Oct. 2nd, 2007

Tipping

Oct. 2nd, 2007 01:59 pm
jack: (Default)
Are there any standards of journalistic integrity? Should there be? Truths about people (eg. so-and-so is a fraudster) are protected by libel laws. Dangerous truths (eg. "giant asteroid heading for earth, loot now!") by various laws.

But plain old truths? Obviously it's a disaster[1] to require people to prove every statement they make, freedom of speech would evaporate instantly. But should it be possible to prevent people spreading lies that don't immediately harm anyone?

What about textbooks asserting that atoms are individual? Printing lies about someone whose reputation is already ruined? Printing lies about history?

Read more... )

Would an acceptable compromise be not to *ban* people printing unpalatable lies, but allow, under some circumstances, an injunction making them mark it "government certified lie"? Then, if you believe the reasoning, you can trust the source anyway. But if you don't know, you are alerted to be doubtful.

That rings true both for so-called "government certified lies" that I think are false -- eg. holocaust denial -- and those I think are true -- eg. evolution.

[1] Pun.
[2] Someone should fill me in on the details. I know enough that "CABAL" may have been used an amusing acronym, but was apparently a pre-existing word first, and most acronyms weren't. But enough not to report either as truth without checking some sources.
jack: (Default)
By the way, if anyone is interested in duplicate bridge, (and doesn't mind university bridge club people :)), I'm planning to go to UBC this term, starting with freshers' pairs on Thursday. Is anyone else thinking of going?

Freshers' Pairs is, apparently, "go along, play with a fresher." (Though some may debate whether they count as a non-fresher or fresher, if they're played before but never at ubc events :)) so recommended for people who want to give it a go, but don't have a partner and play some crazy ltc system of their own devising :)

Read more... )
jack: (Default)
Attempt to create a second account on a website.

Goodness
^
| Direct you to the previous account, but give an "i meant it" button
| Direct you to the previous account, with an explanation
| Direct you to the previous account
| Simply let you do so
| Create an empty account making it impossible to log in to the first
v
Badness

By the way, CookiePie is another necessary idea for a Firefox extension. It can make one tab have a separate cookies, so you can have two accounts on the same site open at once.

In this case, the site's developers were even more cunning -- they detected an account logged in to/logged out of from the same computer, and logged out the first account at that time. Which is impressive attention to detail, eg. preventing you leaving lj logged in when you log out/someone else logs in in another browser is useful. But very irritating in that a feature naturally automatically exists is, with hard work, eliminated.

(If two accounts was a paid feature, or if 100 accounts could be used for spamming, I'd understand them preventing it, but there didn't seem any detriment to letting people use multiple accounts for different reasons or for experimentation.)

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