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Congratulations on making yourself an outcast. I'm against the whole craze myself but what can one do when the vast majority has already decided?

I am amazed to see such sentiments expressed on /. Here I was thinking that slashdotters were inner-directed, free-thinking, independent minds. But apparently at least one is just a herd animal.

Try visiting

https://thoreau.eserver.org/

Perhaps you have in mind the classic O. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief."

Yeah, that's about it. I think that kid Johnny was my sons Spirit Animal.

Perhaps you have in mind the classic O. Henry story "The Ransom of Red Chief."

Gee, where have I read the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT before? Oh, right: http://cyber.eserver.org/unabo... (see section THE POWER PROCESS).

Um ... both of those were more than a thousand years ago.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the 1192 event. (Note that there's rebuttal to some things mentioned in that paper.)

Consider civil disobedience.
Thoreau, Gandhi, ML King, etc. all broke the law.
However, most people think what they did was "right" and that they should not be punished.
Snowden did us all a great favor by proving what many has suspected... the government is routinely violating the first and fourth amendments to our constitution (among other serious crimes).
This essay on Civil Disobedience by Thoreau may provide some enlightenment:
http://thoreau.eserver.org/civ...

The fact that he would have to break the law to satisfy his sexual proclivities sets up a character test - it shows that he values the gratification of his sexual desires over conforming to the law.

Everyone should value the gratification of their sexual desires over conforming to the law. What you shouldn't do is value the gratification of your sexual desires over the consent of your partner.

You could use this argument to support bans on interracial marriage, masturbation, anal sex, and adultery. Do you really think that if we passed a law against masturbation that every well adjusted citizen would stop masturbating? Do you think that every citizen who failed to resist the temptation to masturbate is too dangerous to walk the streets?

There are many people out there who do not like a particular law, yet because they are a member of society, they obey it nonetheless. This fact alone says that there is something different about someone who is not able to resist temptation despite the risk to his life and liberty. They have already shown that, unlike a normal person, they are willing to break the law for their own purposes.

When a law is unjust, a man of good character will break it. The only thing accomplished by abdicating your own conscience to the government is that you become a more effective tool for injustice. I could go on at length on this issue, but I think it would be more efficient all around if I just linked you to Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.

I can say with certainty it is evil. But it's not universal. Milgram only found that about 2/3s were willing to do so in his experiment. Thoreau put the proportion at less than 1 per thousand square miles. It's rare, but there are good people out there. Perhaps you prefer to think it's universal to feel better about your own tendencies?

The way a moral human being deals with moral conflict with authority is to resist in every practical way. You can choose your battles to be effective, but submission is never an option. We all have the moral responsibility to question authority at every juncture, and we can never abdicate it ever.

You seem to be speaking from an ideological standpoint. I don't know how involved your examination of the source of your 'certainty' about normal human behaviour being evil is so I can't really offer a counterpoint since you didn't present an argument to counter.

I agree with you in that authoritarianism is a wrong and that those with power should justify it and its use, but I do detest your accusation about my character and my tendencies of which you know nothing, and I suspect I would disagree with your solutions to the problem of misused power as well.

I can say with certainty it is evil. But it's not universal. Milgram only found that about 2/3s were willing to do so in his experiment. Thoreau put the proportion at less than 1 per thousand square miles. It's rare, but there are good people out there. Perhaps you prefer to think it's universal to feel better about your own tendencies?

The way a moral human being deals with moral conflict with authority is to resist in every practical way. You can choose your battles to be effective, but submission is never an option. We all have the moral responsibility to question authority at every juncture, and we can never abdicate it ever.

European media is driven by the idea of enlightenment. That means you can't afford to let a crazy or blatanly false claim win. You also cannot attack a medium like Mediamatters which collects batshit crazy statements just because it leans to the left. Factional discourse tops political bias. A lie or untruth does not become true because you agree with a political bias. All sides of the debate have to support their views with facts. You can't support a lie just because it serves your bias or attack a messenger ad hominem. That is against the elite rules of rational discourse and journalists view themselves as guardians of rationalised discourse.

Everyone's first duty is to their conscience.

You must not have been made to read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience in high school

Your loss.

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

I'm very surprised you haven't made mention of the guy who best articulated the importance of breaking unjust laws:
Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience

To give you an idea as to how important that essay was, it was specifically cited by Mohandes Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. And of course the title has lent its name to most non-violent resistance movements.

.

The spiritual universe may be infinite and perhaps the unobservable universe(s) as well.

Not legally justified/Illegal is not the same thing as evil. Upholding the law just because it is the law is dangerous and may cause you to become an agent of injustice. Copyright law (and its associated enforcment and punishment) has been abused far too much by certain organisations that it has lost all respect.

"There's a reason why your mother taught you that two wrongs don't make a right."

Unfortunately, your Mother's clever saying presumes that the second act is a wrong. Since this discussion is about if it is in fact wrong or not, your presumption is unfounded. Bear in mind that doing something illegal is not necessarily wrong. In fact, my good friend Henry David Thoreau wrote an excellent essay arguing that, in many cases, violating the law is in fact the only "Right" thing you can do.

"This is certainly ethically wrong."

Only in a world where your particular ethics are certain to be right for everyone. It could easily be argued that the "prankster" was doing the only ethically correct thing, to wit: "expose a gaping security hole that Apple hasn't fixed so that everyone who buys a phone isn't vulnerable to attack". In case you haven't figured it out yet, the world is full of people who will gladly sacrifice our security to pad their bottom line. The world needs people who have read and understand Civil Disobedience. We also need people smart enough to realize that Thoreau wrote the essay prior to the evolution of the military industrial complex, who can intelligently extrapolate how the ideas therein presented apply to the present day. In other words, he is "certainly ethically wrong" only if you are "clearly lacking in a proper education tempered with a reasonable intellect".

How would history be different if the paragraph condemning the evil of slavery had been kept in the declaration, instead of being removed?

I bet that would work now too! Just put together a declaration that has all your favorite stuff in it, we'll sign it, and the world will be a vastly better place! I wonder why no one has thought of this before?

The very concept of civil disobedience is that you accept the consequences of your actions, even if they be unfair consequences imposed by a corrupt regime.

No. The very concept of civil disobedience is "we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."

Thoreau didn't think to himself, "I'm going to go to jail to make a spectacle and show how wrong this war tax is"; he simply declined to take an action he felt was morally wrong. He didn't demand to stay in jail once someone paid the tax for him.

From TFA:

Ethan Miller, professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says that plastic memory might be incorporated into e-paper. "Suppose you have a sheet with memory and a pressure sensor underneath it--you could write something and store the data, without a scanner," he says.

Yes, this is very cool. I owned the analog versions some years back:

http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0257.html

And

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper

Now, if you think I'm taking a cheap shot - I'm not. The magic tablet and carbon paper technologies were quite significant and did shape our communications - they both broadened the writing medium.

This, now, like the things above, possibly becoming cheap enough for ubiquitous use, could have the same effect.

So - this is one case where "neener neener neener, we had that before" isn't an inaccurate catcall - it's really to say, "neener neener neener, we had that before - and we told everyone we would need it again!"

I for one hope that this doesn't become more forgotten vaporware.

Get a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto
http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

Rate the entire work, and each numbered paragraph, for reading level using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula
http://www.readabilityformulas.com/flesch-grade-level-readability-formula.php

Split the work into 2 parts, one with paragraph reading level ratings greater than the overall score, one with the scores less than overall.

Apply plagiarism testing software to compare these two halves and see whether it says they were written by the same or by different persons.

Before the creation of plagiarism testing software, we still had several different reading level testing programs available. I did this test using three different programs. They said that at least two people wrote the work. Ted Kaczynski was never considered to have Multiple Personality Disorder, so if the results (still) say two people wrote it, each with their own style, then it's highly unlikely Kaczynski wrote it by himself.

Ahh you have discovered the Sony way. Revision 3 of any of their hardware turns into a steaming pile of crap.

The PR5XX is a wonderful device with DRM for only their special format that you can completely ignore and use PDF files.

The new one will probably eliminate the Evil PDF hole that allows scumbags to read books that are not properly protected.

it's wierd how the current sony reader is the choice for anyone wanting freedom in their ebook life, but sony will fix that.

This is not sony's first trip down the ebook lane. I had a sony data discman in the 90's that used the tiny CD's in caddys. they had no DRM in them and it was easy to make your own books if you found a stash of $1.00 crappy books to get the caddys from.

"But then he might not have had the time and resources to develop his nutty ideas. He had to withdraw somewhat to do that."

I'd have to take issue with Kaczynski being a nut, if you actually read anything he wrote he seemed more like a misguided malcontent who channelled his frustration towards violence out of knowing powerless than someone was who was "crazy".

He understood some of the problems of modern society very well even if he did not always frame them in a way that other people would agree with, the essence of what he wrote here:

http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

He has it right that the model of society we currently use exacerbates and creates un-needed psychological stresses on human beings and that human beings are quite immature (See: George W getting elected, War in IRAQ and all that).

Some people born into this system adjust having known no other way of life, others don't and end up on social assistance.

Personally I think calling people crazy is a intellectually lazy way of not being able to criticize the deficiencies of a society, usually societies outcasts tell us a lot more about society then human beings would like to admit.

The "rational" people never seem to be able to adequately criticize their own faults nor have the degree of introspection necessary to smell the stench of their own rotten selves or society.

While the registry's agreement with Google is not exclusive, the registry will be allowed to license to others only the books whose authors and publishers have explicitly authorized it. Since no such authorization is possible for orphan works, only Google would have access to them, so only Google could assemble a truly comprehensive book database.

"No other company can realistically get an equivalent license," said Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Her analysis of Sony V. Universal is required reading. Other articles can be found here

Tennyson's cavalry men knew they would be facing certain death:

Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:

Sysadmins, on the other hand, are paid to "reason why", and to think. Tennyson's poem is about a heroic devotion to duty. Opposing IPv6 is a postmodern exercise in shortsighted idiocy.

No disrespect, but considering the fact that:

-You quoted a Coolio song
-Coolio has never been considered "hot in the streets"
-Coolio hasn't even really appeared on Billboard charts since the 90's
-Coolio has never been (and probably never will be) considered a top talent in Hip-Hop

I'm thinking you might not be the foremost authority on Hip-Hop as a cultural phenomenon.

However, I can't say that I disagree with your assertion about black folks mocking themselves in the context of Rap music. In fact, these guys seem to feel the same way, and it's the theme of one of their albums:

http://bad.eserver.org/reviews/2007/littlebrother.htm

One of my favorite albums of all time.

But "that begs the question" is close to "that 'begets' the question," which does mean "that raises/invites the question."

This usage of 'begets' was somewhat common in 18th c. English. Take a look at Hume, Enquiry, sec. XII, pgh. 2

Belloc

>>Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.

http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html#4.1

Hume says it smarterer than I can, but basically, no. Scientific endeavor is based on faith in the concept of "cause and effect," which we can never have any (non-circular) reason for believing. You can only "prove to yourself" facts about DNA, et cetera if you're already willing to make a boatload of assumptions about the nature of the Universe.

Of course, you can go even further back and ask the same questions Descartes asked. (Or zoom forward and look at the Matrix pop-culture version of them.) How do we KNOW that the world around us is "real" and not just an extended illusion, or dream, or computer simulation? Scientific observation can only prove that it's a highly consistent and detailed reality/illusion/dream/Matrix. Descartes could only "prove" the existence of the world by relying on the concept of a benevolent God. Is that an assumption you're willing to work from?

It's called Civil disobedience

I find it odd that, of all the stories mentioned, you chose Red Riding Hood to balk at. The more modern versions have been cleaned up considerably, but the older versions are ... more disturbing: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/022/cannibal/lit tlered.html. For some reason I was under the impression that the other mentioned stories weren't quite as overt as Red Riding Hood.

Laws can be unjust. In that case, I believe that we have a moral obligation not to follow them. Henry David Thoreau covers this subject rather nicely. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King considered civil disobedience to be the central tenet in their own reform movements.

The problem of course is USB keys that autorun on insertion (which shoudn't even be an option on a modern OS) and people clicking on "virus.exe". Unfortunately, neither one of these is something that can be changed.

Actually, it's any OS that allows for USB autorun on insertion, which the sensibly paranoid disable in the modern OS stupid enough to still have it. This is correctable by avoiding such stupid OSes (is there more than one?) or disabling this option out of the aforementioned sensible paranoia.

People who click on "virus.exe" fall in (at most) three categories: the ignorant, the uncaring, and the stupid. Attempts at education are the first step in solving all three. The best way to get the undivided attention of any organism is to make it feel pain, but this (unfortunately) is frowned upon these days. However, fear is perhaps the second most effective (all IT staff should read Machiavelli's The Prince). Thus, explain at the beginning of the educational presentations that people need to pay attention and ask whatever questions they need to so that they may learn the basic security material, because any cleanup costs or opportunity costs from their not following it will be explicitly laid at their doorstep at their annual reviews. Note the possible range of such costs as multiples of the average salary. This helps you reduce all the uncaring into the one or the other of the two alternate groups... and ignorance is a changeable state. Those who are ignorant will usually work to fix it at that point; help them.

Those who are stupid will not; carry out the threat and submit the information to be saved for their annual review, and insisting that those responsible for the review send confirmation that the problem was addressed during the review. If confirmation is not received, send that for the reviewers' reviews. Repeat. If employee turnover can be kept down to sane levels, you can help (almost) stamp out ignorance and stupidity within the organization. Of course, then you're only left with users who all have at least a little learning , which presents new and interesting IT challenges.

From TFS:

While I recognize that a prototype is subsequently shaped by social, commercial, cultural, and other various forces that popularize it [...].

You failed to mention the genetic component, which is the most determinant component: society, commerce and culture proceed therefrom; Bolsheviks be damned.

As long as you remain distracted by the epiphenomenon of culture, you are one of the “thousand hacking at the branches of evil to [the] one who is striking at the root.*”

_____________
* Thoreau, Walden.

I couldn't help thinking that Poe (others too, probably) already thought of this 150 years ago, specifically in Some Words With a Mummy , written in 1850.

"We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at much trouble in impressing the Count [the mummy] with a due sense of the advantages we enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

"He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused. When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.

"I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

"As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob."

1. A group of people occupy a land.
2. They want to break away from a country who is trying to rule them and tell them what to do.
3. The start off with small skimishs, but there are deaths amongst the civilian population.
4. Down the road, they vote to fight together against their rulers.
5. The rulers have to send troops who are bigger, better equiped.
6. So the little guys does hit and run tactics and then has the ruler troops call them terrorists.
7. Then they win.

I though it was a bit of a no brainer that the spammers would win.

Blue security were/are dealing with people who thought they were above the law
Their servers got attacked ( if spammers control 50% of email messages i'm pretty sure one site wont be beyond their capabilities to DDOS)

It was a good idea but the only outcome was escalation and Blue Security didn't have the firepower to take them down

The following says it all (from http://poetry.eserver.org/light-brigade.html)

[snip]

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

[snip]

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

[snip]
---------------THE END----------------

http://www.xanga.com/petantik

http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html

~Gildas

Civil disobedience encompasses the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence.

"The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

"The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed."

"A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity, -- the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes."

Read George Bernard Shaw's 100 year old play, "Major Barbara". Especially the lines for Andrew Undershaft. Substitute Undershaft Industries with any other defence industry company and see how depressingly little changes in a century.

Walt's testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 24 October, 1947

"Boughten?"

"BOUGHTEN!?!?!??!"

I refuse to take seriously the opinions of a person who either (a) doesn't realize that this is not a legitimate word, or (b) realizes this but is so intellectually lazy that they couldn't bother to think of a real world to say what they think they mean.

http://eserver.org/langs/politics-english-language .txt

I feel all Jews sitting emotionally at the movie 'Gandhi' should be apprised of the advice that the Mahatma offered their coreligionists when faced with the Nazi peril: they should commit collective suicide. If only the Jews of Germany had the good sense to offer their throats willingly to the Nazi butchers' knives and throw themselves into the sea from cliffs they would arouse world public opinion, Gandhi was convinced, and their moral triumph would be remembered for "ages to come." If they would only pray for Hitler (as their throats were cut, presumably), they would leave a "rich heritage to mankind." Although Gandhi had known Jews from his earliest days in South Africa--where his three staunchest white supporters were Jews, every one--he disapproved of how rarely they loved their enemies. And he never repented of his recommendation of collective suicide. Even after the war, when the full extent of the Holocaust was revealed, Gandhi told Louis Fischer, one of his biographers, that the Jews died anyway, didn't they? They might as well have died significantly.

I feel all Jews sitting emotionally at the movie 'Gandhi' should be apprised of the advice that the Mahatma offered their coreligionists when faced with the Nazi peril: they should commit collective suicide. If only the Jews of Germany had the good sense to offer their throats willingly to the Nazi butchers' knives and throw themselves into the sea from cliffs they would arouse world public opinion, Gandhi was convinced, and their moral triumph would be remembered for "ages to come." If they would only pray for Hitler (as their throats were cut, presumably), they would leave a "rich heritage to mankind." Although Gandhi had known Jews from his earliest days in South Africa--where his three staunchest white supporters were Jews, every one--he disapproved of how rarely they loved their enemies. And he never repented of his recommendation of collective suicide. Even after the war, when the full extent of the Holocaust was revealed, Gandhi told Louis Fischer, one of his biographers, that the Jews died anyway, didn't they? They might as well have died significantly.

Something like this?

I did not recall Henry David Thoreau being 'some Indian guy'. http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html

Eserver.org has a fair amount of lit and other books/publications.

seems to me, that portability and useability have been the driving factors; throughout the ages.
Few scribes, historically, have kept the Ozymandian standard,
but in the end, even stone withers.

why? If I take a client for a company lunch and poison him then its my employer thats liabel? HE wrote the code and should take responsibility for it. If its deemed illegal (as determined by the courts) then he should've said so to his employer. ...
But he came to the US and is now subject to US law.

But the point is that it's not illegal in Russia, and that's where he did it. Look at it this way -- let's say that your employer requires you to wear pants to work. Let's also say that I live in a country where it's illegal to wear pants on Wednesday. So, you wear pants every day, and that's fine where you live. If you came to visit me, however, even if you were wearing shorts at the time, my country's police would arrest you, because you had, at some point, worn pants on a Wednesday. Is that fair?

And "but a law like that is insane!" isn't a valid argument. A law like the DMCA is insane, too.

Keep that in mind next time you visit a foreign country -- are you accountable for any of that country's laws you may have broken years ago while in the US? Even the stupid ones?

Ah excellent idea. Lets all disregard laws that we disagree with.

I read this is as "whhhhaaaaa, whhhhaaa, whaaaa...". If you don't like the law then DO something about it to convince people that its bad and have the law changed. But if you break the law, which is what Adobe felt he did, then he should face the consequences. If we all went around disregarding laws that we don't like it would negate the reason to have law in the first place.

Yes, it's called civil disobedience. I recommend you read a book by that same name by Henry David Thoreau. Here's a convenient link.

You got that exactly right. Thoreau correctly pointed out that it is the individual's civil obligation to ignore the laws that he feels unjust. "Why has every man a conscience, then?"