I find it to be less of a reason to try something out and more looking for insight from others. I can look at a toolbox and bang around with a few tools on my own. But I might overlook the finer points of a particular tool. If someone has a better understanding of those tools and can point out some great uses, then that will certainly give me something to look out for when poking around on my own. I may not find things to my liking. But hopefully I won't be missing something that I would have found really useful.
Now, PR people do understand this, and they do sometimes drop hit pieces. But the natural defense mechanism is that there are people who actively follow this stuff and look for those kinds of shenanigans. For example, here's a story that accuses the Obama administration of feeding a story to the WaPo. When PR people try to stir up a story, it's very easy to be caught out, so that naturally limits them to dropping a few hints.
The article is over five years old, but I think it still is quite applicable today: The Submarine. The trick seems to be having awareness of this manipulation, looking for it, and being able to communicate those findings. Politics breeds that kind of watchdog (especially in the current environment). But I don't think you'll find it in every arena on every issue.
That's not to say your view lacks insight. I suspect there is a lot of news that is news because it was in the news - especially within tech. But I also suspect that simply leaves tech news wide open to manipulation either by priming the pump or providing information to feed the cycle beneficial to your message. And unlike the political arena, tech watchdogs rarely become the news which greatly reduces the effectiveness of uncovering manipulation.
Bad experiences with crappy hardware running Android will tarnish the Android name in the consumer's mind.
Only if consumers are buying an Android phone. The advertising I see usually pushes the carrier or the manufacturer. Android is a bullet statement. For example, driving in to work I heard an Ad for Cricket offering the Ascend phone "powered by Android" (manufactured by Chinese company Huawei - I suspect this is right in line with the subject at hand). Which leads me to wonder what name will come to mind if the consumer looks at their device and decides it's a crappy phone. Will they blame Cricket, Huawei (which doesn't even get air time - maybe consumers will identify it simply as the Ascend), or Android?
Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?"
No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.
I'm sure the RIAA would prefer you to simply delete everything and buy it again. Just to be sure. Remember... these are the folks who swore it was illegal to rip your own CDs and firmly believed you should have an individually purchased copy of media for each individual player you used.
Funny, I thought they just posted leaked documents. That seems fairly truthful to me. Sure, there is some grandstanding in the manner that they release them, but that doesn't make them any less truthful. Unless you are suggesting that they are just fabricating all the info that they are releasing, I'm not even sure what you are trying to say.
Let's take the "collateral murder" video as an example. There are two versions. One edited, one raw. The version that gets linked and advertised is the edited one. The one that edits out footage of weapons within the group of men accompanying the reporters yet can highlight cameras, spends time to re-play callous banter from troops, and zoom in and label blurry dots that turn out to be children in a vehicle. This isn't just presenting leaked documents. This is carefully edited footage containing commentary with a specific goal in mind; propaganda.
Don't discount the grandstanding. Assange talks up each release despite the fact that these data dumps, while interesting, tend to offer few insights of criminal activity. At least, nothing that comes close to the grand-standing that Wikileaks and its supporters claim. But it all looks rather dire if you don't actually dig in to the material.
I don't claim that Wikileaks is fabricating what they release. But what they're producing isn't necessarily truthful either.
In essence your opinion is that we shouldn't stand up for truth because there are worse people out there and the perfectly innocent government will beat the tar out of us. That's a wonderful reason to do nothing; I wonder why wikileaks exists. You should tell them your idea:D.
Which is great if what we're getting is truth. Wikileaks produces propaganda. Anonymous and lulzsec seem to produce little more than ego trips. What we have is groups thrashing around and creating really handy political targets for said "worse people" while producing very little for the effort. If anything, they are likely to be damaging the efforts of those who are or would be whistle-blowers producing evidence of real issues.
Excellent post. This is why I find Bitcoins interesting even though I have no interest in mining or trading Bitcoins.
A point of interest on the history of currency. Shells were also a common form of currency. There are examples of currency rates crashing when traders flooded the cowrie shell market. There are also examples of European traders trying to pass off glass beads (high tech at the time) as cowrie shells (and suffering brutal justice when caught). Precious and semi-precious metals were often used. But then you had variations on the weight and alloy of various currencies. You had forged coins that altered these variables as well as clipping that shaved portions of the metal off to be recovered with the intent to pass off the coin at full value. And even during these early time periods, we had bank notes and bills of trade that were entirely paper documents representing value beyond the actual physical value of the note.
The history of currency alone is rather interesting and there are echoes of it being represented in the Bitcoins story.
Bah. Bitcoins represent a number of interesting concepts. Currency alone is a rather fascinating thing that touches on psychology, economy, history, and one of the earliest forms of information technology. Toss in some cryptography, peer-to-peer / decentralisation, etc. and there's no end to the facets of this subject.
That doesn't mean you have to buy in to Bitcoins. Keep in mind that these Bitcoin stories are more than simple "yay Bitcoin - buy buy buy" that you would expect from advertisements / spam. There are negative sides being covered by these stories. But if you have no interest in anything remotely related to Bitcoins, then by all means... don't click on the damn article that says it is, in fact, about Bitcoins.
Not everybody is obsessed with being in control all of the time.
This is less about being obsessed with control and more about ensuring one's efforts aren't disrupted.
The information has value, so yes, the Icelandic government should take care to ensure that it is retained independently of whatever channel they use. It's called taking backups. That's not a Facebook issue. The existence of a channel has value, but it's pretty much irrelevant what the channel is; the main criterion is ease of access for the users. It's a cheap commodity item, and if Facebook didn't provide the channel they could use another channel. The existing userbase has value too, which is in Facebook's favour.
This is, in fact, a Facebook issue. You better believe any channel I set up would include routine backups. And I would expect anything existing on owned architecture to offer fewer restrictions than Facebook.
Changing between channels is disruptive. It is much better to have a set channel once and continue using it. That's why we have niggling little things like domain names that we control no matter where or what hosts it. If you control of a channel, you can alter the underlying details at will. I do agree that communication is a cheap commodity item. And it's a cheap commodity item that someone like a state government should be able to provide on their own without piggybacking on some proprietary 3rd party's "free" service.
Although - the existing user base is a fair point. But at the same time, I find it hard to believe that the existing user base is so important to creating a community for Government business. Are we really claiming that Iceland can't convince its citizens to contribute without involving their Facebook account?
I suspect that's your only real objection, and even that depends on what you consider to be "abuse". After all, didn't you say that the channel had value?
No - those other objections are also real. Just to drive home the point - I would scoff at Iceland inviting comments by providing the email address "icelandpm99@aol.com" as well.
Of course I said it has value. Facebook is about providing a platform for people to give them data (and much more than many realized). That data is sold. I find it questionable whether that behavior has any value to Iceland or any other governmental body.
The article also talked about scammers sending around 12 million emails per purchase. That doesn't mean the article is now strongly implying that sending an email is criminal. I see your point. But I would suggest that a reader seeing this sort of implication needs to go back and re-read the article again.
Busting CAPTCHAs is not a crime. Not usually, anyway. Sure, it may violate a website's terms of service, but US courts so far (quite correctly) say that's not a crime, unless you're "stealing" a for-pay service. And maybe not even then.
It is not valid to label something a "crime" just because it's inconvenient for some people. The lesson to be learned here is that CAPTCHAs are a lazy (and often lousy) way to prevent "unauthorized" access.
I didn't see anywhere in the article where it labeled solving CAPTCHAs as a crime. And I don't remember ever seeing anyone claiming that a CAPTCHA prevents unauthorized access either. What the article does say is that a CAPTCHA solving service is one of the tools that criminals employ in their trade. And while it might seem futile to use a CAPTCHA, doing so induces a cost to criminals that tends to limit how many criminals continue to operate.
In my experience, CAPTCHAs never completely solve the problem of scammers trying to abuse my environment. But invoking a CAPTCHA and changing it once in awhile does weed out a very high percentage of junk accounts.
I think it's unlikely too. It wasn't me that raised it. My point was simply that for a public discussion the supposed problems with Facebook are irrelevant. Why bother going for a system with more control when you don't need more control and most people are already using this system?
If one doesn't need control - why do it? The information and channel have value. If there is no value, then the Icelandic Government is playing games with those who think that they are genuinely participating in reform. If it does have value, then basic steps to ensure that the channel exists and the information collected is handled properly is well worth the small cost of establishing it. Not supporting a company who's sole purpose is to abuse that exchange of information might also be a good step as is not forcing participation in that system to be a part of reform.
But the reality is that one has no control over the services offered in that network nor how your information is used once it is made available to that network.
But why does that matter? If Facebook ceased to offer the services required for this consultation it would be cheap and relatively simple to move the discussion elsewhere.
If it's cheap, why not set up one's own environment and control all data and meta-data while further reducing the possibility of disruption or mis-use?
You can bet that there would be an outcry from Iceland officials if a US Federal agents' dragnet collected information involving this constitutional reform activity.
And you think that's a Facebook issue? This is a public consultation. Do you really think there's nobody in Iceland who would give US Federal agents all the information on the consultation that they required for a very modest fee in terms of US Federal agent's budgets, whatever the medium of the discussions? Or that US Federal agents would have too much difficulty in posing as an Icelandic citizen in order to get access to the discussion, whatever the medium of the discussion? If the USA doesn't already have a registered participant in these discussions, it's because they don't want to.
I think it's unlikely that the US Government has any interest in Iceland's constitutional reforms. Let's not get caught up in the minutia of the example. It is simply an example of control. If data, meta-data, and services exist on my own infrastructure (even if I'm renting that infrastructure) I have much better control and understanding of what is being done with it. Reliance on a 3rd party, especially one that has already shown a willingness to play fast and loose with service and data, seems to be a considerable step backwards. Especially when alternatives exist.
The issue isn't corporations or commerce. It is control. Pens, paper, and fuel are all commodity items that are (within reason) interchangeable. Cars and laptop computers are a little more unique compared to the previous list. However, there are still aspects of commodity - a Ford car can server much the same function as a BMW same as a Dell laptop can serve in place of a HP. Once I purchase said commodity, the deal is done. I own and control it and can make use of it in any manner I see fit. Telephone systems are an interesting animal. They tend to be monopolies - either Gov't run or Gov't granted. And a large part of that is the logistical difficulty in laying down network medium in the physical world. But even then, the modern age has seen a drive to introduce competition among land-line carriers and mobile phone networks. In short, your list does not compare apples to apples.
Again - the real issue is control. We have an amazing communications network using a multitude of open protocols that enable anyone with a modest budget to participate. And we're increasingly using this open communications network as merely a means to access a proprietary network; facebook. The attraction to Facebook is that the barrier to entry is even less than using other open protocols. But the reality is that one has no control over the services offered in that network nor how your information is used once it is made available to that network. And let's be frank - Facebook is not the common carrier that the phone companies were. Facebook exists to deliver your information (that you provide and can be gleaned by what you provide) to advertisers and anyone else who have interest in your information.
You can bet that there would be an outcry from Iceland officials if a US Federal agents' dragnet collected information involving this constitutional reform activity. We've already seen how it works with Twitter and the Fed's pursuit of Wikileaks. Why would Iceland continue to trust, much less encourage, more activity within the uncontrolled confines of yet another proprietary network?
There is a choice. There is a wide open network on which numerous well-tested and very functional open protocols exist that can be managed with even the meager budget that Iceland is likely to command. They could have access to a wide audience, control their own service, and control their own information. Yet they chose to pander to a corporation's private marketing machine.
Kind of the point, really. Yes - we can all snicker at over-priced hammers. But the kind of tech that's being produced for big budget military is orders of magnitude more impressive than the hacks being described here (and there's nothing wrong with a good hack). But both have their place and can be appreciated for the technology involved.
No - less "this car is out of control" and more "this car is accelerating beyond normal capable speed with the help of gravity." Of course, explaining the joke kind ruins the fun but your way is good too.
Slashdot Mirror
Until the next OS upgrade perhaps?
When we get to that point, then sound the alarm. As it is, we're not there yet.
I find it to be less of a reason to try something out and more looking for insight from others. I can look at a toolbox and bang around with a few tools on my own. But I might overlook the finer points of a particular tool. If someone has a better understanding of those tools and can point out some great uses, then that will certainly give me something to look out for when poking around on my own. I may not find things to my liking. But hopefully I won't be missing something that I would have found really useful.
It stops being funny when people truly believe - much like Scientology.
Now, PR people do understand this, and they do sometimes drop hit pieces. But the natural defense mechanism is that there are people who actively follow this stuff and look for those kinds of shenanigans. For example, here's a story that accuses the Obama administration of feeding a story to the WaPo. When PR people try to stir up a story, it's very easy to be caught out, so that naturally limits them to dropping a few hints.
The article is over five years old, but I think it still is quite applicable today: The Submarine. The trick seems to be having awareness of this manipulation, looking for it, and being able to communicate those findings. Politics breeds that kind of watchdog (especially in the current environment). But I don't think you'll find it in every arena on every issue.
That's not to say your view lacks insight. I suspect there is a lot of news that is news because it was in the news - especially within tech. But I also suspect that simply leaves tech news wide open to manipulation either by priming the pump or providing information to feed the cycle beneficial to your message. And unlike the political arena, tech watchdogs rarely become the news which greatly reduces the effectiveness of uncovering manipulation.
Bad experiences with crappy hardware running Android will tarnish the Android name in the consumer's mind.
Only if consumers are buying an Android phone. The advertising I see usually pushes the carrier or the manufacturer. Android is a bullet statement. For example, driving in to work I heard an Ad for Cricket offering the Ascend phone "powered by Android" (manufactured by Chinese company Huawei - I suspect this is right in line with the subject at hand). Which leads me to wonder what name will come to mind if the consumer looks at their device and decides it's a crappy phone. Will they blame Cricket, Huawei (which doesn't even get air time - maybe consumers will identify it simply as the Ascend), or Android?
I stopped using Debian mostly because it was too slow to update.
I own a Roadster *and* have a deposit on a Model S.
I both envy and loathe you. More envy. When are you outfitting your roadster with a custom engine tone?
Because the tech they were selling at $120k is not the tech that they're selling at $50k.
Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?"
No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.
I'm sure the RIAA would prefer you to simply delete everything and buy it again. Just to be sure. Remember... these are the folks who swore it was illegal to rip your own CDs and firmly believed you should have an individually purchased copy of media for each individual player you used.
Funny, I thought they just posted leaked documents. That seems fairly truthful to me. Sure, there is some grandstanding in the manner that they release them, but that doesn't make them any less truthful. Unless you are suggesting that they are just fabricating all the info that they are releasing, I'm not even sure what you are trying to say.
Let's take the "collateral murder" video as an example. There are two versions. One edited, one raw. The version that gets linked and advertised is the edited one. The one that edits out footage of weapons within the group of men accompanying the reporters yet can highlight cameras, spends time to re-play callous banter from troops, and zoom in and label blurry dots that turn out to be children in a vehicle. This isn't just presenting leaked documents. This is carefully edited footage containing commentary with a specific goal in mind; propaganda.
Don't discount the grandstanding. Assange talks up each release despite the fact that these data dumps, while interesting, tend to offer few insights of criminal activity. At least, nothing that comes close to the grand-standing that Wikileaks and its supporters claim. But it all looks rather dire if you don't actually dig in to the material.
I don't claim that Wikileaks is fabricating what they release. But what they're producing isn't necessarily truthful either.
In essence your opinion is that we shouldn't stand up for truth because there are worse people out there and the perfectly innocent government will beat the tar out of us. That's a wonderful reason to do nothing; I wonder why wikileaks exists. You should tell them your idea :D.
Which is great if what we're getting is truth. Wikileaks produces propaganda. Anonymous and lulzsec seem to produce little more than ego trips. What we have is groups thrashing around and creating really handy political targets for said "worse people" while producing very little for the effort. If anything, they are likely to be damaging the efforts of those who are or would be whistle-blowers producing evidence of real issues.
By clogging up Slashdot's front page with bitcoin stories, when the space could be much better used for Packt book reviews.
Enough with the Packt spam already!
(I'm just trying to get ahead of the curve)
Excellent post. This is why I find Bitcoins interesting even though I have no interest in mining or trading Bitcoins.
A point of interest on the history of currency. Shells were also a common form of currency. There are examples of currency rates crashing when traders flooded the cowrie shell market. There are also examples of European traders trying to pass off glass beads (high tech at the time) as cowrie shells (and suffering brutal justice when caught). Precious and semi-precious metals were often used. But then you had variations on the weight and alloy of various currencies. You had forged coins that altered these variables as well as clipping that shaved portions of the metal off to be recovered with the intent to pass off the coin at full value. And even during these early time periods, we had bank notes and bills of trade that were entirely paper documents representing value beyond the actual physical value of the note.
The history of currency alone is rather interesting and there are echoes of it being represented in the Bitcoins story.
Bah. Bitcoins represent a number of interesting concepts. Currency alone is a rather fascinating thing that touches on psychology, economy, history, and one of the earliest forms of information technology. Toss in some cryptography, peer-to-peer / decentralisation, etc. and there's no end to the facets of this subject.
That doesn't mean you have to buy in to Bitcoins. Keep in mind that these Bitcoin stories are more than simple "yay Bitcoin - buy buy buy" that you would expect from advertisements / spam. There are negative sides being covered by these stories. But if you have no interest in anything remotely related to Bitcoins, then by all means... don't click on the damn article that says it is, in fact, about Bitcoins.
If one doesn't need control - why do it?
Not everybody is obsessed with being in control all of the time.
This is less about being obsessed with control and more about ensuring one's efforts aren't disrupted.
The information has value, so yes, the Icelandic government should take care to ensure that it is retained independently of whatever channel they use. It's called taking backups. That's not a Facebook issue. The existence of a channel has value, but it's pretty much irrelevant what the channel is; the main criterion is ease of access for the users. It's a cheap commodity item, and if Facebook didn't provide the channel they could use another channel. The existing userbase has value too, which is in Facebook's favour.
This is, in fact, a Facebook issue. You better believe any channel I set up would include routine backups. And I would expect anything existing on owned architecture to offer fewer restrictions than Facebook.
Changing between channels is disruptive. It is much better to have a set channel once and continue using it. That's why we have niggling little things like domain names that we control no matter where or what hosts it. If you control of a channel, you can alter the underlying details at will. I do agree that communication is a cheap commodity item. And it's a cheap commodity item that someone like a state government should be able to provide on their own without piggybacking on some proprietary 3rd party's "free" service.
Although - the existing user base is a fair point. But at the same time, I find it hard to believe that the existing user base is so important to creating a community for Government business. Are we really claiming that Iceland can't convince its citizens to contribute without involving their Facebook account?
I suspect that's your only real objection, and even that depends on what you consider to be "abuse". After all, didn't you say that the channel had value?
No - those other objections are also real. Just to drive home the point - I would scoff at Iceland inviting comments by providing the email address "icelandpm99@aol.com" as well.
Of course I said it has value. Facebook is about providing a platform for people to give them data (and much more than many realized). That data is sold. I find it questionable whether that behavior has any value to Iceland or any other governmental body.
The article also talked about scammers sending around 12 million emails per purchase. That doesn't mean the article is now strongly implying that sending an email is criminal. I see your point. But I would suggest that a reader seeing this sort of implication needs to go back and re-read the article again.
My password is "thatsmyluggagecombination". It's much better than the old standby "wordpassesyou".
Busting CAPTCHAs is not a crime. Not usually, anyway. Sure, it may violate a website's terms of service, but US courts so far (quite correctly) say that's not a crime, unless you're "stealing" a for-pay service. And maybe not even then. It is not valid to label something a "crime" just because it's inconvenient for some people. The lesson to be learned here is that CAPTCHAs are a lazy (and often lousy) way to prevent "unauthorized" access.
I didn't see anywhere in the article where it labeled solving CAPTCHAs as a crime. And I don't remember ever seeing anyone claiming that a CAPTCHA prevents unauthorized access either. What the article does say is that a CAPTCHA solving service is one of the tools that criminals employ in their trade. And while it might seem futile to use a CAPTCHA, doing so induces a cost to criminals that tends to limit how many criminals continue to operate.
In my experience, CAPTCHAs never completely solve the problem of scammers trying to abuse my environment. But invoking a CAPTCHA and changing it once in awhile does weed out a very high percentage of junk accounts.
I think it's unlikely too. It wasn't me that raised it. My point was simply that for a public discussion the supposed problems with Facebook are irrelevant. Why bother going for a system with more control when you don't need more control and most people are already using this system?
If one doesn't need control - why do it? The information and channel have value. If there is no value, then the Icelandic Government is playing games with those who think that they are genuinely participating in reform. If it does have value, then basic steps to ensure that the channel exists and the information collected is handled properly is well worth the small cost of establishing it. Not supporting a company who's sole purpose is to abuse that exchange of information might also be a good step as is not forcing participation in that system to be a part of reform.
But the reality is that one has no control over the services offered in that network nor how your information is used once it is made available to that network.
But why does that matter? If Facebook ceased to offer the services required for this consultation it would be cheap and relatively simple to move the discussion elsewhere.
If it's cheap, why not set up one's own environment and control all data and meta-data while further reducing the possibility of disruption or mis-use?
You can bet that there would be an outcry from Iceland officials if a US Federal agents' dragnet collected information involving this constitutional reform activity.
And you think that's a Facebook issue? This is a public consultation. Do you really think there's nobody in Iceland who would give US Federal agents all the information on the consultation that they required for a very modest fee in terms of US Federal agent's budgets, whatever the medium of the discussions? Or that US Federal agents would have too much difficulty in posing as an Icelandic citizen in order to get access to the discussion, whatever the medium of the discussion? If the USA doesn't already have a registered participant in these discussions, it's because they don't want to.
I think it's unlikely that the US Government has any interest in Iceland's constitutional reforms. Let's not get caught up in the minutia of the example. It is simply an example of control. If data, meta-data, and services exist on my own infrastructure (even if I'm renting that infrastructure) I have much better control and understanding of what is being done with it. Reliance on a 3rd party, especially one that has already shown a willingness to play fast and loose with service and data, seems to be a considerable step backwards. Especially when alternatives exist.
The issue isn't corporations or commerce. It is control. Pens, paper, and fuel are all commodity items that are (within reason) interchangeable. Cars and laptop computers are a little more unique compared to the previous list. However, there are still aspects of commodity - a Ford car can server much the same function as a BMW same as a Dell laptop can serve in place of a HP. Once I purchase said commodity, the deal is done. I own and control it and can make use of it in any manner I see fit. Telephone systems are an interesting animal. They tend to be monopolies - either Gov't run or Gov't granted. And a large part of that is the logistical difficulty in laying down network medium in the physical world. But even then, the modern age has seen a drive to introduce competition among land-line carriers and mobile phone networks. In short, your list does not compare apples to apples.
Again - the real issue is control. We have an amazing communications network using a multitude of open protocols that enable anyone with a modest budget to participate. And we're increasingly using this open communications network as merely a means to access a proprietary network; facebook. The attraction to Facebook is that the barrier to entry is even less than using other open protocols. But the reality is that one has no control over the services offered in that network nor how your information is used once it is made available to that network. And let's be frank - Facebook is not the common carrier that the phone companies were. Facebook exists to deliver your information (that you provide and can be gleaned by what you provide) to advertisers and anyone else who have interest in your information.
You can bet that there would be an outcry from Iceland officials if a US Federal agents' dragnet collected information involving this constitutional reform activity. We've already seen how it works with Twitter and the Fed's pursuit of Wikileaks. Why would Iceland continue to trust, much less encourage, more activity within the uncontrolled confines of yet another proprietary network?
There is a choice. There is a wide open network on which numerous well-tested and very functional open protocols exist that can be managed with even the meager budget that Iceland is likely to command. They could have access to a wide audience, control their own service, and control their own information. Yet they chose to pander to a corporation's private marketing machine.
Kind of the point, really. Yes - we can all snicker at over-priced hammers. But the kind of tech that's being produced for big budget military is orders of magnitude more impressive than the hacks being described here (and there's nothing wrong with a good hack). But both have their place and can be appreciated for the technology involved.
Which doesn't mean US troops on the line aren't doing plenty of DIY themselves.
No - less "this car is out of control" and more "this car is accelerating beyond normal capable speed with the help of gravity." Of course, explaining the joke kind ruins the fun but your way is good too.
100 mph in a LEAF? You are funny.
I suspect that's where he lost control and went over the guardrail.