If you don’t know what something means, look it up before shooting your mouth off

Yesterday, inspired by the inauguration and Roman History, I tweeted:

The inauguration really ought to close with some random nobody following the newly sworn in president around, repeating "Memento mori."—
Bill Godbold (@wfgodbold) January 21, 2013

This morning, I awoke to a response to that tweet in DestroyTwitter that had sadly been deleted before I could get a screenshot on the actual Twitter page:

Now, I am fully aware that threatening the POTUS is a crime. It is a serious crime, and rightly so.

However, I did not threaten anyone; I suggested that the pomp of the inauguration might be best offset by having a non-politician, regular person follow the president around and remind him that he too, is mortal, and that this shall pass.

Well, it works

Though posting on wordpress is annoying, and it won’t let me upload media (wordpress must use flash).

So, after transferring them to my computer, I have some screenshots of brand new PS Vita fun!

Tales of Innocence R is as good a place to start as any...

 

I even managed to hit PS + Start while fighting to get an action screenshot.

Even Twitter works!

I downloaded the Netflix app, too, but it’s very laggy. I’ll get in more play time tomorrow and over the weekend; for now, it’s back to the law school grind.

I suppose I should thank Lexis Nexis and their student rewards program; if it weren’t for the points they give for research and training, I would have had to pay for this myself! Instead, I traded my points in for Amazon credit and got a huge discount.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

What better way to celebrate than with a bowl game?

Hopefully Arkansas will be able to keep it together and destroy Kansas State.

Twitter is being stupid; I haven’t been able to post anything all day. They need to get their shit together or I’ll be really angry with them. I might even write them a letter, telling them how angry I am.

Steve Jobs may have joined the choir invisible, but he still gets the last laugh…

Proving once again that Westboro really is headed by a bunch of assholes.

Westboro will picket his funeral.He had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin.
MT @AP: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died at 56.—
MargiePhelps (@MargieJPhelps) October 05, 2011

RIP Steve.

*In case you miss the irony; note the Twitter client used.

This whole “we can force you to give up your encrypted files w/o violating your rights” crap is old news

I mean, I complained about it on twitter three whole days ago (an eternity in internet time)! Where were the rest of you!

If you don't tell the Fuzz your pw, what then? Do they have ways to make you talk? http://j.mp/pMWfzQ
Is contempt worse than conviction?—
Bill Godbold (@wfgodbold) July 12, 2011

Seriously, though. The idea that the police can make you give them your password is ludicrous; if they have probable cause, they can get a warrant, just like for your house.

And just like with your house, if you don’t let them in, they’re perfectly capable of busting down the door.

It’s just that in this case, “busting down the door” is a wee bit more difficult.

I am curious, though. If you refuse to comply, can you be held in contempt and jailed forever? Or at some point does that violate your 8th amendment rights?

As usual, the truth will out

And just as most people expected, Weiner’s twitter account wasn’t hacked.

Given yfrog and twitter’s reactions, I’m not surprised at all.

After the revelation, the twittersphere (twitterverse?) was abuzz with dick jokes and scorn, especially since Weiner isn’t going to be resigning his position in Congress.

Apparently, this isn’t Weiner’s first transgression, it’s merely the first time he’s been caught.

I don’t think he broke any laws (though this certainly raises very serious questions about his judgement), and there aren’t any laws that would make horndog congressmen less likely to act out.

The burden of living in a free society is that you have to take responsibility for your actions. It’s best if you do so immediately; if you lie, it’s only going to make it worse for you in the long run (especially if your lies are easily proven to be such).

Remember, kids; once something is on the internet, it will never, ever, ever go away.

Ever.

The obligatory post regarding the annoying congressman from NYC

No, not Rangel. The other one.

I don’t know if he was hacked or not; Yfrog claims that nothing is wrong on their end, and Twitter hasn’t decertified his account.

I don’t know if he accidentally sent a picture, if someone else sent a picture, or what, but one thing is certain: no one who is this bad at managing a media crisis is electable as mayor of New York City.

If you can’t say “with certitude” that a picture is of you or not, then you deserve all the scorn that the world heaps upon you. What next? Equivocating on the definition of “is”?

As they sow, so shall they reap

Harass people who’ve never done you any harm, and don’t be surprised when the hammer gets dropped on you for violating Twitter’s TOS.

Not only can one of the grand high mucky-mucks in the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence not even be bothered to send more than a token form letter (created by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, no less) in response to an ATF request for comments on whether or not the agency should comply with or disregard FEDERAL LAW, but he got @CSGV suspended on Twitter for harassing certain people who disagree with him.

Update: Fixed the post title so that sow and reap weren’t backwards. I need to be more careful when writing while half-asleep.

Does posting about how twitter increases police vulnerability via twitter also increase police vulnerability?

I do kind of see their point; officers and agents might be more at risk (especially if they’re undercover) because of facebook and twitter accounts.

Working as a policeman is not a safe job.

Just like how the guy who live-tweeted the Osama bin Laden mission could have affected its result, so social networking can affect the results of various operations/investigations SWAT teams and the police are working on; that doesn’t meant that the government should be able to restrict freedom of speech.

If we were to ban things because something bad might happen, I don’t know where we’d be!

Why, you might end up throwing a guy in jail because you were afraid someone who saw what he was going to do would riot!

D’oh.

OBL’s death perfectly illustrates why I use twitter

While everyone watching TV last night was waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting) for the president to show up for his hastily scheduled 10:30 PM address (I think he ended up being more than an hour late, in the end), everyone on twitter had already found out that he was going to announce the death of Osama bin Laden.

I experienced the same thing at the beginning of March; when the Tohoku earthquake struck, I read the instant reaction from Japanese people, all talking about how violent the shaking was. It wasn’t reported on news sites for another hour or two.

Kudos to the SEAL team that took out bin Laden, and to the Obama and Bush administrations for their unrelenting pursuit. I might not agree with Obama on much of anything else, but he gave the order that needed to be given, and for that, I thank him.