You can opt out of using a site if you don't care for it's TOS. You cannot opt out of government spying if you don't like what the fact that they're doing it
Why are people still making this comparison, when it's been known to be false for at least as long as we've known about Facebook's shadow profiles?
Agreed. To freak out about Snapchat's terms of service, I'd first have to care about Snapchat, most likely due to being a snapchat user. But I really have nothing to freak out about.
the Hamster Toy is an inch-tall, cartoon-like plastic animal, which has no apparent gender...
I would have to disagree there. Look at those prominent eyelashes. By the rules of cartoon sexual dimorphism, this is very obviously a female hamster by that trait alone.
Having said that, I agree that she doesn't actually look like the news anchor in question.
That's a barbaric rule, under the most literal definition: the concept it represents is directly opposed to the concept of civilization itself.
One of the most fundamental pillars of civilization is specialization. Farmers become really good at farming, so that the rest of us don't have to grow our own food, lifting everyone out of a basic subsistence lifestyle, and the rest of us learn to become specialized craftsmen, engineers, laborers, soldiers, teachers, doctors and so on, each becoming an expert at one thing, and look what it's done for us!
I wear clothes I didn't make, made from fabric spun from fibers from plants I didn't grow. I drive a car so advanced that I literally couldn't ever hope to build one like it from scratch if I devoted my entire life to it. Same goes with the computer I'm typing this on, not to mention the infrastructure needed to make both cars and computers run. My breakfast this morning contained ingredients from 3 different countries, and arrived at my location fresh and still fit for human consumption.
I'm able to do all these things, and so are you, because we're able to implicitly trust that all these things around us that we don't fully understand were produced by experts who do understand what they were doing and who did a good job. You may not think of it in those terms, but that basic expectation is there.
Caveat emptor is the antithesis of that. The idea that the responsibility for not getting screwed over in a purchase is on the buyer, not the seller, implicitly requires that the buyer be in a position to competently evaluate every purchase. It is, in effect, requiring everyone to become an expert on everything that affects their lives, and then when this inevitably fails, because in a specialized civilization even the most intelligent people simply don't have the time or the brainpower to do so, saying that it's their own fault for failing at something they should never have had to do in the first place.
Caveat emptor is victim-blaming at its very ugliest, and it's a principle of barbarism, directly opposed to civilization. Can we please just drop it from our collective vocabulary already?
(Note: Before any of the usual suspects try to twist my words around, nothing I said here should be interpreted as saying anything about my opinion of any aspect of the legal case under discussion in this article. I just find the concept of caveat emptor repulsive.)
First off, mea culpa. I made a campaign promise to write 100 stories only 100 words long, which I realized early on was going to be way more challenging than I thought, but for reasons I had not anticipated: the stories weren’t too long, they were too short.
Not surprised. You can't get very much story into such a small amount of space; cutting it down takes a lot of work.
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter. - Blaise Pascal
Illegal? If they were being tried for criminal charges twice, I'd agree. However, your double jeopardy link doesn't apply to civil suits.
The US Department of Justice had them indicted by federal a grand jury, and after they were found guilty it ended in jail time. News flash: that's not a civil suit. That's blatantly illegal double jeopardy in a politically-motivated kangaroo court.
Well there's your problem right there. Any law with at least 1201 sections is too big and complex to be any good.
I've always been a fan of the Brobdingnagian code in Gulliver's Travels:
No law in that country [may] exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet... They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law, is a capital crime.
If you're arguing they still have an excuse for it after this, then please enlighten us as to what law specifically allows them to continue to beat him.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't have to be. The "excuse" after this point is simple: he was continuing to resist, and therefore was not subdued. He struggled more, and took more physical punishment, than you'd expect a normal person to be able to, but all that that proves is that he was on the right slope of the bell curve in that aspect. (Being intoxicated probably helped too. Diminished awareness of pain and all that.)
And if the police had done something wrong I wouldn't defend it. But as long as someone who had just finished putting hundreds of lives in danger by driving impaired at high speeds is continuing to resist, I don't see anything wrong with continuing to attempt to subdue him.
Otherwise, it just seems like you're a cop sympathizer who will defend their actions, even when wrong.
No, what I am is a DWI un-sympathizer. (Losing a couple friends to a drunk driver gives you a bit of a different perspective on such things.) The police were simply doing their jobs. Part of their job is to get people who endanger everyone around them off the streets, and you can't arrest someone and put them in a car while they're still fighting you.
It's unlikely a company as clever as Verizon or Comcast would have acknowledged the anti-competitive potential of such a decision in a memo or PowerPoint presentation.
Companies don't write emails; people employed by companies do. With everything from the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 90s to the Snowden leaks as precedent, why are you skeptical about the existence of a smoking gun just waiting to be found in this particular case?
The problem with Rodney King is that the cops kept beating him well beyond when he was subdued. That's what the cameras caught.
[citation needed]
Did they continue beating him well beyond the point where you'd reasonably expect a normal person to be subdued? Absolutely. But Rodney King continued to struggle and fight back the whole time, even when it should have been clear to him that he had already lost, and in light of that, what exactly did the police do wrong?
There are two very effective ways to make someone involuntarily stop resisting altogether: You can kill them, or you can knock them out cold. The first is highly disproportionate in most cases, and is generally a bad idea for any number of reasons which I shouldn't have to enumerate here. And the trouble with the second is that it's very difficult to accomplish reliably without using enough force that you run a very real risk of killing them. ("Knockout blows" are the stuff of cheesy martial arts movies, not real life.) So what better option was there?
No, I'd actually think Rodney King is foremost in their minds.
The cops in question risked their lives chasing a convict who was fleeing from them because he didn't want to get in trouble for violating his parole conditions. He was intoxicated at the time, which made him prima facie a threat to everyone around him while behind the wheel, even if he hadn't been speeding. When they finally got the car to stop, a still-intoxicated King ended up trying to fight the officers off instead of submitting to arrest.
The tape that got shown on news programs worldwide showed none of that. It showed the effect, but not the cause. All people who watched their TV got to see was the officers trying to subdue a very strong, very hostile person who had just put a lot of lives at risk. Understanding that, it's hard to say that they did anything wrong--as a jury of their peers later found--but without that context it's very easy to make it look like police brutality, and that out-of-context video ended up touching off some horrendously destructive riots. And all because they were trying to do their jobs and protect the people from an extraordinarily strong and resilient threat.
If you were in a business where anyone could take your actions completely out of context and twist them into portraying you as a monster, and possibly end up touching off riots that you would then get blamed for, wouldn't you feel a little like you're under siege too?
No, I don't think they've forgotten about Rodney King at all. I think that "they remember the Rodney King incident all too well" is in fact the best theory by which to explain current LEO attitudes towards cameras.
I want a Neutral Network, but neutrality, in the case of zero-rating, simply means that the zero-rating ability should be open to ALL content providers, not just the ones chosen by the ISP.
Yeah, that's called "not having caps in the first place," and it's the position that Techdirt has always (AFAICT) been in favor of.
Every time this case comes up, Techdirt makes sure to point out how old the All Writs Order is, that it dates back to 1789, the clear implication being that it's ridiculously outdated.
Without going into any specifics on the details of this particular case, does anyone else find that line of argument a bit hypocritical, coming from a site that defends the First and Fourth Amendments at every opportunity?
On the post: Stop Freaking Out About Snapchat's Terms Of Service; You Read It Wrong
Re: One of these things is not like the other...
Why are people still making this comparison, when it's been known to be false for at least as long as we've known about Facebook's shadow profiles?
On the post: Stop Freaking Out About Snapchat's Terms Of Service; You Read It Wrong
Re: What the freak...
On the post: Realm Pictures Goes All In On Real First Person Shooter; Brilliant New Form Of Interactive Entertainment
Re: This is Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age"
On the post: UK Gov't Pretends That It's 'Backed Down' On Snooper's Charter
Re: "Tell you what, as a compromise, I'll only burn down HALF of your house."
"No."
"But I really want a pony!"
"No."
*sniffle* "But I want a pony!"
"No."
*sniffle* "Then... maybe could I have a puppy?"
*sigh* "Oh, all right."
"Heh heh... I got the puppy. That was easy!"
On the post: Fox News Anchor's Suit Over Toy Hamster Likeness Results In Hilarious Point-By-Point Hasbro Rebuttal
I would have to disagree there. Look at those prominent eyelashes. By the rules of cartoon sexual dimorphism, this is very obviously a female hamster by that trait alone.
Having said that, I agree that she doesn't actually look like the news anchor in question.
On the post: Texas Law Enforcement Agencies Now Publishing Police-Involved-Shooting Data Online
Re: "carried, exibited, or used a deadly weapon"
So if they don't have a gun, but they do have a knife, a big rock, a dog, a car headed straight at somebody, etc, that's fundamentally different?
On the post: Judge Tells Plaintiff That Paying Real Money For Virtual Gold Doesn't Somehow Lead To Gambling Law Violations
Re: 1st rule of commerce
One of the most fundamental pillars of civilization is specialization. Farmers become really good at farming, so that the rest of us don't have to grow our own food, lifting everyone out of a basic subsistence lifestyle, and the rest of us learn to become specialized craftsmen, engineers, laborers, soldiers, teachers, doctors and so on, each becoming an expert at one thing, and look what it's done for us!
I wear clothes I didn't make, made from fabric spun from fibers from plants I didn't grow. I drive a car so advanced that I literally couldn't ever hope to build one like it from scratch if I devoted my entire life to it. Same goes with the computer I'm typing this on, not to mention the infrastructure needed to make both cars and computers run. My breakfast this morning contained ingredients from 3 different countries, and arrived at my location fresh and still fit for human consumption.
I'm able to do all these things, and so are you, because we're able to implicitly trust that all these things around us that we don't fully understand were produced by experts who do understand what they were doing and who did a good job. You may not think of it in those terms, but that basic expectation is there.
Caveat emptor is the antithesis of that. The idea that the responsibility for not getting screwed over in a purchase is on the buyer, not the seller, implicitly requires that the buyer be in a position to competently evaluate every purchase. It is, in effect, requiring everyone to become an expert on everything that affects their lives, and then when this inevitably fails, because in a specialized civilization even the most intelligent people simply don't have the time or the brainpower to do so, saying that it's their own fault for failing at something they should never have had to do in the first place.
Caveat emptor is victim-blaming at its very ugliest, and it's a principle of barbarism, directly opposed to civilization. Can we please just drop it from our collective vocabulary already?
(Note: Before any of the usual suspects try to twist my words around, nothing I said here should be interpreted as saying anything about my opinion of any aspect of the legal case under discussion in this article. I just find the concept of caveat emptor repulsive.)
On the post: October Content Creator Of The Month: Ross Pruden Contributing To The Public Domain
Not surprised. You can't get very much story into such a small amount of space; cutting it down takes a lot of work.
On the post: Comey Sells The 'Ferguson Effect,' Blames Spikes In Violent Crime On Citizens With Cameras
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The US Department of Justice had them indicted by federal a grand jury, and after they were found guilty it ended in jail time. News flash: that's not a civil suit. That's blatantly illegal double jeopardy in a politically-motivated kangaroo court.
On the post: Library Of Congress Releases DMCA Anti-Circumvention Exemptions... And It's A Hot Mess
Well there's your problem right there. Any law with at least 1201 sections is too big and complex to be any good.
I've always been a fan of the Brobdingnagian code in Gulliver's Travels:
On the post: Comey Sells The 'Ferguson Effect,' Blames Spikes In Violent Crime On Citizens With Cameras
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't have to be. The "excuse" after this point is simple: he was continuing to resist, and therefore was not subdued. He struggled more, and took more physical punishment, than you'd expect a normal person to be able to, but all that that proves is that he was on the right slope of the bell curve in that aspect. (Being intoxicated probably helped too. Diminished awareness of pain and all that.)
And if the police had done something wrong I wouldn't defend it. But as long as someone who had just finished putting hundreds of lives in danger by driving impaired at high speeds is continuing to resist, I don't see anything wrong with continuing to attempt to subdue him.
No, what I am is a DWI un-sympathizer. (Losing a couple friends to a drunk driver gives you a bit of a different perspective on such things.) The police were simply doing their jobs. Part of their job is to get people who endanger everyone around them off the streets, and you can't arrest someone and put them in a car while they're still fighting you.
What part of this is so difficult to understand?
On the post: With Tim Wu's Help, New York AG Launches Belated Investigation Into Whether ISPs Intentionally Slowed Netflix
Re:
from the why-oh-why-does-techdirt-not-support-comment-editing? dept
On the post: With Tim Wu's Help, New York AG Launches Belated Investigation Into Whether ISPs Intentionally Slowed Netflix
Companies don't write emails; people employed by companies do. With everything from the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 90s to the Snowden leaks as precedent, why are you skeptical about the existence of a smoking gun just waiting to be found in this particular case?
On the post: Comey Sells The 'Ferguson Effect,' Blames Spikes In Violent Crime On Citizens With Cameras
Re: Re: Re:
[citation needed]
Did they continue beating him well beyond the point where you'd reasonably expect a normal person to be subdued? Absolutely. But Rodney King continued to struggle and fight back the whole time, even when it should have been clear to him that he had already lost, and in light of that, what exactly did the police do wrong?
There are two very effective ways to make someone involuntarily stop resisting altogether: You can kill them, or you can knock them out cold. The first is highly disproportionate in most cases, and is generally a bad idea for any number of reasons which I shouldn't have to enumerate here. And the trouble with the second is that it's very difficult to accomplish reliably without using enough force that you run a very real risk of killing them. ("Knockout blows" are the stuff of cheesy martial arts movies, not real life.) So what better option was there?
On the post: Comey Sells The 'Ferguson Effect,' Blames Spikes In Violent Crime On Citizens With Cameras
Re: Re: Re:
Yes, and more to the point, it was illegal, because they had already been put on trial and found not guilty. The Bill of Rights says you can't then go and do what the politicians, for political reasons, then went and did to the officers. But they did it anyway, for political reasons, mainly to placate the rioters.
Under what definition is someone considered to "have been subdued" when they continue, with some success, to resist?
On the post: Comey Sells The 'Ferguson Effect,' Blames Spikes In Violent Crime On Citizens With Cameras
Re:
The cops in question risked their lives chasing a convict who was fleeing from them because he didn't want to get in trouble for violating his parole conditions. He was intoxicated at the time, which made him prima facie a threat to everyone around him while behind the wheel, even if he hadn't been speeding. When they finally got the car to stop, a still-intoxicated King ended up trying to fight the officers off instead of submitting to arrest.
The tape that got shown on news programs worldwide showed none of that. It showed the effect, but not the cause. All people who watched their TV got to see was the officers trying to subdue a very strong, very hostile person who had just put a lot of lives at risk. Understanding that, it's hard to say that they did anything wrong--as a jury of their peers later found--but without that context it's very easy to make it look like police brutality, and that out-of-context video ended up touching off some horrendously destructive riots. And all because they were trying to do their jobs and protect the people from an extraordinarily strong and resilient threat.
If you were in a business where anyone could take your actions completely out of context and twist them into portraying you as a monster, and possibly end up touching off riots that you would then get blamed for, wouldn't you feel a little like you're under siege too?
No, I don't think they've forgotten about Rodney King at all. I think that "they remember the Rodney King incident all too well" is in fact the best theory by which to explain current LEO attitudes towards cameras.
On the post: Reading The Tea Leaves To Understand Why CISA Is A Surveillance Bill
Re: Re:
Hello?
Yes.
Oh, he already knows that.
*click*
Son, who was that?
Some dummy who wanted me to tell you it's a long distance from Japan.
On the post: Reading The Tea Leaves To Understand Why CISA Is A Surveillance Bill
...in expressions of 140 characters or less each?
from the tweets-are-for-twits department
On the post: The EU Prepares To Vote For Awful, Loophole-Filled Net Neutrality Rules
Re: People Like Free
Yeah, that's called "not having caps in the first place," and it's the position that Techdirt has always (AFAICT) been in favor of.
On the post: DOJ Claims Apple Should Be Forced To Decrypt iPhones Because Apple, Not Customers, 'Own' iOS
Without going into any specifics on the details of this particular case, does anyone else find that line of argument a bit hypocritical, coming from a site that defends the First and Fourth Amendments at every opportunity?
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