The Wanderer 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Famous Racist Sues Twitter Claiming It Violates His Civil Rights As A Racist To Be Kicked Off The Platform

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2018 @ 06:58am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Just as a nit, "[desperate for] an opportunity to bash a Nazi" does not imply "only in it for the violence"; someone who's only in it for the violence would be equally glad of an opportunity to bash anyone, Nazi or otherwise. Agreed otherwise, though.

  • On the post: Rhode Island Law Would Mandate Porn Filters, Charge You $20 Per Device To Bypass Them

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2018 @ 05:06am

    Re: Re: Give them what they want

    Counter: all the ISPs who refrain from entering the market in a geographic area already occupied by another ISP.

  • On the post: MPAA Opposes Several Filmmaker Associations Request For Expanded Circumvention Exemptions

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2018 @ 04:26am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Too bad

    Sounds to me like another manifestation of "the proper response to bad speech is more speech"!

  • On the post: After Chat With Ethics Lawyers, FCC Boss Declines NRA Gun Award For Killing Net Neutrality

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2018 @ 08:57am

    Re: FAA supports the second amendment,

    ...do you use some weird kind of nonstandard keyboard on which the "A" is close enough to the "C" for you accidentally type the one in place of the other? (If so, what's it called, and where can I see pictures of the key layout?)

    Or if you really did mean to type "FAA", what the #&*)! does the Federal Aviation Administration have to do with this?

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2018 @ 08:05am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Constitution Free Zones

    Do you have a citation for the definition you reference in point 2? Because it looks to me as if you've confused "fighting words" with the "true threat" doctrine.

    The definition you gave seems much closer to (though not quite identical with) the "true threat" doctrine than to "fighting words".

    "Fighting words", as I understand the concept, are basically words directed in real time at a specific person (or specific group of people) which are so extremely offensive that it would be unreasonable to expect the targeted person to have the self-possession to refrain from reacting with immediate automatic/reflexive/instictive violence.

  • On the post: Slowing Down Driverless Cars Would Be A Fatal Mistake

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2018 @ 07:51am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    As far as I understand, our testing sample for Chemical X is the Powerpuff Girls and Mojo Jojo.

    Based on that set of results, I'm not sure "dangerous" can be entirely ruled out.

  • On the post: Five Years After His Arrest, Prosecutors Try To Push Back Justin Carter's 'Terroristic Threat' Trial

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2018 @ 08:35am

    Re: Re:

    ...that said, "push back" does carry the additional implication that it's being moved farther from the current time, just as "pull forward" carries the implication that it's being moved closer, so the phrase as used was clear enough in this instance.

  • On the post: Five Years After His Arrest, Prosecutors Try To Push Back Justin Carter's 'Terroristic Threat' Trial

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2018 @ 08:34am

    Re:

    This phrase, like similar ones (e.g. the daylight-savings-time "spring forward, fall back" alleged mnemonic) has a problem of ambiguity: the direction intended is not clearly conveyed by the terms used.

    To move an event "back" could mean to shift it "backward in time", i.e., to the past, or to shift it "backward in the queue of "pending" items", i.e., postpone the time when it is scheduled to happen. Both uses of "back" are standard idiom, and no matter which interpretation you default to, it's perfectly natural; as long as the two senses of "move back" are both in general usage, the phrase is not enough to clearly convey which is meant.

    (In some cases, such as this one, context can clear up the ambiguity - but that doesn't mean the phrase itself is any less ambiguous.)

    The phrase "move forward" has the analogous problem in reverse. I have, in fact, seen both phrases used with each of the two possible senses; always assuming the same direction (past/future) for each would have resulted in being wrong at least part of the time.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments In Microsoft Email Case

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2018 @ 04:33am

    Re: Action item for the reader: Get a Proton Mail account

    This is probably good advice. Proton Mail isn't the only option for a non-US-based E-mail provider, either; I've been using Fastmail since mid-2009, and have had no reason to be dissatisfied with them. There are almost certainly other good choices out there.

  • On the post: Anti-NRA Censorship Efforts Echo Earlier Pro-NRA Censorship Efforts, And Learn No Lessons From Them

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 07:42pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Also, I'm given to understand that most of the NRA's power has historically come not through donations to campaigns in whatever form, but through their ability to mobilize and/or motivate their base, into voting for/against (even if not actually contributing to, or to the opponent of) a particular candidate.

  • On the post: Anti-NRA Censorship Efforts Echo Earlier Pro-NRA Censorship Efforts, And Learn No Lessons From Them

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 06:08pm

    Re: Re:

    That's a decent definition, but I think it's still overly-narrow, except insofar as "objectionable" covers a lot of bases.

    My preferred definition is somewhat broader than that: "an attempt to prevent some particular audience from being exposed to some particular information".

    That covers everything from parental censorship of what books their children are allowed to read and what movies their children are allowed to watch, through people working for e.g. the military with the actual job title of "censor" blacking out parts of soldiers' letters home in order to avoid compromising ongoing operations, all the way to V-for-Vendetta-style "add it to the blacklist" banning of books and music and so forth, and a multitude of other things along the way.

    It's the only definition I've ever found which seems neither too narrow (skipping things which seem like they should be included) nor too broad (including things which seem like they should be left out) to my sensibilities.

  • On the post: Senator Klobuchar Thinks We Need To Start Fining Social Media Companies For Not Removing Bots Fast Enough

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 04:47am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Do your job

    It's less "do not want to stand for office" so much as "stand zero practical chance of actually getting elected", such that the investment of time and money and effort into the process of running for office is not remotely worth it.

    I think I could do a far better job of actual policy-making, and so forth, than most of the people currently in office in many places - but I do not remotely have the skillset or the temperament to prevail on the campaign trail, even at the county level much less anything higher than that. (I say that having seen my father, who's much better at those things than I am and much better-connected in the community, fail fairly conclusively - though not spectacularly - in a county-level election.)

    One of the core weaknesses of American-style democracy (and possibly of democracy in general) is that the skills and talents which make someone good at winning elections have little overlap with the skills and talents which make someone good at governing.

    Then again, the same is true of most other forms of government, so the old adage that "democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others" probably still applies...

  • On the post: NRA Gives FCC Boss An Award For 'Courageously' Killing Net Neutrality, May Have Violated Ethics Rules

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 04:39am

    Re: Re: Re: bs/stupid meter

    Uh, no. A peroxide blonde is someone whose hair (on the outside of the skull) has been bleached, e.g. with hydrogen peroxide. The comment was suggesting that it looks like these people have applied the bleach to the insides of their skulls, i.e., to their brains rather than their hair. That says nothing whatsoever about the intelligence of people who applied the bleach on the outside of the skull - to say nothing of natural blonds or blondes, who haven't had bleach involved in the first place.

  • On the post: Rancher Sues CBP After Officers Install A Camera On His Private Property

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 04:27am

    Re: Re: Protect and Serve Who?

    I think the line about the Constitution having been "rewritten secretly after 9/11" was intended to imply that (many of) the things the government has been doing since that date - without being overturned as Constitutional violations by the courts - are so far out of consistency with the publicly-known Constitutional text that the only reasonable conclusion is that the government (including the courts in question) must now be working from different text, which they simply haven't shared with the rest of us. (This of course assumes that "the government (including the high-level courts which overrule the others) is ignoring the Constitution" is not a reasonable conclusion, which one might consider questionable.)

  • On the post: Rancher Sues CBP After Officers Install A Camera On His Private Property

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 04:22am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    (Nit: "ordnance". An ordinance is a law, usually city or county rather than state or federal. The former term is apparently derived directly from the latter, but their senses are now distinct.)

    While it's true that personal armaments aren't likely to do much good against the kind of firepower that the US military can bring to bear when it wants to, wouldn't that serve equally well as an argument that private individuals should be able to have access to that same kind of firepower, to keep that playing field more level?

    There are all sorts of problems with that scenario too, of course, when considering its subsequent ramifications - but since people do (apparently) hold that viewpoint, it needs to be addressed when the argument that "the military will vastly outgun any domestic revolutionary group anyway" is presented, or the two sides just end up talking past one another and the discussion goes nowhere.

  • On the post: Rancher Sues CBP After Officers Install A Camera On His Private Property

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 05:13pm

    Re: Re: Restricted-rights zones at borders

    As I understand matters, the idea behind what has been labeled the "Constitution-free zone" is not "an exception to the Fourth Amendment", but rather that the Fourth Amendment only prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures - and that clearly, since border enforcement is necessary, falls within the responsibilities of the government, and cannot be carried out without carrying out searches, searches pursuant to border enforcement are de-facto reasonable (therefore not requiring warrants) by their very nature. The latter point is where things get a bit sticky. While searching through someone's horse-drawn wagon while they're crossing the border, to make sure they aren't smuggling contraband (including people, where and as applicable), makes perfect sense and might very well fit that "obviously reasonable" standard, the term "border search" has been expanded to cover things well beyond that point - or even the modern equivalent, which itself may no longer be quite equivalent because of the ways in which technology and society have developed. If you want to fight the precedent that establishes those zones, however, the place you need to fight it is on that presumption of "obviously reasonable". (And, nice though it might be, a simple declaration that that presumption is incorrect does not serve as a very effective weapon in that fight.)

  • On the post: Mistakes And Strategic Failures: The Killing Of The Open Internet

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 03:17pm

    Re: Re: Re: You're absolutely right: they weren't

    I don't think it's just that "it was ignored because it was inconvenient".

    I think part of the problem was that someone who ignored the problems would have a short-to-mid-term competitive advantage over someone who didn't, precisely because of how intractable the problems were.

    And so it was inevitable that someone who ignored the problems was going to win out in the marketplace, at least until such time as the problems became too big to keep ignoring.

    The current market giants just happen to be the ones (among all those who ignored the problems) who did grab that brass ring, at whatever the long-term cost may turn out to be.

  • On the post: Game Studio Threatens Employees' Jobs If They Don't Write Positive Reviews Of Own Game, Then Steam Pulls Game Entirely

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 10:00am

    "could care less"

    My guess is that the phrase arose from people parsing "I could not care less" as meaning something like "of course I care this much, how could you possibly think I could care any less than that?" - i.e., as the phrase not stating or implying anything about what level of caring the indicated minimum is, only that the speaker cannot go below that level. The idea that that level is still positive doesn't reflect the intended implication, that the only possible way for it to be impossible to go below a level is for that level to be zero - but I think it's still a technically valid interpretation of the words of the idiom. I agree that "I could care less" is still worse, though; where the most that can be said of the other is that it doesn't explicitly rule out the wrong interpretation, "I could care less" explicitly states the wrong interpretation, and that rubs several parts of my psyche the wrong way. (The only way "I could care less" makes any sense to me is as an elision from "I could hardly care less", which makes sense from a how-language-develops perspective but is no less wrong for that fact.)

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 07:07am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: #BoycottNRA Starts To Bite

    Actually, I believe that an underlying assumption of the Second Amendment is that there will not, and either cannot or must not, be a standing army at all - that the army of the nation will be formed on demand by calling up the (armed) populace into the form of a militia.

    Since we clearly have a standing army, either we need to modify the Second Amendment to accord with that reality, or we need to abolish the standing army.

    I don't think it very likely that any of the gun-rights advocates would be happy with either approach.

  • On the post: Loss In 9th Circuit Appeals Court Isn't Slowing 1-800-LAWFIRM's Lawsuit Crusade Against Social Media Companies

    The Wanderer ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 05:02am

    Re: Re: Re:

    I didn't say that I won't try it, for future instances; I may do so, now that it's been brought to my attention. The reason I didn't try it originally is that it didn't occur to me that it might be appropriate, and the reason I haven't tried it now that you've pointed it out is that I've already reported the problem (publicly, with all the downsides involved in that) so there's no real point in reporting it again (privately). As to "not worth the effort of typing as much as (I) have", most of the typing thus far has been about explaining myself; when someone asks me about something that's not obvious, and seems reasonable about doing so, I usually prefer to answer - if only as a matter of courtesy.

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