Will the EFF be the ones who apologize to the families of those killed by attacks that could have been stopped?
Our fundamental liberties are more important than safety. Are you going to apologize to all the people whose rights you've helped violate in the name of safety? Are you going to apologize to all the people who are abused by corrupt governments? Not a single government throughout history has not abused its powers in horrendous ways. Instead of apologizing, maybe you should move somewhere more to your liking, like North Korea.
People who truly desire freedom realizes that it carries risks. I don't want 100% safety, or anything close to that. I do want privacy. I do want the government to follow the constitution. I do want my other fundamental liberties. I want to live in a country that truly tries to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and I want other supposedly free countries to respect people's freedoms as well. I'm willing to take risks in the name of freedom. You, though, are a coward, and don't belong in any free country.
Then the more people that use TOR, the more targets they'll have. You can provide cover for the people who really need protection. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.
That's a good point, but it also misses the fact that there isn't a single government throughout history that didn't subject its citizens to horrible abuses of some sort, which includes the US government. Give normal humans nearly unlimited power and they'll abuse it. The people who say "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." must be completely and utterly ignorant of history, and must have such faith in the 'normal' people in their governments that they not only believe that the current people in the government will not make mistakes or abuse their powers, but that everyone who will ever be in the government will always be that way. That is just plain stupidity.
Also, the fact that it's unconstitutional in the US should make people in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" oppose it instantly. Whatever happened to the idea that we should be extremely cautious of the government? Even many of the people who say they want a smaller government support mass surveillance, which makes zero sense.
So, hold on a minute. A company *chooses* to harm everyone by using DRM, and you blame someone other than the person who chose to use the DRM? That makes absolutely no sense. How about some personal responsibility for the people who choose to make their software non-free, who choose to use DRM, who choose to implement malicious features, and who choose to use those malicious features to subjugate their users?
Instead, you use a propaganda term and blame people who have nothing to do with any of these decisions.
(If I had a dollar for every/.er who at least thought of writing an angry justification about pirating in response to my last sentence, I'd be able to retire tomorrow. LOL)
Disagreements needn't be filled with anger. If you say something nonsensical, surely it isn't surprising that people would at least voice their disagreement?
Wow, you're already doing such a good job of not buying products from companies we know are evil! Sony Rootkits, DRM, removal of OtherOS, proprietary locked-down consoles... Sony's evil knows no bounds. And yet you still have a PS4.
No, it's not. (Thinking is a learned skill, after all.) That sort of egomaniacal nonsense is why so many programming communities are cesspits. Get over yourself.
Most people don't even truly come to understand mathematics, even though we attempt to teach it everywhere. I don't see any good reason to believe they could have the sort of critical thinking skills required to become truly great programmers, or truly outstanding when it comes to anything. I just don't see any evidence that leads to this. I see people who act like mindless robots when it comes to politics, fail to understand mathematics, believe in magical sky daddies for which there is no evidence, and do all sorts of other tremendously illogical and irrational things despite the education we attempt to give them; that makes me conclude that most people are hopeless.
I see no evidence that they'd be geniuses or very smart if they just worked harder, so at the moment, I simply lack a belief in that being true.
Is it because you're actually insecure and want to believe that those you admire for their talent are "just lucky"? Is it that you'd rather believe that it's not your fault that you're not as accomplished as you'd like to be? Isn't it far more empowering to accept that you're skilled because you put in effort and that you can continue to improve?
Do you believe what you do because you're frustrated that you're not as good as you'd like to be, so you fool yourself into believing that anyone can become truly great through hard work?
If that doesn't sound accurate, it probably isn't. Trying to psychoanalyze other people over the Internet just makes you look like an idiot in my eyes. It isn't even relevant to the conversation.
Oh, sure, if you make absurdly simple programs. Innovating and coming up with clever solutions to complex problems is beyond most people, however. It's the difference between a bad/mediocre programmer and a truly good one.
The idea that you need money to place value on your time is what is ridiculous.
Sure, it's more expensive to drive, but they value their time highly enough that they'd rather spend $5 to get there in 1/3rd the time that the bus would take.
This sort of attitude is why I have no sympathy when I lot of people complain about being in debt. There's an easy alternative and yet they make no attempts to educate themselves or invest their money.
The reason that the 'elitists' get away with spying and engaging in immoral and illegal behaviour is because they are connected to the old-boy pedophile rings.
The ones that haven't been shown to exist, you mean. This is a mere conspiracy theory.
The NSA violates my and other people's rights far more than some "pedophile rings" of such scale that can only exist in the minds of conspiracy theorists. To begin with, these dubious "pedophile rings" would only affect a small portion of kids at most, whereas the NSA's mass surveillance is vast.
This is truly pathetic. This "For the children!" nonsense has no business here.
Drift net sieving of all our communications is the abuse.
It's one abuse. Spying in people in person without probable cause or warrants is another abuse. Fewer people's privacy is violated, but it's still bad.
You want privacy? Nope! We'll just try harder to violate your privacy and constitutional rights if you try to protect it. You exist to make our jobs easier. Your rights are null and void when they make our jobs harder. That silly thing called "freedom" is less important than our ability to catch Bad Guys.
No, they aren't. There is no objective value to someone's life. A child's life is no more important than my own.
while children are potentially part of the solution
Everyone is potentially part of the solution. You may say that the chances that an adult could change their views are slim, but I'd say the chances that a child could be part of the solution when they grow up is just about as slim.
1. Children need looking after, that's just how they are. It's not putting them on a pedestal, it's recognizing that they are vulnerable.
This is a misunderstanding of what I am saying. What I am saying is that children's lives aren't more important than the lives of anyone else. It is just as bad for an adult to be raped as it is for a child to be raped.
2. It's possible to deal with one issue at a time. Just because bad things happen to other people does not mean concentrating on one group with particular issues and needs is wrong.
No, but as you may have noticed, the "for the children" crowd goes absolutely nuts when it comes to children, to the point where some of their nonsense has actually been put in laws. The sheer amount of focus put on children is further shown every time a politician uses the "We need to save the children!" excuse to violate our liberties. It's right up there with terrorism.
How would you propose hacking into a computer WITHOUT developing a zero-day for it?
I'm saying if they have to backdoor specific firmware, there is still hope. Of course, since they have the capability to sap up nearly everyone's data, there isn't much hope to begin with. Just saying that just because something is hosted outside the US, that doesn't mean it's somehow more vulnerable.
It isn't like anybody thinks the NSA has some psychic that just controls the minds of sysadmins from halfway around the globe.
You'd be surprised.
We're talking about wikileaks here. Obviously that is going to be a high-profile target for intelligence agencies anywhere. You simply can't run such an operation on some unencrypted webmail service ANYWHERE.
Law enforcement rarely hunts actual predators. Instead, they mostly go after people who look at images and video and simply label them as predators, even if they never raped anyone. The actual rapists are often free to continue raping.
But it's not a good idea at all to form some sort of unaccountable vigilante lynch mob.
These people are ruled by their primitive instincts to such a degree that anyone who even slightly looks at their children in a way they don't approve of becomes a demon that is going to kill everyone.*
Since pedophiles also didn't "choose to be born this way", why the hostility and dehumanization, even in the case of abstinent pedophiles who attend (the limited) number of programs for them, and don't download illegal images?
The fact that there is such a thing as "illegal images" is disgusting, and in the US (despite what our authoritarian courts have said), unconstitutional.
As for why all the demonization: The matter involves children. These people are ruled by their primitive instincts to such a degree that anyone who even slightly looks at their children in a way they don't approve of becomes a demon that is going to everyone. Forget the constitution and forget fundamental liberties; anything measure that these people think will increase the safety of children is acceptable, because they believe that our fundamental freedoms are less important than safety, a mindset that leads to tyranny.
Remember, this is the same NSA that intercepts Cisco shipments to install back-doored firmware and develops its own zero-day hacks for Windows.
The fact that they have to do this says a lot about their capabilities.
(Even that is somewhat questionable, as many Citizens prefer that legal rights not apply to undocumented residents or suspected criminals.)
Those people are freedom-hating fools. So as soon as you're accused of something, those unspecified people think that you should lose all your rights?
It may not be much more of a hurdle, but actually having to ask a rubber-stamp court for authorization is a higher bar than just pointing their hacking tool at a server.
It's practically nothing, as we've seen with the NSA. They get a few rubber stamps and they're allowed to collect nearly everything.
When you are confused in situations like these, always ask yourself what cold fjord would do; the answer will surely involve getting the government out of our lives. Here's the answer: The community doesn't want things such as drawings of children having sex or simulated child porn, so they should be banned. In addition, realistic simulated child porn makes it more difficult for law enforcement to do their jobs, and as we all know, we exist to make law enforcement's job easy. This is perfectly constitutional and anyone who says otherwise wants License and not Liberty.
Resorting to name calling and conspiracy alleging doesn't make you look any better.
You mean like how you said I supposedly have no compassion for victims? Name calling does not make any of my points valid. I've noticed that you've totally avoided putting forth any logical counterarguments and instead opted to comment about how I called you names or how you've decided in your own imagination that I have no compassion (irrelevant to the conversation anyway); why?
it's going to help the cause of eradicating child exploitation
Do you have any evidence that it will help, rather than end up with innocent people accused of things they did not do? Mob justice rarely is anything resembling actual justice, and I have severe doubts that anything "anonymous" will do will help the situation. But since you seem to have some evidence that I don't, perhaps you should put it forward?
and there is nothing you can do about it.
Probably not, just like I can't stop all the "protect the children" witch hunts that result in innocent people's lives ruined. Does that make you feel better?
Slashdot Mirror
Will the EFF be the ones who apologize to the families of those killed by attacks that could have been stopped?
Our fundamental liberties are more important than safety. Are you going to apologize to all the people whose rights you've helped violate in the name of safety? Are you going to apologize to all the people who are abused by corrupt governments? Not a single government throughout history has not abused its powers in horrendous ways. Instead of apologizing, maybe you should move somewhere more to your liking, like North Korea.
People who truly desire freedom realizes that it carries risks. I don't want 100% safety, or anything close to that. I do want privacy. I do want the government to follow the constitution. I do want my other fundamental liberties. I want to live in a country that truly tries to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and I want other supposedly free countries to respect people's freedoms as well. I'm willing to take risks in the name of freedom. You, though, are a coward, and don't belong in any free country.
Then the more people that use TOR, the more targets they'll have. You can provide cover for the people who really need protection. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.
That's a good point, but it also misses the fact that there isn't a single government throughout history that didn't subject its citizens to horrible abuses of some sort, which includes the US government. Give normal humans nearly unlimited power and they'll abuse it. The people who say "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." must be completely and utterly ignorant of history, and must have such faith in the 'normal' people in their governments that they not only believe that the current people in the government will not make mistakes or abuse their powers, but that everyone who will ever be in the government will always be that way. That is just plain stupidity.
Also, the fact that it's unconstitutional in the US should make people in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" oppose it instantly. Whatever happened to the idea that we should be extremely cautious of the government? Even many of the people who say they want a smaller government support mass surveillance, which makes zero sense.
Thanks, pirate assholes.
So, hold on a minute. A company *chooses* to harm everyone by using DRM, and you blame someone other than the person who chose to use the DRM? That makes absolutely no sense. How about some personal responsibility for the people who choose to make their software non-free, who choose to use DRM, who choose to implement malicious features, and who choose to use those malicious features to subjugate their users?
Instead, you use a propaganda term and blame people who have nothing to do with any of these decisions.
(If I had a dollar for every /.er who at least thought of writing an angry justification about pirating in response to my last sentence, I'd be able to retire tomorrow. LOL)
Disagreements needn't be filled with anger. If you say something nonsensical, surely it isn't surprising that people would at least voice their disagreement?
PS4 will be my last console.
Wow, you're already doing such a good job of not buying products from companies we know are evil! Sony Rootkits, DRM, removal of OtherOS, proprietary locked-down consoles... Sony's evil knows no bounds. And yet you still have a PS4.
No, it's not. (Thinking is a learned skill, after all.) That sort of egomaniacal nonsense is why so many programming communities are cesspits. Get over yourself.
Most people don't even truly come to understand mathematics, even though we attempt to teach it everywhere. I don't see any good reason to believe they could have the sort of critical thinking skills required to become truly great programmers, or truly outstanding when it comes to anything. I just don't see any evidence that leads to this. I see people who act like mindless robots when it comes to politics, fail to understand mathematics, believe in magical sky daddies for which there is no evidence, and do all sorts of other tremendously illogical and irrational things despite the education we attempt to give them; that makes me conclude that most people are hopeless.
I see no evidence that they'd be geniuses or very smart if they just worked harder, so at the moment, I simply lack a belief in that being true.
Is it because you're actually insecure and want to believe that those you admire for their talent are "just lucky"? Is it that you'd rather believe that it's not your fault that you're not as accomplished as you'd like to be? Isn't it far more empowering to accept that you're skilled because you put in effort and that you can continue to improve?
Do you believe what you do because you're frustrated that you're not as good as you'd like to be, so you fool yourself into believing that anyone can become truly great through hard work?
If that doesn't sound accurate, it probably isn't. Trying to psychoanalyze other people over the Internet just makes you look like an idiot in my eyes. It isn't even relevant to the conversation.
Programming is absurdly simple.
Oh, sure, if you make absurdly simple programs. Innovating and coming up with clever solutions to complex problems is beyond most people, however. It's the difference between a bad/mediocre programmer and a truly good one.
The idea that you need money to place value on your time is what is ridiculous.
Sure, it's more expensive to drive, but they value their time highly enough that they'd rather spend $5 to get there in 1/3rd the time that the bus would take.
This sort of attitude is why I have no sympathy when I lot of people complain about being in debt. There's an easy alternative and yet they make no attempts to educate themselves or invest their money.
Producing pedopornographic material requires child sexual exploitation.
Producing it, but not merely looking at it. Ban rape (it already is) and go after the rapists.
There are more reason for banning that kind of content than just censorship.
Nope. Censoring the videos/pictures is mere censorship.
Even if you only value your time in the car at $5
Unless I'm currently working, I don't value my time using money in the first place; it's ridiculous.
The reason that the 'elitists' get away with spying and engaging in immoral and illegal behaviour is because they are connected to the old-boy pedophile rings.
The ones that haven't been shown to exist, you mean. This is a mere conspiracy theory.
The NSA violates my and other people's rights far more than some "pedophile rings" of such scale that can only exist in the minds of conspiracy theorists. To begin with, these dubious "pedophile rings" would only affect a small portion of kids at most, whereas the NSA's mass surveillance is vast.
This is truly pathetic. This "For the children!" nonsense has no business here.
Drift net sieving of all our communications is the abuse.
It's one abuse. Spying in people in person without probable cause or warrants is another abuse. Fewer people's privacy is violated, but it's still bad.
You want privacy? Nope! We'll just try harder to violate your privacy and constitutional rights if you try to protect it. You exist to make our jobs easier. Your rights are null and void when they make our jobs harder. That silly thing called "freedom" is less important than our ability to catch Bad Guys.
They don't seem to have any issues spying on the rest of us and ignoring our privacy. What's the harm in a drone?
But they are.
No, they aren't. There is no objective value to someone's life. A child's life is no more important than my own.
while children are potentially part of the solution
Everyone is potentially part of the solution. You may say that the chances that an adult could change their views are slim, but I'd say the chances that a child could be part of the solution when they grow up is just about as slim.
1. Children need looking after, that's just how they are. It's not putting them on a pedestal, it's recognizing that they are vulnerable.
This is a misunderstanding of what I am saying. What I am saying is that children's lives aren't more important than the lives of anyone else. It is just as bad for an adult to be raped as it is for a child to be raped.
2. It's possible to deal with one issue at a time. Just because bad things happen to other people does not mean concentrating on one group with particular issues and needs is wrong.
No, but as you may have noticed, the "for the children" crowd goes absolutely nuts when it comes to children, to the point where some of their nonsense has actually been put in laws. The sheer amount of focus put on children is further shown every time a politician uses the "We need to save the children!" excuse to violate our liberties. It's right up there with terrorism.
How would you propose hacking into a computer WITHOUT developing a zero-day for it?
I'm saying if they have to backdoor specific firmware, there is still hope. Of course, since they have the capability to sap up nearly everyone's data, there isn't much hope to begin with. Just saying that just because something is hosted outside the US, that doesn't mean it's somehow more vulnerable.
It isn't like anybody thinks the NSA has some psychic that just controls the minds of sysadmins from halfway around the globe.
You'd be surprised.
We're talking about wikileaks here. Obviously that is going to be a high-profile target for intelligence agencies anywhere. You simply can't run such an operation on some unencrypted webmail service ANYWHERE.
Agreed.
Law enforcement rarely hunts actual predators. Instead, they mostly go after people who look at images and video and simply label them as predators, even if they never raped anyone. The actual rapists are often free to continue raping.
But it's not a good idea at all to form some sort of unaccountable vigilante lynch mob.
These people are ruled by their primitive instincts to such a degree that anyone who even slightly looks at their children in a way they don't approve of becomes a demon that is going to kill everyone.*
Since pedophiles also didn't "choose to be born this way", why the hostility and dehumanization, even in the case of abstinent pedophiles who attend (the limited) number of programs for them, and don't download illegal images?
The fact that there is such a thing as "illegal images" is disgusting, and in the US (despite what our authoritarian courts have said), unconstitutional.
As for why all the demonization: The matter involves children. These people are ruled by their primitive instincts to such a degree that anyone who even slightly looks at their children in a way they don't approve of becomes a demon that is going to everyone. Forget the constitution and forget fundamental liberties; anything measure that these people think will increase the safety of children is acceptable, because they believe that our fundamental freedoms are less important than safety, a mindset that leads to tyranny.
Remember, this is the same NSA that intercepts Cisco shipments to install back-doored firmware and develops its own zero-day hacks for Windows.
The fact that they have to do this says a lot about their capabilities.
(Even that is somewhat questionable, as many Citizens prefer that legal rights not apply to undocumented residents or suspected criminals.)
Those people are freedom-hating fools. So as soon as you're accused of something, those unspecified people think that you should lose all your rights?
It may not be much more of a hurdle, but actually having to ask a rubber-stamp court for authorization is a higher bar than just pointing their hacking tool at a server.
It's practically nothing, as we've seen with the NSA. They get a few rubber stamps and they're allowed to collect nearly everything.
When you are confused in situations like these, always ask yourself what cold fjord would do; the answer will surely involve getting the government out of our lives. Here's the answer: The community doesn't want things such as drawings of children having sex or simulated child porn, so they should be banned. In addition, realistic simulated child porn makes it more difficult for law enforcement to do their jobs, and as we all know, we exist to make law enforcement's job easy. This is perfectly constitutional and anyone who says otherwise wants License and not Liberty.
cold fjord: For a Smaller, Leaner Government.
Uh... that only means they don't bother with a warrant. They just go and get whatever they like.
Sounds like what the NSA is already doing. You think the government cares about the constitution?
Name calling does not make any of my points valid.
Or invalid, for that matter. It does not affect the validity of my points at all.
Resorting to name calling and conspiracy alleging doesn't make you look any better.
You mean like how you said I supposedly have no compassion for victims? Name calling does not make any of my points valid. I've noticed that you've totally avoided putting forth any logical counterarguments and instead opted to comment about how I called you names or how you've decided in your own imagination that I have no compassion (irrelevant to the conversation anyway); why?
it's going to help the cause of eradicating child exploitation
Do you have any evidence that it will help, rather than end up with innocent people accused of things they did not do? Mob justice rarely is anything resembling actual justice, and I have severe doubts that anything "anonymous" will do will help the situation. But since you seem to have some evidence that I don't, perhaps you should put it forward?
and there is nothing you can do about it.
Probably not, just like I can't stop all the "protect the children" witch hunts that result in innocent people's lives ruined. Does that make you feel better?