I don't even remember the last time I saw a shop selling single-function clockwork alarm clocks.
Toasters are no longer simple mechanical devices for a reason. If an "appliance" concept really worked, all you'd need is a 555 timer chip and a variable resistor. There hasn't been a toaster that simple in almost 2 decades!
Whoa - dude -- are you, like, talking to us from the future? What is 2035 like? How far have 3D printers come? Can you print a Ferrari?.... Wait -- forget that -- who won the 2012 World Series?
>> devices such as this, and the tools needed to work with them will be strictly controlled and only licensed individuals will get access
> The app store did at least $2 Billion in direct revenue for Apple this year
Your counterpoint to a perceived threat of a strictly controlled, licensed access marketplace is a set of devices whose marketplace is strictly controlled and only available to programmers who agree to a license?
I dig what you're saying, and it's a good post. Still, a counterpoint is worth considering:
So ultimately its families and word of mouth which i think will kill all this BS, just as it did with music.
The typical family music-player of choice is the iPod. The touch versions are general purpose computers with a process restricting OS. The included player will play non-DRM music, but you can't implement your own music player or get a third party one without jailbreaking the device or submitting to Apple's distribution authority.
Israel gives radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorists a common cause around which to rally. Israel is an existential support to the extreme authoritarian regimes throughout the region. Israel's lightning rod behavior is materially supportive of the growth and expansion of terrorist organizations and ideology throughout the middle east. If Israel continues to flagrantly choose not to cease its existence of its own volition, it should be caused to cease to exist in the interest of eliminating the raison d'etre of so many terrorist organizations.
Look, Israel: How 'bout you stop fucking with the founding principles of this nation, and we don't complain too loudly about all the money and bombs we give you -- those come out of my goddamn paycheck. It's already tiresome enough to have to carry around a screaming brat prima donna who likes to taunt bullies and fixate on suicidal promises made by a fictional deity a few thousand years ago. The least you could do is not kick us in the kidneys while we're doing it.
The word "Like" is relative. Relative to the past frame of reference. The second time you see a gorilla, you think it looks like the first gorilla. I suspect I would be hard-pressed to tell a male gorilla from a female on casual observation. Jane Goodall, however, probably sees as much visual distinction between individual gorillas as you see between humans.
Same with exoplanets. The first ones we detected were supergiants in close orbits around relatively small stars. Compared to those, Mars is Earth-like. Now we've found enough that "Earth-like" is evolving to mean something more specific. Vague terms in novel and rapidly advancing fields have evolving meanings. That is the nature of language.
As others have said, exoplanet taxonomy is a fine new field to plumb, but that doesn't mean Earth-like is bad -- it's just vague and unscientific. A rough measure that only has meaning in context. Conversational shorthand, useful in casual discourse.
Not very hard, and what they passed instead is a bloated taxpayer funding of giant lobbyists (insurance and pharma).
They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it,
Not very hard, they have one house and the Presidency, and they gave in.
rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down.
Not very hard. In fact, they pushed for some of the tax cuts.
They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war.
Not very hard. They signed the paper that gave Bush and the Neocons the authority to do whatever they damned well pleased. Obama even started some new policies, like summary execution of United States citizens.
They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics.
Not very hard. They said they were fighting for it, but when Citizens United went through the Supremes, they threw up there hands in surrender.
They fought against torture.
Not very hard. We're still doing it.
They fought against teaching creationism in school.
This is one of the theatrical wedge issues. Notice how, for all the stage presence they demonstrate in the fight, no actual policy changes have happened?
they fought for the rights of gays and women
This is also a theatrical wedge issue. The only slight difference is that public opinion fell heavily on the "change the military policy" side, so one tiny corner of gay policy got changed. Until gays have they same rights as non-gay citizens, they are still not showing true support. How many of them are fully invested in truly equal rights for gays? How's Obama's position on gay marriage? They don't even get the half-a-loaf that is civil partnerships. Has there been a single substantive change in non-military policy regarding gay rights?
That is why we call this political theater. Because all the supposed support amounts to sound and fury signifying nothing.
Gridlock, you say? Hardly! We have made enormous changes in our policies, domestic and foreign. We have signed treaties and created sweeping new laws. We have completely revised our interpretation of the Bill of Rights. We have discarded any notion of respect for the War Powers Resolution.
All the truly significant changes in United States policy, happening at a truly blistering pace, are authoritarianism and expansion of monopolies and barriers to entry (copyright, patents, trademarks, insurance, drugs importation). The dramatic changes are all one of two things; the ability to control dissidents (enemy or patriot, foreign or domestic), and government influencing cashflow into the pockets of major corporations that do a lot of lobbying.
Look at the substantive change. If the substantive change does not match the rhetoric, questions must be raised. Show me substantive change, and I will believe that the rhetoric is more than theater.
As far as competing with Diaspora - that's like claiming the NY Yankees are competing with the little league teams that plays down the road from me. It's laughable. As popular as Diaspora is with the disaffected Slashdot and/or techie crowd... It's meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Those enamored of Diaspora are those pissed at other networks, and they'll get pissed and move on again. They're unstable and marginal.
Your aimless and wandering rant against Diaspora sounds to me like a song without a tune. You don't think Diaspora is the solution, aren't entirely sure why, have a few vague answers you've heard before, maybe the same things you've been telling yourself for why you haven't set up a node yet.
I think that is good. I think that is a healthy and good perspective to have.
That perspective implies that you haven't really developed your image of the problem space yet. Here's a key point to keep in mind: Decentralization of information distribution is good. Always has been. From Gutenberg to the replacement of secretaries with personal computers, every time we have decentralized the control of information distribution, society has made a giant leap forward in pretty much every measurable sense.
So, now, think about that as you develop your image of Diaspora. How does Diaspora compare with the advent of personal computers and everyone writing their own reports? Everyone *should* have their own server and be publishing their own social information. And they will. And as it happens, we all get to enjoy another giant leap forward.
It is coming. Diaspora is not really ready yet. It is not easy enough yet. It may not even be the one that wins. But it is the first mover, which confers a significant advantage.
You can host for your friends, so they don't have to. A single Diaspora node can host many accounts for little or no additional cost or maintenance. Granted, one person in your social circle has to run a node, but look at the upside -- great trick to expand geek entree into broader social circles. And, yes, it still means that more people have to run webservers. But, the point is decentralization. More people running servers is pretty much the definition of success.
never catch on with a large enough audience to ever matter to anyone but its users.
I remember when my Dad had a secretary who had a computer and used it to write his reports. Now he writes his own reports on his own computer. We should all have more authority over the servers we use to publish our social information for the same reason my Dad should write his own reports -- makes the resulting product a more accurate reflection of his intent.
The problem here is not that Google is doing this bit of culture control this time. The bigger picture is the same thing Eben Moglen brought up a couple years ago -- centralization of information authority. Until we get off of the centralized systems of social communication, we will continue to have centralized information authorities deciding what we can and cannot say based on their best interests, not ours.
And here's the hard part of this: We're the ones who have to do it. We have to make it happen. We, Slashdotters, are the most perfectly equipped community to do the work that needs to be done -- there is no-one more perfectly suited that we can hope will solve this. I've been doing a bit of work on it, but not enough. We all need to work harder to get our culture out of the hands of a small number of centralized entities.
And this isn't just about flipping the bird -- info centralization also makes astroturfing easier, makes spam harder to filter, makes surveillance and profiling easier (for the corps, the cops, and the perps), and generally turns cultural conformity into a competitive sport.
I wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote a long and subtle post on the value of contemplating the underlying forces acting in society that lead to events like this, rather than jumping to adulation or condemnation. I came to the conclusion that I could not make it clear that I was advocating contemplation, not support or opposition. That all I would get in response would be some twit turning my post into a straw man then hurling rhetorical vitriol at it.
Then it came to me -- I may be able to extract some value from this thread after all. So, I implore you, read through this thread with this question in mind: Do the histrionic posts add value to the discussion or take it away?
My guess; histrionics cheapen the discussion. An emotional and one-sided post about how Anonymous is a terrorist organization or the savior of true democracy is sound and fury signifying nothing, and a waste of our valuable time.
Inhibit histrionics, however you can. They are pablum for the masses and better left to the professional simpletons in popular media.
It's a common rhetorical, but it doesn't really work, does it?
We're near the largest in: Auto manufacturing, aviation manufacturing, nautical manufacturing, space manufacturing, and high tech manufacturing. Grain production, dairy production, meat production, fruit production, and vegetable production. Software, movies, books, websites, music, and television. That's off the top of my head.
Or, to put it slightly differently, we are ninth in the world in GDP per capita, number one in the world in GDP, and our GDP is increasing both absolute and per-capita. We do everything, and we're pretty darned good at it, too. The only remotely plausible sense in which we are not good at everything is in the sense that we are no longer laughably far out in front of everyone else like we were 40 years ago.
Now, I think we should be trying to be laughably far out in front of everyone else. I even think we have the potential to do so and I have some solid data on a few key points to back up my belief. But that doesn't mean we are doing poorly yet -- we have a long way left to fall, even at our current lackluster rate of climb.
The purpose of my post is to try to establish a framework for analyzing the radically different reactions some people have shown to The Arab Spring versus Western dissidence.
Previously they have exploited a message boards softwares failure to strip html tags to post flashing images on a board for epileptics,
Seriously? From the article:
"I'm pretty sure I saw a thread about this while browsing ebaumsworld, so yeah, it was probably those f-----s," said another.
Fascinating evidence of wrongdoing. You are an idiot.
You blame someone because a mob gets angry at them.
Not sure about OP, and I completely understand the validity of your post in the context of a response to his or her post.
An angry mob (or a lone gunman) is, however, a good reason to take a closer look at the situation. Sometimes it is just an angry basement-dweller with a bad attitude, but when someone shouts fire, it is worthwhile to take a look and see if there is a fire (and to hold the shouter accountable as appropriate).
Ok, so do you blame abortion doctors who get killed?
Not immediately, but I would certainly want to hear the murderer's motive in the process of prosecuting him or her. Killing someone is a pretty big step for most people and not an action that should be discounted lightly. Just as they may be delusional about being the vessel of God's wrath, it could be that the abortion doctor was performing partial birth abortions on healthy patients with healthy fetuses at full term.
The point being that just as an angry mob does not mean the target is necessarily guilty, being in an angry mob (or even being a lone gunman) does not mean the torch-wielder is necessarily a misanthropic lunatic.
The angry mob is a warning signal which is prone to false positives and usually includes some measure of unjustifiable hostility -- but sometimes it is the least costly opportunity we get to observe and correct a substantive problem. Like the "Check Engine" light on your car, sometimes it means the oil change place forgot to reset the mile counter, sometimes it means they left the oil drain plug loose. Ignoring societal warning signs is as dangerous as giving them unlimited credence.
This is not a 180 degree turn. It is a grudging submission to their customers on one issue. A 180 degree turn would be for them to oppose SOPA and to challenge the notion that imposing traditional copyright onto this new and incompatible medium is the only possible way to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
This is maybe a 60 degree turn, and I'm being generous.
This is not a case of a company failing to understand something that was not particularly relevant to them. This is a company supporting a law that is in direct conflict with their ability to provide their customers the product that they claim they are selling. They are saying that they think a fundamentally technically flawed law to protect copyright is more important than providing the service that they sell. That displays an intrinsic, cultural disdain for the best interests of their customers.
They can apologize, but they can't change the fact that they have already shown that either they do not know how the Internet works, or they do not think things through, or they are serving someone other than the paying registry customer. Which of those three things is OK for a company you intend to do business with? For me, all three disqualify them from receiving my dollars until they show that their culture has changed -- not just their public statement on one example-case issue.
'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
No, it isn't. Fighting online piracy is a nice-to-have, not a mission-critical.
The ability to transmit information quickly and reliably around the world -- that is of utmost importance. Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts is of utmost importance. Protecting this one particular, possibly outmoded, approach to funding science and the arts is something that we should do if there is a cost effective way to make it happen.
We have not found a cost effective way to do so. The past 15 years of copyright law have cost us far more than they have paid, even in the short run, and their long-run impact in denying or delaying new forms of art, let alone new means of information distribution, is impossible to measure. It is time for us to stop defending and losing ground. This little industry that represents less than 5% of the U.S. GDP is taking far too much away from the other 95% that is absolutely dependent on information distribution. It is time to roll back these hasty and flawed laws that hinder information distribution to protect one small sector of our economy. We need to find ways to enable creators to profit that do not damage the entire rest of the economy. We need to challenge the unsubstantiated belief that this one archaic mode of funding is "of utmost importance."
>> Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, âoeHave confidence in Uncle Sam,â when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense.
> After witnessing enough conversations about how TSA is worthless, or worse, yet another part of an effort to acclimate hapless Americans to living in a police state, I think it's valid to consider the reasons for even "appearances" of security, and I'm glad this article laid them out clearly. Even appearances can be a deterrent.
Isn't this an inherently short-term oriented approach? Once the public realizes that it is theater for theater's sake, they will become more distrusting of Uncle Sam than they were before. If the problem is that people don't trust Uncle Sam, hoodwinking them is a pretty deeply misguided solution. Totally aside from the fact that it is condescending as hell, it is creating a bigger problem tomorrow for a smoke and mirrors solution today. We already do that with the budget, do we really need to do it with security as well? Is this our new national credo?
What I really want is a dumb phone that is just a dumb phone, a pocket computer that is completely mine to control (basically an iPod Touch without the "Obey Apple" stuff) and a hotspot.
I'm close -- I have the hotspot, the iPod Touch (though not rooted), and carry a Linux laptop. My phone is an Android G1 that has been so abused and so rarely updated that it is basically a dumb phone now.
Ultimately my point is the same one I made to my brother back in 1999 when he was considering a Palm 7 (or whatever the one was that had network connectivity): Convergence is not for everyone. It may work for the average knuckle-dragger who only needs the 80% heart-of-the-market functionality, or the hipster who worries about having too many devices in his pockets ruining the line of his doofus-wear, but anyone who wants a high-functioning device will typically be better served by a larger number of more specialized devices.
The attendant upside is that you can replace individual components. For example; keep the pocket computer and hotspot, get a new dumb phone for under $50 pay-as-you-go.
You make a convincing argument for the value of scrutiny, but where is the actual law? Values mean nothing anymore.
Laws are the things we grant government the privilege of executing. Anything we don't grant them the privilege of is our reserved right. The things we are obligated to do to manage our government are not necessarily well codified. We each have the civic duty to discern our own responsibilities and to act accordingly. That is the fundamental nature (and difficulty) of Western Democracy, and a primary reason that Western Civics is a required course in most (all?) public schools.
Sometimes citizens disagree about their responsibilities. Sometimes they disagree strenuously. Sometimes people get hurt, and sometimes people go to jail. Sometimes the people who wind up in jail are the good guys. Hopefully, however, Western Democracy has the lowest rate of good people being harmed and of bad people being rewarded.
I think Churchill was the one who said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the rest."
>> 3. Private citizens are supposed to monitor civil servants even when there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
> Where did you get this from?
John Adams:
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Since agents of government must be granted the power to endanger the public liberty in order to do their jobs, they can never be trusted. Lacking trust, the public must observe and hold accountable.
Also, attributed to various people, and in a number of variations going back at least to John Philpot Curran in 1790:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
It is not possible to have liberty, in any substantive definition of the term, without the governed knowing what their servants in government are doing in their name.
And most importantly, of course, by pure reason. We The People grant extraordinary powers over individual liberty to our government. Our government has the ability to incarcerate and even kill citizens. It is a very valuable service that our civil servants provide, but it is inherently in tension with liberty. That power, unless balanced by diligent public scrutiny, would most grievously infringe the most basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't even remember the last time I saw a shop selling single-function clockwork alarm clocks.
Toasters are no longer simple mechanical devices for a reason. If an "appliance" concept really worked, all you'd need is a 555 timer chip and a variable resistor. There hasn't been a toaster that simple in almost 2 decades!
Whoa - dude -- are you, like, talking to us from the future? What is 2035 like? How far have 3D printers come? Can you print a Ferrari? .... Wait -- forget that -- who won the 2012 World Series?
>> devices such as this, and the tools needed to work with them will be strictly controlled and only licensed individuals will get access
> The app store did at least $2 Billion in direct revenue for Apple this year
Your counterpoint to a perceived threat of a strictly controlled, licensed access marketplace is a set of devices whose marketplace is strictly controlled and only available to programmers who agree to a license?
I dig what you're saying, and it's a good post. Still, a counterpoint is worth considering:
So ultimately its families and word of mouth which i think will kill all this BS, just as it did with music.
The typical family music-player of choice is the iPod. The touch versions are general purpose computers with a process restricting OS. The included player will play non-DRM music, but you can't implement your own music player or get a third party one without jailbreaking the device or submitting to Apple's distribution authority.
Israel gives radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorists a common cause around which to rally. Israel is an existential support to the extreme authoritarian regimes throughout the region. Israel's lightning rod behavior is materially supportive of the growth and expansion of terrorist organizations and ideology throughout the middle east. If Israel continues to flagrantly choose not to cease its existence of its own volition, it should be caused to cease to exist in the interest of eliminating the raison d'etre of so many terrorist organizations.
Look, Israel: How 'bout you stop fucking with the founding principles of this nation, and we don't complain too loudly about all the money and bombs we give you -- those come out of my goddamn paycheck. It's already tiresome enough to have to carry around a screaming brat prima donna who likes to taunt bullies and fixate on suicidal promises made by a fictional deity a few thousand years ago. The least you could do is not kick us in the kidneys while we're doing it.
Go Fuck Yourself,
Bob
The word "Like" is relative. Relative to the past frame of reference. The second time you see a gorilla, you think it looks like the first gorilla. I suspect I would be hard-pressed to tell a male gorilla from a female on casual observation. Jane Goodall, however, probably sees as much visual distinction between individual gorillas as you see between humans.
Same with exoplanets. The first ones we detected were supergiants in close orbits around relatively small stars. Compared to those, Mars is Earth-like. Now we've found enough that "Earth-like" is evolving to mean something more specific. Vague terms in novel and rapidly advancing fields have evolving meanings. That is the nature of language.
As others have said, exoplanet taxonomy is a fine new field to plumb, but that doesn't mean Earth-like is bad -- it's just vague and unscientific. A rough measure that only has meaning in context. Conversational shorthand, useful in casual discourse.
A quick look around finds that there are people working on formal taxonomy.
But in the end, they need 60 votes to break the Republican filibuster, and they didn't have those votes. What would you have them do?
Ummm, not vote in favor of the things they say they oppose? That would be a nice start.
Excellent, informative post. Thank you, I'm posting a link to your post to a mailing list with a couple dozen friends who have personal domains.
I hope ... it's ... just some large corporate contract raping the wallets of the American people again...
Ahhhhh, I get it now! That's the kind of hope Obama was talking about.
One party fought for public option health care.
Not very hard, and what they passed instead is a bloated taxpayer funding of giant lobbyists (insurance and pharma).
They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it,
Not very hard, they have one house and the Presidency, and they gave in.
rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down.
Not very hard. In fact, they pushed for some of the tax cuts.
They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war.
Not very hard. They signed the paper that gave Bush and the Neocons the authority to do whatever they damned well pleased. Obama even started some new policies, like summary execution of United States citizens.
They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics.
Not very hard. They said they were fighting for it, but when Citizens United went through the Supremes, they threw up there hands in surrender.
They fought against torture.
Not very hard. We're still doing it.
They fought against teaching creationism in school.
This is one of the theatrical wedge issues. Notice how, for all the stage presence they demonstrate in the fight, no actual policy changes have happened?
they fought for the rights of gays and women
This is also a theatrical wedge issue. The only slight difference is that public opinion fell heavily on the "change the military policy" side, so one tiny corner of gay policy got changed. Until gays have they same rights as non-gay citizens, they are still not showing true support. How many of them are fully invested in truly equal rights for gays? How's Obama's position on gay marriage? They don't even get the half-a-loaf that is civil partnerships. Has there been a single substantive change in non-military policy regarding gay rights?
That is why we call this political theater. Because all the supposed support amounts to sound and fury signifying nothing.
Gridlock, you say? Hardly! We have made enormous changes in our policies, domestic and foreign. We have signed treaties and created sweeping new laws. We have completely revised our interpretation of the Bill of Rights. We have discarded any notion of respect for the War Powers Resolution.
All the truly significant changes in United States policy, happening at a truly blistering pace, are authoritarianism and expansion of monopolies and barriers to entry (copyright, patents, trademarks, insurance, drugs importation). The dramatic changes are all one of two things; the ability to control dissidents (enemy or patriot, foreign or domestic), and government influencing cashflow into the pockets of major corporations that do a lot of lobbying.
Look at the substantive change. If the substantive change does not match the rhetoric, questions must be raised. Show me substantive change, and I will believe that the rhetoric is more than theater.
As far as competing with Diaspora - that's like claiming the NY Yankees are competing with the little league teams that plays down the road from me. It's laughable. As popular as Diaspora is with the disaffected Slashdot and/or techie crowd... It's meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Those enamored of Diaspora are those pissed at other networks, and they'll get pissed and move on again. They're unstable and marginal.
Your aimless and wandering rant against Diaspora sounds to me like a song without a tune. You don't think Diaspora is the solution, aren't entirely sure why, have a few vague answers you've heard before, maybe the same things you've been telling yourself for why you haven't set up a node yet.
I think that is good. I think that is a healthy and good perspective to have.
That perspective implies that you haven't really developed your image of the problem space yet. Here's a key point to keep in mind: Decentralization of information distribution is good. Always has been. From Gutenberg to the replacement of secretaries with personal computers, every time we have decentralized the control of information distribution, society has made a giant leap forward in pretty much every measurable sense.
So, now, think about that as you develop your image of Diaspora. How does Diaspora compare with the advent of personal computers and everyone writing their own reports? Everyone *should* have their own server and be publishing their own social information. And they will. And as it happens, we all get to enjoy another giant leap forward.
It is coming. Diaspora is not really ready yet. It is not easy enough yet. It may not even be the one that wins. But it is the first mover, which confers a significant advantage.
Just some food for thought.
requires users to run their own web server.
You can host for your friends, so they don't have to. A single Diaspora node can host many accounts for little or no additional cost or maintenance. Granted, one person in your social circle has to run a node, but look at the upside -- great trick to expand geek entree into broader social circles. And, yes, it still means that more people have to run webservers. But, the point is decentralization. More people running servers is pretty much the definition of success.
never catch on with a large enough audience to ever matter to anyone but its users.
I remember when my Dad had a secretary who had a computer and used it to write his reports. Now he writes his own reports on his own computer. We should all have more authority over the servers we use to publish our social information for the same reason my Dad should write his own reports -- makes the resulting product a more accurate reflection of his intent.
The problem here is not that Google is doing this bit of culture control this time. The bigger picture is the same thing Eben Moglen brought up a couple years ago -- centralization of information authority. Until we get off of the centralized systems of social communication, we will continue to have centralized information authorities deciding what we can and cannot say based on their best interests, not ours.
And here's the hard part of this: We're the ones who have to do it. We have to make it happen. We, Slashdotters, are the most perfectly equipped community to do the work that needs to be done -- there is no-one more perfectly suited that we can hope will solve this. I've been doing a bit of work on it, but not enough. We all need to work harder to get our culture out of the hands of a small number of centralized entities.
And this isn't just about flipping the bird -- info centralization also makes astroturfing easier, makes spam harder to filter, makes surveillance and profiling easier (for the corps, the cops, and the perps), and generally turns cultural conformity into a competitive sport.
I need to do more to fix this.
Post away, ignore the peanut gallery.
Yeah -- you're right, as is the Offtopic mod. Thanks.
I wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote a long and subtle post on the value of contemplating the underlying forces acting in society that lead to events like this, rather than jumping to adulation or condemnation. I came to the conclusion that I could not make it clear that I was advocating contemplation, not support or opposition. That all I would get in response would be some twit turning my post into a straw man then hurling rhetorical vitriol at it.
Then it came to me -- I may be able to extract some value from this thread after all. So, I implore you, read through this thread with this question in mind: Do the histrionic posts add value to the discussion or take it away?
My guess; histrionics cheapen the discussion. An emotional and one-sided post about how Anonymous is a terrorist organization or the savior of true democracy is sound and fury signifying nothing, and a waste of our valuable time.
Inhibit histrionics, however you can. They are pablum for the masses and better left to the professional simpletons in popular media.
Technician: Hello, this is OnStar. How can I help you?
Owner: I locked my keys in my car, can you unlock it?
Technician: Certainly, let me just bring up your profile... Wow, sweet pooper -- do you do Zumba?
WTF does America do anymore? I mean really?
It's a common rhetorical, but it doesn't really work, does it?
We're near the largest in:
Auto manufacturing, aviation manufacturing, nautical manufacturing, space manufacturing, and high tech manufacturing. Grain production, dairy production, meat production, fruit production, and vegetable production. Software, movies, books, websites, music, and television. That's off the top of my head.
Or, to put it slightly differently, we are ninth in the world in GDP per capita, number one in the world in GDP, and our GDP is increasing both absolute and per-capita. We do everything, and we're pretty darned good at it, too. The only remotely plausible sense in which we are not good at everything is in the sense that we are no longer laughably far out in front of everyone else like we were 40 years ago.
Now, I think we should be trying to be laughably far out in front of everyone else. I even think we have the potential to do so and I have some solid data on a few key points to back up my belief. But that doesn't mean we are doing poorly yet -- we have a long way left to fall, even at our current lackluster rate of climb.
That's just a lot of fingerpointing and maybes.
The purpose of my post is to try to establish a framework for analyzing the radically different reactions some people have shown to The Arab Spring versus Western dissidence.
Previously they have exploited a message boards softwares failure to strip html tags to post flashing images on a board for epileptics,
Seriously? From the article:
"I'm pretty sure I saw a thread about this while browsing ebaumsworld, so yeah, it was probably those f-----s," said another.
Fascinating evidence of wrongdoing. You are an idiot.
You blame someone because a mob gets angry at them.
Not sure about OP, and I completely understand the validity of your post in the context of a response to his or her post.
An angry mob (or a lone gunman) is, however, a good reason to take a closer look at the situation. Sometimes it is just an angry basement-dweller with a bad attitude, but when someone shouts fire, it is worthwhile to take a look and see if there is a fire (and to hold the shouter accountable as appropriate).
Ok, so do you blame abortion doctors who get killed?
Not immediately, but I would certainly want to hear the murderer's motive in the process of prosecuting him or her. Killing someone is a pretty big step for most people and not an action that should be discounted lightly. Just as they may be delusional about being the vessel of God's wrath, it could be that the abortion doctor was performing partial birth abortions on healthy patients with healthy fetuses at full term.
The point being that just as an angry mob does not mean the target is necessarily guilty, being in an angry mob (or even being a lone gunman) does not mean the torch-wielder is necessarily a misanthropic lunatic.
The angry mob is a warning signal which is prone to false positives and usually includes some measure of unjustifiable hostility -- but sometimes it is the least costly opportunity we get to observe and correct a substantive problem. Like the "Check Engine" light on your car, sometimes it means the oil change place forgot to reset the mile counter, sometimes it means they left the oil drain plug loose. Ignoring societal warning signs is as dangerous as giving them unlimited credence.
this 180 turn
This is not a 180 degree turn. It is a grudging submission to their customers on one issue. A 180 degree turn would be for them to oppose SOPA and to challenge the notion that imposing traditional copyright onto this new and incompatible medium is the only possible way to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
This is maybe a 60 degree turn, and I'm being generous.
How else would you expect a company to respond?
This is not a case of a company failing to understand something that was not particularly relevant to them. This is a company supporting a law that is in direct conflict with their ability to provide their customers the product that they claim they are selling. They are saying that they think a fundamentally technically flawed law to protect copyright is more important than providing the service that they sell. That displays an intrinsic, cultural disdain for the best interests of their customers.
They can apologize, but they can't change the fact that they have already shown that either they do not know how the Internet works, or they do not think things through, or they are serving someone other than the paying registry customer. Which of those three things is OK for a company you intend to do business with? For me, all three disqualify them from receiving my dollars until they show that their culture has changed -- not just their public statement on one example-case issue.
'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
No, it isn't. Fighting online piracy is a nice-to-have, not a mission-critical.
The ability to transmit information quickly and reliably around the world -- that is of utmost importance. Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts is of utmost importance. Protecting this one particular, possibly outmoded, approach to funding science and the arts is something that we should do if there is a cost effective way to make it happen.
We have not found a cost effective way to do so. The past 15 years of copyright law have cost us far more than they have paid, even in the short run, and their long-run impact in denying or delaying new forms of art, let alone new means of information distribution, is impossible to measure. It is time for us to stop defending and losing ground. This little industry that represents less than 5% of the U.S. GDP is taking far too much away from the other 95% that is absolutely dependent on information distribution. It is time to roll back these hasty and flawed laws that hinder information distribution to protect one small sector of our economy. We need to find ways to enable creators to profit that do not damage the entire rest of the economy. We need to challenge the unsubstantiated belief that this one archaic mode of funding is "of utmost importance."
>> Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, âoeHave confidence in Uncle Sam,â when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense.
> After witnessing enough conversations about how TSA is worthless, or worse, yet another part of an effort to acclimate hapless Americans to living in a police state, I think it's valid to consider the reasons for even "appearances" of security, and I'm glad this article laid them out clearly. Even appearances can be a deterrent.
Isn't this an inherently short-term oriented approach? Once the public realizes that it is theater for theater's sake, they will become more distrusting of Uncle Sam than they were before. If the problem is that people don't trust Uncle Sam, hoodwinking them is a pretty deeply misguided solution. Totally aside from the fact that it is condescending as hell, it is creating a bigger problem tomorrow for a smoke and mirrors solution today. We already do that with the budget, do we really need to do it with security as well? Is this our new national credo?
What I really want is a dumb phone that is just a dumb phone, a pocket computer that is completely mine to control (basically an iPod Touch without the "Obey Apple" stuff) and a hotspot.
I'm close -- I have the hotspot, the iPod Touch (though not rooted), and carry a Linux laptop. My phone is an Android G1 that has been so abused and so rarely updated that it is basically a dumb phone now.
Ultimately my point is the same one I made to my brother back in 1999 when he was considering a Palm 7 (or whatever the one was that had network connectivity): Convergence is not for everyone. It may work for the average knuckle-dragger who only needs the 80% heart-of-the-market functionality, or the hipster who worries about having too many devices in his pockets ruining the line of his doofus-wear, but anyone who wants a high-functioning device will typically be better served by a larger number of more specialized devices.
The attendant upside is that you can replace individual components. For example; keep the pocket computer and hotspot, get a new dumb phone for under $50 pay-as-you-go.
You make a convincing argument for the value of scrutiny, but where is the actual law? Values mean nothing anymore.
Laws are the things we grant government the privilege of executing. Anything we don't grant them the privilege of is our reserved right. The things we are obligated to do to manage our government are not necessarily well codified. We each have the civic duty to discern our own responsibilities and to act accordingly. That is the fundamental nature (and difficulty) of Western Democracy, and a primary reason that Western Civics is a required course in most (all?) public schools.
Sometimes citizens disagree about their responsibilities. Sometimes they disagree strenuously. Sometimes people get hurt, and sometimes people go to jail. Sometimes the people who wind up in jail are the good guys. Hopefully, however, Western Democracy has the lowest rate of good people being harmed and of bad people being rewarded.
I think Churchill was the one who said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the rest."
>> 3. Private citizens are supposed to monitor civil servants even when there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
> Where did you get this from?
John Adams:
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Since agents of government must be granted the power to endanger the public liberty in order to do their jobs, they can never be trusted. Lacking trust, the public must observe and hold accountable.
Also, attributed to various people, and in a number of variations going back at least to John Philpot Curran in 1790:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
It is not possible to have liberty, in any substantive definition of the term, without the governed knowing what their servants in government are doing in their name.
And most importantly, of course, by pure reason. We The People grant extraordinary powers over individual liberty to our government. Our government has the ability to incarcerate and even kill citizens. It is a very valuable service that our civil servants provide, but it is inherently in tension with liberty. That power, unless balanced by diligent public scrutiny, would most grievously infringe the most basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.