Agreed. --For the most part, anyway. Some secrets are quite, 'keepable'.
I'm sure there are plenty of secret military technologies and operations which are worked on in compartmentalized form, with all kinds of stunningly paranoid security systems and locked doors in place. --Not the least effective system of which being the non-disclosure forms the government makes workers sign through which it is understood that to reveal secrets is considered treason and is severely punishable. Yes, it's entirely possible to keep the lid mostly down. But you're right, stuff still manages to leak out around the edges; that's the nature of information. --But then a curious thing happens; the leaks are dealt with by the most awesome security system of all. The public simply ignores it. Take this current example, for instance. An astronaut, a man who would have been in a position to know, claiming that aliens exist. That's a pretty big leak, but what will come of it? Nothing. Why? Because it could be a deliberate red herring, it could be insanity, it could be true, or it could be partly true. Confusion is the best medicine in such a case at this, and for the most part, people just keep their noses to the ground; they don't want to look silly by giving it too much thought. We've been very well trained. We fear ridicule to ridiculous levels. Tin-foil, anyone?
Governments can keep and manage information just fine, and what they cannot keep, people obediently look away from.
Whups! Thought this mental case had run away and I didn't bother checking to see if he'd responded.
First off, I must say that he's really bad at it. I've countered more of his broken arguments than I can count, but that doesn't stop him! He just picks out the few crumbs where he thinks he can make some headway and continues pounding despite all his previous errors, (as though they don't add up to illustrate a damning picture!)
North Korea is communist. They are communist and have a dictatorship because under communism and even socialism, the government, acting as the agent of the people, ultimately decides what property should be disposed of and in what way. This is entirely what you believe and that you choose to ignore the consequence of your own failed ideology only proves how mind boggingly ignorant you really are.
Blah, blah, blah. Look, when I say Right wing, am talking about a general concept of disrespect for life and those forces which pull in the direction of dictatorial powers of state. Do you really believe that the Neocons with their torture and insane wars and their withdrawal from constitutional oversight represent anything different from North Korea? (Of course you do.) You talk about property rights as though it is the bright redeeming point in your argument, and if that's all you've got, then you've got nothing. (And the only reason you think you've got that is due to my having not yet addressed it, which I will now. ..)
Take a look at the collapse of the mortgage market. Millions are losing their homes. Do you think that collapse was an accident. It wasn't. It was the direct result of greed-based actions sanctioned and promoted by Right Wing policies. Who ends up owning that property? The corporate and private banks, which are linked at the hip with Right Wing political figures, who are really just their puppets anyway. Indeed, people can have their stuff seized should they mysteriously become enemy combatants on the whim of a presidential decree. So in fact, the people do NOT really have control over their own property, not unless they go along with the Right Wing system. And how is that any different than a dictatorial state? Saddam rewarded his supporters lavishly, as well. --A rose by any other name is still a rose. Sheesh! Didn't anybody ever teach you that?
And you're calling me ignorant? BZZT! No, because you see, I am not a coward, (ie, I am able to admit when I am wrong), I am able to witness and accept reality for what it is. This results in the collection of knowledge which is the antidote to ignorance. You on the other hand, with your belief that you are perfect, (when it is impossible to be perfect), are a coward unable to deal with or even admit to your flaws, and thus you cannot look reality in the face. This means that the primary function of your mind, the top rule in the flow chart, is to only collect knowledge which demonstrates your perfection, which means that both true and false facts are acceptable. --So yeah, an actual real fact or two are great now and again, if they happen to support your position, but any facts which disagree must be ignored and replaced with lies because of that primary rule; "You Must Be Right!!!!" --Because you are too cowardly to admit to personal flaws. (Oooooh, poor baby! It HURTS so MUCH when you are wrong!) Now, as the lies build up, your system of denial grows and it becomes less and less likely that any facts will be able to agree with your increasingly false perception of yourself, and thus advances the process of decay. I've seen it before several times and the process doesn't take very many years; I've witnessed once prowling intelligences descend into pulp stupidity; people who cannot even construct logical sentences anymore. That's your path. But hey, because that's not a warm, fuzzy thought, I'm sure you'll file it along with all the others which you find disagreeable. But you have now been warned. Coward.
Dude, there's plenty of evidence that the machines were and are easy to tamper with. There is also plenty of evidence of suspicious behavior during the election. Without a formal inquiry, we're not going to get to the bottom of things, because people are at the moment allowed to maintain their silence. This is why we have police forces; to investigate criminal activity. The problem here is that there has been no official investigation despite the fact that there are plenty of red flags waving like crazy.
If you're tired of hearing about this story and just want it to go away, I'm afraid you're out of luck. When we get into areas where politics and crime meet, then there are hundreds of thousands of people with the same political leanings who all have a vested interest in just making it go away. It's not like just one or two criminals wishing the heat was off. This kind of situation requires long and patient effort and media attention to catch the criminals, and it may yet happen. The tide is turning for Bush with talk of impeachment and war crimes is getting louder and more frequent. I'm just sad that it couldn't have come about before so much damage was done. I really don't want to see a war with Iran; the death toll of innocents is going to be catastrophic, and as Scott Ritter has pointed out, there is a very good chance it will lead to nuclear detonations on American soil. I don't understand why Bush isn't more broadly recognized as the lunatic he is.
In any case, if there was no deliberate wrong done with the Diebold machines, investigations would still be desirable; we clearly need firmer regulations so that properly working machines are used in the future. That alone makes an investigation worth the time.
That's quite a leg you've got to stand on. Seems to me that psychopathic enemies of society would be more like Ted Bundy and other killers, not disgruntled computer programmers that changed a few passwords around.
This is a typical misinterpretation. Bush hasn't Ted Bundied anybody, but he's a psychopath. Killed small animals when he was a kid, and then did further damage to his brain through drug and alcohol abuse. Sociopaths in positions of power result in Enron, and Iraq, and now countless other disasters for society, the costs of each which are counted in the billions of dollars. So yes, I think seemingly innocuous psychopaths need to be tested and upon discovery, put away. Anybody who has dealt with a psychopath in the workplace knows just how destructive and manipulative such creatures can be.
you advocate a justice system mandates psychiatric treatment and puts away a guy for life for changing a couple of passwords. I wonder, based on that scale, how many lifetimes you can put away a murderer for? Does a speeding ticket get 10 years, in that scale?
Don't be daft. (Oops! That's neurologically difficult for you on these topics, isn't it? Well struggle along as best you can. ..)
Where on earth did I say the fellow in question should be put away for life? I don't know anything about the guy. If he's just a regular fellow who broke the law, then he should be suitably penalized under the law. I'd probably be satisfied seeing him do a few months of community service, so long as nobody was hurt or no serious damage was done as a result of his pass-word crank. If somebody, however, was demonstrably hurt by his actions, then it's a different story. But you get the idea. (Well, no of course you don't, but my responses are only here for the record.)
If however, the fellow is discovered to be displaying psychotic tendencies, (such as promoting torture and displaying pathological egotism and demonstrating regular examples of cognitive dissonance. --You know, like you), then he certainly should be taken in for proper testing and evaluation. If he is deemed psychotic, then we should most definitely lock him up somewhere he can't do anybody any harm for the rest of his natural life. I'm sure we could come up with a clean system to deal with the problem and prevent errors. And the good thing is that when you start pulling psychotics out of the system, the likelihood of general abuses drops dramatically. Win!
Really, seriously, give yourself a break, go get a hammer and a chunk of marble, and just to get work on my statue. I'm just better than you and, it's just part of the natural order of things. I still love you in your inferiority, and you will be able to share in that love and gain a love of yourself as you completely your important work of making a statue of me.
Pump that one all you want; levity won't wash you clean; this guy actually believes on a fundamental level that he really is perfect. Read the full post series here to determine it for yourself; the links are all easily within reach right on your browser. He/it realized his mistake of self-exposure early on and he's been dropping these 'joke' versions as frequently as possible so as to disguise the odor of something not quite right in the air.
Gimme more, pal! I'm learning SO much with every step you take! -FL
Wow. That's sounds like a very hard time! I'm glad to hear you got out in one piece. I've been studying the psychopathic head space for some years now, since it is becoming increasingly clear that our governments are well-stocked with such. I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but I've resolved to learn as much about the condition as possible. I have a suspicion that with the right training, it should be possible to build up a set of personal mechanisms which can be used to not just survive the psychopath, but also to combat them. Possibly with great efficiency.
The latest thing I've learned is that the 'sick to the stomach' feeling which comes with exposure to what our emotional side recognizes as clearly 'evil' and which really can wreck you for weeks, can be quite easily side-stepped by recognizing that the subject as exactly that; a subject or machine with a set of predictable text-book reactions. It becomes impossible to take any of the psychopath's words personally because there's simply no person in there. The difficult part is detection; you don't want to make any mistakes, but it makes sense to learn and keep an eye out for the basic cues, like the example of cat killing you came across.
The other useful tactic is the open sharing of information. That one is huge.
Around and around it goes. Logic? Nowhere to be seen, but once again, logic plays no part in the world view of the self-proclaimed pathological ego. It cannot; being right is paramount, and since nobody is always right, the sociopath needs to spin words as fast as necessary to plug the holes. That is, Right Answers are not the point. Twisting nonsense to convince oneself of one's superiority is.
So let's shoot down some houses of cards, shall we? Not for the psycho's benefit, naturally. He's not worth anything but the creepy side-show value since he'll only ever be able to get a sheet of static from that quadrant of his brain, but for the sake of being complete. ..
You contradict yourself. The bailouts are as a result of regulations. Had the true free marketers gotten what they wanted, Bear would have collapsed, there would not be a Fannie Mae. So... why are you complaining about the institutions that you liberals created?
BZZZT!
Does everybody see the problem with that nonsense argument? That's right! It's all about Intent. --That is, if there was real regulation, the problems would not have reached such monumental proportions in the first place. In fact, they reached those proportions exactly because government controls were deliberately relaxed, (by guess who?). And in the case of Bear Sterns, the bailout was basically a tax funded corporate take-over. Look it up; it was actually quite a brilliant scheme for the predators at the top of that heap. So no, when I speak of regulation, it is with the intent of serving society as a whole, not the already massively wealthy. Yes, I know, it's a subtle difference, but anybody with a fully functioning brain would recognize that subtlety from a mile away. Sadly, in the sociopath, the necessary grey matter, usually in the frontal lobe, is simply smaller and malformed, and thus this guy's ability to 'get it' simply isn't there. Next!
American tactics are not nearly what you say they were. You only say that because you are a loser, and you are bitter.
Oooh! Not even an attempt at logic this time. Just a vitriolic statement with no fact content and thus zero value. "You're wrong and you're a loser!" Yes, thank-you Little Billy, we'll take that under advisement. Next!
North Korea is left wing, not right wing. I seem to recall that private property rights are a hallmark of the right wing, whereas your buddies in North Korea would prefer they do not, as you don't.
Ooops! Got mixed up in the whole 'Intent' thing again, did you? (Because, you see, by strict definition in some almanacs, North Korea is 'communist'. Well, actually it's not even that, but it hardly matters what the fake reality is. Let's skip to real reality, shall we? (Yes, that's the place where everybody with fully functioning brains live). North Korea's government system is what is commonly called a 'Dictatorship'. To be very clear, a Dictatorship, and a highly repressive one at that, is about as far away from Leftist values as you can get. --And just to be very very clear, since our pet psycho is literally incapable of differentiating between intended concepts and totally wrong concepts which happen to use the same words, I'm talking about modern American Leftist values; i.e., those of the people supporting what they hoped Obama would be all about, (until the FISA thing, anyway). But again, these are subtle differences which only those with properly functioning brains can recognize. Next!
>You still have no answer to the fundamental point: waterboarding the network guy for 15 minutes to extract the passwords he stole is better for the network guy and his victim than your solution of life in prison. You argue to throw people in prison for the tiniest of offenses, and I fail to see how that improves the value of human life. Sounds rather North Korean to me.
Nope, you're wrong again. I explained it a couple of times in a manner whic
Your economic analysis, by the way, is completely wrong.
Oh, stop! You're making my side hurt!
Cuz you know, the banana republics were a GREAT idea, (and because they did not rise to become self-realized economic powers has nothing to do with repressive American military actions), child labor in foreign factories is a good thing because that blood money might be invested 'wisely' so that the host nations can also become robust right wing economies with bright futures featuring the kind of catastrophic collapses we've been seeing under Republican rule lately. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multi-billion dollar home loan mortgage fiasco just this week being the latest, with a federal bail out to pay for the result of corruption, (and no arrests; funny that). --Right on the heels of the Bear Sterns crisis, also with a federal bail out, and again no arrests. That's the Right Wing buddy system at work with billions in tax dollars. Yeah, unregulated banking and free trade is wonderfully healthy. Not to mention unregulated free trade allowing gas prices to soar to ridiculous levels; cuz, hey, it's supply and demand, right? Even though supply isn't actually a problem so much as a quietly manipulated feature. But yeah, unregulated trade is great!
Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves through trade after WWII, China is now a first world nation, as is South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines.. and now India is on the way. Yep, those people are all being exploited, terribly, as they shift from starving to death to being able to afford cars, cell phones and computers. If the USA is such a terrible empire, as you say, why is the world getting so much richer?
Duh. Yes, trade makes money. And life will generally find a way. But you're arguing that successful countries have found success as a result of Machiavellian, greed-inspired and conscienceless American-based tactics, which in turn justifies those tactics. That's just OUT there! It's in spite of such approaches that survival happens. The rest is just shark food which should be minimized, not glamorized and promoted, but you can't even begin to grasp why, can you? It's just not within your ability to compute.
And South Korea is an especially funny example. Get this; North Korea, with it's failed economy resulting in part from trade ties with the fallen Soviet Union, is touted with having one of the worst human rights records on the planet, whereas the glowing Tiger, South Korea lives under a wonderful democracy and powerhouse economy. The only problem being that you tell us that torture is a great idea! So. . . So what the heck is your message again? "World trade free of tyranny, --but with torture!"? So what now? South Korea should emulate North Korea and its ultra right-wing ideals? Holy Toledo, Brainman! Your wires are unbelievably crossed. But that doesn't matter, because really none of this has anything to do with right or wrong; it's all just an elaborate series of dumb excuses to trick people into debasing the value of human life. All arguments which are, (of course), fundamentally broken in the most ridiculously obvious of ways.
Also, you'll note that this guy is attempting to side-step the leak of a fundamentally pathological ego through his little "Statue of worship" thing by trying to retroactively make more of a joke of it than was originally intended. Typical bully behavior; when the attack goes too far or threatens to reveal him, the bully's first and favorite ploy is to pretend that it was all just a joke. "What? I was just joking? Can't you take a joke?" A simple variation. I mean, yeah, this guy is pretty garden variety, but he's still funny. But go back and read those other links. The egomaniacal rage is barely contained. Hang around a bit here and you'll probably get to see him pop again. Just watch. This guy is now quite beyond the ability to resist posting with more of his insanity. All contest to his 'perfectness' must be me
This wingnut is talking Pax Americana! To, "try and make the world a place for free trade, free from tyranny."??
Any rational person who looks at the world will recognize that tyranny for profit (free trade?) is on the rise, and the 'strong vision' of the Republicans which brought us the Iraq fiasco and horror show currently wants to expand the nightmare to include war with Iran, which will almost certainly lead to nuclear exchanges. Free trade mouthed by Republicans is just another word for "Exploitation Slave Labor in Third World Countries." --Several countries of which have been forced into third world status by maneuvers by the world bank. Free trade is the wet dream of those agencies which brought us the infamous banana republics. It's horseshit. I doubt very much that JFK's version of Democratic leadership would do anything but roll his eyes at this fool. But that's also typical; to twist the vision of great men in delusional history re-writing so that it compliments the agenda of ever-expanding misery for the masses. Just on the fairy-tale level, look at what the Christian Right has done with their mascot, turning him into an icon and excuse for perpetual war and apocalyptic insanity.
Pax Americana is just the same. It's ego-driven insanity. Diverse countries and cultures, among their many strengths, act as a control measure to contain and combat problem nations. Imagine if Hitler had come to power in a system where there was a one world government; there would have been no other collective to have opposed him. Heck, imagine a world where a Pax Americana existed which Bush managed to rise to the top of. Can we really trust ourselves not to vote evil nitwits into power? I think we've proven that we cannot, so further erosion of individuality among nations and further extension of American imperialism is plainly a rotten idea. Checks and balances need to be in place because we KNOW that as a people, we are NOT perfect. --At least those properly realized humans among us recognize this.
This is not to say that democratic leadership today isn't a joke; Obama let everybody down with his FISA nonsense, (though I'd be surprised if this would pose a problem for the parent poster who thinks torture is such a greatidea).
This guy is just looking for easy handouts and ego-perks to feed his, "you should build a statue to worship me" egomania, (yes, he said that); it's easy to pop on the 'wise and insightful' mask for a quick manipulation, but if you stop for a moment to research this loon, you'll see what you're actually dealing with. He never said, "I was wrong", but rather "What you said makes me even MORE right!" It's impossible for this brand of sick to admit anything other than personal perfection. Fascinating case, actually.
This guy is hilarious! Check out his ravings with regard to torture. Here and here. He really seems to believe that he is beyond criticism. I don't think his, "You should build a statue in worship of me" thing is even half in jest.
I notice the subject here is doing exactly as predicted; ignoring those elements which disagree with its argument while spinning utter nonsense. Again, for anybody interested, I'll dissect the clutter. ..
Of course a psycho would prefer a system which allows a criminal to get away without a record. Psychos repeat their crimes; they can't not. And hey, maybe the criminal will get away with it next time around. If the only punishment involves something which the psychopath does not fear and from which it can walk away to continue its criminal activities, then it's completely win-win for the psychopath, whereas society suffers. That's the primary point here, and the real reason for this subject's argument; trying to make society work for the psychopath. Everything else offered by it is total nonsense spin.
Your plan - the victim spends many man hours trying to recover their passwords while the perp then spends years in jail, then cannot get any other job because he has a felony on the record.
Again, there appears to be no understanding here that society doesn't WANT the criminal to be part of society anymore. That's why we put them in jail. If they can't play by the rules, then we pull them out of our midst and put them in a box for a long time so we don't have to deal with them. I'm not saying that there aren't massive problems with the justice system and the prison system. There are, namely bad politics and rampant corporatism. But the essential function makes sense. When a criminal attacks society, they become our enemy. We don't want them to go unnoticed. We want them labeled as a threat so they cannot hurt us again. That's how we protect ourselves. The psychopath loves a society which is endlessly forgiving because that's where it can thrive.
I would be happiest if the purpose of the justice system were bent towards the total ruination and containment of psychopaths. They cannot be fixed or saved, and they do not have souls and thus mercy means nothing to them except another get out of jail card and meal ticket.
I'm far more merciful than you!
No. This subject is a sick monster which wants to strap people to tables and torture them until they scream for mercy, screams which will be ignored until they pony up with the right price. For the psychopath, mercy is just another commodity, and this is what is wrong with them. Mercy comes naturally to real humans which is why torture is so automatically abhorrent. The problem is that psychopaths are masquerading as human, playing the system against us. For example. ..
[...]I would also make available some psychiatric help for the guy[...]
"Make available some psychiatric help"? Make available? Not 'enforce', I notice. Is the psychotic criminal really going to take up such an offer voluntarily? --Also, psychopaths tend to spend a fair bit of time playing psychoanalysis game, so they get good at it and they don't care. It's just another place to tell the story of their 'greatness' and be let off scott free. It's all a game to the monsters, because they cannot be cured.
Luckily, it works both ways. The more people learn, the more people will be able to recognize the psychopath for what it is and thus the predator's options to feed will be narrowed, hopefully to the point of starvation.
Plus this joker is totally hilarious under glass! He's the only one who doesn't realize just how completely out to lunch he sounds, and it's not because nobody 'gets' his 'brilliant' arguments. It's because there's simply something wrong with his brain which means he is actually incapable of seeing a portion of reality which is plainly obvious to everybody else. It's like he thinks in black & white while everybody around him thinks in color. His comments are all based on less information than those around him have, and so it's automatic that his reaction to the world is going to look utterly foolish to everybody with fully functioning perceptions. Ps
And this, folks, is a prime example of what I'm talking about.
The number of off the wall assumptions this guy is making about me and by extension, society in general, offers a rather creepy window into his own mind. I shudder to imagine what he thinks I get up to in private. I'm betting it ain't pretty, but you can be certain of one thing; it says a great deal more about him than anybody else. Also notice how he was condemning me of sickness and depravity when he's the guy promoting torture? That's a classic example of sociopathy; blaming the victim of the crime you are responsible for. --Mind you, I'm calling this creep a psycho; you'd need proper medical testing to be sure, but if it looks like a rose and smells like a rose, you'd be foolish not to expect thorns. If I was somebody in this guy's life, I'd have my guard up big time; these types are totally incapable of seeing that they are wrong even while they rain massive amounts of harm, both physical and psychological on their victims.
As for his broken argument. . . Sigh. It takes so much work to explain the fallacies of broken logic to the delusional, and it's pretty much pointless, because guys like this are generally incapable, sometimes on a neurological level, of admitting or even understanding that they are not perfect beings, that they are capable of being wrong. So whatever I say will be twisted or misinterpreted, slithered out from under or just plain ignored in the blare of his own never-ending voice box. . . But I will make the attempt for the benefit of anybody sane who happens to care. . .
A society which accepts waterboarding in lieu of prison terms, as he suggests we ought to do, is a society which has replaced the means of punishment, so torture is no longer a means simply for extracting information. And since there will be others just like him who scoff in exactly the same way he does, saying, "Bah, Waterboarding doesn't scare me. It's quick and I'll be able to get on with my life, (of crime??)."
So what is the next logical step? Anybody? That's right! To step it up a notch. Any society which starts by accepting torture as a reasonable reaction has just taken a step down the ladder, and so it will accept the next step; that of more terrible torture methods, until the logical end, death by torture, is ultimately reached. I don't want to live in a society which is engaged in a torture arms-race with the 'criminal' element. --Further, and there are SO many things wrong with such a plan, when depravity becomes acceptable, those who have an inclination toward depraved behavior come out of the closet. This is an observed pattern in previous fascist states; because of society's tacit approval of depravity, you'd get the local twisted cop conducting his own extracurricular waterboarding sessions. That's absolutely guaranteed. --But it's a subtle enough detail that it always manages to be left out of the bombastic arguments presented by those arguing for a more evil society.
So that's my argument. Creep-o man, however, will no doubt see it differently. You can always tell which way these types of sicko will jump. Just watch. His internal impulses will pretty much make it impossible for him not to respond with some manner of foul lunacy. And if he somehow manages not to, you can bet he'll be vibrating with rage for a whole week wishing he could kill me! Ha Ha! Loser.
I was wondering how he planned to serve up a video to a million people in one evening when he already said he had no budget.
Though, being Joss, (ie, a genius), he certainly recognized this would happen and that it would create ground-swell interest. (That which you want but can't have, you REALLY REALLY want.)
I love the man's work, but I must say that I do NOT like being manipulated outside of the story. It's impolite. Buffy didn't need marketing. It sold itself because it was good. Firefly was the same way, (it's problem wasn't a lack of viewer support but a lack of executive support. Market to those goons). The fans didn't need selling, and they don't need it here either.
But I do tend to take a strong position against being psychologically manipulated. I dislike it more, it seems, than the average websurfer. But whatever the case, I'm sure this will be a big hit and I look forward to downloading it from some fan-driven initiative, (like Pirate Bay), in a few days time. Good luck, Joss!
This is an old pattern and it takes awareness and will power to choose a path which is different from that which the psychopath wants us to take. --This is the way psychopathic leadership works. They know there is something wrong with them and that they are outnumbered by normal people, and so it is one of their unstated mission goals to change the tenor of society so that it matches their reality, so that they are comfortable and no longer on guard against being discovered. The psychopath creates chaos and within that chaos is able to present easy on-ramps to the dark-side of human instincts. This is a very clear example happening right now.
There are two choices; Crack the password and take back control, (the guy, as it has been pointed out, is not even a software engineer, and as has also been pointed out, with physical access to a system, a simple password isn't going to prevent information from being retrieved). --Then punish the guy using the rule of law.
The other option is to descend into debauched S&M sickness. --Because arguments for torture are NEVER about the stated reasons, but are instead attempts at justification. If one travels into the dark-side of their human nature, they realize that it feels good to hurt people. You can get off on it if you deliberately align yourself in that manner. There's a reason S&M is related to sex for some, and THAT is what this whole torture thing is really all about. And it should be pointed out that people with repressed sexual tendencies tend to go that way more readily. (Repression ==> Frustration ==> Anger ==> Evil) --Now which political group is more sexually repressed would you say?
Way to play into the hands of the beast. This stuff is set up exactly so that the ignorant can 'tip' past the critical threshold and become monsters.
If everybody thought like you, then we might as well be living under Saddam Hussein.
There are always better solutions than the ones which hot emotion dishes out as the fast and dirty answer. Just skimming the first few feet of posts, already half a dozen people have pointed out that with physical access to the system, it takes relatively little effort to crack a password.
Everybody I've met who I've had the chance to really discuss this with are usually only looking for an excuse to hurt people because they get off on it. There's a reason S&M is popular with some people, often in sexually repressed people, (i.e., Republicans). Torture NEVER truly has anything to do with the stated reasons. It's always about justifying the feeding of dark appetites, because in the dark recesses of the mind, it feels good to cause pain. This is what drives school yard bullies and psychopaths. Some people hide from this reality and do not admit it, others know it is true which gives them the choice to deliberately resonate on a different level and change into beings who are naturally repelled by the mere idea of torture, whereas others jump right in and become evil.
Hm. You're right. Life isn't fair. --Because it seems to favor me all the time. In fact, it seems to shower with glory several of the people I know. Charmed lives. It does, however, seem to consistently punish others. It it interesting to note that those it punishes tend to carry with them a self-punishing nature or a dismal life philosophy like Bernie LaPlante's.
Here's a truth for you to add to your pile. . .
You get what you ask for. Your unconscious beliefs are regularly realized. --It's true! I see it every day. Understanding that the universe works to provide the experiences we seek, and more importantly, the experiences we believe are possible and which we deserve. . , understanding that opens up the gear box of reality. It allows us to fine tune our internal mechanisms. If the same difficult things keep happening, we can ask, "Why? What is it about me which keeps returning me to this same series of experiences?" --And this allows us to make adjustments.
The really interesting part, the part which I find both amusing and kind of difficult to watch, is that it encompasses the belief systems of the Bernie LaPlante's of the world. If one believes that Life is Unfair and Miserable, then guess what? It will give you exactly that. Luckily, Bernie LaPlante's belief system occupies a little sub-box on the system tree; his fundamental rule system is not universal, it applies only to himself and others like him. The curious thing is that I've seen people defend to ridiculous lengths their bleak, self-punishing beliefs as though misery and dreariness are prizes of some kind. Better to be miserable than wrong, even if being wrong means freedom!
I've railed against this kind of thinking in the past, but I don't bother anymore. I understand it, and probably shouldn't even comment because I strongly suspect that in many cases holding these kinds of apathetic and often outright nihilistic beliefs is necessary for some people in order for them to execute their Karma. --That is, if you've been dabbling in the dark side and you've got a lot of negative debt to pay off in this life, then one way to do it is to avoid following a course of happiness and self-fulfillment. And anybody who points to the cage door and says, "Uh, you know, it's not locked. You can walk out of here any time you like," when you're deliberately (on some unconscious level), doing time for personal reasons. . , well that person needs to be blocked out and shut up and ignored because he's not really doing you any service.
So good luck with whatever you're dealing with. Carry on. --But for the record, in case anybody else is reading who might unnecessarily be living a lousy life, you do happen to be wrong. There are other options, and very simply, (notwithstanding the necessity for working within the confines of objective reality), you do indeed get what you ask for in life. Happens all the time. And that's about as fair as it gets.
That sounds like apologia. I'd be careful with that; it's dangerous stuff.
Retroactively justifying a false move, that is. That's what Bush/McCain's people, do. That's Neocon thinking. You can spot the difference between a Righty and a Lefty very easily by watching for this behavior; the Right are incapable of seeing reality for what it is and must have their soothing lies in order to be happy. They don't care if the world goes into the crapper, (in fact, I suspect on some deep level, that's actually where they want it so that it can't hurt them or scare them by being alive and uncontrollable), whereas the Left will criticize a flaw when they see one, no matter who happens to perpetrate it. --We're talking in absolutes, of course; there are many shades in between. But essentially, as one who attempts to observe reality objectively, it is my opinion that Obama deserves criticism for going along with a bad bill.
how much energy does it take to cool those lines to that insanely cold value? In a standard copper line the value is zero: we don't cool them...
Actually, this is really neat; New York City is a special case. --I have a friend who visited recently and saw a work crew doing something with a huge smoking excavation in the middle of downtown. The smoke was liquid nitrogen boiling off. My friend, being curious, asked what was going on, and the reply was that they were cooling the electric grid. He did some research and found out that certain sections of the New York City power grid, installed many decades ago, is simply not robust enough to deal with the vast amount of electricity being pulled through them today. The short term solution has been to rig them with system which continually bathes the key hot spots with liquid nitrogen 24/7 to keep the conductors from melting down and the whole system from failing.
When I saw this article I thought, "Ah, so they finally managed to find a solution to that problem. Good for them! They must have been really desperate to embrace such a new and expensive technology."
Usually what MS does is wait until a technology is proven to be wanted/needed. Then comes to market after the leader has established the want/need for it. Then MS undercuts the leader by giving it away free or much cheaper, while proping itself up with other money makers. I still remeber when I first starting working with MS products and training for them in the mid 90's. Their answer for MS DNS, DHCP, etc was "It's not the best, but it;s free". Then once it starts to gain market share, They change their tune. The price is then passed on to all users (all copies of Windows server 2003 have the cost of DHCP server in it) even though it is not used by all. *Smart Business Move. Sometimes it's not always about making more money, but stopping others from makeing money.
Ugh! Yes. You're exactly right.
I wonder which search engine advertisers would give their money to, not just given the option of cheaper rates, but also with Yahoo's search engine integrated across all Microsoft OS's and hardware, and built directly into the interface of Internet Explorer, (which has 70% share of the browser market)? --Keeping in mind that it only takes a few colors and some clever design to manipulate the average shopper/television viewer. All the psychoanalysis has been paid for; If the population can be tricked into going to war, then I think they can be tricked into clicking the wrong button.
I love people very much, I really do; it's why I keep coming back here. But it doesn't change the fact that so many of our race have slipped into ignorant lives; just look at how many fat, semi-retarded, over-medicated ignoramuses there are walking around; people who have chosen not to think or discern for themselves, and so simply allow the corporate world to make their choices for them.
Frankly, it's damned spooky. I think MS could still actually threaten a company like Google. Companies, such as Microsoft, give off a distinct 'smell'; malicious, greedy intentions color everything one produces; it cannot be hidden. But it CAN be ignored and it can go unnoticed by those who are not sensitive enough or who simply don't care. --And the number of people who don't notice or don't care seems to be large enough to consistently change the world.
I heard it put once by a European who had lived through the tyranny of WWII that there is always corruption and tyranny in government, but one version is the kind which pretends to be something else through a facade of humanitarian 'niceness'. People still know it's there for the most part, and they complain and fight. And then the naked, aggressive version of tyranny comes out, with the starving and the death squads and the barbed wire, and the people shudder and cry, "No, anything but that! Anything but that! Bring back the other kind of corruption. Lie to us again, please, just anything but that!"
The interesting thing is that there is a third kind of government which is not corrupt at all, I've seen it and worked at various levels within it. But it only seems to be able to exist in small groups where everybody knows everybody else and the stakes are so low that the wolves don't smell enough blood worth having. When the system gets any bigger and successful, which often happens with healthy beginnings, things start to fail and the psychopaths scent out a meal.
[. ..] the original Fiat 500, launched in 1957, still holds a place in the heart of most Italians similar to the original Mini for the Brits, the Citroën Deux Chevaux for the French, or the VW Beetle for the Germans (and many North Americans, too).
Cinquecento was really the car that put Italy on wheels. In short, it's a cultural icon.
[. ..] The original's 500 name came from the displacement of the air-cooled, rear-mounted two-cylinder engine. Slow? Oh my dear God yes.
But cute as a bunny and tough as nails. You still see these collector's items in every Italian city. I'd have one in a heartbeat.
I wonder if a classic car buff would really want to convert their beloved collector's piece into a modern consumerist status symbol for power and wealth?
In any case, while one is fast, and the other is slow, the Fiat was originally made small so that it could navigate the teeny one-lane streets featured in many Italian cities, whereas the Ferrari needs some serious hubcap room. It could be argued that the analogy should be reversed since the smaller car is more agile and able to deal with small details whereas the other cannot and is in fact primarily focused on flying through as many kilometers as quickly as possible and isn't terribly concerned with counting them off in smaller quantities.
Of course, this kind of observation is the reason why I would be irritating at parties. Carry on. I'm listening.
a rudimentary technology built on similar principles. --The reference is gone, gone, gone, (one of the reasons I was disappointed when the Internet Archive had to abandon it's development of its non-linear search feature, "Recall"), but there was once this cool story about an Australian university student who as part of his lab research discovered the following. . .
Morse code-like binary impulses transferred through the skin using low-level electrical pulses which were undetectable by the subject on the conscious layer, were nonetheless able to be interpreted by the subconscious. --This is after hypnosis was used to teach the subject how to interpret the binary code. After that point, test volunteers could be given very specific instructions which they would actually follow to the letter without realizing that the motivation to act had not come as a result of their own thinking. They thought they were acting on their own ideas! Stunning. According to the lead researcher, (before his website vanished), he got freaked out when other strange things started to surface with his subjects which his experiments should not have had anything to do with, so he aborted the whole experiment.
Now I don't know what to make of that, (which is why I'd love to review the story and perhaps contact the guy to find out what the actual scoop was), but the ideas all certainly sound like they can easily exist within the realm of the possible. How many of your ideas and impulses in life are really your own? It just reinforces the importance, as the Buddhists suggest, to practice 'mindfulness'. Question yourself and your actions all the time and make sure they pass your own filters of rational behavior. Beware of strong impulses which don't make sense; think through them carefully before acting on faith that just because it feels good and right that it must necessarily be good and right. I think we've all learned how bad it can be to hit, "Submit" before reviewing.
I've heard of this kind of thing before. Sadly, they like to pick on people who are already a little border-line and odd. --Thee swarming piranha muggles who get an ego-high from tormenting those who don't quite fit socially can always be counted on to do the dirty work of the Powers That Be by making sure people who dare step outside the draconian social boundaries as established in Jr. High by the popular kids, are punished and ostracized for speaking out. I find it astonishing; so many of the people who visit Slashdot have themselves been similarly treated in this way precisely because they are geeks. They should damned-well know better. --But I've seen it so many times before and I'm sure I'll see it again.
--One of the more poignant episodes which crystallized this repeating pattern into my archetypal reference on this whole behavior type was the day I remember demanding of a room mate why he was tormenting a kid who had made an honest mistake, and his reply was, without a trace of irony, "Well, I was punished all through school, so now it's my turn."
I could have slugged him for being yet another predictable ape incapable of rising above his reptile-brain response behavior as any self-respecting human should always strive to do, but I was too flabbergasted to even close my hanging lower jaw at the time.
I hope everybody will take a moment to read through some of the comments made by certain social cowards, around here with regard to one of your older posts on this same subject. --That is, before the technology in question was officially made 'real' by this current article. . . (News flash, people! It's been around since the cold war. Please, please do some research; all this knowledge is easily and publicly available to anybody with half an ounce of human curiosity.)
People who have been hurt should stand up rather jump at the chance to pass on the misery.
All chickens are taken to slaughter, but they still have to spend their chicken-energy.
Facebook is a great big behavioral data collection engine which is perfectly suited for the monitoring and control of millions. Is it used this way? I don't know. I suspect there is far more data gleaned from our collective lifetimes spent traveling through the education and medical systems, and in adulthood, through the banking systems, than is collected from facebook. --And those other systems are either run directly by the government or are tightly intertwined with government, whereas Facebook is still somewhat private. Though I can certainly see how something like Facebook sheds light into areas which those previously mentioned systems have a harder time quantifying, namely your associations with other people. (Though, that kind of thing is not invisible; there are phone records and email records; Facebook just kind of collects it all with a nice GUI for the MIB's.)
However. . , it's still a system which binds friends and communities together. Much like the phone system. --You're not going to stop using the phone to call your parents or friends just because you KNOW the government is recording everything in paranoid anxiety.
Yeah, humans are hopelessly manipulable, perfect candidates for conquest, domination and liquidation on a whim. Be we still have to fall in love and make friends and exchange ideas. Even this post right now is easily traceable to yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever. But am I going to stop living because there are monsters in our midst? Hmm. Nope. It's sort of a race to the finish line using the same track; we can share information and build strong ties as a community which can prepare and help prevent attack, and while we do this, the enemy learns all the clever ways it can attack by secretly watching as we form our communities. Who will win?
Not sure what the answer is, but the people I've seen who spend their days clinging to anger at the unfairness of it all tend to make themselves sick and miserable and don't generally DO anything productive with their knowledge. There are other ways, and communication is a vital part of it. And so is awareness. Knowing that Facebook makes you naked is important. What you choose to do after that is up to you.
Whenever my phone rings, first thing I do is kill the bit torrent client if I have one running. People come first. Other than that, VOIP totally rocks.
I wonder how much longer that will be the case. --I seem to recall some companies were getting hit hard with law suit losses.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. --For the most part, anyway. Some secrets are quite, 'keepable'.
I'm sure there are plenty of secret military technologies and operations which are worked on in compartmentalized form, with all kinds of stunningly paranoid security systems and locked doors in place. --Not the least effective system of which being the non-disclosure forms the government makes workers sign through which it is understood that to reveal secrets is considered treason and is severely punishable. Yes, it's entirely possible to keep the lid mostly down. But you're right, stuff still manages to leak out around the edges; that's the nature of information. --But then a curious thing happens; the leaks are dealt with by the most awesome security system of all. The public simply ignores it. Take this current example, for instance. An astronaut, a man who would have been in a position to know, claiming that aliens exist. That's a pretty big leak, but what will come of it? Nothing. Why? Because it could be a deliberate red herring, it could be insanity, it could be true, or it could be partly true. Confusion is the best medicine in such a case at this, and for the most part, people just keep their noses to the ground; they don't want to look silly by giving it too much thought. We've been very well trained. We fear ridicule to ridiculous levels. Tin-foil, anyone?
Governments can keep and manage information just fine, and what they cannot keep, people obediently look away from.
And so it goes.
-FL
Whups! Thought this mental case had run away and I didn't bother checking to see if he'd responded.
First off, I must say that he's really bad at it. I've countered more of his broken arguments than I can count, but that doesn't stop him! He just picks out the few crumbs where he thinks he can make some headway and continues pounding despite all his previous errors, (as though they don't add up to illustrate a damning picture!)
North Korea is communist. They are communist and have a dictatorship because under communism and even socialism, the government, acting as the agent of the people, ultimately decides what property should be disposed of and in what way. This is entirely what you believe and that you choose to ignore the consequence of your own failed ideology only proves how mind boggingly ignorant you really are.
Blah, blah, blah. Look, when I say Right wing, am talking about a general concept of disrespect for life and those forces which pull in the direction of dictatorial powers of state. Do you really believe that the Neocons with their torture and insane wars and their withdrawal from constitutional oversight represent anything different from North Korea? (Of course you do.) You talk about property rights as though it is the bright redeeming point in your argument, and if that's all you've got, then you've got nothing. (And the only reason you think you've got that is due to my having not yet addressed it, which I will now. . .)
Take a look at the collapse of the mortgage market. Millions are losing their homes. Do you think that collapse was an accident. It wasn't. It was the direct result of greed-based actions sanctioned and promoted by Right Wing policies. Who ends up owning that property? The corporate and private banks, which are linked at the hip with Right Wing political figures, who are really just their puppets anyway. Indeed, people can have their stuff seized should they mysteriously become enemy combatants on the whim of a presidential decree. So in fact, the people do NOT really have control over their own property, not unless they go along with the Right Wing system. And how is that any different than a dictatorial state? Saddam rewarded his supporters lavishly, as well. --A rose by any other name is still a rose. Sheesh! Didn't anybody ever teach you that?
And you're calling me ignorant? BZZT! No, because you see, I am not a coward, (ie, I am able to admit when I am wrong), I am able to witness and accept reality for what it is. This results in the collection of knowledge which is the antidote to ignorance. You on the other hand, with your belief that you are perfect, (when it is impossible to be perfect), are a coward unable to deal with or even admit to your flaws, and thus you cannot look reality in the face. This means that the primary function of your mind, the top rule in the flow chart, is to only collect knowledge which demonstrates your perfection, which means that both true and false facts are acceptable. --So yeah, an actual real fact or two are great now and again, if they happen to support your position, but any facts which disagree must be ignored and replaced with lies because of that primary rule; "You Must Be Right!!!!" --Because you are too cowardly to admit to personal flaws. (Oooooh, poor baby! It HURTS so MUCH when you are wrong!) Now, as the lies build up, your system of denial grows and it becomes less and less likely that any facts will be able to agree with your increasingly false perception of yourself, and thus advances the process of decay. I've seen it before several times and the process doesn't take very many years; I've witnessed once prowling intelligences descend into pulp stupidity; people who cannot even construct logical sentences anymore. That's your path. But hey, because that's not a warm, fuzzy thought, I'm sure you'll file it along with all the others which you find disagreeable. But you have now been warned. Coward.
So, igno
Jeepers!
Dude, there's plenty of evidence that the machines were and are easy to tamper with. There is also plenty of evidence of suspicious behavior during the election. Without a formal inquiry, we're not going to get to the bottom of things, because people are at the moment allowed to maintain their silence. This is why we have police forces; to investigate criminal activity. The problem here is that there has been no official investigation despite the fact that there are plenty of red flags waving like crazy.
If you're tired of hearing about this story and just want it to go away, I'm afraid you're out of luck. When we get into areas where politics and crime meet, then there are hundreds of thousands of people with the same political leanings who all have a vested interest in just making it go away. It's not like just one or two criminals wishing the heat was off. This kind of situation requires long and patient effort and media attention to catch the criminals, and it may yet happen. The tide is turning for Bush with talk of impeachment and war crimes is getting louder and more frequent. I'm just sad that it couldn't have come about before so much damage was done. I really don't want to see a war with Iran; the death toll of innocents is going to be catastrophic, and as Scott Ritter has pointed out, there is a very good chance it will lead to nuclear detonations on American soil. I don't understand why Bush isn't more broadly recognized as the lunatic he is.
In any case, if there was no deliberate wrong done with the Diebold machines, investigations would still be desirable; we clearly need firmer regulations so that properly working machines are used in the future. That alone makes an investigation worth the time.
-FL
More houses of cards to shoot. . .
That's quite a leg you've got to stand on. Seems to me that psychopathic enemies of society would be more like Ted Bundy and other killers, not disgruntled computer programmers that changed a few passwords around.
This is a typical misinterpretation. Bush hasn't Ted Bundied anybody, but he's a psychopath. Killed small animals when he was a kid, and then did further damage to his brain through drug and alcohol abuse. Sociopaths in positions of power result in Enron, and Iraq, and now countless other disasters for society, the costs of each which are counted in the billions of dollars. So yes, I think seemingly innocuous psychopaths need to be tested and upon discovery, put away. Anybody who has dealt with a psychopath in the workplace knows just how destructive and manipulative such creatures can be.
you advocate a justice system mandates psychiatric treatment and puts away a guy for life for changing a couple of passwords. I wonder, based on that scale, how many lifetimes you can put away a murderer for? Does a speeding ticket get 10 years, in that scale?
Don't be daft. (Oops! That's neurologically difficult for you on these topics, isn't it? Well struggle along as best you can. . .)
Where on earth did I say the fellow in question should be put away for life? I don't know anything about the guy. If he's just a regular fellow who broke the law, then he should be suitably penalized under the law. I'd probably be satisfied seeing him do a few months of community service, so long as nobody was hurt or no serious damage was done as a result of his pass-word crank. If somebody, however, was demonstrably hurt by his actions, then it's a different story. But you get the idea. (Well, no of course you don't, but my responses are only here for the record.)
If however, the fellow is discovered to be displaying psychotic tendencies, (such as promoting torture and displaying pathological egotism and demonstrating regular examples of cognitive dissonance. --You know, like you), then he certainly should be taken in for proper testing and evaluation. If he is deemed psychotic, then we should most definitely lock him up somewhere he can't do anybody any harm for the rest of his natural life. I'm sure we could come up with a clean system to deal with the problem and prevent errors. And the good thing is that when you start pulling psychotics out of the system, the likelihood of general abuses drops dramatically. Win!
Really, seriously, give yourself a break, go get a hammer and a chunk of marble, and just to get work on my statue. I'm just better than you and, it's just part of the natural order of things. I still love you in your inferiority, and you will be able to share in that love and gain a love of yourself as you completely your important work of making a statue of me.
Pump that one all you want; levity won't wash you clean; this guy actually believes on a fundamental level that he really is perfect. Read the full post series here to determine it for yourself; the links are all easily within reach right on your browser. He/it realized his mistake of self-exposure early on and he's been dropping these 'joke' versions as frequently as possible so as to disguise the odor of something not quite right in the air.
Gimme more, pal! I'm learning SO much with every step you take!
-FL
Wow. That's sounds like a very hard time! I'm glad to hear you got out in one piece. I've been studying the psychopathic head space for some years now, since it is becoming increasingly clear that our governments are well-stocked with such. I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but I've resolved to learn as much about the condition as possible. I have a suspicion that with the right training, it should be possible to build up a set of personal mechanisms which can be used to not just survive the psychopath, but also to combat them. Possibly with great efficiency.
The latest thing I've learned is that the 'sick to the stomach' feeling which comes with exposure to what our emotional side recognizes as clearly 'evil' and which really can wreck you for weeks, can be quite easily side-stepped by recognizing that the subject as exactly that; a subject or machine with a set of predictable text-book reactions. It becomes impossible to take any of the psychopath's words personally because there's simply no person in there. The difficult part is detection; you don't want to make any mistakes, but it makes sense to learn and keep an eye out for the basic cues, like the example of cat killing you came across.
The other useful tactic is the open sharing of information. That one is huge.
Anyway, cheers to you!
-FL
And a doo bee doo bee do!
Around and around it goes. Logic? Nowhere to be seen, but once again, logic plays no part in the world view of the self-proclaimed pathological ego. It cannot; being right is paramount, and since nobody is always right, the sociopath needs to spin words as fast as necessary to plug the holes. That is, Right Answers are not the point. Twisting nonsense to convince oneself of one's superiority is.
So let's shoot down some houses of cards, shall we? Not for the psycho's benefit, naturally. He's not worth anything but the creepy side-show value since he'll only ever be able to get a sheet of static from that quadrant of his brain, but for the sake of being complete. . .
You contradict yourself. The bailouts are as a result of regulations. Had the true free marketers gotten what they wanted, Bear would have collapsed, there would not be a Fannie Mae. So... why are you complaining about the institutions that you liberals created?
BZZZT!
Does everybody see the problem with that nonsense argument? That's right! It's all about Intent. --That is, if there was real regulation, the problems would not have reached such monumental proportions in the first place. In fact, they reached those proportions exactly because government controls were deliberately relaxed, (by guess who?). And in the case of Bear Sterns, the bailout was basically a tax funded corporate take-over. Look it up; it was actually quite a brilliant scheme for the predators at the top of that heap. So no, when I speak of regulation, it is with the intent of serving society as a whole, not the already massively wealthy. Yes, I know, it's a subtle difference, but anybody with a fully functioning brain would recognize that subtlety from a mile away. Sadly, in the sociopath, the necessary grey matter, usually in the frontal lobe, is simply smaller and malformed, and thus this guy's ability to 'get it' simply isn't there. Next!
American tactics are not nearly what you say they were. You only say that because you are a loser, and you are bitter.
Oooh! Not even an attempt at logic this time. Just a vitriolic statement with no fact content and thus zero value. "You're wrong and you're a loser!" Yes, thank-you Little Billy, we'll take that under advisement. Next!
North Korea is left wing, not right wing. I seem to recall that private property rights are a hallmark of the right wing, whereas your buddies in North Korea would prefer they do not, as you don't.
Ooops! Got mixed up in the whole 'Intent' thing again, did you? (Because, you see, by strict definition in some almanacs, North Korea is 'communist'. Well, actually it's not even that, but it hardly matters what the fake reality is. Let's skip to real reality, shall we? (Yes, that's the place where everybody with fully functioning brains live). North Korea's government system is what is commonly called a 'Dictatorship'. To be very clear, a Dictatorship, and a highly repressive one at that, is about as far away from Leftist values as you can get. --And just to be very very clear, since our pet psycho is literally incapable of differentiating between intended concepts and totally wrong concepts which happen to use the same words, I'm talking about modern American Leftist values; i.e., those of the people supporting what they hoped Obama would be all about, (until the FISA thing, anyway). But again, these are subtle differences which only those with properly functioning brains can recognize. Next!
>You still have no answer to the fundamental point: waterboarding the network guy for 15 minutes to extract the passwords he stole is better for the network guy and his victim than your solution of life in prison. You argue to throw people in prison for the tiniest of offenses, and I fail to see how that improves the value of human life. Sounds rather North Korean to me.
Nope, you're wrong again. I explained it a couple of times in a manner whic
Your economic analysis, by the way, is completely wrong.
Oh, stop! You're making my side hurt!
Cuz you know, the banana republics were a GREAT idea, (and because they did not rise to become self-realized economic powers has nothing to do with repressive American military actions), child labor in foreign factories is a good thing because that blood money might be invested 'wisely' so that the host nations can also become robust right wing economies with bright futures featuring the kind of catastrophic collapses we've been seeing under Republican rule lately. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multi-billion dollar home loan mortgage fiasco just this week being the latest, with a federal bail out to pay for the result of corruption, (and no arrests; funny that). --Right on the heels of the Bear Sterns crisis, also with a federal bail out, and again no arrests. That's the Right Wing buddy system at work with billions in tax dollars. Yeah, unregulated banking and free trade is wonderfully healthy. Not to mention unregulated free trade allowing gas prices to soar to ridiculous levels; cuz, hey, it's supply and demand, right? Even though supply isn't actually a problem so much as a quietly manipulated feature. But yeah, unregulated trade is great!
Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves through trade after WWII, China is now a first world nation, as is South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines.. and now India is on the way. Yep, those people are all being exploited, terribly, as they shift from starving to death to being able to afford cars, cell phones and computers. If the USA is such a terrible empire, as you say, why is the world getting so much richer?
Duh. Yes, trade makes money. And life will generally find a way. But you're arguing that successful countries have found success as a result of Machiavellian, greed-inspired and conscienceless American-based tactics, which in turn justifies those tactics. That's just OUT there! It's in spite of such approaches that survival happens. The rest is just shark food which should be minimized, not glamorized and promoted, but you can't even begin to grasp why, can you? It's just not within your ability to compute.
And South Korea is an especially funny example. Get this; North Korea, with it's failed economy resulting in part from trade ties with the fallen Soviet Union, is touted with having one of the worst human rights records on the planet, whereas the glowing Tiger, South Korea lives under a wonderful democracy and powerhouse economy. The only problem being that you tell us that torture is a great idea! So. . . So what the heck is your message again? "World trade free of tyranny, --but with torture!"? So what now? South Korea should emulate North Korea and its ultra right-wing ideals? Holy Toledo, Brainman! Your wires are unbelievably crossed. But that doesn't matter, because really none of this has anything to do with right or wrong; it's all just an elaborate series of dumb excuses to trick people into debasing the value of human life. All arguments which are, (of course), fundamentally broken in the most ridiculously obvious of ways.
Also, you'll note that this guy is attempting to side-step the leak of a fundamentally pathological ego through his little "Statue of worship" thing by trying to retroactively make more of a joke of it than was originally intended. Typical bully behavior; when the attack goes too far or threatens to reveal him, the bully's first and favorite ploy is to pretend that it was all just a joke. "What? I was just joking? Can't you take a joke?" A simple variation. I mean, yeah, this guy is pretty garden variety, but he's still funny. But go back and read those other links. The egomaniacal rage is barely contained. Hang around a bit here and you'll probably get to see him pop again. Just watch. This guy is now quite beyond the ability to resist posting with more of his insanity. All contest to his 'perfectness' must be me
Insightful?
This wingnut is talking Pax Americana! To, "try and make the world a place for free trade, free from tyranny."??
Any rational person who looks at the world will recognize that tyranny for profit (free trade?) is on the rise, and the 'strong vision' of the Republicans which brought us the Iraq fiasco and horror show currently wants to expand the nightmare to include war with Iran, which will almost certainly lead to nuclear exchanges. Free trade mouthed by Republicans is just another word for "Exploitation Slave Labor in Third World Countries." --Several countries of which have been forced into third world status by maneuvers by the world bank. Free trade is the wet dream of those agencies which brought us the infamous banana republics. It's horseshit. I doubt very much that JFK's version of Democratic leadership would do anything but roll his eyes at this fool. But that's also typical; to twist the vision of great men in delusional history re-writing so that it compliments the agenda of ever-expanding misery for the masses. Just on the fairy-tale level, look at what the Christian Right has done with their mascot, turning him into an icon and excuse for perpetual war and apocalyptic insanity.
Pax Americana is just the same. It's ego-driven insanity. Diverse countries and cultures, among their many strengths, act as a control measure to contain and combat problem nations. Imagine if Hitler had come to power in a system where there was a one world government; there would have been no other collective to have opposed him. Heck, imagine a world where a Pax Americana existed which Bush managed to rise to the top of. Can we really trust ourselves not to vote evil nitwits into power? I think we've proven that we cannot, so further erosion of individuality among nations and further extension of American imperialism is plainly a rotten idea. Checks and balances need to be in place because we KNOW that as a people, we are NOT perfect. --At least those properly realized humans among us recognize this.
This is not to say that democratic leadership today isn't a joke; Obama let everybody down with his FISA nonsense, (though I'd be surprised if this would pose a problem for the parent poster who thinks torture is such a great idea).
This guy is just looking for easy handouts and ego-perks to feed his, "you should build a statue to worship me" egomania, (yes, he said that); it's easy to pop on the 'wise and insightful' mask for a quick manipulation, but if you stop for a moment to research this loon, you'll see what you're actually dealing with. He never said, "I was wrong", but rather "What you said makes me even MORE right!" It's impossible for this brand of sick to admit anything other than personal perfection. Fascinating case, actually.
-FL
This guy is hilarious! Check out his ravings with regard to torture. Here and here. He really seems to believe that he is beyond criticism. I don't think his, "You should build a statue in worship of me" thing is even half in jest.
-FL
I notice the subject here is doing exactly as predicted; ignoring those elements which disagree with its argument while spinning utter nonsense. Again, for anybody interested, I'll dissect the clutter. . .
Of course a psycho would prefer a system which allows a criminal to get away without a record. Psychos repeat their crimes; they can't not. And hey, maybe the criminal will get away with it next time around. If the only punishment involves something which the psychopath does not fear and from which it can walk away to continue its criminal activities, then it's completely win-win for the psychopath, whereas society suffers. That's the primary point here, and the real reason for this subject's argument; trying to make society work for the psychopath. Everything else offered by it is total nonsense spin.
Your plan - the victim spends many man hours trying to recover their passwords while the perp then spends years in jail, then cannot get any other job because he has a felony on the record.
Again, there appears to be no understanding here that society doesn't WANT the criminal to be part of society anymore. That's why we put them in jail. If they can't play by the rules, then we pull them out of our midst and put them in a box for a long time so we don't have to deal with them. I'm not saying that there aren't massive problems with the justice system and the prison system. There are, namely bad politics and rampant corporatism. But the essential function makes sense. When a criminal attacks society, they become our enemy. We don't want them to go unnoticed. We want them labeled as a threat so they cannot hurt us again. That's how we protect ourselves. The psychopath loves a society which is endlessly forgiving because that's where it can thrive.
I would be happiest if the purpose of the justice system were bent towards the total ruination and containment of psychopaths. They cannot be fixed or saved, and they do not have souls and thus mercy means nothing to them except another get out of jail card and meal ticket.
I'm far more merciful than you!
No. This subject is a sick monster which wants to strap people to tables and torture them until they scream for mercy, screams which will be ignored until they pony up with the right price. For the psychopath, mercy is just another commodity, and this is what is wrong with them. Mercy comes naturally to real humans which is why torture is so automatically abhorrent. The problem is that psychopaths are masquerading as human, playing the system against us. For example. . .
[...]I would also make available some psychiatric help for the guy[...]
"Make available some psychiatric help"? Make available? Not 'enforce', I notice. Is the psychotic criminal really going to take up such an offer voluntarily? --Also, psychopaths tend to spend a fair bit of time playing psychoanalysis game, so they get good at it and they don't care. It's just another place to tell the story of their 'greatness' and be let off scott free. It's all a game to the monsters, because they cannot be cured.
Luckily, it works both ways. The more people learn, the more people will be able to recognize the psychopath for what it is and thus the predator's options to feed will be narrowed, hopefully to the point of starvation.
Plus this joker is totally hilarious under glass! He's the only one who doesn't realize just how completely out to lunch he sounds, and it's not because nobody 'gets' his 'brilliant' arguments. It's because there's simply something wrong with his brain which means he is actually incapable of seeing a portion of reality which is plainly obvious to everybody else. It's like he thinks in black & white while everybody around him thinks in color. His comments are all based on less information than those around him have, and so it's automatic that his reaction to the world is going to look utterly foolish to everybody with fully functioning perceptions. Ps
Your approach ruins lives.
So, NOT torturing people ruins lives, eh? Whereas torturing people is an act of mercy? This is what you are claiming?
Those kinds of statements are anything but new. They are in fact recurring patterns on the world stage in dark times. War is peace. Hate is Love. Etc.
Look sicko, you might actually think you are right, but that's only because you're insane.
I have already responded to this creep and his 'logic' in more detail earlier in this Slashdot comment forum. Anybody interested can read it here.
Cheers!
-FL
And this, folks, is a prime example of what I'm talking about.
The number of off the wall assumptions this guy is making about me and by extension, society in general, offers a rather creepy window into his own mind. I shudder to imagine what he thinks I get up to in private. I'm betting it ain't pretty, but you can be certain of one thing; it says a great deal more about him than anybody else. Also notice how he was condemning me of sickness and depravity when he's the guy promoting torture? That's a classic example of sociopathy; blaming the victim of the crime you are responsible for. --Mind you, I'm calling this creep a psycho; you'd need proper medical testing to be sure, but if it looks like a rose and smells like a rose, you'd be foolish not to expect thorns. If I was somebody in this guy's life, I'd have my guard up big time; these types are totally incapable of seeing that they are wrong even while they rain massive amounts of harm, both physical and psychological on their victims.
As for his broken argument. . . Sigh. It takes so much work to explain the fallacies of broken logic to the delusional, and it's pretty much pointless, because guys like this are generally incapable, sometimes on a neurological level, of admitting or even understanding that they are not perfect beings, that they are capable of being wrong. So whatever I say will be twisted or misinterpreted, slithered out from under or just plain ignored in the blare of his own never-ending voice box. . . But I will make the attempt for the benefit of anybody sane who happens to care. . .
A society which accepts waterboarding in lieu of prison terms, as he suggests we ought to do, is a society which has replaced the means of punishment, so torture is no longer a means simply for extracting information. And since there will be others just like him who scoff in exactly the same way he does, saying, "Bah, Waterboarding doesn't scare me. It's quick and I'll be able to get on with my life, (of crime??)."
So what is the next logical step? Anybody? That's right! To step it up a notch. Any society which starts by accepting torture as a reasonable reaction has just taken a step down the ladder, and so it will accept the next step; that of more terrible torture methods, until the logical end, death by torture, is ultimately reached. I don't want to live in a society which is engaged in a torture arms-race with the 'criminal' element. --Further, and there are SO many things wrong with such a plan, when depravity becomes acceptable, those who have an inclination toward depraved behavior come out of the closet. This is an observed pattern in previous fascist states; because of society's tacit approval of depravity, you'd get the local twisted cop conducting his own extracurricular waterboarding sessions. That's absolutely guaranteed. --But it's a subtle enough detail that it always manages to be left out of the bombastic arguments presented by those arguing for a more evil society.
So that's my argument. Creep-o man, however, will no doubt see it differently. You can always tell which way these types of sicko will jump. Just watch. His internal impulses will pretty much make it impossible for him not to respond with some manner of foul lunacy. And if he somehow manages not to, you can bet he'll be vibrating with rage for a whole week wishing he could kill me! Ha Ha! Loser.
-FL
The Masterplan website is dead.
I was wondering how he planned to serve up a video to a million people in one evening when he already said he had no budget.
Though, being Joss, (ie, a genius), he certainly recognized this would happen and that it would create ground-swell interest. (That which you want but can't have, you REALLY REALLY want.)
I love the man's work, but I must say that I do NOT like being manipulated outside of the story. It's impolite. Buffy didn't need marketing. It sold itself because it was good. Firefly was the same way, (it's problem wasn't a lack of viewer support but a lack of executive support. Market to those goons). The fans didn't need selling, and they don't need it here either.
But I do tend to take a strong position against being psychologically manipulated. I dislike it more, it seems, than the average websurfer. But whatever the case, I'm sure this will be a big hit and I look forward to downloading it from some fan-driven initiative, (like Pirate Bay), in a few days time. Good luck, Joss!
-FL
Come on, you all know you were thinking it. ;-)
Yes, we are, and why do you think that is?
Is that a good thing? And who is responsible?
This is an old pattern and it takes awareness and will power to choose a path which is different from that which the psychopath wants us to take. --This is the way psychopathic leadership works. They know there is something wrong with them and that they are outnumbered by normal people, and so it is one of their unstated mission goals to change the tenor of society so that it matches their reality, so that they are comfortable and no longer on guard against being discovered. The psychopath creates chaos and within that chaos is able to present easy on-ramps to the dark-side of human instincts. This is a very clear example happening right now.
There are two choices; Crack the password and take back control, (the guy, as it has been pointed out, is not even a software engineer, and as has also been pointed out, with physical access to a system, a simple password isn't going to prevent information from being retrieved). --Then punish the guy using the rule of law.
The other option is to descend into debauched S&M sickness. --Because arguments for torture are NEVER about the stated reasons, but are instead attempts at justification. If one travels into the dark-side of their human nature, they realize that it feels good to hurt people. You can get off on it if you deliberately align yourself in that manner. There's a reason S&M is related to sex for some, and THAT is what this whole torture thing is really all about. And it should be pointed out that people with repressed sexual tendencies tend to go that way more readily. (Repression ==> Frustration ==> Anger ==> Evil) --Now which political group is more sexually repressed would you say?
-FL
Way to play into the hands of the beast. This stuff is set up exactly so that the ignorant can 'tip' past the critical threshold and become monsters.
If everybody thought like you, then we might as well be living under Saddam Hussein.
There are always better solutions than the ones which hot emotion dishes out as the fast and dirty answer. Just skimming the first few feet of posts, already half a dozen people have pointed out that with physical access to the system, it takes relatively little effort to crack a password.
Everybody I've met who I've had the chance to really discuss this with are usually only looking for an excuse to hurt people because they get off on it. There's a reason S&M is popular with some people, often in sexually repressed people, (i.e., Republicans). Torture NEVER truly has anything to do with the stated reasons. It's always about justifying the feeding of dark appetites, because in the dark recesses of the mind, it feels good to cause pain. This is what drives school yard bullies and psychopaths. Some people hide from this reality and do not admit it, others know it is true which gives them the choice to deliberately resonate on a different level and change into beings who are naturally repelled by the mere idea of torture, whereas others jump right in and become evil.
What do you want to become?
-FL
Hm. You're right. Life isn't fair. --Because it seems to favor me all the time. In fact, it seems to shower with glory several of the people I know. Charmed lives. It does, however, seem to consistently punish others. It it interesting to note that those it punishes tend to carry with them a self-punishing nature or a dismal life philosophy like Bernie LaPlante's.
Here's a truth for you to add to your pile. . .
You get what you ask for. Your unconscious beliefs are regularly realized. --It's true! I see it every day. Understanding that the universe works to provide the experiences we seek, and more importantly, the experiences we believe are possible and which we deserve. . , understanding that opens up the gear box of reality. It allows us to fine tune our internal mechanisms. If the same difficult things keep happening, we can ask, "Why? What is it about me which keeps returning me to this same series of experiences?" --And this allows us to make adjustments.
The really interesting part, the part which I find both amusing and kind of difficult to watch, is that it encompasses the belief systems of the Bernie LaPlante's of the world. If one believes that Life is Unfair and Miserable, then guess what? It will give you exactly that. Luckily, Bernie LaPlante's belief system occupies a little sub-box on the system tree; his fundamental rule system is not universal, it applies only to himself and others like him. The curious thing is that I've seen people defend to ridiculous lengths their bleak, self-punishing beliefs as though misery and dreariness are prizes of some kind. Better to be miserable than wrong, even if being wrong means freedom!
I've railed against this kind of thinking in the past, but I don't bother anymore. I understand it, and probably shouldn't even comment because I strongly suspect that in many cases holding these kinds of apathetic and often outright nihilistic beliefs is necessary for some people in order for them to execute their Karma. --That is, if you've been dabbling in the dark side and you've got a lot of negative debt to pay off in this life, then one way to do it is to avoid following a course of happiness and self-fulfillment. And anybody who points to the cage door and says, "Uh, you know, it's not locked. You can walk out of here any time you like," when you're deliberately (on some unconscious level), doing time for personal reasons. . , well that person needs to be blocked out and shut up and ignored because he's not really doing you any service.
So good luck with whatever you're dealing with. Carry on. --But for the record, in case anybody else is reading who might unnecessarily be living a lousy life, you do happen to be wrong. There are other options, and very simply, (notwithstanding the necessity for working within the confines of objective reality), you do indeed get what you ask for in life. Happens all the time. And that's about as fair as it gets.
-FL
That sounds like apologia. I'd be careful with that; it's dangerous stuff.
Retroactively justifying a false move, that is. That's what Bush/McCain's people, do. That's Neocon thinking. You can spot the difference between a Righty and a Lefty very easily by watching for this behavior; the Right are incapable of seeing reality for what it is and must have their soothing lies in order to be happy. They don't care if the world goes into the crapper, (in fact, I suspect on some deep level, that's actually where they want it so that it can't hurt them or scare them by being alive and uncontrollable), whereas the Left will criticize a flaw when they see one, no matter who happens to perpetrate it. --We're talking in absolutes, of course; there are many shades in between. But essentially, as one who attempts to observe reality objectively, it is my opinion that Obama deserves criticism for going along with a bad bill.
-FL
how much energy does it take to cool those lines to that insanely cold value? In a standard copper line the value is zero: we don't cool them...
Actually, this is really neat; New York City is a special case. --I have a friend who visited recently and saw a work crew doing something with a huge smoking excavation in the middle of downtown. The smoke was liquid nitrogen boiling off. My friend, being curious, asked what was going on, and the reply was that they were cooling the electric grid. He did some research and found out that certain sections of the New York City power grid, installed many decades ago, is simply not robust enough to deal with the vast amount of electricity being pulled through them today. The short term solution has been to rig them with system which continually bathes the key hot spots with liquid nitrogen 24/7 to keep the conductors from melting down and the whole system from failing.
When I saw this article I thought, "Ah, so they finally managed to find a solution to that problem. Good for them! They must have been really desperate to embrace such a new and expensive technology."
-FL
Usually what MS does is wait until a technology is proven to be wanted/needed. Then comes to market after the leader has established the want/need for it. Then MS undercuts the leader by giving it away free or much cheaper, while proping itself up with other money makers. I still remeber when I first starting working with MS products and training for them in the mid 90's. Their answer for MS DNS, DHCP, etc was "It's not the best, but it;s free". Then once it starts to gain market share, They change their tune. The price is then passed on to all users (all copies of Windows server 2003 have the cost of DHCP server in it) even though it is not used by all. *Smart Business Move. Sometimes it's not always about making more money, but stopping others from makeing money.
Ugh! Yes. You're exactly right.
I wonder which search engine advertisers would give their money to, not just given the option of cheaper rates, but also with Yahoo's search engine integrated across all Microsoft OS's and hardware, and built directly into the interface of Internet Explorer, (which has 70% share of the browser market)? --Keeping in mind that it only takes a few colors and some clever design to manipulate the average shopper/television viewer. All the psychoanalysis has been paid for; If the population can be tricked into going to war, then I think they can be tricked into clicking the wrong button.
I love people very much, I really do; it's why I keep coming back here. But it doesn't change the fact that so many of our race have slipped into ignorant lives; just look at how many fat, semi-retarded, over-medicated ignoramuses there are walking around; people who have chosen not to think or discern for themselves, and so simply allow the corporate world to make their choices for them.
Frankly, it's damned spooky. I think MS could still actually threaten a company like Google. Companies, such as Microsoft, give off a distinct 'smell'; malicious, greedy intentions color everything one produces; it cannot be hidden. But it CAN be ignored and it can go unnoticed by those who are not sensitive enough or who simply don't care. --And the number of people who don't notice or don't care seems to be large enough to consistently change the world.
-FL
I heard it put once by a European who had lived through the tyranny of WWII that there is always corruption and tyranny in government, but one version is the kind which pretends to be something else through a facade of humanitarian 'niceness'. People still know it's there for the most part, and they complain and fight. And then the naked, aggressive version of tyranny comes out, with the starving and the death squads and the barbed wire, and the people shudder and cry, "No, anything but that! Anything but that! Bring back the other kind of corruption. Lie to us again, please, just anything but that!"
The interesting thing is that there is a third kind of government which is not corrupt at all, I've seen it and worked at various levels within it. But it only seems to be able to exist in small groups where everybody knows everybody else and the stakes are so low that the wolves don't smell enough blood worth having. When the system gets any bigger and successful, which often happens with healthy beginnings, things start to fail and the psychopaths scent out a meal.
-FL
What a strange analogy.
I wonder if a classic car buff would really want to convert their beloved collector's piece into a modern consumerist status symbol for power and wealth?
In any case, while one is fast, and the other is slow, the Fiat was originally made small so that it could navigate the teeny one-lane streets featured in many Italian cities, whereas the Ferrari needs some serious hubcap room. It could be argued that the analogy should be reversed since the smaller car is more agile and able to deal with small details whereas the other cannot and is in fact primarily focused on flying through as many kilometers as quickly as possible and isn't terribly concerned with counting them off in smaller quantities.
Of course, this kind of observation is the reason why I would be irritating at parties. Carry on. I'm listening.
-FL
a rudimentary technology built on similar principles. --The reference is gone, gone, gone, (one of the reasons I was disappointed when the Internet Archive had to abandon it's development of its non-linear search feature, "Recall"), but there was once this cool story about an Australian university student who as part of his lab research discovered the following. . .
Morse code-like binary impulses transferred through the skin using low-level electrical pulses which were undetectable by the subject on the conscious layer, were nonetheless able to be interpreted by the subconscious. --This is after hypnosis was used to teach the subject how to interpret the binary code. After that point, test volunteers could be given very specific instructions which they would actually follow to the letter without realizing that the motivation to act had not come as a result of their own thinking. They thought they were acting on their own ideas! Stunning. According to the lead researcher, (before his website vanished), he got freaked out when other strange things started to surface with his subjects which his experiments should not have had anything to do with, so he aborted the whole experiment.
Now I don't know what to make of that, (which is why I'd love to review the story and perhaps contact the guy to find out what the actual scoop was), but the ideas all certainly sound like they can easily exist within the realm of the possible. How many of your ideas and impulses in life are really your own? It just reinforces the importance, as the Buddhists suggest, to practice 'mindfulness'. Question yourself and your actions all the time and make sure they pass your own filters of rational behavior. Beware of strong impulses which don't make sense; think through them carefully before acting on faith that just because it feels good and right that it must necessarily be good and right. I think we've all learned how bad it can be to hit, "Submit" before reviewing.
-FL
I've heard of this kind of thing before. Sadly, they like to pick on people who are already a little border-line and odd. --Thee swarming piranha muggles who get an ego-high from tormenting those who don't quite fit socially can always be counted on to do the dirty work of the Powers That Be by making sure people who dare step outside the draconian social boundaries as established in Jr. High by the popular kids, are punished and ostracized for speaking out. I find it astonishing; so many of the people who visit Slashdot have themselves been similarly treated in this way precisely because they are geeks. They should damned-well know better. --But I've seen it so many times before and I'm sure I'll see it again.
--One of the more poignant episodes which crystallized this repeating pattern into my archetypal reference on this whole behavior type was the day I remember demanding of a room mate why he was tormenting a kid who had made an honest mistake, and his reply was, without a trace of irony, "Well, I was punished all through school, so now it's my turn."
I could have slugged him for being yet another predictable ape incapable of rising above his reptile-brain response behavior as any self-respecting human should always strive to do, but I was too flabbergasted to even close my hanging lower jaw at the time.
I hope everybody will take a moment to read through some of the comments made by certain social cowards, around here with regard to one of your older posts on this same subject. --That is, before the technology in question was officially made 'real' by this current article. . . (News flash, people! It's been around since the cold war. Please, please do some research; all this knowledge is easily and publicly available to anybody with half an ounce of human curiosity.)
People who have been hurt should stand up rather jump at the chance to pass on the misery.
-FL
All chickens are taken to slaughter, but they still have to spend their chicken-energy.
Facebook is a great big behavioral data collection engine which is perfectly suited for the monitoring and control of millions. Is it used this way? I don't know. I suspect there is far more data gleaned from our collective lifetimes spent traveling through the education and medical systems, and in adulthood, through the banking systems, than is collected from facebook. --And those other systems are either run directly by the government or are tightly intertwined with government, whereas Facebook is still somewhat private. Though I can certainly see how something like Facebook sheds light into areas which those previously mentioned systems have a harder time quantifying, namely your associations with other people. (Though, that kind of thing is not invisible; there are phone records and email records; Facebook just kind of collects it all with a nice GUI for the MIB's.)
However. . , it's still a system which binds friends and communities together. Much like the phone system. --You're not going to stop using the phone to call your parents or friends just because you KNOW the government is recording everything in paranoid anxiety.
Yeah, humans are hopelessly manipulable, perfect candidates for conquest, domination and liquidation on a whim. Be we still have to fall in love and make friends and exchange ideas. Even this post right now is easily traceable to yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever. But am I going to stop living because there are monsters in our midst? Hmm. Nope. It's sort of a race to the finish line using the same track; we can share information and build strong ties as a community which can prepare and help prevent attack, and while we do this, the enemy learns all the clever ways it can attack by secretly watching as we form our communities. Who will win?
Not sure what the answer is, but the people I've seen who spend their days clinging to anger at the unfairness of it all tend to make themselves sick and miserable and don't generally DO anything productive with their knowledge. There are other ways, and communication is a vital part of it. And so is awareness. Knowing that Facebook makes you naked is important. What you choose to do after that is up to you.
-FL
Whenever my phone rings, first thing I do is kill the bit torrent client if I have one running. People come first. Other than that, VOIP totally rocks.
I wonder how much longer that will be the case. --I seem to recall some companies were getting hit hard with law suit losses.
-FL