Why is slapping someone a crime, but telling an angry mob that the resident of a certain house is a pedophile, leading to them burning the house down and killing him, fine because it's just speech.

How many people do you think Stalin or Hitler killed with their own hands? Other than thought crimes, hate crimes, or word crimes exactly what crimes did they commit?

So it would not be a criminal act to shoot at someone and miss? To attempt to rob someone but to flea instead when spotted?

It takes a staggering degree of naivety to support such nonsense and the belief society could function around it.

Way to entirely miss the point, and go off on a retarded straw-man tangent.

it is evident to anyone with enough brain cells that they might occasionally message each other that criminalizing, for example, making claims that you have planted a bomb in a school isn't asking people to turn their life upside down.

When the IRA used to phone bomb warnings through to the British police, if the British police had used your idiotic logic and asked for proof before acting instead of evacuating the area then hundreds of people would have died.

A threat by itself shouldn't be illegal, but it may subject you to scrutiny.

Yes it should, with certain limitations. If making threats was always entirely legal, then it would be trivial for an individual, or small group, to shut down things like air travel nationwide, the school network of a major city indefinitely etc. For example, I could say that I have planted a timed release device containing a neurotoxin in a water source somewhere in New York state. I could even drive around near various locations, park up, leave some weird equipment around etc to ensure it is a credible enough threat (perhaps even plan to get caught looking like I was about to break into a site). I could refuse to cooperate with the investigation. How long would it take to ensure that I hadn't done it, how much would it cost, and how many thousands of peoples would be inconvenienced by it? Then after it all, when they finally feel confident in saying that I hadn't actually done it, there's no consequences what so ever for me.

Meaningless, but dangerous to all of our freedoms, for it allows discarding any part of the Bill of Rights at the moment's notice.

It isn't meaningless, and it isn't dangerous. Allowing all speech, in all circumstances, to be free from consequence is viable. It shouldn't be ok to incite mass panic (yelling fire in a crowded venue) nor should it be ok to threaten violence (a bunch of racists standing outside a polling booth with a guns and clubs, telling blacks they'll get it if they try and go inside).

It is naive to think that complete, and total, freedom of speech was ever intended. Heck, even punishing people for lying under oath would breach an over literal interpretation.

You're comparison fails to grasp the effect of inflation in an attempt to make it look like selling parts of a game for full price seem sane.

His point was both clearly, and correctly, explaining that game prices haven't increased in line with inflation.

Unless you can make a supported case for why games development costs have fallen considerably in real terms then the default assumption should be that they have in fact increased roughly in line with prices in general. Even if wages were considerably lower in real terms, that is more than cancelled out by the huge increase in development team sizes. A major title today could well have more people working on sound/music than the entire dev team for a major release on the SNES/Megadrive.

Look at what you get out of the box in a game like Skyrim with no paid for content added. It's incredible, and it's incredibly cheap, especially compared to games of yore. If the core game wasn't worth paying the price for then don't buy it. If the DLC adds something to the game that is worth the cost, then don't complain that you've already bought the game (as you know you got good value for that).

How does that work? Steam already got paid when you bought the game for Steam. The marketplace isn't providing anything other than facilitating payment for something that was already happening, so why should they get 30% of the value when the people who made the game which the mod relies on get nothing?

Just because it was insightful in one discussion doesn't stop it being insightful in another. Perhaps if people had learnt from it already there wouldn't be any need to keep bringing up the same issues with throwing away liberty under the pretence of increasing safety.

Then you're understanding of UK defamation law is poor, and a simple Google search would have taken you to various resources that would have better informed you. In the UK proof that a statement is true is absolute defense against a defamation charge.

Amazon don't think that buying it from amazon or not automatically makes the review different. What they do think is that knowing the account has bought the item decreases the likelihood of it being a fake review. I'm sure if they could easily tell who had really bought the item by another method they'd be happy to use it.

Point is, presume any review has ulterior motives unless you have evidence to think otherwise.

This is a logic I just don't get, but seems extremely common amongst /. readers. I use reviews on things like Amazon/Tripadvisor as a part of decision making process. I've made hundreds of purchases on-line over the years and am very satisfied with the results. If I'm looking to drop £10k on a car, or £500 on a TV then reviews site reviews are just a small art of my process, however if I'm buying a £10 ironing board cover then it becomes the major determinant. Some things just aren't worth the time it would take to come to a good decision without using reviews, and using reviews (with a pinch of salt) has worked consistently.

Not everyone does however. Cars are priced and negotiated on in order to determine a customers willingness to pay. Some customers are willing to pay more, either because they are happy to or because they don't understand the process they are entering into) and this methodology allows them to make additional profit there, while selling at lower prices to other customers.

I think the mistake with the change they are making is that they are throwing away potentially useful information when making a hiring decision. If you make me an offer, and you've incorrectly valued a skill I have, then not hiring me because you won't amend that offer is inefficient. It's naive to assume that companies are good at accurately and rationally valuing potential employees.

I'm sure they do. I hate negotiating on personal purchases, but that doesn't mean that negotiating on major purchases is almost universally the norm.

When is the last time you negotiated prices at the grocery store?

When was the last time you didn't negotiate prices on a house or car? And which is selecting an employer more like, buying you milk and bread for the week or a major purchasing decision?

Rather, what actually happened is that the spy agencies watched everybody, and by and large didn't care about people who weren't throwing up red flags. If it weren't for Snowden and the Internet-fueled rage he spurred, you'd never know that you'd been investigated at all.

And if you never found the camera your neighbour installed in your bathroom you'd never know he'd been watching you and your family naked, but that probably wouldn't stop you being pretty pissed about it when you found out.

When your government begins using mass surveillance on the entire population, and does so in secret and against the protections your government tells you that you have, it should be a pretty obvious sign that you can't trust them.