You misunderstand freedom of speech, you can say anything about anyone, but it is never legal to falsely accuse someone of a crime. You can joke about Michael Jackson being a paedophile all you want, but if you state it as fact you have made a criminal accusation... I know there were incidents where someone is falsely accused and their lives destroyed by it, but it was always a public opinion manhunt in the media that portrays someone very bad. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a right that is also needed, and not only for courts but also the media and people need to adhere to this important right. These incidents have nothing to do with the right to free speech (because it is not a right to falsely accuse someone), but much more with the innocent until proven guilty right.
Funny joke about team America and savage Aussies, but i'm from The Netherlands and it still is much more down to earth here. I remember an incident just this month where a woman accused someone of raping her (because her husband caught them in the act), she was arrested for falsely accusing someone.
P.S. Freedom of speech allows me to indeed dismiss your opinion as you presumed, I have no obligation to agree or even read it, but I see this as a normal courtesy in conversation. Until you insult me (or otherwise undermine communication) in a way that I can't in good conscience continue to converse with you there is no problem with you disagreeing with me... and there never should be. Maybe freedom of speech should be written as 'Freedom for people to disagree and still get along'.
Sure, actions do have consequence. If someone is insulting someone he will look bad in public opinion, not the person insulted. That should be enough! And if someone falsely accuses someone of a crime he himself is in violation of the law...
Some stupid remark by a nobody will go unnoticed, unless he himself involves the law. And someone well known will think twice about lying and insulting someone because it can cost them their own head...
I get that you're hinting at the job of politicians to make laws, but the judge can always rule according to his interpretation of law. If he see the libel laws and the constitution (which guarantees freedom of speech) and weigh them he can choose to throw a case out of court because the freedom of speech right trumps another law *in that particular case*. I guess in this case he didn't because Brazil offers nu such protection for anonymous people, but still the judge could have called bullshit instead of fining Google. It is also perfectly in the right of a judge to tell someone to fuck off and stop wasting the courts time on something trivial.
The USA has:
- The most different lobby groups trying to get laws eroding free speech (left, right, liberal, Christian, Muslim... whatever. All 'for' free speech but against 'X being said because *that* is harmful').
- By far the most lawsuits against people who express opinions (anonymous or not, satire or not), sometimes with a conviction.
- Very strong censoring, some self-inflicted under pressure (like Comedy Central), some because of lobby groups (can't say 'fuck' on TV).
You clearly found the paradox proving why no such laws should ever exists. Otherwise the whole legal system will collapse in on itself and disappear in a puff of purple smoke.
They already invented methane-free cows, couldn't they also create methane-free rice?
Probably... but the vega-hippies still would complain since it is 'bio-engineered'... Most would rather have 2 billion people starve than have bio-engineered crops (even though I presume most of these don't even know about the fact that we can only feed 4 billion if we only produce biological crops, they just go with the rest of the hippie nature crowd without understanding what's at stake).
When will people understand that freedom of speech is inherently linked to offense and injury on the side of the receiving part of any 'verbal abuse' or 'insults'... This is not something you can (or need to) protect against without sacrificing (or eroding) freedom of speech!
I hope judges in other countries (and perhaps Brazil too) will realize that this is not a matter of law, but a matter of common decency. If you insult someone willingly you're a dick and that's it, no need for laws, no need for convictions and most of all no need for a jihad or any physical harm.
Oh yeah, and people who believe they need (or have right to) legal protection against insults are dumbasses who are willing to sacrifice one of our basic rights for their own personal little feel-good gain. Grow some fucking self-confidence and just don't dignify some things with a response! Every time I hear someone proclaim 'the should be a law against saying X' a little part of me dies...
Apparently the project is in the UK, Scandinavia and The Netherlands, let's see if I can participate...
No details on how the study is performed but I guess they will just try to gather data for statistical analysis. I hope they will make a difference between calling for hours daily (holding at your ear) and using mobile Internet over 3G for hours daily (on your lap / in hand)... Most studies until now just looked at the length of use and calculate the energy absorbed by the body (i.e. a sack of water), and I guess there aren't really a lot of interesting things to learn from that...
I understand how they could not allow the situation to continue, but they allowed the situation to develop in the first place. Afghanistan and the fundamentalism there is part of the fallout of US policy in the cold war, especially in Afghanistan they trained, funded and armed these exact same fundamentalists and (ab)used them for their political purposes. This contributed mainly to their hate of the USA, they refused to let the (muslim) world be used and hurt by the far reaching US foreign policy and try to fight back. Sadly the world media only portray it as crazy religious people who want to destroy America because of their freedom, but that really doesn't fully cover it, not even closely... you have to give an intelligent person like Osama more credit than that (even if you, like myself, strongly disagree with his methods).
According to Sun Tsu terrorism is a valid tactic of war (especially if you are at a disadvantage)... And if you look at recent history terrorism (in the original definition) is widely used by all kinds of aggressors and defenders in their wars, some countries to use it the last decades (but are not known for it) are Germany, Israel and the USA for example. Other smaller parties are widely known for using terrorism, hence they are known as 'terrorist'. But because of this people lose focus what terrorism really is. These aren't nut-jobs who love to blow themselves up, these are fighters fighting a losing war and choosing to do so by any extreme means!
... but there are very few organized Christian groups that are pushing for actual Christian rule.
Christian rule is everywhere in western society, and even our gained freedoms are under fire by extemist christians. Some examples:
- Women rights (can't vote or take any government position)
- Free speech (considered too hurtful, or 'sacrelicious', in some situations)
- Abortions (considered murder)
- Gay marriage (considered an abomination)
- Intoxication (considered too dangerous)
I could go on for a while, and there are some very very strange examples (especially if you consider all different christian law around the world).
Call us when multiple Western nations blow up basically everything in Afghanistan and Iraq because of what they perceive as Muslim terrorist atrocities against their fellow Western Christians.
Fixed that for you...
I have to admit it's not quite the same, but you have to see that it's also not that different... especially not in the eyes of the 'insurgents/terrorists/whatever'.
I tend to see the similarity... You claim that the troubles is more politically motivated and religion is merely a weapon used to mobilize people. But I assume the same is equally true for Al Qaeda, they mobilize suckers to blow themselves up with religious propaganda, but this is merely a (very powerful) weapon in their battles against political enemies. Beside this comparison I see a long history of blurry lines between politics and religion, some of the quickest big examples from other religions in history are:
- The catholic church as a political institution (they basically ruled the world for centuries, had great political power, their own country and still enjoy immunity)
- The state of Israel (Jewish lobby and Christian ideals from USA had a big hand in this political decision within the league of nations)
- Ghandi's struggle for independence of India (although admirable he still used religion to succeed by increasing the political pressure).
The same still holds today for the USA, George Bush increased his support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by claiming to be a messenger from god doing gods will, in essence making it a war of Christians against Muslims (again)... Extremist Christians in the USA heard this and said "good thing they kill all the evil terrorist loving Muslims there", just like extremist Muslims said "we can't allow this war to take place unpunished, we must blow up more Christians". The distinction is that one party in the conflict has a huge army (thus going to war in gods name) and the other party has a handful of religiously motivated guys and some explosives (thus blowing people up in gods name).
It does not matter that you and I can see the political motivations behind these wars, what matters is that the extremists (from both sides) see this as a all-out war between religions.
Yeah, the great thing about Southpark is that the 'hate' and mock *everything* equally, so I'd say there is no discrimination or prejudice at all. Leave it up the the people they depicted to create a discrimination between people who can take a joke and people who throw a fit because they have severe issues with themselves...
I'd say you've never even heard of a little country called Ireland...
Everyone I know should be restrained then...
on
ACTA Treaty Released
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· Score: 1
Absolutely everyone I know should be restrained because they are guilty of this "imminent copyright infringement". At least over 90% of the people i've ever known has at least once in their lives done any of the following:
- Downloaded copyrighted material
- Watched copyrighted material on Youtube
- Heard a copyrighted song 'performance'
- Got a copied CD (or tape) from a friend
Anyone who has not done any of the above (or equivalent) is either well over 80 and only has a record player, or they *will* infringe directly or indirectly in the next couple of years... Instead of finding "imminent infringers" they might as well restrain all people under 80.
I respectfully disagree, even though your theory is sound. You fail to account for the likely possibility that before we reach the point where SSD is cheaper than HDD in practice we will have moved on to the next breakthrough technology (holographic, or even molecular or genetic storage). Especially when new breakthroughs like optical and quantum computing change the computing world both SSD and HDD will become obsolete around the same time.
Oh oh... please allow me to 'Speak Free'... we'll have 'Trouble in 421' when this fungus 'Version' of the strain 'Psychopsilocybin' raises to the 'Medium's surface.
We might have to proclaim 'Take Me to Your Leader' or we're 'Shaft'-ed. But 'The Answer' according to our doctor 'Azwethinkweiz' is to let it 'Sink Beneath the Line' of 'Hilikus'.
Oh yeah, and 'You Will Be A Hot Dancer'!
Re:I want it - For My Car
on
Life Recorder
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· Score: 1
Excellent idea, but no need to wait for new tech... you could build this with a low power PC with some standard small camera's and record to an SSD drive (I guess they should be able to survive a crash)... As an added bonus you can add a tiny screen to the mix and create a parking camera. I'd set the system up with some harddisk encryption, but nothing over the top paranoid is needed since you should configure the system to always power off once you turn the engine off (your keys won't be in memory). There is an added bonus to record possible theft, but leaving the system running would drain the battery overnight. So the main purpose would be to have better legal standing in all traffic related incidents. But then again if you build a system like that adding some theft-protection with a GPS receiver and a 3G uplink should be easy, then you would be able to track your car when stolen.
Hmmm... looks like this project would run away from me until I have a full blown car computer, adding satnav, media player, car-phone or internet browser... it's too tempting. My guess is I would spend more on this system then the car...
No you can't blame them, CPS is a nightmare of any parent (because good parents can also be screwed over by one false statement which most of us wouldn't do to our worst enemy). The problem is that CPS is there to intervene in shitty situations, so they have to be the bogeyman, so be it, they're not there for the parents. The CPS people are a last resort and not called in very soon, but the association is enough to scare people. It also does not help that in the Netherlands the CPS is called 'Jeugd Zorg', but the children healthcare bureau is called 'Jeugd Gezondheid Zorg' (or JGZ), the name is similar but the purpose is a world of difference, in my opinion the name was a bad PR move that hinders the healthcare sometimes because the are 'guilty by association', especially in minority groups where the distinction between these two agencies is occluded by language complications.
There is a project in Amsterdam called ABCD (http://www.abcd-studie.nl/, sorry English text seems incomplete I see) they track 8000 children (from volunteers) from before birth at several points. They kept a lot of information about work, stress, food, drug-use etc. both before, during, and after the pregnancy. Currently the children are around 5 and around 5000 are still getting medical screenings (including blood tox etc.), this will continue until the children are 10. It's a pretty big and long-term operation and unique in that respect.
What I meant with counter intuitive is that some things can be an unexpectedly high risk-factor for psychological problems, like if the parent(s) raise a kid with strict authority (a lot of people expect these children to have less problems and less chance of becoming a criminal, but it's likely the opposite). I don't know these factors conclusively, but what I've seen thus far sparks my interest (even though i'm just working on the IT side of the project).
Yeah, the problem is people looking you up before even giving you a chance... Thats exactly the reason to stay away from life-sucking sites like Facebook. If you upload there you basically put everything on your permanent record (removing your account and data is troublesome at best). It's a lot different from telling about your personal life in person (you can gauge what is appropriate to say)... And even if you dress inappropriate you can always try again with better dresscode, but the shit online will not be changed so easily...
Zero tolerance is not yet tolerated in the Netherlands.:-)
And this is about younger children... when a child of an age under 10 is 'violent' or misbehaves it's rarely the childs fault. There is always some circumstance that leads to these behaviours, and this age is perfect for trying to correct it without resorting to punishment. The records are also private, other parents won't find out about them.
I'm not yet a pessimist, but I always think about the possible future abuse of data... But you can't foresee what the next govenment or the one after that will try with the data. Thankfully the law is very clear about that at this moment, and the people won't accept it when they try to change privacy laws (I hope, like I said I'm not a pessimist yet). NLD != USA.
Slashdot Mirror
You misunderstand freedom of speech, you can say anything about anyone, but it is never legal to falsely accuse someone of a crime. You can joke about Michael Jackson being a paedophile all you want, but if you state it as fact you have made a criminal accusation... I know there were incidents where someone is falsely accused and their lives destroyed by it, but it was always a public opinion manhunt in the media that portrays someone very bad. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a right that is also needed, and not only for courts but also the media and people need to adhere to this important right. These incidents have nothing to do with the right to free speech (because it is not a right to falsely accuse someone), but much more with the innocent until proven guilty right.
Funny joke about team America and savage Aussies, but i'm from The Netherlands and it still is much more down to earth here. I remember an incident just this month where a woman accused someone of raping her (because her husband caught them in the act), she was arrested for falsely accusing someone.
P.S. Freedom of speech allows me to indeed dismiss your opinion as you presumed, I have no obligation to agree or even read it, but I see this as a normal courtesy in conversation. Until you insult me (or otherwise undermine communication) in a way that I can't in good conscience continue to converse with you there is no problem with you disagreeing with me... and there never should be. Maybe freedom of speech should be written as 'Freedom for people to disagree and still get along'.
Sure, actions do have consequence. If someone is insulting someone he will look bad in public opinion, not the person insulted. That should be enough! And if someone falsely accuses someone of a crime he himself is in violation of the law...
Some stupid remark by a nobody will go unnoticed, unless he himself involves the law. And someone well known will think twice about lying and insulting someone because it can cost them their own head...
I get that you're hinting at the job of politicians to make laws, but the judge can always rule according to his interpretation of law. If he see the libel laws and the constitution (which guarantees freedom of speech) and weigh them he can choose to throw a case out of court because the freedom of speech right trumps another law *in that particular case*. I guess in this case he didn't because Brazil offers nu such protection for anonymous people, but still the judge could have called bullshit instead of fining Google. It is also perfectly in the right of a judge to tell someone to fuck off and stop wasting the courts time on something trivial.
The USA has:
- The most different lobby groups trying to get laws eroding free speech (left, right, liberal, Christian, Muslim... whatever. All 'for' free speech but against 'X being said because *that* is harmful').
- By far the most lawsuits against people who express opinions (anonymous or not, satire or not), sometimes with a conviction.
- Very strong censoring, some self-inflicted under pressure (like Comedy Central), some because of lobby groups (can't say 'fuck' on TV).
You clearly found the paradox proving why no such laws should ever exists. Otherwise the whole legal system will collapse in on itself and disappear in a puff of purple smoke.
They already invented methane-free cows, couldn't they also create methane-free rice?
Probably... but the vega-hippies still would complain since it is 'bio-engineered'... Most would rather have 2 billion people starve than have bio-engineered crops (even though I presume most of these don't even know about the fact that we can only feed 4 billion if we only produce biological crops, they just go with the rest of the hippie nature crowd without understanding what's at stake).
P.S. Repost for accidental AC.
When will people understand that freedom of speech is inherently linked to offense and injury on the side of the receiving part of any 'verbal abuse' or 'insults'... This is not something you can (or need to) protect against without sacrificing (or eroding) freedom of speech!
I hope judges in other countries (and perhaps Brazil too) will realize that this is not a matter of law, but a matter of common decency. If you insult someone willingly you're a dick and that's it, no need for laws, no need for convictions and most of all no need for a jihad or any physical harm.
Oh yeah, and people who believe they need (or have right to) legal protection against insults are dumbasses who are willing to sacrifice one of our basic rights for their own personal little feel-good gain. Grow some fucking self-confidence and just don't dignify some things with a response! Every time I hear someone proclaim 'the should be a law against saying X' a little part of me dies...
[x] I have read and agree to your EULA and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
There is some more info here: http://www.mthr.org.uk/research_projects/COSMOS.htm
Apparently the project is in the UK, Scandinavia and The Netherlands, let's see if I can participate...
No details on how the study is performed but I guess they will just try to gather data for statistical analysis. I hope they will make a difference between calling for hours daily (holding at your ear) and using mobile Internet over 3G for hours daily (on your lap / in hand)... Most studies until now just looked at the length of use and calculate the energy absorbed by the body (i.e. a sack of water), and I guess there aren't really a lot of interesting things to learn from that...
I understand how they could not allow the situation to continue, but they allowed the situation to develop in the first place. Afghanistan and the fundamentalism there is part of the fallout of US policy in the cold war, especially in Afghanistan they trained, funded and armed these exact same fundamentalists and (ab)used them for their political purposes. This contributed mainly to their hate of the USA, they refused to let the (muslim) world be used and hurt by the far reaching US foreign policy and try to fight back. Sadly the world media only portray it as crazy religious people who want to destroy America because of their freedom, but that really doesn't fully cover it, not even closely... you have to give an intelligent person like Osama more credit than that (even if you, like myself, strongly disagree with his methods).
According to Sun Tsu terrorism is a valid tactic of war (especially if you are at a disadvantage)... And if you look at recent history terrorism (in the original definition) is widely used by all kinds of aggressors and defenders in their wars, some countries to use it the last decades (but are not known for it) are Germany, Israel and the USA for example. Other smaller parties are widely known for using terrorism, hence they are known as 'terrorist'. But because of this people lose focus what terrorism really is. These aren't nut-jobs who love to blow themselves up, these are fighters fighting a losing war and choosing to do so by any extreme means!
... but there are very few organized Christian groups that are pushing for actual Christian rule.
Christian rule is everywhere in western society, and even our gained freedoms are under fire by extemist christians. Some examples:
- Women rights (can't vote or take any government position)
- Free speech (considered too hurtful, or 'sacrelicious', in some situations)
- Abortions (considered murder)
- Gay marriage (considered an abomination)
- Intoxication (considered too dangerous)
I could go on for a while, and there are some very very strange examples (especially if you consider all different christian law around the world).
All they have to do to make sales rise and simultaneously make Jobs and Apple look like a bunch of elitist smug snobs is: *nothing*
Call us when multiple Western nations blow up basically everything in Afghanistan and Iraq because of what they perceive as Muslim terrorist atrocities against their fellow Western Christians.
Fixed that for you...
I have to admit it's not quite the same, but you have to see that it's also not that different... especially not in the eyes of the 'insurgents/terrorists/whatever'.
I tend to see the similarity... You claim that the troubles is more politically motivated and religion is merely a weapon used to mobilize people. But I assume the same is equally true for Al Qaeda, they mobilize suckers to blow themselves up with religious propaganda, but this is merely a (very powerful) weapon in their battles against political enemies. Beside this comparison I see a long history of blurry lines between politics and religion, some of the quickest big examples from other religions in history are:
- The catholic church as a political institution (they basically ruled the world for centuries, had great political power, their own country and still enjoy immunity)
- The state of Israel (Jewish lobby and Christian ideals from USA had a big hand in this political decision within the league of nations)
- Ghandi's struggle for independence of India (although admirable he still used religion to succeed by increasing the political pressure).
The same still holds today for the USA, George Bush increased his support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by claiming to be a messenger from god doing gods will, in essence making it a war of Christians against Muslims (again)... Extremist Christians in the USA heard this and said "good thing they kill all the evil terrorist loving Muslims there", just like extremist Muslims said "we can't allow this war to take place unpunished, we must blow up more Christians". The distinction is that one party in the conflict has a huge army (thus going to war in gods name) and the other party has a handful of religiously motivated guys and some explosives (thus blowing people up in gods name).
It does not matter that you and I can see the political motivations behind these wars, what matters is that the extremists (from both sides) see this as a all-out war between religions.
Yeah, the great thing about Southpark is that the 'hate' and mock *everything* equally, so I'd say there is no discrimination or prejudice at all. Leave it up the the people they depicted to create a discrimination between people who can take a joke and people who throw a fit because they have severe issues with themselves...
I'd say you've never even heard of a little country called Ireland...
Absolutely everyone I know should be restrained because they are guilty of this "imminent copyright infringement". At least over 90% of the people i've ever known has at least once in their lives done any of the following:
- Downloaded copyrighted material
- Watched copyrighted material on Youtube
- Heard a copyrighted song 'performance'
- Got a copied CD (or tape) from a friend
Anyone who has not done any of the above (or equivalent) is either well over 80 and only has a record player, or they *will* infringe directly or indirectly in the next couple of years... Instead of finding "imminent infringers" they might as well restrain all people under 80.
I respectfully disagree, even though your theory is sound. You fail to account for the likely possibility that before we reach the point where SSD is cheaper than HDD in practice we will have moved on to the next breakthrough technology (holographic, or even molecular or genetic storage). Especially when new breakthroughs like optical and quantum computing change the computing world both SSD and HDD will become obsolete around the same time.
Oh oh... please allow me to 'Speak Free'... we'll have 'Trouble in 421' when this fungus 'Version' of the strain 'Psychopsilocybin' raises to the 'Medium's surface.
We might have to proclaim 'Take Me to Your Leader' or we're 'Shaft'-ed.
But 'The Answer' according to our doctor 'Azwethinkweiz' is to let it 'Sink Beneath the Line' of 'Hilikus'.
Oh yeah, and 'You Will Be A Hot Dancer'!
Excellent idea, but no need to wait for new tech... you could build this with a low power PC with some standard small camera's and record to an SSD drive (I guess they should be able to survive a crash)... As an added bonus you can add a tiny screen to the mix and create a parking camera. I'd set the system up with some harddisk encryption, but nothing over the top paranoid is needed since you should configure the system to always power off once you turn the engine off (your keys won't be in memory). There is an added bonus to record possible theft, but leaving the system running would drain the battery overnight. So the main purpose would be to have better legal standing in all traffic related incidents. But then again if you build a system like that adding some theft-protection with a GPS receiver and a 3G uplink should be easy, then you would be able to track your car when stolen.
Hmmm... looks like this project would run away from me until I have a full blown car computer, adding satnav, media player, car-phone or internet browser... it's too tempting. My guess is I would spend more on this system then the car...
No you can't blame them, CPS is a nightmare of any parent (because good parents can also be screwed over by one false statement which most of us wouldn't do to our worst enemy). The problem is that CPS is there to intervene in shitty situations, so they have to be the bogeyman, so be it, they're not there for the parents. The CPS people are a last resort and not called in very soon, but the association is enough to scare people. It also does not help that in the Netherlands the CPS is called 'Jeugd Zorg', but the children healthcare bureau is called 'Jeugd Gezondheid Zorg' (or JGZ), the name is similar but the purpose is a world of difference, in my opinion the name was a bad PR move that hinders the healthcare sometimes because the are 'guilty by association', especially in minority groups where the distinction between these two agencies is occluded by language complications.
There is a project in Amsterdam called ABCD (http://www.abcd-studie.nl/, sorry English text seems incomplete I see) they track 8000 children (from volunteers) from before birth at several points. They kept a lot of information about work, stress, food, drug-use etc. both before, during, and after the pregnancy. Currently the children are around 5 and around 5000 are still getting medical screenings (including blood tox etc.), this will continue until the children are 10. It's a pretty big and long-term operation and unique in that respect.
What I meant with counter intuitive is that some things can be an unexpectedly high risk-factor for psychological problems, like if the parent(s) raise a kid with strict authority (a lot of people expect these children to have less problems and less chance of becoming a criminal, but it's likely the opposite). I don't know these factors conclusively, but what I've seen thus far sparks my interest (even though i'm just working on the IT side of the project).
Yeah, the problem is people looking you up before even giving you a chance... Thats exactly the reason to stay away from life-sucking sites like Facebook. If you upload there you basically put everything on your permanent record (removing your account and data is troublesome at best). It's a lot different from telling about your personal life in person (you can gauge what is appropriate to say)... And even if you dress inappropriate you can always try again with better dresscode, but the shit online will not be changed so easily...
Zero tolerance is not yet tolerated in the Netherlands. :-)
And this is about younger children... when a child of an age under 10 is 'violent' or misbehaves it's rarely the childs fault. There is always some circumstance that leads to these behaviours, and this age is perfect for trying to correct it without resorting to punishment. The records are also private, other parents won't find out about them.
I'm not yet a pessimist, but I always think about the possible future abuse of data... But you can't foresee what the next govenment or the one after that will try with the data. Thankfully the law is very clear about that at this moment, and the people won't accept it when they try to change privacy laws (I hope, like I said I'm not a pessimist yet). NLD != USA.