Skip to main content

Autocorrect: A Sailor's Perspective

For the most part, autocorrect is a useful tool for avoiding spelling mistakes. Sometimes, it feels more like a very subtle tool for censorship, and that really passes me off. Swearing is not always the last resort of the unskilled communicator. In the right hands, it can be a dam good way to express frustration or even righteous indignation. If I want to communicate my emotional state more than any semantic content, a good round of cursing just does the ducking trick. Unfortunately, autocorrect developers must keep in mind that parents will get upset if their computer teaches their kids to swear, so I understand the rationale. Still, I would appreciate being treated like an adult and having an effective "suggest offensive words" option. I've seen such options, but they work like add, and when I'm trying to send a quick message that contains a swear, I don't want to type out the entire word or phrase like an assume. In short, autocorrect, I don't want to live in your censored world. Next time you think I should avoid cursing, you can go duck yourself, and when you're done, just sock a great big bag of docks.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Justifications for Intellectual Property Part 1: Utilitarianism

There is no way this tutorial series would be complete without some discussion of justifications for intellectual property. While not necessarily a matter of law, some knowledge of the philosophical foundations will provide a better sense of the values at stake in intellectual property debates. Notice, for instance, that the tutorials on fair use were punctuated with appeals to values, social goods, and individual rights. Without an understanding of the moral and political framework against which the law stands, one can very easily find oneself in a stalemate, with one value pitted against another and no way of deciding which should prevail. To understand the jurisprudence around intellectual property rights, one has to have some idea of the justifying theories to which attorneys and judges appeal in their arguments and decisions. So, without further ado, let's get to the tutorial.
There are three main ways of justifying intellectual property rights: the Utilitarian theory, the Lab…
Post a Comment
Read more

History and Identity

Yesterday the European Court of Justice issued an important ruling that has the tech policy world buzzing about privacy, search engines and personal history. In short, the court ruled that the EU Data Protection Directive gives a person the right to demand that old information be purged from search results. The particular case involves an attorney seeking removal of links to announcements about a real-estate auction connected with a debt settlement in 1998. While the ECJ made a number of interesting moves in the case (including a welcome argument that the distinction between data processors and data controllers does not make as much sense today as it did in 1995 when the Directive went into effect), the big consequence everyone is talking is the right to be forgotten.

The long memory of the Internet is a feature it's hard not to love and fear at the same time. Whether you have something to hide or not, if it's on the Internet, it stays on the Internet (most of the time, at lea…
Post a Comment
Read more

Fair Use Part 2: Subtleties

Now that you've had the time to digest the basics of fair use, it's time to talk about some common misunderstandings and problems that arise with regard to this aspect of copyright law. As you might have noticed from last time, fair use a complex issue, one in which various concerns must be weighed with no guiding standard as to how much impact each factor should have. Even more problematically, US courts have stayed away from fair use cases for the most part. Very few actually reach a judge, and only four fair use cases have been heard by the Supreme Court. As such, there is very little jurisprudence to clarify the law. As such, fair use is a ripe subject for confusion and debate. Let's begin with the most crucial clarification.
Fair Use is not a right While one might hear talk about “fair use rights,” there really is no such thing. The National Information Infrastructure White Paper on Intellectual Property (released Sept 1995; for more information see: http://www.uspto.g…
Post a Comment
Read more