The Good Life In San Clemente - Darin R. McClure

On the rocks #sanclemente

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:18:47 +0000

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Feels like summer @SCPier #SanClemente

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:18:43 +0000

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Apocalypse 204′s #sanclemente

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:18:56 +0000

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Under the banana tree. #SanClemente

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:49:31 +0000

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#OccupyMINDS Twitter Censorship Outrage

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:48:13 +0000

Twitter Censorship Outrage:

Talk about cat amongst pigeons: Twitter’s announcement that it will enable country-specific censorship has the twittersphere in uproar. From Al Jazeera:

In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site.

True to the form of the medium, the service was immediately abuzz with questions, criticisms and conspiracies about Thursday’s announcement.

In a bid to show the service can still be used for dissent, some users have called for a boycott on Saturday, organised around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout.

In a Forbes article highly circulated on the micro-blogging site early Friday, Mark Gibbs wrote that San Francisco, California-based Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement.

Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.

That “computer-driven” filtering for the up to 9,000 tweets per second the service produced last year could not possibly take context and tone into consideration.

Whereas Gibbs said the announcement equated to Twitter having “dug their own grave”, Alex Howard, a DC-based correspondent for Radar, a blog about emerging technologies, said “the fact that Twitter says they will transparently show the rest of the world what’s being censored is actually quite interesting, even innovative”.

A departure

Howard, who has little doubt the service will implement the country-specific censorship, said: “I don’t think this system was introduced to be symbolic.”

He says the proposal laid out in the blog post entitled “Tweets still must flow” could be a departure even from a similar practice by the search company, Google.

“Google makes raw data available of government requests for information but not the information itself,” Howard said.

Twitter will probably follow this model while also in the process “highlighting the contents of tweets that governments are seeking to block and even regions it’s happening in”, he said.

Similary, Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, does not doubt the proposal amounts to censorship, but says it is the “best middle road” for a company looking to expand globally…

[continues at Al Jazeera]

Superstar 1st Amendment Lawyer Floyd Abrams on Why Free Speech is an All or Nothing Deal

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:33:58 +0000

Superstar 1st Amendment Lawyer Floyd Abrams on Why Free Speech is an All or Nothing Deal:

Great
interview by Jonathan W. Peters of First Amendment Hero Floyd
Abrams. A snippet:

What’s the most serious threat today to free
expression?

…there’s too much legislation and regulation adopted on the
basis of content. One example would be the rights of broadcasters.
They are relegated to a second level of protection, to being judged
by standards that couldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny if
applied to newspapers, the Internet or other outlets.

One thing that troubles me is the willingness of too many people
to be selective in their support for First Amendment norms, because
of their political or ideological views. The First Amendment
doesn’t work that way—its protections don’t vary according to
whether the left or right will benefit from a particular
case. The Nation magazine invited me to a forum
in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Someone at the forum said, “The
wrong people are winning First Amendment cases. What can we do
about it?” My answer was, “Maybe you ought to change your political
views to conform with your First Amendment views, rather than the
other way around, trying to change the First Amendment to conform
with your political views.

Abrams means what he says. Here’s his take on Citizens United
and the largely uninformed criticism of the seemingly obvious
notion that people don’t lose their speech rights when they form
corporations:

I was very surprised by criticism of the idea that corporations
should receive any First Amendment protection at all, as if the
entities I’ve represented through the years—the New York
Times, NBC and CBS—weren’t corporations.

I’ve been surprised, too, by the degree to which
the Citizens United opinion has been treated as
if it had no roots at all, as if no prior cases indicated that the
speech at issue should be protected. And most of all, I’ve been
shocked at the notion that people who claim to defend the First
Amendment would acquiesce in the idea that a politically oriented
group might be criminally sanctioned for producing a documentary
criticizing a candidate for the presidency of the United
States.

And just to throw some seltzer into the mix, here’s Abrams, who
represents the Directors Guild, on why he doesn’t think the Stop
Online Privacy Act (SOPA) was the problem that most of us online
types thought it was:

The basic proposition that we should take steps to shut down
entities that are nothing but infringing does not threaten the
First Amendment. That’s not censorship.

Abrams grants that he’s “by no means expert” on the
technological issues posed by SOPA (and its analogue, PIPA), which
is no small admission, since there are serious questions as to
exactly how shut-down mechanisms on alleged infringement would be
handled and exactly how allegations would be settled. Similarly,
it’s far from clear what constitutes entities that are “nothing but
infringing.” Etc.

Read the whole thing here.

Police officer uses his own iPhone to locate thief and retrieve a stolen iPhone

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:33:50 +0000

Police officer uses his own iPhone to locate thief and retrieve a stolen iPhone:

A Police officer in New York used his own iPhone to catch a thief and retrieve a victim’s iPhone after she was robbed in a handbag store on Thursday night. A man walked into the store brandishing a black handgun and took the woman’s iPhone.

After a fruitless canvass of the area, one officer, Robert Garland, tried another tack. Using the 24-year-old victim’s iTunes account information and the iCloud feature on his own phone, Mr. Garland was able to track the victim’s iPhone. Officers then followed the cyber-scent to the area near 49th Street and Eighth Avenue. As they searched the area, the suspect, who the police said had placed the phone in his boot, walked past the officers. The victim’s phone began to beep. And, soon, the suspect was placed under arrest.

There have been many other reported cases of iPhones being recovered in this way however you do need to use a bit of caution before reprimanding a suspect. Best off leaving it to the police, especially with officers like Robert Garland on your side!

Source: The New York Times

Baby Bella Butter Garlic NOMS!

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:35:33 +0000

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81* Winter in #SanClemente

Darin R. McClure — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:18:34 +0000

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#Stumblebaby @crazyloco home from school

Darin R. McClure — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:18:47 +0000

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