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Comment Re:Responsibility lies with the Taxpayers (Score 1) 201

Only restitution?

First, what's proper restitution for being compelled to post something on a Facebook post? I don't think I'd accept $20K to allow somebody else to put something I disliked on my Facebook account, myself.

A formal apology. If you can show that you suffered any real damages from the false facebook post, including your time or reputation, then you would be entitled to just compensation for those.

Second, the guy had to spend money and time to get the suit going, and had no certainty of getting anything. Offering restitution only (and then only when winning) means that it's most likely the best move to just let the police do whatever to you without recourse.

Your legal costs should of course be included in that restitution.

The legal system should not exist to enrich someone out of proportion to how they were harmed. If people won't pursue justice if they don't have the chance of hitting a big jackpot, then it's probably not very important to them after all.

Comment Re:Responsibility lies with the Taxpayers (Score 1) 201

Judges, most likely.

You've already opened a huge can of worms by giving the money to one undeserving party. Just because there might be problems to resolve with a better system doesn't mean that there's no point in instituting the better system. Say that they get it wrong half the time. That's still better than today, when they get it wrong every single time.

Comment Re:Responsibility lies with the Taxpayers (Score 1) 201

This is why our system of punitive damages sucks. It encourages people to game the system in hopes of winning the lawsuit lottery.

He should receive restitution for the damages done. Nothing more. A huge payout to punish the guilty party is not justice.

If large punitive damages are warranted, they shouldn't go to the plaintiff.

Comment Re:Trolling Douchebags (Score 3, Insightful) 211

Yes, fraudulent 911 calls are a problem. But I'd rather have 100 of those for each legitimate call from an NSI phone which might save one or more lives.

The attitude that any cost is acceptable for the chance of saving a life is a common problem.

There is a point where the resources devoted to your pet cause A could be more beneficial -- even in terms of saving lives -- if directed elsewhere.

Comment Just downgraded (Score 3, Interesting) 434

I finally downgraded my 2012 Nexus 7 today back to KitKat. It was essentially unusable running Lollipop.

Unless Google can make their new versions perform well on older hardware, of course you're going to have a lot of people on the older OS versions. I'm not going to buy a new phone/tablet every time Google releases an update to their OS.

Comment Re:SubjectsSuck (Score 2) 254

Your example isn't a good one, because there's no credible reason for anyone to believe that an anonymous Slashdot poster is going to be able to launch an air attack on US military base. A threat by a lone individual to carry out a mass murder, on the other hand, is perfectly believable, because they happen with some frequency.

And making threats is not protected free speech, so it has no implications in that regard. Calling this a "perceived" threat is disingenuous on your part -- it's a real threat, plain and simple, whether or not he intended to act on it.

Comment Re: already done (Score 1) 126

Actually, the books they will be providing for the $250 million appear to be largely out of copyright already. So this is even worse than paying the publishers for copyrighted books.

Where are you getting this info? From the articles linked from the summary, it appears that the e-books are being donated by the publishers (not paid for by the government) and I didn't find any information on what books are being provided. But the articles I can find are are woefully lacking in detail.

Comment Re:Tablets and technology march on (Score 1) 123

Ouja was always going to be a niche market appealing to techies and gamers.

Niche market, yes, but it seems like one of Ouya's (the company's) biggest problems was that they thought that they could appeal to "gamers."

If you consider yourself a gamer, then you probably already own one of the big-name consoles. Recent consoles have a fair amount of support for the kind of indie games that Ouya was hoping would form the backbone of their library, and so there's not much of a strong incentive to get an Ouya as well. And it was obvious that the big game studios were never going to develop major games for Ouya, so getting one instead of a normal console wouldn't have been a good choice.

I got one soon after release, and it's great for someone who likes to play the occasional game, but not enough to bother investing hundreds of dollars in a standard console. But anyone who thought that it was going to compete in the same space as the XBox or Playstation was fooling themselves.

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