Actually, I think it's more that conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime, whereas conspiracy to do something which is not a crime is not.
The dictionary definition works perfectly well in both cases; it's just that the original commenter didn't bother to specify the "to commit a crime" part, taking it as implied by the context, whereas you're not willing to read that implication into the text.
Both positions are reasonable, but without reconciling them, meaningful discussion of the subject (or possibly even as little as meaningful communication) cannot occur.
I hadn't heard of it before either, but just within the past 24 hours (looking over my mother's shoulder, since I don't do Facebook myself) I've seen her pass over the thumbs-up Like button for a heart-shaped Love button on a post that appeared in her feed.
Not sure when they started doing that, but apparently it is indeed a thing they do.
I've always understood that phrase as being intended not to distinguish a "confidential source which is human" from a "confidential source which is not human", but to distinguish a "human source which is confidential" from a "human source which is not confidential".
(As that would seem to imply, non-human sources which are not confidential also exist; examples would include things like phone taps, wiretaps, and so forth, though that latter can cover a multitude of sins. It might also include the more controversial areas of algorithmic surveillance, in which case the entity serving as the source of the report could indeed be not-human.)
The argument (or at least part of it) is that you do not buy transportation from Uber; you buy it from an individual, who takes advantage of the connect-drivers-with-passengers service which Uber offers by way of its app, and pays Uber a finder's fee for the convenience.
Whether or not Uber's business is actually structured in a way which would make that true nowadays is not clear to me (I have not been following it closely enough to be sure about that, and I've heard indications that they've imposed enough rules and so forth to draw the premise of having that structure into question), but certainly a business which is structured that way should not be considered a transportation vendor or a transportation company.
I may be off, but my understanding of scansion is that it's more "the mapping between the syllables of a piece and the meter of that piece" than either syllable count or meter itself.
If you need to put the emphasis on e.g. every third syllable, but the words used are such that it's awkward or near-impossible to do this without breaking either rhyme or the flow of delivery (e.g. because of the relative placement of word breaks), that I would call poor scansion. (It goes well beyond that, but simplistic as it is, that's about the best example I can bring to mind at the moment.)
Certainly it is possible to compose good pieces which don't care about scansion, et cetera. It's just that when you're attempting to compose in existing form - whether iambic pentameter, limerick, haiku, or the style of Dr. Seuss - the structure of that form is comparatively fixed, and if scansion mattered in the original form it has to matter in the new composition.
In addition to meter and syllable count, scansion and rhyme are important, too - and I suspect that many people who attempt such pieces have never so much as encountered the word "scansion".
(The rhymes are fine in the example currently at hand, but I've seen too many attempts here where they aren't.)
Not unless they're running for office, at least - preferably on the Nazi platform.
And while I believe we _have_ had National Socialist Party members running for office on the Nazi platform in the United States of America, I don't recall having seen it happen during my lifetime - and certainly not in an election where the Nazi candidate had any meaningful chance of winning.
If you think there is going to be a riot and you are likely to get injured, why go?
One possible reason: because you think the protest (which you think might develop into violence, which might be targeted against you), and/or the issue being protested, is important enough to be worth taking the risk of getting injured.
The decision process may be tipped in favor of going if you know that you can at least reduce the risk of injury, even if violence against your side does break out - say, by wearing protective clothing.
More likely, he sees the "communism"/"socialism" association, sees "Nazi" / "National Socialist Party", and infers that Nazism is in some way socialism which is communism therefore the Nazis are obviously pro-Communist and vice versa because they're actually the same category.
That "logic" completely ignores nuance, of course, as well as little things like "words that are capable of having multiple meanings" - but that sort of thing seems to be a relatively common factor with that mindset.
I think what that phrase was probably intended to mean is something more like "reduced the demand for paid, legitimate video services because you can get the same service without paying for it".
It's awkwardly phrased and unclear, but it probably did a better job of conveying the intent in its original context. (Or at least in its speaker's head, where even more context is available.)
Senior members of the House, and other elected officials who are similarly above him in the hierarchy - the Speaker, the majority whip, (other) committee chairs, et cetera.
Not all elected members of Congress are equal within the ranks of Congress, after all; there's rankings and authority within those ranks, both formal and informal.
Technically, although most people probably pronounce it as "Sue-ss", I'm given to understand that - as spoken in the name of the original artist - it would actually have been pronounced "Zoyss".
Censorship only applies to the government. Private parties choosing to not allow speech on their platforms isn't censorship.
False.
It's true that the only kind of censorship which the Constitution prohibits is censorship by the government.
But it is not true that only actions by the government can legitimately be called "censorship".
The only definition of censorship which I've ever found which does not strike me either as being too narrow or as being too broad is one simple sentence:
"An attempt to prevent some particular audience from being exposed to some particular information."
Parents frequently censor what books, TV shows, et cetera, their children have access to.
Many publications censor "foul language", BLEEPing it out or replacing it with punctuation marks or what-have you.
Writers - and speakers more in general - frequently censor themselves, in order to avoid the consequences of negative public reaction to what they might otherwise say. (Certainly I do that; if you knew some of my views, you might consider me an utterly reprehensible human being.)
Websites frequently censor what their posters say, whether those posters are people who write articles for the site or anonymous commenters who leave potentially turd-like nuggets in available discussion fora.
Individuals sometimes censor their own access to some media (e.g. certain Websites), because they know that what they would encounter there would cause them undue stress to no good result.
All of these things are censorship (though the last one is arguably borderline at best). The key is that as long as none of these actions are undertaken at government mandate, or for fear of governmental reaction if the action is not taken, they are not government censorship - and, thus, not prohibited censorship.
Re: "We already have the evidence, so give us the evidence."
The logic is that "we have evidence (A) to prove that further evidence (B) exists on the device, and we have evidence (C) to prove that this person has the password to unlock the device, but we don't yet have the evidence (B) that exists on the device".
It's entirely possible for B be sufficient to convict, but A and C together be insufficient.
In the argument that "the act of unlocking the device would constitute revealing information which would tend to incriminate me", the information which is deemed to be revealed by that act (under established precedent as far as I understand it) is not the information which is behind the lock; it is the information that "this person is able to unlock this device", or in other words "there is a non-imaginary connection between this person and this device", which - under C - is already known.
Since law enforcement already knows C, the act of unlocking the device does not tell them anything they already knew, any more than the act of unlocking a combination-lock safe would do - even though it does give them access to everything which is behind the lock.
(I'm not entirely happy with the consequences of that logic and its conclusion, but I don't see any actual holes in it.)
I think the idea is that they knew A: that the files which contained the information they needed were on there, but did not know B: the information itself.
A little bit like how if a particular bank sends out its customers' bank statements in a particular distinctive style of envelope, with the bank's name on it and the words "statement enclosed", you can know A: that a sealed envelope of that design which has the name of a particular person as the addressee contains one of that person's bank statements, but not know B: the bank balances recorded on that bank statement.
(Leaving aside the-bank-is-involved-in-it conspiracy situations where something other than a bank statement could be sent out in such an envelope, since they're so vanishingly rare as to be ignored as outliers for the purpose of this analogy.)
One correction: he was installed as Chairman of the FCC by such a person.
He was already present at the FCC well before that person was in a position to have any say on the subject, having been installed by some previous administration (I haven't bothered looking up which one).
My name was present on pro-repeal comments several times as well (something like 3 to 6, I forget exactly), but none of them were with addresses - or, I think, even addresses in states - where I've ever lived, so I didn't try to report that as a fraudulent use of my identity.
I could believe that those pro-repeal comments are faked, but I'm not convinced that they're necessarily impersonating me; I'd think it would be at least as likely that at least one of these people really did/does exist with that name at that address, and that it is that person whose identity was fraudulently used to post the comment.
I've seen a particular AC's avatar change within the same reply chain in a given comment thread, though - again, with the "no indication that this is someone who's changing IP addresses" thing.
Yes, the same generated avatar means the two posts were from the same IP address. The fact that it's two different avatars doesn't seem to mean the posts were from different IP addresses, though - not even within a single comment thread.
If I've got it wrong, I'd be glad to learn the truth, but that's the explanation which seems most consistent with what I've observed so far.
(None of this is meant to dispute your point; if anything it's meant to support it, in that the original argument was "the fact that I can track you by your generated avatar means they log IP addresses and so you're not anonymous!" and the less such trackability there is the weaker that argument is.)
Because the volume of data makes it physically impossible for human moderators to get involved before publication and have things moderated in a timely fashion.
As I believe has been gone over before in other threads, I think his position is that this just indicates that the sites which depend on this level of volume have a business-model problem, with the implication that if they can't make their business model work with the same level of content vetting an offline publication does then that's their problem and they should indeed get shut down.
Which is so fundamentally opposed to the things which make the Internet as we know it (including comment fora like this one) possible, there's no real space for engaging in a meaningful discussion on the subject.
On the post: FBI Celebrates Taking Down A 'Terrorist' Who Told Undercover Agents He Couldn't Go Through With An Attack
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually, I think it's more that conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime, whereas conspiracy to do something which is not a crime is not.
The dictionary definition works perfectly well in both cases; it's just that the original commenter didn't bother to specify the "to commit a crime" part, taking it as implied by the context, whereas you're not willing to read that implication into the text.
Both positions are reasonable, but without reconciling them, meaningful discussion of the subject (or possibly even as little as meaningful communication) cannot occur.
On the post: FBI Celebrates Taking Down A 'Terrorist' Who Told Undercover Agents He Couldn't Go Through With An Attack
Re:
Not sure when they started doing that, but apparently it is indeed a thing they do.
On the post: FBI Celebrates Taking Down A 'Terrorist' Who Told Undercover Agents He Couldn't Go Through With An Attack
Re:
(As that would seem to imply, non-human sources which are not confidential also exist; examples would include things like phone taps, wiretaps, and so forth, though that latter can cover a multitude of sins. It might also include the more controversial areas of algorithmic surveillance, in which case the entity serving as the source of the report could indeed be not-human.)
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: "Seussian translation"
On the post: Top EU Court Says Uber Is A Transport Service That Can Be Regulated Like Traditional Taxis
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [technology company]
The argument (or at least part of it) is that you do not buy transportation from Uber; you buy it from an individual, who takes advantage of the connect-drivers-with-passengers service which Uber offers by way of its app, and pays Uber a finder's fee for the convenience.
Whether or not Uber's business is actually structured in a way which would make that true nowadays is not clear to me (I have not been following it closely enough to be sure about that, and I've heard indications that they've imposed enough rules and so forth to draw the premise of having that structure into question), but certainly a business which is structured that way should not be considered a transportation vendor or a transportation company.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: "Seussian translation"
If you need to put the emphasis on e.g. every third syllable, but the words used are such that it's awkward or near-impossible to do this without breaking either rhyme or the flow of delivery (e.g. because of the relative placement of word breaks), that I would call poor scansion. (It goes well beyond that, but simplistic as it is, that's about the best example I can bring to mind at the moment.)
Certainly it is possible to compose good pieces which don't care about scansion, et cetera. It's just that when you're attempting to compose in existing form - whether iambic pentameter, limerick, haiku, or the style of Dr. Seuss - the structure of that form is comparatively fixed, and if scansion mattered in the original form it has to matter in the new composition.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: "Seussian translation"
(The rhymes are fine in the example currently at hand, but I've seen too many attempts here where they aren't.)
On the post: Good News: Trump Protestors Accused Of 'Hiding Behind The First Amendment' Acquitted
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And while I believe we _have_ had National Socialist Party members running for office on the Nazi platform in the United States of America, I don't recall having seen it happen during my lifetime - and certainly not in an election where the Nazi candidate had any meaningful chance of winning.
On the post: Good News: Trump Protestors Accused Of 'Hiding Behind The First Amendment' Acquitted
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
One possible reason: because you think the protest (which you think might develop into violence, which might be targeted against you), and/or the issue being protested, is important enough to be worth taking the risk of getting injured.
The decision process may be tipped in favor of going if you know that you can at least reduce the risk of injury, even if violence against your side does break out - say, by wearing protective clothing.
On the post: Good News: Trump Protestors Accused Of 'Hiding Behind The First Amendment' Acquitted
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That "logic" completely ignores nuance, of course, as well as little things like "words that are capable of having multiple meanings" - but that sort of thing seems to be a relatively common factor with that mindset.
On the post: Charter, Disney Execs Pledge To Crack Down On Streaming Password Sharing 'Piracy'
Re:
It's awkwardly phrased and unclear, but it probably did a better job of conveying the intent in its original context. (Or at least in its speaker's head, where even more context is available.)
On the post: Congress Backs Down From Terrible Surveillance Bill; Running Out Of Time
Re: Above his pay grade?
Not all elected members of Congress are equal within the ranks of Congress, after all; there's rankings and authority within those ranks, both formal and informal.
On the post: How The Muppets And A Font Choice Hurt The Star Trek / Dr. Seuss Mashup In Court
Re: So you pronounce Seuss
On the post: Would-Be Congressman Wants A Law Forcing Social Media Platforms To Keep All His Alt-Right Buddies Online
Re: Re:
False.
It's true that the only kind of censorship which the Constitution prohibits is censorship by the government.
But it is not true that only actions by the government can legitimately be called "censorship".
The only definition of censorship which I've ever found which does not strike me either as being too narrow or as being too broad is one simple sentence:
"An attempt to prevent some particular audience from being exposed to some particular information."
Parents frequently censor what books, TV shows, et cetera, their children have access to.
Many publications censor "foul language", BLEEPing it out or replacing it with punctuation marks or what-have you.
Writers - and speakers more in general - frequently censor themselves, in order to avoid the consequences of negative public reaction to what they might otherwise say. (Certainly I do that; if you knew some of my views, you might consider me an utterly reprehensible human being.)
Websites frequently censor what their posters say, whether those posters are people who write articles for the site or anonymous commenters who leave potentially turd-like nuggets in available discussion fora.
Individuals sometimes censor their own access to some media (e.g. certain Websites), because they know that what they would encounter there would cause them undue stress to no good result.
All of these things are censorship (though the last one is arguably borderline at best). The key is that as long as none of these actions are undertaken at government mandate, or for fear of governmental reaction if the action is not taken, they are not government censorship - and, thus, not prohibited censorship.
On the post: Another Court Says Compelled Password Production Doesn't Violate The Fifth Amendment
Re: "We already have the evidence, so give us the evidence."
It's entirely possible for B be sufficient to convict, but A and C together be insufficient.
In the argument that "the act of unlocking the device would constitute revealing information which would tend to incriminate me", the information which is deemed to be revealed by that act (under established precedent as far as I understand it) is not the information which is behind the lock; it is the information that "this person is able to unlock this device", or in other words "there is a non-imaginary connection between this person and this device", which - under C - is already known.
Since law enforcement already knows C, the act of unlocking the device does not tell them anything they already knew, any more than the act of unlocking a combination-lock safe would do - even though it does give them access to everything which is behind the lock.
(I'm not entirely happy with the consequences of that logic and its conclusion, but I don't see any actual holes in it.)
On the post: Another Court Says Compelled Password Production Doesn't Violate The Fifth Amendment
Re:
A little bit like how if a particular bank sends out its customers' bank statements in a particular distinctive style of envelope, with the bank's name on it and the words "statement enclosed", you can know A: that a sealed envelope of that design which has the name of a particular person as the addressee contains one of that person's bank statements, but not know B: the bank balances recorded on that bank statement.
(Leaving aside the-bank-is-involved-in-it conspiracy situations where something other than a bank statement could be sent out in such an envelope, since they're so vanishingly rare as to be ignored as outliers for the purpose of this analogy.)
On the post: This Whole Mess With Ajit Pai, The Harlem Shake And Copyright Is Bad And Everyone's Wrong.
Re:
One correction: he was installed as Chairman of the FCC by such a person.
He was already present at the FCC well before that person was in a position to have any say on the subject, having been installed by some previous administration (I haven't bothered looking up which one).
On the post: Two Separate Studies Show That The Vast Majority Of People Who Said They Support Ajit Pai's Plan... Were Fake
Re: Not Neutrality
I could believe that those pro-repeal comments are faked, but I'm not convinced that they're necessarily impersonating me; I'd think it would be at least as likely that at least one of these people really did/does exist with that name at that address, and that it is that person whose identity was fraudulently used to post the comment.
On the post: It Was Twenty(-odd) Years Ago Today When The Internet Looked Much Different Than It Does Now
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nice story
Yes, the same generated avatar means the two posts were from the same IP address. The fact that it's two different avatars doesn't seem to mean the posts were from different IP addresses, though - not even within a single comment thread.
If I've got it wrong, I'd be glad to learn the truth, but that's the explanation which seems most consistent with what I've observed so far.
(None of this is meant to dispute your point; if anything it's meant to support it, in that the original argument was "the fact that I can track you by your generated avatar means they log IP addresses and so you're not anonymous!" and the less such trackability there is the weaker that argument is.)
On the post: It Was Twenty(-odd) Years Ago Today When The Internet Looked Much Different Than It Does Now
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nice story
As I believe has been gone over before in other threads, I think his position is that this just indicates that the sites which depend on this level of volume have a business-model problem, with the implication that if they can't make their business model work with the same level of content vetting an offline publication does then that's their problem and they should indeed get shut down.
Which is so fundamentally opposed to the things which make the Internet as we know it (including comment fora like this one) possible, there's no real space for engaging in a meaningful discussion on the subject.
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