If you [WaffleMonster] actually read the released version of the report, then you would have noticed that it repeatedly says that the evidence cannot be released in public. It even explains why.
Now if the actual conclusions that are reported are different from those in the full version of the report that includes the evidence, then that will be reported by some of the people who are actually going to see the report. We can rely on that because some of those people are politicians who could not possibly keep such a secret. That would be a colossal fiasco, and therefore I believe the conclusions are accurately reported. (It also helps that the conclusions are pretty weak tea.)
The report also mentions the use of trolls working for Putin. You [WaffleMonster]?
Excellent point. #PresidentTweety is going to run things by Twitter.
Did you realize that his attack on Toyota caused the market cap of the Japanese auto makers to fall by more than $4 BILLION. Don't you wish you could make BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars disappear with a tweet?
Abuse of power? Conflict of interest?
Well, if I had only known that the Donald was about to make that tweet and I had shorted those companies, I could have made a lot of money. Maybe the long gap in one of his "presidential" two-part tweets was actually for a little phone call to his broker?
Talk about a celebrity apprentice. How long will it take Trump to figure out his new job? How long before he fired his apprentices?
(I'm still expecting Trump will get Bill-Cosby-ed out within a few weeks.)
How did that comment rate an "insightful" moderation? The "funny" reply was much more insightful, but rather funny, too, so I guess that's a fair cop of sorts...
The ideal of WikiLeaks is that there is too much abuse of secrecy by powerful people and more of those secrets should be revealed. There is a real problem there, because in many cases the powerful people are doing terrible, even criminal, things because they think they can keep them secret.
The implementation is fundamentally broken, but I'm not sure how much credit or blame you can assign to Assange. "The system" of corruption, the oligarchy or kleptocracy, if you prefer, is already so well established and powerful that you have to be insane to go against it in the first place. Only someone with personality problems along Assange's lines could have created a WikiLeaks-type organization of any visible significance. Did you even know there are several similar organizations with sane leadership?
Another pathology was the financial model, or rather the lack of any. In chasing the money they wound up producing disaster porn, sort of like a low-budget CNN. Actually, insofar as WikiLeaks had smaller expenses, you could argue the RoI was higher. However it led them to focus on controlled timing for maximum market value of their "news" (AKA disaster porn) and also made them too subject to manipulation.
Just reading the official report now https://www.dni.gov/files/docu... but it was already obvious to me that WikiLeaks was used as part of a propaganda and disinformation campaign. WikiLeaks never had the resources to actually check the validity (or even the potentially harmful consequences) of the data they were publishing. Yet it was the drive to maximize the impact and market value that made WikiLeaks such a useful tool last October.
I'm suffering a bit of a recall gap here. What's the expression for a naive fool manipulated by someone of great cunning (such as Putin)? Oh yeah. It's "useful idiot". Not sure where he started, but Assange ended as a useful idiot.
I basically agree with you that I know little about Medium. My fuzzy recollection is that it sounded like a good idea, but when I looked at it, the reality was pretty much click-bait. The advertising links seemed rather weak, and that seems to be confirmed by the financial results of the article.
I'm suggesting a more general approach to funding better journalism. I've seen a number of minor variations on the old standards, but so far nothing I'd "invest" in.
It sounds like you're referring to the "scoop" problem? There was an extra value in being first because of the delays in publishing or even getting it on a later news problem. That part has basically been crushed out of the system by Internet speeds.
What did Darth Vader say about lack of faith? Disturbing?
Your [the self-identified google employee's] defense of the Google's defense of YOUR privacy only makes me think "Oh, so if you don't like it why are you doing it to ALL of us?"
Ever hear of the golden rule? You can google it. Or maybe you'd prefer Kant's categorical imperative?
I think the google has gone completely EVIL, and age discrimination is merely the tiniest tip of the iceberg. You googlers have a fake problem. That's how I feel about any problem that has no solution, and your unlimited greed for bigger profits can NEVER be solved.
Gandhi may have said it best with the bit about the earth having enough for everyones needs, but not for everyones greed. (I think it could be "any ones greed", since any sufficiently greedy person could want the ENTIRE thing.)
Slightly funny, but mostly reminded me that January 3rd was January 2nd this year, at least locally. New Years Day didn't count as a holiday because it was already Sunday, so they had to move it to Monday, but then that official holiday had to be postponed and the calendar then insisted January 3rd was a holiday called January 2nd... As translation problems go, it must be extra large?
Anyway, if I ever had a mod point, I wouldn't have given a "funny" to that one. Now about moderating this one... I guess "off topic" since there's no "petty nit" mod.
Based on my comments posted over on Medium (but largely applicable to Slashdot, too, so you can substitute in most places):
Pretty sure I looked at Medium a while ago, and if so, today’s visit reminded me why I wasn’t interested. Same sad story, same verse.
There’s a fundamental mismatch here. Many people really do want to know about the problems of the day and even want to help make the world better. Many people want to learn new things so they can make better choices and be more free.
Such goals are irrelevant to the advertisers who are paying for the “free” websites. They would actually prefer docile robots who will quietly obey the ads and buy the toothpaste or politicians. The kind of news they want to pay for is disaster porn like CNN or profitable propaganda like FAUX “news”.
Apparently Medium is not succeeding with what appears to be click-bait approach. Are they desperate enough to consider REAL alternatives? Here are a couple of the top of my head:
(1) Sell SOLUTIONS to the problems. After each article about a problem there should be some links to proposed projects to help SOLVE the problem. Interested readers could look over the projects and buy a share, perhaps $10 a pop, and if enough wannabe-helpful donors agree, then the project would get funded, and later evaluated and the results reported on. The sponsor should be a charitable umbrella organization that would make sure each project proposal was complete and a percentage of funded projects would go back to the websites that helped publicize the problem (like Medium).
(2) Auction my valuable time in LIMITED amounts in exchange for sponsored news. The intermediary (which might be Medium) would have good reason to protect my privacy and personal information in order to protect their involvement, and the companies that are selling goods and services I actually want would get more reliable access to the customers who actually WANT to buy what they’re selling.
Why no comment (that I can find) about the fundamentally misleading title. They did NOT find or even "identify" a new organ. They just decided that the description of a certain part of the human body could be made a bit more clear. Kind of like a promotion up to "organ" status rather like the demotion of Pluto down from planet status.
I'm skeptical it will be helpful in any medical sense, but maybe it will help clarify some medical conditions. Might need to rename them, too.
Not sure I should go here... Probably not. However to me the significant part of improving medical diagnoses is that the more detailed and accurate diagnoses of our diseases reduce the uncertainty about when we'll die and why. So is your last will and testament boots-on or boots-off?
The perversion of copyright is a different problem, but I absolutely agree with your sentiments. However I doubt that Project Gutenberg could be ramped up to the scale I'm thinking of. Nor would it be good for a private company like the google (of increasing EVIL) or the Amazon (of privacy abuse) to have monopolistic control over such a definitive repository of human knowledge, such as it is.
I would prefer that the big repository of ebooks be controlled by the librarians and possibly some academics who are sincerely focused on the preservation of the books for future readers. Maybe a bit for their own sake, too.
Writing as an aging bibliophile who loves the feel and "process" of reading paper books, I'm still forced to regard this as a kind of Luddite problem. Or maybe I should just describe it as bad economics?
The value of a library's shelf space is measurable. The old books should not be rendered inaccessible, but their marginal value continues to decline and shelf space needs to be made available for the new stuff that people want to read more. The obvious and rational response is to retire old paper books in favor of electronic versions. Personally I hate ebooks and think Amazon is aggressively creating an ebook monopoly that will destroy the publishing industry, but... It would make much more sense to make the old, long-tail books available instantly in electronic forms.
There should actually be an equilibrium price here where the 'rental' cost to the library is balanced against the value of the shelf space. For old fogies like me, they should still have an inter-library loan to (slowly) borrow a paper copy. It's not like the old books are going anywhere, eh?
(As usual, I would have hoped to see previous commenters ahead of me, and as too usual these days, it seems no one goes to the obvious places... I should have searched harder? However, in this case the key terms were obvious and they came up almost entirely dry. The unmoderated comment I'm replying to does mention "ebooks", though the notion of putting "ebooks in libraries" is confusing. This is primarily a problem of permissions exacerbated by the greed and desperation of the publishers. The technology is already there.)
Just asking, because it isn't certain America has been decapitated yet. We need to wait for Trump to encounter an actual crisis to see how phucked we are.
Pointless comment, since "insight" on today's Slashdot means someone agrees with you (or has a sock puppet with mod points). My real disappointment was with the total lack of actually funny comments. My hopes were raised by such an active topic.
As regards the alternative explanations, I think there is only one that passes my threshold of plausibility: The Chinese framing the Russians. However it fails on the motive criterion. It is possible the Chinese have the technical means to make it look like the Russians, and both had the opportunity, but the Chinese are doing well enough under the status quo and lack the motive to decapitate America. Haven't made up my mind about the anti-Hillary angle attributed to Putin, but again it appears the Chinese were looking forward to working with her in a relatively predictable way. Then again, the Chinese are capable of 3D chess, so maybe something will come up to reveal a motive?
Are you buying the hope, the dream, or the dream of hope?
Recently read another book that mentioned how lottery winners return to their original state of happiness within a year or so, even if they don't squander all the money. I'd actually be interested in research that followed up the losers. Compared to the odds of winning, it's much more likely that some of the losers came to more serious problems because of the lack of the money they spent on the tickets. As far as I know, that's never been researched.
I am not saying that the Mac black-box approach was instantly successful, but it has certainly become dominant over time. My focus was on the philosophic shift from the hacker mentality to the what we have now, though I'm not sure how to best characterize it. Whatever it is now, I think a lot of the fun and coolness has been removed.
Well it sounds like you're agreeing with me in that form, except that there is some confusing about "network effects" in relation to public or private standards. What I suggested was that Windows can start as a private standard (as it is now), but improvements in the standard (motivated by REAL competition) would be forced into the public domain.
I even speculate that the competition would cause the OS to improve and evolve faster. I would certainly prefer to shop for a smaller and more secure version if I had that choice...
Having said nothing about pseudonyms, I had no idea what you were talking about until I accidentally stumbled across the hidden AC comment you were actually replying to.
My position on handles is different but much more complicated. In general I am averse to handles, though I have been obliged to adopt them from time to time, sometimes in relation to functional roles (as "postmaster") or due to linguistic constraints (as in my current handle). An established identity may well be associated with a handle, and many real names may fail to establish an identity. I once had a business encounter involving John Smith. Yes, THAT John Smith. I'm sure it was him because the check cleared!
However, upon checking I do see that Slashdot has a real name field in my profile, and it does contain my real name. Not sure what that signifies, but I've never much worried about concealing myself. Then again, my "shanen" identity is more than 25 years old now, and quite probably better known than I am.
I agree subject to the proviso that some ACs respond in ways that claim ownership of a prior AC comment. If you are willing to accept such claims, then some sort of discussion is possible, though the notion of identity is strained and transient.
However, I also have to say that it is increasingly hard to aspire to "discussion" on Slashdot these days. Abuse of anonymity is only one of many problems. I actually think the most severe problem is the lack of a viable financial model to motivate and pay for the solutions. Good, hard, honest work don't come cheap.
I'm not sure, because I do think there was a philosophic transition, too. Especially in the area of microcomputers, where the functionality of the "toys" was often superior to the mainframes, at least at the human level of spreadsheets and word processing. However, the original microcomputers were for hobbyists and were often open architectures, where the limitations on your understanding were mostly available time and interest, not corporate determination to protect secret standards. Don't you think the Mac introduced a new kind of black-box mentality to the PC world?
Perhaps the real problem is that we are still hunter gatherers? Relative to the speed of computer evolution, our minds have not kept up. Or evolved at all, to put it more bluntly. Natural evolution requires lots of generations, but the entire computer revolution started only a few years before my birth...
Slashdot Mirror
If you [WaffleMonster] actually read the released version of the report, then you would have noticed that it repeatedly says that the evidence cannot be released in public. It even explains why.
Now if the actual conclusions that are reported are different from those in the full version of the report that includes the evidence, then that will be reported by some of the people who are actually going to see the report. We can rely on that because some of those people are politicians who could not possibly keep such a secret. That would be a colossal fiasco, and therefore I believe the conclusions are accurately reported. (It also helps that the conclusions are pretty weak tea.)
The report also mentions the use of trolls working for Putin. You [WaffleMonster]?
Excellent point. #PresidentTweety is going to run things by Twitter.
Did you realize that his attack on Toyota caused the market cap of the Japanese auto makers to fall by more than $4 BILLION. Don't you wish you could make BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars disappear with a tweet?
Abuse of power? Conflict of interest?
Well, if I had only known that the Donald was about to make that tweet and I had shorted those companies, I could have made a lot of money. Maybe the long gap in one of his "presidential" two-part tweets was actually for a little phone call to his broker?
Talk about a celebrity apprentice. How long will it take Trump to figure out his new job? How long before he fired his apprentices?
(I'm still expecting Trump will get Bill-Cosby-ed out within a few weeks.)
How did that comment rate an "insightful" moderation? The "funny" reply was much more insightful, but rather funny, too, so I guess that's a fair cop of sorts...
The ideal of WikiLeaks is that there is too much abuse of secrecy by powerful people and more of those secrets should be revealed. There is a real problem there, because in many cases the powerful people are doing terrible, even criminal, things because they think they can keep them secret.
The implementation is fundamentally broken, but I'm not sure how much credit or blame you can assign to Assange. "The system" of corruption, the oligarchy or kleptocracy, if you prefer, is already so well established and powerful that you have to be insane to go against it in the first place. Only someone with personality problems along Assange's lines could have created a WikiLeaks-type organization of any visible significance. Did you even know there are several similar organizations with sane leadership?
Another pathology was the financial model, or rather the lack of any. In chasing the money they wound up producing disaster porn, sort of like a low-budget CNN. Actually, insofar as WikiLeaks had smaller expenses, you could argue the RoI was higher. However it led them to focus on controlled timing for maximum market value of their "news" (AKA disaster porn) and also made them too subject to manipulation.
Just reading the official report now https://www.dni.gov/files/docu... but it was already obvious to me that WikiLeaks was used as part of a propaganda and disinformation campaign. WikiLeaks never had the resources to actually check the validity (or even the potentially harmful consequences) of the data they were publishing. Yet it was the drive to maximize the impact and market value that made WikiLeaks such a useful tool last October.
I'm suffering a bit of a recall gap here. What's the expression for a naive fool manipulated by someone of great cunning (such as Putin)? Oh yeah. It's "useful idiot". Not sure where he started, but Assange ended as a useful idiot.
I basically agree with you that I know little about Medium. My fuzzy recollection is that it sounded like a good idea, but when I looked at it, the reality was pretty much click-bait. The advertising links seemed rather weak, and that seems to be confirmed by the financial results of the article.
I'm suggesting a more general approach to funding better journalism. I've seen a number of minor variations on the old standards, but so far nothing I'd "invest" in.
It sounds like you're referring to the "scoop" problem? There was an extra value in being first because of the delays in publishing or even getting it on a later news problem. That part has basically been crushed out of the system by Internet speeds.
What did Darth Vader say about lack of faith? Disturbing?
Your [the self-identified google employee's] defense of the Google's defense of YOUR privacy only makes me think "Oh, so if you don't like it why are you doing it to ALL of us?"
Ever hear of the golden rule? You can google it. Or maybe you'd prefer Kant's categorical imperative?
I think the google has gone completely EVIL, and age discrimination is merely the tiniest tip of the iceberg. You googlers have a fake problem. That's how I feel about any problem that has no solution, and your unlimited greed for bigger profits can NEVER be solved.
Gandhi may have said it best with the bit about the earth having enough for everyones needs, but not for everyones greed. (I think it could be "any ones greed", since any sufficiently greedy person could want the ENTIRE thing.)
Slightly funny, but mostly reminded me that January 3rd was January 2nd this year, at least locally. New Years Day didn't count as a holiday because it was already Sunday, so they had to move it to Monday, but then that official holiday had to be postponed and the calendar then insisted January 3rd was a holiday called January 2nd... As translation problems go, it must be extra large?
Anyway, if I ever had a mod point, I wouldn't have given a "funny" to that one. Now about moderating this one... I guess "off topic" since there's no "petty nit" mod.
Based on my comments posted over on Medium (but largely applicable to Slashdot, too, so you can substitute in most places):
Pretty sure I looked at Medium a while ago, and if so, today’s visit reminded me why I wasn’t interested. Same sad story, same verse.
There’s a fundamental mismatch here. Many people really do want to know about the problems of the day and even want to help make the world better. Many people want to learn new things so they can make better choices and be more free.
Such goals are irrelevant to the advertisers who are paying for the “free” websites. They would actually prefer docile robots who will quietly obey the ads and buy the toothpaste or politicians. The kind of news they want to pay for is disaster porn like CNN or profitable propaganda like FAUX “news”.
Apparently Medium is not succeeding with what appears to be click-bait approach. Are they desperate enough to consider REAL alternatives? Here are a couple of the top of my head:
(1) Sell SOLUTIONS to the problems. After each article about a problem there should be some links to proposed projects to help SOLVE the problem. Interested readers could look over the projects and buy a share, perhaps $10 a pop, and if enough wannabe-helpful donors agree, then the project would get funded, and later evaluated and the results reported on. The sponsor should be a charitable umbrella organization that would make sure each project proposal was complete and a percentage of funded projects would go back to the websites that helped publicize the problem (like Medium).
(2) Auction my valuable time in LIMITED amounts in exchange for sponsored news. The intermediary (which might be Medium) would have good reason to protect my privacy and personal information in order to protect their involvement, and the companies that are selling goods and services I actually want would get more reliable access to the customers who actually WANT to buy what they’re selling.
Why no comment (that I can find) about the fundamentally misleading title. They did NOT find or even "identify" a new organ. They just decided that the description of a certain part of the human body could be made a bit more clear. Kind of like a promotion up to "organ" status rather like the demotion of Pluto down from planet status.
I'm skeptical it will be helpful in any medical sense, but maybe it will help clarify some medical conditions. Might need to rename them, too.
Not sure I should go here... Probably not. However to me the significant part of improving medical diagnoses is that the more detailed and accurate diagnoses of our diseases reduce the uncertainty about when we'll die and why. So is your last will and testament boots-on or boots-off?
The perversion of copyright is a different problem, but I absolutely agree with your sentiments. However I doubt that Project Gutenberg could be ramped up to the scale I'm thinking of. Nor would it be good for a private company like the google (of increasing EVIL) or the Amazon (of privacy abuse) to have monopolistic control over such a definitive repository of human knowledge, such as it is.
I would prefer that the big repository of ebooks be controlled by the librarians and possibly some academics who are sincerely focused on the preservation of the books for future readers. Maybe a bit for their own sake, too.
Z^3
Z^4
Writing as an aging bibliophile who loves the feel and "process" of reading paper books, I'm still forced to regard this as a kind of Luddite problem. Or maybe I should just describe it as bad economics?
The value of a library's shelf space is measurable. The old books should not be rendered inaccessible, but their marginal value continues to decline and shelf space needs to be made available for the new stuff that people want to read more. The obvious and rational response is to retire old paper books in favor of electronic versions. Personally I hate ebooks and think Amazon is aggressively creating an ebook monopoly that will destroy the publishing industry, but... It would make much more sense to make the old, long-tail books available instantly in electronic forms.
There should actually be an equilibrium price here where the 'rental' cost to the library is balanced against the value of the shelf space. For old fogies like me, they should still have an inter-library loan to (slowly) borrow a paper copy. It's not like the old books are going anywhere, eh?
(As usual, I would have hoped to see previous commenters ahead of me, and as too usual these days, it seems no one goes to the obvious places... I should have searched harder? However, in this case the key terms were obvious and they came up almost entirely dry. The unmoderated comment I'm replying to does mention "ebooks", though the notion of putting "ebooks in libraries" is confusing. This is primarily a problem of permissions exacerbated by the greed and desperation of the publishers. The technology is already there.)
ZZ
Z^3
Of all the comments modded insightful, I felt this was one of the few that deserved the mod.
Anyway, the reason to respond is to speculate on citizenship... If I had my choice, I think I'd prefer to be Danish or Swiss.
Just asking, because it isn't certain America has been decapitated yet. We need to wait for Trump to encounter an actual crisis to see how phucked we are.
Pointless comment, since "insight" on today's Slashdot means someone agrees with you (or has a sock puppet with mod points). My real disappointment was with the total lack of actually funny comments. My hopes were raised by such an active topic.
As regards the alternative explanations, I think there is only one that passes my threshold of plausibility: The Chinese framing the Russians. However it fails on the motive criterion. It is possible the Chinese have the technical means to make it look like the Russians, and both had the opportunity, but the Chinese are doing well enough under the status quo and lack the motive to decapitate America. Haven't made up my mind about the anti-Hillary angle attributed to Putin, but again it appears the Chinese were looking forward to working with her in a relatively predictable way. Then again, the Chinese are capable of 3D chess, so maybe something will come up to reveal a motive?
Are you buying the hope, the dream, or the dream of hope?
Recently read another book that mentioned how lottery winners return to their original state of happiness within a year or so, even if they don't squander all the money. I'd actually be interested in research that followed up the losers. Compared to the odds of winning, it's much more likely that some of the losers came to more serious problems because of the lack of the money they spent on the tickets. As far as I know, that's never been researched.
I am not saying that the Mac black-box approach was instantly successful, but it has certainly become dominant over time. My focus was on the philosophic shift from the hacker mentality to the what we have now, though I'm not sure how to best characterize it. Whatever it is now, I think a lot of the fun and coolness has been removed.
Well it sounds like you're agreeing with me in that form, except that there is some confusing about "network effects" in relation to public or private standards. What I suggested was that Windows can start as a private standard (as it is now), but improvements in the standard (motivated by REAL competition) would be forced into the public domain.
I even speculate that the competition would cause the OS to improve and evolve faster. I would certainly prefer to shop for a smaller and more secure version if I had that choice...
ZZ
Having said nothing about pseudonyms, I had no idea what you were talking about until I accidentally stumbled across the hidden AC comment you were actually replying to.
My position on handles is different but much more complicated. In general I am averse to handles, though I have been obliged to adopt them from time to time, sometimes in relation to functional roles (as "postmaster") or due to linguistic constraints (as in my current handle). An established identity may well be associated with a handle, and many real names may fail to establish an identity. I once had a business encounter involving John Smith. Yes, THAT John Smith. I'm sure it was him because the check cleared!
However, upon checking I do see that Slashdot has a real name field in my profile, and it does contain my real name. Not sure what that signifies, but I've never much worried about concealing myself. Then again, my "shanen" identity is more than 25 years old now, and quite probably better known than I am.
Thank you for proving my point about the worthlessness of looking at AC posts. I saw yours by accident as I parent-ed back up the thread.
In your case, you are apparently using AC status to hide your lies. I said nothing about pseudonyms.
I don't like liars and I certainly hope I don't notice you again, so I thank you for your AC status and encourage you to be anonymous all of the time.
I agree subject to the proviso that some ACs respond in ways that claim ownership of a prior AC comment. If you are willing to accept such claims, then some sort of discussion is possible, though the notion of identity is strained and transient.
However, I also have to say that it is increasingly hard to aspire to "discussion" on Slashdot these days. Abuse of anonymity is only one of many problems. I actually think the most severe problem is the lack of a viable financial model to motivate and pay for the solutions. Good, hard, honest work don't come cheap.
Touche?
I'm not sure, because I do think there was a philosophic transition, too. Especially in the area of microcomputers, where the functionality of the "toys" was often superior to the mainframes, at least at the human level of spreadsheets and word processing. However, the original microcomputers were for hobbyists and were often open architectures, where the limitations on your understanding were mostly available time and interest, not corporate determination to protect secret standards. Don't you think the Mac introduced a new kind of black-box mentality to the PC world?
Perhaps the real problem is that we are still hunter gatherers? Relative to the speed of computer evolution, our minds have not kept up. Or evolved at all, to put it more bluntly. Natural evolution requires lots of generations, but the entire computer revolution started only a few years before my birth...