Nobody's investigating that because people know exactly how it happened: Trump won small margins in many states, and Clinton won large margins in a few states, and Trump's many states had more combined electoral votes than Clinton's few states.
It's related to the same way gerrymandering works: pack the people who oppose you into a small number of districts, so that although their candidates in those districts win by huge majorities, their candidates in the majority of districts lose. Electoral-college allocation isn't rigged in quite the same way as the usual gerrymandering process (for one thing, the district boundaries are the state boundaries, which aren't really redraw-able in the same way), but the underlying mechanism still works.
IIRC, if three particular states with relatively tiny margins had gone for Clinton rather than Trump, that would have shifted enough electoral votes to the opposite column we'd have had another President Clinton this year. I don't remember which states that is, however, and it's possible I'm remembering it wrong.
They'll probably count that as a win, since it means the bad guys don't have the advantages and conveniences (mainly, fast communications) which come from using modern technology, and so are less likely to succeed at committing their crimes.
Just one minor point: the principle of "freedom of speech" is not exclusively about government restrictions on speech. That's all the First Amendment covers, true, and for the most part all the law addresses - but on a philosophical (and perhaps also a practical) level, it extends to anything which restrains people from speaking freely.
That's not to say that CNN is in the wrong here; if you want to say things that are frowned upon by (as you put it) polite society, you have to be willing to live with the consequences that society may impose upon you. It's just that if those consequences include preventing you from saying those things (as distinct from ignoring you or refusing to give you a platform), that society has thereby departed from "freedom of speech".
* We can't report how many of the communications which we have collected are from Americans unless we know which ones are and which ones aren't.
* We can't know which communications are from Americans unless we examine the communications in ways which would violate the privacy of whoever they belong to.
* If we don't examine the communications, there is less violation of privacy than if we do.
* Therefore, requiring us to figure out which communications are from Americans amounts to requiring us to violate Americans' privacy.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fair use doesn't mean that
Well, some people have argued (and I think still do argue) that putting up a "terms of service" page on your Website stating the terms under which you are offering the site's contents, and also stating that "by using/browsing/etc. this Website, you are indicating your acceptance of the terms of this agreement; if you do not accept this agreement, do not use/browse/etc. this Website", creates a valid and enforceable "do not cross" line. The proposition seems dubious to me (except perhaps under the CFAA...), but if they've ever been proven wrong in court, I don't recall the incident.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fair use doesn't mean that
I think what's being suggested is that Zillow only serves up the images to people who have signed in via a Zillow account, rather than to any member of the anonymous Web-browsing public who asks for them.
It's also possible that in that case the terms of the agreement you have to accept in creating such an account would state that you aren't allowed to take the images to use elsewhere - in which case Zillow might have a breach-of-contract case, and would certainly be entitled to close the account.
As I've never had any real interaction with Zillow myself, I can't speak to the accuracy of either of those suggestions.
Proportional representation has its advantages, but I'm fairly sure it also has downsides - and I'm more sure that even with a proportional-representation system, as long as we still use single-choice voting there will still be incentive for strategic voting rather than expressing your actual preferences.
IMO, a switch to ranked-preference voting (preferably Condorcet-satisfying) is still an essential step, regardless; the possibility of proportional representation strikes me as an orthogonal change.
Because if your girlfriend didn't have your Spotify password, she would have to pay Spotify herself in order to listen to the stream, and that would be more money going to Spotify which the rightsholders could then demand their share of.
It sounds to me like he has a problem with the idea that the defacement of a Website not directly related to the FOX 40 rewards program - at least not in the public mind - would lead people to leave that program.
I'm not familiar with either the site or the program themselves, so I can't be sure that makes sense with the underlying facts, but that's how I interpret his comments.
...how does recognizing that a market is naturally structured in such a way that running it in any way which is not a monopoly will be impractically inefficient, and regulating that market to limit the negative impacts of that monopoly, constitute "starting [a] monopoly affair"?
The monopoly would have existed with or without the regulation, or the FCC. All the FCC did was attempt to keep the negative aspects of the monopoly in check, using the power it has under Title II.
And it mostly seemed to work, until the companies convinced the FCC that the fact that they also provided some non-Title-II-compatible services meant that none of their services should be classified under Title II. At which point the regulation went away, and the monopoly effect was still there.
And the result is where the market now stands: little or no competition in most regions, horrible customer service ratings, high prices, arguably-abusive terms of service, et cetera.
Speaking purely as a pseudonymous commenter, and not affiliated with Techdirt or Mike Masnick in any other way:
If the way the WC3 decides such things is by voting on proposals, and this proposal was voted down (multiple times!), then how is it not correct to say that the WC3 rejected the proposal?
If your objection is that saying that the WC3 rejected it makes it look as if the decision was unanimous, and all members of the WC3 agreed with that decision:
Saying that the WC3 rejected it is not saying that every member of the WC3 rejected it, only that the organization as an entity did so. As far as I can see, the only ways to demonstrate that the WC3 did not reject a proposal would be to either show that the WC3 actually accepted that proposal, to show that the proposal was never presented to the WC3, or to show that the WC3 never came to a decision on the presented versions of that proposal (and even that last might be argued to constitute rejection).
If your objection is that saying that the WC3 rejected it makes it look as if the decision was unilateral, and made without regard to the opinions of the WC3's members:
The fact that (an apparent majority of?) the members of the WC3 agreed with the rejection does not make it any less a rejection, and in fact would reflect negatively on those members rather than just on the WC3 as a unit.
If your objection is something else, please clarify what it is that you find objectionable about this.
One big reason why it gets such a negative reaction is that there's considerable difficulty in defining "homicidal maniac" in a sufficiently non-arbitrary way that whoever is charged with making the determination couldn't apply the label to - and thus impose that deprivation of access to weaponry on - any desired person.
Until after the person has already gone on a rampage, at least, at which point it's too late to do much (if any) good.
Are you free to offer other people rides on your private aircraft, and fly them to their destinations?
What about if you charge them for it - just enough to cover your costs, of course?
What about if you start charging more, to make a profit?
What about if you use some of those profits to buy more aircraft, and hire other people to pilot those aircraft on your behalf, to fly other people to their destinations?
At what point do you cease to be permitted to ignore the security-theater requirements that the TSA has in place?
And if you can't ignore them at that point, why can you ignore them before that point?
When considered in light of later events in the series, the reason seems clear enough to me; the whale and the bowl of petunias must both be previous incarnations of Agrajag, and the bowl of petunias remembers having fallen to its death from orbit around that same planet.
To be fair, what the accusers are doing is asking the court to find that the evidence shows that the accused has already infringed repeatedly - that is, in multiple distinct instances.
If the system were working properly, there wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with that. Unfortunately, as well established in other discussions, there are many reasons why the current system cannot really be reasonably claimed to be working "properly".
Profanity is about matters religious; obscenity is about matters sexual; vulgarity is about bodily functions, i.e., mostly matters scatological.
Very few forms of foul language fall outside of those three categories; about the only examples I can think of are "bastard", "bloody", and arguably "bitch".
On the post: 'Hacking' Of US Nuclear Facilities Appears To Be Little More Than The Sort Of Spying The US Approves Of
Re: Re: Re: Par for the course hypocrisy
Nobody's investigating that because people know exactly how it happened: Trump won small margins in many states, and Clinton won large margins in a few states, and Trump's many states had more combined electoral votes than Clinton's few states.
It's related to the same way gerrymandering works: pack the people who oppose you into a small number of districts, so that although their candidates in those districts win by huge majorities, their candidates in the majority of districts lose. Electoral-college allocation isn't rigged in quite the same way as the usual gerrymandering process (for one thing, the district boundaries are the state boundaries, which aren't really redraw-able in the same way), but the underlying mechanism still works.
IIRC, if three particular states with relatively tiny margins had gone for Clinton rather than Trump, that would have shifted enough electoral votes to the opposite column we'd have had another President Clinton this year. I don't remember which states that is, however, and it's possible I'm remembering it wrong.
On the post: Moving Beyond Backdoors To Solve The FBI's 'Going Dark' Problem
Re: Re:
On the post: State Dept. Enlists Hollywood And Its Friends To Start A Fake Twitter Fight Over Intellectual Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Talk about Twitter
That's not to say that CNN is in the wrong here; if you want to say things that are frowned upon by (as you put it) polite society, you have to be willing to live with the consequences that society may impose upon you. It's just that if those consequences include preventing you from saying those things (as distinct from ignoring you or refusing to give you a platform), that society has thereby departed from "freedom of speech".
On the post: NSA Continues To Dodge 'Incidental Collection' Question, Wants Its 'About' Surveillance Program Back
Re: Re:
* We can't report how many of the communications which we have collected are from Americans unless we know which ones are and which ones aren't.
* We can't know which communications are from Americans unless we examine the communications in ways which would violate the privacy of whoever they belong to.
* If we don't examine the communications, there is less violation of privacy than if we do.
* Therefore, requiring us to figure out which communications are from Americans amounts to requiring us to violate Americans' privacy.
On the post: Zillow Still Doesn't Get It: Second Letter About McMansion Hell Is Still Just Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fair use doesn't mean that
Well, some people have argued (and I think still do argue) that putting up a "terms of service" page on your Website stating the terms under which you are offering the site's contents, and also stating that "by using/browsing/etc. this Website, you are indicating your acceptance of the terms of this agreement; if you do not accept this agreement, do not use/browse/etc. this Website", creates a valid and enforceable "do not cross" line. The proposition seems dubious to me (except perhaps under the CFAA...), but if they've ever been proven wrong in court, I don't recall the incident.
That said, you're very likely right, all in all.
On the post: Zillow Still Doesn't Get It: Second Letter About McMansion Hell Is Still Just Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fair use doesn't mean that
It's also possible that in that case the terms of the agreement you have to accept in creating such an account would state that you aren't allowed to take the images to use elsewhere - in which case Zillow might have a breach-of-contract case, and would certainly be entitled to close the account.
As I've never had any real interaction with Zillow myself, I can't speak to the accuracy of either of those suggestions.
On the post: AT&T Promises A Cornucopia Of Broadband Investment...But Only If Trump Gives It A Giant Tax Cut & A Shiny New Merger
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Monster in the Mirror
IMO, a switch to ranked-preference voting (preferably Condorcet-satisfying) is still an essential step, regardless; the possibility of proportional representation strikes me as an orthogonal change.
On the post: Copyright Office Admits That DMCA Is More About Giving Hollywood 'Control' Than Stopping Infringement
Re:
On the post: Appeals Court Upholds Matthew Keys' Two-Year Sentence For A 40-Minute Web Defacement
Re: Re: Re: Re: Everyone left because of Chippy?
I'm not familiar with either the site or the program themselves, so I can't be sure that makes sense with the underlying facts, but that's how I interpret his comments.
On the post: Wisconsin Speech Bill Tries To Keep Universities Neutral On Public Policy Debates, Which Is Batshit Crazypants
Re: Re: Re: I think you misunderstand
What part of what you described is a crime?
On the post: Cable Industry Quietly Shelves Its Bogus Plan To Make Cable Boxes Cheaper, More Competitive
Re: Re: Re:
...how does recognizing that a market is naturally structured in such a way that running it in any way which is not a monopoly will be impractically inefficient, and regulating that market to limit the negative impacts of that monopoly, constitute "starting [a] monopoly affair"?
The monopoly would have existed with or without the regulation, or the FCC. All the FCC did was attempt to keep the negative aspects of the monopoly in check, using the power it has under Title II.
And it mostly seemed to work, until the companies convinced the FCC that the fact that they also provided some non-Title-II-compatible services meant that none of their services should be classified under Title II. At which point the regulation went away, and the monopoly effect was still there.
And the result is where the market now stands: little or no competition in most regions, horrible customer service ratings, high prices, arguably-abusive terms of service, et cetera.
On the post: NJ Mayor Can't Stop Streisanding Himself After Being On The Receiving End Of The Crying Jordan Meme
Re: Re:
On the post: Copyright Office Realizes The DMCA Fucks With Security Research While The W3C Still Doesn't See It
Re: Seeking correction
If the way the WC3 decides such things is by voting on proposals, and this proposal was voted down (multiple times!), then how is it not correct to say that the WC3 rejected the proposal?
If your objection is that saying that the WC3 rejected it makes it look as if the decision was unanimous, and all members of the WC3 agreed with that decision:
Saying that the WC3 rejected it is not saying that every member of the WC3 rejected it, only that the organization as an entity did so. As far as I can see, the only ways to demonstrate that the WC3 did not reject a proposal would be to either show that the WC3 actually accepted that proposal, to show that the proposal was never presented to the WC3, or to show that the WC3 never came to a decision on the presented versions of that proposal (and even that last might be argued to constitute rejection).
If your objection is that saying that the WC3 rejected it makes it look as if the decision was unilateral, and made without regard to the opinions of the WC3's members:
The fact that (an apparent majority of?) the members of the WC3 agreed with the rejection does not make it any less a rejection, and in fact would reflect negatively on those members rather than just on the WC3 as a unit.
If your objection is something else, please clarify what it is that you find objectionable about this.
On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
One big reason why it gets such a negative reaction is that there's considerable difficulty in defining "homicidal maniac" in a sufficiently non-arbitrary way that whoever is charged with making the determination couldn't apply the label to - and thus impose that deprivation of access to weaponry on - any desired person.
Until after the person has already gone on a rampage, at least, at which point it's too late to do much (if any) good.
On the post: To Keep The Skies Safe, The TSA Wants To Know What You're Reading
Re: Re: Re: democracy is sad
What about if you charge them for it - just enough to cover your costs, of course?
What about if you start charging more, to make a profit?
What about if you use some of those profits to buy more aircraft, and hire other people to pilot those aircraft on your behalf, to fly other people to their destinations?
At what point do you cease to be permitted to ignore the security-theater requirements that the TSA has in place?
And if you can't ignore them at that point, why can you ignore them before that point?
On the post: Cops Sent Warrant To Facebook To Dig Up Dirt On Woman Whose Boyfriend They Had Just Killed
Re: Re: "Lesbian separatists"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatist_feminism#Lesbian_separatism
On the post:
Re: Re: This would have been reasonable years ago
On the post: Legislators Want To Open Up Wiretap Laws To Target Sex Workers And Their Customers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RIP George Carlin
On the post: How The Supreme Court's Recent Free Speech Ruling May Destroy Hollywood's Plans To Kick People Off The Internet
Re: Re: Re:
To be fair, what the accusers are doing is asking the court to find that the evidence shows that the accused has already infringed repeatedly - that is, in multiple distinct instances.
If the system were working properly, there wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with that. Unfortunately, as well established in other discussions, there are many reasons why the current system cannot really be reasonably claimed to be working "properly".
On the post: Cable Lobbyists Try To Scuttle State Inquiries Into Shitty Broadband Service, Slow Speeds
Re: Profanity in the headline?
Profanity is about matters religious; obscenity is about matters sexual; vulgarity is about bodily functions, i.e., mostly matters scatological.
Very few forms of foul language fall outside of those three categories; about the only examples I can think of are "bastard", "bloody", and arguably "bitch".
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