Most people, when envisioning the various dystopic futures our web-wired world can lead us to, are afraid of the internet and its ability to increase the government's ability to monitor and control its citizenry. In practice, however, it has been the corporate sector that has been pioneering the invasion of privacy with various monitoring tools developed for purposes that at first seen innocuous, but which grow more worrisome with reflection. Likewise, corporations have begun to exert increased control over what is said about them on (and off)line through SLAPP suits and other "legal" means. What do you propose to do about corporate spying on the individual citizen, and its cousin, corporate censorship of critical speech on the internet?
"First of all, more people voted for Bush than Clinton...Second of all, you have no idea who won the popular vote, because millions of absentee votes were never counted because they would have no impact."
This has been specifically denied by every state in which it would have mattered.
I disagree quite completely that "there really isn't anything more to be said."
If you disagree with a bad policy, not only can you refrain from doing business with the company that stands behind the policy, but you can also criticize the company, talk it down, let people know why what they are doing is wrong.
This isn't simply an economic question, it's an ethical question, and one needn't make recourse to the tools of economics only when dealing with this sort of thing.
Consider the fact that in most people's minds "hacking" has been conflated with the notion of "dangerous computer crime", and that most people think hackers are all credit-card stealing sociopaths. We need time to educate the public about the need for "openness" regarding security exploits, and how getting these exploits out in the open produces an incentive to get them fixed. I don't know that we *do* have the time to do it, though.
I usually can't stand "Suck"'s smarmy attitude, but this time, I gotta say, they're spot on. We of the geek set spend most of our time writing about our gripes and actually doing precious little about them. "I'll show them...I'll write a nasty post on Slashdot!"...that effectively summarizes our modus operandi (and I'm not excluding myself here).
Most of us don't have the money to make the system change. And most of us don't have the connections to make the system change. The only tool available to us is our numbers. I've suggested this before: if we were to coordinate our disregard for these rulings with massive civil disobedience (say by posting links to the deCSS software on every BBS and message board we know of, preferably message boards on corporate sites) we'd be able to put a lot more pressure on the system.
Of course, we'd have to be willing to suffer the legal consequences. We can mitigate the individual suffering by making sure a lot of people participate. It's harder to persecute movements than individuals. But damnit, if we don't start doing stuff like this, Suck will be absolutely right and we will get what we deserve.
I think Katz may be overreacting a bit here...and I'm not one of the Slashdot Peanut Gallery members who flash their street creds by bashing Katz.
Some sites set up recently to help facilitate
coverage of political convention related news
from an "outside the convention" perspective.
The news is posted in a strictly "ground up fashion," and tends towards a leftist and anarchist user base. Unsurprisingly, I find it refreshing.
How many of the global warming skeptics and advocates in here are climatologists, I wonder?
It'd be interesting to see if ideology is impacting this (a la Limbaughesque denunciations of phenomena one doesn't understand) or whether it's actually honest knowledge at work in the production of/.er opinions.
Can anyone refresh me on any victories we've had in the courts lately?
It's becoming pretty clear to me that we "punk hackers" aren't doing any good by griping online. And Joe and Jane Everyman don't care about this issue, because it doesn't impact them (in ways that they notice anyway). We need a new strategy here. Something big.
I remember reading about Gandhi, and how he explicitly disobeyed the British authorities in India by conducting a march to the sea to make salt. The manufacture of salt was controlled by a British monopoly, and any attempt to make it one's self could be punished by law. He went to jail for his actions, but the movement to subvert the British salt monopoly was too powerful to stop.
Could we organize a large scale, visible, and very flagrant violation of the tenets of the DMCA? Something everybody would have to notice? And would we be willing to suffer the legal consequences for it?
Y'know, I've always wondered why so many users here feel the need to badmouth those individuals who put their freedom, and sometimes lives, on the line for their beliefs? So some of us believe in social justice, and some of us are willing to sacrifice for it. Smart-ass criticisms from the slashdot peanut gallery smell like defensiveness to me. It'd be interesting to find out what, exactly, has people getting so defensive.
Jon, First off, let me compliment you on writing what are consistently the most talked about items here on slashdot. I appreciate your articles and find them challenging. What has specifically interested me about your writing is its increasingly anti-corporatist focus. Do you feel that voicing strong anti-corporatist sentiments in your writing has ever had a negative impact on your marketability (in effect, have you ever experienced "corporate censorship")?
that you are not a neuroscientist. Well, fear not, I am! And I've got to say that reading the statement "their feelings had nothing to do with it" is really off the mark. Their emotional state could well have impacted the efficacy of the drug/drugs they were on. Liekwise the drugs could have impacted their emotional state. Reccurrent causality...all the more reason to be careful how you treat people who may be or are mentally ill.
If I recall correctly, on one of these young men's web pages, there was a piece written about how awful racism is, or at least so I heard on NPR. Additionally, NPR also reported that the swastika they were fond of wearing had a circle around it, and a slash through it, generally not a sign that one supports the ideals for which the swastika has come to stand. The talking in German, some acquaintances have suggested, had more to do with their fascination with Rammstein than with the Reichstag. If these pieces of information are true, how to reconcile this with the fact that the two apparently used a racial epithet when shooting Isaiah, their sole black victim? One might suppose that any epithets they employed were done to further humiliate their victims, and not out of any great abyss of racial resentment. In any event, why is only on national public radio that I have heard these assertions? Media powerhouses afraid of ratcheting down the level of demonization just a little, maybe?
There is a difference between "blaming" groups, and attempting to understand a group dynamic, and how that dynamic can provoke actions in individuals. Of course, American mediaculture thrives on blame. Blame sells, understanding does not. I would submit that very few we, the marginalized, are blaming jocks for the evil acts of two young men. For the most part, what we've been doing has been is trying to elucidate the dynamics at work in this tragedy.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people, when envisioning the various dystopic futures our web-wired world can lead us to, are afraid of the internet and its ability to increase the government's ability to monitor and control its citizenry. In practice, however, it has been the corporate sector that has been pioneering the invasion of privacy with various monitoring tools developed for purposes that at first seen innocuous, but which grow more worrisome with reflection. Likewise, corporations have begun to exert increased control over what is said about them on (and off)line through SLAPP suits and other "legal" means. What do you propose to do about corporate spying on the individual citizen, and its cousin, corporate censorship of critical speech on the internet?
This has been specifically denied by every state in which it would have mattered.
I disagree quite completely that "there really isn't anything more to be said." If you disagree with a bad policy, not only can you refrain from doing business with the company that stands behind the policy, but you can also criticize the company, talk it down, let people know why what they are doing is wrong. This isn't simply an economic question, it's an ethical question, and one needn't make recourse to the tools of economics only when dealing with this sort of thing.
And a casual reading of Moby Dick might well fail to find reference to the White Whale.
Consider the fact that in most people's minds "hacking" has been conflated with the notion of "dangerous computer crime", and that most people think hackers are all credit-card stealing sociopaths. We need time to educate the public about the need for "openness" regarding security exploits, and how getting these exploits out in the open produces an incentive to get them fixed. I don't know that we *do* have the time to do it, though.
I usually can't stand "Suck"'s smarmy attitude, but this time, I gotta say, they're spot on. We of the geek set spend most of our time writing about our gripes and actually doing precious little about them. "I'll show them...I'll write a nasty post on Slashdot!"...that effectively summarizes our modus operandi (and I'm not excluding myself here).
Most of us don't have the money to make the system change. And most of us don't have the connections to make the system change. The only tool available to us is our numbers. I've suggested this before: if we were to coordinate our disregard for these rulings with massive civil disobedience (say by posting links to the deCSS software on every BBS and message board we know of, preferably message boards on corporate sites) we'd be able to put a lot more pressure on the system.
Of course, we'd have to be willing to suffer the legal consequences. We can mitigate the individual suffering by making sure a lot of people participate. It's harder to persecute movements than individuals. But damnit, if we don't start doing stuff like this, Suck will be absolutely right and we will get what we deserve.
I think Katz may be overreacting a bit here...and I'm not one of the Slashdot Peanut Gallery members who flash their street creds by bashing Katz.
Some sites set up recently to help facilitate coverage of political convention related news from an "outside the convention" perspective. The news is posted in a strictly "ground up fashion," and tends towards a leftist and anarchist user base. Unsurprisingly, I find it refreshing.
Indymedia LA
Indymedia Philly (a neat implementation of slash)
And if you want to bypass the corporate press:
The Media Channel
It'd be interesting to see if ideology is impacting this (a la Limbaughesque denunciations of phenomena one doesn't understand) or whether it's actually honest knowledge at work in the production of /.er opinions.
Can anyone refresh me on any victories we've had in the courts lately?
It's becoming pretty clear to me that we "punk hackers" aren't doing any good by griping online. And Joe and Jane Everyman don't care about this issue, because it doesn't impact them (in ways that they notice anyway). We need a new strategy here. Something big.
I remember reading about Gandhi, and how he explicitly disobeyed the British authorities in India by conducting a march to the sea to make salt. The manufacture of salt was controlled by a British monopoly, and any attempt to make it one's self could be punished by law. He went to jail for his actions, but the movement to subvert the British salt monopoly was too powerful to stop.
Could we organize a large scale, visible, and very flagrant violation of the tenets of the DMCA? Something everybody would have to notice? And would we be willing to suffer the legal consequences for it?
Y'know, I've always wondered why so many users here feel the need to badmouth those individuals who put their freedom, and sometimes lives, on the line for their beliefs? So some of us believe in social justice, and some of us are willing to sacrifice for it. Smart-ass criticisms from the slashdot peanut gallery smell like defensiveness to me. It'd be interesting to find out what, exactly, has people getting so defensive.
Jon, First off, let me compliment you on writing what are consistently the most talked about items here on slashdot. I appreciate your articles and find them challenging. What has specifically interested me about your writing is its increasingly anti-corporatist focus. Do you feel that voicing strong anti-corporatist sentiments in your writing has ever had a negative impact on your marketability (in effect, have you ever experienced "corporate censorship")?
that you are not a neuroscientist. Well, fear not, I am! And I've got to say that reading the statement "their feelings had nothing to do with it" is really off the mark. Their emotional state could well have impacted the efficacy of the drug/drugs they were on. Liekwise the drugs could have impacted their emotional state. Reccurrent causality...all the more reason to be careful how you treat people who may be or are mentally ill.
If I recall correctly, on one of these young men's web pages, there was a piece written about how awful racism is, or at least so I heard on NPR. Additionally, NPR also reported that the swastika they were fond of wearing had a circle around it, and a slash through it, generally not a sign that
one supports the ideals for which the swastika has come to stand. The talking in German, some acquaintances have suggested, had more to do with their fascination with Rammstein than with the Reichstag. If these pieces of information are true, how to reconcile this with the fact that the two apparently used a racial epithet when shooting Isaiah, their sole black victim? One might suppose that any epithets they employed were done to further humiliate their victims, and not out of any great abyss of racial resentment.
In any event, why is only on national public radio that I have heard these assertions? Media powerhouses afraid of ratcheting down the level of demonization just a little, maybe?
There is a difference between "blaming" groups, and attempting to understand a group dynamic, and how that dynamic can provoke actions in individuals. Of course, American mediaculture thrives on blame. Blame sells, understanding does not. I would submit that very few we, the marginalized, are blaming jocks for the evil acts of two young men. For the most part, what we've been doing has been is trying to elucidate the dynamics at work in this tragedy.