"For disclosure's sake, I think the situation with Megan was absolutely horrible, but I'm not the kind out calling for laws to address it"
the only thing that motivates any law in this world is a sense of justice. surely meier's case is a grace injustice and novel legal territory. it is the very definition of a case which cries out for new law
you need to understand that, and someone needs to begin crafting the specific, limiting terminology that defines the meier case. because if someone with concern for free speech doesn't do that, someone else will propose a law that is flawed and too broad
but simply stating "no new law need apply" goes against the spirit of what moves any society to ever make laws in the first place: the desire to right an outrageous injustice. only in the movies can you go "these are not the droids you are looking for" and people's minds go blank and the subject changes. that doesn't work in the real world
you can't simply wave your hand and people will suddenly stop caring about the meier case or stop trying to make laws to counter such heinous cyberbullying. and meier's case will most certainly not be the last such case of such an injustice, thereby renewing the wellspring of concern and passion to fashion new law
so make peace with the fact new law must be created, and get to work crafting the specific and limiting terminology, so free speech is not trampled
or don't, and live in denial, and bad overly broad law will come forth instead. your choice. "bad new law" or "good new law" are your choices. "no new law" is not a choice that's going to happen if you understand anything of what motivates people to write law in the first place
certainly its not the limited law i outlined in my initial post
some sort of other law you are talking about, having nothing whatsoever to do with what i am talking about, limiting blogs for political content, is of course as bad as it gets. we're talking egypt, china, iran, etc. therefore, i am confident this law would be defeated, since it goes against the obvious spirit of obvious tenets of the principle foundations of this country
so stop proceeding on fear. the other people around you understand the idea of free speech and why its important. you meanwhile act as if you are the only person who understands the concept, and everything is in grave danger. its not. your style of thinking on the issue is called hysteria. relax. one tiny idiotic law is not going to change the entire character of the country
you are divorcing the law from what the intent of the law is supposed to be. if you do that, no law, proposed or already in effect, has much meaning, and can be reinterpretted in all sorts of retarded ways
that a law can be twisted into some other meaning that has nothing to do with its obvious intention is not a good argument against passing a law. all laws are subject to this fear. all you have is fear of laws being twisted. well, if the apparatus for enforcing laws is that screwed up, you have problems way way worse than well-intentioned but boradly phrased laws. i woudl suggest to you however than the apparatus for enforcing laws is not malicious as you seem to think it is. so stop being fearful: if a law is well stated and well limited, then support it. baseless fears of bad misinterpration are not good enough to oppose a law
then thank you for furthering my argument against the previous poster
as for the rest of your thread jack into subject matter i was not talking about, well, enjoy your threadjack. you're changing the subject into different territory, not refuting what i say
someone hits my kid with a car. the existence of me, the parent/ guardian, was supposed to protect my kid from being hit by a car?
are you suggesting that just because someone has a parent/ guardian they are protected from cyberbullying? the wisest parenting, in fact, suggests that teenage children need their own private social space in which to develop their own identity. that, as a rule of good parenting, a good parent should butt out of micromanaging a child's online social life
i really don't understand what you are trying to say, or why you think a parent/ guardian somehow protects form cyberbullying
you completely miss my argument. i am not supporting the bill. i am supporting the rightful creation of an anti-cyberbullying statute, IF, and only IF it meets the tests i list
its not like this bill will fail (and it should fail) and no one will ever be cyberbullied again, or that no one will ever try to pass a cyberbullying bill again. the question is, can we pass the bill in such a way that it addresses everyone's concerns? and then this issue can be put to bed, and no further bullshit overly broad challenges from the realm of concern over cyberbullying should appear again
its not like you defeat this bill, and people suddenly stop caring about cyberbullying. you see that, right? so how can we get people who care about cyberbullying (rightfully) satisfied without hurting free speech?
loopholes, extenuating circumstances, are the substance of every legal and moral code in the world
1. don't murder (unless someone is about to murder you)
2. you have free speech (you can't shout fire in a crowded theater)
etc.
for every single moral or legal stricture you could ever demonstrate to me, there exists extenuating circumstances which limits the validity of that law or code. the same would apply to any law on cyberbullying, obviously. anyone intellectually honest knows this. they know this about every law that has ever existed
but you wish to say, because defining cyberbullying has gray areas, that there can be no definition of it at all. well, i say to you, free speech itself has gray areas... so no one should have free speech. this line of reasoning, of course, is bullshit. you deserve and should have free speech. i'm just demonstrating to you the rationale you put forth for oppositing the definiing of cyberbullying is likewise pure bullshit
the existence of gray areas in any law or moral code is no argument against making the law or moral code in the first place. because every single law or moral code has a gray area. most of morality and law, in fact, is nothing more than the further accretion of words defining and partitioning smaller and smaller slices of gray areas which were previously undefined and unaddressed. like cyberbullying, for example
you can defeat any argument on any topic with mindless negativity
some day you'll figure out that this silly anti-intellectual game is only for high school teenagers, and you'll see the only worthy pursuit for your cognitive efforts is to try to make your own positive arguments yourself, about a subject matter you yourself find passionate cause for
only to be torn down in turn by some other snarky teenager. cynicism and sarcasm may be retarded, but irony is forever
"I would favor the creation of a subset of the internet where anonymous speech is impossible"
in everyone's life, there are things you want to do anonymously, that you don't want your identity attached to, that you don't want traced back to you. not all of these things are nefarious, hell, some are even virtuous, like voting. but by the same token, there are somethings you have to do in life that you need your identity attached to. getting a paycheck for example
but, as you note, the internet holds us all at ransom because it is easy to be anonymous, but hard, ehll, impossible, to have a real identity
so not a subset, but a separate network, with clearly delineated authority and verification (rather than nameless peering), for these cases in your life where identity is everything
why do you think i am in any way adovcating for sweepingly general restatement? i am advocating, in multiply stated terminology, for an allowance for a specificly worded limitation on free speech, which anyone with any common sense would agree to. i'll say it yet one more time for your sake:
1. if you target a specific individual 2. for an extended period of time 3. and they are a minor (and you are an adult) 4. or if they are mentally unstable
then you should be fined/ arrested
i defy you to illustrate to me a scenario in which those 4 circumstances above are done in the spirit of free speech, or in any way necessary for you or anyone else to exercise their right to free speech. cyberbullying is a real crime, and it should be stopped, and doing so is not a limitation on free speech in any way when correctly worded in the specific circumstances in which it exists
cyberbullying is obviously NOT free speech. limiting cyberbullying in specific terminology is not limiting free speech
in fact, when you make things personal, you lose whatever argument you think you are advocating for, because you've changed the subject yourself: from one of the issues, to one of personal bickering
if you make things personal with an elected official, you SHOULD be fined/ arrested for harassment
if an elected official is doing something wrong, he should be thrown out of office on the grounds of the moral and legal ISSUES he is defiling. and if you wish to go after him, merely make charges on the ISSUES involved. if you need to harass someone in order to make a point, you've already lost the fight anyways
its the difference between me, in this thread, disagreeing with you, and saying so in terms of the subject matter
versus me, in this thread, calling you petty names, putting up a website devoted to comparing you to hitler, sending you obnoxious abusive emails for months, and calling you up and hanging up after threatening to kill you
#1: if i'm doing that, i'm way past losing this argument
#2: you have every right to have me fined/ arrested for harassment
why do you think elected officials somehow deserve any of this treatment? they don't. they deserve to be voted/ kicked out of office on the ISSUES, and no more
the rights and authority of property owners are, shall we say, not so sacrosanct as you think. nor should they be
say a moviehouse owner gives a guy 100% permission to yell fire in his theatre. so what? say someone dies in the stampede due to this guy yelling fire. at what point in your mind do you believe whatever permission the moviehouse owner gave or did not give has any validity whatsoever in the outcome of this situation? its wrong to shout fire in a crowded theatre. period. end of story. no matter what any property owner thinks or whatever permission he gives, this line of reasoning has no bearing whatsoever, because it doesn't trump anyone's right not to die in a stampede
say my neighbor runs a crack house. and he is 100% ok by this. except i'm not too happy about the effects on my property values because no one wants to live next to a crack house (nevermind the obvious increase in crime that would result). me, and the other neighhbors, and the city at large, and society at large, have greater rights here. we can forfeit this guy's right to own this property, because he removing more rights and freedoms than any property ownership entitles him to. in other words, the rights and freedoms of the property owning individual ends when his policies and actions begins to infringe on other peoples rights and liberties. shouting fire in a theatre, or running a crackhouse, most certainly are examples of limits on such property rights
property rights are extremely limited rights. there are tons of rights that trump property rights. i don't know why you and this weird small cadre of folks thinks so much springs from property rights, when in reality property rights are a small and minor space of rights, and in fact, SHOULD be a small and minor space of rights. that there are other rigths, such as free speech, that easily outweigh property rights, and should outweigh property rights, acocrding to any sound understanding of the principles of liberty and freedom, morality and reason
this is what happened to meier: she was mentally and emotionally unstable. she was a minor. an adult, over an extended period of time, purposefully targetted her and assassinated her confidence with false friends and false romantic interests and outright suggesting she kill herself. then she committed suicide
obviously, no one here supports that. at the same time, those rightfully outraged about what happened to meier are proposing limitations on free speech which are too broad. what you need to do is take what motivates them and REDIRECT their free speech limiting efforts to not be so broad. just laughing and riciculing their efforts doesn't satisfy their motivations. and their motivations are real and vlaid, so you have to address them:
you can say anything you want online. unless you: 1. target one individual, 2. over an extended period of time, 3. who is a minor (nad you are an adult), 4. who is mentally unstable
those who want to fight bullying would agree with this. you, defenders of free speech, would agree to this. so stop just shouting down and ridiculing those who are fighting cyberbullying. just redirect their passions. what motivates them is real and valid: a teenage girl was hounded to commit suicide. there is a valid reason to protect her. there is a valid legal space in which new speech laws can exist that, again:
1. stand against targetting one individual 2. over an extended period of time 3. who is a minor (and the bully is an adult) 4. who is mentally unstable
the most hardcore free speech zealot understands why you cant shout fire in a crowded theatre. therefore, everyone recognizes that yes, there actually ARE limits to free speech. so take what motivates those who are angry at the meier case, and HELP them channel their anger into a SPECIFIC limit on online speech of the form of the 4 limitations above
you have to respect the legitimacy of what motivates those who are upset about what happened to meier. just laughing at or ridiculing their overarching efforts doesn't stop them from trying to right the injustive that happened to meier. you can HELP them, and HELP to retain your free speech principles by tailoring and redirecting their passions to a specifically worded area of what is obviously heinous cyberbullying and does not infringe on your free speech rights
imagine that, compromise, rather than a bunch of kneejerk zealotry like you find in other comments here, without any recognition that waht motivates those who are righfully outraged about wehat happened to meier
for those of you who care about your free speech rights: how do you protect the meiers of the world? you need to address that. if you don't, there will be continued attacks on free speech forever, because what motivates those who want to protect the meiers of the world is just as valid an impulse as those who want to protect free speech
sure, some of you could say the meiers of the world need to just toughen up. fuck them, people are cruel, get used to it
by the same token, i could say to you that some assholes want to limit your free speech so tough luck, just shut up about some of what you want to say... this statement is bullshit, i'm just demonstrating that if you don't show any sensitivity to valid concerns about cruelty to others, why do expect anyone to have sympathy for your concerns about free speech?
because, in the end, the principles and passions that support free speech are the same principles and passions that seek to protect the meiers of this world. you protect the rights and liberties of the weak in this world, or you merely help create a world of cruelty, in which limits of free speech are inevitable. limits on free speech are really just a form of cruelty that this cyberbully demonstrated when manipulating meier
and whenever you argue with someone who is against gun control, they are knee deep in facts and figures. they try to use facts all the time. as for "honestly" using facts, i don't know what honesty is supposed to mean in this context. people honestly fight for their convictions, if that's what you mean
furthermore, i don't know why you think the concept of an "emotional argument" has a negative connotation. the argument for gun control is emotional. the argument against gun control is emotional. there is no such thing as an argument over gun control that is not emotional. furthermore, emotions and passions are the foundation for any social policy in the world, for or against any issue you can dream of
show me someone who can make an emotionless argument, and i'll show you someone who doesn't care about the outcome, and therefore has no business in that argument. emotion is far more important than logic in reason in any policy dispute there is. the place of logic and reason is only to sway people's emotions and passions into alignment with yours
a lot of schemes like this look great on paper, until you consider the energy expenditure involved in running the thing
who knows, maybe carbon black is worth more than the extra methane it costs to run the thing. that would make it financially friendly. but its certainly not environmentally friendly, when you consider the extra methane consumption
and both sides trot out numbers, facts, that support their assertions
when the truth of course is that various quantities out of context can be twisted or misunderstood as to meaning
simply put, when dealing in the hard sciences, numbers rule. but when you get into politics, religion, sociology: numbers mean shit
but try telling this to a committed partisan when you debate them on various issues. they take your avoidance of numbers and their dubious meaning as some sort of implicit admission of defeat
when in reality, the issues are one of logic, reason, and principles, not bullshit numbers and their essential uselessness in supporting what you think they support
its not a great stretch to imagine some old demented crone eating children who stray from town. in 2009, anywhere starvation rages, nevermind medieval europe with frequent famines
i agree with you 100% about what you said otherwise: fairy tales teach kids about bad stuff. i'm just differing with you on what bad stuff was being warned about with hansel and gretel
there is no need to encourage them, merely track them and get out of the way of any of their initiatives. and when the shit hits the fan and another government complains, the government can play dumb: it really wasn't their doing, there's no financing or chain of command. the only crime is one of omission: watching someone do something wrong and not stopping them. the nationalist partisans steer clear of their own nation's computers out of fealty (perhaps protecting them too), they obediently report to the government any stupendous finds (nuclear plant blueprints, warfare plans, etc.) simply for the renown, and in times of great duress, are predisposed to fall under the umbrella of government control. all at the same time, they are complete free of cost, and of the highest technical proficiency and motivation. their motivation is simply passion
this is already happening, for years. before 9/11 there was the hainan island incident:
this spy plane bump and crash brought american partisans and chinese partisans at full war online. how do i know this? because one of my windows boxen in new york at the time got hacked. its front page was replaced with the chinese flag and the text "fuck poisonbox! hacked by chinese". i traced the attacking ip to a technical college near beijing. who is poisonbox? i researched it: he was an american partisan hacker(s) laying waste to various chinese servers at the time
i found an article about the proceedings still online from that era:
there is no debate here, it's already happening, done by partisan hackers, in loose affiliation with their governments and the government's turning a blind eye to the hijinks
someone out there, perhaps reading this comment, has the makings of a great book or movie, with years of hardcore cyberwarfare already under their belt. they could be in any number of countries where ultranationalism rages (turkey, greece, israel, pakistan, india, etc.)
let's just break it down for you world-weary heart-heavy wise men:
if you saw airplanes flying into office towers on 9/11, then the sight of a 747 a few hundred feet off the ground, nearly clipping office towers in lower manhattan, followed by an f-16, this just might persude you to leave the area as well. but naaah... clearly its low-iq hysteria, right?
you may now continue your overly judgmental certitude in your rural basements, safe in your knowledge that all reactions you disprove of are nothing more than irrational fear. you of course are immune to this. when it comes the federal government's wiretapping policies, copyright laws, and anti-pornography crusade, rather than prudent moves to dispel these unwise ideas, the proper reaction is panty-twisting pronouncements of the end of democracy and western liberal ideals. right?
truly, you are all level-headed fountains of wisdom of the ways of humankind. not in any way hypocritical asses
where oh where would we all be without your insightful words? hmmm. maybe with a little less self-serving and smug condescension? naaah
look: an anti-pornography law! whine and moan about the end of western civilization. nothing fear-addled there
blind overly judgmental hypocrites. that's all i see
Slashdot Mirror
"For disclosure's sake, I think the situation with Megan was absolutely horrible, but I'm not the kind out calling for laws to address it"
the only thing that motivates any law in this world is a sense of justice. surely meier's case is a grace injustice and novel legal territory. it is the very definition of a case which cries out for new law
you need to understand that, and someone needs to begin crafting the specific, limiting terminology that defines the meier case. because if someone with concern for free speech doesn't do that, someone else will propose a law that is flawed and too broad
but simply stating "no new law need apply" goes against the spirit of what moves any society to ever make laws in the first place: the desire to right an outrageous injustice. only in the movies can you go "these are not the droids you are looking for" and people's minds go blank and the subject changes. that doesn't work in the real world
you can't simply wave your hand and people will suddenly stop caring about the meier case or stop trying to make laws to counter such heinous cyberbullying. and meier's case will most certainly not be the last such case of such an injustice, thereby renewing the wellspring of concern and passion to fashion new law
so make peace with the fact new law must be created, and get to work crafting the specific and limiting terminology, so free speech is not trampled
or don't, and live in denial, and bad overly broad law will come forth instead. your choice. "bad new law" or "good new law" are your choices. "no new law" is not a choice that's going to happen if you understand anything of what motivates people to write law in the first place
certainly its not the limited law i outlined in my initial post
some sort of other law you are talking about, having nothing whatsoever to do with what i am talking about, limiting blogs for political content, is of course as bad as it gets. we're talking egypt, china, iran, etc. therefore, i am confident this law would be defeated, since it goes against the obvious spirit of obvious tenets of the principle foundations of this country
so stop proceeding on fear. the other people around you understand the idea of free speech and why its important. you meanwhile act as if you are the only person who understands the concept, and everything is in grave danger. its not. your style of thinking on the issue is called hysteria. relax. one tiny idiotic law is not going to change the entire character of the country
then you have no real argument
you are divorcing the law from what the intent of the law is supposed to be. if you do that, no law, proposed or already in effect, has much meaning, and can be reinterpretted in all sorts of retarded ways
that a law can be twisted into some other meaning that has nothing to do with its obvious intention is not a good argument against passing a law. all laws are subject to this fear. all you have is fear of laws being twisted. well, if the apparatus for enforcing laws is that screwed up, you have problems way way worse than well-intentioned but boradly phrased laws. i woudl suggest to you however than the apparatus for enforcing laws is not malicious as you seem to think it is. so stop being fearful: if a law is well stated and well limited, then support it. baseless fears of bad misinterpration are not good enough to oppose a law
then thank you for furthering my argument against the previous poster
as for the rest of your thread jack into subject matter i was not talking about, well, enjoy your threadjack. you're changing the subject into different territory, not refuting what i say
allegory:
someone hits my kid with a car. the existence of me, the parent/ guardian, was supposed to protect my kid from being hit by a car?
are you suggesting that just because someone has a parent/ guardian they are protected from cyberbullying? the wisest parenting, in fact, suggests that teenage children need their own private social space in which to develop their own identity. that, as a rule of good parenting, a good parent should butt out of micromanaging a child's online social life
i really don't understand what you are trying to say, or why you think a parent/ guardian somehow protects form cyberbullying
the bill is obviously wrong
you completely miss my argument. i am not supporting the bill. i am supporting the rightful creation of an anti-cyberbullying statute, IF, and only IF it meets the tests i list
its not like this bill will fail (and it should fail) and no one will ever be cyberbullied again, or that no one will ever try to pass a cyberbullying bill again. the question is, can we pass the bill in such a way that it addresses everyone's concerns? and then this issue can be put to bed, and no further bullshit overly broad challenges from the realm of concern over cyberbullying should appear again
its not like you defeat this bill, and people suddenly stop caring about cyberbullying. you see that, right? so how can we get people who care about cyberbullying (rightfully) satisfied without hurting free speech?
loopholes, extenuating circumstances, are the substance of every legal and moral code in the world
1. don't murder (unless someone is about to murder you)
2. you have free speech (you can't shout fire in a crowded theater)
etc.
for every single moral or legal stricture you could ever demonstrate to me, there exists extenuating circumstances which limits the validity of that law or code. the same would apply to any law on cyberbullying, obviously. anyone intellectually honest knows this. they know this about every law that has ever existed
but you wish to say, because defining cyberbullying has gray areas, that there can be no definition of it at all. well, i say to you, free speech itself has gray areas... so no one should have free speech. this line of reasoning, of course, is bullshit. you deserve and should have free speech. i'm just demonstrating to you the rationale you put forth for oppositing the definiing of cyberbullying is likewise pure bullshit
the existence of gray areas in any law or moral code is no argument against making the law or moral code in the first place. because every single law or moral code has a gray area. most of morality and law, in fact, is nothing more than the further accretion of words defining and partitioning smaller and smaller slices of gray areas which were previously undefined and unaddressed. like cyberbullying, for example
the woman and daughter team manipulating and persecuting meier
1. knew she was a minor
2. knew she was mentally unstable
proof of mental instability after the fact is unnecessary
proof of the bully's familiarity with the altered mental state of the bullied is the issue
you can defeat any argument on any topic with mindless negativity
some day you'll figure out that this silly anti-intellectual game is only for high school teenagers, and you'll see the only worthy pursuit for your cognitive efforts is to try to make your own positive arguments yourself, about a subject matter you yourself find passionate cause for
only to be torn down in turn by some other snarky teenager. cynicism and sarcasm may be retarded, but irony is forever
"I would favor the creation of a subset of the internet where anonymous speech is impossible"
in everyone's life, there are things you want to do anonymously, that you don't want your identity attached to, that you don't want traced back to you. not all of these things are nefarious, hell, some are even virtuous, like voting. but by the same token, there are somethings you have to do in life that you need your identity attached to. getting a paycheck for example
but, as you note, the internet holds us all at ransom because it is easy to be anonymous, but hard, ehll, impossible, to have a real identity
so not a subset, but a separate network, with clearly delineated authority and verification (rather than nameless peering), for these cases in your life where identity is everything
why do you think i am in any way adovcating for sweepingly general restatement? i am advocating, in multiply stated terminology, for an allowance for a specificly worded limitation on free speech, which anyone with any common sense would agree to. i'll say it yet one more time for your sake:
1. if you target a specific individual
2. for an extended period of time
3. and they are a minor (and you are an adult)
4. or if they are mentally unstable
then you should be fined/ arrested
i defy you to illustrate to me a scenario in which those 4 circumstances above are done in the spirit of free speech, or in any way necessary for you or anyone else to exercise their right to free speech. cyberbullying is a real crime, and it should be stopped, and doing so is not a limitation on free speech in any way when correctly worded in the specific circumstances in which it exists
cyberbullying is obviously NOT free speech. limiting cyberbullying in specific terminology is not limiting free speech
you are supposed to talk about the issues
you aren't supposed to make things personal
in fact, when you make things personal, you lose whatever argument you think you are advocating for, because you've changed the subject yourself: from one of the issues, to one of personal bickering
if you make things personal with an elected official, you SHOULD be fined/ arrested for harassment
if an elected official is doing something wrong, he should be thrown out of office on the grounds of the moral and legal ISSUES he is defiling. and if you wish to go after him, merely make charges on the ISSUES involved. if you need to harass someone in order to make a point, you've already lost the fight anyways
its the difference between me, in this thread, disagreeing with you, and saying so in terms of the subject matter
versus me, in this thread, calling you petty names, putting up a website devoted to comparing you to hitler, sending you obnoxious abusive emails for months, and calling you up and hanging up after threatening to kill you
#1: if i'm doing that, i'm way past losing this argument
#2: you have every right to have me fined/ arrested for harassment
why do you think elected officials somehow deserve any of this treatment? they don't. they deserve to be voted/ kicked out of office on the ISSUES, and no more
so you are completely 100% wrong
the rights and authority of property owners are, shall we say, not so sacrosanct as you think. nor should they be
say a moviehouse owner gives a guy 100% permission to yell fire in his theatre. so what? say someone dies in the stampede due to this guy yelling fire. at what point in your mind do you believe whatever permission the moviehouse owner gave or did not give has any validity whatsoever in the outcome of this situation? its wrong to shout fire in a crowded theatre. period. end of story. no matter what any property owner thinks or whatever permission he gives, this line of reasoning has no bearing whatsoever, because it doesn't trump anyone's right not to die in a stampede
say my neighbor runs a crack house. and he is 100% ok by this. except i'm not too happy about the effects on my property values because no one wants to live next to a crack house (nevermind the obvious increase in crime that would result). me, and the other neighhbors, and the city at large, and society at large, have greater rights here. we can forfeit this guy's right to own this property, because he removing more rights and freedoms than any property ownership entitles him to. in other words, the rights and freedoms of the property owning individual ends when his policies and actions begins to infringe on other peoples rights and liberties. shouting fire in a theatre, or running a crackhouse, most certainly are examples of limits on such property rights
property rights are extremely limited rights. there are tons of rights that trump property rights. i don't know why you and this weird small cadre of folks thinks so much springs from property rights, when in reality property rights are a small and minor space of rights, and in fact, SHOULD be a small and minor space of rights. that there are other rigths, such as free speech, that easily outweigh property rights, and should outweigh property rights, acocrding to any sound understanding of the principles of liberty and freedom, morality and reason
this is what happened to meier: she was mentally and emotionally unstable. she was a minor. an adult, over an extended period of time, purposefully targetted her and assassinated her confidence with false friends and false romantic interests and outright suggesting she kill herself. then she committed suicide
obviously, no one here supports that. at the same time, those rightfully outraged about what happened to meier are proposing limitations on free speech which are too broad. what you need to do is take what motivates them and REDIRECT their free speech limiting efforts to not be so broad. just laughing and riciculing their efforts doesn't satisfy their motivations. and their motivations are real and vlaid, so you have to address them:
you can say anything you want online. unless you: 1. target one individual, 2. over an extended period of time, 3. who is a minor (nad you are an adult), 4. who is mentally unstable
those who want to fight bullying would agree with this. you, defenders of free speech, would agree to this. so stop just shouting down and ridiculing those who are fighting cyberbullying. just redirect their passions. what motivates them is real and valid: a teenage girl was hounded to commit suicide. there is a valid reason to protect her. there is a valid legal space in which new speech laws can exist that, again:
1. stand against targetting one individual
2. over an extended period of time
3. who is a minor (and the bully is an adult)
4. who is mentally unstable
the most hardcore free speech zealot understands why you cant shout fire in a crowded theatre. therefore, everyone recognizes that yes, there actually ARE limits to free speech. so take what motivates those who are angry at the meier case, and HELP them channel their anger into a SPECIFIC limit on online speech of the form of the 4 limitations above
you have to respect the legitimacy of what motivates those who are upset about what happened to meier. just laughing at or ridiculing their overarching efforts doesn't stop them from trying to right the injustive that happened to meier. you can HELP them, and HELP to retain your free speech principles by tailoring and redirecting their passions to a specifically worded area of what is obviously heinous cyberbullying and does not infringe on your free speech rights
imagine that, compromise, rather than a bunch of kneejerk zealotry like you find in other comments here, without any recognition that waht motivates those who are righfully outraged about wehat happened to meier
for those of you who care about your free speech rights: how do you protect the meiers of the world? you need to address that. if you don't, there will be continued attacks on free speech forever, because what motivates those who want to protect the meiers of the world is just as valid an impulse as those who want to protect free speech
sure, some of you could say the meiers of the world need to just toughen up. fuck them, people are cruel, get used to it
by the same token, i could say to you that some assholes want to limit your free speech so tough luck, just shut up about some of what you want to say... this statement is bullshit, i'm just demonstrating that if you don't show any sensitivity to valid concerns about cruelty to others, why do expect anyone to have sympathy for your concerns about free speech?
because, in the end, the principles and passions that support free speech are the same principles and passions that seek to protect the meiers of this world. you protect the rights and liberties of the weak in this world, or you merely help create a world of cruelty, in which limits of free speech are inevitable. limits on free speech are really just a form of cruelty that this cyberbully demonstrated when manipulating meier
and whenever you argue with someone who is against gun control, they are knee deep in facts and figures. they try to use facts all the time. as for "honestly" using facts, i don't know what honesty is supposed to mean in this context. people honestly fight for their convictions, if that's what you mean
furthermore, i don't know why you think the concept of an "emotional argument" has a negative connotation. the argument for gun control is emotional. the argument against gun control is emotional. there is no such thing as an argument over gun control that is not emotional. furthermore, emotions and passions are the foundation for any social policy in the world, for or against any issue you can dream of
show me someone who can make an emotionless argument, and i'll show you someone who doesn't care about the outcome, and therefore has no business in that argument. emotion is far more important than logic in reason in any policy dispute there is. the place of logic and reason is only to sway people's emotions and passions into alignment with yours
the flu virus has also been found to paralyze the attentions of the mass media industry
a lot of schemes like this look great on paper, until you consider the energy expenditure involved in running the thing
who knows, maybe carbon black is worth more than the extra methane it costs to run the thing. that would make it financially friendly. but its certainly not environmentally friendly, when you consider the extra methane consumption
say, for or against gun control
and both sides trot out numbers, facts, that support their assertions
when the truth of course is that various quantities out of context can be twisted or misunderstood as to meaning
simply put, when dealing in the hard sciences, numbers rule. but when you get into politics, religion, sociology: numbers mean shit
but try telling this to a committed partisan when you debate them on various issues. they take your avoidance of numbers and their dubious meaning as some sort of implicit admission of defeat
when in reality, the issues are one of logic, reason, and principles, not bullshit numbers and their essential uselessness in supporting what you think they support
the first computer programmer was lord byron's daughter, and she had a porn star's name for some reason:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
is the bastard offspring of the union of the hexdecimal and the decimal, literally 16*10
all of us techies straddle these two worlds. 160 is our numerology of frustration, the techie 666
if (top.location != location) { ;}
top.location.href = document.location.href
its not a great stretch to imagine some old demented crone eating children who stray from town. in 2009, anywhere starvation rages, nevermind medieval europe with frequent famines
i agree with you 100% about what you said otherwise: fairy tales teach kids about bad stuff. i'm just differing with you on what bad stuff was being warned about with hansel and gretel
hidden stenographic information can really put a damper on employment prospects for secretaries
who wants to hire stenographers when the stenographic information is already hidden therein?
must be some cutting edge dictation software that actually hides the text in the audio
next you'll be telling me we can do away with typewriters!
that's what russia and china do
there is no need to encourage them, merely track them and get out of the way of any of their initiatives. and when the shit hits the fan and another government complains, the government can play dumb: it really wasn't their doing, there's no financing or chain of command. the only crime is one of omission: watching someone do something wrong and not stopping them. the nationalist partisans steer clear of their own nation's computers out of fealty (perhaps protecting them too), they obediently report to the government any stupendous finds (nuclear plant blueprints, warfare plans, etc.) simply for the renown, and in times of great duress, are predisposed to fall under the umbrella of government control. all at the same time, they are complete free of cost, and of the highest technical proficiency and motivation. their motivation is simply passion
this is already happening, for years. before 9/11 there was the hainan island incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
this spy plane bump and crash brought american partisans and chinese partisans at full war online. how do i know this? because one of my windows boxen in new york at the time got hacked. its front page was replaced with the chinese flag and the text "fuck poisonbox! hacked by chinese". i traced the attacking ip to a technical college near beijing. who is poisonbox? i researched it: he was an american partisan hacker(s) laying waste to various chinese servers at the time
i found an article about the proceedings still online from that era:
http://attrition.org/security/commentary/cn-us-war.html
there is no debate here, it's already happening, done by partisan hackers, in loose affiliation with their governments and the government's turning a blind eye to the hijinks
someone out there, perhaps reading this comment, has the makings of a great book or movie, with years of hardcore cyberwarfare already under their belt. they could be in any number of countries where ultranationalism rages (turkey, greece, israel, pakistan, india, etc.)
and oh look: a bumper crop of smug slashdot comments calling lower manhattan office workers panicky fear-addled fools
bonus comment: its better to stay inside the building. and this is actually modded up (facepalm)
let's just break it down for you world-weary heart-heavy wise men:
if you saw airplanes flying into office towers on 9/11, then the sight of a 747 a few hundred feet off the ground, nearly clipping office towers in lower manhattan, followed by an f-16, this just might persude you to leave the area as well. but naaah... clearly its low-iq hysteria, right?
you may now continue your overly judgmental certitude in your rural basements, safe in your knowledge that all reactions you disprove of are nothing more than irrational fear. you of course are immune to this. when it comes the federal government's wiretapping policies, copyright laws, and anti-pornography crusade, rather than prudent moves to dispel these unwise ideas, the proper reaction is panty-twisting pronouncements of the end of democracy and western liberal ideals. right?
truly, you are all level-headed fountains of wisdom of the ways of humankind. not in any way hypocritical asses
where oh where would we all be without your insightful words? hmmm. maybe with a little less self-serving and smug condescension? naaah
look: an anti-pornography law! whine and moan about the end of western civilization. nothing fear-addled there
blind overly judgmental hypocrites. that's all i see
xoxoxoxox