These sort of things happen in real life too, not just on the Net.
How often have we seen speakers at universities bullied, shouted down, and threatened? Nobody goes to jail for this.
Just as in real life, restrictions on Net speech are too often about gaining advantage or shutting down opponents.
If someone offends you in social media or in an online game, block them and move on. Deny trolls any feedback at all, and they'll move on too. Don't feed the trolls, and they'll get mighty hungry under their bridges.
I've been a coder since junior high school. (8th grade) The inability to remember names and the ability to recognize people appear separate. I can recognize most faces just fine. But remembering names is tough.
My guess is that social things aren't seen as important enough by geeks to spend effort on until they need the abilities.
If a coder went into technical sales, I expect their ability to remember names would, by necessity get a lot better over time.
The most appalling part of the USA's headlong rush to trade away actual rights for illusory safety is the highly partisan and divided nature of the opposition. Far too many seem to think that ignoring citizens' rights is okay as long as it's done by their favorite political party. It's not.
But to your final point, citizens shouldn't *have* to defend their civil liberties every day. Their leaders and government employees should automatically protect the citizens rights. If not, they should be brought up on charges for violating their oaths of office. Or at least they should be afraid they'll lose their next election or their pensions.
1) Demand a jury trial. 2) When called to serve on a jury, vote to acquit the defendant if a speeding camera is involved. 3) Contribute to and vote for politicians who will remove the cameras. 4) Repeat until speeding cameras are withdrawn
There's a clear distinction between including biological evolution in curriculum, and punishing those with differing political beliefs. The former is reasonable curriculum. The latter is a vile tactic of brownshirts.
So again, do you support coercion in the classroom to enforce political orthodoxy?
Does free speech only apply to people you agree with?
Are you able to see political ideology as something other than a binary value?
Even if K-12 school propaganda has no effect, it's not harmless. The time and money trying to force feed PC values could better be spent on other curriculum or projects.
Even Americans *you* hate have the right of free speech. Flying flags is protected speech. So is protesting the present Administration. Get used to it.
"Liberal bias" is in the eye of the beholder to some degree. For me it'd be defined as using force or intimidation to limit which ideas may be discussed. It'd also mean limiting discussions, including those in school books, to those ideas and belief sets accepted to American liberals or progressives. Even in a state university here in Texas, I had to keep my libertarian views tightly closeted to pass political science and humanities courses. In one case, a history professor removed me from his class rolls because I wrote something he didn't like for the school paper. None of this is reasonable at a taxpayer supported university.
In natural sciences and math classes, it was a much more positive picture. I talked physics and politics with my ponytailed, sandles-wearing prof. We both had a blast.
As far as Texas' book battles, it'd be wrong to see this as a fixture of only the Left or the Right. This battle has been raging in the US since at least the 1950's. This latest action on school textbook selections should be seen in the context of these ongoing battles.
Teaching biological evolution isn't "liberal bias." Even in Texas, few religious people want the state involved in religious instruction. Fewer still want it taught in science classes. Bottom line, every ideology and political party has it's nutters...
Ideally, we'd give up the idea of indoctrinating and controlling thoughts in public schools. But it's rare for humanity to get ideal solutions.:p
I largely agree except that censorship on American broadcast TV doesn't equate to censorship on the Internet. Broadcast TV is regulated speech. Many hope that won't happen to the Internet.
Top down censorship helps nobody. People are bright enough to protect themselves from "harsh words" and the like. Government has no business even trying to be part of that. Further, commercial and open source solutions exist to protect Internet users from security threats such as viruses and trojans.
Beyond basic network security considerations, government' involvements in the Internet and censorship is nothing but a power grab. If governments' want to be part of taking down botnets, I'm all for it. But if they want to keep us from seeing pron or their political foes' websites, they've gone much too far.
The most disturbing part is that we even have to worry about government bureaucrats overreaching like this.
Disposable hearing aids are very inexpensive. In most states audiologist lobbying groups have pushed through certification to limit competition. Compare the price of hearing aids in Europe to the overpriced models available here. The high price of hearing aids has nothing to do with the national health, insurance, etc. It only has to do with state-level politicians and their need for campaign cash.
The best solution is to use the existing coax to pull Cat5 throughout your house.
Another partial solution would be to use old 10BT-to-coax transceivers. This would be easy. It'd cost rather little. But it'd probably end up being too for your needs.
The *best* solution is to re-wire or pay someone to do so. Even with newer technology, coax won't be as good.
Slashdot Mirror
These sort of things happen in real life too, not just on the Net.
How often have we seen speakers at universities bullied, shouted down, and threatened? Nobody goes to jail for this.
Just as in real life, restrictions on Net speech are too often about gaining advantage or shutting down opponents.
If someone offends you in social media or in an online game, block them and move on. Deny trolls any feedback at all, and they'll move on too. Don't feed the trolls, and they'll get mighty hungry under their bridges.
I look forward to examples to help understand your thinking behind this. Successfully making the general case seems quite difficult.
I note that Americans generally see patriotism as more benign that do Europeans. The history of the 20th century helps explain this.
Patriotism is no more bigotry than is favoring one sports team over another.
There are, of course, obvious exceptions to this. But I want avoid invoking Godwin's Rule.
I've been a coder since junior high school. (8th grade) The inability to remember names and the ability to recognize people appear separate. I can recognize most faces just fine. But remembering names is tough.
My guess is that social things aren't seen as important enough by geeks to spend effort on until they need the abilities.
If a coder went into technical sales, I expect their ability to remember names would, by necessity get a lot better over time.
I'll defer to your "deep understanding" of my earlier comments.
God Emperor? If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)
The most appalling part of the USA's headlong rush to trade away actual rights for illusory safety is the highly partisan and divided nature of the opposition. Far too many seem to think that ignoring citizens' rights is okay as long as it's done by their favorite political party. It's not.
But to your final point, citizens shouldn't *have* to defend their civil liberties every day. Their leaders and government employees should automatically protect the citizens rights. If not, they should be brought up on charges for violating their oaths of office. Or at least they should be afraid they'll lose their next election or their pensions.
To eliminate future confusion, you might consider telling us your definition of "agent in cover."
By any reasonable definition she wasn't a covert operative at the time partisans allege misconduct occurred by the Bush #2 administration.
I heard that Julian's codename was actually "Waldo." He's also used the codename "Carmen Sandiego." :)
1) Demand a jury trial.
2) When called to serve on a jury, vote to acquit the defendant if a speeding camera is involved.
3) Contribute to and vote for politicians who will remove the cameras.
4) Repeat until speeding cameras are withdrawn
I expect whomever's been using Betelgeuse for gravitational slingshot maneuvers to own up to it! :)
Help me out, will ya? Do we blame "W" or Obama for this one? :)
There's a clear distinction between including biological evolution in curriculum, and punishing those with differing political beliefs. The former is reasonable curriculum. The latter is a vile tactic of brownshirts.
So again, do you support coercion in the classroom to enforce political orthodoxy?
Does free speech only apply to people you agree with?
Are you able to see political ideology as something other than a binary value?
Even if K-12 school propaganda has no effect, it's not harmless. The time and money trying to force feed PC values could better be spent on other curriculum or projects.
So both taxpayers and students are being harmed.
We all have our belief sets and biases. Don't like one particular Cable News Channel? Switch to another.
The problem comes when there are no alternatives, *and* coercive, punitive measures are used to enforce conformity with political orthodoxy.
Even Americans *you* hate have the right of free speech. Flying flags is protected speech. So is protesting the present Administration. Get used to it.
Do you support instructors who punish students for having different political ideologies?
No, there are objective, fact-based reasons for including biological evolution in a biology course.
...to liberals.
Is it really the mark of a reasonable, tolerant individual to believe that all of reality matches their world view perfectly and exactly?
"Liberal bias" is in the eye of the beholder to some degree. For me it'd be defined as using force or intimidation to limit which ideas may be discussed. It'd also mean limiting discussions, including those in school books, to those ideas and belief sets accepted to American liberals or progressives. Even in a state university here in Texas, I had to keep my libertarian views tightly closeted to pass political science and humanities courses. In one case, a history professor removed me from his class rolls because I wrote something he didn't like for the school paper. None of this is reasonable at a taxpayer supported university.
In natural sciences and math classes, it was a much more positive picture. I talked physics and politics with my ponytailed, sandles-wearing prof. We both had a blast.
As far as Texas' book battles, it'd be wrong to see this as a fixture of only the Left or the Right. This battle has been raging in the US since at least the 1950's. This latest action on school textbook selections should be seen in the context of these ongoing battles.
Teaching biological evolution isn't "liberal bias." Even in Texas, few religious people want the state involved in religious instruction. Fewer still want it taught in science classes. Bottom line, every ideology and political party has it's nutters...
Ideally, we'd give up the idea of indoctrinating and controlling thoughts in public schools. But it's rare for humanity to get ideal solutions. :p
I largely agree except that censorship on American broadcast TV doesn't equate to censorship on the Internet. Broadcast TV is regulated speech. Many hope that won't happen to the Internet.
Top down censorship helps nobody. People are bright enough to protect themselves from "harsh words" and the like. Government has no business even trying to be part of that. Further, commercial and open source solutions exist to protect Internet users from security threats such as viruses and trojans.
Beyond basic network security considerations, government' involvements in the Internet and censorship is nothing but a power grab. If governments' want to be part of taking down botnets, I'm all for it. But if they want to keep us from seeing pron or their political foes' websites, they've gone much too far.
The most disturbing part is that we even have to worry about government bureaucrats overreaching like this.
Disposable hearing aids are very inexpensive. In most states audiologist lobbying groups have pushed through certification to limit competition. Compare the price of hearing aids in Europe to the overpriced models available here. The high price of hearing aids has nothing to do with the national health, insurance, etc. It only has to do with state-level politicians and their need for campaign cash.
The best solution is to use the existing coax to pull Cat5 throughout your house.
Another partial solution would be to use old 10BT-to-coax transceivers. This would be easy. It'd cost rather little. But it'd probably end up being too for your needs.
The *best* solution is to re-wire or pay someone to do so. Even with newer technology, coax won't be as good.
Rio's crime is worse unless you count Chicago's politicians. :)
Would the school officials have used force if the student refused?
What if the student used force against the school officials to avoid the unwarranted search?
What if the school officials had search 300 girls instead of just one? How many would still see this as reasonable?