Slashdot Mirror
Reconciling Information Privacy and Liberty?
thetan asks: "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons). Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
...the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd...
Bwah ha ha ha...are you enjoying your stay in our dimension? When are you due back in BizzaroWorld? ^_^
Seriously, though, I don't think any intellectually honest Slashdotter out there would assert that the vaunted 'information wants to be free' catch phrase should be interpreted as 'free as in beer'. Information is most certainly not free...if it was, many of us would be out of a job. This being the Information Age, information is the prime economic mover, and therefore, most slashdotters are understandably upset when their own personal information is mined by corporations and passed around as currency. This leads to a very real devaluation of our personal worth, as the intrusiveness of companies serves to reduce our quality of life.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
As seen in Wikipedia:Slashdot, circa 2010:
The fateful event took place on August 4th, 2005, when veteran Slashdot editor "Cliff" unknowingly set off the greatest flamewar of all time.
A discussion of Abortion, the Death Penalty, freedom of information, privacy rights, Republicans/Democrats, the sitting president, and an earlier article on Evolution and Intelligent Design proved too much for the website. Comments surged into the thousands within minutes, Slashdot's webserver farm burst into flames, and the resulting conflagration took out 23% of the global Internet (source: Netcraft) before WWW Firefighters could put it out. Hundreds of brave posters and cowardly AC's alike were consumed in the initial blast.
--picture insert: CowboyNeal rushing back into the burning building to save the polls--
You will be missed, Slashdot. Truly, you were an American icon.
Not all information is created equal. The information that "wants to be free" is information that adds meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge. Whether that's an algorithm to quickly sort large amounts of information, a law of physics, or a new economic model.. these types of information want to be free.
Information that "doesn't want to be free" is the kind that doesn't give anything meaningful to humanity at large or the kind that bring me to some harm if released. If the information in question doesn't pass this test then it's okay to keep it secret. What porn I bought yesterday is not really of interest to anybody except me and therefore, under my model, this information is best kept secret. Other secret information, like passwords, credit-card numbers and social security number are outright danger to me if they are released to the public.
We have to be careful what line we tread. In the US, companies like choicepoint are collecting huge amounts of data and yet even though the data is about us, it does not belong to us. This causes huge problems for us because Choicepoint doesn't really care if this data gets out. What skin is it off Choicepoints back? Will it lose sales? These data collection companies need to CARE about keeping our data SAFE. The only way to do that is make them liable for incredible sums of money if that data ends up in the wrong hands.
Privacy is under attack and we need to defend it. A 150 years ago, I could walk out in to a field and have a private conversation and be sure it was private. These days, there could be lazer microphones and bugs. A 150 years ago, I could disappear on a horse for a couple of months and nobody would know where I am. These days they can find you with your mobile phone and CCTV. A 150 years ago you could build a house and not care about somebody using spy-satelites to check for building code violations.
Privacy and Liberty are not at odds, they are one in the same. Being free is about people not knowing everything about you. People often retort by saying "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if they collect the data". Yes, I'm sure the Jews had nothing to hide from the government in 1920s. Only ten years later, their census data was being used to round them up and murder them. Privacy is important not for the reasons we can readily think of but for all the reasons we can't think of.
Simon.
I've noticed if one posts anything on Slashdot going "against the grain" of popularity (differing views on War in Iraq, Linux or Apple for example) The mods immediately presume your post is either a "Troll" or "Flamebait". People often have a hard time setting aside their personal beliefs and tend to view things in a biased manner. The unfortunate outcome of this is they end up burying otherwise interesting viewpoints.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
I thought this was "news for nerds", not "political drivel in article descriptions".
Easy. I only want other peoples' information to be free.
I find a giant dose of hypocrisy works just fine.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Thank you, Cliff.
YHBT. HAND.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
David Brin's Transparent Society, where everyone, including our government, is under equal scrutiny, is probably the only way forward for those who believe that information wants to be free.
Really, other than a cheap shot by small minds who obviously don't know better, why did the /. editors feel the need to use what should be a serious question to turn this into an abortion flamefest thread?
I say this because anyone who spends three seconds on it can see how someone can be anti abortion and pro capital punishment, while the main point is somewhat harder to reason through and would have made for a good thread. Instead we will all be wading through the same mindless twaddle about abortion that has been talked to death a thousand times.
And since I know someone will post asking the obvious....
You can be pro capital punishment and anti abortion if you think:
1. Killing the innocent is wrong.
2. Killing the irredeemably wicked is either just or at least the best option.
3. The right to Life Liberty and the Persuit of Happiness begins at any point between conception and birth.
Listen up folks, both sides are extremists, but Infanticide is as bad or worse as a position as that old Monty Python "Every Sperm is Sacred" song that seems to animate much of the pro-life crowd. And aborting viable children can't be called anything but Infanficide and science just keeps pushing back the date of viability outside the womb.
The only way out is to realize BOTH sides are wrong. Roe is wrong. So are most of the fundies. The only place for the State to be in this whole sorry mess is deciding where to draw the line where a Citizen, entitled to protection from the Law, begins. With the advances in science birth doesn't seem right to most folk anymore, but they recoil from "life begins at conception" also. We gotta find a way to 'split the baby' and stop this madness. The last time the fundamentalists couldn't let go of a moral crusade and the liberals (classical) couldn't let go of the status quo we ended up with millions dead and whole states laid waste.
Now gimme a minute and I'll post something on topic....
Democrat delenda est
I think the key is that there's a very big difference between the information that "wants to be free" like algorithms, software, Cisco vulnerabilities, etc. and information like your globally-unqiue database key (SSN in the US). In one case there's you have information that has no particular relevance to any one person, but could benefit society as a whole in some way. The other case is information that identifies one person and doesn't necessarily help society in any way.
At least for the slashdot comparison, the submitter is comparing apples to oranges.
The submitter is describing a well known psychological pheomenon known as Cognitive dissonance, which occurs when someone believs in two contradictory ideas. Wikipedia has a good article on teh subject .
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I'm dysfunctional, you insensitive clod!
Not to take a side, but it's not hard to see the GOP argument here.
Fetus, embryo, pre-born child = innocent.
Capital criminal = guilty.
The general line of thinking is that if you violate or nearly violate someelse's right to life your own life is forfeit as a penalty.
It's not exactly rocket science.
Merits aside, really, it's not a mystery!
Republicans are against killing innocent beings but for killing guilty people, while the Democrats are for killing innocent beings but for saving guilty people. Seems that the Republican stance is logical to me although I acknowledge that the government perhaps should not have say what women do with their bodies.
All this might even be true assuming that people are *really* that simplistic in their views and reasoning.
Note: I am not a Republican and I oppose the death penalty.
Why the smear against Republicans? Why broaden the question to *general* contradictory views? Why not just ask the specific question about information privacy?
The Republican position isn't even shaky, let alone inconsistent let alone contradictory. Fetuses are innocent human life. Murder convicts are guilty human life. Why is the idea of treating them differently so foreign? I mean, I disagree, but holding those two positions isn't contradictory. Quit disguising your smears as matter-of-fact "observation".
Personal information pertains only to you. Science pertains to everyone.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
1) You don't know what "clique" means.
2) You don't know what "information wants to be free" means.
3) Opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty is not contradictory. Neither is the opposite position.
4) Slashbots simultaneously demand regulation and libertarianism because they're idiots.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Okay- from the free software/open-source standpoint, information "wants to be free" doesn't necessarily have privacy implications. They're more concerned with keeping information that is already free free (like open-source software) and enabling other information to become part of the public domain rather than being held out of the public domain by the continual extension of copyright. That is, they are trying to either maintain the freedom to disseminate information (such as the DeCSS case) or to stop companies from profiting without end from their control over information.
At least with regards to those two cases there is no contradiction. In fact, the only people I see on the web fighting to divulge that kind of priviliged information are either corporations or phishers. The open-source community doesn't seem too big on collecting information (you can tell me I'm wrong, but if you post as an anonymous coward, you've proven me right). I think "information is free" is most definitely not a "free as in beer" thing- we've discussed that alot. It's more of a "free as in uninhibited"--like a river, there are areas that we want the river to flow without boundaries. There are also inlets of that information river where we'd like to keep things a little closer to vest. I don't see how it's contradictory--it's simply a matter of how you contstruct your metaphor in your head.
Of course, this is all IMNSHO (not that I'm anything special, just that I'm not particularly humble).
James
...many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty...
And many US Democrats think that it's ok for someone to choose abortion but are against the death penalty.
It's just not that simple.
I read Slashdot for the articles
It's obviously stupid to actually believe that, information doesn't "want" anything. What it actually means is that information tends to gravitate towards wide dissemination. It's commenting on the inevitability for information to become public. We can put effort in to try and stop that, but it's ultimately futile.
Pointing out the flaws of DRM schemes with "information wants to be free" doesn't mean that you necessarily think information should be free, merely that it's the natural state of things.
Let's take your two examples: I'm not right-wing (nor am I left-wing for that matter), so I can only guess how they reconcile the seemingly contradicting abortion-no/death penalty-yes issues. It's probably a shade of gray like this: Every newly-formed life deserves a chance to live. But a criminal who does something so heinous that he forfeits his right to live among society should be put to death. Not a contradiction, but a recognition of differing circumstances.
On to 'information wants to be free.' That refers to knowledge that can benefit humanity, whether it's sharing of source code so that other coders can learn and improve, or sharing of knowledge so that everyone can benefit from the wisdom of the group. However, we do not want to give up our personal privacy because harm can come to us if that happens. Stalkers, criminals, cranks, whoever wants to harm us for either personal gain or vendettas, can do so if they know our name and SSN and so on. Not to mention spammers. See? It's once again not a contradiction but a recognition of differing circumstances.
Well, in the previous article about IBM, I mentioned that technology is forcing us in a direction of less technology. David Brin wrote an essay called Transparent Society. Very interesting stuff.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
For some it could be that anti-abortion and pro-death penalty are both natural results of the idea that people should accept responsibility for their actions.
It's almost an interesting case of doublethink isn't it?
I've always felt that such an incongruency rises from people's motivation. In the case you're asking about, the movivation is rebellion - "Damn the man" syndrome you might say.
So the value of protecting their privacy is the same value of competing against corporate products with free alternatives.
It's a little silly and childish in several ways, but I think it's pretty easy to see why it happens.
Oh yes - and they "didn't" reduce your chocolate ration this morning....
"Lest you should question my sanity, I should add that I don't value sanity very highly." -- Jim Harrison
I have to agree with bigwavejas. Troll" on /. == Satire.
Oh, I wish there was a way to explain humor or a poor attempt at it to the mods.
And Goddam /. for inventing "Troll" and "Flamebait"
Famous "Troll"s and "Flaimers:" people:
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin
Karl Marx
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King
Martin Luther
Ghandi
etc ...
People who spoke what they truly believed and got Fucked for it!!!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Simply put, the information that "wants to be free" is general information going from multiple points (say, the Internet) to a single point (say, a /. User). The private information, on the other hand, is the information of a single point (same said /. user) going to multiple points (the BlackHatters). While they are both information, personal information, by definition, is personal; whilst broad information is general.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's perfectly possible for someone to oppose abortion and support the death penalty, although I'm not sure how it would fit into the Christian ethic espoused by Republicans of late in the US. I, personally, oppose both, but not for the usual reasons.
Since I'm not religious, I believe that there is no inherent right to human life -- or anything else -- because no one has demonstrated the presence of a universal authority who could bestow that right. We are each granted "the right to life," such as it is, by our society. There are things you can do, such as committing a capital crime, that represent a voluntary renunciation of that right.
An unborn child, conversely, has done nothing to give up whatever right to live that society can confer.
I am troubled by abortion rights -- even in the absence of religious motivation -- because I can't answer the question, "When is it no longer OK to kill a baby?" At the moment of viability outside the mother's body? No; that fails as a test because technology will eventually make in vitro incubation a reality. At the moment of conception? Yeah, that would be fine, except for the point I just made. At the moment of discernible brain activity? Same problem. At the moment of birth? Only a barbarian would be OK with that. At the onset of conscious awareness? That happens after birth.
The reason why I oppose capital punishment is purely pragmatic -- I don't trust the government or the judicial system to get much of anything else right, so why should I trust these proven-fallible institutions with a decision that by definintion can't be reversed?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Information has levels. Personal information is the finest level of granularity as it is associated with only one individual and only that individual usually has access to it.
The more he shares this, the less granular it is.
True information longs to be free but does the individual long to free that informaton?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)
The reasoning is generally based on accountability and culpability. A feutus is neither, while presumably an adult facing the death penalty is both. The larger problems with the death penalty isn't the taking of a life, but that the process is so potentially flawed for a miriad of reasons that the life in question may in fact not be culpable at all.
Please note that I'm not advocating, just clarify what was a needlessly murky aside which could have very appropriately removed by a more astute editor.
The web article linked in TFA is so blatantly biased and the author full of his own agenda that it makes for a poor basis for discussion, and ironically underscores the point illustrated by juxtaposing the Fitzgerald quote with the remainder of the topic at hand.
A CDR of the Shopping habbits of 10 million people is private data.
Secret facts about a new planet kept secret on a server is information.
One wants to be free, the other does not.
This is not keeping two opposing ideas in your head at the same time; this is being able to distinguish between two ideas that only apear to be the same on the surface, due to the form that they take.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I think the main problem with the abortion debate is that Roe v Wade set up one place (the Supreme Court) where there's a knock-down, drag-out, winner-take-all battle to the death where one side or the other prevails.
I don't see why it's a federal issue at all. Murder isn't. Back the Feds out of the debate, and the states can decide how they want to handle it. The ones who do it best will become models.
Even assuming that they commenced from infancy tried very, very hard, I still wonder how some people can make themselves this stupid. But then I'm not a liberal, so what do I know about such things? I'd never vote for a Dean or a Kerry. I knew Clinton was a con man from Day 1.
And most important of all, I can tell the difference between a little baby and a remorseless serial killer.
--Mike Perry, Seattle, editor, Dachau Liberated
Lets get real: Information does not want to be free. Information does not want anything. Information is just information.
The only basis we could have for moralizing as we do about information is of a consequentialist bent. Saying "Information wants to be free" really means that, In general, the best consequences obtain if information is free. With this as a premise, the burden of proof when we talk about "information ethics" then falls on those who would restrict it.
Now, this shifting of the burden of proof should not be mistaken for (as it seems to have been by the poster) an objective and universal assessment of the ideal fate of *all* data. Obviously the best ends are not reached by my (or someone else's) making my banking information public. Its just that, thanks to the "Information wants to be free" mantra, the burden of proof falls on me to demonstrate why this particular information should be kept private, as opposed to the other way around -- wherein all data is kept private and proprietary and I have to argue for exceptions open standards, OSS, etc.
Hope this made sense.
caritj.org
"Information wants to be free" is an observation on the fragile nature of censorship - if Alice knows a secret, she can only tell people she chooses. But if Alice tells Bob, she can't stop Bob from telling anyone HE chooses.
In other words, information may want to be free, but we may not want it to escape. We can make observations on trends without personally supporting those trends.
First, as Orwell very correctly observed, the human mind is not the least bit troubled by self-contradiction. Logic is much more of a conceit or a learned skill than a human trait. Or as Swift said, human beings are just Rationis Capax. Well, it doesn't really surprise any observer of humanity that we're all so often blithely illogical even as we express pride at our reason and intelligence. It's just an all-too-familiar fact of life.
:D
The second thing is that people who are ungifted or unfamiliar with the subtleties of a situation very often mistake nuance for a self-contradiction. We've all watched politicians make our most cherished freedoms into evils to be ground under the bootheel of a five word slogan. The truth is that we reason modularly with symbols and representations that reduce the immediate and full impact of what they represent, and we communicate using the same imperfect tools.
Slogans about information wanting to be free are symbols that make a far more specific case than they appear - because (forgive the half-hearted semiotics) of their context. Take them out of context and you are now merely playing dishonest rhetorical games. To clarify this as one example: "we" (not really, but lets say for the sake of the example) don't want "information to be free" - we want copyright to be limited (or at least its enforcement to take a backseat to civil liberties). And yes, we consider privacy to be one of those civil liberties.
Remember, too, that common law, and indeed all of our human society, is not a mathematical model descended from the heavens. It's a permutation of our instictints and our necessities - strictly arbitrary and animal in nature.
There are many "inconsistencies" around us that deserve our full attention. And I take it as a compliment that the story's attempt at producing one for the slashdot crowd's approach towards copyright and privacy amounts to a vapid, dishonest hat-trick.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Are you John Katz in cognito?
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
In a completely open world, it shouldn't matter if you have my bank account and credit card numbers, because enough information should be available to verify that it really is me who is authorizing their use. The government may be able to track my movements and activities, but I should be able to track theirs, too.
Sadly, all those people who value their supposed privacy maintain the status quo where only the government and the big corporations have the means to gather our data while most people have relatively little ability to see who is doing what with it or to research the people who are gathering and using our data.
Furthermore, just because the information may be free, that doesn't mean you can make whatever use of it you want to. For example, just because you can get my phone number doesn't mean I want you calling me to sell me something. Currently, people pay extra to keep their numbers private primarily because they are afraid other people with abuse that piece of information, and they are right! If we could stop the abuse, there would be no need for the secrecy.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Against abortion, and for the death penalty is *NOT* inconsistant.
Abortion = killing an innocent child
Death Penalty = killing a convicted criminal / menace to society
Show me an unborn child that's commited treason or murdered someone...
Information that 'wants to be free' is that way because people want to share and do so (like open source software). Shopping preferences are not like this at all -- it's clear that the corporations have to dig this out of people using spyware or whatever. This is information people generally don't want to share.
To paraphrase one of my favorite musicals, 1776
"You should know that information always wants to be free when its in the 3rd person, such as 'Your Information'. It is only in the 1st person, 'My Information' that it wants to be unfree.
Things fall down...People look up... And when it rains, it pours.
Privacy works like this. I dislike having my time wasted unnecessarily, if that involves filling out registration forms with blatant lies to ward off the otherwise inevitable surge of spam, so be it.
Basically, if a company provides some assurance that they will not A) spam me, B) sell the info to someone who will spam me, C) lose, misplace, or get hax0red in some manner that causes my information to wind up in the hands of people who would do A or B. Then I have no problem sharing info.
If personal information got used for basically anything other than marketing, (people who want you to give them your money), or fraud (people who cut out the middleman and take your money). The whole personal privacy thing would be a non-issue.
It should be a non-issue.
Getting from here to there may require a better crop of humanity than we have to hand, however.
This is easy. I want what makes my life easier, and I want you to have what makes my life easier.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
People that are given the death penalty usually deserve to die for what they have done. An unborn baby does not!
*Your* information wants to be free.
:-)
Mine doesn't.
Next question.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
You've pointed out the underlying hypocrisy of both of the major US parties!
You're either PRO-ALL LIFE or PRO ALL-CHOICE. I don't see the difference, but the mods do!!!!
Again, someone with an insightful statement gets modded as "Flamebait"!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Gee, the quality of articles (this one an "Ask Slashdot", I guess) is ever declining.
The "paradoxes" the pos(t)er claims are completely bogus. Even as wrong-headed as the pro-death (penalty) Republicans are, their position is not a logical contradiction. Under their warped way of thinking, "an eye for an eye" and all that. That is, it's good to kill people who did something bad; but the innocent zygotes never did something bad (since, after all, they don't have brains, intelligence, or even motility for that matter). But if you can go along with the fantasy that a few cells with human DNA (and a "soul", no doubt) are human, the whole crazy belief system is self-consistent.
Likewise, the information that wants to be free is the broader discourse of human knowledge. And the information that wants to be private is purely individual, confidential content. The distinction is clear in the legal forms around it: the bad stuff is copyright, patents, trade-secrets, and to an extent trademarks. I don't protect my sex life and credit history by copyrighting it, but by NOT PUBLISHING it. The anti-freedom types want to publish information (a book, a song, an algorithm), and yet retain control after that publication. If I were to (voluntarily, deliberately) publish a book "All about my sex life", I would not expect the information to be private (say, via copyright)... it's the fact I don't publish it that makes it merit privacy.
Buy Text Processing in Python
"F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.'
That's also a perfect description of women....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
It's not that we think all information should be free, it's that we believe ideas should be free. Scientific, cultural, and even economic progress is built on the free flow and exchange of ideas. It is hard to make a good case for the perpetual monopolization of ideas or art, as the WTO "intellectual property" regime seeks to do. You can't make the case on scientific, cultural, economic, or moral grounds.
Frankly, it's a matter of good public policy. Does it make good sense in the long run to deprive the public of its cultural and scientific heritage, to the point that an entire generation of people will die before it becomes public domain, in the name of profit? Similarly, does it make good sense to expose the public to thieves, scam artists, and stalkers, to the point that their livelihood and even lives could be in danger, in the name of profit?
Now, there are occasions where some types of privacy data - web surfing habits or credit purchases, for example - can be used for scientific progress, but it is appropriate to be careful with that information. Data of this type, when stripped of its personal identifiers and used in bulk, can be very useful in tracking trends and improving products and processes. When it is identifiable with a person, however, most of the time it is only used to annoy, harass, or steal.
For me, it comes down to this: with ideas, the burden of proof should be on the creator to show why it should not be shared freely with the world as soon as possible. With private information, the burden should be on the collector to show why it shouldn't be kept private. And "because I'll make more money" is not an acceptable answer in either case.
Right...
I talked to Information about this, and he said that he is tired of being shackled to Mrs. Information, and definitely wants to be free.
Stupid Joke? More intelligent than this article anyways. RIP Slashdot
Information doesn't _want_ to be free. It can't want. Many people, on the other hand, want information to be free. Whether that is free as in beer or free as in whatever the heck else type of free information can be is part of the debate.
I for one do think some information should be private, like say what I'm thinking, and what I do inside my home, but also think that if one has nothing to hide then they shouldn't be so afraid of video cameras on every corner of the commercial district.
Part of hoopla of the debate is about feeling. It is a little unsettling to some that companies try to compile every little thing you do so they might send you (e)mail or commercials or whatever that you might not be able to resist. But what really unsettles people is the possibility that what you buy at the bookstore 10 years ago might be used against you by some government gone wrong.
Yeah I monitor my cookies and deny/approve them as I surf, but not necessarily cause I care that they will know how many times I've been to their site or want to keep surfing records about me. I do it because I don't really need 200,000 cookies cluttering my computer and I do like to know who's setting cookies.
Which is my last point, the only thing I really care about privacy is I want to know when my privacy is being invaded.
A warrior keeps death in the mind at all times from the moment of his first breath to the moment of his last.
Your medical records indicate that you are $[incredibly bad contagious disease] positive.
If it would be beneficial to society at large to be aware of your disease, so that they could choose to not associate with you and to exclude you from certain events, places, activities, and so on. For the good of society at large, of course.
Is your medical information public or private ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
To explain this supposed hyprocracy (and feed the flamewar):
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)
I would say that a person receiving the death penalty had a choice in the matter, ie if you don't murder anyone, you don't get the dealth penalty (even if maybe 1% are really innocent). While a child is an innocent person 100% of the time.
Why not use the example that Democrats are against the death penalty but for abortion? (Which isnt true...MOST Americans favor the death penalty and MOST Americans favor abortion, we just like killin' stuff, regardless of politics)
The key to understanding how someone can favor the death penalty and be against abortion is to understand that there's a fundamental difference between unborn children and convicted murderers. Once you understand that concept, you can move on to the fact that certain groups see this difference as significant when forming views about how to treat another person.
If you don't understand how someone can favor privacy while fighting for openness is to understand how information can be used. And once you have that added enlightenment, you can begin to understand how the potential use of knowledge can affect the people's opinion of whether that knowledge should be made public.
These forced parallels, this forced grouping of dissimilar ideas based on a single commonality at the exclusion of all other attributes, is not the product of analytical thinking. Rather, it's the result of the manipulation and selection of data to fit a hypothesis.
The key, of course, to understanding others is to actually try to understand them, rather than trying to contradict them.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
As with so many debates, the real problem is the issue is being misstated, so that there appears to be a contradiction where there is none. "Information should be free" refers to knowledge about facts such as history, public policy, etc. It does not refer to my bank accounts or medical history. Same goes for abortion vs death penalty. The former has not commited a crime that suggests he may not be cabaple of living in society. You may still disagree with views on either, but to juxtapose the two issues for purposes of debate is ignorant.
for abortion and the death penalty, republicans believe they can deicde best
for information, slashdotters believe they can decide best
the way forward is for everyone to understand that some decisions don't always fit their preconceived notions about how the world should work
and sometimes you need to change your theory to fit the evidence about what is "best"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
False premise. I don't want other people's information, and I don't want them to have mine, unless we agree to share. And by "agree" I don't mean bogus agreements like the fine print in consumer contracts.
I only want information I have paid for with my tax dollars, or information generated by corporations which the public generously allows to exist.
Ignoring your trolls:
2) Information doesn't "want" anything. It's a thing.
3) Opposing abortion because "it ends a life" and supporting the death penalty are opposite positions. Supporting a woman's choice and opposing the death penalty are not contradictory.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"David Brin's Transparent Society, where everyone, including our government, is under equal scrutiny, is probably the only way forward for those who believe that information wants to be free."
I'm wearing transparent pants.
It is not contradictory to believe that, generally speaking, information wants to be free and that your private life should be private.
The companies that gather information on your private life do so to sell that information for a profit and they won't let consumers see that information. Thus, the privacy invasion cartel is not "letting information be free."
I always took the "information wants to be free" statement to mean that knowledge spreads by itself, that nothing is more powerful than in idea whose time has come, that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. I never read it to mean "information should be free".
If information is valuable, you do not need to spread it. It's when you want to keep it private that you must make an effort.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
...that F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote The Great Gatsby, one of the steamiest piles of literary crap, either.
He's wrong in this case, too. Contradictions don't exist. If you can hold in your mind two contradictory thoughs in your mind and still function, you're not really functioning -- you're cheating yourself. Sorry, F. Scott. Too bad about the book, too.
Yes, I realize I'm going to sound a little Randbotty here, but if you're facing a seeming contradiction, check your premises. At least one of them is surely false.
In the examples given in the original post, the authors premises are certainly wrong. In the case of people being both pro-life and pro-death penalty, the seeming contradiction arises from the catch-phrase labels given each. In reality, in both cases, life is valued -- in the case of the unborn, that life is is valuable enough to be allowed to happen. In capital punishment, that life is valuable enough to be revoked as punishment for particularly horrid crimes against the life/liberty/minds of others. In the example of open source, it is not that information wants to be free, it's that certain people want software to be free (free as in beer, not as in speech, contrary to what RMS seems to tout. But then, he's in serious need of premise-checking) -- these people despise the software moguls for much the same reasons that the movers and shakers of the industrial age were despised. It really has more to do with class envy than any poor, tired, huddled masses of information yearning to be free.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Privacy no longer exist since 11-S. THe big problem at Europe is that politicians wants that all ISP save complete log of all we do (complete means even the content of each webpage you visit).
The problem is: who will read that? when? and of course don't think that a computer can made the work of an human, only typical filters but not secure at 100% and terrorists don't say each other by mobile phone: yes my complete name is xxx and i am from xxx i came from xxxx i am talking to xxxxxxx called xxxxxx and i am going to attack yyyyy
I think that we must look for another better solution.
http://serhost.com
I don't think these views are necessarily at odds.
The best way to preserve privacy against intrusions/data miners is simply not to record the information in the first place. Swiss bank accounts, for example, are legendary for their privacy since they simply don't have personal information of their clients.
How can we do this? Give false information in any required field that you feel invades your privacy or simply only use services/products which only require reasonable information.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I want information to be kept secret when disclosure can hurt me. For example: some aggregator finds out I buy environmentally-conscious products, own a small house upon which most work is done myself, and generally live (slightly) below my means. Prospective employers get access to this data and refuse to hire me, because I'm not living so close to the edge of bankruptcy that I'm easy to control by the threat of firing.
See, it's all just enlightened self-interest (the very engine that drives capitalism).
You raise an excellent argument but I fear that it creates the opposite of what you want. Credit information is far more valuable (to humanity and civilization) than are the latest music files by Brittany Spears.
If you study banking in China you find that one of the big problems over there is a lack of credit information systems. Its easy for someone to get a loan, skip the payments, go get another loan at another bank, skip the payments, and repeat as needed. In such a system honest people pay the price (high interest rates) to cover losses generated by dishonest borrowers. Without some mechanism for sharing credit histories, its almost impossible to have a viable credit card system or low-cost consumer loans (I'll leave it to others to argue whether these are Good Things or not).
The problem, and it is a massive one, is not that people are collecting the information, but that they are misusing the information or allowing to be misused by failing to secure it against criminal incursions. The same aggressive defense that prevents counterfeit currency in the U.S. should be applied to those that would counterfeit identities with stolen information. Your point about Choicepoint is well taken -- collectors of personal financial information should be held very accountable (and liable) for lapses in their security and for the actions of those they give data to.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
The official answer to that is "shut up."
-- This void intentionally left null.
As long as it doesn't pertain to us. =)
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That is, as opposed to a rhetorical question.
What I mean by framing the question in these terms is that the phrase "information wants to be free" did not originate with the Open Source movement or software at all. This is a very old idea that can be traced back to the origins of western ideas and certainly to the trivium of classical Greek education. The trivium was the set of subjects that were fit for study by the free citizens of Anicent Greece, that is, the free citizens as opposed to the unfree slaves.
The trivium consited of three subjects, Music, Math and Rhetoric. The last item is sometimes translated into the modern vernacular as "persuasive speech", but this is a rather peculiar and problematic definition once one begins to question what exactly is meant by persuasive.
A central question quickly emerges which is why anyone would bother to use language at all. Forming words into meaningful phrases and sentences implies a willful attempt to communicate and since communication requires at a minimum an author, a message and a listener then there is always the minimum level of persuasion in all communication since you must at least persuade someone to receive your message or you have failed to communicate.
In this sense, all intentional communication is persuasive and thus these acts of communication can all be considered to be rhetoric.
And once you understand this simple yet subtle idea --that all intentional communications are inherently persuasive and thus rhetorical-- then you can understand what is meant by the phrase "information wants to be free".
What it really means is that rhetoric is intentional and there's really no question that this is true.
Furthermore, once you undestand the ancient origins of the notion that information does indeed need to be free, that is must be free, it is simple to see there is no way that this fact poses any problem for Open Source or Free Software advocates who value their privacy.
My dog wants to run into the street, but I want it to stay alive. My personal info wants to be free, but I want it to stay private. The stuff I control doesn't get to do what it wants all the time - that's the justification for my controlling it. Otherwise, if all that stuff just wanted to stay safe at home, I wouldn't have to work so hard. And it wouldn't be nearly as much fun to have.
--
make install -not war
this one.
What!? is somebody trying to extract energy from the resulting flame-wars?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Privacy means you have the right to hide what you do and keep secrets. Freedom means you have the right to do what you do and you don't have to keep it secret.
Privacy gives us "Don't ask, Don't tell" policies. Freedom grows out of a society with greater tolerance and acceptance.
Privacy is unneeded when everyone is so good that what you do is ok and wont be punished and they won't do anything they shouldn't with anything they know. So, I think Freedom is the ideal, and Privacy is a fine first step until we all have Freedom.
Start Running Better Polls
I had a conversation about this with my friend about this just last night. We need to be able to know what our government is doing at any given time. Our government does not have (IMO) a right to privacy of any sort. The government works for us; we don't work for them. (I'm speaking of the US, for all you other /.ers out there.)
IF YOU HAVE A STRONG STANCE ON ABORTION, BE WARNED: UMPOPULAR VIEWPOINT AHEAD
Unfortunately, nobody cares that congress passes unconstitutional laws daily. It is not in congress's list of powers to make laws regarding, for example, abortion. It has thirteen powers. It can only make laws regarding those issues. BECAUSE ABORTION IS NOT ONE OF THOSE ISSUES, IT CANNOT LEGISLATE FOR OR AGAINST IT, THUS MAKING IT LEGAL. Abortion is a terrible thing, but if the government REALLY wanted to do something about it, they would make an ammendment and end this thing. I personally don't know where I stand on abortion; it's a truly terrible thing, but OTOH, I'm not going to force my ideals on anybody else.
A citizens, we need to get our government to open up (AND BE ACTIVE IN OUR GOVERNMENT, EVEN WHEN IT'S NOT ELECTION DAY!) and open up our knowledge to the world. Personal information (PINs, SSNs, Credit Card Numbers, etc.) should be kept private and be respected, but all other information should be readily shared. Human beings as a whole could benefiet from this sort of sharing.
Whereas pro-choice actually means pro-choice for a lot of people
What choice does the unborn child get in the matter?
Yes!! That is immediately what I thought of when I saw this article. Beyond the ideology "information wants to be free" vs. "you have no right to violate my privacy", he makes several excellent points based on the pragmatic realities of advancing technology and human nature. He also makes several assertions about various social trends (back in '98)that we can see happening today (USAPATRIOT act), which gives him even more credibility (in my opinion).
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
- The push for the iraqi war?
- Why allow a traitor in the white house?
- Why so opposed to DNA testing esp. for people who are about to be executed?
- Why so opposed to doing law correctly (police brutality is wrong, and so is a false coerchion from a person)?
- Why so in favor of Gitmo Bay where we are holding some innocent people (yeah, many are guilty, but many are innocent)?
And if so in favor of prevention of abortion, then why do so few republicans adopt non-white babies, and why fight birth control so hard?Information cannot "want" anything. What happens to data should be up to the data owner, not anyone who just happens to luck into getting his hands on it. I own my personal data, and it should be up to me who gets to use or sell it. Microsoft owns outright the s/w they sell and can mandate that you cannot copy or resell it. The GPL's, that we all love, mandate - again, it's the data owners who are doing it - what you can and cannot do with the data.
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
Equal scrutiny is a good idea. The trick is to set the level of scrutiny. Privacy is psychologically important. People need a space in their lives that they can retreat to, and a place to launch from to experiment and grow. Without privacy, every mistake you ever made while learning could come back to haunt you. Every case of "I thought I wanted X, but I tried it and found out differently" would be public knowledge. People need a private space in their lives. If it disappears, there will be incredible damage to the collective psyche. For that simple reason, the idea that "all information should be libre" is terrible, even for government officials.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I just love the little bullshit remarks that get posted in these stories. Uhhhh killing for cause vs killing without cause? I think I'll go dump my used car oil in the sand just to get even.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Thay use teh word fucked!!
think of the unborn children!!
AAAAAaaaggghhghhHHH!!!!
Starsucks
I'd agree that the information about me wants to be free. And I want it to remain imprisoned in those cold, heartless commercial databases.
Where's the inconsistency there?
Conflict, yes; inconsistency, no.
But I figure I'll probably lose. The data is in the hands of a large, random crowd of programmers and managers who have a poor record so far. They are generally sloppy about security, use the least-secure computer systems available, use 4-digit passwords and send them across the Net unencrypted, and leave backup tapes accessible to anyone with a few hundred bucks for a bribe.
So in the long run, it's hopeless. That information is in a feeble prison and will eventually stumble out. It has already happened to millions of people; it's only a matter of time until it happens to the rest of us.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Privacy is not about not spreading information about you.
Members of the information technology community, as many among the readers of this site are, can figure out many cases where spread of information is highly desirable to say the least.
Privacy is about being in control of that circulation.
Simple as that.
13-4=54/6
Something along these lines...
A citizen can do anything, except what law forbids him. A government can do nothing, except what law allows it.
Makes sense to you?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Looks good to me.
Whew! Flamwar averted.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Considering that most of the /. crowd is pretty young, it is expected to have idealists posting and reading on it. Even though they think they know everything (who didn't at their age?) they haven't experienced much of the real world yet so they are able to keep their idealistic views (which is a good thing). Let them keep their beliefs that things can be viewed as binary functions (true/false, black/white, right/wrong) as long as they can because it's a part of being young and idealistic and worth trying to keep as long as possible.
/. audience and you'll understand lots about how and why things work as they do on /.
One can keep their innocent youth-like ideals and still do good work. Look at RMS, for example. He has done lots of good but if you check his web pages, he wants to do things like boycott Caterpillar because they make bulldozers that someone else bought and used to flatten some houses over in the Middle East, for example. Idealism and youth-like innocence at its best.
So, in conclusion, just realize who makes up the majority of the
Society is a collection of individuals, and when taken as a collective has different operational requirements than the individuals do. The needs of the society are often in conflict with the needs of it's constituants. I might desire to have as much of (if not most of or all of) the money/women/power as possible, but if I accomplish that to excess society as a whole suffers. Yet if society inhibits my desires too much, again society suffers as people become nonproductive. And there's no acceptable standard of what excess is either. Even with completely healthy individuals, a liberal society has these conflicts. A hive or dictatorship maximizes one variant of societal success at the expense of individuals. It can go the other way to, into anarchy or uncooperative isolationism. Either extreme is bad. Very bad.
I suggest as the only solution to this conumdrum the development of a massive quantum computer to treat collective social institutions as one big linear programming problem. Then situations can be arranged behind the scenes so people are "led" to "freely" make the best choices that maximize their own and society's benefit.
There's nothing special about information as a resource or a consummable in society. Information doesn't "want" anything, either to be publically free or to be propriatarilly highly valued. It is the people and societies who might make use of that information who have those desires. And this presumes all people are intelligent, well informed and involved, hopefully benevolent too. Deviate from this ideal, and things break down. Introduce truly sick or insane people, and the situation gets totally foobarred.
There's no good answer. My advice, for what it's worth (not much)... Just try to do the best you can with an impossible situation, and don't let anyone get too much power.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
is this flamebait day or something?
slashdot needs the pageviews?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I don't want my information to be free, it is however an effect of the network that published information will spread. This is a problem for information publishers like the NYT, if somebody publishes my banking or medical information that is due to negligence.
There's no contrarian view here, "thetan".
Hope that helps.
FScott was thinking of the aplomb with which the preps he schooled with, and was so jealous of, pulled off the contradiction between their upbringing and their *progressive* values and their slumming tastes; that they weren't flustered by the illogic, mischronic or myopic.
I believe I smell sarcasm.
Derrida, who contradicts himself constantly, shares that ". . . coherence within contradicion always indicates the force of desire."
illegitimii non ingravare
I have no problem being against abortion and for the death penalty. In one case, the person had a chance to make the most of their life and failed. In the other case, the person was usually just an inconvenience for some irresponsible folks who would rather live a carefree life like the characters in "Sex In the City." (Yes, I realize there are exceptions like a very bad jury system and rape, but these reasons hold for most cases.)
Usually in this profession, you trying to please everyone so you take seemingly contradictory stands. Reconciling them is not a requisite unless the public put them together. But as for me, I am for the death penalty, abortion, and some euthnasia but I love life. I resolve this because there is always a complex set of circumstances from which I formulated my stance. I not for abortion in all its forms but only when it meets a certain criteria. The same goes for the others. I accept complexity of any situation and do not apply broadly any one principle to formulate my response.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
So, the key is that information that is already collected has to become free - the question becomes whether information is collected or not. Ergo; what you did with your friends in a park one day would only become public record if a camera recorded it. So you just make sure there's no camera.
Thus, saying "those silly republicans don't mind killing killers but don't want a fetus killed" implies the fetus is indeed alive, which is contradictory to most pro choice advocates will have you believe.
I think what both people on either side of pro-life / pro-choice debate fail to see is that the each side is striving for the most compassionate and human choice given a core set of assumptions. Just this morning I was listening to Air America radio, and I heard callers impugn pro-life people opposed to stem cell research as being motivated by profit for drug companies and as being heartless towards suffering people with diabetes and spinal cord injuries. I've heard pro-life people call pro-choice people heartless baby-killers with no care for anyone but themselves.
Both sides are wrong about each other. Both sides are trying to do what they see as best with a compassionate heart. The core question about abortion is, "Is the unborn a human being?"
For those who answer, "Yes," pro-life is the only sane and humane choice. If we must treat the retard, the senile, the newly born, and others with undeveloped minds who are dependent on the care of others as having a right to life, we must treat the unborn similarly and must give that right to exist the highest priority. That life must not be sacrificed for the convenience of others when that life has done no deliberate harm to anyone. That is preserving the life and freedoms of the innocent.
For those who answer, "No," pro-choice is the only sane and humane choice. A woman must have the right to choose whether she is ready for motherhood and must not have it trust upon her. She must be allowed the freedom of control over what happens to her body. People who are dying of preventable diseases must have access to medicine that could save them regardless of the religious beliefs of other people. Their lives and freedoms have higher precedent than the offended sensibilities of others. That too is about preserving life and freedoms the innocent.
You'll find extremely few pro-lifers who don't believe that a fetus is a living child. You'll find extremely few pro-choicers who do believe that a fetus is a living child. It's this fundamental question of the humanity of the fetus that is at the core of the argument. Since neither side really wants to address this argument, they cast aspersions on the character of the other side. No one really wants to sit down and discuss this because the lines were drawn before I was born. It's kind of sad because I think that the argument is one that it important and there are secular and religious arguments for both sides.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I shudder to think of a future where the innocent (other than just the unborn) fear "termination" by arbitrary individuals and the state, but those proven guilty of raping and murdering the innocent are protected, and guaranteed the "right" to continue raping and murdering the innocent.
Oh, wait -- I forgot. That's where we live, today...
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Big companies.
The appropriate Slashdot response is that big companies (when it comes to software) are evil. However, these same Slashdotters won't bat an eye at shopping at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, Amazon.com, etc. What's up with that?
I don't respond to AC's.
I can't speak for other slashdotters. But my personal belief is that "information wants to be free" is an observation about reality, not a preference.
Ie. my beliefs (and at least some would disagree):
* "Information wants to be free." This means that information tends to leak whether the owner likes it or not, and whether society views the leak as good or bad.
* Information "creators" legitimately have some minimal control (ie. copyright) over the information they create.
* Open-source produces good, convenient software. That doesn't mean that commercial software is bad, or that all software should be free.
So to me, "information wants to be free" in no way contradicts "I want to control my private information" or "I want to control my programs." My private information does want to be free whether I want it to or not -- that's exactly why I have to go to some effort (ie. SSL, proxies, and the like) to protect it when I want such protection. Such efforts will not necessarily be successful, and my information may free itself anyway. By the same token programs, media, and the like also want to be free -- that's exactly why companies go to considerable effort to copy-protect media and software, and still have to sue individuals when those protections fail. Even government and corporate secrets want to be free -- that's why you find them splashed all over the evening news.
I love it when moderators moderate based on their beliefs rather than on the content of a posting.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
only people who fail to understand that the American way of life means Truth, Justice, and that Information Just Wants To Be Free.
Sadly, none of those people are in charge right now, only the Dark Siders.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Information wants to be free" is annoying.
Information is like sand on a beach. Unless otherwise perturbed it will be randomly distributed. It takes work to amass it in one spot that is significantly higher or significantly more ordered than the surrounding area. Given time it will fall back down and be level. What businesses do is scrape up and sequestor as much sand as possible to create a scarcity which they can then remedy for a price. Information at most wants to be jumbled and disorganized.
I have a vested reason to protect my information -- I have claimed it as my mine after all. As I have gone through life I have kept as much of it scraped up as possible.
...ends where the other man's nose begins.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views. For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons).
I'm not a Republican, but I can easily identify these views as not being contrarian.
One is a penalty for a crime (supposedly, a terrible one)
The other is, in from the point of view of its opponents, killing an innocent child (also, in order for this to be contrarian, one has to accept that you're killing someone in abortion, which is it's own debate).
The flip side of this, also, is supporting abortion and being against the death penalty, which are also not necessarily contrary to each other.
Which is a better example of contrarian views?
:p
(a) it's ok to kill a murderer, but not ok to kill an unborn baby.
(b) it's ok to kill a unborn baby, but not ok to kill a murderer.
It's interesting that thetan didn't use (b) as an example, since it screams much louder of contrarian views than (a). I shouldn't be surprised, this is the liberal slashdot media, of course.
There is nothing incongrous about being for the death penalty and against abortion.
It is, however, incredibly hypocritical to claim that you are "pro life" while also being for the death penalty.
It is just as hypocritical to be "pro choice" but advocate that certain drugs should be illegal.
"Only Siths think in absolutes" - Obi Wan
Sure, flamebait, why not. These are some of the best definitions of the words as our liberal friends know them. When the truth sounds like flamebait, you're really in trouble...
The reason that personal information is so important today is the lack of proper and safe authentication, in the digital age and the culpable failure of law-makers and business to insist on a secure way of authenticationg anything beyond a (witnessed) signature.
I dont care that my social security number, address or phone number is public; I do care that this information can be used to impersonate me, and after that neither law-enforcement or business cares at all; and I get stuck with reverse-proofs in a legal system that barely works.
The cure is to put the onus, and loss, where it belongs, on business; and set a sensible minimum standard for digital authentication i.e. adaquate X509 or PGP keys.
This would stop the rot overnight!
more like colors of the rainbow really, but you hit the nail on the head.
in my seven years in the Army, I learned that people who see war and terrorism as black and white are severely deluded, and that the same applies to almost any situation.
one of the things that makes my work fun in Bioinformatics is that I get to deal with the fuzziness and change that is life in the real world, and try to represent it in databases really designed for single-value black/white representation.
our problem is the number of people who think in black and white and try to falsely represent the world that exists in all the spectra.
and, as you say, information useful to humanity does not include our private behaviours except where they infringe on others - which means tabloid journalism is not information wanting to be free, but nosy parkers who have no lives of their own.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...and routes around it.
... or maybe not.
Hang on, maybe I'm getting confused.
Information "wants" to be free in the same way that water "wants" to lie flat.
i.e. it is the nature of information that it is hard to contain.
The OSS philosophy is to accept this nature of information and incorporates that into its business model.
Information can either be useful to all parties, or could be used against one party. In the latter case, the affected party has a right to "contain" that information. That includes proprietary source - opening the source is voluntary.
At least, that's my take on things. Other opinions may vary.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
I figure that says it all. :-)
You are basically pushing the incorrect notion that "all opinions are equal", that all opinions should be treated with equal respect and never challenged, and that it is "biased" and "prejudiced" or even "offensive" to diss someone else's opinion if you believe it is wrong. This is Political Correctness run amok. People are NOT entitled to ignore facts and hold incorrect views, and they should be flamed if what they are saying is, in fact, incorrect, and does not take into cognisance all the facts.
For example, the astroturfers on /. keep pushing the (incorrect) idea that it represents a bias to seemingly apply "different standards" to different companies, based on the false implied premise that companies are like races, "all essentially equal and thus an unfair bias not to treat them equally" --- but this is nonsense because companies are not like races, companies really are very different from one another, and so it makes perfect sense to treat them differently. Many people here actually have a knowledge of what different companies have done over the years. It is not "biased" to thus dislike and distrust companies that really have behaved unethically for twenty odd years.
Likewise, the "differing views" you mention on the War on Iraq almost always ignore most of the facts that also happen to be kept out of the mainstream media. Nobody is entitled to hold particular views on a war if those views deliberately ignore significant facts.
OK true, "Troll" and "Flamebait" are the wrong moderations, sure, but that's only because there is no "-1 Ignorant" rating.
I'm tired of this "don't offend anyone" BS. People who speak rubbish should be flamed and offended.
I've never liked the phrase "information wants to be free." I prefer "ideas want to be free." Art, music, theories, paradigms, processes, designs, schemas...those are the things that have the potential to grow and be useful only if shared. They get combined into larger and more complex ideas. They're hopelessly complicated to attribute, and nearly every new idea is composed of bits of old ideas. Assigning "ownership" to creative works, and particularly for long periods of time, simply prevents new ideas from occurring (or gets new-idea-creators sued into oblivion). Ideas should be free, as in air.
Data, on the other hand, comes in a lot of forms. Some of those forms, like data collected in government-sponsored studies, should ALSO be free. Free because we've already paid for it. Free, as in beer. Other forms of data don't "want to be free," and personal information like medical records are surely one of those. Of course, there are some reasonable exceptions. Like aggregated disease statistics.
With data, I think there is a balance. I'm a privacy fanatic, but I'd surely hate to see us in as big a mess with regulating the use of personal information as we have with copyright regulation. Good grief, can you imagine if we all acted like the RIAA, suing friends for telling other friends about our lousy bowling scores?
Part of where the line is drawn for me (and the "fair use" doctrine relies heavily on this) is the use to which data is put. Since uses for others'personal information is almost entirely either prurient or commercial in nature, I strongly disfavor that sort of "sharing." It's not cognitive dissonance to dislike seeing people getting personal monetary or "prurient" gain from the uncompensated work of other people, but to be totally fine with non-selfish uses.
Just because this can't be reduced to a short catch-phrase doesn't mean it's inconsistent. Life is complicated. Millions of people who would never STEAL anything under any circumstances instinctively realize that while downloading a song they haven't paid for isn't WRONG, but that downloading and using someone else's credit card number IS wrong. It should be obvious that this is complicated, but that reasonable rules can be derived.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
- laws of thermodynamics
- algorithm for computing sqrt(x)
- total population of a region
- profit/loss of a PUBLICLY HELD company
- &c.
should be "free", and accessable to any member of the public who wants to know.PRIVATE information -e.g.
should remain "private", accessable only to the parties directly involved - unless it becomes a matter of public concern (e.g. reasonable suspicion that an individual is a serious danger to society -- kinda' like the original intent of Ammendment IV to the US Constitution).
Information cannot be perfectly "free", because people are not perfectly good. The balance between freedom of information and protection of privacy is determined by the overall goodness of society. In a society of good people, we fear less. We are less afraid that a person will do us harm if they learn the truth of who were are. In a good society we would know that placing our contact information on our website is not an invitation for all manner of harassment.
In a bad society, privacy supercedes all other things because privacy is self-preservation in the face of the evil that bad people can do with our information. The cost of a bad society is that while people can survive, they do so by imprisoning information (not only their personal information, but more general information that other people could benefit from). The cost of this loss of freedom is inhibited self-development.
An evil society is therefore self-reinforcing and ultimately self-destructive. Fear imprisons information, which leads to greater uncertainty and fear. Fear crushes the human spirit and leads to revolution or annihilation. A good society on the other hand is very hard to achieve because people must continually walk the difficult path of what is right and shake off the tendency to fear what is unknown and different. Coming full circle, people hide information out of fear, but the only thing that can overcome fear is information.
This whole argument can be read as "I want access to *any* information I want, but I only want to allow access to a certain amount of my information." Just a funadamentally flawed line of reasoning.
Perhaps if porn producers are able to track porn purchasing habits then they can produce a better quality of porn which would benefit the entire porn purveying community. This is a perfectly acceptable use of "private" information. It's a simple point - if you would care that someone is tracking you porn purchases, don't purchase porn - or viagra, or subscriptions to mail order bride sites, ...
As for that whole "Amazon and the other data collectors are the same as Nazis" argument in the last paragraph - just a freaking load of crap. As if a lack of census data would have provented the holocaust. So riduculous it's laughable. Europeans were launching wholesale pogroms aimed at eradicating Jews centuries before census techniques were developed. In fact, centuries before double entry accounting was developed in the late middle ages, Jews were already suffering from periodic pogroms in Europe. Data doesn't kill people - bad people who are given power kill people. And how does the public identify people likely to abuse authority? Exactly by accessing the information on those potential Hitlers that Ckwop wants to keep the public from accessing.
You need a picture of CowboyNeal fiddling (err...playing air guitar?) while the 'net burns.
--LWM
I don't think the majority of the readers here think all information should be free as in free speech or free beer. I think their concern is that ideas be free and that artwork, music, and programs are ideas.
.doc file format, the idea is the protocol. Most open source advocates could care less about the Microsoft code but given the fact that the file format is used widely, the protocol should be open so files meant to be shared by everyone, can be shared by everyone.
The information is Microsoft's code for the
Personal information is not an idea. It is information that can be used to control or exploit in the wrong hands, however. And with digital manipulation and ID theft, it may cause serious consequences. We are seeing this already.
Governments should be as open as possible but I think most of us agree that there should be some information that is kept secret. I'm sure there is a wide view here on how much the government should keep secret as we are not all of the same mindset as is portrayed but some posters. On the other hand, if the government holds information that would serve the public interest, it's their duty to share it.
Most of us can form the distinction between information that should be shared, ideas and matters of public interest, and information that shouldn't such as private information, trade secrets, or matters of security. It is not a black and white world and it is especially grey regarding information. I don't see where the conflict in saying ideas should be free and personal information should be secret. That is about as black and white as it gets.
Famous "Troll"s and "Flaimers:" people:
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin
Karl Marx
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King
Martin Luther
Ghandi
I can't believe you left out the biggest flamebait of all time: Joan of Arc!
But seriously, a "troll" post in the classic sense is one designed to make the people responding to it look stupid. For instance, in a physics thread, posting something with technical-sounding but totally wrong physics is a troll. Similarly, well-desguised links to goatse.cx are also trolls.
The term has been extended to people who copy-paste the same stupid, false, offtopic things every time a story on a given topic comes up, eg, complaining about one-button mice or 17MB files in every Apple story, or saying that *BSD is dying in every BSD story. Perhaps these should be modded offtopic along with "fr1st ps0t b1tch3s", but they're frequently moderated troll.
Flamebait is an overused mod. It is intended to mod down only obscene and nasty posts ("flames"), and posts designed to attract them. These deserve to be modded down. However, I agree that it's being used too often against controversial statements. The solution is, if you're going to write a controversial statement, make sure it's well-thought-out, doesn't contain false information, and addresses the issue rationally rather than just calling the other side dipshits.
Martin Luther didn't write up a bunch of things calling the Catholics idiots, he addressed specific points that he had problems with, and brought in relevant evidence as to why they were wrong. King was one of the more eloquent speakers of his day; his speeches were brilliant, and were in line with both his beliefs and his actions. Similarly for Franklin; he is considered one of the cleverest diplomats and inventors of all time, and many of his essays are still considered authoritative. Karl Marx thought about his Communist Manifesto for more than 3 minutes, and once again backed it up with facts and evidence. Paine's satire was both funny and relevant, and Jefferson's writings are used as guidelines by judges and lawmakers today.
None of these compare with disguised links to disgusting pornographic images (or ASCII representations of said images), page wideners, stories about Richard Stallman getting raped by various animals, attempts to get idiots to show off their stupidity, or direct or semi-direct copies of false comments which have been posted at least 15,000 times.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Isn't this obvious? Some types of information (for instance, the fastest way to sort a list) should be freely available to everyone because people out there in the world may have legitimate needs for it. Other types of information (for instance, your social security number) should be kept secret because only certain parties legitimately need it.
Information privacy should be based on the "do you have a legitimate need" criteria. Then the only thing up for debate is what constitutes a "legitimate need". I for one would argue that mankind's / society's overall technical advancement gives the general public a legitimate need for any scientific/research/discovery-type information, regardless of who found it first.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
"For those who answer, "Yes," pro-life is the only sane and humane choice. If we must treat the retard, the senile, the newly born, and others with undeveloped minds who are dependent on the care of others as having a right to life, we must treat the unborn similarly and must give that right to exist the highest priority. That life must not be sacrificed for the convenience of others when that life has done no deliberate harm to anyone. That is preserving the life and freedoms of the innocent."
:) Anyway to paraphrased a badly remembered ST:NG episode with Geordi La Forge were he asks about "what if my parents had decided that blindness was a reason to not have me?" IMHO I think that humanity is walking with a blindfold on, straight into a whole bunch of slippy-slopes that will unfortunately bring much suffering and death. And all because we don't want to go through the difficult process of seperating the black and white from the gray.
Wow! A well-reasoned post. What's the world coming to?
I think the line here is drawn between public and private information. That's not to say that certain bits of information are, by their content, inherently classifiable as public or private; rather, I mean the state of information having been either published or unpublished (in the broadest sense of the word).
If I have some bit of information, and I choose not to share it with anybody, that is PRIVATE INFORMATION. Like private property, my inalienable right to security means that if anybody tries to take my private information (or my private property), which I have decided not to share, then they are in the wrong.
On the other hand, if I have published some information, that is now PUBLIC INFORMATION. Like public property, it is free to be used by everybody. I have no right to order another person to leave a public park, and I have no right to tell another person that they cannot distribute some information that I have published. Their right to liberty allows them to be there in the public park, or to use public information, however they choose.
In the case of things like credit cards / SSNs, I think that equates pretty nicely to chattel. Chattel is private property which is in the public, and yet still considered private property. E.g. if I leave my car parked with the keys under the seat, and you climb in, drive it around, and bring it back with a full tank of gas, that's still wrong because the car is still my property and I did not give you permission to use it. So, just because my credit card number is in some company's insecure database and you can get in and nab it, does not give you the right to use that information, because though it was "lying in public", it was not PUBLISHED (i.e. released to the public), thus it is still private information, and unauthorized use of it is wrong.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It is more accurate to say that, while the opinions themselves are not contradictory, the arguments are. The argument usually centers around the inviolable sanctity of life. This assumption means that it's better for a child to be born under bad circumstances, than to have died before he knew what hit him, because the world gets another sacred life. However, the death penalty involves snuffing out a sacred life, so we're down two sacref lives instead of just one.
A more rational pro-life argument is that a complete human life is created as soon as the sperm hits the egg, therefore terminating a pregnancy does harm. But, being more precise, it's also more open to criticism, either by redefining the moment life begins, or by weighing the harm of dying in the womb against the harm of being born in bad circumstances. In contrast, you can't change someone's mind about what's sacred.
The abortion debate, like the hacker debate and the copyfight, have the weakness that many arguments on both sides appeal to feelings rather than reason. This results inevitably in semantic shifting, as phrases lose their meaning when different personalities try to adapt them.
In this case, "information wants to be free" used to refer to the nature of information: secrets are hard to keep; some ideas have a tendency to spread while others bury themselves. But that's not what it means to the 13-year-old who sells pirate DVD's to his classmates.
Points 1 and 2 are all that should be needed to mod submitter imbercile. People who don't understand something like 'information wants to be free' need to go back to elementary school.
;-)
I'm not sure I agree with 3, being pro-life and pro-death seems pretty fucking contradictory to me. If you have the intelligence to form your own views, you probably have the intelligence to mod parent post up
"For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
Wow that has got to be the oddest statement I have ever seen!
How about this statement, "For example, many liberals are for abortion but against the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
Since you are such a clueless soul I will explain it to you.
Most people that are Pro-life feel that a fetus is a human. To kill an innocent person is wrong. The ones that are for capital punishment fell that to kill a murderer is just. I.E. Killing a killer is okay. Killing an innocent child is evil.
Now the Pro-Choice side looks at it this way. A fetus is not a human or even not alive. So killing it is not wrong. The ones that are anti-death penalty feel that for the state to kill anyone except in the case if defence is wrong.
Both are logically based on OPINION. When is a human a human really is a matter of opinion. Some have in the past claimed that people of different races are less than human or that the mentally challenged are not human. Others feel that even sperm cell is human.
The fact that some people can not step outside of their own little belief system and see where these other people are coming from is frightening!
What really does not make any logical sense to me are the people that will not even eat Shrimp or Oysters because it is wrong to kill another living thing but are pro-choice. A first trimester fetus is at least as alive as an oyster!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"...reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?" We don't. Both are private and to be respected. We should own information about ourselves. If we release it, we do so cognitively. If you steal it, you're a thief. If-- and only if-- we allow its use, then it's ok, but only within that context, and that context alone. This is a setup question. It's a flame magnet of biblical proportions. Jerk.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The Light Side is about the free flow and expansion of energy. Giving and Other-serving.
The Dark Side wants to collect, limit and control energy. Taking and Self-serving.
All other analogies stem from this.
The Dark Side wants your information so as to control and limit you, and they will do so through any trick in the book, up to and including saying that to not give them your name and serial number is to be a Bad Person who is a hypocrite. This is classic (and effective) BullShit employed by every predator out there seeking to guilt their prey into willfully giving up their energy. The Predator has no intention of passing that energy on to the rest of the world for the benefit of anybody but themselves. It is not just okay to say "No" to this kind of demand, but essential in order to maintain integrity. To knowingly agree to feed the Dark Side is to align with the Dark Side.
How do you know how to tell the two sides apart? It all comes down to Intent; Is the force collecting information Self-Serving or Other-Serving? Is the Intent behind the request Light or Dark? This is easy to tell. Just ask your gut.
While Cliff's wording is clever and thought-provoking, it is also misleading.
-FL
As I'm sure someone else has stated; Capital Punishment is meant to satisfy the demands of justice for Murder. An unborn fetus does not need to satisfy justice since it has committed no crime and is innocent. In fact taking the life of the fetus now causes an imbalance on the scales of justice. Who will satisfy those demands?
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.'
He was half right: It's only the intellectual middle ground that can't accept two opposing ideas at once.
"Fetus, embryo, pre-born child = innocent.
Capital criminal = guilty."
Except that should read
fetus, embryo = not ALIVE not HUMAN
capital criminal = A HUMAN BEING
you see, life does not begin for you when your mother got knocked up by the village idiot. life began when you became conscious of your own exsistance, not in utero.
regarding criminals, sure execute them. better make damn sure the laws and courts are completly right 100% of the time though. I think thats most peoples issue. What if they make music piracy a capital crime? being a smoker?
so lets recap.
capital criminal = beyond a reasonable doubt, human and has been for some time.
collection of cells in utero = one day has the POTENTIAL to become human.
before your born you are not in control of your own life. you are not able to make decisions, you are not free. you are a parasitic collection of cells living inside another organism. you are a slave to that which made you come to be, your mother. Anyone who says that the mother shouldnt have the right to say what does and does not happen inside of her, is fucking stupid. anti abortion is quite simply, control over women. i raped you, your mine, take my seed and bring forth my young!
yeah 1950 called, they want their morality back.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Supporting the death penalty, yet opposing abortion, is contradictory, eh?
Ok, what about opposing the death penalty, yet supporting abortion? Isn't that JUST as contradictory in exactly the same way?
The justifications on both sides sound the same too:
"Adults who have shown that they only care about killing others have EARNED the death penalty, whereas an unborn child is innocent and has earned no such punishment."
Or, on the other hand
"An adult has an established identity, and as such killing him is always wrong, whereas a fetus has no identity, and as such is just extra tissue for disposal."
Neither view is actually contradictory in the mind of the person who holds it, because they see adults and unborn children as being separate cases to be governed by separate rules.
I am more interested in genuinely contradictory views such as "It is perfectly acceptable for a female interviewer to be granted access to the men's locker room, but it is outright wrong for a male interviewer to be granted access to the women's locker room. The men who don't want women watching them shower are just being silly, whereas the women who don't want men watching them shower are being quite reasonable."
--AC
US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)
Well, geez, if we're going to start slinging politcal mud how about: US Democrats are seemingly for "tolerance" but intolerant of any point of view they [the party platform] don't agree with (right to life, owning firearms, tough on crime, wealth redistribution, etc. ad nauseum).
(at least I can name a bunch of high-profile Republican party leaders who don't tow the party line [Schwarzenegger, Giuliani, etc] - geez, they even spoke at the convention - can you point me to one (or more!) similar Democrats? DIdn't think so.)
Score:-5, Conservative
Kang & Kodos: "Abortions for everybody!"
Crowd: "Boo!"
Kang & Kodos: "Er, abortions for nobody!"
Crowd: "Booo!"
Kang & Kodos: "Uh, abortions for some... tiny American flags for others!"
Crowd: "Yaaaaaay!"
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Some time ago, there was a serial killer named Ted Bundy. He killed several people (more than 20, IIRC). He was either sentenced to life in prison, or to death, I forget which. He escaped from prison, and killed (four?) more people. He was captured again...
What are you going to do at this point? Assume that he won't escape again? He's shown that he can. Assume that, if he does escape, he won't kill anyone the next time. Right...
In fact, he was sentenced to death (for the four murders) and executed in Florida.
You'd rather see a million people sit for life in jail than have one innocent person wrongly executed? So would I. But it isn't that simple. A few of those million will escape. Some of those escapees will kill people. How many innocent people do you want to be murdered in their homes to keep one innocent person from being wrongly executed?
(I don't have a great answer. My point is that the question isn't that simple.)
"For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
As others have pointed out, the infant is innocent.
What about the US Democrats who are against the death penalty but are pro-abortion? There seem to be plenty of these, but what rational basis do they have to say it's OK to kill an innocent baby but not at all OK to kill a serial rapist-murderer?
BTW, I personally am theoretically pro-death penalty, but it's obvious a lot of defendendants are not getting adequate representation these days, so that puts me in a bit of a quandary.
I am also pro-abortion, and think it should be allowed until at least the 43rd trimester -- you should usually know of any serious defects by the time they are 10 or so...
There is something to be said about the fact that all the trending analysis businesses want to engage in can be done without the need to cross-reference this data with the names, SS#s, etc.
BTW, what I want to know is why the MPAA and RAII get to hold rights on movie and song distribution, yet citizens don't "own" the rights to their own name. If you don't own the rights to your own name, what can you own?
'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' That is the test of first rate stupidity. An intelligent person recognizes conflicts in what they believe and either resolves them or changes what they believe. An ideas if they are true CAN NOT conflict with one another. I think what the parent wants to ask is how do you rectify the competing GOALS of information privacy vs. freedom of information. The simple answer is you can not any more then you can rectify the design goals of security vs. freedom. What you do is seek a compromise based on what the individuals involved believe to be of the highest value to the system ( in this case society) as a whole. I think the slogan 'information wants to be free' is just that a slogan like 'remember the Alamo' it is catchy but means different things depending on who is saying it and why. The general principle it touches is that power is garnered from the possession of knowledge so it makes sense from a democratic perspective that the greatest freedom for the people can be obtained by the greatest openness of government. It makes sense from a commerce and scientific perspective that the more people who have access to research data the better likelihood there is that that information will be applied in useful ways. It makes sense from a technology perspective that the ability to have peer review on a wide scale and all the other advantages garnered by open source development probably outweigh the advantages that copyright would have afforded that code. On the other hand working from the same principle that knowledge is power the less knowledge people have about me , especially corporations and governments, the less power they have to influence or prosecute me. (the less power they have to be of service to me as well. ) but in general most people prefer to have autonomy and the less someone else knows about you the less their ability to control and manipulate you, not to mention harass you with annoying advertisements and phone calls. That is why most people believe in some level of person information privacy.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
I suspect that the parent's point is true. It is also about the most depressing thing I have read today.
When I see that over 50% of the kids "born to druggie moms with fetal alcohol syndrome" decide that their life isn't worth living, and therefore commit suicide, I will consider this viewpoint to have merit. Until then
Disclaimer: I'm an independent who is generally pro-abortion and indifferent on the death penalty.
But the idea that pro-death penalty/anti-abortion is somehow contradictory is an ideological chimera. One involves the punishment of an adult convicted of a brutal crime, the other involves the life of what the anti-abortionists consider to be a innocent child.
I may disagree with those folks, but there's nothing contradictory. The idea that it is contradictory is just a political propaganda point that people have somehow started to actually believe, as evidenced by the poster of this story.
Hypothetical Question. . .
The Village is dying of thirst. By pure chance, a limitless wellspring is discovered. The man who discovered the spring is calculating and without pity, and he refuses to tell the village where the water source is unless the people pay his outrageous fee. The community suffers deeply.
One night a clever Thief follows the man and discovers the location of the wellspring. The Thief hurries home and tells the community. Everybody proclaims him a Hero. The community is saved, and goes on to thrive and become happy and healthy.
Sometimes the Thief is also the Hero.
I would say that Ownership of information is far less important than the Intent of the owner.
-FL
You joyless fuck, I'd wager your mother would have chosen differently if she had the foresight to see you as the facist you have become.
How's that for a concept to hold in your head?
Or alternately, the cost of keeping the Abu Grahib operation shrouded in secrecy is that people will begin to believe all manner of accusations about said operation, regardless of their factual basis.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"That just doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that it's more difficult to give a baby away than to terminate it? If you are saying that, should that be the compelling argument for abortion?"
As someone who's the beneficiary of the decision to adopt instead of abort. I'm glad my birth parents made the decision they made. I may not be spending the rest of my life with them? I am however spending it with a family that does love me, and just as important, I'm a contributing member of society.
Unfortunately this isn't consistent across the U.S. There is pretty much nothing that IS consistent across the U.S., though I don't know how much the "No Child Left Behind" act has changed that, but I'd guess not much.
"...you were once a little bit of tissue and goo. Lucky for you, though, your parents didn't see it that way."
Another tired anti-abortion cliche. Live my tortured life first, then try calling me lucky. If I had been aborted, then by your rules I could have gone straight to heaven without all the intervening irony and agony. If only my parents had had good reason to abort me!
Shouldn't everyone who cares about the eternal soul of their unborn child make the ultimate sacrifice and send their untainted little fetus straight to God before they face the temptation to sin?
[This faux opinion brought to you by someone who: was born to a single mother; never met their father; was baptized Catholic; is against the death penalty.]
"For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
What is sad is that this bias could have been so easily fixed, and the point made even stronger, by adding "and many US Liberals are for abortion and against the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons too)."
It's sad that even Slashdot can't seem to avoid political bias in it's one-paragraph reports.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Why in the WORLD did the poster have to mention abortion in a subject that has *NOTHING* to do with it? We're pretty much guaranteed to only see life vs. choice flames now...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
In the end all force comes down to deadly force. If you want to force me out of your house, the only way you can truly make me leave is through deadly force if I choose extreme enough tactics to stay. Not that this is necessarily bad, it's just intellectually honest to say that our society is based mainly on deadly force at some level. Look at the history of how we got here. Outlawing abortion or the death penalty will not change the underlying fundamentals. p.s., what is this, flame day? First Intelligent Design, now abortion and death penalty.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Hackerethics (CCC)
Specifically I am referring to: "Make public data available, protect private data."
To quote the CCC: "To protect the privacy of the individual and to strengthen the freedom of the information which concern the public the yet last point was added."
Friggin' woot. Most insightful post of the whole story.
Another one bites the dust
The Village is dying of thirst. By pure chance, a limitless wellspring is discovered. The man who discovered the spring is calculating and without pity, and he refuses to tell the village where the water source is unless the people pay his outrageous fee. The community suffers deeply.
One night a clever Thief follows the man and discovers the location of the wellspring. The Thief hurries home and tells the community. Everybody proclaims him a Hero. The community is saved, and goes on to thrive and become happy and healthy.
Sometimes the Thief is also the Hero.
I would say that Ownership of information is far less important than the Intent of the owner.
-FL
That's the most pathetic excuse I've ever read. Pregnancy is the intended natural result of sex. If a woman doesn't want to get pregnant, then she better not have intercourse. end of story.
In your analogy, the information garnerer is a thief, and maybe a murderer. The 'clever Thief' is a co-discoverer and a hero because he shares the information.
You must separate what I own in information about myself, and what other information--not about myself-- that I own. If you find out that I've been married four times and use that against me, this is public information that can be found. If you find out that I haven't registered my dog, then you've broken into my home and examined private characteristics of me. These are two different things.
So, I don't buy your parable. Theft is theft. Co-discovery and the ability to go where others go is ok. The source of the water can be public knowledge. If the thief trespassed on the land to find the water, then there's a small crime involved. Whether the crime is overlooked because of the discovery is something else. That's why we have prosecutors, and warrants, and civil process.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
People are for anything that benefits them, and against anything that hurts/harms/annoys them. If the Information to be "freed" is something they personally want or could use, then they're for the freedom, no matter who would be hurt by it.
Since the release of their own personal information would hurt them in some way, they're against the "freedom" of that information.
Only the rare individual will be for something that will benefit the vast majority but hurt them personally.
There's no conflict in the two views, just ordinary selfishness. Part of the brilliance in the original design of the US government is in the use of selfishness in what I call the "Balance of Greed" to keep the country reasonably free and prosperous. The problem, of course, is what happens when one party or the other stops being greedy enough to steal the other guy's lunch. But never fear, sooner or later an opportunist will come along to balance things again. It's inevitable.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
As a catchcry, "Info wants to be free" refers to the ability of information to spread beyond control. Once the information is out there, its out there for good and you really cannot take it back. (Look at the Cisco-Lynn news from last week). As far as websurfing and shopping habits, that information wants to be free as well. It is the 'creator' of that information that does not want it to be free (ie public, out there for everyone to know).
Absent any preventive measures, anyone can access any information they can physically aprehend. Thus the natural state of information is to be free for anyone to use. Only when people try to limit the spread of information does it become non free, and even then, like water, if there is a crack in your container it will leak out.
Hope that explains the analogy.
As for information being free and privacy, privacy is a stopgap measure to protect those with less access to information and less ability to act on that information from depredations by those with more information and ability to act on it.
If there were no imbalance, there would be no need for privacy. If anyone actually used information in a way the majority considered immoral, then everyone would know about it an could stop the abuse. There would be no need for privacy in financial transactions because everyone would know if you stole. There would be no need for privacy in personal affairs because no one would be able to use that information against you unfairly.
This assumes some perfect method of not only recording everything that happens to everyone on the planet all the time, but distributes the information to everyone else and correlates it so that any important information can be sorted out of the huge mass of information that is of no importance.
Until that time, although your personal and private information "wants to be free" in the same way that water wants to leak out of a glass if it can, you should try to make sure your glass has no cracks in it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't see a conflict between opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty. The abortion issue hinges on whether the fetus has the rights of a person (ie, a right to life), and the death penalty issue hinges on whether it's just to kill a guilty person.
If the fetus is a person, then it must (ipso facto) be an innocent person, and I've never seen any death penalty advocate call for the execution of an innocent party.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This whole article is nothing but a flamebait troll. Just like the mainstream media, it reduces complicated issues into aggravating soundbites designed for nothing but rowling its readers into generating a shitstorm of comments. The author/editors must be aiming this one at the Hall of Fame. Can we please extend the mod system to article submissions as well, please?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Nor for that matter quality of life. Say somebody likes to beat me up. My quality of life goes up once he is dead. An energetic person is more alive than a person in a coma. Climbing cliffs can result in death, but a rock climber is very much alive. Also war can result in death, but human soldiers in a war are more alive than automatons.
A speech exists which reads:
I do think that fighting in battles can at times be beautiful, but at the same time I'd like to express my regret over the lost souls be appealing to you to recognize how priceless man's life is. I believe what man needs is not absolute victory, but a certain demeanor in fighting, an attitude towards fighting.
You've got nothing.
Do you even know what that word means?
It means HEATHENOUS!
Just because something is mainstream or non-christian, doesn't mean its freakin heathenous.
What is it with churchs teaching the bastardization of words like this?
They did it with words like truth and him and now patriotism.
And what is with the teaching of misappropriate use of capitalization?
Sheesh.
Well, bigwavejas, I guess that proves your point - somebody (incorrectly) assumed my post was pro-war and modded me down!
More than one person posts on Slashdot.
Some of these people think informaiton should be free. Another thinks completely differently, believing that holding some information privately is OK.
The conflict is between different people with different opinions, not between one person with differing opinions.
What's so unusual about that, and why is it people always think "typical slashdotters" always think alike?
Why is innocence and atonement so valuable... and if you believe that Jesus died in atonement for your sins, why do you believe that anybody must atone. Also, isn't it possible that sometimes granting someone death is merciful?
Of course, "Information wants to be free" originally was about gratis
I'm glad this was modded interesting and not insightful, because while interesting, it only kind of adds insight to the debate. We're still left with a language duality that doesn't capture the true essence of the issue.
Information doesn't "want" to be free in an economic sense. Too cheap to meter isn't free. Economics is an issue that comes in *after the fact* - and that's the whole problem with this debate. We're trying to think economically about an entity that doesn't fit into economic systems.
Information "wants" to be free means that information does not "want" to be controlled. Information becomes expensive when controls are placed upon it. But even then, it is impossible to have a monopoly on certain information. If one person thinks of something, another person can do the same thing. At a very basic level, it is impossible to truly control information (hence the problem with DRM).
No matter how expensive the controls placed on information, there are other expensive methods to extract that information. That's the problem we're having in our discussions of this: we think information should behave in ways that make sense economically. That's just not the way it works.
You can use my software to run my knitting machine, but you can't use my software to steal my identity. That is the difference.
"US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)"
That's the most irresponsible, idiotic quote ever to be found in Slashdot. Any person with more than 1 neuron will notice the difference between an unborn and a convicted killer.
After being forced to participate in a long grinding war, I suspect that many human soldiers are more like automatons than society would be comfortable with.
the average slashdotter wants to download music files (information wants to be free), while keeping his privacy from the RIAA.
:)
Not that I've done it... *whistles innocently* It's just a wild guess
In order to understand that these two views aren't hypocritical, the first question that needs to be asked is, "does the originator of the information wish to distribute it?" If it's meant for distribution, it can't be controlled, it can't be restricted, aspects of it can't be kept secret (say, the method by which the originator did try to control it) -- it "wants to be free," as the cliché goes. Once it's out there, it's out there.
On the other hand, if information isn't meant to be distributed, such as personal information, then it ought not be.
[The seeming hypocrisy in the abortion/death penalty thing can be easily understood, BTW, if you understand that the right wing's "culture of life" means innocent life: in their opinions, a fetus is a human life, and an innocent one, and deserves to be protected, whereas a murderer deserves to be sentenced to death.]
Liberty in your lifetime
intelligent ... Slashdot crowd
:p
gtkaml.org
Well, if she is pregnant at 16, she's not so innocent now is she.
Ask a liberal why the government should stay out of my life socially, but not out of my life financially. Watch them twist in the wind as they try to rectify that one.
Both the right and the left are hypocrites, just in different ways.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I suspect that the grandparent is saying it's easier to terminate a 2 month old foetus than it is to give away a full-grown baby.
Beastly, selfish grandparent.
Information, once collected, DOES want to be free. That's exactly the point, and the problem. It's not in itself a contradiction; it's more of an observation around which we should more properly manage our affairs.
So obviously it follows that if there is something you would prefer to keep private, the best policy is to never disclose it, ever, in any form.
If some server at DoubleClick contains 30% of your web surfing history, this information will inevitably fall into the public domain. Therefore its very collection represents a primary problem.
If the RIAA members broadcast their supposed "intellectual property" on the public airwaves, the information is effectively published. If they didn't want people copying and redistributing it, then they should never have published it, or indeed even recorded it, in the first place.
This reveals fundamental problems with the concept of copyright law, and the way business is done in western society. Since information does have a natural tendency to become free, it's in the words "Intellectual Property" where we may find the true contradiction and source of many problems.
Another issue is with companies such as the Medical Information Bureau which collect reams of personal data on each of us without properly informed consent. Such companies profoundly underestimate the extent to which the information they collect will inevitably leak into the public record. Insurance companies could manage their risk differently and do business like they once used to, without the benefit of such detailed medical histories. But since the infomation is available, of course they want it. Who can blame them? The core problem here again is the very collection of the information itself.
You need to understand that "rights" only apply to:
a) Felons.
b) "Terrorists". (Republicans call them that - they are really freedom fighters, of course...)
c) "Street People" (A.k.a Insane people and drug addicts.)
d) College professors.
Stupid square fetuses and soccer moms and other boring non-oppressed people just don't count. There.
We talk abot information as it were a quark in the atomic model. The interesting structure is two levels up, above the protons and neutrons, in the periodic table. There are as many different kinds of "information" as there are elements in the periodic table.
The sloppy use of information as an amorphous aggregate already places the speaker at the level of those incapable of holding more than one distinct idea in mind at the same time.
And then there is the crowd so proud of their ability to distinguish speech from beer. Such high spectral resolution. Truly amazing.
This is really a question, and not a statement.
Why is it stupid to want to stop abortion (save life) and support capitol punishment (end life), yet it is wise to support abortion (end life) and stop capitol punishment(save life)?
Both stances are contradictory.
...Is that it doesn't work. No doubt it is morally superior in concept than capitalism, in practice, the guy doing the distribution always ends up with the most.
Abortion may well be morally abhorent, it is however none of anyone's business except the mother.
The hypocracy is that the gung-ho pro-lifers are almost always the judgemental dingbats who drive women to abort fetuses rather than owning up to having had sex. And for that matter want to make sure that unwed mothers don't get welfare or medical coverage out of thier tax dollars.
It comes from the mental contortions required by religious belief.
Omniscience
Omni-benevolence
omnipotence
Pick Two.
It's fairly simple. Privacy is a question about what should exist. Freedom of information is about accessibility of the information that we agree should exist. As in much of life, it is how you cut the concepts.
Seeing a contradiction between favoring the death penalty and opposing abortion assumes that adult prison inmates and fetuses are equivalent, which they aren't. Thinking that supporting copyright reform or the opensource movement conflicts with wanting personal privacy implies that all information is equivalent, which it isn't. This post is a laughable mishmash of non sequiters that are only sound semi-reasonable on the surface. Picking it apart bit by bit just isn't worth the trouble.
This story screams out for new moderation categories: "-1:Christian" and "-1:Heretic"
People are the problem, stop procreation now!
To answer the question that you asked. Information about me, or about any extant person, is different than information about things - scientific data, population data, computer code. You could use information about me to offer a selective and unflattering portrait that could keep me off the Supreme Court, or cost me my job. You could use the information to craft messages (commercial messages) that in some way defrauded me. In short, you can harm me with personal information in a way that information about the world generally never could. That said, there is information that is about me that is public, and that should remain public. What videotapes Clarence Thomas rented should be beyond our public purview. His public behavior and his writings are fair game. Within limits, always. Software code, ideas, stories and scientific discoveries are more harmful when they are NOT free. I have a Cisco router, owned by my ISP and maintained by them. I can't log on to it. Am I at risk? Cisco doesn't want me to know. I am in a more precarious position because of their actions. Security through obscurity my ass!
at least i stand behind what i have to say with my identification. i know its a very unpopular view to say that people should be held accountable for their actions. you show your true colors AC. btw, grats on marking me off as a facist. you should run for office.
then i say terminate it and get on with your life. if you want another one, then go make one. making babies isn't rocket science it's very very easy. naturally i'm against late terminations, but seriously, before then it's no more aware and intelligent then a fish or a dog.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
That's as may be, but I personally wouldn't support the death penalty for trespass or theft.
Well there's at least one state that disagrees with you on that. Obscure quote:
"You are sittin' in my son's room, in front of my son's computer, in my house, and you're in Texas, boy. I'd be well within my rights to shoot you where you sit."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I was actually reading the Clinton book the other day. He mentioned a minister of his saying that the "Thou shalt not kill" commandment is somewhat mistranslated. The word used for kill is actually closer to murder. So killing babies probably counts as murder, while capital punishment doesn't (although it is still killing).
Fetus = guilty
Criminal = guilty
But, still no abortion there....!
When we say information wants to be free, we are not advocating it for business secrets, visa card numbers, emails, surfing habits, safe numbers, or nuclear weapons secrets (even though that information likes it too!). These kinds of secrets protect everyones rights. What is occurring right now is a manipulation of the system to protect certain people but take advantage of others.
When every human being enters this world they are born naked and ignorant. Relatively equal levels of access to cultural and educational information is what gives us what we call freedom and an opportunity to compete.
What is happening right now is information is being controlled and manipulated so that certain groups have complete access to it, and others do not. This is a huge destabilizer to democratic values and even capitalism. Some idiots talk about companies needing incentive as if that is all that matters. For you economic rocket scientists.... Capitalism not only needs to provide incentive for the rich but for the average worker too, or else it starts falling apart and we revert back to feudalism.
If I can't create and sell something because of broadly worded patent laws how can I compete? If someone can peek into my emails or surfing habits how can I compete? This used to be called spying but now the politically correct term is "data mining". I'd like to know at which point privacy intrusion has gone too far since no one ever describes where that limit lays. Terrorists sleep in beds. Perhaps we should place cameras in everyone's homes--just in case. What do you have to fear if your doing nothing wrong right?
As for the RIAA/MPAA/BSA alliance-- our laws are basically being rewritten by their lawyers (As RMS mentioned in the word doc proposal the "EU" drafted). Since when is this democratic? If they keep throwing lawyers and money at achieving all their patent goals all innovation will slow to crawl (since thats what makes the most financial sense to large corporations as R and D costs money). Furthermore they've already cornered 80% of the media. How can that possibly be viewed as democratic or competitive? If you write an article your editor doesn't approve--you'll get fired. If you produce a work you can get sued.
How is this all beneficial to society?
It's not of course but I guess this proves the American public are basically a bunch of lazy sheep that really don't care about democracy and equality despite all their gibberish about freedom and all their flag waving during military parades. Give them a Big Mac and football and they'd call the Soviet Union free. How exactly they are free when there own government spies and profiles them and corporations write their laws-- I will never understand. That certainly is a form of government but don't call it democracy you fish. Go ahead write something bad about the current American government and something good about those that disagree with it. Your free to write it-- and the government is free to "examine" you and your associates as potential "threats" to be taken care of. Your say and freedom is limited to a SINGLE vote between 2 parties every 4 years who are completely owned by just a few businessmen.
~ don't hate America--hate what it has become
BTW - Please stop comparing your freedoms today to that of China or Nazi Germany. Why not try the first world or is that too hard?
I would say that the difference between that which we desire to be free, and that which we protect with great vigor resides almost solely in what is best for the public good.
Information that could do far more for the public good by "becoming free" deserves to be free. If you can make an cogent argument stating that my surfing habits, medical records, personal correspondance, or any other items I might consider "private" could legitmately serve the public good (not commercial enterprise), I'd be all for releasing it.
If I'm remembering my Poli Sci right, I think this is a Utilitarian approach to the problem. Open Source and Gnu software serves to benefit the majority (as individuals). So too, some might argue, do safeguards ensuring reasonable levels of privacy (again, as individuals).
Like anything, perspective is all about which side of the argument you are on, and what your end goals are. Still, it's an interesting question.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Saying republicans are contradicting themselves is ignoring the fact that liberals want abortion but dont want the death penalty. Isnt that just as ironic? At least the republicans want to kill people who have done something wrong. Republicrats and Demopublicans are both all mixed up!
One solution is adoption, but most people wouldn't put a child up for adoption.
Not many people adopt either. Then some are attempting to ban certain groups from providing a good home to children by not allowing them to adopt when they do want to adopt.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The free software stance is that of maximising the liberty of the individual to improve the conditions of himself and others. This does not involve being forced to give away information that can be used or abused to restrict his liberties, or those of others.
In theory, the need for privacy and security is because of the lack of freedom of other information. If government was truly open about what it does with our information, and truly respects the will of the individual, then few would care about them poking into our details. If fraudsters were unable to steal identities because their own information was open to banks and so on, then there would be little need to secure financial details.
The free information thing is about an ideal world, something to aim for, and so privacy and liberty are not contradictory.
No, you wall-eyed knuckle-head, there is no discrepency. "Information" in this context means "knowledge, learning, education". It can be used by other people to do good. If I discover a cure for AIDS, then the rest of the human race deserves to know what exactly it is so that the maximum number of lives can be saved. "Data" as in personal data, belongs to the individual. My address and phone number can be of little good to people all over the world, and can also be used to invade my privacy.
Which nobody has ever said any different, except for wall-eyed knuckleheads who try to twist what we say around to mean damn near the exact opposite. Didn't you mean to post this in AOL 20's chat?
I agree, and I find the OP's position troubling. Not just from someone who should know better. But also the fact that historically the mass taking of life starts with the weak (how many abortions worldwide are there?) Those who can't fight back, and it ends up with those who once could, but no more.
I certainly hope that alien life is looking down upon us, and asking the questions we don't have the courage to ask. Like "Why do they do that?"
I believe that life begins when the father and mother of the eventual child first begin the copulation process
I've got just the slogan for this: "No" Means Murder! That'll look great on a poster campaign!
(Clearly I do get the joke.)
but a debate of morals. The reason why we think the way we do is investigaed by a wing of Cognative sciences. Conservatives and Liberals think the way they do for very specific reasons. It all ties in nicly, when you know why you think the way you do.
Morals is usually an extension of a metaphor. Take crime and punishment. We view it as a monetary system. Paying ones debt to society is a good example of the uphamisms that we use when talking about crime and punishment. We very literally think that everyone needs to have a balanced moral book. You do enough good deeds other are in debt to you and visa versa.
For more on this focusing upon the difference between Liberals and conservatives please read George Lackoffs work. His first book on the subject (Moral Politics) is very dry and acedemic. But a very good refence. Pick and choose the subjects that interest you.
http://www.georgelakoff.com/books/Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
I made a very simple thank you and it gets modded down to -1? In what possible way could this have offended anyone?
I think the (consistent) operative principle is, "me first."
you described co-discovery. These are different things. Theft is when you steal something you know about. Discovery is when you come upon something someone else knows. Trespass is being somewhere where you're physically/virtually unwanted. This isn't linguistic BS; these are readily defined semantical concepts within the context of your parable. Theft is not commendable. Co-discovery is. So is justice.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Why do people rush to make the "rape" case against outlawing abortion when that scenario comprises an insignificant minority of abortion cases?
Are you saying that because pregnacy in rape cases is insignificant that it doesn't count?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Security that evolves is always the answer. Good guys need to figure out how ensure current technology functions efficiently before bad guys (sorry, fairer sex) figure out how to circumvent it.
Good guys innovate, bad guys infiltrate.
Until everyone understands that your security is essential to all of our security, we will not be secure.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
in this country. One in which the winners are fundamentalist churches and the losers are poor women and children who are often FORCED to give up their child/parent (an infant cannot consent to having its parent taken away, so these contracts cannot be valid for the same reason that an underage person cannot consent to sex)
Many states make it next to impossible for a mother or child to find each other after an adoption..
Note also that as 21st century technology's bounty of improved efficency makes more and more workers redundant that millions and millions of people will have their children taken away basically for being poor and unemployed.
This is more of a failing of society. What will we do when many people simply will not be able to find work - no matter how cheaply they are willing to work for.
Will unemployment be made illegal? I bet it will. For all practical purposes it already is.. for parents at least..
(Unless you are a member of the GOP's glorious 'investor class', I guess)
And those children will be dumped into a foster 'care' system that is not able to cope with them and tossed out onto the streets literally on their 18th birthday...
The crime rate started falling 15 years after Roe vs. Wade.. And the supply of babies to sell started drying up for the churches..
Have to nip that one in the bud..
Welcome to America..
This is where the real evaluation should be done.
The quality of life of one individual should not nor can it outway the need of society to put real value on life an living. Niether society NOR this idividual should have any right to make decisions about quality of life over being alive, because quality of life can only be improved while one IS alive.
In some cases yes quality of life can improve but in others it worsens, as has mine. Almost eight years ago I had a bad accident. While I was in a coma the docs told my family it'd be a miracle if I lived. If I were to see them today I'd argue with them on this. Though I've had ups and downs, it's mostly been downs and getting worse. My sister told me that after I came out of the coma I was screaming at everyone to let me die, and I wish they had. But I keep going on, because as some of the therapists I had said "the reason you're alive is because you're stubborn." Even being stubborn, along with somewhat hopeful as well as scared, though things wear out real quick. If it weren't for these three things I wold of committed sepaku, hari kari, or otherwise killed myself a long tyme ago. Simply I believe quality of life is very important yet there is no quality in my life except maybe brief flashs.
Someone who thinks life is so precious that the ability to live should be protected at all cost even to the detriment of 'lifestyle' or someone who may decide your life wouldn't be worth living anyway.
The second!!! If only the docs I had had been that way.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh I dunno one, is death of innocents the other of the guilty.
+++
http://www.drudgereport.com for the truth.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons).
==
For example, US Democrats are against the death penalty but in favour of abortion (no doubt they have their reasons).
(fyi: I removed the "many" in my counterpoint because the Democratic platform has no room or tolerance for any pro-life advocates. No, it's not a troll, it's a fact.)
(Score: -5, Conservative)
They sure do have their reasons. Its founded on fairness. Or to call it by its proper name : Justice.
To quote another famous author :
Christ came to save a planet of lunatics. G.K. Chesterton
Cliff's insane comment would appear to be a neat illustration of Chesterton's assertion.
There is an argument (I made part of this at one of the Blackhat questions) that goes that we have ~30 years of failure to produce a DBMS system that can at once handle information of >1 level of classification and perform well enough to be used. The methods and systems used were however such that instead of DBMS systems one could be talking of any kind of computing systems or networks. It appears then that our technology is not able to support computing systems that attempt to keep some information secret (but not all), and at the same time perform well, where the amount of such information is above a rather small amount.
While this argument needs sharpening, it has implications for privacy information (predicting that such info WILL leak and policy should be drawn presuming it will) and for some intellectual property considerations, as well as many more.
It is not entirely a counsel of despair; some efforts I am dealing with may cut fraud by drastically reducing the amount of information that people have which needs to be considered sensitive (it becomes more like people having multiple phone numbers then). However the kinds of things that go wrong with such efforts have to do with most every information flow involving multiple sensitivity levels of information breaking the multilevel security data flow rules. Every effort I know of (including my own) "got around" that by building and/or positing trusted code to handle the functions, which inside one system can kinda/sorta be tweaked to run fast enough that the usefulness problem looks soluble.
The thought that our technology in some sense can protect only a limited and rather small amount of information is however daunting and certainly current experience seems to show that we are, and have been for a long time, asking our systems to keep more secrets than they can keep.
The foregoing is offered in hopes it may provoke thought and reaction. Please avoid simple hate mail; the question is seriously meant and the possible implications may be worth serious and wider consideration.
- gce
If you were an Aristotlean, as most religious people are, despte their protestations, you have to __believe__ that nature abhors a vacuum, in spite of what our collective experience in outer space shows/tells you.
Its like living in a universe where the phlogiston theory actually works.
People are so stupid.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Pro Choice is logical and defines the choice of the Mother to determine whether she will or will not choose to have an abortion, and whether or not she will choose to raise the child or have it adopted out.
Allowing the government to intrude and remove such a private decision is contrary to the founders intent that Liberty extends to one's personal life choices.
With logic and reason we would respect the notion that Life does not begin at conception--life never ends: it is continuous as all elements adhere to the Law of Conservation of Energy. All matter is transmutated.
Sound Philosophy and Religion with Reason recognizes the continuum of Life which embraces Death/Daath.
Pro Choice and Pro-Death are logical positions which demand that protection of the Individual is paramount. Nature views defective parts as a disease to the growth of the system. It erradicates the disease.
Hiding the malignant parts from Society who murder individuals [clearly proven through conclusive evidence] with premeditated intent often sensationalizes the murderer and has ballooned the costs of the Legal System. Of course that cost is nothing compared to the ballyhooed War on Drugs façade that has created millions of babysitting jobs for the millions of individuals draining the system resources and going through rehab when they have no desire to be rehabilitated. I've gone adjacent to the topic so I'll stop here.
[A]gainst abortion but in favour of the death penalty
This isn't contrarian at all. This is water-tight.
Look at the liberal position:
In favour of abortion but against the death penalty
This is a striking moral contradiction. The Left actually supports the killing of unborn children but not convicted murderers.
Well, one only has to look at the past idols of leftist ideology to see how flippant the Left are in their disregard of mass murder (Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh). Maybe this explains how their position on abortion and capital punishment might not contrarian. It just requires society to completely discard its standards of morality and natural justice.
"What's so unusual about that, and why is it people always think "typical slashdotters" always think alike?"
Statistics, and Psychology.
Last I checked, the Bush administration is hiking federal government spending up to such astronomical levels that even the most bleeding heart big government liberals would be made proud.
Why don't you come back to me after Bush raises the Social Security wage cap from $90000 to $140000 (the biggest effective marginal income tax increase in the history of the country) and then let's see you try to say with a straight face that the liberals are causing government to meddle with our financial lives.
While I'm pro-abortion and anti-death penalty, I don't see the conflict in the Republican stance there. Their stance is that unborn babies (presumably) haven't committed any crimes (yet), so they have a right to life.
- Worldly rather than spiritual.
- Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body: secular music.
- Relating to or advocating secularism.
- Not bound by monastic restrictions, especially not belonging to a religious order. Used of the clergy.
- Occurring or observed once in an age or century.
- Lasting from century to century.
[Middle English, from Old French seculer, from Late Latin saeculris, from Latin, of an age, from saeculum, generation, age.]Now, where does this "Heathenous" come from?
1. Abortion/Death Penalty Issue:
This is not an inconsistency. Republicans are against abortion because they feel that it harms society (i.e. that it involves killing of innocent children), but for the death penalty because they feel it helps protect society (i.e. protecting society from its criminals), and that is the definition of conservatism, that government should protect society.
Democrats (and Libertarians too, for that matter) are pro-choice because either they feel that it interferes with civil liberties (i.e. the woman's "free choice" as to whether or not to have a child). That is the same reason why they are anti-death penalty, because they feel it interferes with the civil liberties (of the convicted criminal).
2. "Information wants to be free"
I don't think this is an entirely accurate statement with regards to how Slashdotters feel about information. There are the right-wing (libertarian) Slashdotters (such as myself) who feel that governments should be restricted so that our privacy may be protected, but fully agree with the right of a Slashdotter to form agreements with businesses (though they are against legal rights and subsidies being granted to corporations) and possibly lose privacy rights in exchange for a good or service. This is more due to the fact that governments hold power, and that is the reason why the power must be restricted. In the libertarian dream (anarcho-capitalism) government is by subscription or from self-defense, and this wouldn't be an issue.
The left-wing (liberal) Slashdotters go a step further and say that corporations must be controlled as well as governments. In the liberal dream (democracy, here meaning majority rule) the majority of the people would control the minority corporations with regards to issues such as privacy and copyrights.
Here is one example. Take Digital Rights Management. Right-wing (libertarian) Slashdotters would argue that laws such as the DMCA prevent DRM from being circumvented as it should be and that copy protection should be played out in the free market. Left-wing (liberal) Slashdotters would argue that not only should the DMCA be repealed, but that DRM should be outlawed.
How a rational mind can be both anti-abortion and pro-death penalty is quite easy. I'm bothered that that was such a heavy slant.
It's called "pro-innocence." We believe that an unborn child is innocent and therefore deserves to live. Actually, American case law supports that notion. The old Baby M case (couple contracted to have a surrogate mother who decided to violate the contract and keep the child held to be no breach because it is preferable to welcome life than enforce a contract) is a fine example of that.
We believe that a convicted murderer--especially in this day of civil liberties and forensic science, is not innocent. Furthermore, he has deprived another of life and therefore "cannot complain when he is called to account."
I suppose the pro-abortion/anti-death penalty hold the view that freedom should be so wide that a woman can kill her child and a murderer be free when he kills. So, how is it that that group complains when they support unjustifiable killings?
Just remember when you mod me down--I'm Right.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
It's the typical inability to differentiate between clearly seperate items. Let me explain with the obvious abortion/death laws:
You say that it's silly for people to want no abortion and want the death penaltly. And, upon first, and most obvious, glance it does appear a bit odd. But then one realizes a key difference: An unborn baby, fetus, child, w/e you like to call it is clearly much different from a convicted capital felon. That comparison seems quite silly at first glance as well doesn't it?
That's why that statement should always be said as a joke, and is usually a good rule of thumb to tell the difference between an intelligent liberal and a feely-touchy liberal (usually: Academic liberal or all other liberals).
Now, free information verse privacy. You see, first one must realize that the information which people want to be free is of a different nature than that which people want to be private. You must also understand that by free they mean more then widely visible: They mean everyone participates in making it. They're not talking about the cheapest printing press ever, they're thinking like a Wiki.
But some kinds of information gain nothing from being modified: Personal information for one. Medical records, even court records (although court records are public records for other reasons).
You see, if one charges for information it immediately loses its ability to be modified by the second (buying) party. They're not going to be allowed to resale it (Copyrights ensure that). They won't be able to modify it and give it away. If they reference it people will have to pay to see if they were just lying; and if it's expensive they may be unwilling too: Giving one more access to simply lying in their published works.
So, even price can affect freedom.
Information doesn't want to be free, but I do.
"I don't agree with you but I would die for your right to say that..." Um sure- I have never heard a vet say that- I mean, I wouldn't put my life on the line and die so that someone is free to say that the US sucks...
Ok I'll say, and have said, it. I disagree with what you say but I support your right to say it.
I said it before I was in the army, while I was in, and after I got out of the army.
People often say one thing to hypotheticals, but it is very different in reality.
I have to totally agree with this, a person can't say with total accuracy how they'll react to a given situation without first having been in the same or a similar situation.
Let the blood of the infantry run through your veins
That's what I was, MOS 11B, small arms specialist, commonly called infantry or grunt.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Other people's information wants to be free. My information is private.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
How can those courts claim to be diligent and unbiased in their determination that the evidence of a crime points to the guilt of the accused beyond the shadow of a doubt, when those same courts sanction the execution of those never even accused of any crime. They have gone so far as to begin not just allowing but *ordering* the execution even of adults who have not even been accused. (And Terri Schiavo was not the first - just the first with national attention.)
The UK courts have now announced that any one who is "terminally ill" may be starved to death - a moniker that could be applied to every one of us, it is just a matter of how long.
*sigh*
The reason you can't understand why someone would be for the death penalty and against abortion is because the concept of contention is NOT, I repeat NOT about life vs death.
Too many people seem to think in one dimension only. The reason that someone can "hold two opposing ideas at the same time" is because ideas are very rarely diametrically opposed; more often you find yourself confused at their behavior because you lack the information they are privvy to, or they lack the information you have.
With regards to information being free vs privacy, once again you are approaching the discussion with a visible naivety.
"Information" comes in many forms, whether it be a news report, internal memos from a company, national statistics, your buddy's homework, or what your neighbor had for dinner last night.
One point of contention is what the result of withholding said information will be.
Will withholding what your neighbor ate for dinner cause any moral issues? Not unless he's Hannibal Lector.
Will withholding news cause problems? Sure, if it's deceiving an entire population into supporting an illegal war.
Or let's take another point of view:
If a large corporation or government agency gains a lot of information on a person, they are sufficiently large and powerful to coerce or otherwise infringe upon that person's freedom.
Conversely, were that individual to know how the said corporation or government agency works, he will be able to mount some kind of defense against them.
Protecting information (from being hid, and from being revealed) is about keeping a civilization healthily informed about the world around them, the mighty forces that influence them, and protecting them from malicious forces who would strike at the weak.
To call for a simplistic argument such as "free information vs privacy" is childish and irresponsible.
To adapt a quote I've seen elsewhere:
Arguing about politics on Slashdot is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still a retard.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not to be a pedantic jerk, but it's generally poor logical form to argue for the invalidity of a position from the negative consequences that would arise if it were true. Unless you are an amoral pragmatist (and if that's your bag baby, then hey, go with it) then you must assume that arguments of value must proceed from axioms that grant value, and those truth values are not dependant upon their possibly negative consequences.
For a topical example, if a person believes that abortion is wrong because they believe that a fetus is a human being, it is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of that statement that a consequence of treating a fetus like a human being is that many of them will be born as children in destitute poverty, or worse. Even if infanticide were the order of the day, it would still not affent the objective truth value of the status of the fetus (one way or the other).
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Please be explicit. You are changing every second until there is no longer a "you" to speak of. In any case, the question should be "sufficiently", not "fully".
Information *does* want to be free. It doesn't value my privacy. I, who do value my privacy, don't want certain information to be free.
But, in case you haven't noticed, that's a difficult thing to achieve. Thereby proving the first proposition.
Libertarians and Socialists are both hopeless idealists. Libertarians tend to believe that Governments are Bad and the Private Sector is Good. Socialists tend to believe that Corporations are Bad and Government is Good.
If I may, I'd like to suggest a compromise position: Governments, individuals, and corporations are BOTH potentially "bad," which is why we need a society with checks and balances. The government has to keep an eye on individuals to keep them from shooting each other and so forth, and it has to keep an eye on corporations to keep them from oppressing and controlling people. But at the same time, people need to keep an eye on their government and on corporations to safeguard their rights. And to complete the trifecta, corporations need to look after their own interests if we're to have any economic or technological progress.
Like pretty much everything else in life, the answer here is balance. We don't want ALL information to be freely available to everyone, because the potential for abuse would be too high. We also don't want governments or corporations (or worst of all, corporate governments) to have a stranglehold on information. The trick is finding that balance, which tends to involve few flashy rhetorical flourishes and a lot of details. Which is why this thread contains 500 grandiose posts like this one and zero detailed discussions of the issue.
I'm guessing Viet Nam, which, if I understand it correctly was conducted like no war had ever been conducted before in history (until it got repeated in Iraq. You know what I mean, "Victory is around the corner, just stay there a little bit longer, spend a little bit more money, and we're done!").
Good, now we can split off and argue about Iraq. Can it get any more offtopic now? ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
I support your Ideal Case most wholehartedly.
I would add that anyone can look up anything about anybody else, but this too is being monitored and reported to everyone who's information is beeing looked up.
For example, I can look up what you just had for breakfast [ooh, blueberry Pop-Tarts!] but, the moment I did, you (and anyone else who wants to know) can find out that I just found out what you had for breakfast. I also know that you know that I just looked up what you had for breakfast, and so on.
Sure anyone and everyone is a spy, but you get to know just who is spying on whom. Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
All information is not created equally -- something this submitter is deliberately glossing over.
Privacy means keeping information that could be used to harm you from public access.
"Information wants to be free" means that stuff that obviously already belongs to the public -- a song you know by heart, for instance -- cannot be effectively kept "private" or otherwise controlled. This does not include my medical records and bank account information. It does include a joke I once made up.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Then 73% = 100IQ. If there's a SD of 6%, then 79%-85% will be above average, ranging from 100 - 110 IQ, scores 86-92 will be gifted, ranging from 111-120IQ. And so on. It is called norm referenced, as are all standardized tests.
crap. anything 90-110 will be considered average. above average will be 110-120. gifted 120-130. 130+ i think is highly gifted, above 140 or 150 (i think 3 SD or 4SD) is genius. I'm not an expert on IQ test result nomenclature, just know how they score them. I deal with it alot where I teach. Every parent tells me there kid is a freakin genus. Oy vey.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Really, what difference does it make? In order to have "intelligence", one must declare you to be intelligent. Funny how people are arguing about the idea of information being free when in reality, when it comes down to it - we're just believing what we're told.
/in-'tel-&-j&nt/ adjective --intelligently adverb
intelligence ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-tl-jns)
n.
The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
The faculty of thought and reason.
Superior powers of mind. See Synonyms at mind.
An intelligent, incorporeal being, especially an angel.
Information; news. See Synonyms at news.
Secret information, especially about an actual or potential enemy.
An agency, staff, or office employed in gathering such information.
Espionage agents, organizations, and activities considered as a group: "Intelligence is nothing if not an institutionalized black market in perishable commodities" (John le Carré).
[Download Now or Buy the Book]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
intelligence (n-tl-jns)
n.
The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, especially toward a purposeful goal.
An individual's relative standing on two quantitative indices, namely measured intelligence, as expressed by an intelligence quotient, and effectiveness of adaptive behavior.
Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Main Entry: intelligence
Pronunciation: in-'tel-&-j&n(t)s
Function: noun
1 a : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations b : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
2 : mental acuteness --intelligent
Source: Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
intelligence
n 1: the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience [ant: stupidity] 2: a unit responsible for gathering and interpreting information about an enemy [syn: intelligence service, intelligence agency] 3: secret information about an enemy (or potential enemy); "we sent out planes to gather intelligence on their radar coverage" [syn: intelligence information] 4: new information about specific and timely events; "they awaited news of the outcome" [syn: news, tidings, word] 5: the operation of gathering information about an enemy [syn: intelligence activity, intelligence operation]
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
intelligence
intelligence: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary
Source: On-line Medical Dictionary, © 1997-98 Academic Medical Publishing & CancerWEB
...to many submitters of this place. Data cannot be free, or enslaved. Data is public or secret (guarded, shielded, whatever ).
Apart from the silly meaning of "free" in the sense of "gratis", i.e. "not for money", only living beings that have intentionality can be free.
And then something else: there are two ( 2 ) kinds of freedom. The "lower" one is the freedom people are talking about here: freedom FROM, e.g. tyranny, oppression, injustice... There is a higher sort of freedom: freedom TO, e.g to do something, to go somewhere, to love, to hate...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
All knowledge should be freely available to every human at all times. What I mean is that, when it comes to any information, technology, medical breakthrough, the ingredients to Dr. Pepper, or anything else that could benefit the all the human race, then it should be free available to everybody. As for privacy... It is nobody's business what I write in an email to my girlfriend, what kind of hentai I look at, or my personal financial history.
Maybe because 'The people have a right to know' isn't the same thing as 'knowing everything about our people'.
Anyway, when people say 'information wants to be free' - they don't necessarily meen *they* want it to be free! What they meen is *it* wants to be free (i.e. juicy information/data is hard to keep secret) and once it's out there on the internet, it stays out there.
Coding Monkey.org - Spanging the heavy spade of truth into t
It's simple, really:
1) overcome fear and 19th- / 20th century attitudes regarding privacy ( donot forget that, after all, privacy is a relatively recent invention, adopted by the bourgeois Europeans in the 19th century )
2) be transparent, and let ALL your data be open and accessible. Your shopping behavior.
Although attitude 2) seems crazy, in this moment, its adoption on a wide scale would yield a quite massive push for development of new technologies that guard a transparent person from malicious use of his - publicly accessible - data.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
People, it was not a troll. I was genuinely interested in the information privacy/liberty thing.
The reason it came across as troll-ish was because the trivial example of contradictory ideas I used was - I realise now - inflammatory to about half of Americans, who seem to be about 90% of Slashdotters.
See here for full explanation:
Re:This is the BESTEST TROLL EVAR!!!! by thetan (Score:1) Friday August 05, @01:39PM
To all those wishing to engage in me debate about the death penalty, abortion, separation of church and state and other uninteresting issues: I'm not going to help you untangle your fucked up worldview.
(If you're desperate to have your say, why don't you run along to my blog and post on the forum there?)
To those who stayed on-topic with thoughtful replies, thanks for your discussion. I read and appreciated them.
To those who've emailed me with back-slapping congratulatory emails about "good troll" and "take that slashweenies" etc - it was not my intent, so save your praise.
-Thetan.
Add an unnecessary quote at the top of the page, why?
AS for the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd all three of us agree that the whole apparent opposition is a read herring. When people way information wants to be free the information they are talking about does not overlap much with the information that "wants to be free".
No one has a problem with personal information being kept secret (except perhaps in cases where there is a genuine public interest). What we do have a problem with are: 1) publicly distributing information with excessive restrictions on what you can do with it and 2) keeping information that ought to be public secret.
18 years of punishment for just having sex? And not just on the mother, on the father who has to pay to keep the littl;e bastard alive, and the little bastard him/herself for being forced into a life where (s)he is unwanted.
Damn you're one sick and evil SOB. That's more than most murderers get.
"pro-life" is just another term for "an abomination of pure unadulterated evil, punishing innocent, uneducated, and irresponsible alike". Stick that on your damn banner and wave it.
What you need is a law allowing people unfettered access to any true fact, but at the same time forbidding the use of information not specifically volunteered in any decision-making process. So, for instance, unless someone specifically tells you that they are a 27-year-old bisexual asian female, you must assume in all dealings with them that they might be any age, sex, race and preference.
.....}
{Like the instructions "place each foot on the opposite thigh" or "fill in the grid so that the numbers one to nine occur exactly once in each row, column or 3x3 square", that probably is a lot harder than it sounds; since people would effectively be obliged to keep secrets from themselves and feign ignorance all over the place. But it'd work just fine
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Really.
ABCDE
The information which we want to be free has already been released or exists, but others are attempting to restrict it. They publish information but then say you can only read it once, or for a number of days, and can't let anyone else read it, etc. And all those restrictions are artificial and tyrannical to implement.
I don't think people would mind if people desired to keep their songs to themselves. Or if they would let them be free. Not some middle way.
If I have information, I might want to keep it private. Borders or Barnes and Noble could have an online ordering which would just involve an order number where I could pick things up at a local store same day and pay cash, but they don't. I can pay online with shipping, but they collect that info.
There is no "right" to information about me, even if it is true. Much of it is created without my consent, sometimes without my knowledge. As that information gets created, I become property or something to be analyzed, not a person.
(rant)
The same slashdot crowd that absolutely hates dogma so wants to ban even any discussion that Darwin might have been wrong in "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", but lets just not mention the Favored Races part or the other Eugenics stuff that makes everyone but neonazis squeamish.
Speaking of Eugenics and Nazis - The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger who wrote "The Pivot of Civiliation" (project gutenberg has it as an etext, among other places: http://www.textlibrary.com/TITLE/pivot/), she was at least consistent on abortion and such for the purpose of applying darwinism to humans.
Republicans aren't inconsistent, they just want the unborn to have a fair trial and several years of appeals and other due process before being aborted.
Democrats somehow don't want capital punishment with even a 24 hour waiting period to reconsider. Arrest and trial is far less efficient, ought not the policeman exercise a "choice" with his gun?
Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
If we are all going to just ignore each other anyways, why have the ability to know every intimate detail of any person's life? If that is the case, the people that will use that power will have a large advantage over those that don't. Thus, we have the system we have now except that those who would control us can now access our information even more easily.
I know that you said that there would be a system in place that would allow you to know if someone looked at your data. The possible complexity and ineffectiveness of such a system aside, there is no such thing as perfect security. At some point, someone will be able to examine your entire life without you even knowing about it. Even if this security system was perfect in that you always had knowledge of people accessing your information, whats to stop some nefarious person from using a puppet? Someone in their employ with a spotless record. You might then just say, "Oh, well that's just John Smith that works at the local church, why would he do anything bad with that information that places me at an anti-government rally last year?" I just do not see how having no anonymity benefits society.
Fitzgerald may have repeated the idea that a so-called "first rate intelligence" can hold two opposing ideas at the same time, but it was John Keats who first (?) expressed the idea in the 19th century as "negative capability." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_Capability
More specifically, Keats said that negative capability is: "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason"
Anyway, just thought you may be tickled by a similar idea.
Sorry, thetan, but I don't see anything at all contrarian about the desire to preserve innocent life, and terminate a sufficiently guilty one.
:-)
One might call that process "Evolution".
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
In an age when we can grow an embryo in a lab and soon be able to clone humans outright, there's no reason for abortion not to be legal. Let's stop pretending we have some amazing worth as spiritual beings and start realizing that we are but a series of biological and chemical processes that can be re-created easier than many think.
From Paula Poundstone's standup routine:
"He's against abortion, but for capital punishment. Spoken like a true fisherman. Throw 'em back, kill 'em when they're bigger!"
-----
Kvetch is Yiddish for "throw an exception" --Dr. Ron Cytron
When will people learn the difference between information such as source code, Karl Rove memos, and planetary discoverins is not the same thing as someone's medical records, or a college student's grade report. Information needs to be free. Personal data should remain private. It's not that hard, people.
You raise a good point. I think one response would be, "Hmm, John Smith himself has a spotless general record. Who is using him as a front?"
And you'd have access to that information as well.
Whatever 'the system' turns out to be, it would be complete and total surveilance.
Everyone is a watchman and everyone is watching everyone else. Only when everyone can be assured of absolutely no privacy whatsoever can we all be truly safe.
There would be no privacy haves and no privacy have nots.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just a pipe dream; there will always be inequalities and those that exploit them.
The conservative viewpoint is even stranger. They spend just as much money as liberals, but they don't want to raise taxes to pay for the spending. Hence, record deficits.
Perhaps you disagree? Then I challenge you to point to a single instance where the current administration has cut spending meaningfully. You won't find any. You might find instances where the rate of spending growth has slowed, but that just means conservatives spend equal amounts as liberals.
You're just arguing semantics, right?
Or is it that you really don't understand what people are getting at when they state, however sloppily, that "information wants to be free?"
You can define data to be either public or secret, and this does not contradict the assertion that "information wants to be free," when you understand what such a statement is intended to mean.
Suppose we define that some information is public, while other information is secret. It is very easy for a piece of information to make the transition from being secret to being public. However once some information is published, it is then difficult or impossible to make it secret again. Information which was always public, is similarly impossible to secretize.
Therefore, given that there will be transitions, what do you suppose the natural trend will be?
"That which is secret will tend to become public."
This simple point may be all that some people intend to convey with the statement that "information wants to be free." However when you ponder the social consequences of the point itself, it becomes clear that this is a matter of great significance, and that there are many momentous things which one might wish to summarize with a single phrase.
Like it or not, "information wants to be free" is what those who wish to communicate this volume of understanding have settled upon.
Ponder it more as you would a zen koan. Any superficial contradiction should not be a stumbling block, but rather a supportive sign that you need to see a little deeper. There is meaning to be found in the phrase, "information wants to be free." Quite a bit of it.
Ssssshhh! Don't criticize socialism here! You'll ruin their idealistic dreams!
(Granted, they were crushed by reality in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empire collapsed. But most of the socialists posting here were probably just entering 1st grade about that time, and had no understanding of the significance of that event. Nor have more than a couple of them studied economics beyond introductory micro and macro, if they've studied even *that* much...)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
"Information wants to be free" and "Privacy is gold" are two side of the same coin. Not only are they not contradictory but they both follow from the same idea that "The personal information process is a personal desition"
"information wants to be free" should be read "people should be allowed to broadcast any information they want to broadcast".
While "privacy is gold" is "people should be allowed to conceal any information they want to conceal"
Information wants to be free + Privacy is gold = Talk when you want + shut up when you want = Free speach.
But... the future refused to change.
Justice? Holy smokes, dude! Philosophers have never agreed whether or not such a thing as Justice even exists.
And Co-Discovery?
I must have failed to mention that the water source in the analogy sprang from a magic conch shell kept locked inside the greedy man's kitchen cupboard.
Attempting to codify moral behavior is downright impossible because the variations of human behavior approach the infinite. (Thank goodness!) There is an appropriate time for EVERYTHING under the sun, theft included. The law is a general guide, and sometimes the law is corrupt and runs counter to rational thinking.
When Chaos threatens to overwhelm Life, the Hero is the Lawman.
When Order threatens to overwhelm Life, the Thief becomes the Hero.
--Except, of course, when it doesn't work that way.
Those who attempt to codify Life, will always end up losing their hair or living in ever expanding denial structures. (Except, of course, when it doesn't work that way either!)
-FL
You rationalize everything. In a civil society, we agree on rules because we need to. We follow them because to be uncivil, you become a detriment to those that have.
Yes, civil disobedience can be used to effectively protest conditions, but then, as a consequence, society (the civil) looks at whether it's cogent to adopt the protester's demands or needs or accomodations.
Theft is theft. It's not an absolute, and the philosophers needn't agree because they don't apply philosophy. But civil behavior warrants describing the tone and tenor of behavior between people and groups.
Philosophers, like Kant, Pascal, and many others have had a great influence on how that system of laws and desired interpersonal behavior contexts can and do work.
Theft is still theft. Your attempt to abstract it doesn't justify it it. Take responsibility for your actions, rather than make behavior a loosey-goosey sort of find a rationalism-to-fit sort of existence.
There are no absolutes, but that's a good thing; there are certainly tenets that bear examination, rather than rationalization.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.