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Comment Mistaken role of stylebooks (Score 1) 301

Dictionaries, stylebooks or some government bureau (in the case of the pompous "Académie française") do not and cannot create (nor steer) the language. At best, they merely document and codify the language that emerges. You don't need any stylebook or dictionary to define "LOL" before you can use it, nor should you use it just because they documented it.
It other words, this news has little bearing on what people actually use or will use.

Comment Monopoly breeds profits and invites competition (Score 0) 89

Monopolies can raise prices, decrease product output and quality, and capture huge profits.
One trouble is that excites those "greedy capitalists" who see this as an opportunity to capture some of those profits for themselves, taking marketshare away from an abusive and disreputable service provider, by offering a better deal to willing customers. They can even pre-sign customers like Google Fiber did. They could even issue bonds or start crowdfunding campaigns to bootstrap the investment.

Comcast can't do zlich to prevent such competition. The municipalities on the other hand have the real monopoly as they control rights of way (utility poles, trenches, roads). Worse, they often grant exclusivity deals to motivate the few providers that are considering jumping through the piles of red tape. Municipalities do this with the motivation to get more taxes, but this really screws up their constituencies.

Comment Entrepreneurship (Score 1) 157

There's been multiple examples of people deploying their own connectivity solution and starting local broadband services. I think it's awesome when people solve a problem for themselves and their neighbors. Take charge, start a project and don't wait for someone else.
The examples I've seen were in rural area, and I suspect that helped. In more urban areas, the difficulty is getting a right of way from the local government (who is often in bed with incumbent ISPs).

Comment Private rules vs government rules (Score 1) 321

If yelling FIRE was disallowed by the theater owner, that would be fine.
Also no talking during the movie.
There are many extremely strong restrictions and relaxations that people can agree to, and that is fine: No swearing in my barbershop. The boxers agree to punch each other in a boxing ring. The flutist in an orchestra agrees to breath as directed.
If the rules are unpopular, then people won't participate and they will provide alternatives. If some forums want to be NSFW and some want to be insult-free, then so be it.

The trouble is with un-owned or government-owned spaces, or venues that receive taxpayer money. Those are contentious because whatever rules will be decided will be one-size-fits-all monopoly rules.
Freedom of speech only pertains to government interference. Rationally, it is hard to justify the proportionality of using coercion (for example, fines with threats of prison and armed enforcement) in response to speech.

Comment Hallucinations as evidence (Score 1) 79

This should be easy for a defense attorney to invalidate. Hallucinated images (assembled largely from a corpus of previous images to "enhance" some evidence) are not the same as an image that is run through an abstract de-blurring algorithm.
It's probably easy to demonstrate the problem with some examples, so that judge and jury "gets it".

Comment But what is the crime? (Score 4, Insightful) 94

I don't know if this information is public, but what is his supposed crime, specifically?
Did he break the rules of the exchange? Did he trespass, break in, or otherwise tamper with the system?

If you're playing poker, actually manipulating the deck, looking at other people's cards, are both against the rules. Participants agree to those rules when they join the table.
Let's say you're really good at bluffing other people or reading their bluff, you've done nothing wrong. And calling it "manipulation" or "abuse" or "profiting" or "ruining other players" is just a way to obscure that fact.

Comment Classical liberal concepts (Score 1) 1368

It's good to hear a resurgence of interest in classical liberal concepts like secession.
Here are a few more that maybe people should think about: division of powers, limited and decentralized/local government, non-interventionism, nullification.
I wish it didn't take Trump getting elected for people to take those seriously.

Comment Definition of "comb" (Score 1) 488

Comey announced they filtered out all emails that were not sent to or from Hillary, which would indeed narrow down the set. But this method may suffer other problems.
Assuming that intent is relevant to the crime for argument's sake, if you are only looking for a smoking gun of Hillary's intent ("hey could you set up a private email server so that I can avoid those pesky Congressional investigations and FOIA requests"), then such a filter is adequate.
If you think maybe Hillary asked her assistant to do such thing, but was not stupid enough to put it in email herself (what are assistants for, if not plausible deniability?), then clues may be found in emails that were filtered out (ie. not "combed through").
This is but one example where the filter may be efficient (fast) but inadequate.

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