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Wikileaks Needs Help, and Not Just Money
st1d writes to tell us that Wikileaks has put out a call for help. However, instead of just asking for money, they have also suggested technical and legal avenues for support. In the site's short life, Wikileaks has been at the center of many breaking scandals and investigations. "Wikileaks is currently overloaded by readers. This is a regular difficulty that can only be resolved by deploying additional resources. If you support our mission, you can help us by integrating new hardware into our project infrastructure or developing software for the project. Become patron of a WikiLeaks server or other parts of our technology, adding more pillars to the stability and balance of the WikiLeaks platform. Servers come trouble-free and legally fortified, software is uniquely challenging. If you can provide rackspace, power and an uplink, or a dedicated server or storage space, for at least 12 months, or software development work for WikiLeaks, please write to wl-supporters@sunshinepress.org."
For once, the article submitter isn't lying!
Freenet has been slow and hard to use in the past, but its improved quite a bit. It is the obvious platform for something like Wikileaks. Of course, there is nothing to prevent people from mirroring content on the web (since installing Freenet, like any piece of software, is a hassle). But at least there will be an unimpeachable backup of all data on Freenet.
Wikileaks are asking for help at a time when people are financially struggling. If the aspects of the internet that enhance personal freedom depend on people committing their time and resources, this is a dangerous time.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Wouldn't "The Cloud" solve all of WikiLeaks problems?
I'll host one image for them, no larger than 128x128px off my own web server on a DSL line. I know it's not much but it's all I can offer in today's recessionary times
I downloaded ba-038-air-traffic-control-tape.wmv from wikileaks and distributed it to a few co-workers and friends. I don't have the resources to run a full mirror but I would be happy to mirror that file. If wikileaks had the ability to point to mirrors for specific files and verify the MD5s of the files on an ongoing basis then some load could be taken off their servers.
I suppose a sneaky mirror host could serve different files to different IP addresses though but I can't immediately see a reason for that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
good idea but unfortunately the 'unwashed masses' only support HTTP, and if the unwashed masses don't have any access to this information then it loses credibility and becomes more of a geek conspiracy theory group. As we all know its very hard to get something done if the unwashed masses don't realise the problem and are therefore unwilling to support you.
You know, the people who think that the only way to get an iPhone is to buy it locked (if they even understand the concept of a SIM-lock) and on a long contract with a huge telco.
Jokes based on racial stereotypes can be funny, but the GGP's comment wasn't a joke at all, it was just a nonsensical statement with something about Native Americans.
It's really funny though. If you make a joke about the mean, bad, imperialist pigdog Americans you get a +5 Funny - but woe on those who dare to play jokes on other racial or cultural stereotypes...
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Does the "fresh air" resulting from my publishing that you like to wear women's clothing and are having an affair with a male cubicle mate make you less inclined to indulge that behaviour?
Yes, actually, it probably would. But I agree: for the average citizen that information should remain private. However, public figures have to play by different rules, at least under U.S. law, and if those public figures happen to be people who make decisions that affect me ... you're damn right I want to know about it. I may want to vote against them next time.
Yours takes the form of a zero-tolerance policy that, by definition, precludes any such requirements, or any thinking generally.
The only zero-tolerance around here I see is yours. I made no such statement, and quite deliberately limited my remarks to governments and corporations that do bad things to people. And yes, if a corporation has dirty laundry it should be aired: they have way too much power in most societies as it is, and coverups rarely do any long-term good. The more the business world gets away with murder (in many cases, literally) the more comfortable they're going to feel in continuing their bad behavior. And as for government ... well, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish but the same arguments apply. The disease of unaccountability is infecting more and more levels of government and corporate leadership, and there's only one way to put a stop to that.
... but don't make shit up. That's just irritating.
So feel free to disagree
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm surprised nobody yet thought up a BitTorrent analogue for HTTP - to offload/share traffic from busy sites.
I guess latencies are the problem, but faced with information being not available at all, higher latencies are probably a good compromise.
Sites like Wikipedia or WikiLeaks could definitely benefit from such technology.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Do you need an explanation of this in kindergarten level?
There is 30 people in your class;
Out of those, 29 of them make a joke about 1 of them.
vs
That 1 boy makes a joke out of those 29 people.
Is it a same situation?
I post this in the expectation group-think will mark the comment down as a "troll" and it will come back and bite you bunch of bastards down the line.
Ah yes. The old "if you mod me down, I'll become stronger than you can ever imagine!" ploy. In this case though, you're just crazy.
As for your refugees comment, why would someone want to post the refugee information online where everyone can see it, rather than just send it to whoever is doing the slaughtering? Plausible deniability? Right. Because when sending troops to slaughter refugees, you will care about an email that says "refugees be here".
Face it: the only thing that is useful to be distributed online is something that someone has, but can't do anything with it. Instead, it is distributed for the world to see so that someone, somewhere, can pick it up in full view of everyone watching, and run with it. And that's just not the mode of operation of someone committing a crime.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Making a potentially offensive joke and then complaining about the moderators not getting the humor in it is also being an ass. So is continuing to post when the mass of "offtopic" moderators would prefer you to leave quietly.
BTW, I quite honestly had no idea that your "probably Native American" post was supposed to be funny.
...that I can't afford to be the legal test case for running a Tor exit node or a Wikileaks server, much as I believe in both of these projects. And I would imagine there are many who, while they possess the desire and the technical know-how to engage in such activities, simply cannot be expected to do so without some form of legal immunity (or at least a guarantee of unlimited legal representation). Until that time comes, I simply don't see many people stepping forward with offers of hosting assistance.
Perhaps an effort should be made to secure guaranteed legal representation from the EFF, FSF, and other groups for those who volunteer to run exit nodes, servers, etc.
A career that was ruined because something became publicly available is a career that should be ruined
What if the "something" that became publicly available had absolutely no direct bearing on the career of the person (ie sex scandal)? Could this not be a reason for why the U.S has so many seemingly perfect, dull, boring politicians that are good at playing the game, but bring no dynamicism to the political arena?
I'm the type that understands that sometimes backroom deals are best left in the backroom, and that people should stop interfering and meddling in personal affairs. Context is everything, and your black vs white argument might be right in some situations, but very wrong in others.
I agree that wikileaks needs to exist, and it gives freedom to those of us with less power and connections. Still, the power it has can be wielded wrongly, turning people like you into those that you're railing against. Your argument makes it sound like you would like power more than you would fairness.
I've often wondered if it is possible to involve the community in hosting websites like Wikileaks and Wikipedia. A large part of the cost these organizations have is the hardware and bandwidth required to serve the content. However, this content is mostly static. It seems to me it ought to be easy to set up an extensive mirroring system for such content. It also seems to me that it ought to be able to set up a system where people can contribute a bit of disk space and other computer resources and form part of a sort of distributed hosting system. I think Freenet does something like this, and even optimizes things by moving frequently requested content closer to where it is being requested.
Can we set up such a system for the worldwide web? Is there any existing software package that makes this possible? Can we write one? Or can we perhaps modify open source web browsers so that distributed hosting can really work?
I think I speak for many others when I say that I have plenty of disk space, bandwidth, and CPU cycles available, but my capacity to support worthy causes financially is rather limited. So if I could contribute my computer resources, I think I could help out a lot more then I can by making donations. So if we have the technology to make that possible, let's start using it! And if we don't have the technology, let's build it!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Theres nothing funny about racist jokes. Leave that junk on 4chan and Digg.
I disagree. And let me point out that, as someone of Greek extraction, I personally have been the butt of many jokes over the years ("... so the Jew bent over, and the Greek disappeared", yeah I know, that's an oldie, but it manages to slam Jews, Italians and Greeks simultaneously.) I'm also part Irish, and if you have any awareness of ethnic humor at all you'd know how much ribbing I've taken from that part of my typically American polycultural background. "What do Irish do on their first date? Get drunk and have sex. What do the Irish do on their second date? Get drunk and have sex", etc., etc. Etc. Still, I accept them with good humor and in the spirit in which they were told. That's because I've found that people with high horses often fall off of them.
The way I look at this, if you're so goddamn proud of your heritage that you just can't stand to see anyone poke fun at it, well, you are the one with issues. In fact, maybe you aren't so proud of your background as you want other people to believe. Yes, it's true sometimes such "jokes" are told with mean-spirited intent: the best response then is to laugh uproariously and say to the teller, "Good one!", and file it away for future use. I've picked up quite a few that way.
Heck, I've got a fine collection of Greek and Irish jokes somewhere on my network here, and some of them are truly hysterical. My family and friends have all told them and laughed at them (and each other.) I'm also part German and if any of you have some good German jokes I'd appreciate your passing them along.
So it simply is not true that "racist" jokes are never funny. They're just not funny to certain people, and I feel sorry for them, because if you can't laugh at yourself then you have something wrong with you. Humor, racist or otherwise, is a powerful binding force that crosses racial boundaries like nothing else, if we let it.
Also, it's worth pointing out that the bulk of what human beings find "funny" is at someone else's expense, whether race is involved or not. That's just the way it is. Don't believe me? Just ask Moe, Larry or Curly (or Shemp, if you prefer.) Maybe the whole human race is mentally ill at some level, but trying to pretend that we don't find the discomfiture of others humorous at times is just denying what is. Such denial makes some individuals feel superior, I've noticed, but in reality they're just insecure and uptight.
The world is, and always will be, full of things that will offend us all at different times and different places. Learning to handle such affronts with grace and dignity is a major part of growing up.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.