As usual, the technology remains morally neutral, but another technical bandage is NOT a real solution. Just another flavor of "Live and let spam", and the REAL objective of such weak-@ssed technical approaches is to deny liability for any harms done.
The specific aspect of spam that bugs me most is the time wasted. If the google was liable for all the time wasted by their support of spam, I think they'd be bankrupt, even at minimum wage rates. Other people might be more annoyed by the abuse of corporate reputations. Or maybe you're annoyed by the abuse of personal information? Or the entry-level-crime argument, especially for phishing and identity theft?
Anyway, I always want to see the solutions. So what am I doing on Slashdot these years?
My favored solution approach is to go after the spammers' business models. There's even an obvious proof of concept. Where is all your pump-and-dump stock-scam spam? Gone, gone, gone. Because they went after those spammers' business model--though only after several research papers proved that the scam worked so well it was like printing money.
Why aren't such approaches being adopted? My theory is because they'd have to work with us. To really fight the spammers effectively they'd need to collaborate with the potential victims. One part of it is that we are the only ones who know our side of the targeting. It doesn't matter how good the spam looks if I actually know that I've never done business with that bank, eh? But the bigger part is that they don't want to reveal how much of our personal information they are already holding. They don't have to ask me for such categories of information because they probably have all the details already. Probably even the account numbers.
I think I agree with your reaction, especially the last part, and it is part of why I have reconsidered and reformed my position on this story. Not much credit to Slashdot, but mostly some other stuff I read and probably one video news story. (However your comment is now partial reinforcement for my new analysis.)
Now I'm thinking that Assange's big crime was bad journalism, and even though I think Assange was quite guilty of quite bad journalism, I now basically think it is wrong for the government to attack him only on that basis. Lots of better journalists could be attacked for their mistakes if every incident of "bad journalism" was a crime. Right now I'm not clear what crimes they think they can stick on him, but I'm even considering a theory that the current charges are deliberately "trumped up" so that Trump can prevent Assange from going down.
I do NOT think that Trump is capable of thinking up this strategy, but it is within the cunning and guile of Kellyanne Conway, the greatest liar still working for Trump. I think Trump is about to pardon Assange and claim he is a champion of free speech and "REAL" journalism.
Disappointed but not surprised that I couldn't find any substantive comments here on Slashdot, and especially not among the trolls' mods. Enough time for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Actually, I eventually managed to find a few substantive comments scattered among the usual troll mods.
I wish you'd gotten more funny mods so your comment would have been more visible. Yes, there was insight underneath, but Slashdot is short on funny these days.
Don't look at me! I never get a mod point to give.
When you say "insurance policy", are you speculating that Assange might have some interesting dirty on the great dirtbag himself? Perhaps more drone videos? This time showing Trump cheating at golf?
Seriously, I'd love to see a video of Trump kicking the other player's ball into the bunker.
Even more seriously, the FBI should be bugging Trump's phone to see if Assange calls to offer a deal for a pardon. LOTS of categories of information that a REAL journalist might have revealed... WikiLeaks must have some of it?
Hmm... That gave me a weird idea. Maybe it goes back to Putin and his plans for Trump? I'm actually skeptical that any P-tape exists (though perhaps I shouldn't believe in any limit to Trump's idiocy), but Assange wouldn't care about the authenticity at this point. If Putin gave such a putative tape to Assange and then recorded Trump talking with Assange about it... Well, the kompromat doesn't get any better than that.
Actually now is the least-bad time for him to be arrested. He helped Trump's campaign, and they both share a raging hate-boner for Hillary. Perhaps he can expect a presidential pardon?
Kind of an interesting comment, with traces of insight, though troll-modded into near invisibility.
To actually deserve the insightful mod (which is where the mod wars have left your comment at this time), I think you should have considered the underlying dynamics of journalism. The objective of all journalism, even at Wikipedia in the early days, is to reveal the truth. Not a problem except for people who have dirty secrets to hide, and there are plenty of them. Actually, if you are looking for dirty secrets to reveal, Trump is the mother lode.
Now if Trump thought that Assange was holding dirty secrets about him, then that would be the only factor determining whether or not Trump would intervene. If Trump believed that Assange was about to release Trump's tax returns unless he was pardoned, then you can safely bet Trump would pardon Assange in the proverbial New York minute.
In contrast, if Assange was a real journalist and he had received Trump's tax returns, then he would have first attempted to validate their authenticity, and if satisfied with their authenticity, he would have released them already. That was the original idea of WikiLeaks before Assange became the story. To me the question of guilt is whether Assange made himself into the story, in which case he is certainly guilty of bad journalism, or whether it was inevitable that Assange would become the story, in which case Assange is merely incompetent and the underlying crime is the state of journalism today.
Glad to see better moderators overruled the trolls.
However, I'm not sure it goes all the way to insightful, as it appears now. Rather I think there is a deeper insight to be revealed in how Assange's distorted personality led him down this road. I even think his paranoia became justified over time...
As the joke goes, even paranoids can have real enemies.
Yes, but journalism naturally has an adversarial relationship with the holders of secrets. I think you are actually agreeing with me for the most part, though I am unclear about your focus. My focus is on the economic factors that drove Assange to tilt from impartial journalism towards an extreme form of partisan journalism, where the main harm was ultimately to the reputation of Wikipedia in particular and to the reputation of better journalists in general.
It goes back to integrity and credibility as the primary "assets" of any journalist or publisher of news. The readers have to believe a journalist is acting with integrity, with higher motivations than the pursuit of publicity and donations, and that what the journalist reportr is credible, which requires some attempts to validate the information as real news, not manufactured propaganda. Assange failed on both counts, and therefore I think WikiLeaks eventually became harmful to real journalism.
Thank you for your curiosity. I will attempt to answer your question, though I don't want to go too far afield.
First, to address your context and solution, I'm taking UBI as Universal Basic Income, and I agree with you that it can support journalism, though indirectly. However I do not think that is its primary purpose, and I would analyze it differently, from my ekronomic (time-based economic) perspective. I think the justification for UBI is independent of the problems of journalism, but within UBI the encouragement of journalism fits within the larger category of encouraging investment time use rather than recreational time. However this is an especially tricky area, and I would argue that some journalism even crosses into the area of essential time for the same reason that the basic work of police is largely essential. (Though some journalism crosses the other way into recreational time.)
Second, as regards my solution approach, it can be regarded as a different kind of subscription, but with the advantage of letting you use your donated money to indicate your interests and priorities at the same time as you are helping to make the world better. You would read the stories (or watch the videos) as before, but afterwards you would have the option to look at the proposed solutions to see if you want to support any of them. If enough readers agree with you, then the project would be funded. After the project has been completed, it would be natural to do a story about how it came out, and of course the donors would be especially interested in those results.
The CSB would earn a share for project management and evaluation services (including handling and accounting for the money), and the publisher would receive a share for publishing the story to the wider audience. I also think the journalists should be paid for their valuable work (even if a UBI exists). There are two natural mechanisms there. One would be payment at the discretion of the editors and publishers, but I would actually favor the use of "internal projects". As an internal project, one of the "solution projects" after the article would be to solve the "problem" of compensating the author. In most cases that would be a relatively trivial project, so it would soon be satisfied and replaced with some other project--but of course if too few readers agree to support the author's work, then that is important feedback, both for the journalist and for the publisher.
Not surprised the trolls are so eager to censor you. Just lucky I stumbled across it. Sorry, but I never get a mod point to give. At least not in the last decade or two.
Mostly just expressing agreement, but I think it's also important to consider how the money drove Assange down this path. He didn't have any funding to do real journalism, but he became desperate for the publicity that would bring in some donations. There were some interesting journalism-like ideas buried in Wikipedia, but they got lost a long time ago.
I think you're arguing with a troll, but I would add two questions to your list:
Does Assange even qualify as a journalist? If WiliLeaks became a bad form of journalism, has it harmed the work of good journalists?
The second question is covered at some length in the longer comment I added farther down. It's about viable economic models for journalism and why WikiLeaks is not one of them.
It's obvious that journalism needs new economic models, but WikiLeaks is NOT one of them. Having read several books about WikiLeaks, I think the underlying problem was the lack of a viable economic model. There was a good idea under there, but it was buried so deeply and Assange got so far away from any form of actual journalism that the cart got in front of the horse.
At first WikiLeaks actually understood that the documents should be vetted to make sure they weren't being used to propagate propaganda. Also real journalism requires considering the possible negative ramifications of the release of the information, as when an innocent person might get murdered because their identity is revealed to a vengeful criminal. Multiple sources are important, too, and it is very rare that information cannot be verified by some method or other.
However Assange rather quickly decided it was more important to prioritize the releases of information for maximization of the value to WikiLeaks, including how the information would affect the increasingly important financial donations WikiLeaks needed. Fairly early in the process, they were overwhelmed with more information than they knew what to do with, so they were forced to start picking and choosing what to reveal, and when, and that is when Assange started tasting the poisonous fruit. Follow the money.
Solution time? My own proposed solution approach for the economic troubles of journalism would be a solution-based approach. The readers would be able to contribute to solution projects with the journalists earning a percentage for revealing and publicizing the problems. I think there would also need to be an independent entity (I call it the charity share brokerage) that would provide project guidance and evaluation, as well as handling the money.
Disappointed but not surprised that I couldn't find any substantive comments here on Slashdot, and especially not among the trolls' mods. Enough time for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
I'll pay for 50 channels when the deal includes 50 screens to watch them on and another 49 heads, so I can assign one of my heads to each channel. Also a time multiplexer and get rid of this sleep thing.
Enough with the joke already. Why would any sane person pay to have his valuable and limited time wasted on such a gigantic scale?
Or were you simply too lazy to read all the way to the third paragraph?
Or did you merely forget to say something useful about HBO's financial model? Perhaps you could have corrected my ignorance? LOTS of ignorance here, and you could have asked if you were unsure about which parts of my ignorance apply to HBO.
Or did you just have nothing to say, but lacked the self-control to say nothing?
I think what offends me the most is the google's notion I should pay a lot of money to have my time wasted. Not just the google, of course. Facebook is clearly the #1 abuser of engagement.
(Still an open contest for #1 abuser of personal information, but we suckers can't even tell who's "winning" because they hide our own personal information from us. If I had to bet, I'd wager on Amazon to out-rape the others, but I might take Apple or Microsoft if you give me some points.)
As things stand now, I think I'm watching too much TV, but at least I'm not paying too much for it. I actually regard it as a sort of scam. The local cable company has a kind of pre-wired apartment deal with local apartment owners. The owners get to advertise their apartments as having "free" cable TV and Internet, but the REAL plan on the cable side is to up-sell the tenants to premium services. Laugh's on the cable company. The unpaid services are sufficient for my needs and excessive for my available time.
Then again (on the extreme other side of the topic) I might consider paying for about 1 hour of HBO per week, but that isn't HBO's business model either. I actually checked this story to see if the google was selling HBO as part of the package. No mention here, and not enough interest to visit YouTube with the question.
So the final answer is "No, thank you YouTube, and I do hope you implode ASAP."
I think my comment was misleading. I was just picking the low-hanging fruit.
I don't really hate Outlook more than any other email system, and I basically hate all f them for supporting the spammers and scammers. I even imagine that technology remains morally neutral, and that includes the RFCs and SMTP, too. I think "Live and let spam" is basically evil, but it's the fundamental policy of every email provider I'm aware of.
In my twisted thinking, it isn't actually a problem unless there's a solution. I think the best solution approach to the scammers in email is to break their financial models. Proof of concept is the pump-and-dump stock scammers. You don't see their spam now because a couple of research papers revealed how profitable the scam was, and certain rich bastards were so offended that they actually fixed that particular problem.
I have a new theory for what's going on now. Among other real-world effects, it explains such extremist reactions on YouTube.
Actually it's not really Trump's idea, but must be coming from Stephen Miller and his associates. Trump is just the puppet. Again.
The Department of Homeland Security is under reconstruction.
Coming soon: The Department of WHITE Homeland Security. #DWHS
Don't think of it as the largest piece of the federal government running amok.
It's just color coordination. White House and White Homeland.
Not sure who coined the term "slow-moving coup". Perhaps Bill Maher? But they are shifting out of first gear now. I'm even beginning to think Trumpism has some of the potential of Stalinism. Depends on the depth of the purge. If the Trumpists start purging the "weaklings" among themselves, that would be an exceedingly bad sign. (I had to wrestle with that "If" for a while...)
Well, well, well. Something certainly seems to have triggered someone.
Mangling the language is one of the most important tools of the professional liars. Basic ontology of lies:
Level 0: Self-contradiction. Something is obviously wrong. Only amusing variation is when both halves are false.
Level 1: Counterfactual. As the famous saying says, any fool can check the facts.
Level 2: Partial truth. Two basic variations. One is to omit parts so as to deny actually lying, but the higher form involves actively creating a false perception of reality based on the gaps.
Level 3: Reframing. This is where the best liars work, distorting reality until you have no idea what color the sky is. Mangling the language is one of their best tools, and "white nationalism" is merely a deliberately confusing repackaging of a brand that has become too toxic.
Amusingly enough, Trump is a rather poor liar, usually bumbling about at the low levels and rarely getting as high as Level 2. However, Trump does have some excellent liars working for him. Right now I think his best (= worst) one is Kellyanne Conway. Many of the best (still = worst) liars are most effective at arm's-length, often using Trump as a facade or MacGuffin. That includes such brilliant liars as Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
Hmm... I'm not certain. I am convinced that Trump thinks HE himself is (genetically and presidentially and otherwise) superior, but I think it is mostly at a personal, familial level rather than at a racial level. Rather I suspect Trump is so solipsistic that he has no real feelings about groups as such. Therefore I think Trump can be played by the racists, but he isn't nearly as sincere about it as Miller and Bannon. I think Trump has always been a puppet, and the only trick to pulling his strings is to convince Trump it was his idea in the first place. As long as you are pushing him from behind, Trump thinks he's leading.
Having said that, I do have to agree that there is plenty of racist stuff in Trump's past. The Central Park Jogger stuff is especially bad, but there was some less racist stuff mixed in, too. For example, if a black celebrity could help him make some money, then Trump was much more concerned about the money than the race.
I just don't think Trump was smart enough to come up with the idea of the Department of White Homeland Security, and his willingness is not that important. In fact, now he seems to be getting cold feet.
If Trump had any imagination, then I'd think he was afraid of a protest mocking one of his own rallies. I still want to see the video of "Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!" In my imagination, the protesters are in Trump face, and the video builds to an angry crescendo before collapsing into howls of insane rage.
I am unable to interpret that as a request for clarification, not does it suggest the slightest awareness of my earlier writings on the general topic. Therefore I can only congratulate you on your remarkable mind-reading or other psychic capabilities and beg you to explain what is wrong with the idea. Surely you can share a tiny bit of your infinite wisdom with us peasants?
(Yes, I'm overreacting, but it might be triggered by your handle.)
I think it's a bit deeper than that. Largely it's a kind of abuse of free speech (and anonymity) to attack certain kinds of speech. A kind of jujitsu, where the tolerance of a relatively open society is being used to subvert that society. Popper's Parsdox of Tolerance is highly relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My theory is that the extremism against any study of white nationalism is part of a larger effort to divide and conquer America, and it seems to be working rather well. That's not how Stephen Miller sees it, but I think he's quite sincere. About his own infinite superiority. As in white superiority.
When you talk about "gangs", I think you may be onto something, even though I think their organization structure is different. And worthy of investigation, even congressional investigation. That's "worthy" in the negative sense of having large negative value and the potential for large harm.
My other comment about the new Department of White Homeland Security is also relevant. Too bad #DWHS is unlikely to trend as a tag?
Cue the trolls: "Stop calling all of Trump's supporters racists!" Of course that is not what I'm saying. Some of them are passively mindless, active fools, religious fanatics, exploitable suckers, or worse. Also ineducable, and if there are enough of them, then America is finished.
Why is your comment nearly invisible? Yes, your Subject: line isn't greatly illuminating, but I don't see the basis for the current score of 1. Some kind of troll moderation effect?
The comic you linked to is rather insightful. My favored solution approach would involve MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) so that people who have a track record of not acting like that would acquire additional visibility, while the trolls would be helped in rendering themselves less and less visible. Anonymity has limited justification. Near as I can tell, almost all secrecy can only be justified based on prior and ongoing secrecy, and circular justifications are weak.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual, the technology remains morally neutral, but another technical bandage is NOT a real solution. Just another flavor of "Live and let spam", and the REAL objective of such weak-@ssed technical approaches is to deny liability for any harms done.
The specific aspect of spam that bugs me most is the time wasted. If the google was liable for all the time wasted by their support of spam, I think they'd be bankrupt, even at minimum wage rates. Other people might be more annoyed by the abuse of corporate reputations. Or maybe you're annoyed by the abuse of personal information? Or the entry-level-crime argument, especially for phishing and identity theft?
Anyway, I always want to see the solutions. So what am I doing on Slashdot these years?
My favored solution approach is to go after the spammers' business models. There's even an obvious proof of concept. Where is all your pump-and-dump stock-scam spam? Gone, gone, gone. Because they went after those spammers' business model--though only after several research papers proved that the scam worked so well it was like printing money.
Why aren't such approaches being adopted? My theory is because they'd have to work with us. To really fight the spammers effectively they'd need to collaborate with the potential victims. One part of it is that we are the only ones who know our side of the targeting. It doesn't matter how good the spam looks if I actually know that I've never done business with that bank, eh? But the bigger part is that they don't want to reveal how much of our personal information they are already holding. They don't have to ask me for such categories of information because they probably have all the details already. Probably even the account numbers.
I think I agree with your reaction, especially the last part, and it is part of why I have reconsidered and reformed my position on this story. Not much credit to Slashdot, but mostly some other stuff I read and probably one video news story. (However your comment is now partial reinforcement for my new analysis.)
Now I'm thinking that Assange's big crime was bad journalism, and even though I think Assange was quite guilty of quite bad journalism, I now basically think it is wrong for the government to attack him only on that basis. Lots of better journalists could be attacked for their mistakes if every incident of "bad journalism" was a crime. Right now I'm not clear what crimes they think they can stick on him, but I'm even considering a theory that the current charges are deliberately "trumped up" so that Trump can prevent Assange from going down.
I do NOT think that Trump is capable of thinking up this strategy, but it is within the cunning and guile of Kellyanne Conway, the greatest liar still working for Trump. I think Trump is about to pardon Assange and claim he is a champion of free speech and "REAL" journalism.
Z^-3
Disappointed but not surprised that I couldn't find any substantive comments here on Slashdot, and especially not among the trolls' mods. Enough time for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Actually, I eventually managed to find a few substantive comments scattered among the usual troll mods.
Z^-2
I wish you'd gotten more funny mods so your comment would have been more visible. Yes, there was insight underneath, but Slashdot is short on funny these days.
Don't look at me! I never get a mod point to give.
When you say "insurance policy", are you speculating that Assange might have some interesting dirty on the great dirtbag himself? Perhaps more drone videos? This time showing Trump cheating at golf?
Seriously, I'd love to see a video of Trump kicking the other player's ball into the bunker.
Even more seriously, the FBI should be bugging Trump's phone to see if Assange calls to offer a deal for a pardon. LOTS of categories of information that a REAL journalist might have revealed... WikiLeaks must have some of it?
Hmm... That gave me a weird idea. Maybe it goes back to Putin and his plans for Trump? I'm actually skeptical that any P-tape exists (though perhaps I shouldn't believe in any limit to Trump's idiocy), but Assange wouldn't care about the authenticity at this point. If Putin gave such a putative tape to Assange and then recorded Trump talking with Assange about it... Well, the kompromat doesn't get any better than that.
Actually now is the least-bad time for him to be arrested. He helped Trump's campaign, and they both share a raging hate-boner for Hillary. Perhaps he can expect a presidential pardon?
Kind of an interesting comment, with traces of insight, though troll-modded into near invisibility.
To actually deserve the insightful mod (which is where the mod wars have left your comment at this time), I think you should have considered the underlying dynamics of journalism. The objective of all journalism, even at Wikipedia in the early days, is to reveal the truth. Not a problem except for people who have dirty secrets to hide, and there are plenty of them. Actually, if you are looking for dirty secrets to reveal, Trump is the mother lode.
Now if Trump thought that Assange was holding dirty secrets about him, then that would be the only factor determining whether or not Trump would intervene. If Trump believed that Assange was about to release Trump's tax returns unless he was pardoned, then you can safely bet Trump would pardon Assange in the proverbial New York minute.
In contrast, if Assange was a real journalist and he had received Trump's tax returns, then he would have first attempted to validate their authenticity, and if satisfied with their authenticity, he would have released them already. That was the original idea of WikiLeaks before Assange became the story. To me the question of guilt is whether Assange made himself into the story, in which case he is certainly guilty of bad journalism, or whether it was inevitable that Assange would become the story, in which case Assange is merely incompetent and the underlying crime is the state of journalism today.
Glad to see better moderators overruled the trolls.
However, I'm not sure it goes all the way to insightful, as it appears now. Rather I think there is a deeper insight to be revealed in how Assange's distorted personality led him down this road. I even think his paranoia became justified over time...
As the joke goes, even paranoids can have real enemies.
Z^-1
Yes, but journalism naturally has an adversarial relationship with the holders of secrets. I think you are actually agreeing with me for the most part, though I am unclear about your focus. My focus is on the economic factors that drove Assange to tilt from impartial journalism towards an extreme form of partisan journalism, where the main harm was ultimately to the reputation of Wikipedia in particular and to the reputation of better journalists in general.
It goes back to integrity and credibility as the primary "assets" of any journalist or publisher of news. The readers have to believe a journalist is acting with integrity, with higher motivations than the pursuit of publicity and donations, and that what the journalist reportr is credible, which requires some attempts to validate the information as real news, not manufactured propaganda. Assange failed on both counts, and therefore I think WikiLeaks eventually became harmful to real journalism.
Thank you for your curiosity. I will attempt to answer your question, though I don't want to go too far afield.
First, to address your context and solution, I'm taking UBI as Universal Basic Income, and I agree with you that it can support journalism, though indirectly. However I do not think that is its primary purpose, and I would analyze it differently, from my ekronomic (time-based economic) perspective. I think the justification for UBI is independent of the problems of journalism, but within UBI the encouragement of journalism fits within the larger category of encouraging investment time use rather than recreational time. However this is an especially tricky area, and I would argue that some journalism even crosses into the area of essential time for the same reason that the basic work of police is largely essential. (Though some journalism crosses the other way into recreational time.)
Second, as regards my solution approach, it can be regarded as a different kind of subscription, but with the advantage of letting you use your donated money to indicate your interests and priorities at the same time as you are helping to make the world better. You would read the stories (or watch the videos) as before, but afterwards you would have the option to look at the proposed solutions to see if you want to support any of them. If enough readers agree with you, then the project would be funded. After the project has been completed, it would be natural to do a story about how it came out, and of course the donors would be especially interested in those results.
The CSB would earn a share for project management and evaluation services (including handling and accounting for the money), and the publisher would receive a share for publishing the story to the wider audience. I also think the journalists should be paid for their valuable work (even if a UBI exists). There are two natural mechanisms there. One would be payment at the discretion of the editors and publishers, but I would actually favor the use of "internal projects". As an internal project, one of the "solution projects" after the article would be to solve the "problem" of compensating the author. In most cases that would be a relatively trivial project, so it would soon be satisfied and replaced with some other project--but of course if too few readers agree to support the author's work, then that is important feedback, both for the journalist and for the publisher.
Not surprised the trolls are so eager to censor you. Just lucky I stumbled across it. Sorry, but I never get a mod point to give. At least not in the last decade or two.
Mostly just expressing agreement, but I think it's also important to consider how the money drove Assange down this path. He didn't have any funding to do real journalism, but he became desperate for the publicity that would bring in some donations. There were some interesting journalism-like ideas buried in Wikipedia, but they got lost a long time ago.
I think you're arguing with a troll, but I would add two questions to your list:
Does Assange even qualify as a journalist?
If WiliLeaks became a bad form of journalism, has it harmed the work of good journalists?
The second question is covered at some length in the longer comment I added farther down. It's about viable economic models for journalism and why WikiLeaks is not one of them.
It's obvious that journalism needs new economic models, but WikiLeaks is NOT one of them. Having read several books about WikiLeaks, I think the underlying problem was the lack of a viable economic model. There was a good idea under there, but it was buried so deeply and Assange got so far away from any form of actual journalism that the cart got in front of the horse.
At first WikiLeaks actually understood that the documents should be vetted to make sure they weren't being used to propagate propaganda. Also real journalism requires considering the possible negative ramifications of the release of the information, as when an innocent person might get murdered because their identity is revealed to a vengeful criminal. Multiple sources are important, too, and it is very rare that information cannot be verified by some method or other.
However Assange rather quickly decided it was more important to prioritize the releases of information for maximization of the value to WikiLeaks, including how the information would affect the increasingly important financial donations WikiLeaks needed. Fairly early in the process, they were overwhelmed with more information than they knew what to do with, so they were forced to start picking and choosing what to reveal, and when, and that is when Assange started tasting the poisonous fruit. Follow the money.
Solution time? My own proposed solution approach for the economic troubles of journalism would be a solution-based approach. The readers would be able to contribute to solution projects with the journalists earning a percentage for revealing and publicizing the problems. I think there would also need to be an independent entity (I call it the charity share brokerage) that would provide project guidance and evaluation, as well as handling the money.
Disappointed but not surprised that I couldn't find any substantive comments here on Slashdot, and especially not among the trolls' mods. Enough time for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
I'll pay for 50 channels when the deal includes 50 screens to watch them on and another 49 heads, so I can assign one of my heads to each channel. Also a time multiplexer and get rid of this sleep thing.
Enough with the joke already. Why would any sane person pay to have his valuable and limited time wasted on such a gigantic scale?
Did I stutter?
Or were you simply too lazy to read all the way to the third paragraph?
Or did you merely forget to say something useful about HBO's financial model? Perhaps you could have corrected my ignorance? LOTS of ignorance here, and you could have asked if you were unsure about which parts of my ignorance apply to HBO.
Or did you just have nothing to say, but lacked the self-control to say nothing?
Greedy much?
I think what offends me the most is the google's notion I should pay a lot of money to have my time wasted. Not just the google, of course. Facebook is clearly the #1 abuser of engagement.
(Still an open contest for #1 abuser of personal information, but we suckers can't even tell who's "winning" because they hide our own personal information from us. If I had to bet, I'd wager on Amazon to out-rape the others, but I might take Apple or Microsoft if you give me some points.)
As things stand now, I think I'm watching too much TV, but at least I'm not paying too much for it. I actually regard it as a sort of scam. The local cable company has a kind of pre-wired apartment deal with local apartment owners. The owners get to advertise their apartments as having "free" cable TV and Internet, but the REAL plan on the cable side is to up-sell the tenants to premium services. Laugh's on the cable company. The unpaid services are sufficient for my needs and excessive for my available time.
Then again (on the extreme other side of the topic) I might consider paying for about 1 hour of HBO per week, but that isn't HBO's business model either. I actually checked this story to see if the google was selling HBO as part of the package. No mention here, and not enough interest to visit YouTube with the question.
So the final answer is "No, thank you YouTube, and I do hope you implode ASAP."
I think my comment was misleading. I was just picking the low-hanging fruit.
I don't really hate Outlook more than any other email system, and I basically hate all f them for supporting the spammers and scammers. I even imagine that technology remains morally neutral, and that includes the RFCs and SMTP, too. I think "Live and let spam" is basically evil, but it's the fundamental policy of every email provider I'm aware of.
In my twisted thinking, it isn't actually a problem unless there's a solution. I think the best solution approach to the scammers in email is to break their financial models. Proof of concept is the pump-and-dump stock scammers. You don't see their spam now because a couple of research papers revealed how profitable the scam was, and certain rich bastards were so offended that they actually fixed that particular problem.
I have a new theory for what's going on now. Among other real-world effects, it explains such extremist reactions on YouTube.
Actually it's not really Trump's idea, but must be coming from Stephen Miller and his associates. Trump is just the puppet. Again.
The Department of Homeland Security is under reconstruction.
Coming soon: The Department of WHITE Homeland Security. #DWHS
Don't think of it as the largest piece of the federal government running amok.
It's just color coordination. White House and White Homeland.
Not sure who coined the term "slow-moving coup". Perhaps Bill Maher? But they are shifting out of first gear now. I'm even beginning to think Trumpism has some of the potential of Stalinism. Depends on the depth of the purge. If the Trumpists start purging the "weaklings" among themselves, that would be an exceedingly bad sign. (I had to wrestle with that "If" for a while...)
Well, well, well. Something certainly seems to have triggered someone.
Mangling the language is one of the most important tools of the professional liars. Basic ontology of lies:
Level 0: Self-contradiction. Something is obviously wrong. Only amusing variation is when both halves are false.
Level 1: Counterfactual. As the famous saying says, any fool can check the facts.
Level 2: Partial truth. Two basic variations. One is to omit parts so as to deny actually lying, but the higher form involves actively creating a false perception of reality based on the gaps.
Level 3: Reframing. This is where the best liars work, distorting reality until you have no idea what color the sky is. Mangling the language is one of their best tools, and "white nationalism" is merely a deliberately confusing repackaging of a brand that has become too toxic.
Amusingly enough, Trump is a rather poor liar, usually bumbling about at the low levels and rarely getting as high as Level 2. However, Trump does have some excellent liars working for him. Right now I think his best (= worst) one is Kellyanne Conway. Many of the best (still = worst) liars are most effective at arm's-length, often using Trump as a facade or MacGuffin. That includes such brilliant liars as Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
Hmm... I'm not certain. I am convinced that Trump thinks HE himself is (genetically and presidentially and otherwise) superior, but I think it is mostly at a personal, familial level rather than at a racial level. Rather I suspect Trump is so solipsistic that he has no real feelings about groups as such. Therefore I think Trump can be played by the racists, but he isn't nearly as sincere about it as Miller and Bannon. I think Trump has always been a puppet, and the only trick to pulling his strings is to convince Trump it was his idea in the first place. As long as you are pushing him from behind, Trump thinks he's leading.
Having said that, I do have to agree that there is plenty of racist stuff in Trump's past. The Central Park Jogger stuff is especially bad, but there was some less racist stuff mixed in, too. For example, if a black celebrity could help him make some money, then Trump was much more concerned about the money than the race.
I just don't think Trump was smart enough to come up with the idea of the Department of White Homeland Security, and his willingness is not that important. In fact, now he seems to be getting cold feet.
If Trump had any imagination, then I'd think he was afraid of a protest mocking one of his own rallies. I still want to see the video of "Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!" In my imagination, the protesters are in Trump face, and the video builds to an angry crescendo before collapsing into howls of insane rage.
I am unable to interpret that as a request for clarification, not does it suggest the slightest awareness of my earlier writings on the general topic. Therefore I can only congratulate you on your remarkable mind-reading or other psychic capabilities and beg you to explain what is wrong with the idea. Surely you can share a tiny bit of your infinite wisdom with us peasants?
(Yes, I'm overreacting, but it might be triggered by your handle.)
I think it's a bit deeper than that. Largely it's a kind of abuse of free speech (and anonymity) to attack certain kinds of speech. A kind of jujitsu, where the tolerance of a relatively open society is being used to subvert that society. Popper's Parsdox of Tolerance is highly relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My theory is that the extremism against any study of white nationalism is part of a larger effort to divide and conquer America, and it seems to be working rather well. That's not how Stephen Miller sees it, but I think he's quite sincere. About his own infinite superiority. As in white superiority.
When you talk about "gangs", I think you may be onto something, even though I think their organization structure is different. And worthy of investigation, even congressional investigation. That's "worthy" in the negative sense of having large negative value and the potential for large harm.
My other comment about the new Department of White Homeland Security is also relevant. Too bad #DWHS is unlikely to trend as a tag?
Cue the trolls: "Stop calling all of Trump's supporters racists!" Of course that is not what I'm saying. Some of them are passively mindless, active fools, religious fanatics, exploitable suckers, or worse. Also ineducable, and if there are enough of them, then America is finished.
Why is your comment nearly invisible? Yes, your Subject: line isn't greatly illuminating, but I don't see the basis for the current score of 1. Some kind of troll moderation effect?
The comic you linked to is rather insightful. My favored solution approach would involve MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) so that people who have a track record of not acting like that would acquire additional visibility, while the trolls would be helped in rendering themselves less and less visible. Anonymity has limited justification. Near as I can tell, almost all secrecy can only be justified based on prior and ongoing secrecy, and circular justifications are weak.