Re: Average function

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From: Alan Beban (unavailable_at_no.com)
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 20:25:32 -0700

Harlan Grove wrote:
>. . .
>
>>>If Microsoft wants to moderate
>>>their newsgroups, they could. If they don't, then anything goes in the
>
> sense
>
>>>that there's no practical way to restrict what's posted and most of the
>>>nastiness posted isn't actionable under law.
>>
>>A common confusion between the right to do something and the power to do
>>something, but that, too, should be the topic of a different
>>philosophical discussion.
>
>
> Microsoft lacks the *power* to moderate its newsgroups? Perhaps it lacks the
> interest to do so, but it has both the right and power to do so if it
> chartered these newsgroups.
>
No, the confusion I was referring to is your confusion about your power
to be nasty and your right to be nasty.
>
>What you seem to mean is that freedom of speech doesn't imply permission
> to be nasty. . . .
>>
>>Yes, partly, but I mean something a bit more; that the effort to paint
>>your adolescent nastiness as a high-minded defense of the rights of man
>>is a tad nauseating.
>
> Believe what you want to believe. Freedom of speech, in part, allows one to
> express oneself in pure adolescent nastiness if one feels like doing so.
> Freedom of speech doesn't mean much if it has to be nice & polite all the
> time.
>
Your pretentiousness is delightful.

Alan Beban

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