Slashdot Mirror
Globalization
In fact, as British political scientist Anthony Giddens writes in his eerily prescient book Runaway World: How Globalism is Reshaping Our Lives, the conflict now underway between the United States and some extremist fundamentalists was inevitable. Cosmopolitans welcome technology and cultural diversity, while fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous.
In a globalizing world -- one of its cornerstones being the Net -- technology, information, culture, money, business and imagery are routinely transmitted across the world. Boundaries mean different things now, including the inescapable fact that they are highly porous. This enrages political, social and religious fundamentalists, as we are hurriedly learning. They turn to religion, ethnic identity and nationalism to build "purer" traditions -- and a few turn to violence.
So despite the fact that there's no consensus on exactly what globalism is (my dictionary defines it as the process by which social institutions become adopted on a worldwide scale), the questions torment us: is globalism a force to ease poverty and inequality, by bringing higher standards of living and new technologies to poor and distant regions? Or merely an unprecedented vehicle for promoting the greed, conformity, environmental destruction and profit-at-all-cost ethos of multinational corporations? Perhaps it's both.
Giddens' predictions are coming true before our eyes. The conflict is here, and we seem to be unwilling and unknowing combatants. We, along with our leaders, are astonished at just how much we seem to be hated out there. We see our popular and technological culture despised in much of the world. Fundamentalist extremists have declared a holy war against it, one that may continue for years with bloody and uncertain consequences.
It's not an oversimplification to say that technology is the prime battleground. Technologies from movie cameras to TV sets to the Net are the means by which culture and wealth travel from one part of the world to the other. Fundamentalists have declared war on technology as much as on anything. And from anthrax to passenger jets as missiles, they've shown a sophisticated grasp of how technology can be used to devastating effect against its creators, who revel in making it but not thinking much about it.
In this conflict what Giddens calls "the cosmopolitan approach" is the choice of the people who are reading this column and working in the tech universe. We value free speech, religious freedom, scientific exploration, open communications, cultural choice and diversity. Such tolerance is closely conected to democracy.
Yet democracy and fundamentalism are both spreading world-wide, two seemingly irreconcilable ideologies colliding head-on. As Giddens points out, globalism creates a paradox: democratic cultures are its most enthusiastic proponents, yet globalism doesn't seem to promote democracy so much as corporate profits and practices. In fact, you could argue that globalism seems to expose the limits of democratic structures: Can governments preserve the environment, keep work secure and equitable, ensure fair wages, control capitalism, distribute new technologies equitably, respect diverse cultural values, contain greed and restrict the imagery that Americans love but that frightens and offends large segments of the world population?
In Part Two: Have multinationals hijacked globalism? (Yes.)
As if recent events (for example: this Jon Katz article, attacks on the World Trade Centres, Anthrax Attacks, etc.) raising our collective conciousness into a state of terror wasn't bad enough, Hallowe'en is just around the corner. Soon, a new terror, a spooky terror, will unfold as the souls of thousands of innocent civilians who died raise from the dead on All Hallow's Eve to terrorise yawl's neighborhood. And you people have the gall to be discussing globalization???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The angry souls of the recent dead could give a good god damn about globalization, instead preferring to wander the areas where they met their untimely ends, seeking out unwitting victims for retribution. By all means, on the evening of Hallowe'en, try to avoid the area around Ground Zero of the WTC, the area near the Pentagon, and the crash site in Pennsylvania unless you don't mind becoming a victim of terror (a very spooky terror indeed), yourself.
You have been warned!
This might put things in perspective.
If the lameness filter actually worked, would you even be reading this?
I was reading this and WOW these guys The Slashdot Privacy Watch. They say this:
An Open Letter to VA Linux Concerning Privacy on Slashdot
To whom it may concern,
It has come to our attention that Slashdot is building a detailed database of every visitor and user of Slashdot. This database includes, among other personal details, an address history which permanently records every IP address assosciated with every Slashdot user and comment for all time. We are concerned that this database is a signifigant Intellectual Property asset that may be abused in the event of a sale of Slashdot by VA Linux to a third party.
In addition, we feel that keeping a permanent and indelible record of every IP address used to post every Anonymous comment on Slashdot erases whatever hopes of anonymity that endangered or threatened users may have had. To name two examples, Chinese dissidents and corporate insiders can have no expectation of anonymously revealing civil rights violations and corporate abuse.
It is our hope that given these concerns, VA Linux or Slashdot may choose to provide an opt-out option to users, whereby users could choose not to be tracked and profiled if they so request. Some discussion has been made of a Slashdot subscription service; perhaps one revenue stream for Slashdot would be to sell Privacy Rights. For a low yearly fee, a user could purchase the right not to be tracked, profiled, and logged by IP address.
Whatever steps are taken, it is our hope that Slashdot will address the current privacy concerns in public to allay our fears and to promote open discussion.
Thanks again for creating one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and all the best.
-The Slashdot Privacy Watch Team.
Jon lookout you are being tracked wherever you go!!?!
Does the Slashdot Customer Profile violate my Privacy?
It is strongly reccomended that you understand Slashdot Customer Profiles before asking this question. Now that you do, let's attempt to understand the answer.
The Right to Privacy is not guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and in America whatever "right" we may have had to privacy is rapidly dissapearing. Nowhere is this more true than on the Internet. However, many Americans value their privacy, and the courts have attempted to safeguard the privacy of citizens to some degree. However, "privacy" on the Internet is a subjective and hotly contested term, so any attempt to define it objectively will most likely fail.
Does the Slashdot Customer Profile violate the OSDN Privacy Statement?
This much more focused question can be easily answered. The Slashdot Privacy Policy is linked from the toolbar in the upper left hand corner of your web browser. Slashdot is part of VA Linux Inc.'s OSD Network, and is bound by OSDN's Privacy Policy. Let's examine the relevant portions of this policy:
With regard to personal information, users can view their data on their personal profile page.
This statement is empirically false. No user has ever been permitted to view his or her Slashdot Customer Profile "IP address history" field.
OSDN will track the domains from which people visit OSDN and analyze this data for trends and statistics.
This statement is empirically false. Slashdot does not track domain statistics in the aggregate, rather it profiles every customer and their IP address history for the purpose of gagging abusive content on a per-user or per-subnet basis.
Subject to the provisions of this Privacy Policy, different OSDN sites may use accumulated data for different purposes, including but not limited to marketing analysis, service evaluation and planning.
This statement is true, but misleading. Tracking and gagging users by IP address is certainly a "different purpose", and it is clearly stated that use of per-customer information includes but is not limited to the stated purposes. One must wonder what the other unstated purposes are?
General: In cases where users voluntarily and publicly disclose personal information which may contain Registration Data or otherwise post personal information in conjunction with content subject to an open source license, such personal information necessarily will be disclosed subject to the terms of the applicable license.
Keep in mind that your IP address history is not a "voluntarily disclosed" piece of information: you are forced to disclose an IP address when you interact with a web site. Therefore IP address histories are not bound by this clause.
At OSDN, we intend to give you as much control as possible over your personal information, including the Registration Data
It is not possible to change, modify, or "opt out" of having your IP address history stored in your Slashdot Customer Profile. Therefore, we must understand this statement to mean "OSDN does not believe it is possible for a Slashdot user to check a box which opts them out of being profiled by IP address".
The simple answer to the question "Does the Slashdot Customer Profile violate the OSDN Privacy Statement?", therefore, is a resounding yes. The recent changes to Slashcode to profile every customer and their IP address history for the purpose of gagging abusive content on a per-user or per-subnet basis have only been made recently. It is therefore possible - nay, likely - that these changes have been made without a careful examination of the OSDN Privacy Policy.
Which brings any concerned privacy advocate to the obvious question: Should I be concerned about potential privacy violations on Slashdot? More importantly, should Slashdot users be given the option of "opting out" of being profiled? The answer is a resounding... perhaps .
Globalization is only another word for fascism. People are starting to realize that Americans are all nothing more than oversexed perverts, and they want nothing to do with us. I blame it all on Slashdot.
So...
September 11th is Jon Katz's new Columbine, then?
"Information wants to be paid"
I thought at first I'd skip the Katz article: I'm not exactly a fan of his, but...I broke down and read, primarily for the readership's reaction. Hmmm. Interesting.
How many of you guys have actually thought what it means if we steer away from globalization? Let's say we disentangle. What happens next?
The US says "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Europe decides that untangling itself is a good idea. etc, etc.
That would mean that the world gets poorer, not richer. The sweat shps close: but nothing takes their place. The poor get even poorer. And so do the rich. Or even more so, the rich get even richer.
An example: the US funds a massive amount of money into alternative energy sources as a way to pull out of the Middle East. The revenue that would have continued to flow into the ME dries up. An equal investment in robotics is funded: have machines do what the "sweat shops" in Africa do for clothing. Those close. Develop cheap and very good recycling technologies: the need for a great deal of third world resources goes away. Toss in cheap asteroid mining and that ought to clean the rest up. (very sfnal, yes, but...)
What happens? We see the Have Nots no longer needed. Therefore ignored. Therefore without the capital, they can't make the investments to develop their own systems and then things get poorer...and then...
Seems a lot like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
. . . however, I *HATE* the fact that I'm classified as a "pacifist" for wanting the Afghan bombing to stop.
I think that this is completely the wrong way to do this - because the Afghan propaganda seems to be much more effective on 1 billion muslims than the US propaganda they've been hearing for the past 20 years. I think that every bomb that drops on Afghanistan is going to be characterized as an attack on islam, a genocide of arabs and persians, and proof of how Evil the US is. Every day, clearly, the US's standing in the coalition is getting worse and worse.
What we must do, is:
Pull out of the UN. Create a new world-organization that does not include nations who support terrorism. All member-states have to have a minimum standard of identifying citizens who want to cross borders, and serious laws against money laundering that are strictly enforced. Security is what people want. Security is the best way to ensure peace, and prosperity. Pull out of Saudi Arabia. Pull out of Israel (since the Israeli government clearly is not interested in peace). Develop alternative energy sources to power the Western economies of the 21st century. Stop all foreign aid and erect trade interdiction to all non-member states.
Let the Arabs starve. Let them know that it's their extremists and their pandering to the extremists that got them into this position, the only way to ensure their own survival and prosperity is to become democratic nations, and join the coalition, and find and eliminate their extremists, and stop sponsoring their propaganda in their schools.
If they want to farm dust, and play in their oil, and lead mideval lives, they're free to do so. But we should completely cease all contact with those societies, and prevent those people from entering Western society so they can no longer terrorize us.
And Israel's problems should be Israel's alone. I, for one, am sick of taking it in the nuts for them. If they want peace, then they have to get rid of their own extremists. Note that all this recent Palestinian violence started when Ariel Sharon came to power. He and his extremist regime are just as nasty as the Jerry Falwells and the Mulluh Omars of the world.
If OBL wants to create a "pure islamist state" and use oil as a weapon to topple the West, I say, let him try, and let him fail on his own.
The muslims of the world will soon find out that 90% of them don't want a pure islamist state, and when the west finds alternative energy sources, then they'll be crying like the oil industry did in the 80's - remember? OPEC cut back on supply, and demand dropped, and they went hungry.
In the end, what we'll have is a bunch of counter-revolutions in the middle east, Arabs who will overthrow these religious regimes, and they'll be much more strongly committed to democracy, because they had to fight to get it, instead of having "the man" impose it on them "against allah's will".
And the world will be a better place, not only because of the better political climate in the mideast, but because the western economies will be using less oil, and the environment may actually allow human life to exist on this planet.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Nice try.. but a lousy troll. Or maybe you're just a nationalist pig. Yep, patriotism = nationalism. Maybe more of you Americans should notice that. When you are waving your flags, celebrating your military forces and condemning the "third world" for hating you, you are NAZIS!!! And the holocaust began many decades ago.