Such a simplistic view purposefully rejects the effect on the user; which is precisely why we should discuss and pursue user's freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify published software.
"Inspect and modify" has meaning only if you are a programmer or can employ a programmer. That excludes the home market and huge chunks of other markets.
I would agree that "inspect and modify" is only a subset of what makes Open Source important. However, you are missing a bigger picture by thinking that such freedoms offer no benefit to any given end user. It's true that the end user might be oblivious to these mechanisms. But what the end user has in front of them is a direct result of the freedoms accorded to all, if only acted on by a smaller group.
It's not as simple as that, the NSA has a certain degree of authority that they most certainly abused. If a government agency that high up came to you and told you to do something that wouldn't really affect your company financially would you do it?
And so now we are applying the financial liability that these corporate leaders should have had the wherewithal to understand in the first place. Those who chose poorly will now face the one motivation any business understands - financial repercussion. Quest, it would seem, should feel rather vindicated at this point.
I assume that the telcos thought they would be in way more trouble if they didn't comply, the NSA would make them their enemies (Would you want to be on the bad side of the NSA?) that the media would tear them apart for assisting "terrorists". As an informed slashdottter, I am appalled. From a business and PR perspective, I can sympathize.
On the PR point - you're saying that industry leaders are worried about negative PR if they didn't participate in a secret program? PR from a secret program. I would expect that was the furthest from their minds.
The true evil here is the NSA, while it is a common stratagy for the executive branch to pretend it has more power than it does, these guys took it way too far. Don't get me wrong I think the telcos should have thought a bit longer, hopefully they will get some sort of punishment so there is more of an incentive for companies to think before they comply with a government request.
I think we ultimately agree. The NSA is certainly the main cause of this. And the telcos should feel heat for their actions. But one should not fail to stress the role corporate leaders played in this whole affair. The saying goes "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Whoever wrote this silly blogpost clearly hasn't considered the real reason Google needs their products to succeed. Google's bread and butter is their search product. But here's the problem: search growth is slowing. The only way for Google to keep growing their business at the breakneck speed that they and Wall St have become accustomed to is to find new places besides search pages that they can stick their ads on.
You may be missing a major point. While search growth may be slowing, Google's enterprise division is growing rapidly - doubling over last year. Google dominates that market due to a great product and a solid reputation.
The combination of Google's search service and AdSense dwarfs Google's enterprise profits for now. But I suspect it is short-sighted to see today's environment as the final strategy at Google.
Look at what all Google's projects are. These are not services (which is why "success" of individual projects is not an issue). These are experiments. They are beta programs that provide Google with valuable experience in learning how to aggregate and handle information. These beta "services" are made available to the public as such use provides Google with an invaluable test set that demonstrates not only how well Google's ideas work with real data, but what types of data and functionality people use in the real world.
Sure - this experience gets turned back in to developing better public services. Which probably means a continued success for AdSense. But the real reason to become experts in data aggregation is to service the enterprise; big business and Government accounts. Information is power but only for those who can quickly and accurately access the right information. IT environments are generating more and more current and historical data. There's a nice market for anyone who can facilitate making use of that sea of information. And that market is growing.
Rhodes added: 'We are hoping to give the crowd that come to the virtual concert a real immersive experience, so they can interact with us and react while we are stage.'
Interact and react. In Quake or Unreal Tournament sense? Duran Duran Deathmatch.
who cares about a 'Web Standard" that is only followed by a small rabid group of anti-MS users.
Some may remember back to the days of networks that followed defacto standards established by singular corporate interests. These networks had names like GEnie, CompuServe, and AOL.
Actually - Konq and ioslaves is one of the several reasons I've gone all-Linux at work. It's a nifty feature. And not only do ioslaves work within Konq, they also work for many KDE applications from the file open dialog.
The Truth is always the Truth, it never changes. Don't confuse human knowledge for the Truth. Sure Wikiality could be applied to other records of human knowledge but Wikipedia is a glowing example of embracing a "democratization of truth".
I should stress that the full quote of what I said was:
The overall point was the fluid nature of truth - or our ability to arbitrarily alter our perception of truth.
Sure. I believe there is such a thing as truth; being consistent with accurate fact. However, it is far more common for what we refer to as "truth" really being our perception of a truth. Such perception is prone to error and deception. As such it will be revised as we either discover our error or are continuously deceived. In that way, what we think is the "truth" becomes fluid.
Again - there is indeed a difference between the Truth and our perception of what we think is true. But for all practical purposes, our perception is what is most important as that is what we act on. Colbert's entire shtick is based on toying with those perceptions - or at least highlighting how others manipulate it. That, and tossing stones at people who put "truth" on a pedestal only to cloak it with crafted perceptions of truth.
Yet the article on Lutheranism [wikipedia.org] is still shorter than the article on Truthiness [wikipedia.org]. The Lutheran movement had a much larger impact on world history than the word 'truthiness'. That was Colbert's overall point; Wikipedia does not represent reality but a subset of reality which he coined Wikiality.
Actually - you missed the overall point. Poking fun at the Wikipedia was simply a prop; an experiment that viewers themselves can participate in and experience directly. The overall point was the fluid nature of truth - or our ability to arbitrarily alter our perception of truth. This is not limited to the Wikipedia. After all, the Iraq WMD issue (mentioned in the segment) did not involve the Bush Administration routinely editing Wikipedia entries.
The fact that this comes from the Colbert Report should be a well appreciated irony. The show clearly lampoons Fox News. It has coined the term "truthiness" which is essentially perception of truth based on emotional response rather than fact. The basic theme of the Colbert Report is how malleable "truth" can be. And none of this involves the Wikipedia - at least not specifically. Much of this involves public perception driven by politics and the media.
Along those lines - those who appreciate irony should also appreciate the fact that Colbert's claims on Wikipedia's amount of information on Lutherans is actually incorrect. Yet that meme is being bandied about in this conversation as if it were factual truth.
Wikipedia only has the "truth of the moment" while the Truth is something timeless.
I have a collection of encyclopedias published in the 1930s with copyrights going back to the 1920s. It is essentially a collection of 10 years of work - a snapshot of information from over 60 years ago. The "truth" found in that work is often in sharp disagreement with what I find in the Encyclopedia Britannica today. This discrepancy might come from being produced by different publishers. But it is certainly due to perceptions changing over time - out-dated material is easily identified by social changes and scientific advancements. In any case, the "truth" presented is hardly timeless.
bought every Linux game Loki Games ever ported. I still play half of them quite often (under FC5). However, it seems that nobody else did, as they went belly-up and near the end of their life the games were liquidated at EBGames for $5.00/title.
Go through Slashdot's archives (or google 'em) and dig up the articles about Loki's demise. There's quite a lot of discussion there. Some claim Loki sold to a non-market. Others claim that Loki's funds were grossly mismanaged. I'm not privy to the life and times of Loki Games enough to know which is the reason or what the right mix of the two are.
Unless you're a zealot who refuses to dual boot windows for gaming, the performance will never measure up, ever. It's just about useless.
What makes you think that only a "zealot" doesn't want to dual-boot? And what makes you think the performance will never measure up? I suspect your name-calling answers both questions.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, vote for Democracts in November 2006 and elect a Democratic President in 2008 - we need to balance things the other way for a little while. I don't care if Democrats help unemployed people a little bit; it can't be worse than spending $300 billion dollars on War/Death/Oil.
Yes - by all means. Blindly vote Democrat. Because the Democrat party is pure as the driven snow. And what's more, having a Democrat President (as of yet unnamed) would immediately solve decades (if not centuries) of stuggles in the Middle East! Those Democrats - is there nothing that magical party can not do? Other than beat the Republicans, that is.
Sorry... but this kind of knee-jerk Red/Blue political idiocy annoys me to no end. You want change? Get a candidate with a solid platform.
Reading the comments on Slashdot gives me great insight as to how the USA could possibly support the GENOCIDE that is occuring in Lebannon today. This bullocks gets rated informative.....
Please. If it was really genocide, there would be FAR more civilian deaths. Or do you not think Isreal is not capable of complete destruction of any given city in Lebannon? The argument that there is a callous disregard for civilians in these engangements might have merrit. But claiming the intentional targeting of civilians with the intent to wipe out that given population is simply playing in to the hands of propaganda masters in the region.
This all started because on the 25th of June (right in the middle of the World cup) ISRAEL invaded sovereign palestinian territory and seized two member of hamas [guardian.co.uk], this little fact has not been broadly publicised by an extremely Israeli biased media. Then on 26th of June Hamas retaliated by launching a similiar raid into Israel capturing Corporal Shalit, this was of course very well publicised, most think this was an unprovoked act of agression on behalf of Hamas in actual fact it was not.
You're not really doing much to counter the parent's post. You simply supply a more current view of the long-onging struggle between the various parties involved.
Having said that - very interesting. Thanks. I've been doing some reading on this based on your post. There is little to find - and what I can find seems to be heavily biased (which leads me to wonder what these sources leave out). But it does provide something to consider with all the more widely reported events.
Because if you see images of children bleeding, perhaps you wouldn't support the war.
Which is exactly the point of the propaganda war being waged in the Middle East. Whenever some group suffers retribution for whatever acts they commit, out comes the images of dead children.
I'm torn on the issue. On one hand, I do believe that such imagery is important. If the fact that innocents die in war is news to anybody, then by all means this should drive home the truth of the matter. We should never be lulled in to thinking any war is bloodless; that any war is not marred with inhumane acts and dire consequences for those trapped in the fighting. However, on the other hand the use of these images to sway opinion speaks of a cynical ploy rather than genuine concern for those depicted in these images.
It's not that everyone involved doesn't have a genuine care for the victims involved. But rather major actors and parties to these conflicts believe that these images can be used to gain tactical advantage. Propagating this imagery plays in to these tactics far to well for my taste. And it rewards the use of suffering innocents as pawns.
Part of propaganda is not just making up the message people will hear, but also suppressing the message you do not want them to hear. The Republicans do not want you to hear, or actually see, that our U.S. soldiers are dying in the war in Iraq.
I agree that the whole case of flag-draped coffins issue was questionable (at the least). But let's not kid ourselves in to thinking propaganda is a Republican mechanism.
Thank you! It is amazing how naive, and flat-out stupid some of the people are here with regards to their perception of NASA. Missiles, fighter jets, and cutting edge weaponry all need to be invented to be used...and guess where a lot of that technology is invented?
The space program that gets all the media attention, and that you Sci-Fi geeks cling to is just a small portion of what NASA really does. It's more of a public relations tool than anything.
If you look at the history of NASA, it's plain that much of the technology being developed was dual-purpose with very distinct military applications. And in NASA's golden years, it was certainly part of the propaganda arsenal in the Cold war. But to claim that NASA's space program is currently a minor part of what NASA does today seems to be a little far-fetched. Look at NASA's budget and trace where the money is going.
RMS has become impatient in this quest for social revolution and now he's decided to wield a bigger club.
Is this an interpretation or do you have quotes to back that up? My own interpretation is that the environment is changing and the FSF wants to change the GPL in an attempt to counter some of the more onerous trends. The new license certainly seems more aggressive. But then so do said trends.
15 of 201 doesn't seem to be much. This exercise is tedious. The lesson here should be that it doesn't matter whether any given politician is Democrat or Republican.
My wife was recently diagnosed with MS. The flareup she suffered involved lesions in the area of the brain that deals with balance and nausea. Consequently, her immediate symptoms included severe disorientation and nausea. While these symptoms slowly subsided during her recovery, she was still left with fairly disabling balance issues.
Once she was finally able to go home, she discovered that different games she played affected her sense of balance in different ways. Two notable examples were Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. The isometric graphics of UO were easily tolerated. WoW quickly made her dizzy. We mentioned this to her rehab doctor who ordered her to add WoW to her routine of home exercises.
It wasn't the first time we had run in to this advice. We had a contact with Space Medicine at NASA. They had expressed some interest in my wife's condition since the issue of balance is something they work with extensively. One of the interesting side effects of extended space travel is having to become readjusted to gravity; essentially recalibrating your body to properly interpret the effects of gravity. Astronauts will often find themselves easily disoriented and quick to lose their balance during this period of time (it seems to be more pronounced in less-experienced astronauts). One of the treatments to speed recovery is watching a video of motion while running on a treadmill. The video perspective often shifts, challenging the patient's system to properly interpret conflicting perceptions. Our NASA doctor friend saw the issue that he dealt with as very similar to what my wife was experiencing.
The underlying issue is programing behavioral response. In my wife's case, she is having to re-learn her way around damage. In the Astronauts, they are having to re-learn how to handle stimulus that they had become used to ignoring. I would imagine the soldiers are also re-learning to interpret things in different ways.
Am I the only one who wonders if there isn't some ulterior motivation behind these people coming forth and claiming this "addiction?"
My knee-jerk reaction is that "think of the children" is one of the traditional sales pitches for snakeoil (in it's many forms - services, products, politics, religion, etc.).
I doubt that those matters are more important and larger to Steve Rambam at the moment.
I am sure you are correct. But you've missed the point. The individuals who drove the decisions leading to the given list(s) of questionable actions by this Administration are unlikely to be the same who called for the arrest of Steve Rambam. I have a hard time considering the given grievances as proof that this particular action by the FBI is also likely to be over-the-line in some way.
Informed decisions are great, but you're relying on the very people who now have a history of withholding, distorting, and "creating" information to be the ones to give you the information on which you'll base your decision.
Wait a minute. The arrest and (eventually) court records will become public. Rambam's lawyer will likely make statements. The information will be there soon (if it isn't already). If for some reason this information is being withheld, then you've got a point. But we're not to that point yet. Note that statement - it's very important in the context of this conversation. We are not to the point of information even being available with which to make an informed judgement.
All sarcasm aside, the fact that a large number of people are worried about the legalities of the federal law enforcement agents actions, rather than jumping to the conclusion that the arrested person must (at least appeared to) have crossed the legal line, demonstrates just how strained, if not outright broken, our current system is.
I would argue that this is a healthy symptom and should be encouraged. It is when we automatically assume that law enforcement always gets it right that I become concerned. My only complaint is that concerned parties should be waiting on at least basic information before denouncing law enforcement actions.
My question to you, and to everyone is: At what point do we stop gathering information and move to action?
Once you actually have information that shows questionable actions. It would be nice if the information gathering was done first. Otherwise one creates an appearance of a sea of emotional conspiracy nuts drowning out the voice of anyone who might actually have a valid grievance.
You're not going to bait me in to some debate about the qualifications of this Administration with a rant on various unrelated issues. Just because Federal agents are involved in this particular case, it does not mean it is acting on the specific direction of those involved in your list of much more important and larger matters.
I'm no fan of this Administration. I am not one to defend it; I'll even agree that it has crossed the line on many issues. But if you wish to be an effective critic of this Administration, you'll have to refrain from knee-jerk reactions and get the facts. Such facts are not available in this particular case. Yet.
I would stress that my entire point is in response to someone's emotional rant in response to another having the audacity to call for informed decisions. I suspect this Administration acts too much on gut feelings and too little on facts. I'm not keen to accept the same behavior from its critics.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree that "inspect and modify" is only a subset of what makes Open Source important. However, you are missing a bigger picture by thinking that such freedoms offer no benefit to any given end user. It's true that the end user might be oblivious to these mechanisms. But what the end user has in front of them is a direct result of the freedoms accorded to all, if only acted on by a smaller group.
And so now we are applying the financial liability that these corporate leaders should have had the wherewithal to understand in the first place. Those who chose poorly will now face the one motivation any business understands - financial repercussion. Quest, it would seem, should feel rather vindicated at this point.
On the PR point - you're saying that industry leaders are worried about negative PR if they didn't participate in a secret program? PR from a secret program. I would expect that was the furthest from their minds.
I think we ultimately agree. The NSA is certainly the main cause of this. And the telcos should feel heat for their actions. But one should not fail to stress the role corporate leaders played in this whole affair. The saying goes "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
You may be missing a major point. While search growth may be slowing, Google's enterprise division is growing rapidly - doubling over last year. Google dominates that market due to a great product and a solid reputation.
The combination of Google's search service and AdSense dwarfs Google's enterprise profits for now. But I suspect it is short-sighted to see today's environment as the final strategy at Google.
Look at what all Google's projects are. These are not services (which is why "success" of individual projects is not an issue). These are experiments. They are beta programs that provide Google with valuable experience in learning how to aggregate and handle information. These beta "services" are made available to the public as such use provides Google with an invaluable test set that demonstrates not only how well Google's ideas work with real data, but what types of data and functionality people use in the real world.
Sure - this experience gets turned back in to developing better public services. Which probably means a continued success for AdSense. But the real reason to become experts in data aggregation is to service the enterprise; big business and Government accounts. Information is power but only for those who can quickly and accurately access the right information. IT environments are generating more and more current and historical data. There's a nice market for anyone who can facilitate making use of that sea of information. And that market is growing.
Interact and react. In Quake or Unreal Tournament sense? Duran Duran Deathmatch.
Some may remember back to the days of networks that followed defacto standards established by singular corporate interests. These networks had names like GEnie, CompuServe, and AOL.
"Dude... you totally neck-pinched that guy!" "Excellent!"
Actually - Konq and ioslaves is one of the several reasons I've gone all-Linux at work. It's a nifty feature. And not only do ioslaves work within Konq, they also work for many KDE applications from the file open dialog.
I should stress that the full quote of what I said was:
Sure. I believe there is such a thing as truth; being consistent with accurate fact. However, it is far more common for what we refer to as "truth" really being our perception of a truth. Such perception is prone to error and deception. As such it will be revised as we either discover our error or are continuously deceived. In that way, what we think is the "truth" becomes fluid.
Again - there is indeed a difference between the Truth and our perception of what we think is true. But for all practical purposes, our perception is what is most important as that is what we act on. Colbert's entire shtick is based on toying with those perceptions - or at least highlighting how others manipulate it. That, and tossing stones at people who put "truth" on a pedestal only to cloak it with crafted perceptions of truth.
Actually - you missed the overall point. Poking fun at the Wikipedia was simply a prop; an experiment that viewers themselves can participate in and experience directly. The overall point was the fluid nature of truth - or our ability to arbitrarily alter our perception of truth. This is not limited to the Wikipedia. After all, the Iraq WMD issue (mentioned in the segment) did not involve the Bush Administration routinely editing Wikipedia entries.
The fact that this comes from the Colbert Report should be a well appreciated irony. The show clearly lampoons Fox News. It has coined the term "truthiness" which is essentially perception of truth based on emotional response rather than fact. The basic theme of the Colbert Report is how malleable "truth" can be. And none of this involves the Wikipedia - at least not specifically. Much of this involves public perception driven by politics and the media.
Along those lines - those who appreciate irony should also appreciate the fact that Colbert's claims on Wikipedia's amount of information on Lutherans is actually incorrect. Yet that meme is being bandied about in this conversation as if it were factual truth.
I have a collection of encyclopedias published in the 1930s with copyrights going back to the 1920s. It is essentially a collection of 10 years of work - a snapshot of information from over 60 years ago. The "truth" found in that work is often in sharp disagreement with what I find in the Encyclopedia Britannica today. This discrepancy might come from being produced by different publishers. But it is certainly due to perceptions changing over time - out-dated material is easily identified by social changes and scientific advancements. In any case, the "truth" presented is hardly timeless.
Go through Slashdot's archives (or google 'em) and dig up the articles about Loki's demise. There's quite a lot of discussion there. Some claim Loki sold to a non-market. Others claim that Loki's funds were grossly mismanaged. I'm not privy to the life and times of Loki Games enough to know which is the reason or what the right mix of the two are.
What makes you think that only a "zealot" doesn't want to dual-boot? And what makes you think the performance will never measure up? I suspect your name-calling answers both questions.
Yes - by all means. Blindly vote Democrat. Because the Democrat party is pure as the driven snow. And what's more, having a Democrat President (as of yet unnamed) would immediately solve decades (if not centuries) of stuggles in the Middle East! Those Democrats - is there nothing that magical party can not do? Other than beat the Republicans, that is.
Sorry... but this kind of knee-jerk Red/Blue political idiocy annoys me to no end. You want change? Get a candidate with a solid platform.
Please. If it was really genocide, there would be FAR more civilian deaths. Or do you not think Isreal is not capable of complete destruction of any given city in Lebannon? The argument that there is a callous disregard for civilians in these engangements might have merrit. But claiming the intentional targeting of civilians with the intent to wipe out that given population is simply playing in to the hands of propaganda masters in the region.
You're not really doing much to counter the parent's post. You simply supply a more current view of the long-onging struggle between the various parties involved.
Having said that - very interesting. Thanks. I've been doing some reading on this based on your post. There is little to find - and what I can find seems to be heavily biased (which leads me to wonder what these sources leave out). But it does provide something to consider with all the more widely reported events.
Which is exactly the point of the propaganda war being waged in the Middle East. Whenever some group suffers retribution for whatever acts they commit, out comes the images of dead children.
I'm torn on the issue. On one hand, I do believe that such imagery is important. If the fact that innocents die in war is news to anybody, then by all means this should drive home the truth of the matter. We should never be lulled in to thinking any war is bloodless; that any war is not marred with inhumane acts and dire consequences for those trapped in the fighting. However, on the other hand the use of these images to sway opinion speaks of a cynical ploy rather than genuine concern for those depicted in these images.
It's not that everyone involved doesn't have a genuine care for the victims involved. But rather major actors and parties to these conflicts believe that these images can be used to gain tactical advantage. Propagating this imagery plays in to these tactics far to well for my taste. And it rewards the use of suffering innocents as pawns.
I agree that the whole case of flag-draped coffins issue was questionable (at the least). But let's not kid ourselves in to thinking propaganda is a Republican mechanism.
Oh - I don't know. Maybe through private contractors?
If you look at the history of NASA, it's plain that much of the technology being developed was dual-purpose with very distinct military applications. And in NASA's golden years, it was certainly part of the propaganda arsenal in the Cold war. But to claim that NASA's space program is currently a minor part of what NASA does today seems to be a little far-fetched. Look at NASA's budget and trace where the money is going.
Is this an interpretation or do you have quotes to back that up? My own interpretation is that the environment is changing and the FSF wants to change the GPL in an attempt to counter some of the more onerous trends. The new license certainly seems more aggressive. But then so do said trends.
No - it makes it clear who has superior artillery.
Let's look at the numbers then. From the House's website...
Republican: 226 Yea, 0 Nay, 4 NV
Democratic: 183 Yea, 15 Nay, 3 NV
Independent: 1 Yea, 0 Nay, 0 NV
15 of 201 doesn't seem to be much. This exercise is tedious. The lesson here should be that it doesn't matter whether any given politician is Democrat or Republican.
My wife was recently diagnosed with MS. The flareup she suffered involved lesions in the area of the brain that deals with balance and nausea. Consequently, her immediate symptoms included severe disorientation and nausea. While these symptoms slowly subsided during her recovery, she was still left with fairly disabling balance issues.
Once she was finally able to go home, she discovered that different games she played affected her sense of balance in different ways. Two notable examples were Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. The isometric graphics of UO were easily tolerated. WoW quickly made her dizzy. We mentioned this to her rehab doctor who ordered her to add WoW to her routine of home exercises.
It wasn't the first time we had run in to this advice. We had a contact with Space Medicine at NASA. They had expressed some interest in my wife's condition since the issue of balance is something they work with extensively. One of the interesting side effects of extended space travel is having to become readjusted to gravity; essentially recalibrating your body to properly interpret the effects of gravity. Astronauts will often find themselves easily disoriented and quick to lose their balance during this period of time (it seems to be more pronounced in less-experienced astronauts). One of the treatments to speed recovery is watching a video of motion while running on a treadmill. The video perspective often shifts, challenging the patient's system to properly interpret conflicting perceptions. Our NASA doctor friend saw the issue that he dealt with as very similar to what my wife was experiencing.
The underlying issue is programing behavioral response. In my wife's case, she is having to re-learn her way around damage. In the Astronauts, they are having to re-learn how to handle stimulus that they had become used to ignoring. I would imagine the soldiers are also re-learning to interpret things in different ways.
By that logic, any application (script, etc.)... and to some extent any piece of data... could be a trojan. That's hardly a novel idea.
That's the legitimate extension. This trojan is not it.
My knee-jerk reaction is that "think of the children" is one of the traditional sales pitches for snakeoil (in it's many forms - services, products, politics, religion, etc.).
I am sure you are correct. But you've missed the point. The individuals who drove the decisions leading to the given list(s) of questionable actions by this Administration are unlikely to be the same who called for the arrest of Steve Rambam. I have a hard time considering the given grievances as proof that this particular action by the FBI is also likely to be over-the-line in some way.
Wait a minute. The arrest and (eventually) court records will become public. Rambam's lawyer will likely make statements. The information will be there soon (if it isn't already). If for some reason this information is being withheld, then you've got a point. But we're not to that point yet. Note that statement - it's very important in the context of this conversation. We are not to the point of information even being available with which to make an informed judgement.
I would argue that this is a healthy symptom and should be encouraged. It is when we automatically assume that law enforcement always gets it right that I become concerned. My only complaint is that concerned parties should be waiting on at least basic information before denouncing law enforcement actions.
Once you actually have information that shows questionable actions. It would be nice if the information gathering was done first. Otherwise one creates an appearance of a sea of emotional conspiracy nuts drowning out the voice of anyone who might actually have a valid grievance.
You're not going to bait me in to some debate about the qualifications of this Administration with a rant on various unrelated issues. Just because Federal agents are involved in this particular case, it does not mean it is acting on the specific direction of those involved in your list of much more important and larger matters.
I'm no fan of this Administration. I am not one to defend it; I'll even agree that it has crossed the line on many issues. But if you wish to be an effective critic of this Administration, you'll have to refrain from knee-jerk reactions and get the facts. Such facts are not available in this particular case. Yet.
I would stress that my entire point is in response to someone's emotional rant in response to another having the audacity to call for informed decisions. I suspect this Administration acts too much on gut feelings and too little on facts. I'm not keen to accept the same behavior from its critics.