Declaring intent is a threat. "I'm gonna punch you" is a threat.
Yes, it is a "threat" as in "a verbal statement of intent to cause harm". "I'm gonna punch you" is a "threat" even if I'm in handcuffs and obviously incapable of carrying it out.
It is not a "threat" as in "a significant risk of loss or damage". A violent criminal who is not in handcuffs is a "threat" to police even if he is completely silent.
Those are two entirely different meanings of the word "threat".
CircleTimesSquare repeatedly mixed those two meanings up in his postings, making his statements rather incoherent.
Another thing people get confused about is legality of threats vs civil issues. The speech act of saying "I'm going to shoot you" shouldn't be illegal, and there is no reason for making it illegal, but in some situations, it may be sufficient to justify self-defense or civil action.
This whole crap about "yarg, let teh companies do as they please" is basically being stupid and ignoring all of the reasons why we have these laws in the first place.
The reason we have most of these laws is rent seeking and crony capitalism.
Capitalism isn't a natural law of the universe. It's a belief system which came out of observations about how things were structured.... You're romanticizing something which has never existed as you imagine it to be, and which simply can't exist as you imagine it.
So, you simultaneously claim that capitalism was descriptive of how things used to work, yet at the same time never existed?
In fact, free market economics is a theoretical ideal that came out of the Enlightenment, and it follows logically from the fundamental idea that every human being has the right to self-determination. You're correct that it has never existed, but we can move closer to that ideal.
The rest of us don't want to live in a world where all of the advantages are in the hands of greedy, shady douchebags.
So you are saying you want to live in a society in which businesses and individuals work for the common good of society; where their education, health care, and retirement are taken care of by the state; where they are remunerated according to the value of their labor; where foreign workers don't come in and take away American jobs. We've had those societies. Look up the 25 point program of the NSDAP, it pretty much reflects your views.
See, the problem with your ideology is that it ends up concentrating power somewhere, and that's where the "greedy, shady douchebags" go. You may be justified in disliking Mr. Moneybags, but he's still a whole lot better than Mr. Goebbels or Mr. Stalin.
Does Schumpeter's creative destruction also apply to the transportation sector?
Obviously, the more crony capitalism and rent seeking there is in a sector, the harder it is to innovate, drive down prices, and deliver a better product, viz transportation, healthcare, education.
But just to be helpful, no, halving the US rates wouldnt make them 'isn't that different' from Europe.. not even close.
Apparently, you need a little remedial math yourself. The US murder rate is 4.7/100000. Europe's murder rate is 3.0/100000. That's already not so different. Now, about half of US murders are committed by African Americans, who make up about 1/8 of the population. If you adjust the rate of that population to the national average, you get a US murder rate of less than 2.7/100000.
The 'Fuck you, and here is my gun to prove it!' attitude of many Americans is the problem
Europeans manage to murder each other just fine despite strict gun control. The population that owns guns in the US legally and that tells you "Fuck You" is not the population that commits murders. In fact, in the US, increases in gun ownership and sales have correlated with decreases in murder rate.
If making threats was always entirely legal, then it would be trivial for an individual, or small group, to shut down things like air travel nationwide, the school network of a major city indefinitely etc. For example, I could say that I have planted a timed release device containing a neurotoxin in a water source somewhere in New York state.
Well, hey, if making something illegal keeps it from happening, then why do you worry about someone planting poison anywhere? It's illegal, so it won't happen!
But seriously, the real terrorists in that case are the people "shutting down things" for no reason, because that is what makes the threat effective. When a terrorist says "I will do _ to hurt people, so you better turn your lives upside down if you don't want to get killed." the correct response is "Where is the proof?"
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, then free speech ceases to exist, because by the same logic, you can reason that speech that makes you uncomfortable infringes on your liberties and should be banned.
I've had to use gun-related murder stats as I couldn't find comparable numbers for gun related violence.
Gun-related murder stats are irrelevant, because if you ban guns, people will just switch to other means of killing each other. What you need to look at is murder stats, period.
I couldn't find a racial breakdown for Dutch murder rates either, not that it makes a difference.
It doesn't make a difference in the Netherlands, but it does in the US. The extremely high homicide rate among young black males in the US (more than 10x higher than in the general population) is not caused by race; race is simply a marker for a particular population that, for one reason or another, occupies a niche in US society.
As far as murder rates and where to live goes, though, the fact that the US murder rate is higher than that of Europe isn't relevant to you unless you're part of the subpopulation that has this excessively high murder rate, and if you were, you wouldn't be reading Slashdot.
You're citing Old Testament passages that apply to the Jewish people only (although Muslims may be confused on that point), verses that do not demand any penalty if broken (presumably, God will punish you Himself). Even if you assume that they apply to Muslims, Islam doesn't "ban" such depictions "explicitly" for non-Muslims. That wouldn't make any sense, since as a non-Muslim, you are already considered an "idolater".
And don't kid yourself, you reason like a religious fundamentalist, somehow believing that "conservative" interpretations of scripture are somehow closer to the truth. In fact, all the religious texts of the Abrahamic religions are tainted and corrupted, by translation, oral transmission, selection, and forgery. They do not and cannot represent literal law or calls to action; at best, you can use them as inspiration for your own personal dialog with God.
what most don't understand is that threats to your freedoms do not come only from above, corrupt authority, but also from losers around you who abuse your freedoms out of malice or stupidity
The word "threat" has two entirely separate meanings: (1) a declaration of an intention, and (2) a risk or possibility of loss or trouble. The first is a speech act, the second is a state of nature. Try to understand the difference between these two fundamentally different meanings, then formulate a coherent statement of what you mean by "freedom" and how it is put at risk through speech acts. Be sure to look up and understand the different meanings of the word "freedom" as well.
And Netherlands gun violence is high by European standards - a lot of the crime is related to North-African gangs.
Half of US gun violence is due to young black males (for whatever reason). For the rest of the population, gun violence in the US isn't that different from Europe, and it is probably very low among suburban middle class white legal gun owners.
The controversial event, where attendees competed to draw the prophet Mohammed, which is explicitly banned in Islam and seen as a sign of grave disrespect,
No, it is not "explicitly banned in Islam".
It may or may not be a sign of "grave disrespect", but so what? Having your beliefs disrespected is part of life, whether you're a Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or atheist.
Cops investigating speech (unobtrusively) isn't the same as making something illegal. A threat by itself shouldn't be illegal, but it may subject you to scrutiny.
such as their freedom to live, and live free of threats
You do not have a right to live free of threats, sorry. If reading messages on Yik Yak causes you fear, don't read messages on Yik Yak.
which understands freedom to mean "i can do anything i want, as long i don't infringe on the freedom of others"
What you are looking for is the "non-aggression principle". Aggression is the initiation of force or fraud against others. Saying or doing things that cause you to feel uncomfortable is not "aggression".
it is illegal to to threaten lives. it's the only logical position. to *preserve* freedom, you see
The only logical position to preserve freedom is the nonaggression principle. What you are postulating, namely protection of your sensitive feelings in any environment, is logically incompatible with freedom.
Could have been just be a prediction rather than a threat. There are plenty of "warnings" that there might be "another 9/11" every year just before 9/11, from journalists.
I want to know about any tool that makes programmers five times more effective!
R for statistics, Matlab for numerical programming, Simulink for simulation, Lua for game AI, etc.
So, with respect to the topic at hand, I strongly believe if you have decent employees, then they can probably tell you what engine will work best for them.
If you ask a bunch of C++ programmers about what tools you should buy, they are probably not going to recommend tools that they don't know and that would put most of them out of a job.
And no, I don't expect 500% productivity increases. But it doesn't take much of a productivity increase to have the right product pay for itself within the year.
My point is that for most game programming you should demand big productivity increases compared to writing your own solution, because for most types of games, the problems are well understood and there are excellent solutions.
Furthermore, it doesn't take much of a vendor screwup to have a small productivity increase in one year eaten up by a buggy release or other problem the next year. The cost and risk of adopting any new tool or library is huge, which is again why buying a library or tool for a small productivity increase isn't worth it.
For example, religious icons are banned in French schools.
Yes, and German schools have government-sponsored religious instruction, and the German government pays the salaries of protestant ministers and Catholic priests, while Britain still gives special status to its state church and has had a deadly religious conflict with Ireland. The French, on the other hand, throughout history occasionally become violently anti-religious. What's your point?
but in Europe we recognise that sometimes society has to say "no".
Ah, and at what point did "we in Europe" actually prove that any of our political, social, or cultural views are worth shit? Until the mid-20th century, European history was an endless string of wars, genocide, and totalitarian rule. Since then, Europe has effectively been occupied and defended by the US, while many of its former centuries-old elite are still in power.
Practically speaking, Europeans have a lot more individual power in their democracies, simply because they are not ruled by corporations to the degree that the US is.
Practically speaking, you are utterly ignorant and know nothing about how Europe works; you simply spew back the nationalism and ideology that has been drilled into you from birth. How do I know? Because I grew up in Europe myself, and it took quite some time to unlearn the bullshit they were stuffing our heads with.
Maybe because the money isn't used in the correct way in the first place? Why not fix that aspect first?
Quite right: why not fix that first. I.e., instead of first switching over to single payer and then figuring out how to save costs, do it the other way around: first, the vast, existing public health care system in the US should figure out how to become cost efficient, and once they have proven they can do that, then we can revisit the question of whether we can switch to single payer. I won't hold my breath.
Germany should be more concerned about its own domestic spying programs, the massive data collection by the German government, and the widespread restrictions on free speech and free exercise of religion in Germany.
While you might say that perhaps putting up statues to US whistleblowers might encourage Germans to do the same thing, in reality, this is just an outgrowth from a widespread political effort in German (and similarly other European countries) to distract people from domestic problems by pretending that it's all the Americans' fault.
It's very, VERY important to pay attention to the terms when someone starts flashing around statistics.
Why are you telling me? I wasn't "flashing statistics", I was pointing out that the GP post was comparing apples and oranges.
That's the people who get paychecks. We're not talking about the truly rich, who don't have to work for a living, they make their money in investments - that is, capital gains. Now, capital gains is taxed, but at a much lower rate.
You need to look at the combination of corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, because capital gains are simply corporate profits that haven't been paid out to you as dividends. So, if the company pays a dollar in corporate taxes on their profits, that comes out of your capital gains as much as if you pay a dollar in capital gains taxes on your personal tax return.
When you do that, you'll see that the US has one of the highest tax rates on capital gains of all nations, ahead of most European countries (only Denmark, Italy, and France are higher).
That's also one of the main reasons corporations are leaving the US: not only are they subject to excessive regulations and cost of doing business, they also face a very tax-unfriendly environment.
That's your response to the US spending more per capita than the UK? You're incoherent. The UK has a much more socialized system that makes them much less sensitive to cost of services than US consumers.
No, you are incoherent. As I was saying, the socialized portion of the US health care system already spends more three times as much as the UK system per patient; obviously, socialization of the health care system isn't working in the US.
You think we can't afford to pay for health care? We're paying for it now through a combination of taxes and premiums, just in a less efficient system than what Sanders wants.
Our public health care system covers about a third of Americans and consumes about half of our health care spending overall. When we take all that money, the US government is already spending more per capita over the entire population than the UK. How can you possibly believe that extending that kind of system to the entire US population would make US health care more efficient?
The problem with health care in the US is that it completely divorces costs from individual choice; patients have no motivation and no information to save money; they pick the latest and most expensive drugs and tests for everything because, hey, why not? That's the problem with the current system, and it's the problem with Sanders' system.
To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is a "threat" as in "a verbal statement of intent to cause harm". "I'm gonna punch you" is a "threat" even if I'm in handcuffs and obviously incapable of carrying it out.
It is not a "threat" as in "a significant risk of loss or damage". A violent criminal who is not in handcuffs is a "threat" to police even if he is completely silent.
Those are two entirely different meanings of the word "threat".
CircleTimesSquare repeatedly mixed those two meanings up in his postings, making his statements rather incoherent.
Another thing people get confused about is legality of threats vs civil issues. The speech act of saying "I'm going to shoot you" shouldn't be illegal, and there is no reason for making it illegal, but in some situations, it may be sufficient to justify self-defense or civil action.
And why should Uber "stand behind them"? These drivers are adults; they know what kind of insurance they ought to get.
Really? What possible beneficial function does taxi licensing actually fulfill that wouldn't be better accomplished by other mechanisms?
The reason we have most of these laws is rent seeking and crony capitalism.
So, you simultaneously claim that capitalism was descriptive of how things used to work, yet at the same time never existed?
In fact, free market economics is a theoretical ideal that came out of the Enlightenment, and it follows logically from the fundamental idea that every human being has the right to self-determination. You're correct that it has never existed, but we can move closer to that ideal.
So you are saying you want to live in a society in which businesses and individuals work for the common good of society; where their education, health care, and retirement are taken care of by the state; where they are remunerated according to the value of their labor; where foreign workers don't come in and take away American jobs. We've had those societies. Look up the 25 point program of the NSDAP, it pretty much reflects your views.
See, the problem with your ideology is that it ends up concentrating power somewhere, and that's where the "greedy, shady douchebags" go. You may be justified in disliking Mr. Moneybags, but he's still a whole lot better than Mr. Goebbels or Mr. Stalin.
Good questions. You should reflect on them. Are those the best ways of ensuring road safety or are there better ones?
Indeed it would be. And that too is something you should reflect on.
Good idea. Let's replace it with something that makes people safer and saves money in the process.
Obviously, the more crony capitalism and rent seeking there is in a sector, the harder it is to innovate, drive down prices, and deliver a better product, viz transportation, healthcare, education.
Apparently, you need a little remedial math yourself. The US murder rate is 4.7/100000. Europe's murder rate is 3.0/100000. That's already not so different. Now, about half of US murders are committed by African Americans, who make up about 1/8 of the population. If you adjust the rate of that population to the national average, you get a US murder rate of less than 2.7/100000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Europeans manage to murder each other just fine despite strict gun control. The population that owns guns in the US legally and that tells you "Fuck You" is not the population that commits murders. In fact, in the US, increases in gun ownership and sales have correlated with decreases in murder rate.
Well, hey, if making something illegal keeps it from happening, then why do you worry about someone planting poison anywhere? It's illegal, so it won't happen!
But seriously, the real terrorists in that case are the people "shutting down things" for no reason, because that is what makes the threat effective. When a terrorist says "I will do _ to hurt people, so you better turn your lives upside down if you don't want to get killed." the correct response is "Where is the proof?"
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, then free speech ceases to exist, because by the same logic, you can reason that speech that makes you uncomfortable infringes on your liberties and should be banned.
I'm pointing out one fallacy, and it's a big one: you're using the term "threat" in two unrelated senses.
Someone making a "verbal threat" is not "threatening your freedom".
Gun-related murder stats are irrelevant, because if you ban guns, people will just switch to other means of killing each other. What you need to look at is murder stats, period.
It doesn't make a difference in the Netherlands, but it does in the US. The extremely high homicide rate among young black males in the US (more than 10x higher than in the general population) is not caused by race; race is simply a marker for a particular population that, for one reason or another, occupies a niche in US society.
As far as murder rates and where to live goes, though, the fact that the US murder rate is higher than that of Europe isn't relevant to you unless you're part of the subpopulation that has this excessively high murder rate, and if you were, you wouldn't be reading Slashdot.
You're citing Old Testament passages that apply to the Jewish people only (although Muslims may be confused on that point), verses that do not demand any penalty if broken (presumably, God will punish you Himself). Even if you assume that they apply to Muslims, Islam doesn't "ban" such depictions "explicitly" for non-Muslims. That wouldn't make any sense, since as a non-Muslim, you are already considered an "idolater".
And don't kid yourself, you reason like a religious fundamentalist, somehow believing that "conservative" interpretations of scripture are somehow closer to the truth. In fact, all the religious texts of the Abrahamic religions are tainted and corrupted, by translation, oral transmission, selection, and forgery. They do not and cannot represent literal law or calls to action; at best, you can use them as inspiration for your own personal dialog with God.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
The word "threat" has two entirely separate meanings: (1) a declaration of an intention, and (2) a risk or possibility of loss or trouble. The first is a speech act, the second is a state of nature. Try to understand the difference between these two fundamentally different meanings, then formulate a coherent statement of what you mean by "freedom" and how it is put at risk through speech acts. Be sure to look up and understand the different meanings of the word "freedom" as well.
Half of US gun violence is due to young black males (for whatever reason). For the rest of the population, gun violence in the US isn't that different from Europe, and it is probably very low among suburban middle class white legal gun owners.
No, it is not "explicitly banned in Islam".
It may or may not be a sign of "grave disrespect", but so what? Having your beliefs disrespected is part of life, whether you're a Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or atheist.
Cops investigating speech (unobtrusively) isn't the same as making something illegal. A threat by itself shouldn't be illegal, but it may subject you to scrutiny.
You do not have a right to live free of threats, sorry. If reading messages on Yik Yak causes you fear, don't read messages on Yik Yak.
What you are looking for is the "non-aggression principle". Aggression is the initiation of force or fraud against others. Saying or doing things that cause you to feel uncomfortable is not "aggression".
The only logical position to preserve freedom is the nonaggression principle. What you are postulating, namely protection of your sensitive feelings in any environment, is logically incompatible with freedom.
Could have been just be a prediction rather than a threat. There are plenty of "warnings" that there might be "another 9/11" every year just before 9/11, from journalists.
R for statistics, Matlab for numerical programming, Simulink for simulation, Lua for game AI, etc.
If you ask a bunch of C++ programmers about what tools you should buy, they are probably not going to recommend tools that they don't know and that would put most of them out of a job.
My point is that for most game programming you should demand big productivity increases compared to writing your own solution, because for most types of games, the problems are well understood and there are excellent solutions.
Furthermore, it doesn't take much of a vendor screwup to have a small productivity increase in one year eaten up by a buggy release or other problem the next year. The cost and risk of adopting any new tool or library is huge, which is again why buying a library or tool for a small productivity increase isn't worth it.
Yes, and German schools have government-sponsored religious instruction, and the German government pays the salaries of protestant ministers and Catholic priests, while Britain still gives special status to its state church and has had a deadly religious conflict with Ireland. The French, on the other hand, throughout history occasionally become violently anti-religious. What's your point?
Ah, and at what point did "we in Europe" actually prove that any of our political, social, or cultural views are worth shit? Until the mid-20th century, European history was an endless string of wars, genocide, and totalitarian rule. Since then, Europe has effectively been occupied and defended by the US, while many of its former centuries-old elite are still in power.
Practically speaking, you are utterly ignorant and know nothing about how Europe works; you simply spew back the nationalism and ideology that has been drilled into you from birth. How do I know? Because I grew up in Europe myself, and it took quite some time to unlearn the bullshit they were stuffing our heads with.
Quite right: why not fix that first. I.e., instead of first switching over to single payer and then figuring out how to save costs, do it the other way around: first, the vast, existing public health care system in the US should figure out how to become cost efficient, and once they have proven they can do that, then we can revisit the question of whether we can switch to single payer. I won't hold my breath.
Germany should be more concerned about its own domestic spying programs, the massive data collection by the German government, and the widespread restrictions on free speech and free exercise of religion in Germany.
While you might say that perhaps putting up statues to US whistleblowers might encourage Germans to do the same thing, in reality, this is just an outgrowth from a widespread political effort in German (and similarly other European countries) to distract people from domestic problems by pretending that it's all the Americans' fault.
Why are you telling me? I wasn't "flashing statistics", I was pointing out that the GP post was comparing apples and oranges.
You need to look at the combination of corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, because capital gains are simply corporate profits that haven't been paid out to you as dividends. So, if the company pays a dollar in corporate taxes on their profits, that comes out of your capital gains as much as if you pay a dollar in capital gains taxes on your personal tax return.
When you do that, you'll see that the US has one of the highest tax rates on capital gains of all nations, ahead of most European countries (only Denmark, Italy, and France are higher).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That's also one of the main reasons corporations are leaving the US: not only are they subject to excessive regulations and cost of doing business, they also face a very tax-unfriendly environment.
No, you are incoherent. As I was saying, the socialized portion of the US health care system already spends more three times as much as the UK system per patient; obviously, socialization of the health care system isn't working in the US.
The first number refers to income tax, the second number refers to net worth (it's probably not correct either, but who's counting).
Yeah, but garbage in garbage out.
Our public health care system covers about a third of Americans and consumes about half of our health care spending overall. When we take all that money, the US government is already spending more per capita over the entire population than the UK. How can you possibly believe that extending that kind of system to the entire US population would make US health care more efficient?
The problem with health care in the US is that it completely divorces costs from individual choice; patients have no motivation and no information to save money; they pick the latest and most expensive drugs and tests for everything because, hey, why not? That's the problem with the current system, and it's the problem with Sanders' system.
To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work.