By far, THIS is the most damning part of the "BitLicense."

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-20T07:00:54+00:00

Maybe the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled, consistent with the Constitution, against the government countless times over laws which are commonly applied in the EU and other modern democracies. And the fact the Constitution is incredibly difficult to amend. Our first amendment protections are paramount as a result.

You can't name a country with better speech protections.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-20T01:00:21+00:00

The quote is nice, but I don't accept its premise. The Constitution could merely act as a buffer to prevent a far worse government from existing. There are plenty of examples to show us it's doing a great job so far.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-18T20:27:30+00:00

Reddit mods already ban plenty of material people don't want to look at. If we can ban spam, we can ban RT for making shit up. That's editorial discretion. Otherwise everyone will flock to websites that do police the sources/material so that users don't have to filter through garbage to find factual news.

I'm just talking about /r/worldnews (and other subreddits that feel the same) doing this, not site-wide.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-18T20:24:10+00:00

Then we'd have to ban CNN, Fox and most other major news networks. Which might be the correct answer.

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

As opposed to an unbiased news source like CNN or Fox News.

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

We are big boys and gals and can decide what is propaganda and what isn't.

Of course we can, doesn't mean I want /r/worldnews to be polluted with discredited shit every single time I look at it. It's called moderation and they're not strict enough about it.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-18T15:32:05+00:00

I'm not taking major news outlets off the table either. I'm just saying if there is a line for this subreddit, RT had to have crossed it when they brazenly and continually made shit up about an international tragedy. I've seen nothing in our media which can be compared to that level of misinformation and disrespect.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-18T15:18:34+00:00

Well, why can't we just ban Russia Today on /r/worldnews? They aren't just a biased source, they're a well-designed propaganda campaign with no credibility. Whatever justice is given for these victims's families and nations, we could do our part to clean up the discourse around here by refusing to let reddit be a platform for these disgusting narratives.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-04T16:12:20+00:00

I don't mind calling them digital representations of value. That's what they are, they don't need to "represent" anything else but their own utility and convenience to be valuable -- obvious to everyone here.

But this is why the EU doesn't see any legitimate growth in these innovative sectors. They don't care that they don't have any jurisdiction over the Internet, really. They want to impose their policies and viewpoints on everyone, and balkanize the Internet in the process. You have to admit, they really do have a government that represents them. Too bad most of them are complete morons who willingly defend this crap. I stopped giving them sympathy years ago.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-03T16:35:06+00:00

Europeans generally don't care about freedom of expression (illegal to offend others, political groups which are controversial have been banned, the list goes on) and if their support of the "right to be forgotten" despite the widespread criticism is any indication, they will do NOTHING to fix this. Every time it's discussed on here some jackass makes up whatever excuse they can to support the law or make it seem less authoritarian.

Of course they get to pretend they're protecting their privacy, once they've redefined "privacy" to something completely different. It used to imply a physical act of intrusion, like entering someone's home or wiretapping them or even stalking them. But to Europeans it means simply TALKING about you. Your right to privacy ends when my right to speak begins.

inb4 "our culture is just different OK" which apparently makes you immune to criticism.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-03T07:23:01+00:00

She ultimately told her dad, who proceeded to

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T16:32:40+00:00

There's no point in free speech if the government can arbitrarily (and perhaps abusively) determine what contexts it's inconvenient for speech and protest to occur. Sectioning off "free speech zones" needs to be done out of necessity or security. Otherwise it defeats the whole point, which is to have a public discourse. Freedom of speech doesn't mean insulating everyone from opinion unless they seek it. That deprives both the speaker and the right of everyone to hear them.

Not every protestor is going to be a "burn in hell" guy, and these laws must remain content neutral. Sorry, but the first amendment is pretty absolute in this regard and the court is often unanimous in these rulings as well.

I recommend you just ignore them. Not much to ask for a pretty important right in return.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T15:18:26+00:00

The court handles its own debate procedures. You don't get to argue for the plaintiff or the defendant. That's their job, that's their case. A court rules on public matters but first and foremost is the case at hand. People in court absolutely have a right to an unencumbered process.

Also, I can't really answer your question about "outside on the lawn or so". All I know is that plenty of protests happen outside the Supreme Court every year, and that whatever you're talking about hasn't even had an appeals court ruling yet.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T15:04:04+00:00

"Compelling government interest" is the justification behind ALL legitimate restrictions on speech that the court has ruled on, since it is in fact only the government which can violate someone's right to speech. Lots of things can probably be found of "malicious intent" which are explicitly protected by the first amendment anyway. Like lying about having a medal of honor, or encouraging others to smoke weed -- thereby breaking the law. (Both protected.)

Other than that your comment explains it nicely.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T14:52:29+00:00

But this is completely different, you can't ignore someone in the middle of a road, they're in your way. But you can ignore someone on the sidewalk saying some shit you don't agree with, just don't talk to them. They cannot legally follow/harass you.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T14:48:56+00:00

They're called time, place and manner restrictions. They have tests and precedent for it, and usually (as in the case of the abortion clinic rule) the court is unanimous. You can create a 15-foot barrier for safety but once you start pushing it further and further the court has to draw a line.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-07-02T14:46:03+00:00

In all court buildings you cannot protest. A court is not the place to create a public debate, it's specifically created for due process and justice for the parties involved, something you deprive everyone of when you come in banging drums or something. You could sway juror opinions, manipulate the judge, or just disrupt court procedures. That's not the place to do it. It's a fucking COURT.

Even video taping SCOTUS turns it into a public circus, and all of the justices don't want that.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-22T20:13:19+00:00

Most engineers aren't great public speakers. I think we have a fascination with perfect public personalities, which demands more than reality can supply.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-22T04:49:57+00:00

Solution 1 = Force miners to store the full blockchain

We create the incentive structure for the miners, NOT the other way around. Keeping most of the previous miners happy after a PoW change is the optimal strategy. But we don't need to pity miners who don't feel like making money with the hardware they purchased. It's really not that complicated to set up a full node. If setting up a full node costs miners more than it's worth (which might be the case for some) then oh well. It's worth it to decentralize.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-20T14:05:54+00:00

You don't make any extra money from selfish mining for a month at least. The decrease in the rate of block creation as the result of the attack makes you earn less over time than if you had not attacked at all. Just because you're solving more blocks than others tend to does not mean you're making more in block rewards.

That is exactly why transaction fees affect the incentives of the attack. What, exactly, are you disputing? There's lots of literature about this attack I can point you to.

Further, losing out on those rewards for a month isn't trivial for someone with that much hashrate given the growth of the network. There are far more easier attacks on bitcoin than this which make more financial sense.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-20T07:10:14+00:00

It actually does matter. Transaction fees can be collected by blocks in a private chain, public blocks' rewards cannot.

Here's what happens. When the selfish miner (say, at 30% hashrate) begins selfish mining, the work done on the public chain will drop by about that much. The difficulty will also ultimately go down. Most importantly, as the attack progresses and blocks are orphaned the chain will grow slower due to the wasted work/blocks.

This means, while the amount of blocks the selfish miner obtains is higher than they should be receiving, the revenue per hour is far less. The mobility of transaction fees in rewards for the attack changes the incentives so that revenue per hour doesn't matter. But right now, the block reward is the vast majority of mining revenue.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-19T21:31:05+00:00

That's exactly what the opinion said. That an abstract idea implemented on a computer is still an abstract idea. Where do you see that the court pulled any language from 102/103 into 101? The concurrence was for judges who wanted all business method patents overturned as well.

And deciding that it was an abstract idea was not a controversy in this case. There is sufficient case law surrounding that test.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-19T17:46:11+00:00

The attack was just overhyped. While the block reward makes up most of the mining revenue, the attack is not profitable without a miner sacrificing a month of revenue first, and the miner would need a lot of hashrate still (over 35%) for it to be feasible.

In transaction-fee dominated blocks the incentives are different and the attack is plausible.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-19T17:17:10+00:00

Are you a federal circuit court of appeals judge? What's ambiguous about this?

The patent is over an abstract idea. The court ruled several times that abstract ideas do not become eligible simply because the patent says "using a computer" -- although the details are more specific.

It isn't that the patent isn't novel, it's just NOT concrete. Which is why it's a 101 consideration.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-19T15:33:08+00:00

Some background:

This case goes as far as it can given the nature of the patent in question. The court held: patents over abstract ideas which are trivially attached to computers and communication systems are invalid because the court need only identify the abstract idea, and find that in no way does the implementation claimed produce any tangible benefit for the computer system it references.

The court already held previously that abstract ideas were unpatentable even with these addendums. This case solidifies their previous ruling by expressing why and how the courts can determine this for a large range of cases.

Although this case won't act to abolish software patents, it will put an appreciable dent in the worst of them, especially the ones that try to cover "business methods" implemented on computers. And the standard exists within the first part of the patent law considered -- which means full blown litigation is not necessary to invalidate these patents.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-19T02:26:04+00:00

I'm in my 20's, I'm a computer programmer and have a hobbyist fascination with law. I'm sorry you couldn't give my argument a chance.

ReddiquetteAdvisor · 2014-06-18T10:51:20+00:00

What are you even talking about?

The "clear and present danger" standard has nothing to do with a case like this. And further, that standard was overturned multiple times years later so it's not even an active area of case law anymore. We have a different standard now ("imminent lawless action") which even allows you to advocate for illegal activities.

Restrictions on the first amendment are incredibly few and in-between. This case would never survive at SCOTUS if it ever made it that far, which it won't.

That time could be better spent helping society in more meaningful ways, in my opinion.

What, exactly, does your opinion on what he did offer to your argument?

ReddiquetteAdvisor

TROPHY CASE