Agreed until you used "civil disobedience" to describe what they did.
Civil disobedience is not abiding, and thus breaking, a law in order to protest its injustice -- protesters use civil disobedience so that the crime and the unjust punishment can be starkly juxtaposed in the public eye. Lulzsec have broken only laws regarding computer fraud, yet they were not protesting computer fraud laws they thought unjust, they were protesting laws of censorship, i.e. they committed a different crime in retaliation for what they saw as injustice -- that is a HUGE difference.
This is NOT civil disobedience, they are not the downtrodden heroes, they are a vigilante group with their own agenda using tactics we despise for causes we cherish. Think on that for a moment. Isn't this exactly what most Slashdotters hate about governments, behaving as if the ends justify the means? And yet here we are supporting just that, because for the moment it looked like a good thing.
Actually, I wasn't entirely correct there, sorry. I just run the old install file I have from 2007, and it gets the newest version. No now when I run the program, though. Ignore that post in any case. Sorry
I think the idea here is that there's no free lunch in distorting the economy, artificially strengthening one part will always make some other part of the system more vulnerable -- the invisible hand always catches up with you and makes you pay. To say things akin to "well the USA does it too" avoids the issue, I mean what conversational response can there be to that rhetoric, "ok we'll stop talking about it"? Give me a break.
I'd normally agree with you, but by the way they're defining "torture" these days, I'm not so sure I could. I'd take being forced to listen to shitty metal music while standing on one leg over getting blasted to little pieces any day.
Well, maybe we could have this freedom if non-Americans in this country and across the world would all agree to stick their fingers in their ears and yell LALALALALA whenever the US government wishes to inform its citizens.
Submitter claims a non-binding poll constituted a vote, while also implying that no such thing happens in the US Conducting a poll is in no way equal to holding a vote, and if anything US politicians are far too caught up in polling numbers. Two points in the summary -- both falsehoods.
The only things we can learned from this story is: 1. hackingbear is now a confirmed troll 2. timothy needs to be made aware that if he intends to promote troll submissions, he better be prepared to explain to his employers the future decline in Slashdot viewership.
That's a central bank, or more accurately the authority overseeing the banking system, e.g. Federal Reserve or ECB. not the same animal as, say, Bank of America.
I'm pretty sure networking hardware and the software they use are platform-neutral with respect to client connections, and they took your issue as an instance of "THAT dude who thinks he's leet for using linux yet doesn't know how networks operate."
Firstly, none of what you've listed can be considered political censorship, with the exception of possibly wikileaks. Even with wikileaks, no civilian has been arrested in connection with helping the organization, even though its list of donors has been made public.
Secondly, however opposed we both may be to some of the examples of censorship you've listed, every one of the violations is outlined in US law and defined rather clearly. Censorship is a capricious thing in China, where the law is ambiguous -- "disruption of harmony" being an often used one brought out to punish those who voice political criticism and gain attention. In addition, what is illegal to say is never put on record for the public, never made clear. Public outcry is allowed one day, but it is made illegal the next when the party tire of it. The result is that no one knows how far is too far, so everyone practices self-censorship. It is exactly the "chilling effect" slashdotters like to grimly bring up.
Lastly, in the US, you can fight censorship in the courts, and you can win. It would be a fool's errand to attempt to do so in China where there is no ACLU, no EFF, and where the courts are independent only in the propaganda pages. Saying the US has its own problems with censorship is certainly relevant and true, but using the same wording to subtly imply that the US and China are equal in its suppression of speech is over-dramatic and ignorant of reality in the eyes of this Chinese American slashdotter.
This isn't some esoteric theory being posited in a science journal. When the risk that is posed has the potential to harm or even kill people it would be smart to err on the side of the more cautious hypothesis. Burden of proof works the other way around in such circumstances -- it's the whole basis for that popular "better choice of two unwanted outcomes" argument for a total worldwide effort against global warming, for instance.
That's not a very fair comparison. Fashion has a luxury component in it that demands authenticity, so while it may be that LV bags are copied all the time, one cannot expect the impact of counterfeit in that area to be as high as that of digital content, which is the crux of the issue when we talk of IP in the USA.
Well, US federal law imposes a pretty low limit on credit card fraud liability -- which means banks, and thus the government, bear a fair share of the costs. It would not make much sense for any entity to rob from itself, though I wouldn't discount unscrupulous individuals doing something like you suggest for personal gain.
After all, a lot of wrong-doings wouldn't be done if there wasn't a social framework (e.g. forums) to reinforce the behaviour.
Shutting a site down won't stop people gathering, it's the internet. I think many people have an falsely close-ended view of law-enforcement -- that it's about ending network intrusion or some other beneficent finality. The fact is that the game is open-ended, and maintaining leverage and control is the only way to deal with the issue. The FBI knows and accepts this reality, and so they pursue the smarter strategy of containment and prevention rather than try to win the prize at the infinitely holed whack-a-mole game that is the internet.
Maybe you're more accurately a hobbyist tinkerer, and maybe someone else is more accurately a network intruder.. but fuck that in any case. This is what you get for pigeon-holing yourself into broadly defined labels. If people at large recognize a label for a certain meaning, insisting otherwise isn't going to change things or benefit you in any way. This is why I hate foisting labels on myself -- better to enjoy the hobbies and people you relate to on your own terms without ideological associations.
I agree. Articles related to hot topics are defaced all the time, and I'd expect people who got a kick from spreading the "truthiness" meme to also get a kick from messing up a historical account for further lulz, as much as any Palin supporter. And face it, sweat from sometimes biased and often uptight wikipedia editors is sweet nectar for trolls. It doesn't seem like anyone can know the true motives of an anonymous vandal.
First of all this news in no way lightens the cruel brutality through which the PRC government dealt with their citizens that day, but I want to make a point on a possible explanation for the "tanks crushing people" claim. I'm not saying it's false, since we'll never know the truth having not been there, but consider this: The Chinese word for "suppress" is "ya", which is the same exact word for "to physically crush underneath" -- to put suppress an idea or to crush grapes underfoot for juice, it's the same word. So the phrase "they're using tanks to suppress people in the square" and "they're using tanks to physically crush people in the square" are the same in Chinese. Perhaps the real meaning was lost in the moment, then even more so in translation.
There lies a deep contradiction in Anonymous wanting a world of goodwill and responsibility in one facet as you claim, yet clamoring for reckless lulz in another. When you can seamlessly fall from one justification to another, any action can be excused. The headless nature of the beast makes its intentions impossible to pin down, and therefore impossible to trust.
Think more deeply for a moment. The meat of this issue is not that the US is suddenly comfortable with bombing somebody's router when it threatens their power grid -- every country whose infrastructure is worth protecting already has this in their contingency plans. The real news is that the US is SAYING it and making it explicitly clear.
For those of you who still think in terms of moralities in geopolitics, I don't know what to tell you except grow up -- realpolitik defines the world beyond your Matrix-like construct of adversarial relationships. Brinkmanship is the name of the game and posturing with threat and counter-threat is how you play.
What this news indicates is that the Pentagon is not yet confident in its network anti-intrusion and counter-intrusion abilities. It therefore must reinforce its current posture with the next best tools it has available, i.e. its conventional arsenal. Or rather, the perceived threat of its conventional arsenal. Let this sink in and think back to the times past where China, Iran, Russia, even EU nations publicly highlighted an aggressive change to their doctrine, be they political, economic, or military.
It was all at moments of perceived weakness.
The Pentagon is very much aware of its own weakness in network security right now, and so a defensive gambit like this is how they maintain enemy reluctance in order to buy time until military and civilian cyber-security doctrine and operational procedure is brought up to standard, at which time you will see a lessening of this sort of rhetoric -- perhaps even seeing this stricken from official doctrine ('course you should never assume that anything is ever off the table). In short, this is more of an attempt to keep a defensive status quo than an offensive escalation.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed until you used "civil disobedience" to describe what they did.
Civil disobedience is not abiding, and thus breaking, a law in order to protest its injustice -- protesters use civil disobedience so that the crime and the unjust punishment can be starkly juxtaposed in the public eye. Lulzsec have broken only laws regarding computer fraud, yet they were not protesting computer fraud laws they thought unjust, they were protesting laws of censorship, i.e. they committed a different crime in retaliation for what they saw as injustice -- that is a HUGE difference.
This is NOT civil disobedience, they are not the downtrodden heroes, they are a vigilante group with their own agenda using tactics we despise for causes we cherish. Think on that for a moment. Isn't this exactly what most Slashdotters hate about governments, behaving as if the ends justify the means? And yet here we are supporting just that, because for the moment it looked like a good thing.
PDF http://azgovernor.gov/dms/upload/SB_1070_Signed.pdf
That's what I was wondering. What professional operation can't get customer data back from onsite or offsite backup withing the day?
Actually, I wasn't entirely correct there, sorry. I just run the old install file I have from 2007, and it gets the newest version. No now when I run the program, though. Ignore that post in any case. Sorry
Skype has always auto-dated for me. It's been doing that for years. Never found a way to turn that off, either -- not that it really bothers me.
I think the idea here is that there's no free lunch in distorting the economy, artificially strengthening one part will always make some other part of the system more vulnerable -- the invisible hand always catches up with you and makes you pay. To say things akin to "well the USA does it too" avoids the issue, I mean what conversational response can there be to that rhetoric, "ok we'll stop talking about it"? Give me a break.
I'd normally agree with you, but by the way they're defining "torture" these days, I'm not so sure I could. I'd take being forced to listen to shitty metal music while standing on one leg over getting blasted to little pieces any day.
Well, maybe we could have this freedom if non-Americans in this country and across the world would all agree to stick their fingers in their ears and yell LALALALALA whenever the US government wishes to inform its citizens.
Or maybe you and I are both being absurd.
Submitter claims a non-binding poll constituted a vote, while also implying that no such thing happens in the US
Conducting a poll is in no way equal to holding a vote, and if anything US politicians are far too caught up in polling numbers.
Two points in the summary -- both falsehoods.
The only things we can learned from this story is:
1. hackingbear is now a confirmed troll
2. timothy needs to be made aware that if he intends to promote troll submissions, he better be prepared to explain to his employers the future decline in Slashdot viewership.
Did you try the Chinese character search?
http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=en&safe=off&qscrl=1&q=%E5%A2%9E%E5%9F%8E+%E6%9A%B4%E4%B9%B1&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
I doubt the government cares about controlling the foreigners.
Ok, I'll accept "accused." Examples please.
bank...create and destroy money
That's a central bank, or more accurately the authority overseeing the banking system, e.g. Federal Reserve or ECB. not the same animal as, say, Bank of America.
People are now regularly being accused of terrorism for pointing out flaws and failures.
Care to list some examples of people indicted for "terrorism" when all they did was "point out flaws and failures"?
I'm pretty sure networking hardware and the software they use are platform-neutral with respect to client connections, and they took your issue as an instance of "THAT dude who thinks he's leet for using linux yet doesn't know how networks operate."
Firstly, none of what you've listed can be considered political censorship, with the exception of possibly wikileaks. Even with wikileaks, no civilian has been arrested in connection with helping the organization, even though its list of donors has been made public.
Secondly, however opposed we both may be to some of the examples of censorship you've listed, every one of the violations is outlined in US law and defined rather clearly. Censorship is a capricious thing in China, where the law is ambiguous -- "disruption of harmony" being an often used one brought out to punish those who voice political criticism and gain attention. In addition, what is illegal to say is never put on record for the public, never made clear. Public outcry is allowed one day, but it is made illegal the next when the party tire of it. The result is that no one knows how far is too far, so everyone practices self-censorship. It is exactly the "chilling effect" slashdotters like to grimly bring up.
Lastly, in the US, you can fight censorship in the courts, and you can win. It would be a fool's errand to attempt to do so in China where there is no ACLU, no EFF, and where the courts are independent only in the propaganda pages. Saying the US has its own problems with censorship is certainly relevant and true, but using the same wording to subtly imply that the US and China are equal in its suppression of speech is over-dramatic and ignorant of reality in the eyes of this Chinese American slashdotter.
This isn't some esoteric theory being posited in a science journal. When the risk that is posed has the potential to harm or even kill people it would be smart to err on the side of the more cautious hypothesis. Burden of proof works the other way around in such circumstances -- it's the whole basis for that popular "better choice of two unwanted outcomes" argument for a total worldwide effort against global warming, for instance.
That's not a very fair comparison. Fashion has a luxury component in it that demands authenticity, so while it may be that LV bags are copied all the time, one cannot expect the impact of counterfeit in that area to be as high as that of digital content, which is the crux of the issue when we talk of IP in the USA.
Well, US federal law imposes a pretty low limit on credit card fraud liability -- which means banks, and thus the government, bear a fair share of the costs. It would not make much sense for any entity to rob from itself, though I wouldn't discount unscrupulous individuals doing something like you suggest for personal gain.
After all, a lot of wrong-doings wouldn't be done if there wasn't a social framework (e.g. forums) to reinforce the behaviour.
Shutting a site down won't stop people gathering, it's the internet. I think many people have an falsely close-ended view of law-enforcement -- that it's about ending network intrusion or some other beneficent finality. The fact is that the game is open-ended, and maintaining leverage and control is the only way to deal with the issue. The FBI knows and accepts this reality, and so they pursue the smarter strategy of containment and prevention rather than try to win the prize at the infinitely holed whack-a-mole game that is the internet.
Maybe you're more accurately a hobbyist tinkerer, and maybe someone else is more accurately a network intruder.. but fuck that in any case. This is what you get for pigeon-holing yourself into broadly defined labels. If people at large recognize a label for a certain meaning, insisting otherwise isn't going to change things or benefit you in any way. This is why I hate foisting labels on myself -- better to enjoy the hobbies and people you relate to on your own terms without ideological associations.
I agree. Articles related to hot topics are defaced all the time, and I'd expect people who got a kick from spreading the "truthiness" meme to also get a kick from messing up a historical account for further lulz, as much as any Palin supporter. And face it, sweat from sometimes biased and often uptight wikipedia editors is sweet nectar for trolls. It doesn't seem like anyone can know the true motives of an anonymous vandal.
First of all this news in no way lightens the cruel brutality through which the PRC government dealt with their citizens that day, but I want to make a point on a possible explanation for the "tanks crushing people" claim. I'm not saying it's false, since we'll never know the truth having not been there, but consider this: The Chinese word for "suppress" is "ya", which is the same exact word for "to physically crush underneath" -- to put suppress an idea or to crush grapes underfoot for juice, it's the same word. So the phrase "they're using tanks to suppress people in the square" and "they're using tanks to physically crush people in the square" are the same in Chinese. Perhaps the real meaning was lost in the moment, then even more so in translation.
There lies a deep contradiction in Anonymous wanting a world of goodwill and responsibility in one facet as you claim, yet clamoring for reckless lulz in another. When you can seamlessly fall from one justification to another, any action can be excused. The headless nature of the beast makes its intentions impossible to pin down, and therefore impossible to trust.
That sets an unwanted precedence. Same reason governments don't negotiate with terrorists (or at least not in public)
Think more deeply for a moment. The meat of this issue is not that the US is suddenly comfortable with bombing somebody's router when it threatens their power grid -- every country whose infrastructure is worth protecting already has this in their contingency plans. The real news is that the US is SAYING it and making it explicitly clear.
For those of you who still think in terms of moralities in geopolitics, I don't know what to tell you except grow up -- realpolitik defines the world beyond your Matrix-like construct of adversarial relationships. Brinkmanship is the name of the game and posturing with threat and counter-threat is how you play.
What this news indicates is that the Pentagon is not yet confident in its network anti-intrusion and counter-intrusion abilities. It therefore must reinforce its current posture with the next best tools it has available, i.e. its conventional arsenal. Or rather, the perceived threat of its conventional arsenal. Let this sink in and think back to the times past where China, Iran, Russia, even EU nations publicly highlighted an aggressive change to their doctrine, be they political, economic, or military.
It was all at moments of perceived weakness.
The Pentagon is very much aware of its own weakness in network security right now, and so a defensive gambit like this is how they maintain enemy reluctance in order to buy time until military and civilian cyber-security doctrine and operational procedure is brought up to standard, at which time you will see a lessening of this sort of rhetoric -- perhaps even seeing this stricken from official doctrine ('course you should never assume that anything is ever off the table). In short, this is more of an attempt to keep a defensive status quo than an offensive escalation.