Regardless of what he said. It is reasonable to assume that not all open source software are cheaper to run on the long run than their propriety equivalent.
Sure. But this is hardly revolutionary or worthy of yet another book. We know that everything has costs and the overall cost of something is not always represented in an up-front price tag - software is no different. Where this conversation tends to get misleading is that not every cost is always considered and individuals with an axe to grind tend to limit the conversation to "free" being about licensing costs. This is old ground that's been trodden many times before.
So what you're saying is that instead of making that good argument that you imply you have, you're just going to jump right to being a self-stylized martyr for truth. I predict you won't be the last to do this (which is cheating - this behavior always shows up in any OSS TCO thread).
This is either astonishingly naive, or propaganda. I can't quite figure out which.
Why does it have to be naivety or propaganda?
I'm pretty confident that are any number of levels involved where there are people technically savvy enough to introduced the myriad of ways to get around IP address restrictions. It's possible we have a case of willful ignorance over-riding these knowledgeable people (which wouldn't be the first time in Government or any bureaucracy). But more likely it just isn't an issue - or an issue big enough to warrent concern. So then the question is why the lack of concern. We know the reason for any concern is export restrictions and, by extension, the politics of Iran. It is possible that the applications in question meet the letter of the law but have been determined to not pose the kind of threat that the law is attempting to curtail. In that case, it isn't entirely uncommon for bureaucrats to take token actions to meet the letter of the law to allow otherwise restricted behavior.
too much value is placed on such information, and the information gathering, grouping, etc... is not as infallible, nor as interesting as one might think?
And yet Facebook is making how much money by gathering, grouping, etc. this sort of information?
Why is it so hard for people to understand that with Facebook and other so called free stuff that they are the product that is being sold.
The general public doesn't understand the power, or the value, of information. Part of that is the fundamental misunderstanding of the technology involved. There's a belief that there is anonymity in a crowd. And we continue to look at our systems as "computers" when computations aren't nearly as interesting as the ability to index and sort. Get a label on someone (or better yet, many labels) and they stand out from even the largest crowd (or they become parts of very tailored, selected crowds that they weren't aware they're in). Facebook is an application with which people label themselves.
It very much removed, but it was both entertaining and technically accurate.
Alright - entertaining, yes. But not exactly educational or representing what chess is about. There's been movies done about hacking that are reasonably accurate and entertaining as well. But for the most part, the subject isn't handled well and I still maintain that is because the subject is difficult to handle in an entertaining way without presenting an entirely inaccurate portrayal.
No. But I have seen LEXX before. As far as I've been able to determine, it isn't a documentary and their take on chess might be somewhat removed from the experiences of the average player.
Are you saying a chess match would make a good movie scene? And yes - seen a chess match. Not all that interesting unless you're in to the game. Which means you have personal experience and the considerable background knowledge the appreciate it.
Hacking (in all senses of the word) is not a spectator sport. You can't watch someone poking at code or discovering an exploit / compromising a system and understand the feeling of elation unless you, yourself, have felt that elation. The excitement is personal. Or at least, the excitement requires considerable background knowledge. Capturing that is a difficult challenge. As you noted, it tends to make a pretty poor movie scene.
And that elephant is named "espionage." The only difference today is that the systems are more complex and interconnected. Otherwise, "cyber-war" is no different than the ongoing spying and sabotage that's been practiced for decades. Espionage was never it's own entity which is why "cyber-war" is misleading.
This is the kind of crap that keeps people from thinking straight. Video games do affect people. If you play them every now and then its normal. BUT if you play them to the point where you can't pry yourself away from them, then you have problems.
When I was a kid, I played a MUD of sorts (Quest for Alchemy). Of the 20 or so people I knew playing the game, there was one guy who I found out had serious personal issues. The guy was so caught up in solving the puzzle before everyone else (there were at least 2 teams working it) that we would ditch school for a week and spend his days pouring over printouts of the game text mapping out solutions.
Forsaking real life commitments and benefits for the sake of a game. That's an addiction, right?
I was also told about the guys' crappy home life (who's parents would allow them to ditch school for a week to play a game), troubles at school, and general dislike of his personal situation. The game was a hell of an escape; a rabbit hole that he dove down with enthusiasm.
But there's a big difference between something that provides an unhealthy escape and something that is addictive. The issue is that concerned individuals (parents, educators, law makers) might mistake Gaming as a cause for self-destructive behavior rather than a conduit of that behavior.
I think you're probably working with outdated information. Neither the Iran-Iraq conflict nor the Gulf War provide useful examples, because by the time of the US operation against Iraq, Iraq's armed forces were substantively less prepared in terms of both training and equipment.
I haven't seen any assessment that claimed Iraq's armed forces were in such a state of disrepair. In fact, during Desert Shield, the concerns seemed to be quite the opposite.
In addition-- they simply caved, showing little resistance and no cohesion behind Hussein. The regime toppled. I don't think that's going to happen in Iran.
While this isn't true across the board, I agree that things would have been considerably rougher for US and allied forces if there wasn't a large amount of defection. But keep in mind that there were forces that stood their ground and, where they did, they were defeated.
And in contrast, Iran is now spending roughly a quarter of it's GDP on military expenditures. A lot of that is indeed the nuclear program-- but a lot more is weapons programs of all sorts. The Revolutionary Guard and the military are spread throughout -- and generally control -- most areas and most of society.
Data that I'm finding seems to indicate closer to 3 - 5% of their GDP:
It should be noted that, beyond the debatable manpower numbers, Iran is noted for it's arsenal of rockets and missiles. But what seems to really get everyone's attention is "asymmetrical forces" which, again, is not conventional warfare.
This isn't the puppet dictatorship of Hussein, it's an aspiring regional superpower, preparing for a regional confrontation in which it might well be willing, as Avner Cohen points out, to use nuclear force and/or to sacrifice large portions of its population. Could it roll over and die? Sure, maybe. But unlikely. More likely its going to take a lot of blood just to prevent absolute disaster.
Again - you seem to be really eager to downplay the strength of Iraq but sell the strength of Iraq. I don't see why Iraq's regime was any more fundamentally flawed than Iran's or vise versa.
I do agree with your point about the willingness to sacrifice population. We've seen that willingness during the Iran-Iraq war. And we've seen Iran's investment in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as well as rocket and missile weaponry as another lesson learned from that conflict.
Um, so did Iran, through, of all places, Israel. I don't believe Iran and Israel hate each other as much as some people would like you to think.
Keep in mind that the whole deal was being brokered by the US; the Iran-Contra affair. Isreal was essentially a conduit for the movement of arms to a specific faction of Iran. I don't think this shows any particular favor of Isreal towards Iran.
Iraq feel because it was neither prepared nor ready for war. Iran has been preparing for war for close to a decade, apace.
I'm really curious as to why you seem to portray the Iraqi army as a push-over but somehow Iran isn't. The Iraq-Iran war was a stalemate. Iraq had access to Western and Soviet hardware. Iraq built up the 4th largest army in the world. And while that army was greatly reduced after the Gulf War, I find the characterisation of being "unprepared" hard to accept. Granted - in comparison to what they went up against, the Iraqi forces were ill-equipped. But then that leads to the question of why you believe Iran is in such a better situation?
I should note that I don't believe an invasion of Iran would be a "walk in the cake" either. But I suspect the problems would be more of the same issues we're seeing with Iraq today which is very much removed from conventional warfare.
P.S. My friends from the 101st assure me that your characterization of the narrow nature of US forces and their training and preparation is also largely a pile of poop; US Armed Forces are also one of the largest and most prepared humanitarian response forces, as well.
Policing and counter-insurgency is very different than helping people pick up the pieces after a war or a natural disaster.
Humor is a subjective thing. And that was a definite attempt at humor. I like to think that it was a multi-leveled yet minimalistic example of humor. Which is a tricky thing to pull off as those sorts of things can catch people the wrong way. But I thought it was funny. Granted, I'm not an impartial judge.
It's simply finding out who is not happy. Thegovernment trusts a large majority of ti's employees, and a vast majority of the employees trust there employeer.
And group of people goes through this, whether sits a corporation or a government agency. Something happens, the organization responds, things get better, then something happens.
I've worked within various Government organizations, all the while tending to be the resident malcontent most likely to tilt the nearest windmill. I also do good work. My inclination to tilt windmills tends to lead to improvements to my employer's environment that would not have been made following the status quo.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this direction. Bureaucracies do sometimes learn from events, however, sometimes they learn the wrong lesson. My concern here is that you'll have bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the subtleties of trust using this directive to mount witch hunts against people who shake their comfortable status quo. That endangers the jobs of people who would otherwise be perfectly functional and trustworthy employees which hurts the organization.
Of course - we know this is the kind of chaos that Assange wants. I envision a turtle-necked Julian leaning back in a mesh chair, basked in the dark glow of several screens in an otherwise dark room late at night. His fingers steepled. "Exxxxcellent."
The irony of the situation is that if this does bring about anything, it is likely the ousting of more people most likely to be future whistleblowers.
Let me preface this by noting that I've always maintained Wikileaks to be irresponsible and Manning to be a fool. But having said that, it makes complete sense for Wikileaks to do this. Wikileaks needs people like Manning to function. It is entirely within the stated moral scope of Wikileaks to support Manning. And it helps counter the US DoD's plan to undermine Wikileaks by shaking the confidence of current and potential future whistleblowers / leaks / informants. And it does a lot to gain good will, followers, and donations to Wikileaks' cause. I think the potential risk of this "proving" culpability is far outweighed by the advantages.
IMHO, Politicians and government officials don't take their job seriously enough, and try to have "private lives" as well as have a "public office". It's one or the other; Don't like transparecy? Don't run for PUBLIC office!
Don't get me wrong - I do believe Government should be under much more scrutiny than private organisations. And they are. I've spent a fair amount of time under various Government guises and have first hand experience with how some of that increased scrutiny works. It's a PITA, but it is necessary.
But I don't support complete transparency. Right now, if you knew how, you could go find out what gear I've been spending tax dollars on. You can request the emails I sent to vendors and inter-agency individuals in the process of determining what gear to buy. But you can't get how I configured that gear. You need to know that I wasn't wasteful or corrupt in my purchases, but you don't need to know the details of how I've configured our environment.
And again - as I noted earlier, complete transparency runs in to individual right to privacy really quick. This isn't just about civil servants, but the fact that Government largely serves and deals with private individuals and their personal lives. There's a trade-off that needs to happen between the public's right to know how their government is operating and the individual right to privacy. Complete transparency has no such trade-offs.
Yet I am one of those supporters (and I posted the comment to which you replied) and I do hold more moderate views.
Pity people like you aren't more vocal. But then, it's also a shame you're supporting an organisation that doesn't share your moderate view.
In response to the most common criticism, I do not think that WL just "dumped" the cables. They partnered with a variety of responsible news organizations, embargoed them, and gave them time to develop stories using the material. The vast majority still aren't public (feel free to show me where one can get all 250k if I'm wrong, I haven't bothered to look as I have little interest in those which are not newsworthy).
Yes - Assange is learning. After the "war diaries" and criticism over botched redacting, he's turned to the traditional media that's supposedly failing us all to bring the expertise. And now Wikileaks has moved from release everything to a more measured pace. How much of that reflects enlightenment on Assange's part remains to be seen. This could simply be playing against criticism or extending the time that Wikileaks' greatest cache of secrets will keep interest and funding.
Which secrets do you think their partnering news organizations should not have leaked, exactly? I mean, sure, we can all make up our favorite hypothetical situations that support any viewpoint, so why not stick to real situations and things that have actually happened?
They're all rather interesting, aren't they? But I've found some of them don't stand up to actual investigation. For example, one of the more salacious stories is US contractors paying for Afghan boy-sex parties. Turns out, this is a single event where (it seems like) locals acted illegally and were being prosecuted for their crimes. The only reason the cable exists was because the local government asked the US to pressure a reporter who was on to the story and the US explained that they couldn't and why it would be a bad idea anyway. But that doesn't make headlines like industrial complex contractors raping children.
Mankind has a very long history of shady doings in all governments, particularly in the less transparent/accountable parts. Ironically, many of them exist to protect us from their counterparts in foreign governments! Would we all not be better off if nobody could get away with that sort of nonsense?
To be sure. And that's why we need real whistleblowers exposing real issues. Wikileaks could have been a part of that without getting involved in politics. But Assange is too busy playing modern Scarlet Pimpernel and "ending wars".
Sections B1 and B3 cover that, even though Section B2 seems to say it doesn't. At least, that's my interpretation. I guess we won't know until things progress.
Hopefully we'll see more reports if the subpoenas continue. I believe Google has already warned us that these things are going on under PATRIOT Act which means we're likely to be oblivious to how routine might be.
If WL or Twitter seem to think that's what the gov't want, I am curious if that's because that is what the request that accompanied the subpoena asked for.
I suppose I'm being cynical and viewing this as WL over-stating the issue as, I believe, they commonly do. Bias colors interpretation (applied to both WL and myself).
When it comes down to it, only the lawyers and a judge will know. I did some digging around on the language used and found that it's pretty boiler-plate. What's interesting is that the examples provided were for email accounts. Which has some interesting implications when applied to communications services that are of an entirely different nature than email.
Which is why the moderate views dominate. Not everything done by the government need be open, but there DOES need to be some means to hold everyone in the government accountable. Giving them unchecked power has a habit of turning out very badly.
I completely agree. Alas, you won't find this viewpoint shared by Wikileaks or their supporters it seems.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless of what he said. It is reasonable to assume that not all open source software are cheaper to run on the long run than their propriety equivalent.
Sure. But this is hardly revolutionary or worthy of yet another book. We know that everything has costs and the overall cost of something is not always represented in an up-front price tag - software is no different. Where this conversation tends to get misleading is that not every cost is always considered and individuals with an axe to grind tend to limit the conversation to "free" being about licensing costs. This is old ground that's been trodden many times before.
So what you're saying is that instead of making that good argument that you imply you have, you're just going to jump right to being a self-stylized martyr for truth. I predict you won't be the last to do this (which is cheating - this behavior always shows up in any OSS TCO thread).
This is either astonishingly naive, or propaganda. I can't quite figure out which.
Why does it have to be naivety or propaganda?
I'm pretty confident that are any number of levels involved where there are people technically savvy enough to introduced the myriad of ways to get around IP address restrictions. It's possible we have a case of willful ignorance over-riding these knowledgeable people (which wouldn't be the first time in Government or any bureaucracy). But more likely it just isn't an issue - or an issue big enough to warrent concern. So then the question is why the lack of concern. We know the reason for any concern is export restrictions and, by extension, the politics of Iran. It is possible that the applications in question meet the letter of the law but have been determined to not pose the kind of threat that the law is attempting to curtail. In that case, it isn't entirely uncommon for bureaucrats to take token actions to meet the letter of the law to allow otherwise restricted behavior.
Groupthink is a marvelous phenomenon, contagious to all sorts...
It's possible we have an entire advertising industry that is self delusional, sure.
too much value is placed on such information, and the information gathering, grouping, etc... is not as infallible, nor as interesting as one might think?
And yet Facebook is making how much money by gathering, grouping, etc. this sort of information?
Why is it so hard for people to understand that with Facebook and other so called free stuff that they are the product that is being sold.
The general public doesn't understand the power, or the value, of information. Part of that is the fundamental misunderstanding of the technology involved. There's a belief that there is anonymity in a crowd. And we continue to look at our systems as "computers" when computations aren't nearly as interesting as the ability to index and sort. Get a label on someone (or better yet, many labels) and they stand out from even the largest crowd (or they become parts of very tailored, selected crowds that they weren't aware they're in). Facebook is an application with which people label themselves.
It very much removed, but it was both entertaining and technically accurate.
Alright - entertaining, yes. But not exactly educational or representing what chess is about. There's been movies done about hacking that are reasonably accurate and entertaining as well. But for the most part, the subject isn't handled well and I still maintain that is because the subject is difficult to handle in an entertaining way without presenting an entirely inaccurate portrayal.
No. But I have seen LEXX before. As far as I've been able to determine, it isn't a documentary and their take on chess might be somewhat removed from the experiences of the average player.
Are you saying a chess match would make a good movie scene? And yes - seen a chess match. Not all that interesting unless you're in to the game. Which means you have personal experience and the considerable background knowledge the appreciate it.
Hacking (in all senses of the word) is not a spectator sport. You can't watch someone poking at code or discovering an exploit / compromising a system and understand the feeling of elation unless you, yourself, have felt that elation. The excitement is personal. Or at least, the excitement requires considerable background knowledge. Capturing that is a difficult challenge. As you noted, it tends to make a pretty poor movie scene.
And that elephant is named "espionage." The only difference today is that the systems are more complex and interconnected. Otherwise, "cyber-war" is no different than the ongoing spying and sabotage that's been practiced for decades. Espionage was never it's own entity which is why "cyber-war" is misleading.
This is the kind of crap that keeps people from thinking straight. Video games do affect people. If you play them every now and then its normal. BUT if you play them to the point where you can't pry yourself away from them, then you have problems.
When I was a kid, I played a MUD of sorts (Quest for Alchemy). Of the 20 or so people I knew playing the game, there was one guy who I found out had serious personal issues. The guy was so caught up in solving the puzzle before everyone else (there were at least 2 teams working it) that we would ditch school for a week and spend his days pouring over printouts of the game text mapping out solutions.
Forsaking real life commitments and benefits for the sake of a game. That's an addiction, right?
I was also told about the guys' crappy home life (who's parents would allow them to ditch school for a week to play a game), troubles at school, and general dislike of his personal situation. The game was a hell of an escape; a rabbit hole that he dove down with enthusiasm.
But there's a big difference between something that provides an unhealthy escape and something that is addictive. The issue is that concerned individuals (parents, educators, law makers) might mistake Gaming as a cause for self-destructive behavior rather than a conduit of that behavior.
I think you're probably working with outdated information. Neither the Iran-Iraq conflict nor the Gulf War provide useful examples, because by the time of the US operation against Iraq, Iraq's armed forces were substantively less prepared in terms of both training and equipment.
I haven't seen any assessment that claimed Iraq's armed forces were in such a state of disrepair. In fact, during Desert Shield, the concerns seemed to be quite the opposite.
While this isn't true across the board, I agree that things would have been considerably rougher for US and allied forces if there wasn't a large amount of defection. But keep in mind that there were forces that stood their ground and, where they did, they were defeated.
And in contrast, Iran is now spending roughly a quarter of it's GDP on military expenditures. A lot of that is indeed the nuclear program-- but a lot more is weapons programs of all sorts. The Revolutionary Guard and the military are spread throughout -- and generally control -- most areas and most of society.
Data that I'm finding seems to indicate closer to 3 - 5% of their GDP:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:IRQ:IRN&tstart=567993600000&tunit=Y&tlen=21&hl=en&dl=en
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ir-iran/mil-military
It should be noted that, beyond the debatable manpower numbers, Iran is noted for it's arsenal of rockets and missiles. But what seems to really get everyone's attention is "asymmetrical forces" which, again, is not conventional warfare.
This isn't the puppet dictatorship of Hussein, it's an aspiring regional superpower, preparing for a regional confrontation in which it might well be willing, as Avner Cohen points out, to use nuclear force and/or to sacrifice large portions of its population. Could it roll over and die? Sure, maybe. But unlikely. More likely its going to take a lot of blood just to prevent absolute disaster.
Again - you seem to be really eager to downplay the strength of Iraq but sell the strength of Iraq. I don't see why Iraq's regime was any more fundamentally flawed than Iran's or vise versa.
I do agree with your point about the willingness to sacrifice population. We've seen that willingness during the Iran-Iraq war. And we've seen Iran's investment in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as well as rocket and missile weaponry as another lesson learned from that conflict.
attack Russia.
You're just trying to get someone to make a Princess Bride reference.
Um, so did Iran, through, of all places, Israel. I don't believe Iran and Israel hate each other as much as some people would like you to think.
Keep in mind that the whole deal was being brokered by the US; the Iran-Contra affair. Isreal was essentially a conduit for the movement of arms to a specific faction of Iran. I don't think this shows any particular favor of Isreal towards Iran.
Iraq feel because it was neither prepared nor ready for war. Iran has been preparing for war for close to a decade, apace.
I'm really curious as to why you seem to portray the Iraqi army as a push-over but somehow Iran isn't. The Iraq-Iran war was a stalemate. Iraq had access to Western and Soviet hardware. Iraq built up the 4th largest army in the world. And while that army was greatly reduced after the Gulf War, I find the characterisation of being "unprepared" hard to accept. Granted - in comparison to what they went up against, the Iraqi forces were ill-equipped. But then that leads to the question of why you believe Iran is in such a better situation?
I should note that I don't believe an invasion of Iran would be a "walk in the cake" either. But I suspect the problems would be more of the same issues we're seeing with Iraq today which is very much removed from conventional warfare.
P.S. My friends from the 101st assure me that your characterization of the narrow nature of US forces and their training and preparation is also largely a pile of poop; US Armed Forces are also one of the largest and most prepared humanitarian response forces, as well.
Policing and counter-insurgency is very different than helping people pick up the pieces after a war or a natural disaster.
Humor is a subjective thing. And that was a definite attempt at humor. I like to think that it was a multi-leveled yet minimalistic example of humor. Which is a tricky thing to pull off as those sorts of things can catch people the wrong way. But I thought it was funny. Granted, I'm not an impartial judge.
It's simply finding out who is not happy. Thegovernment trusts a large majority of ti's employees, and a vast majority of the employees trust there employeer.
And group of people goes through this, whether sits a corporation or a government agency. Something happens, the organization responds, things get better, then something happens.
I've worked within various Government organizations, all the while tending to be the resident malcontent most likely to tilt the nearest windmill. I also do good work. My inclination to tilt windmills tends to lead to improvements to my employer's environment that would not have been made following the status quo.
I'm not entirely comfortable with this direction. Bureaucracies do sometimes learn from events, however, sometimes they learn the wrong lesson. My concern here is that you'll have bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the subtleties of trust using this directive to mount witch hunts against people who shake their comfortable status quo. That endangers the jobs of people who would otherwise be perfectly functional and trustworthy employees which hurts the organization.
Of course - we know this is the kind of chaos that Assange wants. I envision a turtle-necked Julian leaning back in a mesh chair, basked in the dark glow of several screens in an otherwise dark room late at night. His fingers steepled. "Exxxxcellent."
The irony of the situation is that if this does bring about anything, it is likely the ousting of more people most likely to be future whistleblowers.
I've heard that h.264 support is broken in an upcoming release.
That's a feature.
Yes... well... he also puts forth the following opinions:
http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/05/77169
http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/06/77218
So I'd be a little wary of putting his work forward as being particularly wise. Although your outlook / bias might be different.
Let me preface this by noting that I've always maintained Wikileaks to be irresponsible and Manning to be a fool. But having said that, it makes complete sense for Wikileaks to do this. Wikileaks needs people like Manning to function. It is entirely within the stated moral scope of Wikileaks to support Manning. And it helps counter the US DoD's plan to undermine Wikileaks by shaking the confidence of current and potential future whistleblowers / leaks / informants. And it does a lot to gain good will, followers, and donations to Wikileaks' cause. I think the potential risk of this "proving" culpability is far outweighed by the advantages.
IMHO, Politicians and government officials don't take their job seriously enough, and try to have "private lives" as well as have a "public office". It's one or the other; Don't like transparecy? Don't run for PUBLIC office!
Don't get me wrong - I do believe Government should be under much more scrutiny than private organisations. And they are. I've spent a fair amount of time under various Government guises and have first hand experience with how some of that increased scrutiny works. It's a PITA, but it is necessary.
But I don't support complete transparency. Right now, if you knew how, you could go find out what gear I've been spending tax dollars on. You can request the emails I sent to vendors and inter-agency individuals in the process of determining what gear to buy. But you can't get how I configured that gear. You need to know that I wasn't wasteful or corrupt in my purchases, but you don't need to know the details of how I've configured our environment.
And again - as I noted earlier, complete transparency runs in to individual right to privacy really quick. This isn't just about civil servants, but the fact that Government largely serves and deals with private individuals and their personal lives. There's a trade-off that needs to happen between the public's right to know how their government is operating and the individual right to privacy. Complete transparency has no such trade-offs.
Yet I am one of those supporters (and I posted the comment to which you replied) and I do hold more moderate views.
Pity people like you aren't more vocal. But then, it's also a shame you're supporting an organisation that doesn't share your moderate view.
In response to the most common criticism, I do not think that WL just "dumped" the cables. They partnered with a variety of responsible news organizations, embargoed them, and gave them time to develop stories using the material. The vast majority still aren't public (feel free to show me where one can get all 250k if I'm wrong, I haven't bothered to look as I have little interest in those which are not newsworthy).
Yes - Assange is learning. After the "war diaries" and criticism over botched redacting, he's turned to the traditional media that's supposedly failing us all to bring the expertise. And now Wikileaks has moved from release everything to a more measured pace. How much of that reflects enlightenment on Assange's part remains to be seen. This could simply be playing against criticism or extending the time that Wikileaks' greatest cache of secrets will keep interest and funding.
Which secrets do you think their partnering news organizations should not have leaked, exactly? I mean, sure, we can all make up our favorite hypothetical situations that support any viewpoint, so why not stick to real situations and things that have actually happened?
They're all rather interesting, aren't they? But I've found some of them don't stand up to actual investigation. For example, one of the more salacious stories is US contractors paying for Afghan boy-sex parties. Turns out, this is a single event where (it seems like) locals acted illegally and were being prosecuted for their crimes. The only reason the cable exists was because the local government asked the US to pressure a reporter who was on to the story and the US explained that they couldn't and why it would be a bad idea anyway. But that doesn't make headlines like industrial complex contractors raping children.
Mankind has a very long history of shady doings in all governments, particularly in the less transparent/accountable parts. Ironically, many of them exist to protect us from their counterparts in foreign governments! Would we all not be better off if nobody could get away with that sort of nonsense?
To be sure. And that's why we need real whistleblowers exposing real issues. Wikileaks could have been a part of that without getting involved in politics. But Assange is too busy playing modern Scarlet Pimpernel and "ending wars".
Sections B1 and B3 cover that, even though Section B2 seems to say it doesn't. At least, that's my interpretation. I guess we won't know until things progress.
Hopefully we'll see more reports if the subpoenas continue. I believe Google has already warned us that these things are going on under PATRIOT Act which means we're likely to be oblivious to how routine might be.
If WL or Twitter seem to think that's what the gov't want, I am curious if that's because that is what the request that accompanied the subpoena asked for.
I suppose I'm being cynical and viewing this as WL over-stating the issue as, I believe, they commonly do. Bias colors interpretation (applied to both WL and myself).
When it comes down to it, only the lawyers and a judge will know. I did some digging around on the language used and found that it's pretty boiler-plate. What's interesting is that the examples provided were for email accounts. Which has some interesting implications when applied to communications services that are of an entirely different nature than email.
Which is why the moderate views dominate. Not everything done by the government need be open, but there DOES need to be some means to hold everyone in the government accountable. Giving them unchecked power has a habit of turning out very badly.
I completely agree. Alas, you won't find this viewpoint shared by Wikileaks or their supporters it seems.