Not really--It doesn't make them either clever or noble. It's just a logical target, with side-effects that appeal to concerns of techies. It doesn't take any particular cleverness to know facebook is an intelligence source, since that's been covered by the media a few times. (I don't recall the particular articles, but am sure they've come up on slashdot before.) Nor does it take any great nobility to rationalize or have a rationalization for a criminal act. Most criminals do.
I suppose it's possible that harm to the intelligence community isn't the driving factor. If anonymous isn't thinking strategically, or if their strategy is warped by some kind of odd logic that makes them think that this will help them with the general public, for example.
It is also possible that this is not Anonymous at all, but is a script kiddie in a basement. Apparently it comes from a low production quality youtube video that was sitting around for a month before the German Press noticed.
Even in a war against a major power, there will be hesitation to use nuclear weapons. Nobody will want to use them unless they are sure they can be decisive with little or no threat of retaliation. That being said, any country *might* use them if, for example, it will take out a carrier group launching attacks on their capital or another large enough target.
Just look at their new aircraft carrier, for example.
The aircraft carrier is a threat long-term, once they have another carrier and adequate ships around it to make a carrier group, but for now is largely symbolic.
The anti-ship ballistic missiles are a much bigger threat right now, since they are not a member of the accords we've signed with Russia limiting their development (so China gains superiority on that tech) and such missiles are potentially very effective weapons against other carriers.
I was not suggesting it was a moral act, just that it had a particular side-effect which happens to be good. From a PR standpoint, that side-effect may be bad because it will help turn the common people against them. Interestingly, that is another possibility, now that I think about it--someone they have ticked off in the past may be doing this, and pretending to be them, in order to tick people off and provoke stronger public support for an electronic crackdown.
Outcome 5: Anonymous neither fails nor attacks on that day. The announcement is misinformation. Perhaps it is a distraction from a different target they intend to hit on the same day, is a distraction because they will be hitting facebook before that.
Outcome 6: Anonymous has already obtained information that, when released, will be a major public relations scandal for facebook, or perhaps will be evidence of criminality. The information will be released on that day.
In any event, this appears to be Anonymous trying to do something to hurt the U.S. Intelligence community, with the side-effect of raising awareness of data privacy issues.
DHS has failed to make the country safer; if anything it made it easier for government to abuse the citizens.
It makes it easier for government to abuse citizens. It makes it slightly harder for terrorists and drug-runners to do their stuff.
When Congress was debating the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the House of Representatives voted to specifically exclude from its protection atheists and communists. So it was okay to discriminate against atheists or communists, or at least that's what they wanted. The Senate took out at least the atheist part.
I suppose my point is just that we've never been Utopia. But yes, we all knew DHS would be a threat to civil liberties. I was honestly shocked, when they named it that--could you pick a more 1984-ish name?
Yes, that obviously would be one solution. It would not be appropriate if you want something to look nice, however.
The question which the poster asked, and which people have just bashed rather than answering, is what good alternative solutions are out there? Specifically, "Is there a free CMS which offers the same balance of simplicity, usability and extensibility, and that can run on most shared hosts? I'm genuinely curious."
Fail to see how that helps, although it would be more fun.:)
Wordpress lets you slap together a site that looks nice and is functional, and do it very quickly and without (or with little) graphic design skill, and is open source. If you write the site from scratch, it is substantially harder to have a site that looks nice and is functional.
Both are problems. The latter is a bigger problem than the former. But threatening to arrest someone for blowing bubbles is not just acting like an asshole, it's abusing authority.
I think the hypo was for Cooley to unknowingly hire the bloggers themselves. The problem would then be that the defendant was representing the plaintiff.
It's about as hard as it is to get a doctor to say another doctor is completely wrong. Industries that purport to self-regulate generally don't.
Bar discipline mostly only occurs in two cases: drug and alcohol related problems and stealing from clients. Lying to the bar during the application process can also screw you. That's about it.
Keep in mind that if it goes to SCOTUS, it might be overturned. The Supreme Court might decide that extortion which is asking for an agreement not to pursue a known legal right--i.e. suing you--is perfectly legal. Most of the legal system works that way. But it shouldn't.
Are you kidding in your subject line? Signing away first amendment rights is a common practice. Security Clearances, employment agreements, settlement agreements, nondisclosure agreements, all kinds of things let you sign away your rights. (Though consult a lawyer if it matters to you in a particular situation, obviously.)
No; Cooley hired lawyers who had graduated from Georgetown and Michigan. (Both excellent schools.) They did this to go after a blogger who was claiming something bad about Cooley. The poster is implicitly pointing out that they did not trust Cooley graduates to bring their lawsuit.
To be fair, I would much prefer GULC (Georgetown) or Michigan grads. Georgetown's great for practicality, depth of curriculum, non-profit work, and DC connectedness. Michigan is great for Academia, just a notch behind Yale, really, and more like Yale than Harvard. Both have great students.
If your marks go down when you take harder courses, then people who take easier courses are rewarded in the job hunt and in the most readily accessible measure of academic success.
At a competitive school, the student is paying a fortune to go to the school, and the student is capable of doing the material and the work. If you intend to fail the student--to make him or her sit through the entire class again, spending a fortune--it sure as hell better be because the student learned basically nothing and isn't competent to work in the area when necessary. If my students are paying seventy grand a year for their education, I'm not going to make them retake a class unless they are incredibly incompetent. A low grade basically reflects someone knowing a bit about the material, not enough to be an expert there alone but enough to know what kind of questions to start asking and where to start looking for the answers.
Grade curving limits grade inflation given a roughly comparable applicant pool. It also limits the perception of grade inflation given an applicant pool with bigger numbers.
The balanced budget amendment idea is absurd. A willingness to compromise has to reflect some acceptance of political reality before it really is a willingness to compromise, and not just a starting point.
Your second point may be fair, and your third one I agree with.
On the EITC, the reason giving more people money makes sense is they are more likely to spend it than people who can afford to save. Once it is spent, it generates income for the company it buys something from, and for its entire supply or service chain. If you spend it for someone who can afford to and does put that dollar into savings, then it usually does not get spent for years. (Sometimes it will be, depending on how they save.) It would take some serious math to get good numbers for both scenarios, but I'd be willing to bet that spending on someone who will consume stimulates the economy more than spending on someone who will invest--particularly when a major portion of investment goes not to financing new operations, but to buying stock that was issued a long time ago. Sure, that value can be leveraged--but so can the value of actual income, which is what is generated by spending the money on low income consumers.
The idea of writing horribly because you can is not cute and is not a sign of maturity, but is a sign of childish snobbery.
I don't think any of the well-regarded literary critics write horribly just because they can, although all fields have some people who do. I think most serious scientific articles are written horribly, but I don't use that to dismiss science or accuse scientists of childish snobbery. It's just that both fields require a particular sort of writing.
I suppose that's the problem. I don't see the need for the kind of writing that I have seen used in the crit i've seen. It's not literature, but it seems like it should still be well-written. I cannot regard someone as a master of English literature, no matter how many letters he has after his name, if his prose is horrid. Perhaps it is because I cannot believe such a person will be moved by the literature in the first place. I don't mind if it's concise, or simple, eloquent, or plainspoken, but there's just no need for most of the ugliness and fluff in the writing.
I don't dismiss criticism--simply the writing of most critics I've read, at least in style. And that greatly undermines both the effectiveness and the persuasiveness of their work, as well as (to me and to others I know) the legitimacy of the field. And that is tragic, because there is a great deal that literary criticism can teach, but the vast bulk of those teachings will remain inaccessible to the world at large in part because of the way that work in the field is written.
Slashdot Mirror
This technology could have applications to industrial inspection, dermatology, and even forensic ballistics.
And, don't forget counterfeiting.
Also Anthropology, and specifically archaeology. You could take a perfect image of every artifact at the dig site.
Not really--It doesn't make them either clever or noble. It's just a logical target, with side-effects that appeal to concerns of techies. It doesn't take any particular cleverness to know facebook is an intelligence source, since that's been covered by the media a few times. (I don't recall the particular articles, but am sure they've come up on slashdot before.) Nor does it take any great nobility to rationalize or have a rationalization for a criminal act. Most criminals do.
I suppose it's possible that harm to the intelligence community isn't the driving factor. If anonymous isn't thinking strategically, or if their strategy is warped by some kind of odd logic that makes them think that this will help them with the general public, for example.
It is also possible that this is not Anonymous at all, but is a script kiddie in a basement. Apparently it comes from a low production quality youtube video that was sitting around for a month before the German Press noticed.
Even in a war against a major power, there will be hesitation to use nuclear weapons. Nobody will want to use them unless they are sure they can be decisive with little or no threat of retaliation. That being said, any country *might* use them if, for example, it will take out a carrier group launching attacks on their capital or another large enough target.
If shit really truly hits the fan, you unplug.
What makes you think there aren't sleeping botnets designed to attack in the event of prolonged disconnection from country X?
Just look at their new aircraft carrier, for example.
The aircraft carrier is a threat long-term, once they have another carrier and adequate ships around it to make a carrier group, but for now is largely symbolic.
The anti-ship ballistic missiles are a much bigger threat right now, since they are not a member of the accords we've signed with Russia limiting their development (so China gains superiority on that tech) and such missiles are potentially very effective weapons against other carriers.
I was not suggesting it was a moral act, just that it had a particular side-effect which happens to be good. From a PR standpoint, that side-effect may be bad because it will help turn the common people against them. Interestingly, that is another possibility, now that I think about it--someone they have ticked off in the past may be doing this, and pretending to be them, in order to tick people off and provoke stronger public support for an electronic crackdown.
And with this.... Anonymous jumps the shark.
Ah, Mister Anonymous Fonzarelli...
Outcome 5: Anonymous neither fails nor attacks on that day. The announcement is misinformation. Perhaps it is a distraction from a different target they intend to hit on the same day, is a distraction because they will be hitting facebook before that.
Outcome 6: Anonymous has already obtained information that, when released, will be a major public relations scandal for facebook, or perhaps will be evidence of criminality. The information will be released on that day.
In any event, this appears to be Anonymous trying to do something to hurt the U.S. Intelligence community, with the side-effect of raising awareness of data privacy issues.
Should *also* be using bind variables. Bind variables alone don't protect you or your visitors from XSS attacks from user content, for example.
Or maybe having the internet full of websites full of security holes that is used to pollute the Internet is the price of not having such a CMS.
DHS has failed to make the country safer; if anything it made it easier for government to abuse the citizens.
It makes it easier for government to abuse citizens. It makes it slightly harder for terrorists and drug-runners to do their stuff.
When Congress was debating the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the House of Representatives voted to specifically exclude from its protection atheists and communists. So it was okay to discriminate against atheists or communists, or at least that's what they wanted. The Senate took out at least the atheist part.
I suppose my point is just that we've never been Utopia. But yes, we all knew DHS would be a threat to civil liberties. I was honestly shocked, when they named it that--could you pick a more 1984-ish name?
Yes, that obviously would be one solution. It would not be appropriate if you want something to look nice, however.
The question which the poster asked, and which people have just bashed rather than answering, is what good alternative solutions are out there? Specifically, "Is there a free CMS which offers the same balance of simplicity, usability and extensibility, and that can run on most shared hosts? I'm genuinely curious."
Fail to see how that helps, although it would be more fun. :)
Wordpress lets you slap together a site that looks nice and is functional, and do it very quickly and without (or with little) graphic design skill, and is open source. If you write the site from scratch, it is substantially harder to have a site that looks nice and is functional.
Let's assume we're programmers, not graphic designers.
Both are problems. The latter is a bigger problem than the former. But threatening to arrest someone for blowing bubbles is not just acting like an asshole, it's abusing authority.
I think the hypo was for Cooley to unknowingly hire the bloggers themselves. The problem would then be that the defendant was representing the plaintiff.
It's about as hard as it is to get a doctor to say another doctor is completely wrong. Industries that purport to self-regulate generally don't.
Bar discipline mostly only occurs in two cases: drug and alcohol related problems and stealing from clients. Lying to the bar during the application process can also screw you. That's about it.
Keep in mind that if it goes to SCOTUS, it might be overturned. The Supreme Court might decide that extortion which is asking for an agreement not to pursue a known legal right--i.e. suing you--is perfectly legal. Most of the legal system works that way. But it shouldn't.
Disclaimer: I haven't read this case yet.
Officer Bubbles...
Are you kidding in your subject line? Signing away first amendment rights is a common practice. Security Clearances, employment agreements, settlement agreements, nondisclosure agreements, all kinds of things let you sign away your rights. (Though consult a lawyer if it matters to you in a particular situation, obviously.)
No; Cooley hired lawyers who had graduated from Georgetown and Michigan. (Both excellent schools.) They did this to go after a blogger who was claiming something bad about Cooley. The poster is implicitly pointing out that they did not trust Cooley graduates to bring their lawsuit.
To be fair, I would much prefer GULC (Georgetown) or Michigan grads. Georgetown's great for practicality, depth of curriculum, non-profit work, and DC connectedness. Michigan is great for Academia, just a notch behind Yale, really, and more like Yale than Harvard. Both have great students.
If your marks go down when you take harder courses, then people who take easier courses are rewarded in the job hunt and in the most readily accessible measure of academic success.
At a competitive school, the student is paying a fortune to go to the school, and the student is capable of doing the material and the work. If you intend to fail the student--to make him or her sit through the entire class again, spending a fortune--it sure as hell better be because the student learned basically nothing and isn't competent to work in the area when necessary. If my students are paying seventy grand a year for their education, I'm not going to make them retake a class unless they are incredibly incompetent. A low grade basically reflects someone knowing a bit about the material, not enough to be an expert there alone but enough to know what kind of questions to start asking and where to start looking for the answers.
Grade curving limits grade inflation given a roughly comparable applicant pool. It also limits the perception of grade inflation given an applicant pool with bigger numbers.
Correction: not just a talking point. :) Sorry, I was thinking "non-starter."
The balanced budget amendment idea is absurd. A willingness to compromise has to reflect some acceptance of political reality before it really is a willingness to compromise, and not just a starting point.
Your second point may be fair, and your third one I agree with.
On the EITC, the reason giving more people money makes sense is they are more likely to spend it than people who can afford to save. Once it is spent, it generates income for the company it buys something from, and for its entire supply or service chain. If you spend it for someone who can afford to and does put that dollar into savings, then it usually does not get spent for years. (Sometimes it will be, depending on how they save.) It would take some serious math to get good numbers for both scenarios, but I'd be willing to bet that spending on someone who will consume stimulates the economy more than spending on someone who will invest--particularly when a major portion of investment goes not to financing new operations, but to buying stock that was issued a long time ago. Sure, that value can be leveraged--but so can the value of actual income, which is what is generated by spending the money on low income consumers.
Litcrit != literature.
The idea of writing horribly because you can is not cute and is not a sign of maturity, but is a sign of childish snobbery.
I don't think any of the well-regarded literary critics write horribly just because they can, although all fields have some people who do. I think most serious scientific articles are written horribly, but I don't use that to dismiss science or accuse scientists of childish snobbery. It's just that both fields require a particular sort of writing.
I suppose that's the problem. I don't see the need for the kind of writing that I have seen used in the crit i've seen. It's not literature, but it seems like it should still be well-written. I cannot regard someone as a master of English literature, no matter how many letters he has after his name, if his prose is horrid. Perhaps it is because I cannot believe such a person will be moved by the literature in the first place. I don't mind if it's concise, or simple, eloquent, or plainspoken, but there's just no need for most of the ugliness and fluff in the writing.
I don't dismiss criticism--simply the writing of most critics I've read, at least in style. And that greatly undermines both the effectiveness and the persuasiveness of their work, as well as (to me and to others I know) the legitimacy of the field. And that is tragic, because there is a great deal that literary criticism can teach, but the vast bulk of those teachings will remain inaccessible to the world at large in part because of the way that work in the field is written.