You just ran one hell of a great ad for a very good site that is doing something mildly important.
Okay, now are you a marketer, or are you a journalist?
Surely, you're aware that people have collected censored works since, well, since censorship began occurring. You can find accusations of possessing banned information dating back pretty much to the first examples of written language.
When you're dealing with censorship, and protecting the ability of people to access information, you have to realize that you cannot look at it from the point-of-view of the technoliterati or the intelligentsia. You have to go down to the people.
The Internet isn't so much more difficult to censor than any media has been. All of network television in America is controlled by, what, 5 companies? So, censorship is easy. How many backbone routers have to be reconfigured to censor an internet site for an entire country, Jon? How many companies would you have to contact to have them censored? Here's a hint: not very bloody many.
The File Room is difficult to censor in the same sense as an activists library of banned materials is difficult to censor: it's small, and it can migrate, and other people can choose to copy the works and possess their own library, which others can access and copy. Oop! We're talking about P2P, here, another meme that's a favourite of yours -- so why didn't you connect them?
The File Room is largely meaningless. It's a good resource for people like us to use to access censored information, okay. How much does it help the guy in North Korea, though? He jumping on board to read those censored documents? He probably doesn't have a computer, Jon.
The Internet is fragile. It can be controlled on a regional level, because 99% of any populace will be using optic lines that are basically under the control of the government. Sure, you'll have a couple of people hitting a dial-up server over international long distance, but those people have always existed -- they were the people who kept private libraries, who published anonymous newsletters, etc. This is NOTHING NEW.
Why an advertisement, Jon? Why not look at the efforts of various governments and corporations (cease and desist!) to censor the internet, and real media to boot? How successful have they been? Are people aware that things are being censored? Do they care?
What, really, does all of this ballyhoo about freedom of information and censorship *mean*? What does it mean to people who are fighting for their freedoms? What does it mean to the people trying to take it away?
Internet penetration is highest per capita in countries that are already pretty permissive about information sharing. To the people who really have few freedoms, who really want more, I don't think the Internet really matters. D'you? Tell me why. Don't give me an advertisement for a website that I find occasionally enlightening, but mostly annoying. The criteria "Stuff that somebody somewhere finds offense" makes for an awful lot of muck.
That way if an Evil Empire Corporation sends me a cease and desist letter, I can craft one of my own and volley it back:
Dear Evil Empire,
After extensive research, I discovered that your website contains a reference to "Widgetmitalls" on its third page. Please note that all discussion of Widgetmitalls are to be considered a trade secret on the grounds that Widgetmitalls form the foundation for my business / religious movement. Please remove all references to Widgetmitalls, or replace them with the more generic "Widget".
Sincerely, The Little Guy
I could then run that through this database and have people comment on it. That will allow me to improve on it, so that by the time it actually reaches Evil Empire Incorporated, it looks ominous enough that they might pay it heed.
I assume, at any rate, that that is what the functionality exists for. Quite subversive.
It's nice to see that after all the talk and jokes about open-sourcing the law, that it is happening.
Is this that much different from submitting a patch to a peer-maintenance group and having it reviewed by various persons of various qualifications? Or from submitting an Ask Slashdot, for that matter.
I've been involved with businesses that have been threatened by letters about various things. Upon receiving the first of those letters, I started expanding my knowledge of legalese, law application, etc. A lot of google and a few dead trees later, and I'm much more informed... and can now spot the bullshit much easier than I once could.
This database should provide a short circuit, so that people can quickly learn about things that pertain to them, and get assistance on resolving them.
I think this sort of idea is important to free speech in an increasingly corporate medium. It's heartening to see that people care enough to actually devote their time to it.
I won't flame, but my understanding splits from yours a bit, so I thought I'd express it.
The police were initially affording suspects reasonable protection by virtue of the fact that the suspects, should no evidence be gathered pertaining to their guild, could press criminal charges against the police officer for trespassing, in addition to possibly requiring some level of recompensation from them.
Warrants were brought into place because it no longer made sense for each individual officer to be held accountable for his actions to outsiders. The days of only a few police officers in a region came to an end, and under a centralised system the old way just didn't make sense. Hence warrants, which were intended to shift the burden of guilt from Police to the system itself. This protected both police and system at the same time -- not as much liability for individual officers, and less chance of charges against the system.
This was not due to people becoming paranoid about their individual privacy, however. People had secured privacy -- police, facing possible criminal charges, did not just wander into peoples houses. They were diligent about their work because they had personal responsibility for determining the validity of a suspect. I don't think this has changed at all, save that the responsibility has shifted to the system and is now backed up by a piece of paper.
Of course, corruption was rife in those days, and I'm describing the system-as-it-should-have-been, not as-it-was. It's rife in these days, too.:)
And this is my understanding, and a fairly cursory one, but I think the system of checks and balances in the "ideal" in America for protecting privacy has remained consistent, though the focus has shifted now and again.
No, it is legal (theoretically, though exceptions can be discovered) to sell any device that may be used for an illegal purpose, so long as it can be demonstrated to have a legal purpose.
This is why guns are for sale. And lockpicks (though you need a locksmithy license in some places). And kitchen knives. All can be used for illegal activities, but none can be banned from the market because the illegality is not inherent in the device, but rather in the actions of the user.
If it can be demonstrated that the only (or overwhelmingly primary) reason for the existance of a product is to assist in illegal activities, then that product can be removed from the market. That is why black market sattelite decoders are not sold at the Mom & Pop Grocery Store (you have to go to the Mom & Pop Seedy Basement for these), even though a flimsy arguement could be made that you're selling, uh, really fancy paperweights.
To swing that back to drug paraphernalia, it was impossible to ban bongs and pipes from being sold because both could be used to inhale tobacco, and you run into an annoying slippery slope -- if you ban pipes, all those tweed-wearing english professors will be mad. If you don't ban pipes, you've basically ceded your ability to ban bongs, as functionally they are only a pipe with an additional filtration layer and necessarily different design principles.
So, if it is discovered that the device in question is being used almost entirely for illegal activities, or that it has no other reasonable purpose, it will be banned.
But this is a DMCA thing, which is related but not quite the same. Basically, if US Customs rules it to be a violation, then the violated party (Nintendo) are permitted to confiscate the violating material (Flash Linker) on the grounds that the only purpose of that material is to harm Nintendo. So, by virtue of the product being designed to harm Nintendo through permitting / encouraging copyright infringements, all instances of that product...oh, fuck it:
Er. "Argument to the Man", "Reduction to Absurdity" and "Argument to Popular Opinion" are rather unwieldy. The latin is more compact, and is the standard used when discussing logic.
If I take your television, you still own it. This is something that can be proven by receipts, by testimony from people familiar with you, etc.
If, however, you leave a television in the middle of the desert and have no ability to prove that you own it, and I stumble upon it, then it is indeed at least 9/10ths mine. More like 10/10ths, actually, regardless of whether or not you wished to repossess it.
This is because:
1) I broke no laws in obtaining the television, as it was not on private property.
2) You and I have equal claim to the television, in that neither you nor I have any ability to prove that we own the television, or to prove that the other person does not.
3) I am currently in possession of the television, making me the de facto owner.
It's all in how you define possession, of course. And in that possession cannot be taken via an illegal act and still be viewed as legitimate possession.
They don't have to contribute to society. Neither do you. That's part of what makes our society great.
If they like to cheer, and people like to watch them cheer, and the teams like to have them cheer, then what the fuck is wrong with cheering, exactly?
His viewpoint was certainly not valid, except in the context that anybodys opinion has to be valid, by virtue of it being valid to them. Can I call bullshit, yet?
How are they overly celebrated, exactly? I must have missed National Cheerleader Awareness day, but I guess that that around-the-clock-coverage of the Cheerleading World Finals on CNBC... oh, no, that didn't happen, either.
The belief that every action must contribute to some nebulous notion of "society" will do precious little other than guarantee that "society" progresses slower than it would if shepherded to a lesser degree.
His point being that people who aren't popular (him) are somehow justified in vitriolic attacks on people who are popular?
Or his point being that because he is an enlightened atheist, he is better / smarter / more clever than the Cheerleaders for Christ?
Or his point being that he's so smart and funny that he doesn't need to display a modicum of respect to people who have consented to being interviewed by him?
Or his point being that a lack of capability in editing and writing can be overcome by being an asshole?
Er. Which point was it that ol' Marty had?
When you express your view through attacks, when your "interviewing style" consists of a 50/50 mixture of reductio ad absurdum and argumentum ad hominem with a little sprinkling of argumentum ad populos, and fail to show any respect to those whom you are meant to be writing about, and allow your own personal agenda to jump up and down all over whatever bit of journalistic integrity might have existed, then you deserve to be discounted. Your views? No. There are other people who can doubtless explain them more eloquently. It is possible to disqualify yourself as a spokesman, and that's what ol' Marty did.
Disinformation is nothing. If you are looking for the web that was "promised" -- and who promised it, anyway, technofuturists drawing a paycheque on empty predictions -- then you should go to www.google.com.
What do you want to know about? Type it into the search box. Check your results. Read the ones that are interesting. Alter your criteria. Try it again.
Use their links to read newspapers from all around the world. Use babelfish to translate a German page to English.
I have all of the information I could possibly need at my fingertips through a combination of Google, Lexis-Nexis and sites like Everything2 and the Guerilla News Network. I have opposing viewpoints, case studies, major media coverage, independent media coverage, essays and fiction based upon pretty much every major event in the last twenty years. Going back a bit, the completeness level goes down for all but the most major of events, but nonetheless.
The Internet allows anyone to put anything up. Google allows you to find it. Your brain allows you to parse, to judge, and to collate it.
The third part of that equation is the important one.
If you're still using major media to define your worldview, you haven't understood a thing about what the internet has done (nevermind what it was supposed to do or what it should do in the future). I check in with major media sites because they tend to be well laid out. When I actually want the information, all of it, that's when MSN and CNN can kiss my ass good-bye, because they do not and never have provided anything more than sound bites.
Which is pretty much what Disinfo does, except with a snotty, leftist bent that doesn't do much more than pre-emptively derail most of the discussion that occurs.
The heart of the web? No. Just another meta. The heart of the web is that anybody with access to a PC and 20 minutes to learn can put a basic webpage up that will be indexed by Google so that somebody like me can stumble across it.
Google and the WayBack machine are the killer apps of the net. The provider of the content (Disinfo or whomever) don't matter. That's just branding.
And, hey, wasn't the 'Net going to take us away from all that? Or is it acceptable in the case of clearly lefty-biased sites?
Yes, but IM software is very common on home machines, and home machines with big fat 24/7 DSL/Cable can be used in DDOS against corporate networks.
So, you see, the issue isn't a corporate security package -- as you mention, the need for this is obviated by corporate policies. It's the need to have an easy-to-use method of protecting home users, so they aren't co-opted into doing nasty things to my webserver.;)
Have any A/V companies deployed products to protect against instant messaging vulnerabilities? I know that Bitdefender have a product that helps to increase your security when running such services, but I haven't heard of similar things from Norton/McAffee.
I always thought this was kinda silly, waiting for the horse to leave before closing the stable. Did anybody not view Instant Messenger traffic, especially once it got into a high level of file transfer interaction, as not being a platform for the deployment of viruses?
Still, this is a social engineering thing more than it is anything else. It's not even really a virus -- it's a piece of destructive code delivered via social engineering. It is not really self-propogating, though, in that it requires the server-side in order to be malicious, or do anything at all.
That seems to me to be stretching "virus" a bit. Maybe "viral meme"? I agree it does spread a bit like a virus, but it actually requires fetching external information.
-l
P.S. Bitdefender are beta'ing a Linux product, by the way. It's not Open, but the beta is a free (as in beer) download. Disclaimer: I'm a fan of that company.;)
My favorite Slashdot-ism: The complete, unthinking, absolutely unassailable assumption that every MS employee must be a lying bastard, hypocritical and backstabbing to the end...
"when things don't check out." Because of course they're all lying bastards, and of course it won't check out... and "of course" if you gave the source to Linus [salon.com] he'd save us all!
Um. Actually, having done similar activities in the past, I gravitated towards "when" instead of "if", because I've never been in a situation where a complex project restored from source control matched exactly the installation binaries generated during release. You have to chase your way around your development team and discover that, oh yea, there was a tiny little bug that was patched with 1 line of code and that escaped version control because Person X was in a hurry and told Person Y to do it tomorrow, and then Person Y was out sick so Person Z ended up...you get the picture.
My favorite slashdot-ism: Being so engaged in the political infighting in Slashdot that you aren't able to disengage yourself from it, and devote your time to showing everyone just how biased they are.
Quite unlikely that Microsoft does not engage in source control. Take the stable source from a release, and have them provide you with the compiler, compiling options, compile platform, etc. used to create the installation set, as well as all documentation regarding changes to the output of the compiler.
Replicate the steps taken to create the installation binary set. Checksum your creation against the actual release. Ask MS "What's up?" when things don't check out.
Art and technology been separated? I don't believe that, I'm afraid. If anything, they exist in an inextricably linked chicken-and-egg sort of way.
As mentioned, art and science were not divorced prior to the end of the renaissance, and remained linked in public discourse for some time after. Only with mass industrialisation did the two begin to drift apart, but only in terms of communication, interdisciplinary study, and perception. They remained entirely linked in practical terms.
Artists have for a long time advantaged themselves of technology -- is there a tremendous difference between using engineering principles to design a graceful cathedral, using a camera to capture an image, and using thousands of lines of code to animate the locks of a characters hair? Was the camera obscura, so important in understanding optics, invented by an artist or a scientist?
With the industrial revolution, and the drive to specialization that came about due to the implementation of the assembly line (and assembly line managerial philosophy), the facility to communicate effectively between disciplines degraded. Specialization came about in such an intense way that jargon came to dominate not just art and science, but even sub-sets thereof. This made it difficult for people to communicate their ideas clearly, or even to see the numerous parallels and convergences existing within these two perceptively distinct (and only perceptively) faculties.
This was an error that occurred in social re-alignment, which is now being corrected as more people pursue interdisciplinary studies, and come to understand that it's not really apples and oranges, after all. What we are undergoing is a correction, not the introduction of a new philosophy.
In practical terms, the two have never been separated. They have merely been mis-named. This is not a re-connection of science and art that we are witnessing. It is a return to disciplinary study / application that does not rely on arbitrary dividing lines intended to increase productity through compartmentalised specialisation.
We are not doing different, we are doing as we have always done. Artists are leveraging technology, technology is leveraging art. As always.
We are simply returning to our old practice of rationally identifying the two, and being aware of their overlap and synergy.
What an unabashed coward. An email? How about laying down your life in an all out struggle to get home alive to see your loved ones. What a pussy, what a wimp, what a disgrace to the human race.
Try laying down a line of fire to cover your buddy's ass as he scrambles for refuge. Try firing at everything that moves in an atempt to keep your own ass alive. Try listening to the lead ping off of everything around you while you pray to god you make it out in one piece.
Heroism? You want fucking heroism? Put yourself in the gunsights of the enemy then tell me about heroism.
Oh look, it's one of those 14 year olds who likes to pretend he was a Navy SEAL, and does so by referencing descriptions at-home in pulp-fiction war books and Soldier of Fortune.
Is that heroism, or is that war? If you would like to define heroism as being under enemy fire, I have no argument to offer against your viewpoint. I would note, however, that many Taliban members had exactly those thoughts flitting through their heads as bombs exploded all around them.
"Try firing at everything that moves", though, I must take issue with. Is it heroic to fire at everything that moves, mauling civilians and combatants alike? That strikes me more as being "panicked" than "heroic".
You missed, unsurprisingly, the point of my post -- which was that I could hardly send an e-mail, or really any other form of communication, to "Stebby". He's currently serving 30 years for anally raping a 12-year-old girl.
On behalf of the United States Army and the soldiers who made it out of Mogadishu (and those who didn't):
FUCK YOU.
On behalf of the tribal elders massacred by United States military hardware whilst in the midst of attempting to convince their more fiery counterparts of the benefits of peace, a massacre that brought about a declaration of war from Aidid that led to the Mogadishu disaster...
Um, fuck US Foreign/Military policy?
Because, really, if you care about those men who died and those who lived through something awful, then that's who you should be directing your vitriol towards.
While I realize that your intellectual credibility has cemented itself somewhere around "Nil", I feel obliged to note that wrapping yourself up in a flag will neither increase it nor add any other sort of credibility to your ranting.
Please read Mr. Ebert's review, which tackles the same issues as yours does (Pre/Post 9/11), but does so in a clear, concise, and intelligent manner. Do not be so eager to put on 9/11-tinted glasses in the same manner that you did Columbine-tinted glasses prior to the terrorist attack.
Your references to Black Hawk Down betray your complete lack of familiarity with the history surrounding that mission. Please do some research before using Mogadishu in your writings. It's actually getting to be very worrisome, since so many people have on so many occasions pointed out how absolutely narrow your focus is regarding that event.
You have managed to write a movie review without providing a review. This is a noteworthy feat but, alas, does not enrich any of your readers. Try to do better, next time.
The United States was repeatedly cautioned by other nations to not involve themselves in Somali affairs, as they were a mish-mash of various warlords each having armed forces and all being about as sane as a bucket of loons on a Sunday.
The United States, however, being pricked repeatedly by one particular of these warlords, decided that they, being smarter and stronger than the nations who warned them, would take care of this pesky warlord.
Their execution of this plan was fatally flawed. The soldiers were not familiar with the methods of fighting employed by the locals. They did not know how to act effectively when a crowd of civilians acted as shields for the militants. Basically, the entire effort receded into a "Cover each other and back the hell up" scenario, which just barely managed to get the bulk of US Soldiers out alive.
Heroism? Where? What was heroic? Bad orders came down based on bad policy, executed by ill-prepared soldiers. Is it heroic to survive?
I would gladly send an e-mail to the soldiers involved. Particuarly John Stebbins (name changed to John Grimes for the movie). Ewan MacGregor's character -- You know him? The one who failed in attempting to join the regular forces three times during the Gulf War, before somehow being permitted to join the Rangers? Unfortunately, he probably isn't too easy to get ahold of these days.
The movie was grossly exaggerated and removed from any meaningful context. As a result, it cannot be called "truth". It is entertainment, not a historical document.
Slashdot Mirror
You just ran one hell of a great ad for a very good site that is doing something mildly important.
Okay, now are you a marketer, or are you a journalist?
Surely, you're aware that people have collected censored works since, well, since censorship began occurring. You can find accusations of possessing banned information dating back pretty much to the first examples of written language.
When you're dealing with censorship, and protecting the ability of people to access information, you have to realize that you cannot look at it from the point-of-view of the technoliterati or the intelligentsia. You have to go down to the people.
The Internet isn't so much more difficult to censor than any media has been. All of network television in America is controlled by, what, 5 companies? So, censorship is easy. How many backbone routers have to be reconfigured to censor an internet site for an entire country, Jon? How many companies would you have to contact to have them censored? Here's a hint: not very bloody many.
The File Room is difficult to censor in the same sense as an activists library of banned materials is difficult to censor: it's small, and it can migrate, and other people can choose to copy the works and possess their own library, which others can access and copy. Oop! We're talking about P2P, here, another meme that's a favourite of yours -- so why didn't you connect them?
The File Room is largely meaningless. It's a good resource for people like us to use to access censored information, okay. How much does it help the guy in North Korea, though? He jumping on board to read those censored documents? He probably doesn't have a computer, Jon.
The Internet is fragile. It can be controlled on a regional level, because 99% of any populace will be using optic lines that are basically under the control of the government. Sure, you'll have a couple of people hitting a dial-up server over international long distance, but those people have always existed -- they were the people who kept private libraries, who published anonymous newsletters, etc. This is NOTHING NEW.
Why an advertisement, Jon? Why not look at the efforts of various governments and corporations (cease and desist!) to censor the internet, and real media to boot? How successful have they been? Are people aware that things are being censored? Do they care?
What, really, does all of this ballyhoo about freedom of information and censorship *mean*? What does it mean to people who are fighting for their freedoms? What does it mean to the people trying to take it away?
Internet penetration is highest per capita in countries that are already pretty permissive about information sharing. To the people who really have few freedoms, who really want more, I don't think the Internet really matters. D'you? Tell me why. Don't give me an advertisement for a website that I find occasionally enlightening, but mostly annoying. The criteria "Stuff that somebody somewhere finds offense" makes for an awful lot of muck.
-l
...and every user who moderated that thread had their moderation privileges revoked.
I'm typing this because apparently having a speedy typing rate requires that I fill comments with bullshit to sneak past the stupid 20 second delay.
La la... is it done yet?
Click on my sig, journal entry has a brief run-down. Links exist, as well.
It's good to be capped, baby.
l
That way if an Evil Empire Corporation sends me a cease and desist letter, I can craft one of my own and volley it back:
Dear Evil Empire,
After extensive research, I discovered that your website contains a reference to "Widgetmitalls" on its third page. Please note that all discussion of Widgetmitalls are to be considered a trade secret on the grounds that Widgetmitalls form the foundation for my business / religious movement. Please remove all references to Widgetmitalls, or replace them with the more generic "Widget".
Sincerely,
The Little Guy
I could then run that through this database and have people comment on it. That will allow me to improve on it, so that by the time it actually reaches Evil Empire Incorporated, it looks ominous enough that they might pay it heed.
I assume, at any rate, that that is what the functionality exists for. Quite subversive.
-l
It's nice to see that after all the talk and jokes about open-sourcing the law, that it is happening.
Is this that much different from submitting a patch to a peer-maintenance group and having it reviewed by various persons of various qualifications? Or from submitting an Ask Slashdot, for that matter.
I've been involved with businesses that have been threatened by letters about various things. Upon receiving the first of those letters, I started expanding my knowledge of legalese, law application, etc. A lot of google and a few dead trees later, and I'm much more informed... and can now spot the bullshit much easier than I once could.
This database should provide a short circuit, so that people can quickly learn about things that pertain to them, and get assistance on resolving them.
I think this sort of idea is important to free speech in an increasingly corporate medium. It's heartening to see that people care enough to actually devote their time to it.
-l
A Mac-branded portion of Slashdot, complete with oogly googly prettiness in the form of gradients and rounding.
.slashdot.orgs would have to be:
The message being broadcast to me on a quick hop around the
Apple = Pretty, ooh, ooh
Linux = Ugly, stinky, green
BSD = Red
Hm.
Anyway, this is far too hi-fi for me. Back to ugly, stinky, green.
-l
p.s. Why is Science ugly, stinky, green, too? Science and Linux don't look even nearly similar, I dual boot them!
I won't flame, but my understanding splits from yours a bit, so I thought I'd express it.
The police were initially affording suspects reasonable protection by virtue of the fact that the suspects, should no evidence be gathered pertaining to their guild, could press criminal charges against the police officer for trespassing, in addition to possibly requiring some level of recompensation from them.
Warrants were brought into place because it no longer made sense for each individual officer to be held accountable for his actions to outsiders. The days of only a few police officers in a region came to an end, and under a centralised system the old way just didn't make sense. Hence warrants, which were intended to shift the burden of guilt from Police to the system itself. This protected both police and system at the same time -- not as much liability for individual officers, and less chance of charges against the system.
This was not due to people becoming paranoid about their individual privacy, however. People had secured privacy -- police, facing possible criminal charges, did not just wander into peoples houses. They were diligent about their work because they had personal responsibility for determining the validity of a suspect. I don't think this has changed at all, save that the responsibility has shifted to the system and is now backed up by a piece of paper.
Of course, corruption was rife in those days, and I'm describing the system-as-it-should-have-been, not as-it-was. It's rife in these days, too.:)
And this is my understanding, and a fairly cursory one, but I think the system of checks and balances in the "ideal" in America for protecting privacy has remained consistent, though the focus has shifted now and again.
-l
No, it is legal (theoretically, though exceptions can be discovered) to sell any device that may be used for an illegal purpose, so long as it can be demonstrated to have a legal purpose.
This is why guns are for sale. And lockpicks (though you need a locksmithy license in some places). And kitchen knives. All can be used for illegal activities, but none can be banned from the market because the illegality is not inherent in the device, but rather in the actions of the user.
If it can be demonstrated that the only (or overwhelmingly primary) reason for the existance of a product is to assist in illegal activities, then that product can be removed from the market. That is why black market sattelite decoders are not sold at the Mom & Pop Grocery Store (you have to go to the Mom & Pop Seedy Basement for these), even though a flimsy arguement could be made that you're selling, uh, really fancy paperweights.
To swing that back to drug paraphernalia, it was impossible to ban bongs and pipes from being sold because both could be used to inhale tobacco, and you run into an annoying slippery slope -- if you ban pipes, all those tweed-wearing english professors will be mad. If you don't ban pipes, you've basically ceded your ability to ban bongs, as functionally they are only a pipe with an additional filtration layer and necessarily different design principles.
So, if it is discovered that the device in question is being used almost entirely for illegal activities, or that it has no other reasonable purpose, it will be banned.
But this is a DMCA thing, which is related but not quite the same. Basically, if US Customs rules it to be a violation, then the violated party (Nintendo) are permitted to confiscate the violating material (Flash Linker) on the grounds that the only purpose of that material is to harm Nintendo. So, by virtue of the product being designed to harm Nintendo through permitting / encouraging copyright infringements, all instances of that product...oh, fuck it:
ALL YOUR LINK ARE BELONG TO NINTENDO.
IANAL
Er. "Argument to the Man", "Reduction to Absurdity" and "Argument to Popular Opinion" are rather unwieldy. The latin is more compact, and is the standard used when discussing logic.
But you already knew that.
Right?
-l
If I take your television, you still own it. This is something that can be proven by receipts, by testimony from people familiar with you, etc.
If, however, you leave a television in the middle of the desert and have no ability to prove that you own it, and I stumble upon it, then it is indeed at least 9/10ths mine. More like 10/10ths, actually, regardless of whether or not you wished to repossess it.
This is because:
1) I broke no laws in obtaining the television, as it was not on private property.
2) You and I have equal claim to the television, in that neither you nor I have any ability to prove that we own the television, or to prove that the other person does not.
3) I am currently in possession of the television, making me the de facto owner.
It's all in how you define possession, of course. And in that possession cannot be taken via an illegal act and still be viewed as legitimate possession.
-l
"thing" = "think", to stave off the obvious troll.
They don't have to contribute to society. Neither do you. That's part of what makes our society great.
If they like to cheer, and people like to watch them cheer, and the teams like to have them cheer, then what the fuck is wrong with cheering, exactly?
His viewpoint was certainly not valid, except in the context that anybodys opinion has to be valid, by virtue of it being valid to them. Can I call bullshit, yet?
How are they overly celebrated, exactly? I must have missed National Cheerleader Awareness day, but I guess that that around-the-clock-coverage of the Cheerleading World Finals on CNBC... oh, no, that didn't happen, either.
The belief that every action must contribute to some nebulous notion of "society" will do precious little other than guarantee that "society" progresses slower than it would if shepherded to a lesser degree.
-l
I've read your comment and I have only one question:
Are you a horny frustrated teenage boy or an equally frustrated middle-aged teacher?
Oops. Thing I figured it out.
-l
His point being that people who aren't popular (him) are somehow justified in vitriolic attacks on people who are popular?
Or his point being that because he is an enlightened atheist, he is better / smarter / more clever than the Cheerleaders for Christ?
Or his point being that he's so smart and funny that he doesn't need to display a modicum of respect to people who have consented to being interviewed by him?
Or his point being that a lack of capability in editing and writing can be overcome by being an asshole?
Er. Which point was it that ol' Marty had?
When you express your view through attacks, when your "interviewing style" consists of a 50/50 mixture of reductio ad absurdum and argumentum ad hominem with a little sprinkling of argumentum ad populos, and fail to show any respect to those whom you are meant to be writing about, and allow your own personal agenda to jump up and down all over whatever bit of journalistic integrity might have existed, then you deserve to be discounted. Your views? No. There are other people who can doubtless explain them more eloquently. It is possible to disqualify yourself as a spokesman, and that's what ol' Marty did.
-l
Disinformation is nothing. If you are looking for the web that was "promised" -- and who promised it, anyway, technofuturists drawing a paycheque on empty predictions -- then you should go to www.google.com.
What do you want to know about? Type it into the search box. Check your results. Read the ones that are interesting. Alter your criteria. Try it again.
Use their links to read newspapers from all around the world. Use babelfish to translate a German page to English.
I have all of the information I could possibly need at my fingertips through a combination of Google, Lexis-Nexis and sites like Everything2 and the Guerilla News Network. I have opposing viewpoints, case studies, major media coverage, independent media coverage, essays and fiction based upon pretty much every major event in the last twenty years. Going back a bit, the completeness level goes down for all but the most major of events, but nonetheless.
The Internet allows anyone to put anything up. Google allows you to find it. Your brain allows you to parse, to judge, and to collate it.
The third part of that equation is the important one.
If you're still using major media to define your worldview, you haven't understood a thing about what the internet has done (nevermind what it was supposed to do or what it should do in the future). I check in with major media sites because they tend to be well laid out. When I actually want the information, all of it, that's when MSN and CNN can kiss my ass good-bye, because they do not and never have provided anything more than sound bites.
Which is pretty much what Disinfo does, except with a snotty, leftist bent that doesn't do much more than pre-emptively derail most of the discussion that occurs.
The heart of the web? No. Just another meta. The heart of the web is that anybody with access to a PC and 20 minutes to learn can put a basic webpage up that will be indexed by Google so that somebody like me can stumble across it.
Google and the WayBack machine are the killer apps of the net. The provider of the content (Disinfo or whomever) don't matter. That's just branding.
And, hey, wasn't the 'Net going to take us away from all that? Or is it acceptable in the case of clearly lefty-biased sites?
Yes, but IM software is very common on home machines, and home machines with big fat 24/7 DSL/Cable can be used in DDOS against corporate networks.
;)
So, you see, the issue isn't a corporate security package -- as you mention, the need for this is obviated by corporate policies. It's the need to have an easy-to-use method of protecting home users, so they aren't co-opted into doing nasty things to my webserver.
-l
Have any A/V companies deployed products to protect against instant messaging vulnerabilities? I know that Bitdefender have a product that helps to increase your security when running such services, but I haven't heard of similar things from Norton/McAffee.
;)
I always thought this was kinda silly, waiting for the horse to leave before closing the stable. Did anybody not view Instant Messenger traffic, especially once it got into a high level of file transfer interaction, as not being a platform for the deployment of viruses?
Still, this is a social engineering thing more than it is anything else. It's not even really a virus -- it's a piece of destructive code delivered via social engineering. It is not really self-propogating, though, in that it requires the server-side in order to be malicious, or do anything at all.
That seems to me to be stretching "virus" a bit. Maybe "viral meme"? I agree it does spread a bit like a virus, but it actually requires fetching external information.
-l
P.S. Bitdefender are beta'ing a Linux product, by the way. It's not Open, but the beta is a free (as in beer) download. Disclaimer: I'm a fan of that company.
My favorite Slashdot-ism: The complete, unthinking, absolutely unassailable assumption that every MS employee must be a lying bastard, hypocritical and backstabbing to the end...
"when things don't check out." Because of course they're all lying bastards, and of course it won't check out... and "of course" if you gave the source to Linus [salon.com] he'd save us all!
Um. Actually, having done similar activities in the past, I gravitated towards "when" instead of "if", because I've never been in a situation where a complex project restored from source control matched exactly the installation binaries generated during release. You have to chase your way around your development team and discover that, oh yea, there was a tiny little bug that was patched with 1 line of code and that escaped version control because Person X was in a hurry and told Person Y to do it tomorrow, and then Person Y was out sick so Person Z ended up...you get the picture.
My favorite slashdot-ism: Being so engaged in the political infighting in Slashdot that you aren't able to disengage yourself from it, and devote your time to showing everyone just how biased they are.
Hm.
-l
Quite unlikely that Microsoft does not engage in source control. Take the stable source from a release, and have them provide you with the compiler, compiling options, compile platform, etc. used to create the installation set, as well as all documentation regarding changes to the output of the compiler.
Replicate the steps taken to create the installation binary set. Checksum your creation against the actual release. Ask MS "What's up?" when things don't check out.
l
Art and technology been separated? I don't believe that, I'm afraid. If anything, they exist in an inextricably linked chicken-and-egg sort of way.
As mentioned, art and science were not divorced prior to the end of the renaissance, and remained linked in public discourse for some time after. Only with mass industrialisation did the two begin to drift apart, but only in terms of communication, interdisciplinary study, and perception. They remained entirely linked in practical terms.
Artists have for a long time advantaged themselves of technology -- is there a tremendous difference between using engineering principles to design a graceful cathedral, using a camera to capture an image, and using thousands of lines of code to animate the locks of a characters hair? Was the camera obscura, so important in understanding optics, invented by an artist or a scientist?
With the industrial revolution, and the drive to specialization that came about due to the implementation of the assembly line (and assembly line managerial philosophy), the facility to communicate effectively between disciplines degraded. Specialization came about in such an intense way that jargon came to dominate not just art and science, but even sub-sets thereof. This made it difficult for people to communicate their ideas clearly, or even to see the numerous parallels and convergences existing within these two perceptively distinct (and only perceptively) faculties.
This was an error that occurred in social re-alignment, which is now being corrected as more people pursue interdisciplinary studies, and come to understand that it's not really apples and oranges, after all. What we are undergoing is a correction, not the introduction of a new philosophy.
In practical terms, the two have never been separated. They have merely been mis-named. This is not a re-connection of science and art that we are witnessing. It is a return to disciplinary study / application that does not rely on arbitrary dividing lines intended to increase productity through compartmentalised specialisation.
We are not doing different, we are doing as we have always done. Artists are leveraging technology, technology is leveraging art. As always.
We are simply returning to our old practice of rationally identifying the two, and being aware of their overlap and synergy.
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
l
What an unabashed coward. An email? How about laying down your life in an all out struggle to get home alive to see your loved ones. What a pussy, what a wimp, what a disgrace to the human race.
Try laying down a line of fire to cover your buddy's ass as he scrambles for refuge. Try firing at everything that moves in an atempt to keep your own ass alive. Try listening to the lead ping off of everything around you while you pray to god you make it out in one piece.
Heroism? You want fucking heroism? Put yourself in the gunsights of the enemy then tell me about heroism.
Oh look, it's one of those 14 year olds who likes to pretend he was a Navy SEAL, and does so by referencing descriptions at-home in pulp-fiction war books and Soldier of Fortune.
Is that heroism, or is that war? If you would like to define heroism as being under enemy fire, I have no argument to offer against your viewpoint. I would note, however, that many Taliban members had exactly those thoughts flitting through their heads as bombs exploded all around them.
"Try firing at everything that moves", though, I must take issue with. Is it heroic to fire at everything that moves, mauling civilians and combatants alike? That strikes me more as being "panicked" than "heroic".
You missed, unsurprisingly, the point of my post -- which was that I could hardly send an e-mail, or really any other form of communication, to "Stebby". He's currently serving 30 years for anally raping a 12-year-old girl.
Regards,
l
On behalf of the United States Army and the soldiers who made it out of Mogadishu (and those who didn't):
FUCK YOU.
On behalf of the tribal elders massacred by United States military hardware whilst in the midst of attempting to convince their more fiery counterparts of the benefits of peace, a massacre that brought about a declaration of war from Aidid that led to the Mogadishu disaster...
Um, fuck US Foreign/Military policy?
Because, really, if you care about those men who died and those who lived through something awful, then that's who you should be directing your vitriol towards.
Did it hurt much when they washed out your brain?
-l
Dear Mr. Katz,
While I realize that your intellectual credibility has cemented itself somewhere around "Nil", I feel obliged to note that wrapping yourself up in a flag will neither increase it nor add any other sort of credibility to your ranting.
Please read Mr. Ebert's review, which tackles the same issues as yours does (Pre/Post 9/11), but does so in a clear, concise, and intelligent manner. Do not be so eager to put on 9/11-tinted glasses in the same manner that you did Columbine-tinted glasses prior to the terrorist attack.
Your references to Black Hawk Down betray your complete lack of familiarity with the history surrounding that mission. Please do some research before using Mogadishu in your writings. It's actually getting to be very worrisome, since so many people have on so many occasions pointed out how absolutely narrow your focus is regarding that event.
You have managed to write a movie review without providing a review. This is a noteworthy feat but, alas, does not enrich any of your readers. Try to do better, next time.
Re-evaluate yourself, immediately.
Regards,
l
The United States was repeatedly cautioned by other nations to not involve themselves in Somali affairs, as they were a mish-mash of various warlords each having armed forces and all being about as sane as a bucket of loons on a Sunday.
The United States, however, being pricked repeatedly by one particular of these warlords, decided that they, being smarter and stronger than the nations who warned them, would take care of this pesky warlord.
Their execution of this plan was fatally flawed. The soldiers were not familiar with the methods of fighting employed by the locals. They did not know how to act effectively when a crowd of civilians acted as shields for the militants. Basically, the entire effort receded into a "Cover each other and back the hell up" scenario, which just barely managed to get the bulk of US Soldiers out alive.
Heroism? Where? What was heroic? Bad orders came down based on bad policy, executed by ill-prepared soldiers. Is it heroic to survive?
I would gladly send an e-mail to the soldiers involved. Particuarly John Stebbins (name changed to John Grimes for the movie). Ewan MacGregor's character -- You know him? The one who failed in attempting to join the regular forces three times during the Gulf War, before somehow being permitted to join the Rangers? Unfortunately, he probably isn't too easy to get ahold of these days.
The movie was grossly exaggerated and removed from any meaningful context. As a result, it cannot be called "truth". It is entertainment, not a historical document.
-l
I run Debian potato on a P200 with X/Afterstep.
It's a hella quicker than Windows 98 on same box.
I'm the opposite from you -- I got very interested in Linux when I found myself in possession of 4 computers in the P90-200 range.
-l