Wikileaks does self-promotion; they don't promote other people's works. Meanwhile, this book will (obviously) sell out it's first edition and get a huge boost in sales over the second printing due to the surrounding "controversy." The author might even get an additional air of legitimacy as word-of-mouth will be that this is the book the US Government tried to keep us from reading.
Why would you pay $2 when you can have it for free?
I would. If the cost was really $2, it wasn't broken by some DRM scheme, and the quality was professional. What I'd get for going to the studio as opposed to some random torrent is quality and a guaranteed download. I wouldn't have to worry about my download dying in the middle. I wouldn't have to worry about waiting for a download to find out it wasn't what I expected. And the high-quality digital format would enable me to convert the file to whatever format I need for whatever device I need. I'd be much more likely to buy more movies like this.
What's really disappointing is going out of my way to buy a movie and get saddled with junk. I may like the move - but there's stupid "non skippable" trailing bits and bogus copy protection schemes and any number of additional things that make me feel bad for having spent time and money on a product. In many ways, what you find out in the illicit data market is superior than the legal product. That has to change.
Is it so unreasonable to focus instead on producing the same products with less labor (and thus less cost) than those willing and able to propagate such practices?
That sounds great. I'm all for increasing efficiency and applying technology to the issue. But there's limits. Some jobs are difficult to automate. And even when you can automate, the machines have to be paid for and someone has to run the machines.
This leads us to two issues. One, the machines have to be more cost-effective than an exploited work-force. And even then, what can be automated here can be automated there where the workforce that runs the machines are cheaper (read: exploited).
THis is aside from the fact that - at least from TFA - working conditions might not be quite as bad as the media hysteria has made them out to be.
Yes - I'm sure the suicides and the expose on working conditions at the company by China Business News were just aberrations of an overzealous imagination. Meanwhile, Foxconn hired a New York public relations firm because they just want to get their name out there.
Great, in theory, and it makes sense -- the military has always needed to keep certain things secret during times of war. Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices.
The problem is those documents are probably properly classified. There is intelligence to be gained by studying the leaked video and the slew of documents Wikileaks has published. Our interest, as a society funding these efforts, is more about the fact that reporters or civilians were killed. But that doesn't mean the documents were classified to hide those facts. The problem is uncovering the pieces that we really do need to know and keeping secret the ancillary intelligence that would be interesting to our adversaries.
The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago. Wikileaks exists to fight back and show people what the government (and other powerful organizations) does not want them to know.
Wikileaks is presented as a champion of truth. However, what they produce is more in the line of propaganda and self promotion. Criticism is dismissed as the actions of a powerful conspiracy. The situation is seeped in irony.
Sure, Wikileaks has some responsibility for ensuring that civilians are not harmed in the process, and they try to redact the leaks. They even asked for government help in redacting the leaks. In the end, though, Wikileaks is run by volunteers, and the government is not willing to help them, so yes, some civilians are harmed. That is unfortunate, but it is not Wikileaks' fault -- Wikileaks is not responsible for the war, and Wikileaks is not responsible for the government misclassifying documents to the point of becoming untrustworthy.
Wikileaks is entirely responsible for their actions. Asking the government for help to redact classified documents is laughable. So is the idea that Wikileaks has no responsibility for the outcome of their actions. Being volunteers is no excuse for dangerous behavior. If anything, it highlights the problem. When Wikileaks (and it's volunteers - of which, I'm sure more than a few are posting here on Slashdot) claims that a document is mis-classified and poses no harm, it is very unlikely that they are in any way qualified to make that claim.
What gets me is that I'm generally supportive of concepts like Wikileaks. We invest a lot of power in our Government due to necessity of what agents of our Government have to do. Most of those agents are worthy of that trust. But in any bureaucracy there will be corruption and incompetence. Insiders and whistleblowers are needed to keep pressure on the system to handle those individuals; without the threat of exposure, it is far too easy for difficult situations to be handled by sweeping it all under the rug.
But that doesn't absolve a would-be whistleblower from responsibility for their actions. What they're reporting on has to be so bad that it's worth overstepping their duty. It has to be worth the damage that they'll cause in doing so. And there are, indeed, times when this is so. And that's what makes these people (IMHO) heroes. But this action can't be considered lightly.
Now Timmy... can you tell me which of the shiny... candy-like... red buttons has an electric current on it's surface? Ooooh. Sorry. It WAS a trick question. They all do. We're going to need another Timmy.
This should be modded funny rather than insightful.
Yes, it should. I'm mocking the conspiracy theory angle that gets pushed so very hard whenever anything involving Assange or Wikileaks graces this site. Any piece of news that comes within an inch of these two names gets bundled up as further proof of a conspiracy. And while it can be entertaining and even thought-provoking ("A Scanner Darkly" indeed), I find it a little sad that so many who would likely describe themselves as too critical to be fooled are so convinced with so little actual background. Because Assange is so very anti-War and critical of US policy, all he has to say is "frog" and a whole mob of people begin jumping to conclusions. It would be interesting to know if the "Insightful" mod was done because someone bought in to the post at face value or they saw it as the ironic commentary it was intended to be.
I try to make it easy for people to get around me when I need to drive slow. And likewise, I expect people to do the same when I want to go faster than them. There are times and places where it just doesn't work out that way - sucks for all parties involved. It sucks even more when there's drivers who think they can solve the problem by jumping around lanes and cutting people off.
There's also plenty of places where you really want to follow the speed limit. Some other poster in this thread jumped on me and raved about cars hitting soft bodies. They do have a point - although not well made, IMHO. You don't want to speed anywhere there's a good chance you'll find pedestrians.
Not ignoring it - it is hard to stretch that into your claim that he directly implied what your claiming he implied.
What's interesting is a lot of other folks who are supporters got this implication as well. Look at all the Wikileaks / Assange posts of late. Look at how many are CONVINCED that this is a plot of the US Government, if not the CIA by name. And they often refer to Assange's claims and Wikileaks documents. It's one thing for critics to hear a message that could put you in a bad light. But your supporters?
"I never said the word CIA, I never said anyone was behind this," he said.
How far does this conspiracy go?! They've even gotten to Assange! Surely at this point nobody can deny the plain evidence of duplicity.
"That doesn't mean that intelligence agencies are behind this, nor does it mean they are not behind it, nor does it mean once this has happened, for other reasons, that they are not capitalizing on it."
How telling is that? I've heard this exact language before.
There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.
That's right. Rumsfeld. What more proof is required? Assange is now just another puppet on the long strings of the CIA; determined to undermine the fine work of Wikileaks and Assange himself.
That would be nice and all, not being the fact that every thought in the brain of someone that doesn't just buys everything he sees in TV, points to the fact that he his being screwed in his personal life because of his work with Wikileaks.
How interesting. My take on it is that anyone with a clearly critical mindset won't blindly assume that this case is some US Government spook black op. However, I'm also not a big fan of Assange so maybe I'm more removed from the issue than many others.
You were probably unfamiliar with the traffic laws, I call bullshit, all roads in germany have speed limits, except some stretches of the autobahns. There are no 2 lane back roads with no speed limit. The speed limit was probably 80 or 100 km/h and you just didn't get caught.
Sometimes its good to read a thread before you reply (or give mod points for that matter). Others have called me out on this. I've noted that my memory is probably faulty on this point. It was, in fact, years ago. And while I do like trivia, German traffic laws just haven't kept my interest enough for me to remember the details that I knew back when I was driving there.
Also it depends on where you are now in the US and where you were in Germany which one is more stressful to drive on. I commuted from ingolstadt to munich on the A9 for years, and it was horrible, I live in north texas now, and it's not bad at all. If you moved from Regensburg to LA though, well, you might have had the opposite experience.
That's very possible. I lived in the Eifel region so it wasn't exactly major metropolis. Its possible the times we drove to large cities was outside commute hours. I compare this to traffic in Houston, TX at the same time period. Houston traffic was a heck of a lot more chaotic. But if your experience is limited to outside rush hour, you might not find it so bad (YMMV - I know one guy who refuses to go on the highway). Of course, I've found traffic in other places in the US to be much better than Houston since then (and now). Interstate traffic in the US and the equivalent in Germany seemed to be mostly the same level of stress.
What a useless thing to try and do when I have somewhere urgent to get to!
I can understand the ire if I were driving on roads paved with children. Unfortunately, not every law designed to "save children" really does what it claims.
Here's hoping you and all the others making excuses for speeding get to your FINAL destination a little faster. I think it would do us all a lot of good if the evolutionary factor were applied. Of course the problem is cars tend to kill the soft bodies around them first and the cradled bodies in them later. What a wonderful way to travel through life.
Anywhere that I am speeding shouldn't have soft bodies to be hit. And in those cases, it's the overly cautious slow movers that tend to turn traffic dangerous. I hope that your tone isn't betraying you as one of those idiots who should stay on the feeder (or at least in the right lane).
There are few things more annoying than finding something impressive or good about someone I dislike and consider responsible for a lot of people suffering.
Really? I have no problem with it. Few people are one-dimensional. Look through the history of serial killers. You'll find a few in there that were very charismatic, engaging personalities who happened to be complete psychopaths. If these guys were one-dimensional representations of the horrors they enacted on others, they wouldn't be serial killers for long.
It's like the idolization of sports celebrities. I have no problem with people being impressed with someone's ability to play a sport; even want to be able to play as well as that individual. But being able to, say, kick a ball does not automatically make one a good person. I find it sad when some sports figure ends up having some screw up in their personal lives and out trots all the shock and horror at this individual not living up to being a role model for the kids. Idols shouldn't be worshiped for things that they don't do and not all sports figures are lifestyle role models.
I suppose discovering multiple dimensions to someone destroys one-dimensional images of demons and idols alike. But that doesn't necessarily eliminate what made the demon or idol in the first place.
I got a troll mod. I'm curious whether this is because I called Fidel Castro a hypocrite (a parent post got the same mod for doing so) or because I noted that some cultures are worthy of criticism? Or maybe I wasn't critical of the right culture?
I used to think the big difference between driving in Germany and the US was the drivers themselves. That the US was just more aggressive. But then I lived a year in the Silicon Valley area and found driving there to be (while heavily congested) a lot more pleasant. In comparison, I'd almost swear there are people in the Houston, TX region that are out to kill people on the freeway.
It could simply be a cultural thing. The US has very Puritanistic views towards alcohol and sex compared to Germany. Drinking ages and all manner of laws restricting sex-related industries are supposed to be there for our safety as well.
It's possible. I haven't been in Germany for years and I might have forgotten a good amount of the law there.
I've been called out elsewhere in this conversation for making this claim.:) Its been noted that there were limits for towns (which I remember slowing down before hitting a burg - and there was one town that didn't allow through-traffic at all). And it was noted that the default limit is 100km/h. That's pretty darn speedy by US standards for the type of roads we're talking about. It's possible it just FELT like there was no speed limit as I wasn't keen to go past it on those particular roads.
I do remember the city speed limits. And the region I lived in was dotted with small burgs. You really didn't want to drive through them fast anyway. Although there were roads that I drove that went a fair distance before touching a town.
You might have me on the default limit for country roads. I remember them as being without a limit. But I don't think I ever wanted to drive one above 100km/h - lots of turns and hills. Fun to drive but you wanted to be careful about what you'd find on the road ahead of you. It's been years and it's very possible I've forgotten the default limit. In any case, any such road in the US would have a drastically slower speed limit.
Having said that - I'm pretty sure that there were larger roads that weren't part of the Autobaun that didn't have a limit. These tended to go for quite awhile without a town, were multiple lanes, and involved long stretches with clear views. But again - it's possible I just don't remember the law that well.
Slashdot Mirror
Where is wikileaks when you need them?
Wikileaks does self-promotion; they don't promote other people's works. Meanwhile, this book will (obviously) sell out it's first edition and get a huge boost in sales over the second printing due to the surrounding "controversy." The author might even get an additional air of legitimacy as word-of-mouth will be that this is the book the US Government tried to keep us from reading.
Why would you pay $2 when you can have it for free?
I would. If the cost was really $2, it wasn't broken by some DRM scheme, and the quality was professional. What I'd get for going to the studio as opposed to some random torrent is quality and a guaranteed download. I wouldn't have to worry about my download dying in the middle. I wouldn't have to worry about waiting for a download to find out it wasn't what I expected. And the high-quality digital format would enable me to convert the file to whatever format I need for whatever device I need. I'd be much more likely to buy more movies like this.
What's really disappointing is going out of my way to buy a movie and get saddled with junk. I may like the move - but there's stupid "non skippable" trailing bits and bogus copy protection schemes and any number of additional things that make me feel bad for having spent time and money on a product. In many ways, what you find out in the illicit data market is superior than the legal product. That has to change.
Is it so unreasonable to focus instead on producing the same products with less labor (and thus less cost) than those willing and able to propagate such practices?
That sounds great. I'm all for increasing efficiency and applying technology to the issue. But there's limits. Some jobs are difficult to automate. And even when you can automate, the machines have to be paid for and someone has to run the machines.
This leads us to two issues. One, the machines have to be more cost-effective than an exploited work-force. And even then, what can be automated here can be automated there where the workforce that runs the machines are cheaper (read: exploited).
THis is aside from the fact that - at least from TFA - working conditions might not be quite as bad as the media hysteria has made them out to be.
Yes - I'm sure the suicides and the expose on working conditions at the company by China Business News were just aberrations of an overzealous imagination. Meanwhile, Foxconn hired a New York public relations firm because they just want to get their name out there.
Great, in theory, and it makes sense -- the military has always needed to keep certain things secret during times of war. Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices.
The problem is those documents are probably properly classified. There is intelligence to be gained by studying the leaked video and the slew of documents Wikileaks has published. Our interest, as a society funding these efforts, is more about the fact that reporters or civilians were killed. But that doesn't mean the documents were classified to hide those facts. The problem is uncovering the pieces that we really do need to know and keeping secret the ancillary intelligence that would be interesting to our adversaries.
The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago. Wikileaks exists to fight back and show people what the government (and other powerful organizations) does not want them to know.
Wikileaks is presented as a champion of truth. However, what they produce is more in the line of propaganda and self promotion. Criticism is dismissed as the actions of a powerful conspiracy. The situation is seeped in irony.
Sure, Wikileaks has some responsibility for ensuring that civilians are not harmed in the process, and they try to redact the leaks. They even asked for government help in redacting the leaks. In the end, though, Wikileaks is run by volunteers, and the government is not willing to help them, so yes, some civilians are harmed. That is unfortunate, but it is not Wikileaks' fault -- Wikileaks is not responsible for the war, and Wikileaks is not responsible for the government misclassifying documents to the point of becoming untrustworthy.
Wikileaks is entirely responsible for their actions. Asking the government for help to redact classified documents is laughable. So is the idea that Wikileaks has no responsibility for the outcome of their actions. Being volunteers is no excuse for dangerous behavior. If anything, it highlights the problem. When Wikileaks (and it's volunteers - of which, I'm sure more than a few are posting here on Slashdot) claims that a document is mis-classified and poses no harm, it is very unlikely that they are in any way qualified to make that claim.
What gets me is that I'm generally supportive of concepts like Wikileaks. We invest a lot of power in our Government due to necessity of what agents of our Government have to do. Most of those agents are worthy of that trust. But in any bureaucracy there will be corruption and incompetence. Insiders and whistleblowers are needed to keep pressure on the system to handle those individuals; without the threat of exposure, it is far too easy for difficult situations to be handled by sweeping it all under the rug.
But that doesn't absolve a would-be whistleblower from responsibility for their actions. What they're reporting on has to be so bad that it's worth overstepping their duty. It has to be worth the damage that they'll cause in doing so. And there are, indeed, times when this is so. And that's what makes these people (IMHO) heroes. But this action can't be considered lightly.
Heh. Indeed. Girl Genius is great stuff.
Now Timmy... can you tell me which of the shiny... candy-like... red buttons has an electric current on it's surface? Ooooh. Sorry. It WAS a trick question. They all do. We're going to need another Timmy.
No, they tend to stick to windows.
This should be modded funny rather than insightful.
Yes, it should. I'm mocking the conspiracy theory angle that gets pushed so very hard whenever anything involving Assange or Wikileaks graces this site. Any piece of news that comes within an inch of these two names gets bundled up as further proof of a conspiracy. And while it can be entertaining and even thought-provoking ("A Scanner Darkly" indeed), I find it a little sad that so many who would likely describe themselves as too critical to be fooled are so convinced with so little actual background. Because Assange is so very anti-War and critical of US policy, all he has to say is "frog" and a whole mob of people begin jumping to conclusions. It would be interesting to know if the "Insightful" mod was done because someone bought in to the post at face value or they saw it as the ironic commentary it was intended to be.
I try to make it easy for people to get around me when I need to drive slow. And likewise, I expect people to do the same when I want to go faster than them. There are times and places where it just doesn't work out that way - sucks for all parties involved. It sucks even more when there's drivers who think they can solve the problem by jumping around lanes and cutting people off.
There's also plenty of places where you really want to follow the speed limit. Some other poster in this thread jumped on me and raved about cars hitting soft bodies. They do have a point - although not well made, IMHO. You don't want to speed anywhere there's a good chance you'll find pedestrians.
I'm not talking about media. I'm talking about people posting here on Slashdot.
Not ignoring it - it is hard to stretch that into your claim that he directly implied what your claiming he implied.
What's interesting is a lot of other folks who are supporters got this implication as well. Look at all the Wikileaks / Assange posts of late. Look at how many are CONVINCED that this is a plot of the US Government, if not the CIA by name. And they often refer to Assange's claims and Wikileaks documents. It's one thing for critics to hear a message that could put you in a bad light. But your supporters?
You should study history a bit more. Isolationism is not new in concept or practice.
How far does this conspiracy go?! They've even gotten to Assange! Surely at this point nobody can deny the plain evidence of duplicity.
How telling is that? I've heard this exact language before.
That's right. Rumsfeld. What more proof is required? Assange is now just another puppet on the long strings of the CIA; determined to undermine the fine work of Wikileaks and Assange himself.
That would be nice and all, not being the fact that every thought in the brain of someone that doesn't just buys everything he sees in TV, points to the fact that he his being screwed in his personal life because of his work with Wikileaks.
How interesting. My take on it is that anyone with a clearly critical mindset won't blindly assume that this case is some US Government spook black op. However, I'm also not a big fan of Assange so maybe I'm more removed from the issue than many others.
Considering the fact that "wikileaks founder Assange accused of rape" made headline news across the bloody planet...did he really have a choice?
Well - yeah. He had a choice. He could have distanced his work with Wikileaks from his personal life. But I don't think that's what Assange is about.
My spelling in English is pretty horrid also. Thanks for the tip.
You were probably unfamiliar with the traffic laws, I call bullshit, all roads in germany have speed limits, except some stretches of the autobahns. There are no 2 lane back roads with no speed limit. The speed limit was probably 80 or 100 km/h and you just didn't get caught.
Sometimes its good to read a thread before you reply (or give mod points for that matter). Others have called me out on this. I've noted that my memory is probably faulty on this point. It was, in fact, years ago. And while I do like trivia, German traffic laws just haven't kept my interest enough for me to remember the details that I knew back when I was driving there.
Also it depends on where you are now in the US and where you were in Germany which one is more stressful to drive on. I commuted from ingolstadt to munich on the A9 for years, and it was horrible, I live in north texas now, and it's not bad at all. If you moved from Regensburg to LA though, well, you might have had the opposite experience.
That's very possible. I lived in the Eifel region so it wasn't exactly major metropolis. Its possible the times we drove to large cities was outside commute hours. I compare this to traffic in Houston, TX at the same time period. Houston traffic was a heck of a lot more chaotic. But if your experience is limited to outside rush hour, you might not find it so bad (YMMV - I know one guy who refuses to go on the highway). Of course, I've found traffic in other places in the US to be much better than Houston since then (and now). Interstate traffic in the US and the equivalent in Germany seemed to be mostly the same level of stress.
What a useless thing to try and do when I have somewhere urgent to get to!
I can understand the ire if I were driving on roads paved with children. Unfortunately, not every law designed to "save children" really does what it claims.
Here's hoping you and all the others making excuses for speeding get to your FINAL destination a little faster. I think it would do us all a lot of good if the evolutionary factor were applied. Of course the problem is cars tend to kill the soft bodies around them first and the cradled bodies in them later. What a wonderful way to travel through life.
Anywhere that I am speeding shouldn't have soft bodies to be hit. And in those cases, it's the overly cautious slow movers that tend to turn traffic dangerous. I hope that your tone isn't betraying you as one of those idiots who should stay on the feeder (or at least in the right lane).
Dammit Fidel, don't you have some reading to catch up on?
I can only hope that I've inspired you to get out there and live life like I have. And stop reading 4chan.
There are few things more annoying than finding something impressive or good about someone I dislike and consider responsible for a lot of people suffering.
Really? I have no problem with it. Few people are one-dimensional. Look through the history of serial killers. You'll find a few in there that were very charismatic, engaging personalities who happened to be complete psychopaths. If these guys were one-dimensional representations of the horrors they enacted on others, they wouldn't be serial killers for long.
It's like the idolization of sports celebrities. I have no problem with people being impressed with someone's ability to play a sport; even want to be able to play as well as that individual. But being able to, say, kick a ball does not automatically make one a good person. I find it sad when some sports figure ends up having some screw up in their personal lives and out trots all the shock and horror at this individual not living up to being a role model for the kids. Idols shouldn't be worshiped for things that they don't do and not all sports figures are lifestyle role models.
I suppose discovering multiple dimensions to someone destroys one-dimensional images of demons and idols alike. But that doesn't necessarily eliminate what made the demon or idol in the first place.
I got a troll mod. I'm curious whether this is because I called Fidel Castro a hypocrite (a parent post got the same mod for doing so) or because I noted that some cultures are worthy of criticism? Or maybe I wasn't critical of the right culture?
I used to think the big difference between driving in Germany and the US was the drivers themselves. That the US was just more aggressive. But then I lived a year in the Silicon Valley area and found driving there to be (while heavily congested) a lot more pleasant. In comparison, I'd almost swear there are people in the Houston, TX region that are out to kill people on the freeway.
It could simply be a cultural thing. The US has very Puritanistic views towards alcohol and sex compared to Germany. Drinking ages and all manner of laws restricting sex-related industries are supposed to be there for our safety as well.
It's possible. I haven't been in Germany for years and I might have forgotten a good amount of the law there.
I've been called out elsewhere in this conversation for making this claim. :) Its been noted that there were limits for towns (which I remember slowing down before hitting a burg - and there was one town that didn't allow through-traffic at all). And it was noted that the default limit is 100km/h. That's pretty darn speedy by US standards for the type of roads we're talking about. It's possible it just FELT like there was no speed limit as I wasn't keen to go past it on those particular roads.
I do remember the city speed limits. And the region I lived in was dotted with small burgs. You really didn't want to drive through them fast anyway. Although there were roads that I drove that went a fair distance before touching a town.
You might have me on the default limit for country roads. I remember them as being without a limit. But I don't think I ever wanted to drive one above 100km/h - lots of turns and hills. Fun to drive but you wanted to be careful about what you'd find on the road ahead of you. It's been years and it's very possible I've forgotten the default limit. In any case, any such road in the US would have a drastically slower speed limit.
Having said that - I'm pretty sure that there were larger roads that weren't part of the Autobaun that didn't have a limit. These tended to go for quite awhile without a town, were multiple lanes, and involved long stretches with clear views. But again - it's possible I just don't remember the law that well.