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[Nadaka]

Darkflagrance... I can not tell if that is a dead pan parody or not. Are you serious?

[darkflagrance]

Guilty by association; if they had left well alone, they would not have been injured. By paying any attention at all to a bunch of shiftless dissidents who were about to be met with the full fury of the law, they took the risk of becoming collateral damage upon themselves.

Left well enough alone? While I pay that it was perhaps a little strange for the judge to be there, are you seriously suggesting reporters should not attend potentially world changing events, or doctors to ignore the badly injured? It is literally a violation of their code of ethics!

Reporters report what they believe is newsworthy at their own discretion. When people get involved in dangerous situations they take on the risk of reporting the events they cover on themselves. Reporters mistaken for terrorists and gunned down in Iraq knew the risks when they entered the warzone.

I'm not implying that they were actually at fault in legal terms when I say guilty. I mean that they were likely to be tarred as such by virtue of their proximity, and that was the risk they took on.

[Nadaka]

So basically what you are saying seems to be that if you are rich enough and refuse to express your rights, you should mostly be safe from illegal police brutality? But if you are poor or express your rights, the illegal police brutality is to be expected?

Are you really ok with that?

[MadocComadrin]

And this justification is unsubstantiated, as I've pointed out previously.  We don't know what "hit and run" means in this case.  Tapping an empty parked car in a parking lot and leaving is technically defined as a hit and run.  Please show that she did something as terrible as you're implying if you intend to continue using this as justification for abandoning concern for her safety.

My argument is fully qualified: I have more than once acknowledged that this part of my argument was hypothetical/waiting to be confirmed.

[darkflagrance]

So basically what you are saying seems to be that if you are rich enough and refuse to express your rights, you should mostly be safe from illegal police brutality? But if you are poor or express your rights, the illegal police brutality is to be expected?

Are you really ok with that?

More like the poor only have rights at the pleasure of the rich. The only reason that the poor have rights is because those rights were granted at a time when segments of the poor apparently possessed the power to overturn those who governed society.

It's not whether I'm okay with it or not; this is how it has always been. The powerful and wealthy trust to their privilege to guard them against abuse; concrete defenses are infinitely more trustworthy than ideal ones or those enshrined on mere paper.

Slavery was ended because it served a president's political purposes to do so, but those who were freed only began to acquire true equality when they themselves fought for it. So it is with the rights of all oppressed people.

[SalmonGod]

Sigh...

More info here

[Duuvian]

Weird new silence enforcement gun.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/weird-gun-future-attacks-words-not-people-193050045.html

[darkflagrance]

Weird new silence enforcement gun.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/weird-gun-future-attacks-words-not-people-193050045.html

This sounds like the kind of invention you could write a speculative science fiction novel around, like Fahrenheit 451.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I'd love to bring one of those to a campaign speech.

[palsch]

That is pretty abusable but at the same time I adore the technology. I'd seen those directional speakers in the past and have been waiting for them to go portable/commercial for years now, but using them like this is a stroke of (debatably evil) genus.

[SalmonGod]

It looks like something that will need a lot of work to become practical as a tool of oppression.

[Osmosis Jones]

It looks like something that will need a lot of work to become practical as a tool of oppression.

Yeah, it strikes me more as a weapon of annoyance; rather than hecklers trying to shout down presidential candidates etc., they can just point one of these at them.

Of course, this will also be purchased by said candidates staff, to drown out any potential hecklers.

...

I forsee great hilarity when two of these are pointed at each other.

[SalmonGod]

It also strikes me as something that could be worked around with a little practice or preparation.

[Descan]

I basically subject myself to this every time I turn "voice_loopback" on in Team Fortress 2, since the loopback is delayed by a second at most.

Sometimes it shuts me down, but I've gotten used to it pretty easily.

[Putnam]

Try playing a musical instrument with voice_loopback going on.

Impossible. I imagine using one of those at a live show would cause hilarity.