Censorship is what the government does. Private individuals are free to engage in editing and may pick and choose what to allow in their own homes or on their own web sites.

Your honor, I object on the grounds that counsel is a poopy head.

Why did someone mark this as troll? If anything it's snark. Just because someone doesn't agree doesn't it a troll. For example, a troll is me saying that only frothy morons would mark that post as a troll, but of course I would not say that as it would be insulting to frothy morons.

The "unconstitutional" thing is more of the same old gripe that anything the feds are not explicitly allowed in the constitution is forbidden. It's an idea that's been overruled since the first congress was seated.

And of course, the feds are explicitly allowed to regulate interstate commerce by the constitution and the internet fits into that mold easily.

Don't.

:P :P :P

What? No, it didn't. One of the Palm Pilot's creators did come from Apple, but they didn't bring the Newton with them. The Palm Pilot was actually a competitor to the Newton, and not the only pen-based contemporary either, though it was the only one in the same size class. The Zoomer actually became the Palm Pilot; the Graffiti handwriting recognition system was first developed for this PC-GEOS-based, paperback-sized handheld.

Uh yeah, so was the Palm Pilot. You don't know your history.

So water hitting your car causes risk.

Yes, it certainly does. A sudden splash that opaques your windshield and/or distorts your view -- which a water balloon can most definitely do -- can startle and disorient the driver, leading to dire consequences. Throwing water balloons at vehicles is not a harmless prank. It is a thoughtless act that can directly endanger others. It is shortsighted and naive to characterize it any other way.

I guess you never drive when rain is predicted.

First of all, rain is an act of nature. Consequently you're going to have trouble equating it to voluntary human action. Secondly, rain can indeed endanger drivers. As can sudden splashes from puddles, clouds of spray from passing trucks and so on. Mitigating these risks is a big part of why cars have windshield wipers, why companies sell products like "Rain-X", and why sane people drive differently when rain interferes with their view of the road and/or the vehicles on it. And yes, absolutely, if rain is predicted, it is factored into my driving plans. Likewise snow, hail, high winds, or sandstorms.

I think your logic is flawed.

You have not demonstrated this in any way. You may, of course, continue to attempt to try. :)

So I'm trying to identify the edges, if any.

There aren't any when offense is the metric. There certainly are where incitement is concerned, though. You put your finger right on one of them: when incitement is directed at someone who is not competent to take responsibility for their own actions -- such as your putative mentally ill minor.

Offense is real, and measurable. It can be measured with medical tools, like you can see a bruise on someone's nose when you hit them. Yet the nose is sacred to you, and the ears aren't.

Pleasure is real and measurable with medical tools as well. So is itching, the length of your fingernails, and the salinity of your tear ducts. The point is that measurement is not the determinant. The determinant is, is it harmful, and with offense, the answer is no unless you undertake self-caused harm entirely on your own.

For your benefit, from my other writings:

What offends you may not offend me. And vice-versa. What serves no purpose for you, may serve a purpose for me. Be it intended offense, or otherwise, or both at once.

No one in the USA (or anywhere with sane law) has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a particular group; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (of any size) may not offend another, nor a person of another grouping; and in the final analysis, it is also flawed in that it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another.

And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not -- any more than you can guess what is offensive to me, or not.

Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. It does not rely on the idea that we "must not cause offense." It relies on the idea that we must not cause harm.

Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration of others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.

I assume it will be the same sort of people who paid (i.e. their time and expertise) to create and make freely available other software like BitTorrent, the Linux kernel, the Apache server, etc.

There is ample reason to believe this is possible. There are numerous extant examples, far too many to enumerate here, in the form of just about every GPL'd project ever created. Perhaps you missed the part where I said it would need to be decentralized and peer-to-peer, so much like BitTorrent, the users themselves would bear the cost of the bandwidth and CPU cycles.

The question of how to host content that many users will want to share without ever-increasing costs of a centralized system to bear the load was, after all, the chief problem that BitTorrent was created to solve.

If your parents had taught you how to read, you'd know that's precisely what I've done. I hope you do the same, since a coward like you can teach only the wrong lessons.

P.S. I leave comments on Youtube, too. Go talk some shit there, next. I could use more targets.

The BSD license very well could have worked, in the sense that I know of no law of physics or any other hard barrier making it impossible, yes. But generally to get something like what we've seen from the GPL Open Source movement, you need some kind of hedge against total selfishness. This is particularly true when dealing with corporations. That's the one thing the BSD license does not provide.

Perhaps in a more ideal world that does not still have such a pronounced scarcity mentality, the BSD license would have been sufficient. But in the world we know today, it's clear to me why one was more successful than the other (in terms of participation) long after a time when both were available.

I'll add, "paranoia" is one of those words that gets thrown around. Properly understood, it means an unreasonable fear of what is either impossible, or so astronomically unlikely as to be completely impractical. It doesn't take much study of history to see the repeating pattern that, again and again, any form of power or authority that can be abused, has been abused. Knowledge and technology are forms of power. It is inevitable that those who can wield them will abuse them. It's a scenario that is not only inevitable, but one that should be expected and prepared for.

To do otherwise is simply foolish and naive, an act of investing tremendous trust in institutions that have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy. I wonder sometimes if it's merely a problem of scale. If an individual lies, deceives, manipulates, or otherwise acts dishonestly towards another individual, confidence is quickly broken and trust withdrawn, often permanently. If a government or other large institution repeatedly acts dishonestly, you often see this faith-based (certainly not fact-based) defense that it meant well, will do better next time, and deserves our continued trust. This is usually never explicitly stated, but can be readily observed in the decisions many people make.

What do you mean, reference? Look at the mileage figures, since the last revamp they're almost good for something. The really small engines (2 liter and below) are returning exceptional mileage for their maximum output.

Perhaps this is a generational difference. In school, I was taught not to write "I think this is so" or "I believe this is true" in anything even slightly resembling formal composition. I was taught that, perhaps barring a rigorous scientific publication, anytime you read any written work of any sort in which the author takes a position, what you are reading is exactly that: one person's position. It should be understood as something like an opinion, something that may change at a later date, something with which others may have good reasons for disagreement. This is one part of thinking for yourself, by the way.

The more modern trend is to assume that anytime anyone speaks, they automatically presume to speak for everyone else in the most absolute terms possible unless this is otherwise disclaimed. Therefore much time is wasted bickering about things like "but I'm an exception!" and "that's just your opinion!" and many false judgments against someone's character are made, such as yours. While condemning someone for such a flimsy reason may be a reassuring outlet for the type of insecure people who contribute nothing but love to throw stones, if you are honest, you may have noticed it's not making any progress.

I wish most religions placed half that much value on justifying their doctrines.

I don't view Stallman as having a "communistic" mind-set at all. I view him as having a post-scarcity mind-set. In terms of the modern Information Age and its ability to make virtually infinite perfect copies of bits at nearly zero cost, he is correct. That you and others who share your viewpoint would read his works and falsely liken it to a doctrine arising in the mid-1800s (i.e. Marxism/Communism) simply tells me that the man is ahead of his time.

The point about a hammer stands, because much software is used as tools for making other things. No manufacturer of hammers would last a moment in court if they tried to implement an EULA, yet in the quest to make "intellectual property" more like physical property, copyright law allows this sort of thing to be done with software. Obviously this means it goes too far. The desire for software freedom is simply a desire to achieve a more reasonable balance.

The thing I have great difficulty understanding is this need so many have to worry about the guy personally. Did you know that no one is going to try to force you to agree with him 100%? Did you realize that you can take his ideas that resonate with you and ignore the rest? For example, you can run a mostly Open Source Linux system, but then use some proprietary software such as the nVidia drivers? Yes, you can, with your own systems, achieve whatever balance *you* find reasonable, no matter what Stallman says (of course, you have this option at all because of him).

If Stallman were threatening to send storm troopers to your home to force you at gunpoint to live the way he wants, then I would understand all this vitriol against someone you never had to listen to. I've never heard of him doing that and I don't consider it likely. Meanwhile, of course the man is going to advocate what he believes. Did you expect him to advocate a philosophy he doesn't believe in? So what's the actual problem, here? That he has an audience, that when he speaks it makes headlines, and when you speak it doesn't? Is that the root of the problem? If so, that's known as simple jealousy.

Definitely "Funny", since it's an AC. If it were a logged-in user, I'd use "Insightful" to contribute in some small way to their karma score.