The fact that it was a semi public joke that people other than the jokesters could view does not change the fact that school have no authority to police the private lives of the children they oversee for a few hours during weekdays.
There's nothing "semi" about it. It was posted on a public site, and as Techdirt frequently points out, you have no expectation of privacy on things you do in public, pretty much by definition.
The fact that a child was punished for actions thousands if not millions of children have undertaken over the years is only made possible by the seemingly unending desire for control our society has these days.
[citation needed] If even a single kid at my high school had publicly claimed he was having inappropriate relations with one of the female teachers, even as a "joke", the rumors would have been flying and it would be all over the school in no time flat, but that never happened, because (among other reasons) we all knew that that was over the line.
The situation Mason describes could easily play out in community-driven software development too.
Heck, with as much scripting as a non-trivial campaign requires, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this project "software development" too.
And I don't want to give the wrong impression. Author #2 was a major contributor to every aspect of the project after Episode 1. His work really made a lot of the difference between Episode 1 (good) and Episode 2 (amazing). This wasn't some minor "spend a few months on this" thing. But he still was the secondary guy on the project, and when Author #1 said not to worry about it, everyone pretty much acknowledged right there that that settled the matter.
Many years ago, I used to play a lot of Starcraft, and one day I ran across an incredibly well-made fan campaign this guy had put together. Then he got together with a second guy to build a second part of the story, and it was amazing, to the point where a lot of people considered their work even better than the original Starcraft campaign.
They set up a forum, and a fan community developed, hanging out and talking about various stuff while waiting on the team (which grew to something like 5 people) to finish Part 3, which was going to be The Most Epic Thing Evar.
In the end, of course, it all came apart. The project was too ambitious, and real life was still progressing, and they ended up just releasing the script (which was awesome) and cancelling the project. But that was a few years later, and the community had taken on a life of its own. The forum had changed location a time or two, and it was now being maintained by the fans.
Somewhere along the line, Author #2 went completely off the deep end, getting heavily into Libertarianism, wild anti-government conspiracy theories, and just general unpleasantness. As he continued to clash with the rest of the community, eventually he tried to "punish" us by demanding that we remove our hosted copy of the campaign from the fan site, because he was a copyright holder and he could say that. He was making some very serious-sounding threats of getting lawyers involved if we didn't give in to his bullying.
Then, for the first time in years, Author #1 made a post on the forum, stating that his copyright claim was the strongest one, and he was just fine with us hosting it, and that was the end of that. Even Author #2 had to concede that much.
So I'm a bit confused to see the polar opposite going on in the music world...
It's not a legal requirement; it's basic etiquette that predates the Internet. If your kid does something stupid and thoughtless, you apologize on their behalf, because their behavior reflects on the people who raised them.
Between all the instances of criminals getting busted for posting evidence online in the form of bragging on social networks, and the well-known tendency for guys (particularly jocks) to brag about their "conquests," (whether or not any "conquering" truly happened, to the severe detriment of many an innocent girl's reputation,) what in the world makes you think that that's a realistic scenario?
No, we slaughter them in preparation. But you want the animal to be in good health before that point, for a variety of reasons that should be intuitively obvious.
The word "actually" has a very specific and clearly-understood meaning: "even though this might sound hard to believe, it is literally true and not a joke." So to try to claim afterwards that saying something that clearly and unambiguously accuses a teacher of actually committing a crime that could (and should) cost her her job if the accusation is true was "just a prank" is disingenuous in the extreme.
It's the act of a spoiled, entitled kid who makes life hell for everyone around him on a daily basis and thinks he's above the rules. You know, the sort who ends up becoming captain of the football and basketball teams and never seems to get in real trouble (ie disciplinary actions) because he's good at attacking his victims when there are no witnesses and/or knowing how to do things that aren't technically in violation of the rules, no matter how much anguish they cause his fellow students, not to mention a couple influential (usually wealthy) parents who always seem to have his back no matter what he does wrong. (And you know exactly the type I'm talking about. If reading this paragraph doesn't bring to mind at least one specific person from your high school days, you don't remember high school well enough.)
And now he slipped up and tormented someone in full view of the public, about as clear-cut an act of libel as you can possibly commit... and he seems to think he's still special and the rules don't apply, so when the consequences of his actions begin to become apparent, he and his family immediately play the victim card.
It makes me sick, and even worse is the way so many people fall for it! Even the court, which really should have known better, made the absurd statement that his libel of the teacher, in a public forum where any of her students could have seen it and many of them doubtless did, "in no way impacts or disrupts the school environment"! I mean, come on! I've been out of high school for plenty of years now but I can still clearly imagine exactly the disruptive impact that that would have on her ability to effectively teach and keep order in her classroom; can't you?
No, the only ridiculous thing here is the reactions of a bunch of people who seem to have forgotten all about what high school life is like.
As Techdirt frequently points out when bullies abuse trademarks, the point of trademark law is not to protect the company or their "intellectual property," but to prevent customer confusion.
That being the case, when a company becomes so big that its very name is iconic, the opportunity for customer confusion is everywhere, even if it's a preexisting word. So I can kind of see both sides of this.
"Facebook" used to be another word for "yearbook," but today, it means the 800-lb gorilla of social networking. Be honest: if you were driving around downtown and you saw a little place called Facebook Pizza, or Google Brake & Muffler... wouldn't you wonder, at least a little?
It sounds silly, but now a company with all-encompassing name recognition power like that is laying claim to a name that a lot of small businesses are using. Seems to me they have a very legitimate reason to worry about customer confusion.
That's strange. I've never seen serious performance problems or malfunctions on G+. My biggest gripe with it is that its posting system supports a very small subset of Markdown, which makes you think, at first, that you can use Markdown formatting, except when you try to do more interesting things, they fail and you're left with an ugly post.
Now, I know the DMCA takedown notice's "under penalty of perjury" affirmation is notoriously weak, but isn't this specific case one that would clear the bar? Fraudulently claiming to own the copyright on material?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't mind me, just moving to a more secure database...
Think about what you've said and you'll realise that it is easier to have the DBMS automate many of the normal DBA activities than it is for the DBMS to determine if a query is non-parameterised.
How do you figure? Because if the parser and the AST it produces are designed in any remotely reasonable way at all, this is trivial: iterate over all binary expressions in the WHERE clause and determine if any of them don't contain a parameter reference.
It is the programmers responsibility to handle this not the DBMS. It requires a case by case analysis of the business activity for the interface interaction not the vendor interference.
Yeah, that's been the go-to excuse for poor language design for decades now. "It's the programmer's responsibility for getting all the little details right. It's not the language's fault that everyone keeps making the very same class of mistake that's incredibly easy to make because doing it the obvious way is the wrong way to do it." It's always been a bunch of crap, and it still is.
Re: Re: Don't mind me, just moving to a more secure database...
Actually, databases are kinda funny like that. "Actual remote code execution" is one of the most common security problems in database-driven programs: it's known as SQL Injection, and unlike most instances of code execution vulnerability, it's (theoretically) not the database's fault, but the fault of the program that's accessing it for not parameterizing their queries properly.
I say theoretically because it wouldn't be all that difficult for a database vendor to make it so that non-parameterized queries automatically return an error by default, (with an opt-out for ad-hoc queries by database tools, etc,) which would shut SQL injection down cold... but AFAIK no relational database has ever actually done this.
True, but that's not what cargo cults were about. It's actually a very interesting case study in reasoning and comprehension.
In World War II, both the Japanese and American navies set up air bases on Pacific islands, bringing in supplies for the war, some of which inevitably ended up in the hands of the local population, greatly enhancing their standard of living.
When the war was over, there was no more point in having air bases, so everyone packed up and left, but the islanders who were left behind often didn't understand what had happened. It was discovered years later that several movements had arisen where the native populations would create ceremonial imitations of air bases and the activities that they had observed thereon, in the hopes of enticing the soldiers and their supplies to return again to bless them with prosperity. Of course, this never did succeed in its goal, because no matter how much you make your ceremonial site look like a military airstrip, if there's nothing going on in the outside world that requires airbases, the people with the airplanes have no reason to actually use an airbase.
From this, the term "cargo cult" has passed into the lexicon as referring to someone who imitates something related to a desired outcome in the hopes of achieving that outcome, without understanding what's really going on in the system they're imitating, which prevents them from achieving success.
What was it Colbert said about Dubya? "The President is steady. This is a man who will believe the same thing on Wednesday that he did on Monday... no matter what happened on Tuesday." Or something like that.
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
There's nothing "semi" about it. It was posted on a public site, and as Techdirt frequently points out, you have no expectation of privacy on things you do in public, pretty much by definition.
[citation needed] If even a single kid at my high school had publicly claimed he was having inappropriate relations with one of the female teachers, even as a "joke", the rumors would have been flying and it would be all over the school in no time flat, but that never happened, because (among other reasons) we all knew that that was over the line.
On the post: Split Works Debate Raises Thorny Issues For Music Companies (And For The Rest Of Us)
Re: Re: Music or everywhere?
Heck, with as much scripting as a non-trivial campaign requires, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this project "software development" too.
And I don't want to give the wrong impression. Author #2 was a major contributor to every aspect of the project after Episode 1. His work really made a lot of the difference between Episode 1 (good) and Episode 2 (amazing). This wasn't some minor "spend a few months on this" thing. But he still was the secondary guy on the project, and when Author #1 said not to worry about it, everyone pretty much acknowledged right there that that settled the matter.
On the post: Split Works Debate Raises Thorny Issues For Music Companies (And For The Rest Of Us)
Many years ago, I used to play a lot of Starcraft, and one day I ran across an incredibly well-made fan campaign this guy had put together. Then he got together with a second guy to build a second part of the story, and it was amazing, to the point where a lot of people considered their work even better than the original Starcraft campaign.
They set up a forum, and a fan community developed, hanging out and talking about various stuff while waiting on the team (which grew to something like 5 people) to finish Part 3, which was going to be The Most Epic Thing Evar.
In the end, of course, it all came apart. The project was too ambitious, and real life was still progressing, and they ended up just releasing the script (which was awesome) and cancelling the project. But that was a few years later, and the community had taken on a life of its own. The forum had changed location a time or two, and it was now being maintained by the fans.
Somewhere along the line, Author #2 went completely off the deep end, getting heavily into Libertarianism, wild anti-government conspiracy theories, and just general unpleasantness. As he continued to clash with the rest of the community, eventually he tried to "punish" us by demanding that we remove our hosted copy of the campaign from the fan site, because he was a copyright holder and he could say that. He was making some very serious-sounding threats of getting lawyers involved if we didn't give in to his bullying.
Then, for the first time in years, Author #1 made a post on the forum, stating that his copyright claim was the strongest one, and he was just fine with us hosting it, and that was the end of that. Even Author #2 had to concede that much.
So I'm a bit confused to see the polar opposite going on in the music world...
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
Between all the instances of criminals getting busted for posting evidence online in the form of bragging on social networks, and the well-known tendency for guys (particularly jocks) to brag about their "conquests," (whether or not any "conquering" truly happened, to the severe detriment of many an innocent girl's reputation,) what in the world makes you think that that's a realistic scenario?
On the post: DailyDirt: Life As We Know It...
Re: Re: Bad Idea!
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
The word "actually" has a very specific and clearly-understood meaning: "even though this might sound hard to believe, it is literally true and not a joke." So to try to claim afterwards that saying something that clearly and unambiguously accuses a teacher of actually committing a crime that could (and should) cost her her job if the accusation is true was "just a prank" is disingenuous in the extreme.
It's the act of a spoiled, entitled kid who makes life hell for everyone around him on a daily basis and thinks he's above the rules. You know, the sort who ends up becoming captain of the football and basketball teams and never seems to get in real trouble (ie disciplinary actions) because he's good at attacking his victims when there are no witnesses and/or knowing how to do things that aren't technically in violation of the rules, no matter how much anguish they cause his fellow students, not to mention a couple influential (usually wealthy) parents who always seem to have his back no matter what he does wrong. (And you know exactly the type I'm talking about. If reading this paragraph doesn't bring to mind at least one specific person from your high school days, you don't remember high school well enough.)
And now he slipped up and tormented someone in full view of the public, about as clear-cut an act of libel as you can possibly commit... and he seems to think he's still special and the rules don't apply, so when the consequences of his actions begin to become apparent, he and his family immediately play the victim card.
It makes me sick, and even worse is the way so many people fall for it! Even the court, which really should have known better, made the absurd statement that his libel of the teacher, in a public forum where any of her students could have seen it and many of them doubtless did, "in no way impacts or disrupts the school environment"! I mean, come on! I've been out of high school for plenty of years now but I can still clearly imagine exactly the disruptive impact that that would have on her ability to effectively teach and keep order in her classroom; can't you?
No, the only ridiculous thing here is the reactions of a bunch of people who seem to have forgotten all about what high school life is like.
On the post: BMW Apparently Concerned That New Google Holding Company 'Alphabet' Infringes On Its Trademark
Re:
That being the case, when a company becomes so big that its very name is iconic, the opportunity for customer confusion is everywhere, even if it's a preexisting word. So I can kind of see both sides of this.
"Facebook" used to be another word for "yearbook," but today, it means the 800-lb gorilla of social networking. Be honest: if you were driving around downtown and you saw a little place called Facebook Pizza, or Google Brake & Muffler... wouldn't you wonder, at least a little?
It sounds silly, but now a company with all-encompassing name recognition power like that is laying claim to a name that a lot of small businesses are using. Seems to me they have a very legitimate reason to worry about customer confusion.
On the post: The Failure Of Google Plus Should Be A Reminder That Big Companies Very Rarely Successfully 'Copy' Startups
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Convicted Fraudster Follows Bogus DMCA Takedowns With Bogus DMCA Takedown Targeting Techdirt Post About His Bogus Takedowns
On the post: Convicted Fraudster Follows Bogus DMCA Takedowns With Bogus DMCA Takedown Targeting Techdirt Post About His Bogus Takedowns
Re:
On the post: Oracle Tells Customers To Stop Trying To Find Vulnerabilities In Oracle Products... Because 'Intellectual Property'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't mind me, just moving to a more secure database...
How do you figure? Because if the parser and the AST it produces are designed in any remotely reasonable way at all, this is trivial: iterate over all binary expressions in the WHERE clause and determine if any of them don't contain a parameter reference.
Yeah, that's been the go-to excuse for poor language design for decades now. "It's the programmer's responsibility for getting all the little details right. It's not the language's fault that everyone keeps making the very same class of mistake that's incredibly easy to make because doing it the obvious way is the wrong way to do it." It's always been a bunch of crap, and it still is.
On the post: Oracle Tells Customers To Stop Trying To Find Vulnerabilities In Oracle Products... Because 'Intellectual Property'
Re: Re: Don't mind me, just moving to a more secure database...
I say theoretically because it wouldn't be all that difficult for a database vendor to make it so that non-parameterized queries automatically return an error by default, (with an opt-out for ad-hoc queries by database tools, etc,) which would shut SQL injection down cold... but AFAIK no relational database has ever actually done this.
On the post: The Failure Of Google Plus Should Be A Reminder That Big Companies Very Rarely Successfully 'Copy' Startups
Re: "Fake airports"
In World War II, both the Japanese and American navies set up air bases on Pacific islands, bringing in supplies for the war, some of which inevitably ended up in the hands of the local population, greatly enhancing their standard of living.
When the war was over, there was no more point in having air bases, so everyone packed up and left, but the islanders who were left behind often didn't understand what had happened. It was discovered years later that several movements had arisen where the native populations would create ceremonial imitations of air bases and the activities that they had observed thereon, in the hopes of enticing the soldiers and their supplies to return again to bless them with prosperity. Of course, this never did succeed in its goal, because no matter how much you make your ceremonial site look like a military airstrip, if there's nothing going on in the outside world that requires airbases, the people with the airplanes have no reason to actually use an airbase.
From this, the term "cargo cult" has passed into the lexicon as referring to someone who imitates something related to a desired outcome in the hopes of achieving that outcome, without understanding what's really going on in the system they're imitating, which prevents them from achieving success.
On the post: The Failure Of Google Plus Should Be A Reminder That Big Companies Very Rarely Successfully 'Copy' Startups
On the post: HP Asks For Heavily-Redacted Documents To Be Sealed; Judge Responds With Heavily-Redacted Refusal
Re: Re: Re: Is it too much to wish...
On the post: Chris Christie So Obsessed With Increasing Surveillance He Pretends He Was A Fed On 9/11 Even Though He Wasn't
Re: Re:
On the post: Chris Christie So Obsessed With Increasing Surveillance He Pretends He Was A Fed On 9/11 Even Though He Wasn't
Confusing one day that will live on in infamy forever with another. It's an honest mistake anyone could make, amirite?
On the post: Irish Businessman Denis O'Brien Sues Parliament, Sends Legal Threat To Satirical Newspaper
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
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