Don't you think that, while "right" probably doesn't factor into it, adults should be able to lay down their lives for a just cause if they choose? Although I agree that 18 is a low age as far as mental maturity goes, and I'm just barely 23.
Ignoring that I have ailments preventing me from serving (at least in the Swedish armed forces, but I could probably soldier in a kill-people position with a lot of physical training and being in a position where med supply isn't likely to be cut off) - What plane? Am I supposed to purchase one myself? And alongside whom? And with what guns and training?
More importantly while I realize that the situation isn't as simple as that, in cheering for armed intervention I don't really feel like I'm asking people to do "dirty things" I wouldn't do myself, in a moral or emotional sense at least - I realize that soldiers are people too. But you're right that I can't speak for them, and most soldiers seem to have a basic mentality quite far removed from mine.
You're right, of course - but from (my) European view, this has been tried and failed. At least from outside of Brussels, it looks like everything has slid into apathy and a status quo of food shipments and oppressive dictators setting the standards for what constitutes "human rights".
If I went seriously ill, you'd be damn right I'd be happy if someone ran my house and prevented me from dying. And in a long-term scenario, if the bombs fell and you or anyone else managed to become a feudal lord or other autocratic ruler of some kind, offering the only available shelter from roving bandits and control over irrigation or such, I'd most certainly pledge allegiance as long as that wasn't worse than the bandits or starvation. I assume most other people would, as well.
Who cares about "friends"? If no-one steps up and forces justice and freedom, it won't happen. It doesn't matter who gives the order, or who holds the guns. If the situation is as described, the problem becomes even simpler, since it's easy to declare when the occupation will end - when the "good" party is in power, and the government has access to enough force to police the people in the area.
Why would they? The situation in Iraq resulted from there quite simply not being enough boots on the ground to keep the area safe and root out the warring forces kept in check by the Saddam regime. A top-rank general quit over this, referring to established doctrine on occupation and refusing to be involved. Everyone fell on each others throats, seeking power. That doesn't necessarily carry over to other situations, either for want of manpower or for the presence of powder-keg political situations.
Who cares about cultural identity or national borders when you don't have enough to eat, your children won't receive a proper education, and your life and freedom in any case is at the whim and mercy of whoever has the guns?
These are people, not cretins. You don't think they'd be capable of making that distinction, especially if the positive effects of removing oppression where self-evident?
Responsibility or borders or rules doesn't really matter in the end, what matters is suffering. That makes the reason pure empathy, even if only to prevent future suffering. Empathy varies wildly between individuals however, and if you don't feel like I do - then you don't.
There is no such thing as "The People". If an occupation improves their situation, people will support it. If it worsens it, it will be rejected. I remember reading what a town elder said in "Generation Kill" - "We will build gold statues of president Bush up and down the main street as long as you give us proper sanitation and stay away from our women." Admittedly, that was out in the desert bush and the conditions inside the main cities are of course different, but it is probably representative for the situation in Africa.
And not just a faceless human. Seriously, not flamebait. This is why the civilized world should act in force, and not just lamely sit around and ship food and medicine to these hellholes.
Have you tried Arch Linux? AUR is a ports-like source code repository system, and there is no customization, patching or bloat in the install, it's basically a Slackware install plus the pacman package manager and some extra plaintext config files in/etc.
Ludicrous. "The People" is not a person, and cannot collectively appreciate anything. Rhetoric like that just serves to ease the minds of those living in comfort and ease, to take their minds off the squalid suffering that is other people's daily life.
Hell yes. I used to run Slackware for four years until I switched to Arch. I don't manage server farms, I don't need complicated internal configuration systems - the package and configuration system is simple enough that you can get it by just skimming the manpages. And the source package repository AUR is just wonderful, since usually someone has already repackaged and fiddled with the source so it compiles, which I always found a pain to do under Slack.
And no, you could not use open HTTP/Socks proxies or TOR assuming they where not blocked, not if you wanted to use steganography. Which you would want to, since you want to present an "advanced persistent threat", i.e., you want to monitor the target systems for a long time without getting caught.
Elaborating: I assume these rootkits (I don't think HBGary have knowingly participated in industrial espionage mind, but there are a lot of malware authors out there) are sold as packages designed for use in spear phishing or usb key schemes. In order for the attacking party to avoid liability when the software exfiltrates data from the target network, no matter how good steganography it uses, it would need to dump the data onto a "bulletproof" system or lease a botnet. Such systems are (currently) found in Malaysia, Panama, China, and much of the old East Bloc. The Russians have been clamping down some, I believe. To take the risk of calling home to a system affiliated or traceable to the spying corporation would be a suicidal risk in my eyes. They would probably need a "consulting hacker" to oversee the deployment and use of the software. This would also mean that the "consultant" could weigh the risk of the action, something an unskilled person would not be able to do at all. So I think they would not just "buy the software and start cracking", frankly, I don't think they'd know where to look and what to look for.
1. It was an act of social engineering against their admin. They got their hands on the SSH password - not superhuman hacking skills. And it was a 16-year old girl that did it, to boot.
2. Yeah, I'd think so. But you need to know the limitations and proper use of that sort of software at least, to avoid getting caught.
3. The rootkits I've seen are mostly for windows, though there are a lot of *nix rootkits around. Traditionally, rootkits where the domain of *nix servers - they where as far as I know not needed in the pre-NT era.
As for sockpuppets, there's a few users here with spelling suspiciously similar to Barrs, but I'm not going to point fingers. It could be just a coincidence.
Certainly, but what I consider "good" or "bad" or "just" is just what my "moral neurocircuitry" tells me is. Therefore there is no true universal morality, and what we can call "morality" on a societal level becomes something very different from what is everyday experienced as such, and probably shouldn't be called that. The closest thing to universal morality would probably be "suffering" and the empathic reaction to this in others, but even this has limits - what if I suffer so long as I cannot take vengeance upon another, so that he would suffer, for example? What about the suffering of the man who *knows* the gay couple next door is bringing god's wrath on him by having sex every night?
I see two major impediments or problems to this basic view of morality: religion and complex social structures. Religion adds "false suffering" to their adherents, which makes them prioritize and react in a way that is very strange. So long as they are alone in it it is a simple issue, but when we involve inflicting suffering on others or spreading their "false suffering" to their children it becomes a problem. As for complex social relationships, I don't speak about prioritizing your loved ones or such situations, but oaths and structures losing purpouse and becoming a burden and impediment to the reduction of suffering, or at the worst adding suffering. I do not delude myself that I have any solutions to these problems, but I do believe others delude themselves, or hide behind principles such as "war is always wrong" or "guns are evil" so that they can conclude that others suffering is inevitable and is thus spared from thinking about it as something concerning them.
"Inner World of Government Sponsored Hacking: Effectively Recognizing the Signs of Paranoid Schizophrenia in the Information Age - A Primer w/Case Studies".
Just not on my carpet; on my neighbors carpet if you will. I have work and guests to attend to, and he's a sorry old man-crone, not to mention poor. And I suspect he steals my newspaper on Saturdays sometimes. Just don't tell him I said that, or our many affairs and conspiracies will go sour.
Malware can be explained away as malware, especially if it logs to a "dead drop" of some sort that can't be linked back to the intruder. A hardware computer bug, if found, would be much harder to explain away. Especially if found en masse by people who's only link in space and time is crossing the US border.
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Don't you think that, while "right" probably doesn't factor into it, adults should be able to lay down their lives for a just cause if they choose? Although I agree that 18 is a low age as far as mental maturity goes, and I'm just barely 23.
Ignoring that I have ailments preventing me from serving (at least in the Swedish armed forces, but I could probably soldier in a kill-people position with a lot of physical training and being in a position where med supply isn't likely to be cut off) - What plane? Am I supposed to purchase one myself? And alongside whom? And with what guns and training?
More importantly while I realize that the situation isn't as simple as that, in cheering for armed intervention I don't really feel like I'm asking people to do "dirty things" I wouldn't do myself, in a moral or emotional sense at least - I realize that soldiers are people too. But you're right that I can't speak for them, and most soldiers seem to have a basic mentality quite far removed from mine.
You're right, of course - but from (my) European view, this has been tried and failed. At least from outside of Brussels, it looks like everything has slid into apathy and a status quo of food shipments and oppressive dictators setting the standards for what constitutes "human rights".
If I went seriously ill, you'd be damn right I'd be happy if someone ran my house and prevented me from dying. And in a long-term scenario, if the bombs fell and you or anyone else managed to become a feudal lord or other autocratic ruler of some kind, offering the only available shelter from roving bandits and control over irrigation or such, I'd most certainly pledge allegiance as long as that wasn't worse than the bandits or starvation. I assume most other people would, as well.
Who cares about "friends"? If no-one steps up and forces justice and freedom, it won't happen. It doesn't matter who gives the order, or who holds the guns. If the situation is as described, the problem becomes even simpler, since it's easy to declare when the occupation will end - when the "good" party is in power, and the government has access to enough force to police the people in the area.
Why would they? The situation in Iraq resulted from there quite simply not being enough boots on the ground to keep the area safe and root out the warring forces kept in check by the Saddam regime. A top-rank general quit over this, referring to established doctrine on occupation and refusing to be involved. Everyone fell on each others throats, seeking power. That doesn't necessarily carry over to other situations, either for want of manpower or for the presence of powder-keg political situations.
Who cares about cultural identity or national borders when you don't have enough to eat, your children won't receive a proper education, and your life and freedom in any case is at the whim and mercy of whoever has the guns?
These are people, not cretins. You don't think they'd be capable of making that distinction, especially if the positive effects of removing oppression where self-evident?
Responsibility or borders or rules doesn't really matter in the end, what matters is suffering. That makes the reason pure empathy, even if only to prevent future suffering. Empathy varies wildly between individuals however, and if you don't feel like I do - then you don't.
There is no such thing as "The People". If an occupation improves their situation, people will support it. If it worsens it, it will be rejected. I remember reading what a town elder said in "Generation Kill" - "We will build gold statues of president Bush up and down the main street as long as you give us proper sanitation and stay away from our women." Admittedly, that was out in the desert bush and the conditions inside the main cities are of course different, but it is probably representative for the situation in Africa.
And not just a faceless human. Seriously, not flamebait. This is why the civilized world should act in force, and not just lamely sit around and ship food and medicine to these hellholes.
That's a good point. I actually hadn't thought about that at all.
Have you tried Arch Linux? AUR is a ports-like source code repository system, and there is no customization, patching or bloat in the install, it's basically a Slackware install plus the pacman package manager and some extra plaintext config files in /etc.
Ludicrous. "The People" is not a person, and cannot collectively appreciate anything. Rhetoric like that just serves to ease the minds of those living in comfort and ease, to take their minds off the squalid suffering that is other people's daily life.
Hell yes. I used to run Slackware for four years until I switched to Arch. I don't manage server farms, I don't need complicated internal configuration systems - the package and configuration system is simple enough that you can get it by just skimming the manpages. And the source package repository AUR is just wonderful, since usually someone has already repackaged and fiddled with the source so it compiles, which I always found a pain to do under Slack.
And no, you could not use open HTTP/Socks proxies or TOR assuming they where not blocked, not if you wanted to use steganography. Which you would want to, since you want to present an "advanced persistent threat", i.e., you want to monitor the target systems for a long time without getting caught.
Elaborating: I assume these rootkits (I don't think HBGary have knowingly participated in industrial espionage mind, but there are a lot of malware authors out there) are sold as packages designed for use in spear phishing or usb key schemes. In order for the attacking party to avoid liability when the software exfiltrates data from the target network, no matter how good steganography it uses, it would need to dump the data onto a "bulletproof" system or lease a botnet. Such systems are (currently) found in Malaysia, Panama, China, and much of the old East Bloc. The Russians have been clamping down some, I believe. To take the risk of calling home to a system affiliated or traceable to the spying corporation would be a suicidal risk in my eyes. They would probably need a "consulting hacker" to oversee the deployment and use of the software. This would also mean that the "consultant" could weigh the risk of the action, something an unskilled person would not be able to do at all. So I think they would not just "buy the software and start cracking", frankly, I don't think they'd know where to look and what to look for.
1. It was an act of social engineering against their admin. They got their hands on the SSH password - not superhuman hacking skills. And it was a 16-year old girl that did it, to boot.
2. Yeah, I'd think so. But you need to know the limitations and proper use of that sort of software at least, to avoid getting caught.
3. The rootkits I've seen are mostly for windows, though there are a lot of *nix rootkits around. Traditionally, rootkits where the domain of *nix servers - they where as far as I know not needed in the pre-NT era.
As for sockpuppets, there's a few users here with spelling suspiciously similar to Barrs, but I'm not going to point fingers. It could be just a coincidence.
Certainly, but what I consider "good" or "bad" or "just" is just what my "moral neurocircuitry" tells me is. Therefore there is no true universal morality, and what we can call "morality" on a societal level becomes something very different from what is everyday experienced as such, and probably shouldn't be called that. The closest thing to universal morality would probably be "suffering" and the empathic reaction to this in others, but even this has limits - what if I suffer so long as I cannot take vengeance upon another, so that he would suffer, for example? What about the suffering of the man who *knows* the gay couple next door is bringing god's wrath on him by having sex every night?
I see two major impediments or problems to this basic view of morality: religion and complex social structures. Religion adds "false suffering" to their adherents, which makes them prioritize and react in a way that is very strange. So long as they are alone in it it is a simple issue, but when we involve inflicting suffering on others or spreading their "false suffering" to their children it becomes a problem. As for complex social relationships, I don't speak about prioritizing your loved ones or such situations, but oaths and structures losing purpouse and becoming a burden and impediment to the reduction of suffering, or at the worst adding suffering. I do not delude myself that I have any solutions to these problems, but I do believe others delude themselves, or hide behind principles such as "war is always wrong" or "guns are evil" so that they can conclude that others suffering is inevitable and is thus spared from thinking about it as something concerning them.
Actually it was founded by Hoglund, and it sounded like the core of the company was Hoglund and Hoglunds wife (as a manager of some sort).
"Inner World of Government Sponsored Hacking: Effectively Recognizing the Signs of Paranoid Schizophrenia in the Information Age - A Primer w/Case Studies".
Just not on my carpet; on my neighbors carpet if you will. I have work and guests to attend to, and he's a sorry old man-crone, not to mention poor. And I suspect he steals my newspaper on Saturdays sometimes. Just don't tell him I said that, or our many affairs and conspiracies will go sour.
Malware can be explained away as malware, especially if it logs to a "dead drop" of some sort that can't be linked back to the intruder. A hardware computer bug, if found, would be much harder to explain away. Especially if found en masse by people who's only link in space and time is crossing the US border.
I didn't say it necessarily was the US government who'd run the campaign.
Hair-splitting it like that amounts to using what should be a label of moral/ethical behavior as a title of prestige.