Or as a friend of mine said:

Nate Silver is to talking-head punditry what the National Weather Service is to "Hurricanes are caused by teh gays."

I was going to guess that it was a trunked radio system like many large law enforcement agencies use. Each site probably has access to a datalink of some sort (possibly IP based, possibly something more specialized, like a satelite link) that can carry traffic between sites, and a central controller at each site relays traffic to individual users. That would probably allow the sort of performance he describes.

And then the patent expires.

You are still, STILL, missing the point that a crowd isn't controlled by the people at the obstruction. It's controlled by the people behind, and their actions (which may be perfectly reasonable in isolation) are compounded into an undesirable behavioral under certain circumstances. Person 3 in my example can no more resist the pressure from behind than Person 2 could.

You don't see deaths at every rock concert today for the same reason you don't see people dying every time a fire alarm goes off in a theater. YOU don't see all the infrastructure and people working behind the scenes to prevent tragedies. If you look at the flow of people out of any modern large stadium, you'll see that there are multiple chokepoints to prevent any one crowd from being too large, that's why seating sections have dividers between them, and there are several levels of exits. (That provides exactly zero excuse for someone who intentionally creates a rush - If you pulled a fire alarm and people got trampled to death, you bear responsibility, same as if you yelled "Fire!") Most of the time the system works, theaters, concerts, it's all the same. Crowd depth is an important variable. Psychology is another. People who are much more knowledgeable about either field than I spend a lot of time writing regulations, designing buildings, creating crowd control plans, and doing whatever they can to make sure that the cattle-like participants like you stay as calm as possible, and your "herd" is limited to a reasonable size. After all, if you feel stressed or overcrowded, you'll spend your money elsewhere - but if you die, they have to pay off your heirs.

I agree in principle with your statement that "Normal people are usually reasonable in their actions" but you forget the edge cases. Normal people are known to be unreasonable in their actions under some circumstances, and if you attempt to manufacture those circumstances, there's NO WAY you will be held blameless for the result. There's no excuse if you create a hazardous situation and someone is harmed.

As to your distinction to "Real" vs "Fake" fires - I thought the distinction was obvious, but clearly I have to spell this out too. Here's how courts see this situation:

a) You yell "fire!" in a theater.
b) There's a crowd of 300, who collectively panics, stampedes, and 3 people die.

Scenario 1: You were telling the truth. (There was a REAL fire)
Harm done as a result of your actions: 3 deaths caused
Good done as a result of your actions: up to 297 deaths averted

Scenario 2: You were lying (there was no real fire)
Harm done as a result of your actions: 3 deaths caused
Good done as a result of your actions: 0 deaths averted

Judgment: In the first scenario, you were acting in the interest of the greater good, so the lives you saved would vastly outweigh those lost due to your actions. You may not be judged a hero, but no one's going to suggest that you be charged for manslaughter or worse.
In the second scenario, there is no greater good, so your actions can only be judged by the harm they did. Expect to face charges, who's severity depend on your intent.

Don't try to feed me that line about dropping things in my responses - I'd be here all day if I wanted to pick apart every error in your reasoning. And besides, you are hardly innocent. (To paraphrase someone who may or may not have lived two millennia ago: Remove the beam from your own eye, then you can see clearly to remove the speck from mine.) My goal in this discussion is to attack your idiotic thesis that the first amendment prevents your being held responsible for harm done as a result of falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater (or similar situation). In the furtherance of that goal, I have attempted to educate you about previous events (you had not done enough research to know that people HAD died due to false claims that there was a fire in a theater) and I have set up sample scenarios so that you could better understand the situations (physics of a stampede, responsibility of intelligence gatherers). You have taken no opportunity to educate me as to events that support your thesis, or set up scenarios indicating that your thesis is correct (or cannot possibly cause harm).

You clearly are not interested in allowing me to convince you that you are wrong - and not just wrong, so wrong that a court of law would clearly, obviously, rule against you. So lets do this: You find someone who is actually an expert on this area of law, and go ask them. When you've done this, let me know who they are, what credentials they possess, and what they've said. Then we can count up the score.

Goodness knows I've more time into trying to improve your thinking that you deserve. Good luck out there, and again: stop spouting this indefensible nonsense. I don't want to hear about some innocent being hurt while your test out your crackpot ideas.

I stand corrected.

You really need to start researching things before you post them.

Google search: "people die at rock concert crush". First result: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114358,00.html

A little more searching also found this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stampede, which has the following:
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_The_Who_concert_disaster (alluded to in previous link)
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskilde_Festival#2000_accident
3) August 20, 1988: 2 people were crushed to death during a Guns N' Roses concert at a Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park, England. (no specific link)

This DOES happen, and one of the big responsibilities of the venue is to provide adequate crowd control. If you think they aren't worried about this, ask them about their insurance. You may also note that really large venues have physical separations between groups of seating - this ensures that you can't develop a crowd that's too deep - and they keep security people trained in crowd control around.

Also, if you have found a specific error in my math or scenario, please feel free to point it out. I'll fix it and we can reevaluate. (If all you can come up with is a vague counter-example, can it.) You've neglected a couple of key difference between 300 people in a hallway and 300 people up against a stage. Crowd depth in the direction of motion, participant expectations, and state of mind are major factor in these situations. A group of fans near a stage in a large venue may have a couple hundred people in it, but be 30 people wide and only 10 people deep. Also, these people are expecting to _stop_ moving forward at some point. One more thing - These people aren't expecting to be burned to death if they are at the back of the crowd - which changes the dynamic a bit.

I think that addresses your counter-example, and I want to take a moment to point out that you are really not taking much time to think through the specifics of the situation and the influence of small details. This may be why you were promoting such idiocy in the first place. Really, do some research.

Uh, all of those products are recent products. Not only that, but the iPhone 4 is Apple's current flagship model. Galaxy S II is Samsung's.

You are still missing a few important points.

1) For the legality of the situation: IF YOU CREATE A DANGEROUS SITUATION, YOU CAN BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HARM DONE, EVEN IF YOU WERE NOT PRESENT FOR THE HARM. This is true even if others could have acted to prevent the harm. If you think this is false, you are wrong, If you don't believe me, ask a judge or someone else who has professional experience with this area of the law. Don't look for idiots on /. to confirm your foolish belief.

2) You are still totally ignoring the physics of a tightly packed crowd. Trampling happen among tightly packed people even when everyone behaves in the most rational possible way. Let me provide an example:

Imagine a crowd of three hundred adults of average size packed into a hallway that fits 6 people across under the current conditions (approx 10 feet), and there is about 6 inches between each person and the person behind.
This implies that the crowd will be roughly 50 people deep.
At the end of a hallway is large double door, measuring 8 feet across, through which no more than 5 people may pass at any one time.

Still with me?

Let's give them a reason to worry: Some person (who depending on their intent, may or may not be the scum of the earth) has announced loudly (and in a way which inspires panic) that there is a "FIRE!"

Let's imagine that every thing is perfect for a moment - people are passing through the door, no person is touching any other, and the evacuation is proceeding in an orderly fashion. This lasts for a moment, but while passing through the door, somebody trips. Let's call this moment Time 0.

What happens? The second person in line behind them does exactly what any reasonable person would do, and attempts to stop. Let's imagine that Person 2 has remarkable strength and reflexes, and succeeds in going from a walking pace to a stop over the course of 6 inches. However, the third person in the line comes up abruptly Person 2 - pressing them forward slightly. Person 3 applies whatever force is necessary to stay upright. (For the sake of simplicity, let's say they initially exert 20 N of force (slightly less than 5 lbs) against Person 2.

Has anything unreasonable happened here yet? Personal space has been invaded, but that's it. Has someone acted in any way OTHER than the way a rational person would act? I think not.

While this little drama involving Persons 1, 2, and 3 has been playing out (in which Person 4 is about to join), Persons 5 thru 50 have been moving forward. Many of them have not been made aware of the problem, and even if they are aware that there is a problem ahead, the person directly in front of them is still moving forward at the same rate as before, so there appears to be no immediate need to stop.

Another 500 milliseconds pass. Now, Person 4 comes against Person 3, and applies a 20 N load in exactly the same way as Person 3 is loading Person 2. Now, Person 3 transmits a load of 20 Newtons IN ADDITION to the origional 20 N load that they were imposing, so Person 2 now sees a force of 40 N.

The situation repeats, through the entire line. Here's why. If people are moving at 0.5 miles per hour, they cover that 6 inch spacing in a bit less than 700 milliseconds. Human reaction time is roughly 200 milliseconds. So if we assume that everyone grasps the entire situation and determines the appropriate response within 200 milliseconds of when the person in front of them comes to a stop, then they have 500 milliseconds to act before they will come into contact with the person in front of them - and they haven't done anything yet. if it takes an additional 200 ms to reposition their bodies to stop in the most effective way possible, they have 300 ms remaining. If each person can come to a complete stop in that time, without touching the person in front, then the crowd will stop nicely. Unfortunately they can't. This would require a deceleration of 0.75 m/s^2. For a reasonable sized male (78 kg) this requires a force of newtons - applied at the center of mass for 500 milliseconds. Each person has to stop only using their feet to exert a torque on the floor, and this torque must be roughly 57 N*m to be sufficient (assumes center of mass is 1 m from floor). Each person has limited floor-space available, equal to the thickness of their body, plus roughly 6 inches - about 16 inches. The person's center of mass is already well past the center of their 16 inches at this point, so the I estimate that most torque this average person can exert on the floor in this situation is 50 N. In short, they can't possibly stop in time.

Once person 12 gets caught up in the jam, Person 2 is under a load of 200 N (roughly 50 lbs). Once Person 42 is involved, he's resisting 800 N which, incidentally, can't be done. That's more than enough force to lift him into the air, let along push him over the top of Person 1.

This is where things get ugly and people get trampled. After Person 3 gets pushed over Person 2, we find that he is in exactly the same position - there's more force on him than he can possibly resist, and he has nowhere to go except over Person 1, and possibly Person 2 as well. Once one person gets pushed over another, the game is over until the crowd thins, or someone persuades the people in the back that they are not going to die in the fire.

All this was assuming that only the people directly behind Person 1 would be affected, and that everyone responded perfectly. In reality, the people to either side would become involved as well, increasing the forces dramatically.

So if you think I have misrepresented the math of the situation, I refer you to an account by someone who has experienced it:

In his 1894 account of the incident, survivor William Codling, Jr., described the crush, and the realisation that people were dying:
"Soon we were most uncomfortably packed but still going down. Suddenly I felt that I was treading upon someone lying on the stairs and I cried in horror to those behind "Keep back, keep back! There's someone down." It was no use, I passed slowly over and onwards with the mass and before long I passed over others without emotion. "

This quote can be found on the Wikipedia page for the Victoria Hall Disaster, in which 183 people were killed in the crush.

----

As for the example about the Iraq war: imagine this scenario: You are THE expert on X. Your boss asks you about X, telling you the importance of good information. You lie, either explicitly, or by omission. Your boss then takes reasonable action based on the content of the information that you provided. You have no further opportunities to influence the outcome. Disaster ensues. There's an investigation, which uncovers the fact that you lied, and had you told the truth, the situation might have been averted. Now here are some questions:

Q: Did you, by lying, make yourself party to the outcome? A: Yes.
Q: If you had told the truth, and the result was still a disaster, would you have been party to the outcome? A: No
Q: Because someone else acted on your bad information, are you blameless for the outcome? A: CLEARLY not. (*)
Q: Is your boss blameless? A: No. He or she made a crucial mistake in that they trusted you.
Q: Is your boss getting fired? A: Maybe, but that's not your problem.
Q: Are you getting fired? A: Hell yeah!
Q: Is any court going say that you were treated unfairly? A: Hell no! You're getting court costs too.

Remember, there's a difference between responsibility and blame. You can remember the difference this way: A good boss will take responsibility for his actions, and the actions of those acting on his orders. If he orders that you do something (like give accurate information) and you do not, you will be blamed for the results. If you think otherwise, I suggest that you imagine yourself in the "boss" role.

(* = This seems to be the part you have trouble with. Get a clue. If you tell a child to "eat glue tomorrow", and they do it and die, you are just as responsible as if you had put the glue in their mouth yourself. Oh, and stay away from children, unless you are being presented as a great example of faulty mentation.)
---

Now, do the world a favor and quit spouting this ridiculous "I'm not responsible for the results of my actions." Whether you believe it or not, you are wrong, your positions are not defensible here or in court, and I only hope that you don't actually permanently damage some innocent bystander in the process of finding this out.

I agree that the Iraq War does not pertain precisely to your original statement - but I enjoyed the insight.

Your second statement is interesting too. "fault . . . does not solely rest on whoever provided bad intelligence" So you'd agree that they are clearly not blameless? This would seem to support my position.

I take the position that if you engage in action that you know will lead to the harm of others when inaction will prevent the harm, you are culpable for the harm. (This is true even if you do not personally inflict the harm. If you drop a piano on someone, you can't say "Gravity did it!" and expect clemency.) If you are not prepared to accept blame for the harm, you better not engage in the action. There are (rare) circumstances where this is acceptable - like preventing an even greater harm. However, knowingly causing the harm of others makes you a criminal in the eyes of society, even if the law does not explicitly ban your conduct.

Taking a different approach: It's not a crime to speak (most things), or to shoot guns (most places), or to throw things, or to drop pianos. Causing the death of another human is a crime, even if it happens due to otherwise protected actions. If you take actions that you know could result in the death of another, you are party to the crime. How blame is apportioned will depend on the circumstances, but you should not expect that a court of law or public opinion will support your contention that "it's legal, therefore I'm blameless."

And as others have mentioned already, the Italian Hall Disaster of 1913 is an example of someone falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, which resulted in the deaths of 73 people.

I'd suggest that you consider what it would take to implement any of the following of your ideas:

1) Ban theaters (I'm sure everyone will take this like the rational people we expect them to be, right?)
2) Pass new legislation (Yay! More regulations!) requiring that every theater in the country be retrofitted per your specifications.
3) Develop "consumer safe" ejection seat - must work flawlessly for infants, toddlers, children, adolescents, adults, the elderly, the infirm, the deaf, those twits necking in the back row, the mentally handicapped, etc...
4) Pay for said regulations/retrofitting/inspections (How do you feel about taxes and/or movie ticket prices?)

All of these to save a couple people a year on average, maybe. Read up on the statistical value of a human life before you propose extravagant solutions.

Or we could just make a habit of smacking the hell out of people who cry wolf with the intent to cause injuries. Cheaper. Faster. Deters future idiocy.

We recognize that, with almost every activity, there is risk involved and there's the chance that people will die. We put up with deaths in theater fires because they are very rare and preventing them costs so much as to be prohibitive. (It's the same reason you don't see seat belts on school buses, or see a car recall after every accident.) We don't put up with people who think that "free speech" is a justified reason (or defense) for needlessly endangering others.

And besides, if the government can ban theaters for "your own protection", they might just as easily replace your house with a padded room, and take over management of your diet and exercise, and otherwise deprive you of ways to harm yourself.

+1

There are probably other reasons, but the way I heard it explained was this: Lots of doors open inward to restrict access to the hinge pins. Unless you have security hings, someone can pull the hinge pins and simply push the door open.

Good job. You are right. We can't legally prosecute you for being a douchbag, but even if we can't prosecute you for the speech itself, If you yell fire in a crowded theater with the intent of harming others, you can still be tried for reckless endangerment and, should the worst happen, voluntary manslaughter or murder.

You've managed to completely overlook what a fire in a crowded theater actually meant at the time that the phrase was coined. Let's just say that we have these things called "fire exits" in theaters now because theater fires used to be so gruesome. Holmes' 1919 opinion was written a mere 16 year after 600 people died in the Iroquis theater fire, and six years after 73 people died in Calumet, Michigan due to exactly the conduct you advocate. At the time, yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater was a guaranteed way play on popular fears and to ensure that large numbers of people died. Congrats on holding the moral low ground.

In addition, you've utter neglected the fact that people packed in tightly do not behave in the same way as people packed loosely, irrespective of their intentions. If you have a hundred tightly packed people in a narrow hallway so much as casually lean forward all at one time, the people in the front are going to be under immense force. (If you think that the inevitable trampling someone to death is any one person's fault, you are an idiot and a bastard.) That this principle is still true today is evident in the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

You have as much as admitted that people are predictable, and if you think that hurting people to emphasize that fact is acceptable, you deserve no better.

Woah. I'm surprised you can type with that chip on your shoulder. Ease up there . . .

The FTC requires that country-of-origin claims be assessed by portioning the manufacturing costs of the final product. A couple of dollars worth of foreign components/costs in an otherwise domestically sourced product that costs $300 is not considered to be an issue. If, on the other hand, the final product cost $5, then it's not acceptable to make a "Made in the USA" claim.

Here is a link to the FTC page which describes the situation a bit more clearly, if not nearly so briefly.
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus03-complying-made-usa-standard