Good, I'm glad someone said this so I don't have to. As it happens, the very fact that there are so many string theories available is my #1 reason for being disillusioned with the theory. Not only does this data slow down any string theory research program, but they have not even described any possible data that could. String theories (or I should say M-theory) is so empirically slippery that it serves more as an explanatory framework and less a scientific theory.
An explanatory framework is a normative constraint on how we should interpret the world, not a set of statements that entails to observational predictions that can be falsified. The Enlightenment view that "the universe is a clocklike mechanism" is clearly not a scientific theory, but it sort of provides a framework for things that are. They basically said "we don't want to hear any theories that don't represent the universe as a clock-like mechanism." That's why I said "normative." M-theory evangelists are best understood as people who try to commit us to a new normative framework ("we only want theories that can be expressed in 'elegant' M-theory math'), rather than to a scientific theory.
It's an interesting question that might be unsettled in some jurisdictions. About the intentionally-caused traffic jam, I bet that would be a crime in the US, but I don't know the law well enough to know what the exact charge would be. But in any case, there is no indication that authorities have any evidence that this guy did any denial of service attacks. It sounds to me like they're intimidating him into snitching on others. I don't see why else they would mess with him. No court in a first world country would convict a guy for writing a press release... I would hope!
Is he charged with designing graphics? With sympathizing with an unsavory group? How the heck would that arrest warrant look? How is the creation of that document even something in the vicinity of a crime?
I have a feeling that next year, Assange will publish some juicy leaks on China, Iran and Russia, and diplomats in those three countries will start calling for his head using the exact same language that was already used by US Republicans. Talk about cognitive dissonance! When the Chinese are trying to off muckraking journalists, we in the West turn those journalists into heroes and award them prizes in absentia. If Assange were in a Chinese jail right now instead of a British one, he'd be a lock for every fucking prize in the world.
Why can't people take a step back and see this? There is no moral difference between exposing Chinese or Iranian treachery, and exposing US or British treachery. All treachery deserves to be called out.
This thread is on to something interesting. Let's expand on it with a thought experiment: Suppose that for the sake of transparency ("A corporation shouldn't hide its data!"), Assange released all the information in Facebook for anyone to look at. After all, it's not just the people in power who act reprehensibly and could use a bit of sunshine to clean up their act. It's also our husbands and daughters who practice treachery (on a more personal level). I don't think that Assange would have the high ground in this hypothetical case, but it's interesting to ask why not. Clearly, it can't just be that transparency is always a morally superior end state, but where is the line? Why is it OK to publish the presumed private musings of diplomats, scientists and bankers, but not those of grad students, plumbers or lawyers?
Yeah, me too! And I did it on my own terms, without being forced to play in some megalomaniac's proprietary sand box. If Zuckerberg deserves the award, it's for the generosity he has shown with the money he earned. I'll feel much better about Facebook if it really turns out to be a tool for sucking money from the idle rich and giving (half) to the Gates foundation, who use it to do stuff that's actually valuable.
Facebook is a piece of shit, and it makes our lives worse. But it made Zuckerberg a mountain of money, and he's giving half of it to the Gates Foundation. I am completely certain that this money really will make a positive difference in people's lives, and I do think we should acknowledge people like Zuckerberg for acting morally.
Are you serious? Read this article and then tell me that he's not doing journalism. I don't really see much of a difference between what he does and Woodward and Bernstein publishing the insider tips from their informant "Deep Throat". And everyone needs to get over the impression that Assange is just passing on documents. He and his organization are doing a ton of work in fact-checking, redacting, mediating with other media outlets, etc. (If you don't realize how much redacting there is in WikiLeaks, you don't know shit about this issue and need to do more reading before you comment again. The staffs of four of the most important newspapers in the world are collaborating with the WikiLeaks staff on the gigantic project of figuring out what needs to be redacted. That's why the release of the cables is basically a trickle. Processing them responsibly takes a ton of work.)
But I do think that Assange would serve well the cause of WikiLeaks if he got a job from a proper newspaper somewhere - I'd recommend Iceland. That way, the "leaks" would be called "newspaper stories" in Geysir News or whatever. If WikiLeaks were a newspaper, they would be by far the most successful and talked-about newspaper in the world. I think the rebranding of their operation would be a good start to help remedy misperceptions like yours.
I don't think my parents were ever as impressed with me as on the day when I rescued their data, including many years of precious photos, from their crashed hard drive. After diagnosing the click of doom on their drive, I wrapped it in a towel, then two bags of that blue freezer gel, another towel and a plastic bag, and in this state left it to freeze overnight. It had a SATA cable and a SATA power adapter cable sticking out, and I did my best to seal the plastic bag with tape to avoid condensation once I took the thing out. The next day, the wrapped, frozen hard drive actually booted and was able to transfer a few gigabytes of the data onto a new drive. I repeated the procedure until I rescued the rest. I still can't believe that worked!
Good point! You know, I'm noticing a pattern here: It's becoming disturbingly easy to trick the USA into a self-destructive overreaction. Bin Laden did this masterfully, and that was his intention. I don't think that Assange did that intentionally - maybe - but it definitely does work in the favor of WikiLeaks. And let's not forget how the traditional media shot itself in the foot: It used to be that when you have insider information, you would call the Washington Post, or maybe Seymour Hersch. Today's Deepthroat would not even consider that: He'd be crazy to do anything but go to WikiLeaks. Those guys will protect his identity and get his info to the world. The newspapers will squabble over who gets sloppy seconds. And if they, like the NY Times, do an unflattering story about Assange, he can freeze them out of future pre-leaks and condemn them to the sidelines. The NYT would have nothing to write if The Guardian hadn't graciously shared their info with them. It looks to me like WikiLeaks is kicking everyone's ass!
You're quite right, but I think that it's a huge misconception to think of WikiLeaks as being an organization that focuses on American transgressions. Their first huge story uncovered sickening, systematic corruption in the Kenyan government. They've leaked evidence of corruption in Swiss banks. They've done lots more. Of course the US only inflates the story into a big stink when it's their shit that's smeared everywhere, but that's not because WikiLeaks ignores non-US corruption.
What Assange really needs right now are leaks about human rights abuses in China, as you say - something serious enough that the Chinese would be calling for his head using exactly the same words used by US Republicans. I think that would make the cognitive dissonance complete.
This New Yorker article from the more innocent days of June is something that everyone needs to read before they can really make sense of WikiLeaks. It's about what those people actually do, and it's an excellent read. Even if you've read a hundred stories about WikiLeaks, you probably don't have this background and it will change the way you look at their work.
If someone could make money on this, then someone else will start selling custom concealable weapons. Sure, $500 might be a lot to pay for a ceramic dagger or a piece of C4 explosive shaped to look like belly fat, but you get all that money back and more on the first flight you take, so it's a good deal for both the buyer and seller.
Obviously, the real problem happens when an actual terrorist who means to do harm sneaks one of those weapons on board.
Why didn't the TSA test this technology first to make sure it works? I mean, it's not like cloth tape and a flattened explosive are unprecedented or amazingly cunning bits of circumvention! Why not hire 20 nerds and give them a week to figure out if they can sneak something truly dangerous through the scanner? As long as they can do so reliably, wait for the next version of the machine and test again. Only when it works should you place the order!
Exactly! I just had a conversation last night that really put this into perspective. We imagined that we were sitting on highly sensitive classified information that we wanted to leak. My friend argued that she'd leak it to Seymour Hersch, the traditional go-to journalist who has the trust of many people in power. I realized that I'd rather leak it to Assange. Why? Because I could be sure that it will be released. Hersch is a brilliant information sponge, but if any of this information escapes, it sounds like vague descriptions of rumors he's heard. That's not quite the impact that one would wish for.
But the most important thing for me, if I were a leaker, is to make sure that I'm not sending my leaks to cops. If there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that Assange and Hersch are not cops. And you know that cops are working very hard at opening their own competing leaks release organization. A perfect name for a CIA honeypot of this source would be "OpenLeaks". It sounds pretty Orwellian if you think about it that way. How hard is it to imagine that a young, morally driven insider leaks something to them, and instead of releasing that info, they just lock him away in solitary for life? Our crime enforcement agencies would be remiss to not try something like this, and publicize it as a "superior alternative" to Wikileaks. But as long as Wikileaks is up and running, I would never send sensitive data to any other source.
Hey, this is a serious "nerds at war" story. Slashdot would be remiss to not cover what might be greatest exploit of weapons grade professional hacking in world history. How long before Slashdot "friends" find themselves on opposite sides of an actual war where key infrastructure is literally exploding? Because that's exactly what those worm coders did: Blow up uranium centrifuges in militarized underground bunkers. This really is the start of a new era in the history of nerddom, and if anything, it should be getting more attention from nerds. Maybe some of the authors of that worm even have user accounts here.
And this is supposed to be comforting how? I mean, I can't find confirmation for anything that you say apart from the fertility numbers, but if Iran is a collapsing nation of heroin zombies, that doesn't exactly inspire my confidence in the stability of that part of the world. Add nuclear weapons to the mix and you'll see that something could possibly go wrong.
If there is this kind of heavy handed crap going on at companies we are supposed to trust, we all know where to send the evidence. I know that not everyone agrees, but somehow I feel better in the world knowing that Wikileaks is on call, doing its thing.
No, fear of death really doesn't make sense to me. I definitely fear suffering, that's different. You've got to be alive to suffer. I also don't want to die, but not because I fear death. It's because I don't expect to run out of interesting stuff to do. But it's not fear. Maybe we don't want to go to work tomorrow, but it's not because we fear work. I figured this out when I was about six, and it still makes sense to me: Death feels just like it felt before you were born. Nothing scary about that!
Right, that's a good idea, but I'm wondering: Is there really any advantage to the postal money order, rather than putting cash into an envelope? I know you're asked to not mail cash, but if somebody intercepted the postal money order, couldn't they just as easily deposit it?
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice.
I have to call 'bullshit' on the boobies. Did you forget how the FCC fined CBS $550,000 for the Janet Jackson boob incident? The 'F' in FCC is for "Federal". Don't tell me that networks are boobless simply by self-regulation.
It's not just throwing out diplomatic cables. If that's all they needed to do, they wouldn't need a whole organization. They could just use Tor and the hundreds of other back channels by which data circulates on the internet. But consider all the other things that Wikileaks actually does besides distributing data:
Wikileaks needs to receive leaks, for which it has to be a credible organization that's worth leaking to. One problem with past leaks is that the leaker's life was destroyed without the leak actually getting out. The alleged diplomatic cables leaker is in deep shit legally, but at least he has the comfort of knowing that his info actually got out. I'm sure we'll see organizations in the near future that pose as leak releasers, but really, they're just cops. Whatever you think of Wikileaks, they're clearly not the cops, and they will pass your leaks to the world.
Wikileaks needs to have a pretty serious research arm so they can check the authenticity of the stuff being leaked to them. I'm sure that various governments/firms are, at this very moment, sending them falsified "leaks" in order to discredit them or to gain some sort of an advantage over their rivals.
Wikileaks needs to have international security experts in its ranks, or at least reliable access to such experts, in order to know what information needs to be redacted. I can't stress this enough. Wikileaks works very hard at making sure the leaks are redacted in a way that they cannot be used to cause direct harm. This is not an easy job!
Wikileaks needs to have open channels to the most respected global media outlets, so that they can consult with them and leverage their fact-checking and distribution resources. That's why the leaks are pre-leaked to selected global media sources.
These four tasks are absolutely indispensable. If some future Wikileaks copycat thinks that it's enough to dump out documents, then the world is really in trouble. Wikileaks doesn't get enough credit for all the work they do to make sure their leaking is done in a responsible way.
Yeah, I get it. It just struck me as perverse. I mean, the point of classifying documents is to keep them from giving foreign powers an advantage. Yet the fact that they're classified is the very thing that's giving foreigners an advantage. They can study our documents; we can't.
If I studied political science, international relations or even history, I would definitely be all over these leaks. I can't think of a better source of lessons on how international politics really functions. It may be harder to read than a textbook, but it's real and raw and recent. In fact, if I were a professor of international politics, I'd consider throwing together a graduate seminar where the wikileaks are the primary assigned reading. The government warning would give me pause, and it would be a dealbreaker for my university. But that wouldn't make such a seminar any less good. Why deny American graduate students this understanding, and leave that treasure trove of information to foreign graduate students?
Slashdot Mirror
Good, I'm glad someone said this so I don't have to. As it happens, the very fact that there are so many string theories available is my #1 reason for being disillusioned with the theory. Not only does this data slow down any string theory research program, but they have not even described any possible data that could. String theories (or I should say M-theory) is so empirically slippery that it serves more as an explanatory framework and less a scientific theory.
An explanatory framework is a normative constraint on how we should interpret the world, not a set of statements that entails to observational predictions that can be falsified. The Enlightenment view that "the universe is a clocklike mechanism" is clearly not a scientific theory, but it sort of provides a framework for things that are. They basically said "we don't want to hear any theories that don't represent the universe as a clock-like mechanism." That's why I said "normative." M-theory evangelists are best understood as people who try to commit us to a new normative framework ("we only want theories that can be expressed in 'elegant' M-theory math'), rather than to a scientific theory.
It's an interesting question that might be unsettled in some jurisdictions. About the intentionally-caused traffic jam, I bet that would be a crime in the US, but I don't know the law well enough to know what the exact charge would be. But in any case, there is no indication that authorities have any evidence that this guy did any denial of service attacks. It sounds to me like they're intimidating him into snitching on others. I don't see why else they would mess with him. No court in a first world country would convict a guy for writing a press release... I would hope!
Is he charged with designing graphics? With sympathizing with an unsavory group? How the heck would that arrest warrant look? How is the creation of that document even something in the vicinity of a crime?
I have a feeling that next year, Assange will publish some juicy leaks on China, Iran and Russia, and diplomats in those three countries will start calling for his head using the exact same language that was already used by US Republicans. Talk about cognitive dissonance! When the Chinese are trying to off muckraking journalists, we in the West turn those journalists into heroes and award them prizes in absentia. If Assange were in a Chinese jail right now instead of a British one, he'd be a lock for every fucking prize in the world.
Why can't people take a step back and see this? There is no moral difference between exposing Chinese or Iranian treachery, and exposing US or British treachery. All treachery deserves to be called out.
This thread is on to something interesting. Let's expand on it with a thought experiment: Suppose that for the sake of transparency ("A corporation shouldn't hide its data!"), Assange released all the information in Facebook for anyone to look at. After all, it's not just the people in power who act reprehensibly and could use a bit of sunshine to clean up their act. It's also our husbands and daughters who practice treachery (on a more personal level). I don't think that Assange would have the high ground in this hypothetical case, but it's interesting to ask why not. Clearly, it can't just be that transparency is always a morally superior end state, but where is the line? Why is it OK to publish the presumed private musings of diplomats, scientists and bankers, but not those of grad students, plumbers or lawyers?
Yeah, me too! And I did it on my own terms, without being forced to play in some megalomaniac's proprietary sand box. If Zuckerberg deserves the award, it's for the generosity he has shown with the money he earned. I'll feel much better about Facebook if it really turns out to be a tool for sucking money from the idle rich and giving (half) to the Gates foundation, who use it to do stuff that's actually valuable.
Facebook is a piece of shit, and it makes our lives worse. But it made Zuckerberg a mountain of money, and he's giving half of it to the Gates Foundation. I am completely certain that this money really will make a positive difference in people's lives, and I do think we should acknowledge people like Zuckerberg for acting morally.
Are you serious? Read this article and then tell me that he's not doing journalism. I don't really see much of a difference between what he does and Woodward and Bernstein publishing the insider tips from their informant "Deep Throat". And everyone needs to get over the impression that Assange is just passing on documents. He and his organization are doing a ton of work in fact-checking, redacting, mediating with other media outlets, etc. (If you don't realize how much redacting there is in WikiLeaks, you don't know shit about this issue and need to do more reading before you comment again. The staffs of four of the most important newspapers in the world are collaborating with the WikiLeaks staff on the gigantic project of figuring out what needs to be redacted. That's why the release of the cables is basically a trickle. Processing them responsibly takes a ton of work.)
But I do think that Assange would serve well the cause of WikiLeaks if he got a job from a proper newspaper somewhere - I'd recommend Iceland. That way, the "leaks" would be called "newspaper stories" in Geysir News or whatever. If WikiLeaks were a newspaper, they would be by far the most successful and talked-about newspaper in the world. I think the rebranding of their operation would be a good start to help remedy misperceptions like yours.
I don't think my parents were ever as impressed with me as on the day when I rescued their data, including many years of precious photos, from their crashed hard drive. After diagnosing the click of doom on their drive, I wrapped it in a towel, then two bags of that blue freezer gel, another towel and a plastic bag, and in this state left it to freeze overnight. It had a SATA cable and a SATA power adapter cable sticking out, and I did my best to seal the plastic bag with tape to avoid condensation once I took the thing out. The next day, the wrapped, frozen hard drive actually booted and was able to transfer a few gigabytes of the data onto a new drive. I repeated the procedure until I rescued the rest. I still can't believe that worked!
Good point! You know, I'm noticing a pattern here: It's becoming disturbingly easy to trick the USA into a self-destructive overreaction. Bin Laden did this masterfully, and that was his intention. I don't think that Assange did that intentionally - maybe - but it definitely does work in the favor of WikiLeaks. And let's not forget how the traditional media shot itself in the foot: It used to be that when you have insider information, you would call the Washington Post, or maybe Seymour Hersch. Today's Deepthroat would not even consider that: He'd be crazy to do anything but go to WikiLeaks. Those guys will protect his identity and get his info to the world. The newspapers will squabble over who gets sloppy seconds. And if they, like the NY Times, do an unflattering story about Assange, he can freeze them out of future pre-leaks and condemn them to the sidelines. The NYT would have nothing to write if The Guardian hadn't graciously shared their info with them. It looks to me like WikiLeaks is kicking everyone's ass!
You're quite right, but I think that it's a huge misconception to think of WikiLeaks as being an organization that focuses on American transgressions. Their first huge story uncovered sickening, systematic corruption in the Kenyan government. They've leaked evidence of corruption in Swiss banks. They've done lots more. Of course the US only inflates the story into a big stink when it's their shit that's smeared everywhere, but that's not because WikiLeaks ignores non-US corruption.
What Assange really needs right now are leaks about human rights abuses in China, as you say - something serious enough that the Chinese would be calling for his head using exactly the same words used by US Republicans. I think that would make the cognitive dissonance complete.
This New Yorker article from the more innocent days of June is something that everyone needs to read before they can really make sense of WikiLeaks. It's about what those people actually do, and it's an excellent read. Even if you've read a hundred stories about WikiLeaks, you probably don't have this background and it will change the way you look at their work.
If someone could make money on this, then someone else will start selling custom concealable weapons. Sure, $500 might be a lot to pay for a ceramic dagger or a piece of C4 explosive shaped to look like belly fat, but you get all that money back and more on the first flight you take, so it's a good deal for both the buyer and seller.
Obviously, the real problem happens when an actual terrorist who means to do harm sneaks one of those weapons on board.
I'm not against placating people, but there's a cheap and well-known way to do that: a placebo. It also doesn't bathe you in dangerous x-rays.
Why didn't the TSA test this technology first to make sure it works? I mean, it's not like cloth tape and a flattened explosive are unprecedented or amazingly cunning bits of circumvention! Why not hire 20 nerds and give them a week to figure out if they can sneak something truly dangerous through the scanner? As long as they can do so reliably, wait for the next version of the machine and test again. Only when it works should you place the order!
Exactly! I just had a conversation last night that really put this into perspective. We imagined that we were sitting on highly sensitive classified information that we wanted to leak. My friend argued that she'd leak it to Seymour Hersch, the traditional go-to journalist who has the trust of many people in power. I realized that I'd rather leak it to Assange. Why? Because I could be sure that it will be released. Hersch is a brilliant information sponge, but if any of this information escapes, it sounds like vague descriptions of rumors he's heard. That's not quite the impact that one would wish for.
But the most important thing for me, if I were a leaker, is to make sure that I'm not sending my leaks to cops. If there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that Assange and Hersch are not cops. And you know that cops are working very hard at opening their own competing leaks release organization. A perfect name for a CIA honeypot of this source would be "OpenLeaks". It sounds pretty Orwellian if you think about it that way. How hard is it to imagine that a young, morally driven insider leaks something to them, and instead of releasing that info, they just lock him away in solitary for life? Our crime enforcement agencies would be remiss to not try something like this, and publicize it as a "superior alternative" to Wikileaks. But as long as Wikileaks is up and running, I would never send sensitive data to any other source.
Hey, this is a serious "nerds at war" story. Slashdot would be remiss to not cover what might be greatest exploit of weapons grade professional hacking in world history. How long before Slashdot "friends" find themselves on opposite sides of an actual war where key infrastructure is literally exploding? Because that's exactly what those worm coders did: Blow up uranium centrifuges in militarized underground bunkers. This really is the start of a new era in the history of nerddom, and if anything, it should be getting more attention from nerds. Maybe some of the authors of that worm even have user accounts here.
And this is supposed to be comforting how? I mean, I can't find confirmation for anything that you say apart from the fertility numbers, but if Iran is a collapsing nation of heroin zombies, that doesn't exactly inspire my confidence in the stability of that part of the world. Add nuclear weapons to the mix and you'll see that something could possibly go wrong.
If there is this kind of heavy handed crap going on at companies we are supposed to trust, we all know where to send the evidence. I know that not everyone agrees, but somehow I feel better in the world knowing that Wikileaks is on call, doing its thing.
No, fear of death really doesn't make sense to me. I definitely fear suffering, that's different. You've got to be alive to suffer. I also don't want to die, but not because I fear death. It's because I don't expect to run out of interesting stuff to do. But it's not fear. Maybe we don't want to go to work tomorrow, but it's not because we fear work. I figured this out when I was about six, and it still makes sense to me: Death feels just like it felt before you were born. Nothing scary about that!
Right, that's a good idea, but I'm wondering: Is there really any advantage to the postal money order, rather than putting cash into an envelope? I know you're asked to not mail cash, but if somebody intercepted the postal money order, couldn't they just as easily deposit it?
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice.
I have to call 'bullshit' on the boobies. Did you forget how the FCC fined CBS $550,000 for the Janet Jackson boob incident? The 'F' in FCC is for "Federal". Don't tell me that networks are boobless simply by self-regulation.
It's not just throwing out diplomatic cables. If that's all they needed to do, they wouldn't need a whole organization. They could just use Tor and the hundreds of other back channels by which data circulates on the internet. But consider all the other things that Wikileaks actually does besides distributing data:
These four tasks are absolutely indispensable. If some future Wikileaks copycat thinks that it's enough to dump out documents, then the world is really in trouble. Wikileaks doesn't get enough credit for all the work they do to make sure their leaking is done in a responsible way.
Yeah, I get it. It just struck me as perverse. I mean, the point of classifying documents is to keep them from giving foreign powers an advantage. Yet the fact that they're classified is the very thing that's giving foreigners an advantage. They can study our documents; we can't.
If I studied political science, international relations or even history, I would definitely be all over these leaks. I can't think of a better source of lessons on how international politics really functions. It may be harder to read than a textbook, but it's real and raw and recent. In fact, if I were a professor of international politics, I'd consider throwing together a graduate seminar where the wikileaks are the primary assigned reading. The government warning would give me pause, and it would be a dealbreaker for my university. But that wouldn't make such a seminar any less good. Why deny American graduate students this understanding, and leave that treasure trove of information to foreign graduate students?