Eminem is an artist in the same way that a marketing professional is. That's not completely accurate, of course: most hacks can at least string the occasional sentence together. Without the word fuck, Emimem would be stuck using nouns (and precious few adjectives.)
The real question is: why would anyone pirate his crap? Hell, with a cheap copy of Acid lying around, I'd rather listen to me cursing over a tired drum loop....
Which brings up another more interesting question: are there any decent looping programs out there on Linux?
I find it interesting that out of several paragraphs of diatribe, a single phrase, with the magic word "union" in it, generated the string of responses, while the rest of the message seems to have slipped under the radar.
At any rate, I don't prefer unions, either (and I've worked for them in the past, which I imagine most of the/. crowd has not.) Still, I've yet to see an organization other than unions or trade guilds or any word that symbolizes collective worker action that *attempts* to protect the individual from the predatory practices of the tool-owners. It's a fundamental truism that there's safety in numbers, and until Man decides that force isn't the best way to conduct his daily affairs, that truism will remain. And while it is true that union bosses are often little more than crooks, as Enron graphically displays, you don't have to wear the union label to rip off employees.
In a nutshell, the whole point is that, after all the preaching about open markets and open opportunity, when push comes to shove, Americans cry when someone else does it better than they do, and quickly circle the wagons to ward off those in "fair competition". The originator of this thread would certainly agree with this assertion, as would any Japanese circa 1985, or any European steel executive today. The fundamental irony of the situation is, most of the people here who are "free agents" working for the Man, can't see that in the Cave, their shadows are just as chained as the poor savages' are.
I don't have any answers for this, but I'm not going to pretend that it's not the way things are. Like you, I'm still taking the money, but the same qualities that make me a "solid information technology performer" absolutely refuse me to allow myself the luxury of cozy, fascistic consumerism that the Lego builders in the cubes around me indulge in.
This case is cut and dry. H1B workers take American jobs. Period. If all the H1B workers left, there would be more jobs for Americans. And since it is our country, I'm sure you'll understand that we think Americans should have first access to those jobs.
Wrong. Nafta and other globalization forces desolve the artificial borders of state into one global economic system ruled by the rich (United States) and enforced by the overwhelming military superiority of the US. Read some journals about the militarization of space, and you'll see that the global economic planners want to extend this hegemony well into the next century. (The _Alien_ world is not that far from a reality.)
In this context, it matters not if you're an American, an Indian, an African, a Chinese--all that matters is that you take what scraps are available. Pampered Americans--those who cheer scabs over unionization--are reaping the whirlwind they've sown.
YOU get over it.
I'll tell you like I told a flock of Europeans I met while traveling: Americans do not care about foreigners. When I say we don't care, I don't mean we hate them. I mean we really don't care. They never enter our minds. I spend more time choosing what movie I'm going to see than I do about the petty causes of some country I've never been to.
And that's the way it should be.
Total self-absorbed, myopic ignorance proudly displayed--and fully indicative of the points the Indian AC was making.
"These countries" as you call them, particularly India, were the cradles of civilization when Whitee was a barbarian hoard fucking over his neighbor (and it hasn't changed that much, as your pound-your-ignorant-chest post shows.) Indeed, India was just fine until the Brits raped it, so take care with your overt, jingoistic racism: you haven't a logical or moral leg to stand on.
As an American who has lived abroad, the one thing *I* can tell you is that Americans are the most embaressing people I've come across: spoiled little children of Empire, their rudeness is only exceeded by their self-righteous certainty that they're better than everyone else. As your post shows, that feeling grows at home, and gets exported whenever the Disney Generation goes abroad.
You honestly make me ashamed to be an American. Assuming this post reflects your true feelings, you don't give me warm and fuzzies for humanity in general, either.
Sure, all technologies *sound* promising, but what have those technologies delivered, other than a society of asocial fat-asses who complain that no one loves them even as they plot out the next Enron scheme?
It's a brave future these technologists see for us, a place where you don't have to *see* poor people or urban blight or even your fellow fat-asses--from the article:
"Eventually we will be able to get the resolution so clear and the images will look so real, that you may not be able to tell anymore what is real and what is being created by the computer you're wearing," Evans said.
Now *that* sounds like the perfect world--your vision enhanced so that all the dirty parts of existance are pushed to the background by buxom anime characters, your surroundings cleanly filtered into one rosy worldview that guarantees a market for Frosted Flakes.
These people also scream that we have to solve world hunger before we feed our cars. (My opinion? Theses savages are stupid enough to breed when they can't feed themselves, let alone their larvae. It doesn't take education or literacy to understand the problem; a below-average human intelligence should readily grasp the situation. It's not my problem, and I resent you attempting to make it my problem.)
This is *precisely* why human beings should be confined to this planet: this "compassionate conservative" wants to spread his "it's not my problem" immaturity to the stars, where it'll be free to destroy everything it doesn't understand or can't empathize with.
We really are a pathetic collection of evil nothings. Best outcome: the nukes do us all in, and the dolphins take over the top of the food chain.
"Go ahead. Mod me down. But I'm right, and all the politically-correct simpering you might want to do won't change the facts."
Obviously, he has some reason to be here. My question is "what is that reason?". He gives a lot of good reasons for him not to be here, and mentions not one redeeming quality. My curiosity was piqued, and I responded accordingly.
What value does Slashdot add, that outweighs the catalog of faults he lists? I'm still waiting to find out.
This is a fascinating question, and it's a shame it's more or less buried under the hundreds of other posts. IMO, it should be a subject unto itself.....
Along those lines, I offer why I stop in here every once in a while.
First off, let me say I will *never* pay for this site's upkeep. As was noted elsewhere, the people who post here make up this site's value, not the structure itself (not to say that slashcode isn't valuable; all the other sites based on it testify to its worth.) Given that the people who post here are the value that prompts my return, they must be people who I admire and respect whose thoughts and opinions I share and want to hear, right?
Well, no, not for the most part. Most of the posts here are worthless, and the people who post them I hold in low esteem. No, the real value of this site is the cumulative glimpse provided by the various posters into how Power is distributed and maintained in our world today. That may seem lofty, but consider: most of the posters here are in some capacity members of the technocratic priesthood that allows the current power structure to exist. Though many are not aware of it, their very belief systems--which often *are* revealed quite graphically here--mark them as servants of the State, which more or less makes them my ideological foes. In a nutshell, I come here to see into the mind of the enemy, all the while hoping that I am not alone in my thoughts, and that the "enemy" is not as great as I fear it to be.
I am often disappointed to see just how great the Machine's brainwashing is. Still, I return here--AS LONG AS IT IS RELATIVELY EASY TO DO SO (which rules out bigger, more obtrusive ads, I assure you)--to see if in their clockwork minds, the technocrats have any sign of awakening to their responsibility for what is, or even if they realize they have that responsibility at all.
Killing people is not enjoyable (for non-sociopaths) but our army is good at it. They see a greater good in wholesale slaughter. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
Other than the above statement ruling out 90% of the video games out there, you're point still doesn't mesh with reality, or, at least, the justifications for *much* of our "reality".
For example, the reason government exists, according to Hobbes, is to protect us from the war of all against all, from the violent nature of ourselves. This implies that government's purpose is to "civlize" our native desire to slaughter each other. Nietzche's (sic) ubermensch is "civilized" man's ultimate form, a form that transcends this bestial nature to become something actually worth existing. I'm sure there are other philosphers who've weighed in on this, but the point is we *do* like killing people and other species, and have from the get-go. (It's up to you to determine if this design is flawed or not.)
In the context of the current discussion, "efficiency" in programming could easily be compared to "efficiency" in civilization: the myth of progress--or, more accurately, the myth of progress of value is the ruling paradigm that holds this species back, and the programming world in check.
Sure, human celebrities are real people, but you'll never actually see the real person unless you happen to be a close family member or friend. What's the point of elevating fake personas to such status?
The two word answer: social control.
If people are engaged with how to look like an icon, or how to live like one, they are less inclined to notice what's really going on in the world.
For example, there are now kangaroo military courts alive and well in America, because it is "at war". It might give one pause to think about the deeper, underlying issues of what is being done here in the name of "freedom" and "security" if we didn't have the Britney Spears of the world tarting around to remind us what's *really* important: just-legal lust (though Bob Dole's dirty-old-man routine in the Burpsi commercials failed in this regard: too openly creepy for me.)
In _The Republic_, Plato wanted to ban artists--actors, singers, etc.--as being dangerous distractions for the people of the polis; he saw entertainers as a bad thing. However, in the inverted polis that is America, the distraction of the manufactured personality is not only a good thing, it is absolutely required to maintain the power structure.
It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army...
So I want to understand this. You prefer to experience life through an interface to a localized digital sub-reality where you kill and destroy like a trained machine instead of breathing and eating here with us in meatspace where the blood, disease, and destruction come complete with a real olifactory track that would turn a decent being's stomach?
Philip K. Dick must be rolling over in his grave......
Please think about what you are saying. Even if it is said in jest, this kind of eager-beaver jingoism should be known and despised for what it is: abject worship of a system that actively promotes the death of your fellow human beings, "enemy" or not. If you don't value life, that's fine, but keep your adolescent, cold-blooded thoughts to your self.
You sound like a person without hope. However, I believe that if a human being can conceive of something, it can be made reality. I don't expect you to understand that belief, because it is merely that--a belief in the ultimate potential of hairless apes; it's not something that can be quantified with the world of needful facts.
However, if Noam Chomsky is correct--and I believe that he most certainly is--the ability that humans possess, though currently unfufilled, can ultimately achieve a world where people do not need to assert themselves at the expense of others. Indeed, the underlying ideas in his linguistics canon is that there are many things that hairless apes *cannot* do because of inherent limitations (I won't be breathing water anytime soon), but the ability to reason and communicate, which *is* an evolotionary adaptation, will continue to progress, ultimately evolving in a direction such as anarchy as a matter of course.
Of course, we could all be wrong, and you right. Being practical is very comforting; I'm glad it makes you feel better.....
Re:The freedom to swing your fist
on
Freedom or Power?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
So, OSS is going to have to do what M$ does, and that is buy into the government through a lobbying system.
One reason some anarchists revile Noam Chomsky is because he advocates such activities to achieve the ultimate goal of a hierarchal-less society: in effect, working from within the system to change it, which is inherently contradictory to the very concept of autonomous free zones, etc. (I don't follow this line of thinking myself, but the idea is out there.)
Your characterization of anarchism is unfounded; it is not about defining freedoms, it is about the expectation that human beings are not children to be sheparded through their lives by external conventions or traditional modes of living, thinking and feeling. Anarchism, as a mode of thought, simply expects people to be grown-ups. Most people who have anything to say about the subject--which is to say, most people who are not in any shape or form an anarchist--fail to notice this component of it in their mad rush to disavow any possibility that human beings can live this way.
If you're really seeking to understand "anarchy" from a workable economic perspective, go to parecon.org for more information.
--give a bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics a clue about what questions should *really* be asked.
--enlighten perspective and deepen the human experience.
--make a difference to those who've already died.
Conversely, tech *can* do the following:
--provide a forum for flag-waving statist thugs to prime the pump for a bloodbath they will only experience through the filtering power of their "communications technology".
--enable the ennobling of killing in the name of the State as some sanitized exercise that allows feelings of vengeful fury without the painful hangover of moral reflection.
I'm sure there are *many* things I've missed, but I'm not trying to pander to a thread count, like Mr. Katz seems to be doing these days. No, all I'm seeking out of this post is the voicing of my inner dialogue's response to the latest trivialization of death and destruction in the name of the new god, Technology.
I refuse to worship at your god, Jon. Further, I reject the "premises" you make that bring forth your self-serving questioning. For me, you have gone from a reasonable, yet quirky columnist to another standard bearer for facile sensation. I honstly doubt I'll spend time reading you again....
Though I agree with everything you said, the fundamental problem goes a bit deeper than privacy.
The full underlying cause of this is nationalism and the belief that the State is an almost divine entity that will protect you from all ills provided you play by its rules.
History shows that this is a fool's bargain. Any state--and yes, flag-wavers, that includes the US--is *designed* to limit your freedoms for the "greater good". While this works for a great many people indoctrinated to accept the definitions the State provides for "freedom" and "democracy", it is not, nor has it ever been, a complete solution for people in the world, and *much* has been done in the name of the State--like much was done in the name of God before it--that is simply hateful and evil.
Allegiance to the State, a belief that the State is all, that you should be proud to be part of the State, happened in Germany in the 1930s, and it appears to be happening here. Based on some of the troll posts here, you just have to substitute Arab for Jew, and you have the basic plank of the Nazi party flying in full colors.
How does this relate to crypto? It doesn't really at all--that's the point. But, if we're really trying to make a connection, then there's the tenuous observation that crypto is math, and knows no allegiance to State, which has no allegiance to you, meaning that Crypto is like the State in that it is an abstract concept without any feeling or allegiance to anyone or anything. The major difference between Crypto and the State is that the State is established, has full access to social control mechanisms, and panders to people's senses of belonging while Crypto is simply math that individuals can use to keep pieces of themselves from the State and unto themselves.
It is natural that the State--which *fully* seeks the totality of National Socialism, and now has the capacity to make _1984_ look like a Disneyland ride--would seek to abolish the one tool that can put an individual on equal footing with it. It's up to *us* to drop our allegiance to one abstract concept and rally our efforts around the other.
I'll leave it up to you to decide which way the wind appears to be blowing.
I'm sorry, could you say that again??!! You aren't going to blame the people but you are going to blame an inanimate object instead. How convenient. Like it has been said, the Internet will not be what you want it to be but what you make of it.
I guess I'll have to, because it's obvious that my point was at 55000 ft. as it flew over your befuddled scalp.
Simply, technology does not grant freedom, and any discussion about freedom in the context of technology is flawed from the get-go.
Further, technology in general is a form of social control, and a means of securing priviledge for those who possess it over those who don't. Remember the opening of _2001_? Think of that next time this thought confuses you....
This doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to go to the "underground" sites. If someone wants to go to a sanitized news source, that does not hurt me in any way. I've never understood the problem with letting people use the internet how they want. There will always be an "underground" on the net for people who want to go there.
You've obviously never hung out with people who configure routers, otherwise you'd realize how foolhardy this assertion is.
The "net" flows because a (small) collection of organizations allow their networks to talk to each other. This could stop at any time.
And, if I read Solomon's argument correctly, this has already de facto happened with the commercialization of the Internet. But instead of it happening on the transport layer, it's happened on the content layer. All the bluster from pundits about the "end" of the "free Internet" is a facet of this, as is the "dot.bomb" phenomenon: these people want to make you pay for EVERYTHING that you see and hear, and the established ones shear size will squeeze out those that don't have such a "revenue model". (Remember where you're reading this at...hardly an "independent enterprise" anymore, and not for a long time.)
This is not new: it happened with newspapers and more recently with radio and television.
It is easy to blame the victim--the People--for this failure to maintain vigilance over their freedoms. For my money, though, it is just as easy--and far more accurate--to blame the very foundation that allows us to have this conversation--the tech itself.
Technology from the beginning has been used to control people in equal fashion to its ability to make their lives easier. Yes, a fax can bring down the Evil Empire, but it certainly makes it easier to deny stays of execution, too. Ultimately, one has to question the value of "freedom" dependent on technology: are we really free if our freedom can be squelched as easily as pushing a button or changing an ACL?
The first intelligent phrase ever spoken occurred today
" We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry, and if the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation."
While I'm reasonably sure this was irony as originally posted, but as this AC notes, there are a lot of people who believe--like Sunday morning Gospel singers--that competition and innovation have actually occured, and this has been a Good Thing.
Now, I'm not blind to the appearance of some major conveniences that have been showered onto rich Westerners, but where is the innovation when it comes to feeding people and protecting the environment? Really, all the tech that AC and people like him fetishize has been handed down from the State-Military Nexus as second-rate gear fit for the consumer masses that paid for the original research that created the tech to start with. I'd hardly call that innovation, and you certainly can't say that Raytheon and Lockheed *compete* for the government contracts that float their boats (unless you call the bidding graft sessions "competition".) In this context, "regulation" has no meaning: who watches the Watchmen?
Comfort and longevity do not equate to happiness and wisdom, even if those wonderful gifts are showered only on those rich enough to afford them.
Eric Raymond has inspired for me a new nickname that I will forever associate with him. And though it's not exactly a new term, it certainly seems to fit the person: CapMan. Actually, on the comic book cover where I see this flashing in colors of metallic red and copper, the full title reads "The Incredible CapMan". The question is--who, or more precisely, what, is a CapMan?
Simple, silly, CapMan is short for Capitalist Maniac. We could also precede that description with a few other modifiers, such as gun-toting, narcissistic, egomaniacal CapMan, and we would have a full description of the King of the Bazaar.
Up to this point in this post, probably as far as the moderators will read before modding this down, I've disparaged one of the gods of the Open Source Marketing Engine--literally, the High Priest himself--in a highly personal way. If you're still with me, allow me to elucidate exactly why this comic vision has risen in my eyes.
ESR is undoubtedly a talented individual, but his personal vision of unfettered, fully armed laissez-faire capitalism, is, like all proponents of the creed, self-contradictory, and, ultimately, selfish in the way that only readers of Rand can admire as a positive quality. What has always galled me about this unspoken but fully present theme in his discourse is the barely-veiled self-promotional qualities of it: what's good for Open Source is good for ESR, often VERY good for ESR; he's certainly improved his profile by his crusade. Beyond that, though, is the fundamental contradiction of anarcho-capitalist/right-libertarian "freedom" espoused by the tenets of ESR and his Open Source cronies. Though they talk about the "communist dictatorship" of RMS and FSF as if that will eventually cut into their profits (because such an anti-business model cannot be sold to the suits who throw them scraps from their tables), they have little problem using the software that allows them their little capitalist fantasies, and would, no doubt, pull a Bill Gates if the FSF released its wares under BSD-style licensing.
Simply, ESR's argument about a law for *any* licensing is a straw man. In a free world, there ARE no laws, because the individuals participating in such a mature society would not need to be told what to do like young children at the dinner table. I find it particularly interesting, though unsurprising, that ESR's "found contradiction" in the FSF model is viewed by him as a failing of logic; I'm sure that RMS can only be nodding somewhere, saying "precisely my point". The GPL is the ultimate software Leviathan: it is there until we're mature enough to not need it. (Besides, does anyone *really* believe a law against non-GPL licences would ever see the light of day? Perhaps in ESR's Form world, but like many things outside of that world, logical extremes to make a point cannot and will not ever exist: Plato sounds good in _The Republic_, too, but no one wnats that form of justice, either.)
Why is that when push comes to shove, capitalist arguments for or against laws always wind up being the equalavent of their communist counterparts? Shouldn't we look beyond the inherent statist principles of these two economic systems to a place where neither are necessary? *My* reading of the GPL is an attempt to do this--within the current paradigm of statist legalism. Perhaps if ESR looked beyond his own immediate needs, he might appreciate the long-range vision that the GPL represents.
The US Government is a lot like Microsoft. Neither one of them do things out of some sinister plot, or megalomaniac agenda. In reality, both of them are just terribly, horribly, inexcusably incompetent.
Unbelievably, incedibly, beyond the pale WRONG. Neither the US Gov nor Microsoft is incompentent. Indeed, both are VERY efficient at what they do.
Out of the literally billions of species on this planet, only one consistently tortures its own kind (let alone entities of other species.) While it can be said humans have ability, one must question the ultimate value that "ability" has when it's used as it so often is--that is, to destroy. There are far more Pinochets and Khans in our history than Michaelangelos and Beethovens.
Do you think that, given our brainpower, any other species on the planet would be nicer than we have been?
Another self-serving notion. Who is to say that humans HAVE the level of brainpower that separates them from "the Beasts of the Earth"? Oh, I get it, a Man would, even though dolphins have social structures every bit as complex as we do, and gorillas can learn our language forms--while we can't understand theirs.
What's so wonderful about being a human being--the fact that you are one?
Really, I started this as a wry commentary on the dubious ethical standards of a conflicted, immature species attempting godhood, but I want to know, particularly from those whose religion is Science (with evolution being one of the sacraments), why is that Man is so wonderful? How can you in good conscience--not to mention logical consistency--defend a species as vile and base as this one so patently is knowing full well that the fossil record indicates this form is ultimately destined for the Smithsonian of tomorrow? Are you, perhaps, suggesting that this species is the last, and it should take no precautions with the future?
It seems the religion of Science has its Apocrypha, as well.
When you take stem cells from an animal, there is still the issue of life and death. Why is it different to kill an animal as opposed to a human EMBRYO?
WHY indeed.
The answer is that we hairless apes are BETTER than our fellow animals. We invented nuclear fission, spilled oil in Alaska, strip forests bear in South America, and heat up the planet with greenhouse gas emissions. See, we have the technology and the talent to keep the animals where they belong--where God told us to keep them--as vassals in our great corporate democracy.
The great thing about stem cells research is that, if the industry's company flacks are correct, we'll be able to extend the lifespan of individuals of the most hateful species the planet has ever seen *indefinitely*. Think of the possibilities!
This stuff always makes me laugh. Noam obviously never worked in the media. I have for the last twenty years. Trust me on this, it can't be over-stressed. We're not close to bright, single-minded or organized enough to hone and implement these 'secret guidelines' on news content. Those are fantasies promulgated by intellectuals who in most cases literally never left school.
This is off topic, but I just HAD to respond to this.
You're so full of bullshit--probably because you dispensed so much of it for so long--that your self-serving lament of "we're only giving 'em what they want" is actually believable to you.
If you read ANY of Chomsky's work, you'd KNOW there is no conspiracy theory about the Propaganda Model--it simply descibes the system AS IT EXISTS. (Chomsky and Herman regularly attack the Times and Post for their reporting, and neither of them can easily fit into your "lowest common denominator" category.) I studied journalism in college, too, and I know what it takes to get ahead in your business--that's why I do IT work: it may be a Dilbert World, but I don't have to lie every day for my living. (Yes, I know that you don't "lie", you merely "filter" and "arrange" for easy consumption by the people you hold in such complete contempt.)
Like some date-rapist, you blame the victim for your own mediocrity and sell out. Scum like you have to look up to lawyers for moral guidance; it appears that you're not even looking that far these days.
Read practically any *political* book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, and you'll soon come to the realization of the futility of your proposal (for a taste from _Manufacturing Consent_, go here.) Only ideological material that fits within the agenda of the given elite will get full play in the media--which is, of course, NOT free, but wholly owned by increasingly fewer groups of people whose interests coincide less and less with those of "the People"; that is why, surprise, surprise, this case is muted, if not completely unknown, because it challenges the tenets of issues the DMCA camp wants kept quiet.
Sadly, writing to your editor solves nothing more than venting your spleen *here* does--actually, probably far less, as at least SOME people beyond the Gatekeepers see your opinions here, whereas at the Times and Post the most likely recipient of your words is the Round File.
No, if you want to support Dimitry, send him and his lawyers money. If you want to stop the DMCA--and other repressive measures taken by the Elite, be prepared to help those on the front lines with your wallet. In this unjust society, money is the only force that can buy Justice.
Yes, it was, but Taco's appelation of jerks--with the specification that they're not doing something worthwhile--is a bit specious, or perhaps more exactly, personally myopic.
I realize this is hairsplitting, but I'm sure the creators of such "malicious" acts have fully justified reasons for what they're doing, even if those reasons are only justifiable to themselves. They *ARE* doing something worthwhile, in this sense; their actions just aren't worthwhile to Taco.
Now, if one wishes to attack said individuals on a stictly moral basis, I think that is perfectly justified.
Remember that vast majority of the infrastructure of the net is controlled by private companies, running on hardware almost exclusively from a single source (Cisco.)
Truer words were never spoken. The simple fact of the mattr is that *ALL* modern communications systems are susceptible to this type of control. The ARPAnet was a *military* creation, and the underlying redundancy required to survive a nuclear attack can simply be controlled by turning off the flow under their control--they wouldn't have designed it any other way. To assume the "Internet" is any different is at best foolhardy.
Regarding economics: why is it that everyone accepts this pseudoscience as a valid discipline? So a bunch of Chicago-trained aristocratic apologists for the status quo trot out their charts on M1 and M2 and we're supposed to believe them because hack staff writers in the media indulge in reckless appeals to authority in *all* their reportings?
The FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo; it was originally designed to control internal dissent during the Red Scare of the late 1910s and early 1920s. The organization has NEVER been about "law enforcement" in the traditional local sheriff sense; it has ALWAYS been about state contol (think COINTELPRO, etc.)
Hoover was not the originator of McCarthyism, nor was his death the end of it--Red-bating scare tactics and general state bullying have been around since before they through Emma out. Given that context, you should be not be surprised at the bail issue--just ask Mitnick how the government and their police deal with the "rights" of "computer terrorists".
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that.
Eminem is an artist in the same way that a marketing professional is. That's not completely accurate, of course: most hacks can at least string the occasional sentence together. Without the word fuck, Emimem would be stuck using nouns (and precious few adjectives.)
The real question is: why would anyone pirate his crap? Hell, with a cheap copy of Acid lying around, I'd rather listen to me cursing over a tired drum loop....
Which brings up another more interesting question: are there any decent looping programs out there on Linux?
I find it interesting that out of several paragraphs of diatribe, a single phrase, with the magic word "union" in it, generated the string of responses, while the rest of the message seems to have slipped under the radar.
/. crowd has not.) Still, I've yet to see an organization other than unions or trade guilds or any word that symbolizes collective worker action that *attempts* to protect the individual from the predatory practices of the tool-owners. It's a fundamental truism that there's safety in numbers, and until Man decides that force isn't the best way to conduct his daily affairs, that truism will remain. And while it is true that union bosses are often little more than crooks, as Enron graphically displays, you don't have to wear the union label to rip off employees.
At any rate, I don't prefer unions, either (and I've worked for them in the past, which I imagine most of the
In a nutshell, the whole point is that, after all the preaching about open markets and open opportunity, when push comes to shove, Americans cry when someone else does it better than they do, and quickly circle the wagons to ward off those in "fair competition". The originator of this thread would certainly agree with this assertion, as would any Japanese circa 1985, or any European steel executive today. The fundamental irony of the situation is, most of the people here who are "free agents" working for the Man, can't see that in the Cave, their shadows are just as chained as the poor savages' are.
I don't have any answers for this, but I'm not going to pretend that it's not the way things are. Like you, I'm still taking the money, but the same qualities that make me a "solid information technology performer" absolutely refuse me to allow myself the luxury of cozy, fascistic consumerism that the Lego builders in the cubes around me indulge in.
This case is cut and dry. H1B workers take American jobs. Period. If all the H1B workers left, there would be more jobs for Americans. And since it is our country, I'm sure you'll understand that we think Americans should have first access to those jobs.
Wrong. Nafta and other globalization forces desolve the artificial borders of state into one global economic system ruled by the rich (United States) and enforced by the overwhelming military superiority of the US. Read some journals about the militarization of space, and you'll see that the global economic planners want to extend this hegemony well into the next century. (The _Alien_ world is not that far from a reality.)
In this context, it matters not if you're an American, an Indian, an African, a Chinese--all that matters is that you take what scraps are available. Pampered Americans--those who cheer scabs over unionization--are reaping the whirlwind they've sown.
YOU get over it.
I'll tell you like I told a flock of Europeans I met while traveling: Americans do not care about foreigners. When I say we don't care, I don't mean we hate them. I mean we really don't care. They never enter our minds. I spend more time choosing what movie I'm going to see than I do about the petty causes of some country I've never been to.
And that's the way it should be.
Total self-absorbed, myopic ignorance proudly displayed--and fully indicative of the points the Indian AC was making.
"These countries" as you call them, particularly India, were the cradles of civilization when Whitee was a barbarian hoard fucking over his neighbor (and it hasn't changed that much, as your pound-your-ignorant-chest post shows.) Indeed, India was just fine until the Brits raped it, so take care with your overt, jingoistic racism: you haven't a logical or moral leg to stand on.
As an American who has lived abroad, the one thing *I* can tell you is that Americans are the most embaressing people I've come across: spoiled little children of Empire, their rudeness is only exceeded by their self-righteous certainty that they're better than everyone else. As your post shows, that feeling grows at home, and gets exported whenever the Disney Generation goes abroad.
You honestly make me ashamed to be an American. Assuming this post reflects your true feelings, you don't give me warm and fuzzies for humanity in general, either.
Still, this does sound like promising technology.
Sure, all technologies *sound* promising, but what have those technologies delivered, other than a society of asocial fat-asses who complain that no one loves them even as they plot out the next Enron scheme?
It's a brave future these technologists see for us, a place where you don't have to *see* poor people or urban blight or even your fellow fat-asses--from the article:
"Eventually we will be able to get the resolution so clear and the images will look so real, that you may not be able to tell anymore what is real and what is being created by the computer you're wearing," Evans said.
Now *that* sounds like the perfect world--your vision enhanced so that all the dirty parts of existance are pushed to the background by buxom anime characters, your surroundings cleanly filtered into one rosy worldview that guarantees a market for Frosted Flakes.
Where's my soma?
These people also scream that we have to solve world hunger before we feed our cars. (My opinion? Theses savages are stupid enough to breed when they can't feed themselves, let alone their larvae. It doesn't take education or literacy to understand the problem; a below-average human intelligence should readily grasp the situation. It's not my problem, and I resent you attempting to make it my problem.)
This is *precisely* why human beings should be confined to this planet: this "compassionate conservative" wants to spread his "it's not my problem" immaturity to the stars, where it'll be free to destroy everything it doesn't understand or can't empathize with.
We really are a pathetic collection of evil nothings. Best outcome: the nukes do us all in, and the dolphins take over the top of the food chain.
"Go ahead. Mod me down. But I'm right, and all the politically-correct simpering you might want to do won't change the facts."
Obviously, he has some reason to be here. My question is "what is that reason?". He gives a lot of good reasons for him not to be here, and mentions not one redeeming quality. My curiosity was piqued, and I responded accordingly.
What value does Slashdot add, that outweighs the catalog of faults he lists? I'm still waiting to find out.
This is a fascinating question, and it's a shame it's more or less buried under the hundreds of other posts. IMO, it should be a subject unto itself.....
Along those lines, I offer why I stop in here every once in a while.
First off, let me say I will *never* pay for this site's upkeep. As was noted elsewhere, the people who post here make up this site's value, not the structure itself (not to say that slashcode isn't valuable; all the other sites based on it testify to its worth.) Given that the people who post here are the value that prompts my return, they must be people who I admire and respect whose thoughts and opinions I share and want to hear, right?
Well, no, not for the most part. Most of the posts here are worthless, and the people who post them I hold in low esteem. No, the real value of this site is the cumulative glimpse provided by the various posters into how Power is distributed and maintained in our world today. That may seem lofty, but consider: most of the posters here are in some capacity members of the technocratic priesthood that allows the current power structure to exist. Though many are not aware of it, their very belief systems--which often *are* revealed quite graphically here--mark them as servants of the State, which more or less makes them my ideological foes. In a nutshell, I come here to see into the mind of the enemy, all the while hoping that I am not alone in my thoughts, and that the "enemy" is not as great as I fear it to be.
I am often disappointed to see just how great the Machine's brainwashing is. Still, I return here--AS LONG AS IT IS RELATIVELY EASY TO DO SO (which rules out bigger, more obtrusive ads, I assure you)--to see if in their clockwork minds, the technocrats have any sign of awakening to their responsibility for what is, or even if they realize they have that responsibility at all.
Killing people is not enjoyable (for non-sociopaths) but our army is good at it. They see a greater good in wholesale slaughter. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.
Other than the above statement ruling out 90% of the video games out there, you're point still doesn't mesh with reality, or, at least, the justifications for *much* of our "reality".
For example, the reason government exists, according to Hobbes, is to protect us from the war of all against all, from the violent nature of ourselves. This implies that government's purpose is to "civlize" our native desire to slaughter each other. Nietzche's (sic) ubermensch is "civilized" man's ultimate form, a form that transcends this bestial nature to become something actually worth existing. I'm sure there are other philosphers who've weighed in on this, but the point is we *do* like killing people and other species, and have from the get-go. (It's up to you to determine if this design is flawed or not.)
In the context of the current discussion, "efficiency" in programming could easily be compared to "efficiency" in civilization: the myth of progress--or, more accurately, the myth of progress of value is the ruling paradigm that holds this species back, and the programming world in check.
Sure, human celebrities are real people, but you'll never actually see the real person unless you happen to be a close family member or friend. What's the point of elevating fake personas to such status?
The two word answer: social control.
If people are engaged with how to look like an icon, or how to live like one, they are less inclined to notice what's really going on in the world.
For example, there are now kangaroo military courts alive and well in America, because it is "at war". It might give one pause to think about the deeper, underlying issues of what is being done here in the name of "freedom" and "security" if we didn't have the Britney Spears of the world tarting around to remind us what's *really* important: just-legal lust (though Bob Dole's dirty-old-man routine in the Burpsi commercials failed in this regard: too openly creepy for me.)
In _The Republic_, Plato wanted to ban artists--actors, singers, etc.--as being dangerous distractions for the people of the polis; he saw entertainers as a bad thing. However, in the inverted polis that is America, the distraction of the manufactured personality is not only a good thing, it is absolutely required to maintain the power structure.
It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army...
So I want to understand this. You prefer to experience life through an interface to a localized digital sub-reality where you kill and destroy like a trained machine instead of breathing and eating here with us in meatspace where the blood, disease, and destruction come complete with a real olifactory track that would turn a decent being's stomach?
Philip K. Dick must be rolling over in his grave......
Please think about what you are saying. Even if it is said in jest, this kind of eager-beaver jingoism should be known and despised for what it is: abject worship of a system that actively promotes the death of your fellow human beings, "enemy" or not. If you don't value life, that's fine, but keep your adolescent, cold-blooded thoughts to your self.
You sound like a person without hope. However, I believe that if a human being can conceive of something, it can be made reality. I don't expect you to understand that belief, because it is merely that--a belief in the ultimate potential of hairless apes; it's not something that can be quantified with the world of needful facts.
However, if Noam Chomsky is correct--and I believe that he most certainly is--the ability that humans possess, though currently unfufilled, can ultimately achieve a world where people do not need to assert themselves at the expense of others. Indeed, the underlying ideas in his linguistics canon is that there are many things that hairless apes *cannot* do because of inherent limitations (I won't be breathing water anytime soon), but the ability to reason and communicate, which *is* an evolotionary adaptation, will continue to progress, ultimately evolving in a direction such as anarchy as a matter of course.
Of course, we could all be wrong, and you right. Being practical is very comforting; I'm glad it makes you feel better.....
So, OSS is going to have to do what M$ does, and that is buy into the government through a lobbying system.
One reason some anarchists revile Noam Chomsky is because he advocates such activities to achieve the ultimate goal of a hierarchal-less society: in effect, working from within the system to change it, which is inherently contradictory to the very concept of autonomous free zones, etc. (I don't follow this line of thinking myself, but the idea is out there.)
Your characterization of anarchism is unfounded; it is not about defining freedoms, it is about the expectation that human beings are not children to be sheparded through their lives by external conventions or traditional modes of living, thinking and feeling. Anarchism, as a mode of thought, simply expects people to be grown-ups. Most people who have anything to say about the subject--which is to say, most people who are not in any shape or form an anarchist--fail to notice this component of it in their mad rush to disavow any possibility that human beings can live this way.
If you're really seeking to understand "anarchy" from a workable economic perspective, go to parecon.org for more information.
What technology cannot do in "this conflict":
--give a bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics a clue about what questions should *really* be asked.
--enlighten perspective and deepen the human experience.
--make a difference to those who've already died.
Conversely, tech *can* do the following:
--provide a forum for flag-waving statist thugs to prime the pump for a bloodbath they will only experience through the filtering power of their "communications technology".
--enable the ennobling of killing in the name of the State as some sanitized exercise that allows feelings of vengeful fury without the painful hangover of moral reflection.
I'm sure there are *many* things I've missed, but I'm not trying to pander to a thread count, like Mr. Katz seems to be doing these days. No, all I'm seeking out of this post is the voicing of my inner dialogue's response to the latest trivialization of death and destruction in the name of the new god, Technology.
I refuse to worship at your god, Jon. Further, I reject the "premises" you make that bring forth your self-serving questioning. For me, you have gone from a reasonable, yet quirky columnist to another standard bearer for facile sensation. I honstly doubt I'll spend time reading you again....
Though I agree with everything you said, the fundamental problem goes a bit deeper than privacy.
The full underlying cause of this is nationalism and the belief that the State is an almost divine entity that will protect you from all ills provided you play by its rules.
History shows that this is a fool's bargain. Any state--and yes, flag-wavers, that includes the US--is *designed* to limit your freedoms for the "greater good". While this works for a great many people indoctrinated to accept the definitions the State provides for "freedom" and "democracy", it is not, nor has it ever been, a complete solution for people in the world, and *much* has been done in the name of the State--like much was done in the name of God before it--that is simply hateful and evil.
Allegiance to the State, a belief that the State is all, that you should be proud to be part of the State, happened in Germany in the 1930s, and it appears to be happening here. Based on some of the troll posts here, you just have to substitute Arab for Jew, and you have the basic plank of the Nazi party flying in full colors.
How does this relate to crypto? It doesn't really at all--that's the point. But, if we're really trying to make a connection, then there's the tenuous observation that crypto is math, and knows no allegiance to State, which has no allegiance to you, meaning that Crypto is like the State in that it is an abstract concept without any feeling or allegiance to anyone or anything. The major difference between Crypto and the State is that the State is established, has full access to social control mechanisms, and panders to people's senses of belonging while Crypto is simply math that individuals can use to keep pieces of themselves from the State and unto themselves.
It is natural that the State--which *fully* seeks the totality of National Socialism, and now has the capacity to make _1984_ look like a Disneyland ride--would seek to abolish the one tool that can put an individual on equal footing with it. It's up to *us* to drop our allegiance to one abstract concept and rally our efforts around the other.
I'll leave it up to you to decide which way the wind appears to be blowing.
I'm sorry, could you say that again??!! You aren't going to blame the people but you are going to blame an inanimate object instead. How convenient. Like it has been said, the Internet will not be what you want it to be but what you make of it.
I guess I'll have to, because it's obvious that my point was at 55000 ft. as it flew over your befuddled scalp.
Simply, technology does not grant freedom, and any discussion about freedom in the context of technology is flawed from the get-go.
Further, technology in general is a form of social control, and a means of securing priviledge for those who possess it over those who don't. Remember the opening of _2001_? Think of that next time this thought confuses you....
This doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to go to the "underground" sites. If someone wants to go to a sanitized news source, that does not hurt me in any way. I've never understood the problem with letting people use the internet how they want. There will always be an "underground" on the net for people who want to go there.
You've obviously never hung out with people who configure routers, otherwise you'd realize how foolhardy this assertion is.
The "net" flows because a (small) collection of organizations allow their networks to talk to each other. This could stop at any time.
And, if I read Solomon's argument correctly, this has already de facto happened with the commercialization of the Internet. But instead of it happening on the transport layer, it's happened on the content layer. All the bluster from pundits about the "end" of the "free Internet" is a facet of this, as is the "dot.bomb" phenomenon: these people want to make you pay for EVERYTHING that you see and hear, and the established ones shear size will squeeze out those that don't have such a "revenue model". (Remember where you're reading this at...hardly an "independent enterprise" anymore, and not for a long time.)
This is not new: it happened with newspapers and more recently with radio and television.
It is easy to blame the victim--the People--for this failure to maintain vigilance over their freedoms. For my money, though, it is just as easy--and far more accurate--to blame the very foundation that allows us to have this conversation--the tech itself.
Technology from the beginning has been used to control people in equal fashion to its ability to make their lives easier. Yes, a fax can bring down the Evil Empire, but it certainly makes it easier to deny stays of execution, too. Ultimately, one has to question the value of "freedom" dependent on technology: are we really free if our freedom can be squelched as easily as pushing a button or changing an ACL?
The first intelligent phrase ever spoken occurred today
" We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry, and if the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation."
While I'm reasonably sure this was irony as originally posted, but as this AC notes, there are a lot of people who believe--like Sunday morning Gospel singers--that competition and innovation have actually occured, and this has been a Good Thing.
Now, I'm not blind to the appearance of some major conveniences that have been showered onto rich Westerners, but where is the innovation when it comes to feeding people and protecting the environment? Really, all the tech that AC and people like him fetishize has been handed down from the State-Military Nexus as second-rate gear fit for the consumer masses that paid for the original research that created the tech to start with. I'd hardly call that innovation, and you certainly can't say that Raytheon and Lockheed *compete* for the government contracts that float their boats (unless you call the bidding graft sessions "competition".) In this context, "regulation" has no meaning: who watches the Watchmen?
Comfort and longevity do not equate to happiness and wisdom, even if those wonderful gifts are showered only on those rich enough to afford them.
Eric Raymond has inspired for me a new nickname that I will forever associate with him. And though it's not exactly a new term, it certainly seems to fit the person: CapMan. Actually, on the comic book cover where I see this flashing in colors of metallic red and copper, the full title reads "The Incredible CapMan". The question is--who, or more precisely, what, is a CapMan?
Simple, silly, CapMan is short for Capitalist Maniac. We could also precede that description with a few other modifiers, such as gun-toting, narcissistic, egomaniacal CapMan, and we would have a full description of the King of the Bazaar.
Up to this point in this post, probably as far as the moderators will read before modding this down, I've disparaged one of the gods of the Open Source Marketing Engine--literally, the High Priest himself--in a highly personal way. If you're still with me, allow me to elucidate exactly why this comic vision has risen in my eyes.
ESR is undoubtedly a talented individual, but his personal vision of unfettered, fully armed laissez-faire capitalism, is, like all proponents of the creed, self-contradictory, and, ultimately, selfish in the way that only readers of Rand can admire as a positive quality. What has always galled me about this unspoken but fully present theme in his discourse is the barely-veiled self-promotional qualities of it: what's good for Open Source is good for ESR, often VERY good for ESR; he's certainly improved his profile by his crusade. Beyond that, though, is the fundamental contradiction of anarcho-capitalist/right-libertarian "freedom" espoused by the tenets of ESR and his Open Source cronies. Though they talk about the "communist dictatorship" of RMS and FSF as if that will eventually cut into their profits (because such an anti-business model cannot be sold to the suits who throw them scraps from their tables), they have little problem using the software that allows them their little capitalist fantasies, and would, no doubt, pull a Bill Gates if the FSF released its wares under BSD-style licensing.
Simply, ESR's argument about a law for *any* licensing is a straw man. In a free world, there ARE no laws, because the individuals participating in such a mature society would not need to be told what to do like young children at the dinner table. I find it particularly interesting, though unsurprising, that ESR's "found contradiction" in the FSF model is viewed by him as a failing of logic; I'm sure that RMS can only be nodding somewhere, saying "precisely my point". The GPL is the ultimate software Leviathan: it is there until we're mature enough to not need it. (Besides, does anyone *really* believe a law against non-GPL licences would ever see the light of day? Perhaps in ESR's Form world, but like many things outside of that world, logical extremes to make a point cannot and will not ever exist: Plato sounds good in _The Republic_, too, but no one wnats that form of justice, either.)
Why is that when push comes to shove, capitalist arguments for or against laws always wind up being the equalavent of their communist counterparts? Shouldn't we look beyond the inherent statist principles of these two economic systems to a place where neither are necessary? *My* reading of the GPL is an attempt to do this--within the current paradigm of statist legalism. Perhaps if ESR looked beyond his own immediate needs, he might appreciate the long-range vision that the GPL represents.
The US Government is a lot like Microsoft. Neither one of them do things out of some sinister plot, or megalomaniac agenda. In reality, both of them are just terribly, horribly, inexcusably incompetent.
Unbelievably, incedibly, beyond the pale WRONG. Neither the US Gov nor Microsoft is incompentent. Indeed, both are VERY efficient at what they do.
And that's precisely WHY you should be concerned.
The most hateful? No, simply the most able.
Out of the literally billions of species on this planet, only one consistently tortures its own kind (let alone entities of other species.) While it can be said humans have ability, one must question the ultimate value that "ability" has when it's used as it so often is--that is, to destroy. There are far more Pinochets and Khans in our history than Michaelangelos and Beethovens.
Do you think that, given our brainpower, any other species on the planet would be nicer than we have been?
Another self-serving notion. Who is to say that humans HAVE the level of brainpower that separates them from "the Beasts of the Earth"? Oh, I get it, a Man would, even though dolphins have social structures every bit as complex as we do, and gorillas can learn our language forms--while we can't understand theirs.
What's so wonderful about being a human being--the fact that you are one?
Really, I started this as a wry commentary on the dubious ethical standards of a conflicted, immature species attempting godhood, but I want to know, particularly from those whose religion is Science (with evolution being one of the sacraments), why is that Man is so wonderful? How can you in good conscience--not to mention logical consistency--defend a species as vile and base as this one so patently is knowing full well that the fossil record indicates this form is ultimately destined for the Smithsonian of tomorrow? Are you, perhaps, suggesting that this species is the last, and it should take no precautions with the future?
It seems the religion of Science has its Apocrypha, as well.
When you take stem cells from an animal, there is still the issue of life and death. Why is it different to kill an animal as opposed to a human EMBRYO?
WHY indeed.
The answer is that we hairless apes are BETTER than our fellow animals. We invented nuclear fission, spilled oil in Alaska, strip forests bear in South America, and heat up the planet with greenhouse gas emissions. See, we have the technology and the talent to keep the animals where they belong--where God told us to keep them--as vassals in our great corporate democracy.
The great thing about stem cells research is that, if the industry's company flacks are correct, we'll be able to extend the lifespan of individuals of the most hateful species the planet has ever seen *indefinitely*. Think of the possibilities!
This stuff always makes me laugh. Noam obviously never worked in the media. I have for the last twenty years. Trust me on this, it can't be over-stressed. We're not close to bright, single-minded or organized enough to hone and implement these 'secret guidelines' on news content. Those are fantasies promulgated by intellectuals who in most cases literally never left school.
This is off topic, but I just HAD to respond to this.
You're so full of bullshit--probably because you dispensed so much of it for so long--that your self-serving lament of "we're only giving 'em what they want" is actually believable to you.
If you read ANY of Chomsky's work, you'd KNOW there is no conspiracy theory about the Propaganda Model--it simply descibes the system AS IT EXISTS. (Chomsky and Herman regularly attack the Times and Post for their reporting, and neither of them can easily fit into your "lowest common denominator" category.) I studied journalism in college, too, and I know what it takes to get ahead in your business--that's why I do IT work: it may be a Dilbert World, but I don't have to lie every day for my living. (Yes, I know that you don't "lie", you merely "filter" and "arrange" for easy consumption by the people you hold in such complete contempt.)
Like some date-rapist, you blame the victim for your own mediocrity and sell out. Scum like you have to look up to lawyers for moral guidance; it appears that you're not even looking that far these days.
Read practically any *political* book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, and you'll soon come to the realization of the futility of your proposal (for a taste from _Manufacturing Consent_, go here.) Only ideological material that fits within the agenda of the given elite will get full play in the media--which is, of course, NOT free, but wholly owned by increasingly fewer groups of people whose interests coincide less and less with those of "the People"; that is why, surprise, surprise, this case is muted, if not completely unknown, because it challenges the tenets of issues the DMCA camp wants kept quiet.
Sadly, writing to your editor solves nothing more than venting your spleen *here* does--actually, probably far less, as at least SOME people beyond the Gatekeepers see your opinions here, whereas at the Times and Post the most likely recipient of your words is the Round File.
No, if you want to support Dimitry, send him and his lawyers money. If you want to stop the DMCA--and other repressive measures taken by the Elite, be prepared to help those on the front lines with your wallet. In this unjust society, money is the only force that can buy Justice.
Yes, it was, but Taco's appelation of jerks--with the specification that they're not doing something worthwhile--is a bit specious, or perhaps more exactly, personally myopic.
I realize this is hairsplitting, but I'm sure the creators of such "malicious" acts have fully justified reasons for what they're doing, even if those reasons are only justifiable to themselves. They *ARE* doing something worthwhile, in this sense; their actions just aren't worthwhile to Taco.
Now, if one wishes to attack said individuals on a stictly moral basis, I think that is perfectly justified.
Remember that vast majority of the infrastructure of the net is controlled by private companies, running on hardware almost exclusively from a single source (Cisco.)
Truer words were never spoken. The simple fact of the mattr is that *ALL* modern communications systems are susceptible to this type of control. The ARPAnet was a *military* creation, and the underlying redundancy required to survive a nuclear attack can simply be controlled by turning off the flow under their control--they wouldn't have designed it any other way. To assume the "Internet" is any different is at best foolhardy.
Regarding economics: why is it that everyone accepts this pseudoscience as a valid discipline? So a bunch of Chicago-trained aristocratic apologists for the status quo trot out their charts on M1 and M2 and we're supposed to believe them because hack staff writers in the media indulge in reckless appeals to authority in *all* their reportings?
The FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo; it was originally designed to control internal dissent during the Red Scare of the late 1910s and early 1920s. The organization has NEVER been about "law enforcement" in the traditional local sheriff sense; it has ALWAYS been about state contol (think COINTELPRO, etc.)
Hoover was not the originator of McCarthyism, nor was his death the end of it--Red-bating scare tactics and general state bullying have been around since before they through Emma out. Given that context, you should be not be surprised at the bail issue--just ask Mitnick how the government and their police deal with the "rights" of "computer terrorists".