for the lesser charge of incitement of [murder|manslaughter|battery] or possibly solicitation of [murder|manslaughter|battery]. If the people urging violence take part in the planning or materially aid the violent actors, they can be held just as responsible as said actors. This seems perfectly logical to me; there is no one person "truly responsible" at the exclusion of the others. There are more responsible and less responsible parties, but why should one be off the hook just because the other threw the stone or pulled the trigger?
What about when you get pissed off at someone and say "God, I want to kill you!". You cannot prove you weren't serious. Common sense would tell you this man didn't want to actually kill someone.
"God, I want to kill you!" is neither a threat nor a solicitation. "I will kill you" is a threat of violence. "Would someone please kill [so-and-so]?" is a solicitation of violence, which is (usually) an even more serious crime than a threat. It's not a crime to want to kill someone. It is a crime to request that they be killed.
Bullshit....I don't know about you, but the people on my city council I really don't care what they say personally or not. This isn't an MP, this isn't the Queen, this isn't David Cameron or Nick Clegg saying this its some random city council member....Free speech should be free speech, especially when it comes to things that are obviously jokes...
So our legal standard should be "Would Darkness404 listen to a command from this person? No? Then it *must* be a joke entitled to protection!"
>>>Your freedom to swing your words stops at deathtreats.
Not in the US where the supreme court has ruled again-and-again that speech is fully protected. The only exception is if the person issuing the death-threat is holding a gun or knife at the time, and the victim is in immediatee danger.
It is interesting to ask whether speech protections should include the right to say, "Give an opinion that I don't like and I shall call for your death."
It's one thing to state that general proposition and expect to be protected. It's quite another to actually call for the individual person's death by name and expect to be protected.
The last thing most projects need is a bunch of clueless n00bs filling up the mailing list with "OMG how do I run make", and I see no evidence that your "training" will produce anything else.
...teaching people how to use make will cause more people to go "OMG how do I run make?".
I momentarily forgot that the definition of "scam" was "hold a gun to someone's head." My mistake.
Apparently you define it as someone listening to an idea that you oppose and concluding it's the right way to go.
You're pretty good at twisting logic. I thought it was clear that my definition of scam was "listening to a statement that is false and concluding it's the right way to go", given that I conditioned my statement about scamming on the premise that Ballmer's line was incorrect, without stating whether I believed that premise true or false.
But since the meaning of "otherwise" in my sentence appears not to be as clear as I had hoped, let me break it down for you: I basically said "hopefully [A] is a bad idea, because if [A] turns out to have been a good idea, then [person paying money to convince people to oppose A] scammed the electorate." This has nothing to do with whether I support or oppose [A]. It only has to do with whether the thing people ended up believing ([A] is bad) was true or false, which I don't presume to be able to answer.
First I would take issue with the word Conservative and recommend replacing it with Republican. Believe it or not there is a difference. For example, George W. Bush and his Republican Congress were definitely not Conservative,
Funny, they all called themselves conservatives, and voters who self-identify as "conservative" repeatedly voted for them. But I'm not talking about George W. Bush or the Republican congress in my original post. I'm talking about ordinary folks who live in small towns like the one where I grew up who call themselves conservative, and I'm talking about pundits like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter who are considered conservative voices, and I'm talking about Tea Partiers who think wearing those funny hats gives them more standing to talk about the Constitution than people who've actually studied the Constitution.
they clearly spent to much in general...
So your definition of "Conservative" is "not spending too much"? What about Reagan, who ran on a platform of fiscal and social conservatism and then dramatically enlarged federal spending? What about Edmund Burke? The traditional definition of conservative has always been support for traditional institutions and opposition to social change. I know that ever since Goldwater published "Conscience of a Conservative" the movement has been hitched to fiscal responsibility as part of its ideological platform, but that doesn't make fiscal responsibility the definition of conservative.
As far as the article goes, if it is protected by the Constitution or any federal law in compliance with the Constitution then they may have a case. If its not they have nothing.
Of course, but many conservatives I've known don't see it that way. Many conservatives I've known don't care about Constitutional freedoms when they're invoked by pornographers, or gays, or people who might be terrorists, or people who've had abortions. I say the Constitution applies to all equally.
Which way does this fall? I don't know. Not happy about the way it falls in the end? Vote for people who will change the law as you think it should be changed.
I plan on so voting. What does that have to do with criticizing conservative hypocrisy?
Slashdot Mirror
Amnesty International leaves out You!
(Sadly, probably true)
Are you aware that England and Britain are different?
Are you aware of synecdoche?
It's not synecdoche if someone's just being an idiot.
The placing of the word 'joke' in inverted commas in this 'story' shows that it is no story, but the ranting of one who couldn't detect a joke if it struck him on the forehead. Or maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is not aware of what inverted commas signify.
WTF are 'inverted commas'?
I think there's a lesson in here somewhere...oh! Here it is! "Don't threaten to kill people or request others to do so in writing, in public!" I think I'll abide by that one for the rest of my days. Actually, I think I already was, because it's, oh, I don't know, common sense? I mean, what did these people think was going to happen?
The joke is that the woman who he "said should be stoned" said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because Muslim culture allows for stoning.
He then "said she should be stoned."
The implication here is that she has no right to complain about him wanting to have someone stoned.
Hallelujah! But where's the +5 Insightful this comment deserves?
Forget that comment, where's the +5 Insightful for the councilman's twitter post? Of course, we would also have to mod it -5 criminal, but you take the good with the bad, I guess.
Dude...that's so meta...I think you just blew my mind. It's like when the Offspring sold T-shirts with the Napster logo on them, and Napster sued them for copyright infringement.
I posted this, and then realized, 50% of slashdot is probably too young to remember Napster...
The joke is that the woman who he "said should be stoned" said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because Muslim culture allows for stoning. He then "said she should be stoned." The implication here is that she has no right to complain about him wanting to have someone stoned.
Dude...that's so meta...I think you just blew my mind. It's like when the Offspring sold T-shirts with the Napster logo on them, and Napster sued them for copyright infringement.
Given the context it is entirely obvious it is a joke. Giver her idiotic stance, she deserves to be offended.
But does she deserve to be stoned? That is the question.
p>
There's no slander involved here.
Besides which, one has to wonder how one could slander to death. I'm picturing a coroner's report saying "Cause of Death: Slander."
...is that he used the word "shan't". In the 21st Century.
Does this mean we can stone bad comedians? That's way more satisfying than chucking tomatoes.
On the other hand, saying "oh come on guys, it was just a joke!" seems like it could easily turn into the "insanity" plea.
Unlikely. See, what most people don't know and never bother to find out because they're too busying being incensed over people "getting off" under an insanity plea, is that while you don't go to jail if you plead insanity, you instead go to a prison mental ward... where you can be kept forever.
It's true. My Criminal Law prof. ran our state's corrections system for five years and he told us nobody in their right mind would actually want to plead insanity, because the psychiatric facilities for the criminally insane are far more unpleasant places than any of the prisons. They keep you there as long as you are deemed a threat to yourself or others, which is very unlikely to be less than the prison term you got out of and fairly likely to be more. People so far out of their right mind that they can neither function in prison nor in society are the only ones that should go there.
And even if it were a purposeful incitement to violence --
Who is truly responsible there -- the person urging violence, or the people who actually take it upon themselves to commit the violence that is urged??
Ummm, the law is pretty clear on this. People who take it upon themselves are responsible for murder or manslaughter or battery, people who incite the violence in a manner like this are responsible for the lesser charge of incitement of [murder|manslaughter|battery] or possibly solicitation of [murder|manslaughter|battery]. If the people urging violence take part in the planning or materially aid the violent actors, they can be held just as responsible as said actors. This seems perfectly logical to me; there is no one person "truly responsible" at the exclusion of the others. There are more responsible and less responsible parties, but why should one be off the hook just because the other threw the stone or pulled the trigger?
What about when you get pissed off at someone and say "God, I want to kill you!". You cannot prove you weren't serious. Common sense would tell you this man didn't want to actually kill someone.
"God, I want to kill you!" is neither a threat nor a solicitation. "I will kill you" is a threat of violence. "Would someone please kill [so-and-so]?" is a solicitation of violence, which is (usually) an even more serious crime than a threat. It's not a crime to want to kill someone. It is a crime to request that they be killed.
Bullshit....I don't know about you, but the people on my city council I really don't care what they say personally or not. This isn't an MP, this isn't the Queen, this isn't David Cameron or Nick Clegg saying this its some random city council member....Free speech should be free speech, especially when it comes to things that are obviously jokes...
So our legal standard should be "Would Darkness404 listen to a command from this person? No? Then it *must* be a joke entitled to protection!"
If you start down the path of kowtowing to people whose mental deficiencies give them homicidal tendencies, you don't solve any problems. Ever.
Yeah. They tried that in Shutter Island and it totally didn't work.
>>>Your freedom to swing your words stops at deathtreats.
Not in the US where the supreme court has ruled again-and-again that speech is fully protected. The only exception is if the person issuing the death-threat is holding a gun or knife at the time, and the victim is in immediatee danger.
Where did you go to law school?
It is interesting to ask whether speech protections should include the right to say, "Give an opinion that I don't like and I shall call for your death."
It's one thing to state that general proposition and expect to be protected. It's quite another to actually call for the individual person's death by name and expect to be protected.
Maybe, but he still shouldn't be arrested for it!
Shouldn't be arrested for requesting that someone be killed? What's your logic for that?
Obviously he should have phrased it "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome columnist?"
Also might've helped if he'd been the King of England, not some lowly city councilman.
I was going to say something like, shoot me for not being native english and heavy dyslextic.
There you go, taking all the fun out of my wild speculation. I prefer my theory.
The last thing most projects need is a bunch of clueless n00bs filling up the mailing list with "OMG how do I run make", and I see no evidence that your "training" will produce anything else.
...teaching people how to use make will cause more people to go "OMG how do I run make?".
Most computer science students don't know how to write code. So it doesn't matter at all.
I feel like your spelling of experiance is some level of brilliant meta-commentary that I'm not qualified to understand.
I momentarily forgot that the definition of "scam" was "hold a gun to someone's head." My mistake.
Apparently you define it as someone listening to an idea that you oppose and concluding it's the right way to go.
You're pretty good at twisting logic. I thought it was clear that my definition of scam was "listening to a statement that is false and concluding it's the right way to go", given that I conditioned my statement about scamming on the premise that Ballmer's line was incorrect, without stating whether I believed that premise true or false.
But since the meaning of "otherwise" in my sentence appears not to be as clear as I had hoped, let me break it down for you: I basically said "hopefully [A] is a bad idea, because if [A] turns out to have been a good idea, then [person paying money to convince people to oppose A] scammed the electorate." This has nothing to do with whether I support or oppose [A]. It only has to do with whether the thing people ended up believing ([A] is bad) was true or false, which I don't presume to be able to answer.
First I would take issue with the word Conservative and recommend replacing it with Republican. Believe it or not there is a difference. For example, George W. Bush and his Republican Congress were definitely not Conservative,
Funny, they all called themselves conservatives, and voters who self-identify as "conservative" repeatedly voted for them. But I'm not talking about George W. Bush or the Republican congress in my original post. I'm talking about ordinary folks who live in small towns like the one where I grew up who call themselves conservative, and I'm talking about pundits like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter who are considered conservative voices, and I'm talking about Tea Partiers who think wearing those funny hats gives them more standing to talk about the Constitution than people who've actually studied the Constitution.
they clearly spent to much in general...
So your definition of "Conservative" is "not spending too much"? What about Reagan, who ran on a platform of fiscal and social conservatism and then dramatically enlarged federal spending? What about Edmund Burke? The traditional definition of conservative has always been support for traditional institutions and opposition to social change. I know that ever since Goldwater published "Conscience of a Conservative" the movement has been hitched to fiscal responsibility as part of its ideological platform, but that doesn't make fiscal responsibility the definition of conservative.
As far as the article goes, if it is protected by the Constitution or any federal law in compliance with the Constitution then they may have a case. If its not they have nothing.
Of course, but many conservatives I've known don't see it that way. Many conservatives I've known don't care about Constitutional freedoms when they're invoked by pornographers, or gays, or people who might be terrorists, or people who've had abortions. I say the Constitution applies to all equally.
Which way does this fall? I don't know. Not happy about the way it falls in the end? Vote for people who will change the law as you think it should be changed.
I plan on so voting. What does that have to do with criticizing conservative hypocrisy?