What exactly is the problem with calling a racist a racist?
Nothing, if the person the label is being applied to has actually said something truly racist deliberately.
But, if it is a case of ignorance of the listener ("niggardly" is not a racist term), or someone helpfully trying to "decode" a "keyword" for us, or assuming because one party to some event was white and the other black that the event must have been racially motivated (e.g., the white cop who made a black congressman who had just broken into his own house show ID), there's a lot wrong with trying to permanently stain someone with the accusation. This would include the case of someone who, nine and a half years previously, while working with a Hollywood script writer to create dialog for a cop show, suggested that the bad cop being portrayed might use 'the N word'.
Adding to it by posting true identities and physical locations just makes it worse.
Now, I haven't seen the tumblr stuff so I don't know if the person who was doing this limited himself to clear-cut unambiguous things, but I'm responding to your simple question "what's wrong with".
How do you "out" somebody who's posting to what is essentially a public forum.
By tracking down not only their real names, but their physical addresses. "strength_of_10_men" is really George Thompson who lives at 3482 Wayback Lane, Apt. 4, Glen Close, CA, and his phone number is 800 555-1212.
This is a celebrated tactic when anti-spammers deal with spam kings (who are sending email out to anyone with an email address, or essentially "public"), with the implication that someone should go "visit" them to help them straighten out their lives. Why would we not recognize it as the same type of tactic here?
By that reasoning, noise ordinances are inherently suspect under the First Amendment, because you could easily stick your fingers in your ears or use earplugs.
Your reasoning is incorrect. There is no reason I should have to take affirmative action in my own dwelling to avoid hearing you. And it isn't always as simple as "you could easily". So no, wrong conclusion. In fact, by supporting noise ordinances, you are supporting my statement that there is no right to force others to listen. You can stand on the sidewalk and speak in a normal tone of voice all day without being arrested. As soon as you try to force your speech into my house by shouting or amplification, you're breaking the law.
The First Amendment is and ought to be more thoughtfully complex than you're giving it credit for.
No. Consitutional rights should by their nature if inherency be simple and straightforward. Given no compelling and urgent reason to the contrary, people have the right to free speech. Period, end of sentence. Trying to add shades and nuances and myriads of conditions based on thoughtful consideration creates unfairness, complexity, and preferential treatment. It destroys the concept that the first amendment is most needed to protect the speech that is least preferred.
Oh, but you might be able to afford to buy more speech than someone else. That's not fair. Well, ok, but so what? Some people can afford to buy more things than others. I'm pretty sure that the framers of the Constitution were well aware of the differing abilities of people in their day to afford the means of exercising their rights to free speech. They didn't include any "too much" clauses in the first amendment, so it would seem that none was intended. And none is needed, especially today. Perhaps this medium above all others should demonstrate that.
If the framers really had wanted to deal with "too much" with respect to free speech rights, then why are there no laws that say a newspaper has to print letters to the editor that disagree with the editorials? The editors have an open soapbox that reaches potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of people every day, and yet they are under no legal requirement to print contradictory opinions. They do so because it sells papers, but the laws of economics aren't the same as the laws of the constitution.
Now, there used to be a "fairness doctrine" involving broadcast media, which was based on the idea that there was a limited amount of broadcast space and time, and that broadcasters had some implied duty to be fair to everyone with an opinion. The huge expansion of media has made that limited space concept obsolete, and forcing broadcasters to give away airtime to anyone who wants to contradict someone else is now passe.
The other commenter's point was that it's a reasonably foreseeable consequence of your argument.
No. The part that makes the interpretation patently wrong is the bit about "to the exclusion of others." And the part that implies by exclusion that only the rich have the right to have their voices heard is wrong, as well. My arguments say nothing of the kind. In fact, as we know, there is no way they can force anyone to hear their voices, and there is plenty of webspace for opinions of all shapes and kinds.
You're right, I can just turn off my T.V. and my radio, and stop reading miscellaneous websites, and not be informed. I'm not sure that ignorance is a good solution to this problem.
But you're saying that your TV and radio have been taken over by one voice who is trying, we assume, to misinform you. You're complaining now that you have a choice in turning off misinformation.
So, if you're claiming that having to turn you TV off means you will be uninformed, that means there is still information being conveyed. Where's this "drowning out" effect that you're assuming has happened? Clearly it hasn't.
Why should some members or sections of our society have the ability to drown out the voices of others?
You're assuming they have that ability. That's not a fact that is in evidence. You don't like what some people say, so you think they're being too loud about saying it. That's different than them drowning anyone else out.
And given the web, it is impossible for anyone to drown anyone else out. A million websites on the web all saying the same thing do not hinder your ability to read the one website that says things you agree with.
But then I'll turn the question around. Why do you think some people's right to free speech is more important than others? Who picks who wins? Is there a limit in the constitution on "if X number of people want to say the same thing, they no longer have the right to say it"?
That comes as part and parcel of your "people don't have the right to be heard" argument.
That's not what I said. The argument is that nobody can FORCE anyone else to listen. You can't force anyone to listen to those people you want them to listen to, nor can the billionaire George Soros force anyone to listen to him. There is no right in the constitution that says that anyone has to hear what you say. They can use their "off" knob at their discretion. Any attempts at removing that discretion is more dangerous than free speech itself.
But someone a large enough organization (or someone with enough money; remember, the Supreme Court says that money is speech) can force you to listen to them, by drowning out all the other voices.
My TV and radio both have an "off" knob. Who can force me not to use it? I use it on a regular basis when there are programs that I find offensive, for example. I was able to use it quite well when Air America still had a local station. Right next to it was the tuning knob which allowed me to avoid using the 'off' knob.
Thus, under your interpretation, organizations (and the rich) have the right to have their voices heard, to the exclusion of others.
That's your interpretation of something I didn't say.
While the common use of TDD is for deaf, they usually have a speechless mode of data entry that a mute person could use.
Since we're talking about removing rights of free speech from people who have joined a corporation, you're question is actually relevant, but I suspect you were trying to claim that the "right to be heard" is somehow involved in not being able to speak at all. You're right, silencing people is bad, but forcing others to listen to everything someone has a right to say is, if not worse, as bad.
Imagine the laws: "you will watch TV tonight at 7PM so you can hear the free speech from the following individuals. Your viewing will be monitored and you will have to answer a quiz to test your comprehension." The "right to be heard" is not implied in the right to free speech, as much as some people would like it to be.
You are right, there were groups. But today those groups have become extremely powerful.
You don't think that Masonry, which claimed Geo. Washington, Ben Franklin, and many other founders, as members, much less as targets to be influenced, wasn't extremely powerful? Or any of the trades or social "guilds" of the time? You're talking about a time when, if you pissed of a trade guild in the city where you lived, you couldn't just get on the web and order what they were't going to provide for you from the next state or country over.
You don't know about them like you know about the unions today, but don't be fooled into thinking that their invisibility to you today made them meaningless yesterday.
Communication is much more effective today
Special interest group power comes not from being able to broadcast their message, but from being able to monocast it to the ones who have the real power. This has not changed.
Manipulation of people has become a science.
Now say something that argues for the repeal of basic constitutional rights for people.
It is a real dilemma, and perhaps something that was not anticipated by the Constitution.
Obviously, prior to the Constitution, there never were such things as unions (guilds) made up of people with common ideas (trades) who might try to influence governments to do things that support them. There were no groups that any of the founders of the US were familiar of, despite the following from here:
During the late 1700s it was one of the organizations most responsible for spreading the ideals of the Enlightenment: the dignity of man and the liberty of the individual, the right of all persons to worship as they choose, the formation of democratic governments, and the importance of public education. Masons supported the first public schools in both Europe and America.
I think any argument that tries to claim that "special interest groups" weren't forseen by the founders who wrote the constitution is epic fail.
Thus, in order to guarantee free speech for the individual, to some degree, the speech of large groups must be kept in check.
You're confusing the right of free speech with the right to be heard. The former is protected, the latter is not. E.g., you have the right to say something. You don't have the right to force me to hear you.
In any case, this is a very dangerous road to start travelling on. Who decides when "a group" is "too large" to have First Amendment rights anymore? Is George Soros, with billions of dollars, "too large" and likely to have too loud a voice to have the right to use that voice? Citizen's United was apparently "too large" to have the right to free speech, even though they were a corporation formed explicitely for the purpose of making political speech and were trying to buy airtime in the face of a much larger organized political party.
Commercial speech is not really different from any other speech,
Yes, it is. Speech trying to sell you something (a product with a price) is much different than someone trying to convince you of an opinion. There is existing case law differentiating the two.
That's right, the companies that spam text messages (and email) don't know and don't care.
Why is it the Belgian government's problem
Who said it was? The comment was about it being legal in Belgium to send spam texts unless the recipient is roaming and thus is charged roaming rates. That's a law covering the companies, who we already know don't know and don't care. So the law does nothing to protect anyone.
that US carriers have stupid "receiver pays" billing policies?
Stupid is a subjective evaluation. Why should it even matter if someone has to pay per-text message for spam to be unethical and a morally bankrupt practice, including the common practice of hiding a tiny checkbox that is pre-checked with permission to spam as much as a company wants? Such a practice is essentially changing an opt-in system into an opt-out system, because the user must take an explicit action to NOT participate -- the definition of "opt-out".
I just ran across a site run by a travel agency that would RECHIECK the "spam me until my eyes bleed, please" box every time there was a problem on submitting a checkout. "Please enter your phone number, and don't notice that I've re-enabled the 'spam me until my eyes bleed, please' option for you because you obviously wanted that box checked, didn't you"?
Even if someone doesn't pay in cash for each text, each text spam takes up very limited memory on the phone, which can mean that real texts (like a system status report letting someone know there is a critical issue with a computer he's responsible for) will not get delivered. "Message memory full" is a DOS attack just as real as any other.
Ummm, I could have sworn that computers are supposed to be deterministic things, in that if you start with the same inputs (the images) and do the same things to them (the steps they're told to do in the book) you will always get the same results.
How can the product be "too perfect" when the products should be identical? Ok, date stamps and maybe embeded path names will be different, but the image itself, starting from the same sources, doing the same things, should be the same.
Maybe the problem is that the students are copying things from the book to start with? Shouldn't it be easy to tell that a student has not done this, when his image product is of a golfball and the book example was an umbrella?
In any case, doesn't the teacher have to look at the homework to grade it anyway?
Imagine, you get a phone call from a friend whose toilet just exploded and is flooding the entire first floor.
1. He's your friend, not the person you are paid to protect.
2. It's a broken toilet, not a life threatening incident. No reason to risk your life getting there in a hurry.
3. You're not a professional plumber. You don't have a professional plumber's truck sitting outside your house so you can respond to 24/7 calls. If you did, you wouldn't need the time to "grab all your tools, brief a few more friends", or load them into cars.
"Adding 10-15 minutes" to a trip doesn't excuse the claim that it took them only 28 mintues when the clock says more like 45. And it shouldn't take 45 minutes to get from a nearby annex to the site of the trouble.
Yes. He's a human being (who thus makes mistakes, sometimes bad ones) who holds himself to a higher standard of honor than some others. He broke a vow, he violated a trust, and he's stepping down so that his impropriety won't be an issue for anyone.
He's a graduate of West Point, which has a well-known honor code that has caused many people to resign, even if they were only marginally involved in improper actions. He taught at West Point, which means as a leader he has to hold even more strongly to that code.
It's a shame. He's had people with less honor pulling stunts like calling him "General Betrayus", and others who have called for rigorous investigations of some without any evidence of wrongdoing, only the potential for the appearance of such, who are still in government service.
The White House issued the following statement in response to the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya:
"I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants."
That statement about "denigrate the religious beliefs of others" is a reference to the movie that was allegedly the cause for the incident. Obama knew otherwise. And wouldn't it be interesting to know how supporting the security of our personnel in Libya might have worked out had he directed his administration to do it before the attack?
And if the New York Times is more to your liking, here:
For days after the attack, as it became clearer that the Benghazi violence was a Qaeda operation rather than a protest, White House officials continued to stress the importance of the "hateful" and "disgusting" video, and its supposed role as a catalyst for what Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, insisted was a spontaneous attack.
This narrative was pushed on Sunday morning programs, on late-night talk shows and at news conferences, by everyone from Rice to Hillary Clinton to the president himself. When Obama spoke at the United Nations shortly after the attacks, the video was referenced six times in the text; Al Qaeda was referenced only once.
Ever wonder why Romney didn't harp on about it?
Because it wasn't appropriate at the time. Because other members of his own party were jumping down his throat for pointing it out.
not with people who can't even get the most basic facts about it correct. i.e. YOU.
I've quoted the timeline with "the most basic facts", which aren't what you claim. This "other embassy" fact you keep repeating isn't supported by the real facts. The '28 minutes' is also wrong. "Proven over and over again wrong", as you are using it, has been proven to be wrong. And I didn't make a single reference to this "Fox News" to do it.
a) the requests for security were for a different embassy
August 2, 2012: Ambassador Stevens sends a cable to D.C. requesting "protective detail bodyguard postions" -- saying the added guards "will fill the vaccum of security personnel currently at post... who will be leaving with the next month and will not be replaced." He called "the security condition in Libya... unpredictable, volatile and violent."
Ambassador Stevens was referring to Benghazi, not "a different embassy" as you claim.
September 11, 2012: 9:43 a.m. Benghazi time (3:43 ET): Amb. Stevens sent cables to D.C., including a Benghazi weekly report of security incidents reflecting Libyans' "growing frustration with police and security forces who were too weak to keep the country secure."
Again, Benghazi, not "a different embassy", as you claim.
9:40 p.m. (3:40 p.m. ET): Gunfire and an explosion are heard. A TOC agent sees dozens of armed people over security camera flowing through a pedestrian gate at the compound's main entrance. It is not clear how the gate was opened.
The agent hits the alarm and alerts the CIA security team in the nearby annex and the Libyan 17th of February Brigade, one of several powerful militias serving as a de facto security presence in Benghazi. The embassy in Tripoli and the State Dept. command center were also alerted.
State Dept. Diplomatic Security follows events in real time on a listen-only, audio-only feed, according to testimony of Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant director for international programs, given before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Oct 10.
This is, once again, at the Benghazi embassy, not someplace else. A real-time feed of the audio was being monitored in DC. They knew what was happening. It wasn't a reaction to someone using their right of free speech, and shouldn't have been apologized for.
10:25 p.m. (4:25 p.m. ET): A six-member CIA team arrives from the annex with 40 to 60 members of 17th of February Brigade. The team removes Smith's body.
Hmm. 9:40PM to 10:25 PM. I do the math and get 45 minutes, not the 28 minutes you claim. An nearby annex with military forces that takes 45 minutes to show up.
But these are all lies from "Fox News", right? Try again. CBS
You do realize that the only reason Benghazi is even remotely believed to be some massive incident is because...
killing a US Ambassador and dragging his body through the streets is a massive incident. The fact that he requested additional support and was refused doesn't make the killers less guilty, but it does make the people who are responsible for supporting him culpable. The fact that the same people who should have gotten him more security lied about the events makes them ethically bankrupt.
The fact that it isn't a massive incident anywhere other than on Fox News speaks very well for Fox News and very poorly for the rest of the media.
But hey, anything to take down Obama.
So in your opinion massive incidents that take place on his watch, and the lies he tells to try to cover them up, including apologizing to the people who did it for our First Amendment rights of free speech, are Good Things that he shouldn't be questioned about? What would it take for you to disapprove of anything he does?
I seem to recall a very heated discussion here in/. when the British simply threatened to decertify an embassy in the UK. They didn't threaten to kill the amabassador, even. And this event isn't worth discussing?
I think the work you are looking for is "honor". When one makes vows to someone, and then breaks them, it is a sign of a lack of honor. Resigning is a sign that he has more than most people do.
This is a perfect case in point. Viagra is the wet dream of any big Pharma (on a roll now) a normal patent would have been solid and made them bazillions of dollars; but no they had to squeeze another nickle or dime out of the patent so they risked it all.
I'm sure that Big Pharma has patent lawyers on staff, and that not being explicit enough in this patent saved them nothing. This is more a perfect case in point of "mistake", I think, or "in our opinion", than of some greedy company bending rules. The lawyers almost certainly would have thought they were being explicit enough to meet the rules (because not getting the patent would cost a bundle), and the judges had a differing opinion.
In fact, since there would be a danger of being too vague, and being more explicit costs them nothing, they have no reason not to be explicit. I mean, the patent stops other manufacturers, and it isn't like other Big Pharmas don't know or couldn't figure out how to make Viagra without a more explicit patent.
This is EXACTLY the type of thinking that needs to change to make weed socially acceptable. Would you say the same thing if I said I have a beer every night after work & chores?
Yes, I would.
Notice that I didn't imply anything about a problem. I simply said that if he's stressed at work and needs to use drugs to relax, then the statement that he "couldn't be happier" is untrue.
Imagine this. If he's happy now, imagine how much happier he'd be with a lower stress job and smoking a joint.
As for the nudge who thinks he needed to lecture me about hyperbole, I'll simply point out that if you are using the statement "I couldn't be happier" as hyperbole, then yes, you really could be happer. Either it's true or it isn't. If it isn't true, then it means you could be happier. If it is true, it's not hyperbole.
If he's stressed out at work enough that he needs to smoke a dubee to relax at home, then yes, his life could be happier.
I, too, have really cool and innovative ideas while I am under the influence of various things, and I write them all down because I know they'll make millions of bucks and win me prizes and stuff. It's just I can never read my writing when I sober up. Once I solve that problem, I'm going to be famous!
I see you want to take a comment showing your ignorance of the potential for injury from a single ingested Lego and turn it into some magical support for banning Lego. Nice try.
I suspect that Lego doesn't suffer the same fate because most adults would automatically know that they need to keep their kids from eating Legos, and they don't know they need to keep them from eating magnets. Or maybe it's because 4 year olds don't try using Legos as faux-piercings like 12 year olds do with magnets?
Your apparent (and probably typical) ignorance of the difference between a piece of plastic and a high-powered magnet demonstrates the exact reason that the government felt compelled to act in this case.
The sharp edge on one "just a piece of plastic" can perforate the stomach or intestines causing life threatening sepsis more easily than one tiny spherical magnet can. It takes two magnets in just the right spot to cause injury. Whose ignorance are you talking about?
This is as bad as when Big Government sinisterly destroyed the hardworking Americans employed in the Asbestos industries.
Yeah! Who cares that in one case you could be harmed just by being in the same room with the microscopic deadly terror and wouldn't know it was happening, and the other you have to actually decide to deliberately eat more than one of the macroscopic fiendish killers? Yeah! That makes no difference.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly is the problem with calling a racist a racist?
Nothing, if the person the label is being applied to has actually said something truly racist deliberately.
But, if it is a case of ignorance of the listener ("niggardly" is not a racist term), or someone helpfully trying to "decode" a "keyword" for us, or assuming because one party to some event was white and the other black that the event must have been racially motivated (e.g., the white cop who made a black congressman who had just broken into his own house show ID), there's a lot wrong with trying to permanently stain someone with the accusation. This would include the case of someone who, nine and a half years previously, while working with a Hollywood script writer to create dialog for a cop show, suggested that the bad cop being portrayed might use 'the N word'.
Adding to it by posting true identities and physical locations just makes it worse.
Now, I haven't seen the tumblr stuff so I don't know if the person who was doing this limited himself to clear-cut unambiguous things, but I'm responding to your simple question "what's wrong with".
How do you "out" somebody who's posting to what is essentially a public forum.
By tracking down not only their real names, but their physical addresses. "strength_of_10_men" is really George Thompson who lives at 3482 Wayback Lane, Apt. 4, Glen Close, CA, and his phone number is 800 555-1212.
This is a celebrated tactic when anti-spammers deal with spam kings (who are sending email out to anyone with an email address, or essentially "public"), with the implication that someone should go "visit" them to help them straighten out their lives. Why would we not recognize it as the same type of tactic here?
By that reasoning, noise ordinances are inherently suspect under the First Amendment, because you could easily stick your fingers in your ears or use earplugs.
Your reasoning is incorrect. There is no reason I should have to take affirmative action in my own dwelling to avoid hearing you. And it isn't always as simple as "you could easily". So no, wrong conclusion. In fact, by supporting noise ordinances, you are supporting my statement that there is no right to force others to listen. You can stand on the sidewalk and speak in a normal tone of voice all day without being arrested. As soon as you try to force your speech into my house by shouting or amplification, you're breaking the law.
The First Amendment is and ought to be more thoughtfully complex than you're giving it credit for.
No. Consitutional rights should by their nature if inherency be simple and straightforward. Given no compelling and urgent reason to the contrary, people have the right to free speech. Period, end of sentence. Trying to add shades and nuances and myriads of conditions based on thoughtful consideration creates unfairness, complexity, and preferential treatment. It destroys the concept that the first amendment is most needed to protect the speech that is least preferred.
Oh, but you might be able to afford to buy more speech than someone else. That's not fair. Well, ok, but so what? Some people can afford to buy more things than others. I'm pretty sure that the framers of the Constitution were well aware of the differing abilities of people in their day to afford the means of exercising their rights to free speech. They didn't include any "too much" clauses in the first amendment, so it would seem that none was intended. And none is needed, especially today. Perhaps this medium above all others should demonstrate that.
If the framers really had wanted to deal with "too much" with respect to free speech rights, then why are there no laws that say a newspaper has to print letters to the editor that disagree with the editorials? The editors have an open soapbox that reaches potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of people every day, and yet they are under no legal requirement to print contradictory opinions. They do so because it sells papers, but the laws of economics aren't the same as the laws of the constitution.
Now, there used to be a "fairness doctrine" involving broadcast media, which was based on the idea that there was a limited amount of broadcast space and time, and that broadcasters had some implied duty to be fair to everyone with an opinion. The huge expansion of media has made that limited space concept obsolete, and forcing broadcasters to give away airtime to anyone who wants to contradict someone else is now passe.
The other commenter's point was that it's a reasonably foreseeable consequence of your argument.
No. The part that makes the interpretation patently wrong is the bit about "to the exclusion of others." And the part that implies by exclusion that only the rich have the right to have their voices heard is wrong, as well. My arguments say nothing of the kind. In fact, as we know, there is no way they can force anyone to hear their voices, and there is plenty of webspace for opinions of all shapes and kinds.
You're right, I can just turn off my T.V. and my radio, and stop reading miscellaneous websites, and not be informed. I'm not sure that ignorance is a good solution to this problem.
But you're saying that your TV and radio have been taken over by one voice who is trying, we assume, to misinform you. You're complaining now that you have a choice in turning off misinformation. So, if you're claiming that having to turn you TV off means you will be uninformed, that means there is still information being conveyed. Where's this "drowning out" effect that you're assuming has happened? Clearly it hasn't.
Why should some members or sections of our society have the ability to drown out the voices of others?
You're assuming they have that ability. That's not a fact that is in evidence. You don't like what some people say, so you think they're being too loud about saying it. That's different than them drowning anyone else out.
And given the web, it is impossible for anyone to drown anyone else out. A million websites on the web all saying the same thing do not hinder your ability to read the one website that says things you agree with.
But then I'll turn the question around. Why do you think some people's right to free speech is more important than others? Who picks who wins? Is there a limit in the constitution on "if X number of people want to say the same thing, they no longer have the right to say it"?
That comes as part and parcel of your "people don't have the right to be heard" argument.
That's not what I said. The argument is that nobody can FORCE anyone else to listen. You can't force anyone to listen to those people you want them to listen to, nor can the billionaire George Soros force anyone to listen to him. There is no right in the constitution that says that anyone has to hear what you say. They can use their "off" knob at their discretion. Any attempts at removing that discretion is more dangerous than free speech itself.
But someone a large enough organization (or someone with enough money; remember, the Supreme Court says that money is speech) can force you to listen to them, by drowning out all the other voices.
My TV and radio both have an "off" knob. Who can force me not to use it? I use it on a regular basis when there are programs that I find offensive, for example. I was able to use it quite well when Air America still had a local station. Right next to it was the tuning knob which allowed me to avoid using the 'off' knob.
Thus, under your interpretation, organizations (and the rich) have the right to have their voices heard, to the exclusion of others.
That's your interpretation of something I didn't say.
"What good is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_device_for_the_deaf
http://www.access-board.gov/telecomm/rule.htm
While the common use of TDD is for deaf, they usually have a speechless mode of data entry that a mute person could use.
Since we're talking about removing rights of free speech from people who have joined a corporation, you're question is actually relevant, but I suspect you were trying to claim that the "right to be heard" is somehow involved in not being able to speak at all. You're right, silencing people is bad, but forcing others to listen to everything someone has a right to say is, if not worse, as bad.
Imagine the laws: "you will watch TV tonight at 7PM so you can hear the free speech from the following individuals. Your viewing will be monitored and you will have to answer a quiz to test your comprehension." The "right to be heard" is not implied in the right to free speech, as much as some people would like it to be.
You are right, there were groups. But today those groups have become extremely powerful.
You don't think that Masonry, which claimed Geo. Washington, Ben Franklin, and many other founders, as members, much less as targets to be influenced, wasn't extremely powerful? Or any of the trades or social "guilds" of the time? You're talking about a time when, if you pissed of a trade guild in the city where you lived, you couldn't just get on the web and order what they were't going to provide for you from the next state or country over.
You don't know about them like you know about the unions today, but don't be fooled into thinking that their invisibility to you today made them meaningless yesterday.
Communication is much more effective today
Special interest group power comes not from being able to broadcast their message, but from being able to monocast it to the ones who have the real power. This has not changed.
Manipulation of people has become a science.
Now say something that argues for the repeal of basic constitutional rights for people.
It is a real dilemma, and perhaps something that was not anticipated by the Constitution.
Obviously, prior to the Constitution, there never were such things as unions (guilds) made up of people with common ideas (trades) who might try to influence governments to do things that support them. There were no groups that any of the founders of the US were familiar of, despite the following from here:
I think any argument that tries to claim that "special interest groups" weren't forseen by the founders who wrote the constitution is epic fail.
Thus, in order to guarantee free speech for the individual, to some degree, the speech of large groups must be kept in check.
You're confusing the right of free speech with the right to be heard. The former is protected, the latter is not. E.g., you have the right to say something. You don't have the right to force me to hear you.
In any case, this is a very dangerous road to start travelling on. Who decides when "a group" is "too large" to have First Amendment rights anymore? Is George Soros, with billions of dollars, "too large" and likely to have too loud a voice to have the right to use that voice? Citizen's United was apparently "too large" to have the right to free speech, even though they were a corporation formed explicitely for the purpose of making political speech and were trying to buy airtime in the face of a much larger organized political party.
Commercial speech is not really different from any other speech,
Yes, it is. Speech trying to sell you something (a product with a price) is much different than someone trying to convince you of an opinion. There is existing case law differentiating the two.
They don't know and they don't care.
That's right, the companies that spam text messages (and email) don't know and don't care.
Why is it the Belgian government's problem
Who said it was? The comment was about it being legal in Belgium to send spam texts unless the recipient is roaming and thus is charged roaming rates. That's a law covering the companies, who we already know don't know and don't care. So the law does nothing to protect anyone.
that US carriers have stupid "receiver pays" billing policies?
Stupid is a subjective evaluation. Why should it even matter if someone has to pay per-text message for spam to be unethical and a morally bankrupt practice, including the common practice of hiding a tiny checkbox that is pre-checked with permission to spam as much as a company wants? Such a practice is essentially changing an opt-in system into an opt-out system, because the user must take an explicit action to NOT participate -- the definition of "opt-out".
I just ran across a site run by a travel agency that would RECHIECK the "spam me until my eyes bleed, please" box every time there was a problem on submitting a checkout. "Please enter your phone number, and don't notice that I've re-enabled the 'spam me until my eyes bleed, please' option for you because you obviously wanted that box checked, didn't you"?
Even if someone doesn't pay in cash for each text, each text spam takes up very limited memory on the phone, which can mean that real texts (like a system status report letting someone know there is a critical issue with a computer he's responsible for) will not get delivered. "Message memory full" is a DOS attack just as real as any other.
Belgium can't fix an American problem.
Spam is not an American problem, my friend.
I'd rather have a VGA port instead of HDMI. Lack of Ethernet is a killer, and lack of firewire is a dissappointment.
How can the product be "too perfect" when the products should be identical? Ok, date stamps and maybe embeded path names will be different, but the image itself, starting from the same sources, doing the same things, should be the same.
Maybe the problem is that the students are copying things from the book to start with? Shouldn't it be easy to tell that a student has not done this, when his image product is of a golfball and the book example was an umbrella?
In any case, doesn't the teacher have to look at the homework to grade it anyway?
Imagine, you get a phone call from a friend whose toilet just exploded and is flooding the entire first floor.
1. He's your friend, not the person you are paid to protect.
2. It's a broken toilet, not a life threatening incident. No reason to risk your life getting there in a hurry.
3. You're not a professional plumber. You don't have a professional plumber's truck sitting outside your house so you can respond to 24/7 calls. If you did, you wouldn't need the time to "grab all your tools, brief a few more friends", or load them into cars.
"Adding 10-15 minutes" to a trip doesn't excuse the claim that it took them only 28 mintues when the clock says more like 45. And it shouldn't take 45 minutes to get from a nearby annex to the site of the trouble.
Use a TCXO and you'll never be low on pitch. And if you are, then you can just autotune yourself back to perfection.
Genuinely curious here, any answers?
Yes. He's a human being (who thus makes mistakes, sometimes bad ones) who holds himself to a higher standard of honor than some others. He broke a vow, he violated a trust, and he's stepping down so that his impropriety won't be an issue for anyone.
He's a graduate of West Point, which has a well-known honor code that has caused many people to resign, even if they were only marginally involved in improper actions. He taught at West Point, which means as a leader he has to hold even more strongly to that code.
It's a shame. He's had people with less honor pulling stunts like calling him "General Betrayus", and others who have called for rigorous investigations of some without any evidence of wrongdoing, only the potential for the appearance of such, who are still in government service.
yes it is. It's so important you should get some facts straight.
That's why I attributed them to where I got them.
the request was for a different embassy.
Really? Amabassador Stevens was making requests for security support for some other embassy, not the one he was in charge of? Why would he do that?
which has been shown to be wrong over and over again.
One more time, from here:
That statement about "denigrate the religious beliefs of others" is a reference to the movie that was allegedly the cause for the incident. Obama knew otherwise. And wouldn't it be interesting to know how supporting the security of our personnel in Libya might have worked out had he directed his administration to do it before the attack?
And if the New York Times is more to your liking, here:
Ever wonder why Romney didn't harp on about it?
Because it wasn't appropriate at the time. Because other members of his own party were jumping down his throat for pointing it out.
not with people who can't even get the most basic facts about it correct. i.e. YOU.
I've quoted the timeline with "the most basic facts", which aren't what you claim. This "other embassy" fact you keep repeating isn't supported by the real facts. The '28 minutes' is also wrong. "Proven over and over again wrong", as you are using it, has been proven to be wrong. And I didn't make a single reference to this "Fox News" to do it.
a) the requests for security were for a different embassy
Ambassador Stevens was referring to Benghazi, not "a different embassy" as you claim.
Again, Benghazi, not "a different embassy", as you claim.
This is, once again, at the Benghazi embassy, not someplace else. A real-time feed of the audio was being monitored in DC. They knew what was happening. It wasn't a reaction to someone using their right of free speech, and shouldn't have been apologized for.
Hmm. 9:40PM to 10:25 PM. I do the math and get 45 minutes, not the 28 minutes you claim. An nearby annex with military forces that takes 45 minutes to show up.
But these are all lies from "Fox News", right? Try again. CBS
You do realize that the only reason Benghazi is even remotely believed to be some massive incident is because...
killing a US Ambassador and dragging his body through the streets is a massive incident. The fact that he requested additional support and was refused doesn't make the killers less guilty, but it does make the people who are responsible for supporting him culpable. The fact that the same people who should have gotten him more security lied about the events makes them ethically bankrupt.
The fact that it isn't a massive incident anywhere other than on Fox News speaks very well for Fox News and very poorly for the rest of the media.
But hey, anything to take down Obama.
So in your opinion massive incidents that take place on his watch, and the lies he tells to try to cover them up, including apologizing to the people who did it for our First Amendment rights of free speech, are Good Things that he shouldn't be questioned about? What would it take for you to disapprove of anything he does?
I seem to recall a very heated discussion here in /. when the British simply threatened to decertify an embassy in the UK. They didn't threaten to kill the amabassador, even. And this event isn't worth discussing?
I think the work you are looking for is "honor". When one makes vows to someone, and then breaks them, it is a sign of a lack of honor. Resigning is a sign that he has more than most people do.
This is a perfect case in point. Viagra is the wet dream of any big Pharma (on a roll now) a normal patent would have been solid and made them bazillions of dollars; but no they had to squeeze another nickle or dime out of the patent so they risked it all.
I'm sure that Big Pharma has patent lawyers on staff, and that not being explicit enough in this patent saved them nothing. This is more a perfect case in point of "mistake", I think, or "in our opinion", than of some greedy company bending rules. The lawyers almost certainly would have thought they were being explicit enough to meet the rules (because not getting the patent would cost a bundle), and the judges had a differing opinion.
In fact, since there would be a danger of being too vague, and being more explicit costs them nothing, they have no reason not to be explicit. I mean, the patent stops other manufacturers, and it isn't like other Big Pharmas don't know or couldn't figure out how to make Viagra without a more explicit patent.
This is EXACTLY the type of thinking that needs to change to make weed socially acceptable. Would you say the same thing if I said I have a beer every night after work & chores?
Yes, I would.
Notice that I didn't imply anything about a problem. I simply said that if he's stressed at work and needs to use drugs to relax, then the statement that he "couldn't be happier" is untrue. Imagine this. If he's happy now, imagine how much happier he'd be with a lower stress job and smoking a joint.
As for the nudge who thinks he needed to lecture me about hyperbole, I'll simply point out that if you are using the statement "I couldn't be happier" as hyperbole, then yes, you really could be happer. Either it's true or it isn't. If it isn't true, then it means you could be happier. If it is true, it's not hyperbole.
If he's stressed out at work enough that he needs to smoke a dubee to relax at home, then yes, his life could be happier.
I, too, have really cool and innovative ideas while I am under the influence of various things, and I write them all down because I know they'll make millions of bucks and win me prizes and stuff. It's just I can never read my writing when I sober up. Once I solve that problem, I'm going to be famous!
I suspect that Lego doesn't suffer the same fate because most adults would automatically know that they need to keep their kids from eating Legos, and they don't know they need to keep them from eating magnets. Or maybe it's because 4 year olds don't try using Legos as faux-piercings like 12 year olds do with magnets?
Your apparent (and probably typical) ignorance of the difference between a piece of plastic and a high-powered magnet demonstrates the exact reason that the government felt compelled to act in this case.
The sharp edge on one "just a piece of plastic" can perforate the stomach or intestines causing life threatening sepsis more easily than one tiny spherical magnet can. It takes two magnets in just the right spot to cause injury. Whose ignorance are you talking about?
This is as bad as when Big Government sinisterly destroyed the hardworking Americans employed in the Asbestos industries.
Yeah! Who cares that in one case you could be harmed just by being in the same room with the microscopic deadly terror and wouldn't know it was happening, and the other you have to actually decide to deliberately eat more than one of the macroscopic fiendish killers? Yeah! That makes no difference.