You have a gun and I have a camera and we are walking around our neighborhood, say a block from your house.
If I am armed and you are travelling through a war zone with me, then we implicitly understand that our lives are at stake. At this point, getting shot at should NOT be a surprise.
Since we're indulging in a little make-believe, let's explore this a little further. If you are a journalist and I am an insurgent fighter, why are you following me into a war zone? Probably to film the imminent firefight between my group of fighters and the occupying Italians. Any Italian gunship crew in that position is going to light us up with gunfire, just like the American crew did. Whether I'm a foreign mercenary or an American patriot doesn't factor into their equation. They would be defending their brothers on the ground.
Why else were one or more journalists moving with armed men towards American troops? The group he was travelling with seemed a little too large for purely personal protection.
I don't condone the killing of civilians or war correspondents. However, in this case I think I can understand how it happened, and I don't attribute it to any malice on the part of the gunship crew. They were doing what they were there to do - protect their fellow GIs on the ground.
Whom is the insurgent? How would an Italian describe the situation?
I don't have much trouble figuring out who the insurgents are. By definition, insurgent forces fight against the established authority, while occupying forces project foreign authority. Engaging in a bit of sophism by renaming the occupiers as insurgents is an interesting rhetorical exercise, but it is just an exercise, and it doesn't change the truth on the ground in Iraq. So just to be clear, whether we are talking about an occupied Iraq or an occupied USA, the rebels are insurgents, and the invaders are the occupying force.
Furthermore, I don't buy into the moral equivalency of the two positions. Many of the "insurgents" in Iraq have no local patriotic ties, but are instead serving foreign agendas (albeit agendas that are better hidden) in a proxy war against America by killing Iraqi civilians, intentionally targeting women, children, and old men. I'd consider them more an occupying force than an insurgent one. So instead of asking who the real insurgent is, I'd ask who the real occupier is?
It would be as if the Canadians and Mexicans slipped over our borders (no double entendre intended regarding the Mexicans) and started blowing up innocent Americans in our churches and police stations to drive out the Italians.
No one in the world (95+%) views the situation like you describe it except media-educated US citizens.
That's an interesting distinction you draw there, between the "media-educated US citizen" and the 95% of the rest of the world. Exactly how does the other 95% of the world form their opinion on the matter? Surely not from first-hand experience. Throughout the world, news is not simply disseminated; it is shaped, filtered, edited, etc. by people and institutions with agendas. That's not unique to the US or any other locale.
Wikileaks is one such entity, and this article shows clearly that they are not unbiased or pure in their actions or motives.
If you want to be a well-educated consumer of media, read many sources from different points of view, including those you disagree with. What is covered and how it is covered will help you to see through the agendas being forced on you. Many of the 95% you speak of live in conditions that do not permit the freedom of communication (and therefore thought) you and I enjoy.
Furthermore, numbers aren't everything. Clearly your number is an approximation based on world population, not a survey of 6-point-something billion opinions, and the assumptions that a) everyone in the US agrees with each other, and b) everyone outside the US agrees with each oth
I don't see why they have to hire outsiders. I'm pretty sure that there are at least 10,000 government workers surfing the web full-time at work as it is, including at least one state senator.
Oh, wait, they want to test bandwidth that isn't paid for by the government. Sorry, my bad.
Some empty-handed locals, some locals with weapons
That's what insurgents look like. They kill Americans all the time. They were approaching an American position. That's who the helo pilots and gunners were there to stop.
initiate the killing of locals and journalists on the ground
You assume foreknowledge. Impossible for the gunner to tell he was killing journalists. As you mention, some of the guys on the ground were carrying weapons. They crew in the air were - to the best of their knowledge, - protecting their fellow soldiers on the ground who were being approached by armed men.
weaponless locals drives in and tries to rescue the wounded, but are also shot, along with their kids,
Again, that assumes foreknowledge that the helo crew can't possibly have. The van obviously opaque. There is no way to see whether the occupants are armed, or whether they were crazy and stupid enough to bring kids into a live-fire area.
Looks like murder of innocents to me.
Murder implies intent. For instance, a suicide bomber who detonates in front of a mosque is clearly targeting innocent civilians. That is murder of innocents. If murder was the plan, the Americans in the film sure botched it... they didn't even kill the kids. Instead, they ran them to an ambulance. If they just wanted to murder civilians, why not buzz a school, fire rockets, shoot up the classrooms? Obviously, that's not what they were after.
It was tragic. It was awful. It was an accident.
Look, I get the idea that this film fit your own preconceived notions about the war, which is why it is apparently easy for you to dismiss legitimate criticism from the NYT (not known for its conservative positions) about the film. You were right about one thing - the possibility of a propagandist disseminating a film like this. The heavy-handed editing done to the film makes it apparent that the people producing it don't want you to draw your own conclusions - they want to feed you the narrative they like best. I'd love to get my hands on the unedited footage. Maybe some of it would change my mind. Maybe some of it would change yours.
Among civilized people, there is a perfectly legitimate right to and expectation of privacy when communicating via electronic means. Witness the brouhaha over the Patriot Act, "warrantless wiretaps", etc., and various privacy laws around the globe. That's not to say that it wouldn't be trivial to violate those rights, but that it would be wrong. In fact, it's the kind of thing that Wikileaks would likely expose if it found evidence the US government did it.
I'd say that by using TOR, the users here were clearly seeking privacy, albeit imperfectly. Wikileaks apparently used this very fact to expose their secrets.
Make no mistake. Wikileaks is not here to help you or respect you and your rights in any way. They are here to help Wikileaks only. What benefit they may provide to the rest of us is only incidental to that fact, and is apparently bought at a cost. They have built their reputation on privacy for the whistleblower, but if this report is true, their lack of respect for privacy and confidentiality is rather surprising.
I'm worried for more reasons than just the probity of the data and editorial bias, which are important issues on their own. I am far more worried about what this means for privacy in general, and the extent to which the fourth estate will go in violating privacy freedoms to advance their own cause.
Where's the outrage, people? Let's just flip this picture around for a minute; what if someone (Wikileaks, maybe) ran a story saying that the US or Russian or Chinese govt had compromised TOR in the same way Wikileaks supposedly did? The howling from aggrieved civil libertarians on slashdot and elsewhere would make the outcry over the Patriot Act pitiful by comparison.
No. Let's say you are ratting out a bad guy who is likely monitoring your network (government, employer, etc.). If you forward incriminating documents via encrypted transmission what you sent is concealed, but the fact that you sent something, and the destination to which you sent it are not.
If you use TOR to cover your tracks, the destination may be obscured, but what you sent may be in the open if not protected by encryption above and beyond what TOR uses internally.
Or you could draw a picture of Mohammed screwing a 9 year old girl, which would at least be historically accurate. Of course, you'd probably also be violating the "enlightened" and "progressive" anti-free speech rules of various western countries regarding cartoon kiddie porn...
Whoosh. He is declaring himself an uneducated redneck twat because he refuses to kowtow to the PC establishment. In other words, he's saying what you're saying, but you don't realize it.
And I'm going to assume that you aren't American by your fundamental misunderstanding of the proper role of government and the natural rights of citizens. I'd suggest you read some Thomas Paine before looking down your nose at us and inferring that we don't understand others.
I'd suggest starting with Common Sense, and then reading The Rights of Man. The Gutenburg Project has them. To sum up, The rights we enjoy (including the right to view what we please) are natural, they are part of our being. They are not conferred upon us by government, and therefore cannot be withdrawn at the government's whim. Rather, government is erected by the people to secure these rights, not the other way around..
I do not think anyone on the internet really gets the choice whether to watch porn or not.
Not anyone? Really? Here's a partial list: My wife. My kids. My parents. Me, unless I'm looking for it. Millions of people on work PCs.
I know dozens of people, not computer experts, using regular PCs without pop-up blockers, who are not assaulted with internet porn. If you think someone can't venture online without encountering porn, you're doing it wrong. Furthermore, your incompetence is no excuse to prevent consenting adults from accessing legitimate adult-themed content.
You'll probably never come into contact with the titanium oxide, thanks to the plastic coating that traditionally keeps the data layers more or less protected. Plus, the outgassing from the plastic coating is likely way worse for you anyway.
Context. It's perfectly okay for Mike Rowe to use "poo" twenty times a minute on Dirty Jobs. Usually, he is referring to actual poo. Poop, crap, kaka, doo-doo, whatever. The title in question is a) representing a more vulgar term for the same stuff (one that for whatever obscure lexiconigraphical reasons, has been shunned by polite society long and often enough to be effectively a lingual outcast), and b) it is being used in a vulgar context (they aren't referring to literal shit, they are referring to "stuff" or "things" in a perjorative manner).
Personally, I say fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. (Which this obviously is.)
Yeah, but at least there are still manufacturers out there that still supply the blades (and manage to not go bankrupt doing it), and even some like Merkur who make a quality razor in the same style.
Sad when a company views simplicity, quality, and product longevity as restricting their revenue stream.
Comparison holds just fine. At the time, razors weren't plastic, in fact they were quite elegant chunks of metal with a rather satisfying weight to them. I use a 1970's era Gillette adjustable myself. Almost 40 years on, and it still works great, and getting blades is easy and cheap. I wonder if the same could be said for today's inkjet in 40 years.
Regardless, the razors were still sold as loss leaders, just like the printers.
Nice nick. I take issue with propaganda from the union president.
The teachers union did not defend him.
I'm sure that they did not defend his actions per se, but nonetheless, the contract between the union and the city keeps his salary flowing to him, despite ample evidence that he rightfully should have been terminated years ago, and the fact that he doesn't teach anymore because he's too dangerous to have around kids.
I'm sure that the union prez is right when he say the system is broken and doesn't work right for anyone. However, when he says
that the union "has made repeated attempts to work with the administration to resolve the rubber-room issue, but the administration has preferred to grandstand rather than solve it."
I take that to mean "It comes up as a bargaining chip at every contract negotiation, but the price we ask for giving up these losers is always too high, and the administration says no."
There are plenty of reasons to hate teachers' unions beyond the subject at hand. I've had frank discussions with teachers and administrators, and union rules provide a barrier to good teaching in most schools I've known. The sad thing is that the administrators are often so awful that the unions really are a necessary evil needed to protect good teachers from the system.
If you ever get the chance, sit down with a teacher (preferably a young one who still has his/her idealism intact) for a few drinks in a place where they don't have to worry about being overheard, and ask them for some stories about administration vs. union with the teacher (and kids) caught in the middle.
Defending a monopoly by claiming it is beneficial is nonsense. Normal market competition eliminates or marginalizes the "wounded gazelles". Monopoly abuse resulted in the destruction of otherwise viable, healthy companies and the technologies they developed. It also resulted in direct and indirect costs to consumers through reduced competition, and broken compatibility with standards.
Thanking MS for delivering Firefox to us is an exercise in selective hindsight. By the same token, you can't say what innovations would have happened ten years ago, had MS not destroyed companies like Wollongong. They also had a browser out... ever heard of them? 'course not... they were killed off early in the Internet boom, back when MS started bundling their browser.
In other words, the non-Microsoft market would have continued with their "browser extension of the week" methodology to lock people into their products, and would not have been forced to use standards conformance as a competition mechanism.
That is exactly what Microsoft did - broke standards conformance, forcing the entire internet to conform to their broken, proprietary software or be odd man out. Had they not been a monopoly, they would have been in no position to force it on the rest of the world, and their "innovations" would have died the miserable death they deserved.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a gun and I have a camera and we are walking around our neighborhood, say a block from your house.
If I am armed and you are travelling through a war zone with me, then we implicitly understand that our lives are at stake. At this point, getting shot at should NOT be a surprise.
Since we're indulging in a little make-believe, let's explore this a little further. If you are a journalist and I am an insurgent fighter, why are you following me into a war zone? Probably to film the imminent firefight between my group of fighters and the occupying Italians. Any Italian gunship crew in that position is going to light us up with gunfire, just like the American crew did. Whether I'm a foreign mercenary or an American patriot doesn't factor into their equation. They would be defending their brothers on the ground.
Why else were one or more journalists moving with armed men towards American troops? The group he was travelling with seemed a little too large for purely personal protection.
I don't condone the killing of civilians or war correspondents. However, in this case I think I can understand how it happened, and I don't attribute it to any malice on the part of the gunship crew. They were doing what they were there to do - protect their fellow GIs on the ground.
Whom is the insurgent? How would an Italian describe the situation?
I don't have much trouble figuring out who the insurgents are. By definition, insurgent forces fight against the established authority, while occupying forces project foreign authority. Engaging in a bit of sophism by renaming the occupiers as insurgents is an interesting rhetorical exercise, but it is just an exercise, and it doesn't change the truth on the ground in Iraq. So just to be clear, whether we are talking about an occupied Iraq or an occupied USA, the rebels are insurgents, and the invaders are the occupying force.
Furthermore, I don't buy into the moral equivalency of the two positions. Many of the "insurgents" in Iraq have no local patriotic ties, but are instead serving foreign agendas (albeit agendas that are better hidden) in a proxy war against America by killing Iraqi civilians, intentionally targeting women, children, and old men. I'd consider them more an occupying force than an insurgent one. So instead of asking who the real insurgent is, I'd ask who the real occupier is?
It would be as if the Canadians and Mexicans slipped over our borders (no double entendre intended regarding the Mexicans) and started blowing up innocent Americans in our churches and police stations to drive out the Italians.
No one in the world (95+%) views the situation like you describe it except media-educated US citizens.
That's an interesting distinction you draw there, between the "media-educated US citizen" and the 95% of the rest of the world. Exactly how does the other 95% of the world form their opinion on the matter? Surely not from first-hand experience. Throughout the world, news is not simply disseminated; it is shaped, filtered, edited, etc. by people and institutions with agendas. That's not unique to the US or any other locale. Wikileaks is one such entity, and this article shows clearly that they are not unbiased or pure in their actions or motives.
If you want to be a well-educated consumer of media, read many sources from different points of view, including those you disagree with. What is covered and how it is covered will help you to see through the agendas being forced on you. Many of the 95% you speak of live in conditions that do not permit the freedom of communication (and therefore thought) you and I enjoy.
Furthermore, numbers aren't everything. Clearly your number is an approximation based on world population, not a survey of 6-point-something billion opinions, and the assumptions that a) everyone in the US agrees with each other, and b) everyone outside the US agrees with each oth
Good question, and beyond my ability to answer with certainty, but my guess is "no".
I don't see why they have to hire outsiders. I'm pretty sure that there are at least 10,000 government workers surfing the web full-time at work as it is, including at least one state senator.
Oh, wait, they want to test bandwidth that isn't paid for by the government. Sorry, my bad.
Some empty-handed locals, some locals with weapons
That's what insurgents look like. They kill Americans all the time. They were approaching an American position. That's who the helo pilots and gunners were there to stop.
initiate the killing of locals and journalists on the ground
You assume foreknowledge. Impossible for the gunner to tell he was killing journalists. As you mention, some of the guys on the ground were carrying weapons. They crew in the air were - to the best of their knowledge, - protecting their fellow soldiers on the ground who were being approached by armed men.
weaponless locals drives in and tries to rescue the wounded, but are also shot, along with their kids,
Again, that assumes foreknowledge that the helo crew can't possibly have. The van obviously opaque. There is no way to see whether the occupants are armed, or whether they were crazy and stupid enough to bring kids into a live-fire area.
Looks like murder of innocents to me.
Murder implies intent. For instance, a suicide bomber who detonates in front of a mosque is clearly targeting innocent civilians. That is murder of innocents. If murder was the plan, the Americans in the film sure botched it ... they didn't even kill the kids. Instead, they ran them to an ambulance. If they just wanted to murder civilians, why not buzz a school, fire rockets, shoot up the classrooms? Obviously, that's not what they were after.
It was tragic. It was awful. It was an accident.
Look, I get the idea that this film fit your own preconceived notions about the war, which is why it is apparently easy for you to dismiss legitimate criticism from the NYT (not known for its conservative positions) about the film. You were right about one thing - the possibility of a propagandist disseminating a film like this. The heavy-handed editing done to the film makes it apparent that the people producing it don't want you to draw your own conclusions - they want to feed you the narrative they like best. I'd love to get my hands on the unedited footage. Maybe some of it would change my mind. Maybe some of it would change yours.
Bullshit.
Among civilized people, there is a perfectly legitimate right to and expectation of privacy when communicating via electronic means. Witness the brouhaha over the Patriot Act, "warrantless wiretaps", etc., and various privacy laws around the globe. That's not to say that it wouldn't be trivial to violate those rights, but that it would be wrong. In fact, it's the kind of thing that Wikileaks would likely expose if it found evidence the US government did it.
I'd say that by using TOR, the users here were clearly seeking privacy, albeit imperfectly. Wikileaks apparently used this very fact to expose their secrets.
Make no mistake. Wikileaks is not here to help you or respect you and your rights in any way. They are here to help Wikileaks only. What benefit they may provide to the rest of us is only incidental to that fact, and is apparently bought at a cost. They have built their reputation on privacy for the whistleblower, but if this report is true, their lack of respect for privacy and confidentiality is rather surprising.
I'm worried for more reasons than just the probity of the data and editorial bias, which are important issues on their own. I am far more worried about what this means for privacy in general, and the extent to which the fourth estate will go in violating privacy freedoms to advance their own cause.
Where's the outrage, people? Let's just flip this picture around for a minute; what if someone (Wikileaks, maybe) ran a story saying that the US or Russian or Chinese govt had compromised TOR in the same way Wikileaks supposedly did? The howling from aggrieved civil libertarians on slashdot and elsewhere would make the outcry over the Patriot Act pitiful by comparison.
No. Let's say you are ratting out a bad guy who is likely monitoring your network (government, employer, etc.). If you forward incriminating documents via encrypted transmission what you sent is concealed, but the fact that you sent something, and the destination to which you sent it are not.
If you use TOR to cover your tracks, the destination may be obscured, but what you sent may be in the open if not protected by encryption above and beyond what TOR uses internally.
Dear Lauren,
Please turn in your Blackberry. Pardon the pun, but you are simply too stupid to operate a smartphone. Good luck with your hospital bills.
Best regards,
- the rest of the world
Or you could draw a picture of Mohammed screwing a 9 year old girl, which would at least be historically accurate. Of course, you'd probably also be violating the "enlightened" and "progressive" anti-free speech rules of various western countries regarding cartoon kiddie porn ...
Whoosh. He is declaring himself an uneducated redneck twat because he refuses to kowtow to the PC establishment. In other words, he's saying what you're saying, but you don't realize it.
Maybe Google should do just that. You know, as sort of a Darwinian public service announcement.
I'm just sayin'.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight ... because that makes frivolous lawsuits okay.
Pity you weren't walking with her at the time ...
Fiscal survival trick #14: "When faced with the worst economy in nearly a century, try finding an excuse to sue a huge corporation."
And I'm going to assume that you aren't American by your fundamental misunderstanding of the proper role of government and the natural rights of citizens. I'd suggest you read some Thomas Paine before looking down your nose at us and inferring that we don't understand others.
I'd suggest starting with Common Sense, and then reading The Rights of Man. The Gutenburg Project has them. To sum up, The rights we enjoy (including the right to view what we please) are natural, they are part of our being. They are not conferred upon us by government, and therefore cannot be withdrawn at the government's whim. Rather, government is erected by the people to secure these rights, not the other way around..
I do not think anyone on the internet really gets the choice whether to watch porn or not.
Not anyone? Really? Here's a partial list: My wife. My kids. My parents. Me, unless I'm looking for it. Millions of people on work PCs.
I know dozens of people, not computer experts, using regular PCs without pop-up blockers, who are not assaulted with internet porn. If you think someone can't venture online without encountering porn, you're doing it wrong. Furthermore, your incompetence is no excuse to prevent consenting adults from accessing legitimate adult-themed content.
You'll probably never come into contact with the titanium oxide, thanks to the plastic coating that traditionally keeps the data layers more or less protected. Plus, the outgassing from the plastic coating is likely way worse for you anyway.
Oblig xkcd.
Context. It's perfectly okay for Mike Rowe to use "poo" twenty times a minute on Dirty Jobs. Usually, he is referring to actual poo. Poop, crap, kaka, doo-doo, whatever. The title in question is a) representing a more vulgar term for the same stuff (one that for whatever obscure lexiconigraphical reasons, has been shunned by polite society long and often enough to be effectively a lingual outcast), and b) it is being used in a vulgar context (they aren't referring to literal shit, they are referring to "stuff" or "things" in a perjorative manner).
Personally, I say fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. (Which this obviously is.)
Yeah, but at least there are still manufacturers out there that still supply the blades (and manage to not go bankrupt doing it), and even some like Merkur who make a quality razor in the same style.
Sad when a company views simplicity, quality, and product longevity as restricting their revenue stream.
Comparison holds just fine. At the time, razors weren't plastic, in fact they were quite elegant chunks of metal with a rather satisfying weight to them. I use a 1970's era Gillette adjustable myself. Almost 40 years on, and it still works great, and getting blades is easy and cheap. I wonder if the same could be said for today's inkjet in 40 years.
Regardless, the razors were still sold as loss leaders, just like the printers.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The teachers union did not defend him.
I'm sure that they did not defend his actions per se, but nonetheless, the contract between the union and the city keeps his salary flowing to him, despite ample evidence that he rightfully should have been terminated years ago, and the fact that he doesn't teach anymore because he's too dangerous to have around kids.
I'm sure that the union prez is right when he say the system is broken and doesn't work right for anyone. However, when he says
that the union "has made repeated attempts to work with the administration to resolve the rubber-room issue, but the administration has preferred to grandstand rather than solve it."
I take that to mean "It comes up as a bargaining chip at every contract negotiation, but the price we ask for giving up these losers is always too high, and the administration says no."
There are plenty of reasons to hate teachers' unions beyond the subject at hand. I've had frank discussions with teachers and administrators, and union rules provide a barrier to good teaching in most schools I've known. The sad thing is that the administrators are often so awful that the unions really are a necessary evil needed to protect good teachers from the system.
If you ever get the chance, sit down with a teacher (preferably a young one who still has his/her idealism intact) for a few drinks in a place where they don't have to worry about being overheard, and ask them for some stories about administration vs. union with the teacher (and kids) caught in the middle.
Thanking MS for delivering Firefox to us is an exercise in selective hindsight. By the same token, you can't say what innovations would have happened ten years ago, had MS not destroyed companies like Wollongong. They also had a browser out
In other words, the non-Microsoft market would have continued with their "browser extension of the week" methodology to lock people into their products, and would not have been forced to use standards conformance as a competition mechanism.
That is exactly what Microsoft did - broke standards conformance, forcing the entire internet to conform to their broken, proprietary software or be odd man out. Had they not been a monopoly, they would have been in no position to force it on the rest of the world, and their "innovations" would have died the miserable death they deserved.
Care to link to some actual proof for your assertion?
No, I'd prefer to link to some spurious claims and hearsay, but I'm having a hard time googling some. ;)
But if you insist: http://bigjournalism.com/jhudnall/2010/02/09/teachers-unions-the-child-molesters-best-friend/ which liinks to http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/head_of_the_crass_qWrc4xPXr5UxSo8Npym2vO#ixzz0eseQIbrX