This seems like sophistry: one can always identify "but-for" causes for an observable phenomenon, since events are largely influenced by causal factors only tangentially related to the phenomenon. To say that those tangential factors are "responsible" may be vacuously true, but it doesn't really mean much of anything.
If one accepts the premise that the state of being offended is a response to external stimuli as described above, it doesn't make much sense to view the offended as equally culpable for the offense as the offenders who caused the stimuli in the first place. It makes even less sense if one accepts that there are instances where it is reasonable for a person to feel offended and act accordingly.
It seems to me that being offended is a reactive process, rather than an active one. While one can suppress that response (sometimes), that still implies a causal chain in which the offense is a reflex of the offensive stimulus, rather than an active decision to be offended.
Indeed, your discussion of an individual "deciding" whether or not to be offended seems more in line with my discussion above. The actual process of that decision is more likely first the subjective experience of being offended, following by differing degrees of self-analysis to determine whether the offended individual wants to suppress that feeling.
I'm not proposing new guidelines. I'm saying that if the maintainers decide that they want to avoid the offense by forcing a name change, they can mitigate the risks of a "slippery slope" by establishing guidelines for why the name change is justified, rather than doing it in an ad hoc way (that would then support further ad hoc policies).
in short, when it comes to policy, slippery slopes are only slippery if you let them become that way.
It's not really a great insight to point out that someone generally will dislike views that they find offensive.
Putting "responsibility" on the person who is offended by a statement implies that the offended has an obligation to avoid being offended, regardless of the nature of the offense. A framework which holds the offender as solely responsible for the offense, and then determining whether the offense is something about which one should be concerned, keeps culpability on the actor and then turns to the relevant question: whether we feel that the offense is something for which we want to judge the offender.
Assuming arguendo that you are in fact offended (rather than more realistically that you're trolling), it's not that you're culpable for being offended, but rather that your sense of being offended over my statement is not something I'm going to strive to avoid.
If your goal is to build a community to develop software, doing things which drive people from the community tend to be counterproductive. If, in the alternative, your goal is to establish a community for the purpose of being antisocial jerks, then doing things which drive people who don't like antisocial jerks from the community would be worthwhile, I suppose.
I had thought the goal of this Python community had more to do with the former than the latter, but I could be wrong.
Re:How about "when software is named by assholes"
on
When Software Offends
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· Score: 2
Hell, even without the sexual harassment issues, the fact that a native speaker of English decided to humiliate a non-native speaker through a name suggestion would seem to indicate that we're not exactly dealing with the nicest people ever,
Easiest way to avoid a slippery slope is to build a fence. Establish guidelines, enforce them, and suddenly your slippery slope becomes quite navigable.
This situation couldn't be further from what happened in New Orleans. The current flooding seems to be an example of a flood control system working as intended, albeit with unintended consequences. In New Orleans, the Corps' system of protection was undermined by the Corps' actions in maintaining MRGO; while the Corps could not be held liable for its negligent maintenance of the levies, it could be (and was) held liable for its negligent maintenance of the channel (ruling available at local news site http://www.wdsu.com/r/21668365/detail.html ), given that the channel increased the power of the storm surge into New Orleans.
Congress isn't allowed to totally delegate it's legislative powers; however, it is permitted to direct the Executive in a general direction through an enabling statute, so long as there's an intelligible principle guiding action. However, Congress retains its authority - anything a regulator does can be undone by an act of Congress. In this specific instance, the regulator (FCC) is doing exactly what Congress demanded, by implementing the Truth in Caller ID Act in the FCC's rules.
Yes, having read the law, I'm aware that the individual mandate was referred to as a "penalty" rather than a tax for PR purposes. I'm also aware that there is no "clear statement" rule in the Constitution requiring Congress to spell out the source of its power for adopting any given proposal into law.
Further, I'm even aware that the Constitution did not "get us out of slavery"; as originally written, it preserved slavery.
In the abstract, yes, a sovereign entity has to consent to being sued in its courts. However, there are many statutes which provide broad consent for most claims against the government, including the Federal Tort Claims Act and 42 USC 1983 (which covers constitutional violations).
It's a tax. Congress can levy taxes. It's also regulating interstate commerce. Congress can regulate interstate commerce.
If the individual health insurance mandate were overturned as unconstitutional, that would be evidence of the manipulation of the Constitution, not the lack thereof.
Reread the Fourth Amendment; it doesn't say that searches have to be accompanied by a warrant, only that searches and seizures must be reasonable, and that, when warrants are issued, they must be supported by probable cause:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That "web of laws and rulings" you so despise is what requires, as a general principle, a warrant in order for a search to be reasonable.
As for the rest of your post, it's clear you haven't thought through the implications of having each case turn on a blank-slate interpretation of the Constitution as it applies to a particular set of facts. Instead of having laws and rulings to support one's case, a person would instead only be able to appeal to a particular judge's reading of broad language. Forget uniformity throughout the legal system: you'd be lucky to get uniformity from a single judge.
Declaring a mistrial here was the only effective way to guarantee the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial, including the right to examine the evidence against him. There's quite a bit of jurisprudence on the use of expert testimony to make sure it's relable, and allowing the jury to just Google whatever they want for information just tosses that process out the door.
Imagine you've been falsely accused of child molestation, based on the faulty science of "recovered memories." Would you want the opportunity to challenge the evidence against you through cross-examination, or would you prefer it if the jury could just pull up some article written by a quack and be swayed by it, with no chance for you or your defense to explain the basic fallacies it contained?
Voters have no way to directly influence FCC policy.
That's incorrect; the FCC is legally obliged to consider the input of the public. If you have a substantive comment to a proposed rule and the FCC doesn't consider it as part of the rule-making process, the rule can and will be struck down.
Not legal advice, but you might consider that there is not only a criminal case against the thief, but also a civil case. If you want it back badly enough, you may be able to get a local lawyer to initiate a civil action against the John Doe and subpoena the university to get the identity of the person in possession of the laptop (you could also do this yourself, but it could be very easy for a non-lawyer to make a fatal mistake when going up against the general counsel of a university to enforce the subpoena, assuming they don't just give in, so I don't really think I'd recommend it). That not only identifies who it is so that you could potentially get it returned through the civil court system, it also may increase the likelihood of the police doing something.
The opinion is remarkably poor legal advice, as it fails to account for the relevant differences between local governments and universities and does not speak to the general grants of authority given to Virginia universities to craft their own rules.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like sophistry: one can always identify "but-for" causes for an observable phenomenon, since events are largely influenced by causal factors only tangentially related to the phenomenon. To say that those tangential factors are "responsible" may be vacuously true, but it doesn't really mean much of anything.
If one accepts the premise that the state of being offended is a response to external stimuli as described above, it doesn't make much sense to view the offended as equally culpable for the offense as the offenders who caused the stimuli in the first place. It makes even less sense if one accepts that there are instances where it is reasonable for a person to feel offended and act accordingly.
If only there were some characteristic by which one might be aware of and sensitive to the thoughts, feelings, and expectations of others, then one could predict the reasonable effects of one's actions on others.
It seems to me that being offended is a reactive process, rather than an active one. While one can suppress that response (sometimes), that still implies a causal chain in which the offense is a reflex of the offensive stimulus, rather than an active decision to be offended.
Indeed, your discussion of an individual "deciding" whether or not to be offended seems more in line with my discussion above. The actual process of that decision is more likely first the subjective experience of being offended, following by differing degrees of self-analysis to determine whether the offended individual wants to suppress that feeling.
I'm not proposing new guidelines. I'm saying that if the maintainers decide that they want to avoid the offense by forcing a name change, they can mitigate the risks of a "slippery slope" by establishing guidelines for why the name change is justified, rather than doing it in an ad hoc way (that would then support further ad hoc policies).
in short, when it comes to policy, slippery slopes are only slippery if you let them become that way.
It's not really a great insight to point out that someone generally will dislike views that they find offensive.
Putting "responsibility" on the person who is offended by a statement implies that the offended has an obligation to avoid being offended, regardless of the nature of the offense. A framework which holds the offender as solely responsible for the offense, and then determining whether the offense is something about which one should be concerned, keeps culpability on the actor and then turns to the relevant question: whether we feel that the offense is something for which we want to judge the offender.
I'm OK with that.
Assuming arguendo that you are in fact offended (rather than more realistically that you're trolling), it's not that you're culpable for being offended, but rather that your sense of being offended over my statement is not something I'm going to strive to avoid.
Well, reading the words of the woman in question directly, it seems pretty clear that she was disgusted with the way the name issue played out.
If your goal is to build a community to develop software, doing things which drive people from the community tend to be counterproductive. If, in the alternative, your goal is to establish a community for the purpose of being antisocial jerks, then doing things which drive people who don't like antisocial jerks from the community would be worthwhile, I suppose.
I had thought the goal of this Python community had more to do with the former than the latter, but I could be wrong.
Hell, even without the sexual harassment issues, the fact that a native speaker of English decided to humiliate a non-native speaker through a name suggestion would seem to indicate that we're not exactly dealing with the nicest people ever,
Easiest way to avoid a slippery slope is to build a fence. Establish guidelines, enforce them, and suddenly your slippery slope becomes quite navigable.
How exactly is the person who is offended to blame for being offended? Also, just how far does that reasoning stretch?
And that's exactly what the developer who was trolled into using the name did - she's not developing in the community anymore.
This situation couldn't be further from what happened in New Orleans. The current flooding seems to be an example of a flood control system working as intended, albeit with unintended consequences. In New Orleans, the Corps' system of protection was undermined by the Corps' actions in maintaining MRGO; while the Corps could not be held liable for its negligent maintenance of the levies, it could be (and was) held liable for its negligent maintenance of the channel (ruling available at local news site http://www.wdsu.com/r/21668365/detail.html ), given that the channel increased the power of the storm surge into New Orleans.
Congress isn't allowed to totally delegate it's legislative powers; however, it is permitted to direct the Executive in a general direction through an enabling statute, so long as there's an intelligible principle guiding action. However, Congress retains its authority - anything a regulator does can be undone by an act of Congress. In this specific instance, the regulator (FCC) is doing exactly what Congress demanded, by implementing the Truth in Caller ID Act in the FCC's rules.
Rather than parsing a sparse recitation of a press release, people wanting more information could always read the actual document justifying and implementing the new rules:
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-11-100A1.pdf
Yes, having read the law, I'm aware that the individual mandate was referred to as a "penalty" rather than a tax for PR purposes. I'm also aware that there is no "clear statement" rule in the Constitution requiring Congress to spell out the source of its power for adopting any given proposal into law.
Further, I'm even aware that the Constitution did not "get us out of slavery"; as originally written, it preserved slavery.
Congratulations; you said something stupid and accurately predicted that people would point it out.
In the abstract, yes, a sovereign entity has to consent to being sued in its courts. However, there are many statutes which provide broad consent for most claims against the government, including the Federal Tort Claims Act and 42 USC 1983 (which covers constitutional violations).
It's a tax. Congress can levy taxes.
It's also regulating interstate commerce. Congress can regulate interstate commerce.
If the individual health insurance mandate were overturned as unconstitutional, that would be evidence of the manipulation of the Constitution, not the lack thereof.
Reread the Fourth Amendment; it doesn't say that searches have to be accompanied by a warrant, only that searches and seizures must be reasonable, and that, when warrants are issued, they must be supported by probable cause:
That "web of laws and rulings" you so despise is what requires, as a general principle, a warrant in order for a search to be reasonable.
As for the rest of your post, it's clear you haven't thought through the implications of having each case turn on a blank-slate interpretation of the Constitution as it applies to a particular set of facts. Instead of having laws and rulings to support one's case, a person would instead only be able to appeal to a particular judge's reading of broad language. Forget uniformity throughout the legal system: you'd be lucky to get uniformity from a single judge.
Declaring a mistrial here was the only effective way to guarantee the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial, including the right to examine the evidence against him. There's quite a bit of jurisprudence on the use of expert testimony to make sure it's relable, and allowing the jury to just Google whatever they want for information just tosses that process out the door.
Imagine you've been falsely accused of child molestation, based on the faulty science of "recovered memories." Would you want the opportunity to challenge the evidence against you through cross-examination, or would you prefer it if the jury could just pull up some article written by a quack and be swayed by it, with no chance for you or your defense to explain the basic fallacies it contained?
Then you can choose not to have contacts with those states. New York isn't forcing you to sell your products to residents of New York.
If you have contacts with a forum state, you're subject to that state's jurisdiction in matters related to those contacts.
That's incorrect; the FCC is legally obliged to consider the input of the public. If you have a substantive comment to a proposed rule and the FCC doesn't consider it as part of the rule-making process, the rule can and will be struck down.
Not legal advice, but you might consider that there is not only a criminal case against the thief, but also a civil case. If you want it back badly enough, you may be able to get a local lawyer to initiate a civil action against the John Doe and subpoena the university to get the identity of the person in possession of the laptop (you could also do this yourself, but it could be very easy for a non-lawyer to make a fatal mistake when going up against the general counsel of a university to enforce the subpoena, assuming they don't just give in, so I don't really think I'd recommend it). That not only identifies who it is so that you could potentially get it returned through the civil court system, it also may increase the likelihood of the police doing something.
The opinion is remarkably poor legal advice, as it fails to account for the relevant differences between local governments and universities and does not speak to the general grants of authority given to Virginia universities to craft their own rules.