That doesn't necessarily mean that some ambient electrical field temporarily froze her brain. More likely is an evolutionary fight-or-flight response was triggered but since the threat (thunder clap) couldn't be seen or its direction sufficiently ascertained, the response was to freeze in place until the threat passed (or until further information came in as to where it was coming from/what was making it).
a) Twitter was alerted to the accounts and didn't shut them down. and b) the case is about the previous or about Twitter not shutting down accounts BEFORE being alerted to them.
Twitter can't be expected to see all tweets coming through and somehow determine which ones are bad and which aren't. Is the account saying "Death to America!" because they want to blow us up? Or is it saying that because it's some sort of in-joke between friends online? Software won't be able to tell and there's no way Twitter employees can read EVERY tweet.
This is exactly why the common carrier concept was formed. So that companies providing a method for communication don't get sued merely because of the existence of some bad speech on the platform.
And even if you terminate an account, it's trivial for the person or people behind it to set up another account. I've experienced this personally. A person was harassing me and a bunch of other people on Twitter so we reported her. Her account was banned. She started a new account and harassed us again. We reported her again and she was banned again. She made a new account again, etc. The cycle would repeat sometimes dozens of times a day. In fact, she's still on Twitter today (though she's backed off from harassing me for the moment).
This is for a woman with obvious mental issues (she believes that god talks to her, tells her crimes people commit, and she threatens to report people to the police on Twitter) and very little technical skills. Imagine if you had a technical organization backing your behavior. If they banned the e-mail account you signed up with, it would be trivial to get others. If they banned your IP address, it would be easy to use VPNs or compromised computers to get around that ban. In short, Twitter could kick you out, but there's no way to stop you from waltzing right back in.
Actually, as I understand it, early Christianity accepted Joseph being married to Mary and that Mary wasn't a virgin. However, they tweaked their own religion to "sell it" to the various tribes they absorbed. That's how many Christmas traditions were formed - Christianity absorbed the winter celebration traditions of some Germanic tribes and put a "Jesus" spin on it. In the case of Mary, some tribes valued virginity so Christians declared retroactively that Mary was actually a virgin and Joseph got shoved aside.
Actually, Dumbledore planned for Snape to kill him, because this would have meant the Elder Wand wouldn't have had a new master. (Malfoy's disarming did ruin that plan.) Voldemort thought that Snape was the master of the Elder Wand because he killed Dumbledore, not realizing that a simple disarming was all that was needed to pass ownership.
“The fact is that, although the new software may enhance privacy for some users, it severely hampers law enforcement’s ability to aid victims. All of the evidence contained in smartphones and similar devices will be lost to law enforcement, so long as the criminals take the precaution of protecting their devices with passcodes. Of course they will do so. Simply stated, passcode-protected devices render lawful court orders meaningless and encourage criminals to act with impunity.”
And here I thought that the standard was "If a technology has a substantial legal use, it's considered legal even if some people use it for illegal purposes."
I look forward to the ban on automobiles. After all, "even though cars may help some people get around, they are used by some criminals to outrun police pursuing them on foot and thus the criminals will act with impunity."
I can just see the argument here: "The Supreme Court ruled that "limited Copyright terms" are still limited even if they expire in 100 years. Therefore, our encrypted phones can be decrypted as far as the law is concerned. Yes, it would take 100+ years to decrypt, but that's a finite period of time and thus should be allowed."
Then, we can either throw out "all phones must be able to be decrypted" or "100+ year Copyright is still 'limited'."
"There have been times we've been pulling bodies out of cars and these people are standing there, snapping pictures on their phones to post on Facebook. It's just not right."
There are many things people can do that might be in poor taste, but won't be illegal. If these people are standing on the sidelines and not preventing emergency services from getting to the injured/dead, then they aren't doing anything illegal. Will we next require people to intervene instead of standing on the sidelines? (Not minding that Random Person intervening might make the problem worse.) If the people are interfering with emergency services, then that SHOULD be illegal. However, it's not the "taking photos/posting on social media" aspect that's illegal. That's just a side issue to people blocking emergency services in their quest to get a photo for Facebook.
Somehow, though, I doubt this guy's talking about people mobbing a scene and instead thinks he needs to regulate what is and isn't in poor taste.
Upon reading more about this, it also seems that this isn't a new law, but a clarification of an existing law. The Federal law was written so vague that you could be arrested for letting Timmy walk a couple of block to school by himself. This clarifies the law to say that this isn't a violation of the law. It's a good clarification, but I'm still conflicted over having the Federal law in the first place.
"Protect the children" laws often start with the best of intentions but often stray from their original intention. Some protections ARE needed (e.g. leaving a 5 year old for two days by himself is child endangerment) but we need to be really careful about how we enshrine them in law since what is needed protection for a 5 year old might not be for a 10 year old or a 15 year old (still counted as a minor).
The purpose is running scared of the terrorists they imagine lurking within every shadow. They see things in the world only under the context of "Could a terrorist use this against us in any way, shape, or form no matter how unlikely?" If the answer is yes, then the thing must be banned or, at least, highly secured.
For example, the shoe bomber tried unsuccessfully to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. They are scared that another one might succeed so now we need to remove all shoes when going through airport security. All because one guy tried something and now the guys in charge think someone else might try it too. (Thank goodness they didn't follow the Underwear Bomber with a "get naked in the TSA line" requirement.)
So encryption might be used by businesses and individuals to secure their private transactions in a completely law-abiding fashion, but the people making these laws think one or two people might use encryption for terrorism purposes so the only way to protect us to to ban encryption and weaken us.
Also, strong passwords have been shown to hinder law enforcement from entering someone's account - which they promise they'd only do when approved by a judge and no they aren't crossing their fingers behind their back. Therefore, all passwords must now be "12345". As a bonus, nobody will ever be locked out of their luggage ever again!
The difference is that surgery only affects you. If you don't get surgery, you won't put anyone other than yourself at risk. Therefore surgery is a decision that should be yours alone to make (hopefully as informed by a doctor, though even that is optional).
Not vaccinating, on the other hand, exposes more than your own children to disease: Babies too young to be vaccinated, people with immune disorders, and people for whom the vaccines didn't "take" (vaccines aren't 100% - close but not 100%). You might have the right to decide your children's medical fate, but you don't have the right to have your children infect others.
For a historical reference, see Typhoid Mary. She was a food service worker who was a Typhoid carrier. She didn't exhibit signs, but whenever she worked somewhere handling food, people got sick and died. She was located and told to stay out of food service. She refused (even going to far as to refuse to take precautions against infecting others), went back to work in another location (changing her name to avoid being found again), and more people died. She claimed that she had the right to work where ever she wanted. Normally, this would be true just like normally you get to decide what medical procedures your children undergo, but she didn't have the right to infect other people.
When you don't vaccinate, you're increasing the chances that others will be infected. Leaving it up to individual people to decide would mean people would make their decisions based on Facebook posts and the words of ex-Playboy models. Herd immunity would break down, diseases we've beaten back would return with a vengeance, and many people would get sick and die. The diseases would also get the chance to mutate as the spread once more which might make the vaccines no longer effective. As a matter of public health, vaccines should be required with only medical reasons as exceptions. It's one of the few times that I'd advocate a widespread, invasive requirement like this.
What is the motivation for having this banned in the first place?
Some people were afraid that letting kids walk by themselves would mean that creepy people would crawl out of the shadows and do horrible things to the kids. Thus, we needed to "think of the children" and arrest parents who let their kids out of their sight for even a second. These busybodies were calling the police and having parents charged with crimes - crimes that could result in them losing custody of their kids. All because the parents didn't hover over their kids 24/7. This law now says that it's not a crime to let your child walk to school. While I wish we didn't need the federal government saying the obvious like this, there's so much stupidity over this and it's ruining people's lives.
It's cases like this where I'm glad the federal law will preempt any state or county level stupidity but I shake my head at the law being needed at all. Yes, if you decided to leave your 5 year old home alone for the weekend while you went out partying, you deserve charges to be filed against you. However, if you're having your 10 year old walk a couple miles to school along a route you both know (and know to be safe), then you shouldn't find yourself being brought up on charges.
I can give examples of when encryption protected against the government (NSA spying) and criminals (any time you use HTTPS for financial transactions). I can give examples of when a gun protected against criminals (burglar breaks in and is faced with owner with a gun). I can't think of any instance when using a gun protected against the government*. Beyond the "the only thing keeping the government from turning dictatorship are our guns." By that line of reasoning, the only thing keeping terrorists from taking over every aircraft is the TSA and the only thing keeping tigers from mauling me every day is this rock.
If the government ever did decide to go dictatorship, the key question wouldn't be "do the citizens have guns." It would be "Where do the army's/navy's/air force's/marine's loyalties lie?" If they lie with the wanna-be-dictator, we've already lost. You might keep pockets of resistance hidden for awhile with your guns, but you won't overthrow the dictator who can call in airstrikes followed by tanks. If they lie with the people, then the dictator will be dethroned (though whether this military coup results in the return of democracy is another matter entirely).
Except only complete fucking idiots, or gun manufacturers, claim the government wants to confiscate everyone's guns.
And remember that the NRA - which might at one time have represented the interests of gun owners - now represents the interests of gun manufacturers. Cultivating an atmosphere of "I need my guns to help overthrow the government when the black helicopters come for me" is good for sales. And if people get killed because people who would have failed simple background checks got guns, then you can just lobby to arm more people and INCREASE sales. Terrible tragedies are just sales opportunities to the NRA.
Actually, vaccines don't pull in big money for pharmaceutical companies. That's one reason why the vaccine court was formed. If pharmaceutical companies needed to face normal lawsuits (both real and baseless) over vaccines in the regular court system, they would lose money and stop making vaccines. Not because the vaccines aren't safe, mind you, but because lawsuits cost so much to defend against and vaccines bring in so little money.
The other people might be too young to be vaccinated or have medical conditions precluding vaccination. Alternatively, they might have been vaccinated, but it didn't "take" (vaccinations aren't 100% - close, but not perfect). In those cases, the vulnerable rely on herd immunity. When people first started not vaccinating, herd immunity was able to take it but we're getting to the point, in some areas, where herd immunity is breaking down. All because some parents decided that a celebrity known for posing naked must give better medical advice than a group of doctors.
There is only one a good reason not to vaccinate: If you have a medical condition (e.g. immune disorder or allergic to the ingredients) that precludes vaccination.
For these people, I fully approve of skipping the vaccine. That's what herd immunity is for. However, it needs to be an actual medical condition and not "I'm not vaccinating my kids because they have Jenny-McCarthy-itis."
2) As for the political leanings of anti-vaxxers being liberal...that may be true in your area or experiences, but the ones I've encountered are usually conservative types (sometimes libertarian) who distrust the government, science, and anything that could be perceived as meddling in their lives.
Just look at the recent GOP debate where Trump repeated the "Vaccines Cause Autism" claim (disproven so many times, I've lost count). Ben Carson started to refute Trump (and as a doctor should have had the knowledge to do so), but then equivocated his response to keep the door open for anti-vax voters to support him. Rand Paul, meanwhile, seemed to be a fan of vaccines but wanted to let each person decide for themselves whether vaccination was right for them. (Kiss herd immunity goodbye!)
There are plenty of liberal anti-vaxxers but this is one time when stupidity has infected both sides.
I haven't heard anyone on the left call for mandatory removal of all guns. If someone did call for this, I'd disagree with them. However, somewhere between "get rid of everyone's guns" and "arm everyone to the teeth" has got to be some sensible level of gun control. Just like there's a sensible level of free speech between "You're not allowed to say anything lest it offend someone" and "I'm going to kill all $GROUP and saying this is my free speech right."
Even moreso for those who say "We need our guns to protect against the government" while also saying "We need more government surveillance to protect against the terrorists." You're making the exact government you're claiming to need guns to protect against!
And insulting such a thing, well, then you should be considered an ass, or someone with Asperger or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That doesn't mean people can't talk about empathy, just that they shouldn't expect you to have any.
It's a common misconception that people with Asperger's Syndrome have no empathy. We do, but it can be hard for us to a) recognize when someone is feeling something (we often miss visual clues that are obvious to neurotypicals) and b) express said empathy. In fact, people with Asperger's can be so worried about upsetting someone by saying the wrong thing that they often will withdraw from conversations entirely. Better not to say anything than to say the wrong thing.
I think, just like other subjects that were once taboo, like homosexuality or drug experiences, people will not surprisingly imagine all kinds of stupid things, because they have no actual experience of it and feel powerless against it.
True. I'd only add that they imagine it in either extreme. Either they think "You have depression? Does that mean you're going to walk in one day and shoot everyone up because you've given up on life? I've heard people with depression do that." Or else they think "You have depression? I had that once when my dog died. I felt bad for a day or two and then it went away and I got a new dog. If you keep having it, it's your own fault for not just getting over it."
And then someone hears you have cancer and they say "I had a cold once and that's sort of like cancer so you should just eat some chicken soup and get over it in a few days. If you don't, then you're obviously faking it to get attention. My cold wasn't that serious so obviously neither is cancer."
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That doesn't necessarily mean that some ambient electrical field temporarily froze her brain. More likely is an evolutionary fight-or-flight response was triggered but since the threat (thunder clap) couldn't be seen or its direction sufficiently ascertained, the response was to freeze in place until the threat passed (or until further information came in as to where it was coming from/what was making it).
It all depends on whether:
a) Twitter was alerted to the accounts and didn't shut them down.
and
b) the case is about the previous or about Twitter not shutting down accounts BEFORE being alerted to them.
Twitter can't be expected to see all tweets coming through and somehow determine which ones are bad and which aren't. Is the account saying "Death to America!" because they want to blow us up? Or is it saying that because it's some sort of in-joke between friends online? Software won't be able to tell and there's no way Twitter employees can read EVERY tweet.
This is exactly why the common carrier concept was formed. So that companies providing a method for communication don't get sued merely because of the existence of some bad speech on the platform.
And even if you terminate an account, it's trivial for the person or people behind it to set up another account. I've experienced this personally. A person was harassing me and a bunch of other people on Twitter so we reported her. Her account was banned. She started a new account and harassed us again. We reported her again and she was banned again. She made a new account again, etc. The cycle would repeat sometimes dozens of times a day. In fact, she's still on Twitter today (though she's backed off from harassing me for the moment).
This is for a woman with obvious mental issues (she believes that god talks to her, tells her crimes people commit, and she threatens to report people to the police on Twitter) and very little technical skills. Imagine if you had a technical organization backing your behavior. If they banned the e-mail account you signed up with, it would be trivial to get others. If they banned your IP address, it would be easy to use VPNs or compromised computers to get around that ban. In short, Twitter could kick you out, but there's no way to stop you from waltzing right back in.
Actually, as I understand it, early Christianity accepted Joseph being married to Mary and that Mary wasn't a virgin. However, they tweaked their own religion to "sell it" to the various tribes they absorbed. That's how many Christmas traditions were formed - Christianity absorbed the winter celebration traditions of some Germanic tribes and put a "Jesus" spin on it. In the case of Mary, some tribes valued virginity so Christians declared retroactively that Mary was actually a virgin and Joseph got shoved aside.
Actually, Dumbledore planned for Snape to kill him, because this would have meant the Elder Wand wouldn't have had a new master. (Malfoy's disarming did ruin that plan.) Voldemort thought that Snape was the master of the Elder Wand because he killed Dumbledore, not realizing that a simple disarming was all that was needed to pass ownership.
And here I thought that the standard was "If a technology has a substantial legal use, it's considered legal even if some people use it for illegal purposes."
I look forward to the ban on automobiles. After all, "even though cars may help some people get around, they are used by some criminals to outrun police pursuing them on foot and thus the criminals will act with impunity."
I can just see the argument here: "The Supreme Court ruled that "limited Copyright terms" are still limited even if they expire in 100 years. Therefore, our encrypted phones can be decrypted as far as the law is concerned. Yes, it would take 100+ years to decrypt, but that's a finite period of time and thus should be allowed."
Then, we can either throw out "all phones must be able to be decrypted" or "100+ year Copyright is still 'limited'."
There are many things people can do that might be in poor taste, but won't be illegal. If these people are standing on the sidelines and not preventing emergency services from getting to the injured/dead, then they aren't doing anything illegal. Will we next require people to intervene instead of standing on the sidelines? (Not minding that Random Person intervening might make the problem worse.) If the people are interfering with emergency services, then that SHOULD be illegal. However, it's not the "taking photos/posting on social media" aspect that's illegal. That's just a side issue to people blocking emergency services in their quest to get a photo for Facebook.
Somehow, though, I doubt this guy's talking about people mobbing a scene and instead thinks he needs to regulate what is and isn't in poor taste.
Upon reading more about this, it also seems that this isn't a new law, but a clarification of an existing law. The Federal law was written so vague that you could be arrested for letting Timmy walk a couple of block to school by himself. This clarifies the law to say that this isn't a violation of the law. It's a good clarification, but I'm still conflicted over having the Federal law in the first place.
"Protect the children" laws often start with the best of intentions but often stray from their original intention. Some protections ARE needed (e.g. leaving a 5 year old for two days by himself is child endangerment) but we need to be really careful about how we enshrine them in law since what is needed protection for a 5 year old might not be for a 10 year old or a 15 year old (still counted as a minor).
The purpose is running scared of the terrorists they imagine lurking within every shadow. They see things in the world only under the context of "Could a terrorist use this against us in any way, shape, or form no matter how unlikely?" If the answer is yes, then the thing must be banned or, at least, highly secured.
For example, the shoe bomber tried unsuccessfully to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. They are scared that another one might succeed so now we need to remove all shoes when going through airport security. All because one guy tried something and now the guys in charge think someone else might try it too. (Thank goodness they didn't follow the Underwear Bomber with a "get naked in the TSA line" requirement.)
So encryption might be used by businesses and individuals to secure their private transactions in a completely law-abiding fashion, but the people making these laws think one or two people might use encryption for terrorism purposes so the only way to protect us to to ban encryption and weaken us.
Also, strong passwords have been shown to hinder law enforcement from entering someone's account - which they promise they'd only do when approved by a judge and no they aren't crossing their fingers behind their back. Therefore, all passwords must now be "12345". As a bonus, nobody will ever be locked out of their luggage ever again!
The difference is that surgery only affects you. If you don't get surgery, you won't put anyone other than yourself at risk. Therefore surgery is a decision that should be yours alone to make (hopefully as informed by a doctor, though even that is optional).
Not vaccinating, on the other hand, exposes more than your own children to disease: Babies too young to be vaccinated, people with immune disorders, and people for whom the vaccines didn't "take" (vaccines aren't 100% - close but not 100%). You might have the right to decide your children's medical fate, but you don't have the right to have your children infect others.
For a historical reference, see Typhoid Mary. She was a food service worker who was a Typhoid carrier. She didn't exhibit signs, but whenever she worked somewhere handling food, people got sick and died. She was located and told to stay out of food service. She refused (even going to far as to refuse to take precautions against infecting others), went back to work in another location (changing her name to avoid being found again), and more people died. She claimed that she had the right to work where ever she wanted. Normally, this would be true just like normally you get to decide what medical procedures your children undergo, but she didn't have the right to infect other people.
When you don't vaccinate, you're increasing the chances that others will be infected. Leaving it up to individual people to decide would mean people would make their decisions based on Facebook posts and the words of ex-Playboy models. Herd immunity would break down, diseases we've beaten back would return with a vengeance, and many people would get sick and die. The diseases would also get the chance to mutate as the spread once more which might make the vaccines no longer effective. As a matter of public health, vaccines should be required with only medical reasons as exceptions. It's one of the few times that I'd advocate a widespread, invasive requirement like this.
Some people were afraid that letting kids walk by themselves would mean that creepy people would crawl out of the shadows and do horrible things to the kids. Thus, we needed to "think of the children" and arrest parents who let their kids out of their sight for even a second. These busybodies were calling the police and having parents charged with crimes - crimes that could result in them losing custody of their kids. All because the parents didn't hover over their kids 24/7. This law now says that it's not a crime to let your child walk to school. While I wish we didn't need the federal government saying the obvious like this, there's so much stupidity over this and it's ruining people's lives.
It's cases like this where I'm glad the federal law will preempt any state or county level stupidity but I shake my head at the law being needed at all. Yes, if you decided to leave your 5 year old home alone for the weekend while you went out partying, you deserve charges to be filed against you. However, if you're having your 10 year old walk a couple miles to school along a route you both know (and know to be safe), then you shouldn't find yourself being brought up on charges.
I can give examples of when encryption protected against the government (NSA spying) and criminals (any time you use HTTPS for financial transactions). I can give examples of when a gun protected against criminals (burglar breaks in and is faced with owner with a gun). I can't think of any instance when using a gun protected against the government*. Beyond the "the only thing keeping the government from turning dictatorship are our guns." By that line of reasoning, the only thing keeping terrorists from taking over every aircraft is the TSA and the only thing keeping tigers from mauling me every day is this rock.
If the government ever did decide to go dictatorship, the key question wouldn't be "do the citizens have guns." It would be "Where do the army's/navy's/air force's/marine's loyalties lie?" If they lie with the wanna-be-dictator, we've already lost. You might keep pockets of resistance hidden for awhile with your guns, but you won't overthrow the dictator who can call in airstrikes followed by tanks. If they lie with the people, then the dictator will be dethroned (though whether this military coup results in the return of democracy is another matter entirely).
And remember that the NRA - which might at one time have represented the interests of gun owners - now represents the interests of gun manufacturers. Cultivating an atmosphere of "I need my guns to help overthrow the government when the black helicopters come for me" is good for sales. And if people get killed because people who would have failed simple background checks got guns, then you can just lobby to arm more people and INCREASE sales. Terrible tragedies are just sales opportunities to the NRA.
Actually, vaccines don't pull in big money for pharmaceutical companies. That's one reason why the vaccine court was formed. If pharmaceutical companies needed to face normal lawsuits (both real and baseless) over vaccines in the regular court system, they would lose money and stop making vaccines. Not because the vaccines aren't safe, mind you, but because lawsuits cost so much to defend against and vaccines bring in so little money.
The other people might be too young to be vaccinated or have medical conditions precluding vaccination. Alternatively, they might have been vaccinated, but it didn't "take" (vaccinations aren't 100% - close, but not perfect). In those cases, the vulnerable rely on herd immunity. When people first started not vaccinating, herd immunity was able to take it but we're getting to the point, in some areas, where herd immunity is breaking down. All because some parents decided that a celebrity known for posing naked must give better medical advice than a group of doctors.
There is only one a good reason not to vaccinate: If you have a medical condition (e.g. immune disorder or allergic to the ingredients) that precludes vaccination.
For these people, I fully approve of skipping the vaccine. That's what herd immunity is for. However, it needs to be an actual medical condition and not "I'm not vaccinating my kids because they have Jenny-McCarthy-itis."
Just look at the recent GOP debate where Trump repeated the "Vaccines Cause Autism" claim (disproven so many times, I've lost count). Ben Carson started to refute Trump (and as a doctor should have had the knowledge to do so), but then equivocated his response to keep the door open for anti-vax voters to support him. Rand Paul, meanwhile, seemed to be a fan of vaccines but wanted to let each person decide for themselves whether vaccination was right for them. (Kiss herd immunity goodbye!)
There are plenty of liberal anti-vaxxers but this is one time when stupidity has infected both sides.
I haven't heard anyone on the left call for mandatory removal of all guns. If someone did call for this, I'd disagree with them. However, somewhere between "get rid of everyone's guns" and "arm everyone to the teeth" has got to be some sensible level of gun control. Just like there's a sensible level of free speech between "You're not allowed to say anything lest it offend someone" and "I'm going to kill all $GROUP and saying this is my free speech right."
Even moreso for those who say "We need our guns to protect against the government" while also saying "We need more government surveillance to protect against the terrorists." You're making the exact government you're claiming to need guns to protect against!
It's a common misconception that people with Asperger's Syndrome have no empathy. We do, but it can be hard for us to a) recognize when someone is feeling something (we often miss visual clues that are obvious to neurotypicals) and b) express said empathy. In fact, people with Asperger's can be so worried about upsetting someone by saying the wrong thing that they often will withdraw from conversations entirely. Better not to say anything than to say the wrong thing.
True. I'd only add that they imagine it in either extreme. Either they think "You have depression? Does that mean you're going to walk in one day and shoot everyone up because you've given up on life? I've heard people with depression do that." Or else they think "You have depression? I had that once when my dog died. I felt bad for a day or two and then it went away and I got a new dog. If you keep having it, it's your own fault for not just getting over it."
And then someone hears you have cancer and they say "I had a cold once and that's sort of like cancer so you should just eat some chicken soup and get over it in a few days. If you don't, then you're obviously faking it to get attention. My cold wasn't that serious so obviously neither is cancer."