Really, they don't even need toys. Boxes of roofing nails distributed on select thoroughfares at rush hour will plunge just about any city into complete chaos.
I dislike the term "taxpayer" - it implies that there are people who don't pay tax. But everyone who buys anything, let alone earns money, ends up contributing toward government coffers.
The word "taxpayer" is a useful word in contexts like this because it tends to reinforce that the settlement (if there is one) will come out of the taxes that the people pay. It also serves to suggest which people are going to pay -- namely, the people who pay taxes in the relevant municipality, or school district, or maybe the whole state.
So yes, "people" works too, but "taxpayer" does a much better job of reinforcing the principle being discussed, and is therefore (IMHO) the correct word to use.
It was a false claim that the teacher had committed a sex offense. Such a claim would be enough to prevent the teacher from getting another teaching job.
No, actually you're dead wrong. The lawsuit is about the suspension that resulted from the two-word tweet. It wasn't filed by the teacher, it wasn't filed by the school. It was filed by the student.
Furthermore, the police chief's statement that this amounted to a felony is pure BS. At worst, it would be defamation, but that's not what this lawsuit is about.
The rules are that anything that causes Reddit headaches or additional work is subject to be banned, or so the CEO has said in his latest comments on this round of quarantining/banning. Though their new policy doesn't exactly make it clear that's the case. So anything they don't like or that makes them work is subject to being removed from the site.
Speaking as someone who runs an internet forum, I can appreciate their position on that point. If 2% of the people cause 90% of the problems, the obvious thing to do is ban those 2%.
Anyone who (apparently) gets this upset over a simple discussion on the Internet is either a troll, or someone who feels so powerless in their real life that stirring up shit on the Internet is the only way they can feel relevant.
Yet you got modded down, and I got modded up. Sadly, it wasn't because you dared to speak the truth, though I'm sure in your persecuted world view that's what you think went down. But no, you got modded down because you're just another internet dimwit.
Hoo-kay.. you're just yet another pedantic, argument-loving internet person, and as such I'm not taking you seriously.
Anyone who says shit like "daring to state the truth" is pretty much automatically not to be taken seriously. The fact that I called you on such a pathetic attempt at melodrama doesn't make me argument-loving, it just means that you're full of shit.
Sure, it has come to pass. Everybody has a web presence without the need to personally hire a programmer. Everyone can compile graphs and charts of their data and advanced analytics reporting without the need of a programmer. No, programmers haven't gone away and someone still needs to write the programs but many of the tasks that once required a programmer now can be done via a service without a programmer.
None of those things are actually examples of programming, nor are (or were) any of those activities the domain of programmers. Word processing, graphic art, illustration, sure. But there's no logic or flow control in any of those examples.
The general population does seem to have problems with complex logic problems. There are some intermediate programs like ifttt.com that seem to work ok for the general population but I consider ifttt still for power users and basic useful stuff will continue to be simplified until many of the things done by programmers today can be done by someone who doesn't understand complex logic.
The pundits have been predicting such a scenario since sometime in the early 1980s. To date, it hasn't come to pass, and I'm pretty confident in saying that your vision is right up there with flying cars.
and, naturally, I will now get modded down to (-1, Troll/Flamebait/whatever) for daring to state the truth
But here's the thing, and this is a really important thing: while some things you say are true, most of what you're saying is at this point speculation. And honestly, you sound more than a bit unhinged to me.
Web pages (the kind you're talking about, anyway) do not employ logic. They do not employ any kind of procedural operations. They do not employ the concept of several / many / hundreds of moving parts. Web pages of the kind you are referring to are little more than RTF documents. There is plenty of convincing evidence that the general population can use word processors. There is no such evidence that the general population can deal with even the most basic coding constructs.
Or programmers who use a bunch of bested if statements because they don't understand XOR, or freak out when they see a ?: statement.
To be fair, I've seen some genuine coding atrocities committed with ternary operations. The programmer thought he was being clever. He was so clever, in fact, that a year later he couldn't quite tease apart all the edge cases in his very compact (and largely impenetrable) code.
Obeying every traffic law guarantees getting in accidents. It might not legally be the robot's fault but they did cause it because they aren't following the rules of the road. Because of that, they flow against the normal progression of traffic and cause disruptions which lead to accidents.
This is complete and utter bullshit. Far be it for me to defend Google (*spit*) but to even suggest that the Google car had any culpability here is incredibly stupid.
What his excuse for not putting his music on there?
Because it's not really about the sound quality, as he asserts.
As it happens, I've listened to Neil Young on and off over the years. Excellent sound fidelity is definitely NOT especially noticeable on his records, nor is excellent sound fidelity something that his music particularly benefits from. His strengths lie elsewhere, which is why this whole PONO thing and now his fake streaming protestations ring especially hollow.
I would argue that if the places that exist to be heard are so small that they are barely noticed, that is an effective stifling of free speech.
Would you in the same breath argue that you have the same right to be heard as everyone else on the planet (or the country of your choice)? If my posts aren't elevated to the front page of reddit, does that mean that censorship is occurring because my voice isn't being heard as widely?
No, censorship is when something is censored. Government censorship is when the government censors something. Someone might even self-censor to avoid offending others, even out of pure politeness.
I think most of the semantic confusion here boils down to the fact that censorship isn't precisely the opposite of free speech.
Even when a corporation engages in censorship, that does not in fact strip an individual of their right to free speech. It just means that the corporation isn't willing to help the individual exercise their right to free speech. There may be other corporations that are, and there may be other avenues (i.e. the public square) where the individual is still free to engage in free speech.
In order for censorship to be the precise opposite of free speech, it would have to take place in all contexts, not just the context that a given corporation happens to control. Hence, the reason why the First Amendment is focused on prohibiting government censorship, and why censorship in other contexts is so much less important.
Private censorship is still censorship, and it can potentially become as big of a threat to social progress as speech repressed by the government. For example. lots of social issues have been avoided in mainstream media because of corporate/political incentives to stay quiet about the subject.
Not exactly. Sure, corporations could collude and tend to reduce the audience that one has access to. But those corporations, in all likelihood, would be unable to stop that individual from standing in a public square (on a proverbial soap box) and delivering their message directly to the unwitting public. So the individual still has an audience, but the audience may not be as big as the individual would like. Is that still censorship? No, I don't believe that it is. The person still has all the elements of free speech. The fact that the individual doesn't have as large an audience as they would like is really very much secondary.
On the flip side, if the corporations were obligated to help every individual reach as large of an audience as they would like, what do you think the practical consequences would be? To start with, we as fellow individuals would be drowning in a sea of literally billions of unwanted messages.
I know which side you are arguing for. But I am fairly confident that if you thought about it for more than 10 nanoseconds, you wouldn't actually want what you're arguing for.
Similarly, being in prison doesn't prevent you from voicing your opinions. Nor does being fined millions of dollars (just earn more money, citizen, so you too can enjoy the same freedoms of billionaires!) Nor does it prevent you from setting up a website to discuss controversial opinions.
Except when it does (funny how credit card companies refused to process donations to Wikileaks right after the release of the Afghan War Diary.
[snip]
All of your points are mooted by one simple fact: private parties are not obligated to give every person on the planet a soap box on which to stand. And if they were, we would be talking about a tyranny with much larger implications than censorship.
There's a really funny flaw in your argument. Who is preventing people from creating their own websites? Why don't you ask the SJW's who keep DDoSing Voat. (That's a felony for those of you playing the home game!) I think we're at, or passed 5 separate DDoS attacks so far.
ScentCone is pointing out that Reddit banning certain subreddits is not actually censorship. Unless Reddit is the one DDoSing voat, your point is utterly moot. Even if Reddit were DDoSing voat (which I very much doubt) that still does not amount to censorship, since the individuals who would otherwise post on voat are still able to speak elsewhere, or to put up their own website. So your point is doubly moot.
TL;DR: Private parties are generally not obligated to give individuals a soap box on which to stand. That does not mean the private parties are preventing free speech, it just means the private parties don't have to foot the bill.
Slashdot Mirror
You win the internets today, sir.
Really, they don't even need toys. Boxes of roofing nails distributed on select thoroughfares at rush hour will plunge just about any city into complete chaos.
Clearly, it's time to lock up the roofers.
I dislike the term "taxpayer" - it implies that there are people who don't pay tax. But everyone who buys anything, let alone earns money, ends up contributing toward government coffers.
The word "taxpayer" is a useful word in contexts like this because it tends to reinforce that the settlement (if there is one) will come out of the taxes that the people pay. It also serves to suggest which people are going to pay -- namely, the people who pay taxes in the relevant municipality, or school district, or maybe the whole state.
So yes, "people" works too, but "taxpayer" does a much better job of reinforcing the principle being discussed, and is therefore (IMHO) the correct word to use.
Thanks for the additional proof that no AC ever has anything useful to add to the conversation.
No one has claimed that defamation is a felony. The student is the *plaintiff* in the defamation case.
From TFS:
The town's police chief even spoke about it to the media, saying the comment was likely a felony.
It was a false claim that the teacher had committed a sex offense. Such a claim would be enough to prevent the teacher from getting another teaching job.
That's still not a felony.
No, actually you're dead wrong. The lawsuit is about the suspension that resulted from the two-word tweet. It wasn't filed by the teacher, it wasn't filed by the school. It was filed by the student.
Furthermore, the police chief's statement that this amounted to a felony is pure BS. At worst, it would be defamation, but that's not what this lawsuit is about.
The rules are that anything that causes Reddit headaches or additional work is subject to be banned, or so the CEO has said in his latest comments on this round of quarantining/banning. Though their new policy doesn't exactly make it clear that's the case. So anything they don't like or that makes them work is subject to being removed from the site.
Speaking as someone who runs an internet forum, I can appreciate their position on that point. If 2% of the people cause 90% of the problems, the obvious thing to do is ban those 2%.
Anyone who (apparently) gets this upset over a simple discussion on the Internet is either a troll, or someone who feels so powerless in their real life that stirring up shit on the Internet is the only way they can feel relevant.
Yet you got modded down, and I got modded up. Sadly, it wasn't because you dared to speak the truth, though I'm sure in your persecuted world view that's what you think went down. But no, you got modded down because you're just another internet dimwit.
Hoo-kay.. you're just yet another pedantic, argument-loving internet person, and as such I'm not taking you seriously.
Anyone who says shit like "daring to state the truth" is pretty much automatically not to be taken seriously. The fact that I called you on such a pathetic attempt at melodrama doesn't make me argument-loving, it just means that you're full of shit.
Listen, guy: of course it's all speculation right now.
You would do well to pay attention to the portion of your comment that I quoted. I'll quote it again for your convenience:
and, naturally, I will now get modded down to (-1, Troll/Flamebait/whatever) for daring to state the truth
That bit where you anticipate being modded down for "daring to state the truth" is utter bullshit if what you're doing is speculating.
Sure, it has come to pass. Everybody has a web presence without the need to personally hire a programmer. Everyone can compile graphs and charts of their data and advanced analytics
reporting without the need of a programmer. No, programmers haven't gone away and someone
still needs to write the programs but many of the tasks that once required a programmer now can
be done via a service without a programmer.
None of those things are actually examples of programming, nor are (or were) any of those activities the domain of programmers. Word processing, graphic art, illustration, sure. But there's no logic or flow control in any of those examples.
The general population does seem to have problems with complex logic problems. There are some intermediate programs like ifttt.com that seem to work ok for the general population but I consider ifttt still for power users and basic useful stuff will continue to be simplified until many of the things done by programmers today can be done by someone who doesn't understand complex logic.
The pundits have been predicting such a scenario since sometime in the early 1980s. To date, it hasn't come to pass, and I'm pretty confident in saying that your vision is right up there with flying cars.
and, naturally, I will now get modded down to (-1, Troll/Flamebait/whatever) for daring to state the truth
But here's the thing, and this is a really important thing: while some things you say are true, most of what you're saying is at this point speculation. And honestly, you sound more than a bit unhinged to me.
BZZZT! No.
Web pages (the kind you're talking about, anyway) do not employ logic. They do not employ any kind of procedural operations. They do not employ the concept of several / many / hundreds of moving parts. Web pages of the kind you are referring to are little more than RTF documents. There is plenty of convincing evidence that the general population can use word processors. There is no such evidence that the general population can deal with even the most basic coding constructs.
Sorry, you've got the wrong website. This is slashdot. Maybe you were looking for Reddit?
Or programmers who use a bunch of bested if statements because they don't understand XOR, or freak out when they see a ?: statement.
To be fair, I've seen some genuine coding atrocities committed with ternary operations. The programmer thought he was being clever. He was so clever, in fact, that a year later he couldn't quite tease apart all the edge cases in his very compact (and largely impenetrable) code.
I'd call that bad code.
Obeying every traffic law guarantees getting in accidents. It might not legally be the robot's fault but they did cause it because they aren't following the rules of the road. Because of that, they flow against the normal progression of traffic and cause disruptions which lead to accidents.
This is complete and utter bullshit. Far be it for me to defend Google (*spit*) but to even suggest that the Google car had any culpability here is incredibly stupid.
I can easily tell the difference between low bitrate and high bitrate MP3. It not even close.
It's not enough to tell the difference. You must also determine which is actually better.
What his excuse for not putting his music on there?
Because it's not really about the sound quality, as he asserts.
As it happens, I've listened to Neil Young on and off over the years. Excellent sound fidelity is definitely NOT especially noticeable on his records, nor is excellent sound fidelity something that his music particularly benefits from. His strengths lie elsewhere, which is why this whole PONO thing and now his fake streaming protestations ring especially hollow.
I would argue that if the places that exist to be heard are so small that they are barely noticed, that is an effective stifling of free speech.
Would you in the same breath argue that you have the same right to be heard as everyone else on the planet (or the country of your choice)? If my posts aren't elevated to the front page of reddit, does that mean that censorship is occurring because my voice isn't being heard as widely?
No, censorship is when something is censored. Government censorship is when the government censors something. Someone might even self-censor to avoid offending others, even out of pure politeness.
I think most of the semantic confusion here boils down to the fact that censorship isn't precisely the opposite of free speech.
Even when a corporation engages in censorship, that does not in fact strip an individual of their right to free speech. It just means that the corporation isn't willing to help the individual exercise their right to free speech. There may be other corporations that are, and there may be other avenues (i.e. the public square) where the individual is still free to engage in free speech.
In order for censorship to be the precise opposite of free speech, it would have to take place in all contexts, not just the context that a given corporation happens to control. Hence, the reason why the First Amendment is focused on prohibiting government censorship, and why censorship in other contexts is so much less important.
Private censorship is still censorship, and it can potentially become as big of a threat to social progress as speech repressed by the government. For example. lots of social issues have been avoided in mainstream media because of corporate/political incentives to stay quiet about the subject.
Not exactly. Sure, corporations could collude and tend to reduce the audience that one has access to. But those corporations, in all likelihood, would be unable to stop that individual from standing in a public square (on a proverbial soap box) and delivering their message directly to the unwitting public. So the individual still has an audience, but the audience may not be as big as the individual would like. Is that still censorship? No, I don't believe that it is. The person still has all the elements of free speech. The fact that the individual doesn't have as large an audience as they would like is really very much secondary.
On the flip side, if the corporations were obligated to help every individual reach as large of an audience as they would like, what do you think the practical consequences would be? To start with, we as fellow individuals would be drowning in a sea of literally billions of unwanted messages.
I know which side you are arguing for. But I am fairly confident that if you thought about it for more than 10 nanoseconds, you wouldn't actually want what you're arguing for.
Similarly, being in prison doesn't prevent you from voicing your opinions. Nor does being fined millions of dollars (just earn more money, citizen, so you too can enjoy the same freedoms of billionaires!) Nor does it prevent you from setting up a website to discuss controversial opinions.
Except when it does (funny how credit card companies refused to process donations to Wikileaks right after the release of the Afghan War Diary.
[snip]
All of your points are mooted by one simple fact: private parties are not obligated to give every person on the planet a soap box on which to stand. And if they were, we would be talking about a tyranny with much larger implications than censorship.
There's a really funny flaw in your argument. Who is preventing people from creating their own websites? Why don't you ask the SJW's who keep DDoSing Voat. (That's a felony for those of you playing the home game!) I think we're at, or passed 5 separate DDoS attacks so far.
ScentCone is pointing out that Reddit banning certain subreddits is not actually censorship. Unless Reddit is the one DDoSing voat, your point is utterly moot. Even if Reddit were DDoSing voat (which I very much doubt) that still does not amount to censorship, since the individuals who would otherwise post on voat are still able to speak elsewhere, or to put up their own website. So your point is doubly moot.
TL;DR: Private parties are generally not obligated to give individuals a soap box on which to stand. That does not mean the private parties are preventing free speech, it just means the private parties don't have to foot the bill.