Freedom of Speech is not and never has been an absolute concept.
Except that's exactly what the Constitution says it is. Again, I say, if you don't want the Constitution to mean what it says, then go through the amendment process. The 14th amendment just takes away the right of states to (among other things) abridge the freedom of speech. It doesn't give the federal government the right to abridge anybody's freedom of speech.
Congress might be able to pass a law which forces me to rent to anyone, but Congress can't stop me from saying that I won't rent to party X, Y, or Z. It doesn't have the authority to pass a law which does that. -russ
That's because women pick shit up when it falls on the floor, and guys don't (generalization, but of course that's what a landlord is going to get when they advertise -- an average tenant). Ever been in a frat? Ever been in a sorority? I rest my case. -russ
Congress names laws by the opposite of the effect of the law, thus you can be sure that the Fair Housing Act will result in unfair housing practices. (And the CAN-SPAM law will result in more spam. Has anybody's spam load gone down since it was passed??) -russ
If you shout "theatre" in a crowded fire, sure, there may be consequences. There may also not be consequences since you may be a well-known false-theatre-shouter. If you say that you don't want to rent your apartment to men because you think men trash apartments, then you are only telling the truth about your feelings. If some guy can't find an apartment, is it YOUR fault? Of course not, because it would have to be the fault of everybody who doesn't want to rent to reputed apartment trashers. -russ
Unfortunately, this amendment has been largely shoved aside since 1933 (and some people will say 1861), and the federal government has now became very big and uses its weight a lot.
Yep. The problem is that it's clear that some legislation is necessary, but how do you know what is and what isn't necessary? What produces good results both in the long term and the short term? You have to try the ideas out in a smaller venue. So maybe "free" health care is a good thing? If you want it, move to Minnesota, live there long enough to be eligible, live long, and prosper. Maybe you want to live some place where peaceful citizens cannot own handguns -- only policemen and criminals. They you'd want to love to New York City. Maybe you want to live some place where abortion is illegal? So move out to Kansas or whatever other states make abortion illegal once Paddle vs Swim is overturned.
However, I am a supporter of private property rights, too. I believe that homeowners should be free to decide which types of roomates that they want.
I may be only a member of the unprotected minority 'geek', but I'll stand behind your right to free speech and free association. -russ p.s. would we have had the Harlem Renaissance if blacks had been forced to include whites? Would jazz exist? Would the blues exist? Would rock and roll exist? Would Elvis exist without a black culture to emulate? (I don't think so.) Would we have men's fashion without gay boys? Taco Bell without Mexicans?? Why is it that we simultaneously steal from minority cultures and ALSO look down at them for not wanting to merge with white bread culture? Does the good create the bad? Does the bad create the good? Or can we have the good without the bad? Is it an American thing? Is it a human thing? I don't know.
The trouble with restricting discrimination by controlling speech is that Congress doesn't have the authority to abridge the freedom of speech. If you really want to shut people up, propose and pass a constitutionall amendment. "Oh, that's too hard", you say? Well then tough luck -- live WITHIN the constitution -- ALL of it. -russ
There is plenty of case law that has upheld the constitutionality of anti-discrimination laws such as the fair housing act.
There are no such laws. They don't exist. Congress does not have the authority to pass a law abridging my freedom of speech. Not only do they not have the authority to abridge my freedom of speech, they don't even have the ability to pass such a law. It says it right there in the Constitution. -russ
Jesus wasn't a Christian and moreover never said anything about people worshipping him, or even God forbid, forming a church in His name. Yes, the Christian Church is completely un-Biblical. So whenever some Bibliolater tries to tell you something, just ask him where his church is mentioned in the Bible. -russ
Of course, you can always look at deregulated markets, and say "but they don't work because they are not REALLY free".
Yeah, except that's the No True Scotsman fallacy. Better, instead to look at a "deregulated" market and see how the deregulation was done. If it arms the sheep so they can compete on equal basis with wolves, that's one thing. If they free the sheep but doesn't pen in the wolves, you're just asking for trouble. In California, the retail price was freed but the wholesale price constrained. We all know what trouble THAT caused.
By the way, I support the right to keep and arm bears, and other wildlife. Give them a fighting chance. -russ
So you agree with Malthus that we ran out of food a hundred years ago and millions died? Or are you agreeing with Paul Ehrlich that we ran out of food twenty years ago and billions died?
Seems to me like predictions like the one you just made have a very bad history of not coming true. I won't try to stop you from making this prediction, but I'd bet against it coming true. -russ
Because the sender knows it when the email gets caught in a spam filter, whereas recipient doesn't. It's hard for a recipient to go to AOL and say "I didn't get ten emails yesterday because they got caught in your spam filters inadvertantly." Not impossible, just hard, and you don't start a company on "hard". -russ
It's not about circumventing filters. It's about removing opt-in email from the input of filters. The more effectively AOL and Yahoo can do that, the harder they can filter. So who is going to identify opt-in email? AOL and Yahoo could create their own solutions, sure, but then N senders need to deal with M mailbox providers leading to N*M transactions (where initially M=2). Much better to have a service organization which deals with N senders PLUS M mailbox providers. It's not like spam blocking is free of cost.
Okay, so once you establish this organization, how are you going to pay for it? The current senders have to spend resources to avoid spam filters, which invariably catch some opt-in email. If this email is high value, then it's worthwhile to pay a little bit to ensure that it gets delivered. But how do you engage the cooperation of the mailbox provider? The best way is to pay them. You could wait for your customer to demand it of the mailbox provider, but that's the egg portion of the chicken and egg problem. The organization MUST take money from the people with the most to lose by dropped email.
s/organiztion/Goodmail/ s/mailbox provider/AOL and Yahoo/ s/sender/Paypal/ -russ
The problem is one of separating spam from opt-in email. If Goodmail Systems gets paid to identify and sign opt-in email, do you really think that AOL and Yahoo are going to reject unsigned email for free? Of course not. That's most of the reason why Goodmail Systems has to pay the receiving mailbox provider. And the reason Goodmail Systems themselves needs to be paid is because they perform the task of certifying that the sender is only sending opt-in email. If ever Goodmail Systems allows a sender to persistently spam, their entire business model will be toast. -russ
I run an opt-in, non-profit, ad-free announcement list, for example. I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!
Ever had bounces because of false positives by spam filters? If not, then this service is probably valueless to you. If so, then would it be worth $5/day, or $1/day, or $0.25/day to be able to evade those filters and avoid that trouble? -russ
The way this will reduce spam is that it will allow AOL and Yahoo to make their filtering more aggressive. Since more email will be identifiable as opt-in (because it has a Goodmail Systems signature), AOL and Yahoo will have a lessened risk of false positive matches. The reason the senders are willing to pay to evade the filters is that they're ALREADY doing that, by being forced to craft their messages so they don't look like spam.
Goodmail Systems doesn't want to see its business destroyed, so it will keep very close track of whose emails generate complaints. If they get too many complaints, they will refuse to sign further messages from that company.
Disclaimer: I have consulted for Goodmail Systems' qmail implementation, and they paid me money for my software. They didn't pay me to tell the truth about what they're doing. That I'm doing because I'm a Quaker. -russ
Tell me, does ANYBODY read TF articles anymore, or do people just rely on the oh-so-inaccurate summary of the story? AOL and Yahoo are not going to permit people to send spam. They're going to give senders of opt-in email a way to avoid spam filters. Spammers aren't willing to pay money; their business would become entirely unprofitable. On the other hand, people who send opt-in email currently have to expend resources trying to avoid spam filters that should not be applying to them. So, like all voluntary free market transactions, AOL and Yahoo are splitting the difference. They're giving opt-in senders a way to reduce their costs and increase reliability (important for transactional email) in exchange for being paid to set up the special infrastructure necessary to ensure that they and only they are able to evade the spam filters.
Disclosure: I have consulted for Goodmail Systems' qmail implementation to be used by Yahoo. -russ
You can't get insurance for something which has 100% chance of happening. Only a government would be stupid enough to sell flood insurance to people living on a flood plain. Bank deposit insurance? Who could tell if there's a market for it when the government gives it away for free? As Bill Gates is no doubt noticing, it's hard to compete with gratis. I don't know what percentage of pensions are privately funded; however when the government guarantees pensions none of them are *really* privately funded.
If you'll notice, it's always the federal government that does the dumbest things. That's because they're a monopoly. State governments aren't anywhere near as stupid because they know that people will just move to a state run by less greedy people. -russ
To an extent you are correct, but it is only because people are not content to let free markets work. Because no one is in control, people think that markets are not under control. So they start to coerce market participants, with the idea that they know better than them.
Free market planning is called "speculation". If you ask people if speculation is a good thing, they'll invariably say that it's bad. That's because speculation and politics are at odds with each other for controllling society. Politicians get the upper hand in this conflict because they can claim to be working for "the people" while speculators are in it for the money. Politicians appeal to people's ignorance and emotions. So, yeah, it's not that free markets don't work, it's that people won't let them work. -russ
Argh. Phil, get yer head outta yer butt. Free markets are GREAT at emergency planning. Where do you think insurance came from? And Underwriter Laboratories (established by the fire insurance companies so they wouldn't have to pay out so much for electrical fires)?
The trouble is that you're looking at a market which is partially free, and saying that because it's partially free, it should work as well as a completely free market. That's poor economics (and something which anyone with an economics background wouldn't do). You should compare how well one market plans compared to another market which is more or less free.
If you think that electricity markets were deregulated, then I can safely say that you were debrained at the same time. -russ
Yes, Cyric, but people don't understand economics; they understand finance and call it economics. That's like strapping downhill skis on a cross-country skier and expecting him to make it to the bottom of a black diamond trail in one piece. Finance and economics are both about money, right? Skiing is skiing, right? WRONGO, JACK! -russ
This is just price differentiation at the retail level. Don't worry about it. Price differentiation is everywhere. When you go to the movies, you can go to see the cheap matinee, or more expensive evening show, and you can pay even more for the premium experience: a ticket plus a gallon of popcorn (or did you really think that 12 ounces of corn, popped and smeared with butter-flavored oil, is worth $5?)
This is completely different from asking service providers to pay for access to their customers. -russ
There's an extra iridium sat or two up there. I went out to view a flare, and saw it.... but it was brighter than I was expecting. Less than a minute later I saw the real flare. -russ
Slashdot Mirror
Freedom of Speech is not and never has been an absolute concept.
Except that's exactly what the Constitution says it is. Again, I say, if you don't want the Constitution to mean what it says, then go through the amendment process. The 14th amendment just takes away the right of states to (among other things) abridge the freedom of speech. It doesn't give the federal government the right to abridge anybody's freedom of speech.
Congress might be able to pass a law which forces me to rent to anyone, but Congress can't stop me from saying that I won't rent to party X, Y, or Z. It doesn't have the authority to pass a law which does that.
-russ
That's because women pick shit up when it falls on the floor, and guys don't (generalization, but of course that's what a landlord is going to get when they advertise -- an average tenant). Ever been in a frat? Ever been in a sorority? I rest my case.
-russ
Congress names laws by the opposite of the effect of the law, thus you can be sure that the Fair Housing Act will result in unfair housing practices. (And the CAN-SPAM law will result in more spam. Has anybody's spam load gone down since it was passed??)
-russ
Only because people don't require that the government abide by its side of the compact. A right to free speech is still a valuable right.
-russ
If you shout "theatre" in a crowded fire, sure, there may be consequences. There may also not be consequences since you may be a well-known false-theatre-shouter. If you say that you don't want to rent your apartment to men because you think men trash apartments, then you are only telling the truth about your feelings. If some guy can't find an apartment, is it YOUR fault? Of course not, because it would have to be the fault of everybody who doesn't want to rent to reputed apartment trashers.
-russ
Unfortunately, this amendment has been largely shoved aside since 1933 (and some people will say 1861), and the federal government has now became very big and uses its weight a lot.
Yep. The problem is that it's clear that some legislation is necessary, but how do you know what is and what isn't necessary? What produces good results both in the long term and the short term? You have to try the ideas out in a smaller venue. So maybe "free" health care is a good thing? If you want it, move to Minnesota, live there long enough to be eligible, live long, and prosper. Maybe you want to live some place where peaceful citizens cannot own handguns -- only policemen and criminals. They you'd want to love to New York City. Maybe you want to live some place where abortion is illegal? So move out to Kansas or whatever other states make abortion illegal once Paddle vs Swim is overturned.
Our national government's design is a feature, not a bug!
-russ
However, I am a supporter of private property rights, too. I believe that homeowners should be free to decide which types of roomates that they want.
I may be only a member of the unprotected minority 'geek', but I'll stand behind your right to free speech and free association.
-russ
p.s. would we have had the Harlem Renaissance if blacks had been forced to include whites? Would jazz exist? Would the blues exist? Would rock and roll exist? Would Elvis exist without a black culture to emulate? (I don't think so.) Would we have men's fashion without gay boys? Taco Bell without Mexicans?? Why is it that we simultaneously steal from minority cultures and ALSO look down at them for not wanting to merge with white bread culture? Does the good create the bad? Does the bad create the good? Or can we have the good without the bad? Is it an American thing? Is it a human thing? I don't know.
The trouble with restricting discrimination by controlling speech is that Congress doesn't have the authority to abridge the freedom of speech. If you really want to shut people up, propose and pass a constitutionall amendment. "Oh, that's too hard", you say? Well then tough luck -- live WITHIN the constitution -- ALL of it.
-russ
There is plenty of case law that has upheld the constitutionality of anti-discrimination laws such as the fair housing act.
There are no such laws. They don't exist. Congress does not have the authority to pass a law abridging my freedom of speech. Not only do they not have the authority to abridge my freedom of speech, they don't even have the ability to pass such a law. It says it right there in the Constitution.
-russ
Jesus wasn't a Christian and moreover never said anything about people worshipping him, or even God forbid, forming a church in His name. Yes, the Christian Church is completely un-Biblical. So whenever some Bibliolater tries to tell you something, just ask him where his church is mentioned in the Bible.
-russ
Ahhhh, just like DiNozzo said on NCIS: the VW is a chick car.
-russ
Of course, you can always look at deregulated markets, and say "but they don't work
because they are not REALLY free".
Yeah, except that's the No True Scotsman fallacy. Better, instead to look at a "deregulated" market and see how the deregulation was done. If it arms the sheep so they can compete on equal basis with wolves, that's one thing. If they free the sheep but doesn't pen in the wolves, you're just asking for trouble. In California, the retail price was freed but the wholesale price constrained. We all know what trouble THAT caused.
By the way, I support the right to keep and arm bears, and other wildlife. Give them a fighting chance.
-russ
So you agree with Malthus that we ran out of food a hundred years ago and millions died? Or are you agreeing with Paul Ehrlich that we ran out of food twenty years ago and billions died?
Seems to me like predictions like the one you just made have a very bad history of not coming true. I won't try to stop you from making this prediction, but I'd bet against it coming true.
-russ
Because the sender knows it when the email gets caught in a spam filter, whereas recipient doesn't. It's hard for a recipient to go to AOL and say "I didn't get ten emails yesterday because they got caught in your spam filters inadvertantly." Not impossible, just hard, and you don't start a company on "hard".
-russ
It's not about circumventing filters. It's about removing opt-in email from the input of filters. The more effectively AOL and Yahoo can do that, the harder they can filter. So who is going to identify opt-in email? AOL and Yahoo could create their own solutions, sure, but then N senders need to deal with M mailbox providers leading to N*M transactions (where initially M=2). Much better to have a service organization which deals with N senders PLUS M mailbox providers. It's not like spam blocking is free of cost.
Okay, so once you establish this organization, how are you going to pay for it? The current senders have to spend resources to avoid spam filters, which invariably catch some opt-in email. If this email is high value, then it's worthwhile to pay a little bit to ensure that it gets delivered. But how do you engage the cooperation of the mailbox provider? The best way is to pay them. You could wait for your customer to demand it of the mailbox provider, but that's the egg portion of the chicken and egg problem. The organization MUST take money from the people with the most to lose by dropped email.
s/organiztion/Goodmail/
s/mailbox provider/AOL and Yahoo/
s/sender/Paypal/
-russ
The problem is one of separating spam from opt-in email. If Goodmail Systems gets paid to identify and sign opt-in email, do you really think that AOL and Yahoo are going to reject unsigned email for free? Of course not. That's most of the reason why Goodmail Systems has to pay the receiving mailbox provider. And the reason Goodmail Systems themselves needs to be paid is because they perform the task of certifying that the sender is only sending opt-in email. If ever Goodmail Systems allows a sender to persistently spam, their entire business model will be toast.
-russ
I run an opt-in, non-profit, ad-free announcement list, for example. I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!
Ever had bounces because of false positives by spam filters? If not, then this service is probably valueless to you. If so, then would it be worth $5/day, or $1/day, or $0.25/day to be able to evade those filters and avoid that trouble?
-russ
The way this will reduce spam is that it will allow AOL and Yahoo to make their filtering more aggressive. Since more email will be identifiable as opt-in (because it has a Goodmail Systems signature), AOL and Yahoo will have a lessened risk of false positive matches. The reason the senders are willing to pay to evade the filters is that they're ALREADY doing that, by being forced to craft their messages so they don't look like spam.
Goodmail Systems doesn't want to see its business destroyed, so it will keep very close track of whose emails generate complaints. If they get too many complaints, they will refuse to sign further messages from that company.
Disclaimer: I have consulted for Goodmail Systems' qmail implementation, and they paid me money for my software. They didn't pay me to tell the truth about what they're doing. That I'm doing because I'm a Quaker.
-russ
Tell me, does ANYBODY read TF articles anymore, or do people just rely on the oh-so-inaccurate summary of the story? AOL and Yahoo are not going to permit people to send spam. They're going to give senders of opt-in email a way to avoid spam filters. Spammers aren't willing to pay money; their business would become entirely unprofitable. On the other hand, people who send opt-in email currently have to expend resources trying to avoid spam filters that should not be applying to them. So, like all voluntary free market transactions, AOL and Yahoo are splitting the difference. They're giving opt-in senders a way to reduce their costs and increase reliability (important for transactional email) in exchange for being paid to set up the special infrastructure necessary to ensure that they and only they are able to evade the spam filters.
Disclosure: I have consulted for Goodmail Systems' qmail implementation to be used by Yahoo.
-russ
You can't get insurance for something which has 100% chance of happening. Only a government would be stupid enough to sell flood insurance to people living on a flood plain. Bank deposit insurance? Who could tell if there's a market for it when the government gives it away for free? As Bill Gates is no doubt noticing, it's hard to compete with gratis. I don't know what percentage of pensions are privately funded; however when the government guarantees pensions none of them are *really* privately funded.
If you'll notice, it's always the federal government that does the dumbest things. That's because they're a monopoly. State governments aren't anywhere near as stupid because they know that people will just move to a state run by less greedy people.
-russ
To an extent you are correct, but it is only because people are not content to let free markets work. Because no one is in control, people think that markets are not under control. So they start to coerce market participants, with the idea that they know better than them.
Free market planning is called "speculation". If you ask people if speculation is a good thing, they'll invariably say that it's bad. That's because speculation and politics are at odds with each other for controllling society. Politicians get the upper hand in this conflict because they can claim to be working for "the people" while speculators are in it for the money. Politicians appeal to people's ignorance and emotions. So, yeah, it's not that free markets don't work, it's that people won't let them work.
-russ
Argh. Phil, get yer head outta yer butt. Free markets are GREAT at emergency planning. Where do you think insurance came from? And Underwriter Laboratories (established by the fire insurance companies so they wouldn't have to pay out so much for electrical fires)?
The trouble is that you're looking at a market which is partially free, and saying that because it's partially free, it should work as well as a completely free market. That's poor economics (and something which anyone with an economics background wouldn't do). You should compare how well one market plans compared to another market which is more or less free.
If you think that electricity markets were deregulated, then I can safely say that you were debrained at the same time.
-russ
Yes, Cyric, but people don't understand economics; they understand finance and call it economics. That's like strapping downhill skis on a cross-country skier and expecting him to make it to the bottom of a black diamond trail in one piece. Finance and economics are both about money, right? Skiing is skiing, right? WRONGO, JACK!
-russ
This is just price differentiation at the retail level. Don't worry about it. Price differentiation is everywhere. When you go to the movies, you can go to see the cheap matinee, or more expensive evening show, and you can pay even more for the premium experience: a ticket plus a gallon of popcorn (or did you really think that 12 ounces of corn, popped and smeared with butter-flavored oil, is worth $5?)
This is completely different from asking service providers to pay for access to their customers.
-russ
There's an extra iridium sat or two up there. I went out to view a flare, and saw it.... but it was brighter than I was expecting. Less than a minute later I saw the real flare.
-russ