"No doubt there have been many individual Catholics who, in forsaking Church teachings, have brought shame to the institution as a whole. It is vitally important to make the distinction."
This is true in any organization, and is one of the inherent weaknesses of organized religion. That being said, the Catholic Church itself has, throughout the years, advocated everything from slavery, to torture, to execution.
"And that's only the last 30 or 40 years, imagine how much its changed in 800 or 1000 years!"
That's not the worst of it, as those are intentional changes, usually meant to clarify something or to make it fit better into context. The worst happened before printing presses were widely available. Monks would sit copying Bibles by hand, sometimes translating them into other languages as they went. Ever take a foreign language? Say a sentence in a foreign language, then translate it on paper; first putting it into context, then translating word for word literally. Meanings are lost/changed any time you translate something, and many sections of the Bible have been translated a dozen times or more. As another neat idea, type a sentence into Babblefish and start translating the same sentence over and over (copying the results into the translation window each time). Finally, translate it back into English. Does it look anything like what you started out with? More importantly, does it mean the same thing? (This used to work and was fun, haven't tried it recently.)
"And try to refrain from making wildly opinionated and unsupported comments about something as sensitive as religion...any religion."
While I agree it's never good to make "wildly opinionated and unsupported comments", I don't think that's the case here. After spending all my years in schooling up 'til college in either Sunday school (first 4 years) or a Catholic school (the rest), I learned a great deal about the Catholic Church and its history. And you know what? (S)He's right. The statements made aren't supported by links etc., but generally speaking, facts stand on their own. If you would like to debate anything that was said, feel free. I'm more than willing to find a plethoria of evidence to support each and every claim made in that post.
" BTW I am a cathlic, and I am not bashing, just curious."
Don't feel bad, I'm Catholic and I bash 'em all the time. Between 4 years of Sunday school and 9 years of Catholic schooling, I pretty much figured out that I want nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
" Is there any specific reason that the Vatican would pick HP over other candidates?"
Remember the Compaq merger? HP's got a reputation for fudging facts. Precisely what's required for a job involving the Catholic church and ancient texts.
" a telemarketer tried to sell me one of those telezappers i'm pretty sure it was a prank"
Call go something like this?
Telemarketer: Hi Mr. Cantel! You: My name is Cantrell. TM: Did we catch you at a bad time? You: Well, actua... TM: Goooood.. If calls like this annoy the hell out of you, you need the Telezapper! You:... TM: It gets rid of those annoying dinner-time calls from lowlife telemarketers like myself! *hangup*
I was in Old Leonardtown in the summer of '00. Jackhammer right outside my window at 8am, AC off for two weeks, smelly workers (probably illegal immigrants) coming and going while they redid our kitchen (and helping themselves to anything we didn't have bolted down or locked away). The frequent power outages were a joy as well. I suppose the only nice thing was having a fat pipe to the net with virtually nobody else using it. Was a lovely time for friends on IRC.
Lemme know when they get a working railgun ready for army troops and I'll be the first one to sign up. I'm an excellent shot, and I've got 6 years of Quake experience to prove it! Bet I can kick Rumsfeld's ass in Rail Arena!
"Having your avionics system fried while flying at 900 knots over enemy territory would be a bit more than annoying don't you think?"
I don't know, why not ask the original F-16 test pilots?
When the F-16 premiered, there was a wire-chaffing problem, which was then covered up as much as possible by the military and General Dynamics (designed the F-16). Basically, screws protruding into the sections of the plane housing most of the wiring were rubbing against the wires during flight; hence the wire chaffing. The mechanics wouldn't ever see a problem on the ground, but during flight every so often, the insulation would wear thin and all of a sudden, the elctrical system would completely short out. Congratulations, you now have the most computer-reliant fighter in the world flying without an electrical system. Basically, crashes were mostly either covered up completely or blamed on the pilots until General Dynamics could fix the problem.
This right here is where the heart of my feelings on this issue rest:
"any HTTP GET request is exactly that, a request. "May I have that resource, Server Sir?"."
At that point, when the server fulfills the request (in essence, a 'yes'), it is rendering consent that you may possess whatever it's sending. How can an inanimate object render consent? Simple; those who maintain the web server allowed it to do so. A computer may only ever do what it is told to do by a human being (at least at this point). In this case, a human being had to move said files onto the web server, and then moved them into the published folder, essentially ordering the server to give that resource to whomever requests it. The web server is little more than an extension of the employee or employees who maintain it. It's no different than having those same employees answering telephone calls from people requesting resources, and then either denying the request or fulfilling it.
There was no trickery, nor any deceit. There was a "may I have that?" from Reuters, and a "yes you may" from the web server. Fire the employee(s) who maintain the server; trash the server; cut the internet connection - but don't sue Reuters. Your problem is in-house folks, and this action only ensures that your employees will continue to handle your most sensitive data in a reckless manner.
As for Reuters, I'd have to say this is about as far as they can go. Obviously, trying passwords and such to access hidden data is evidence of fraud, in that you're trying to pass yourself off as the person who has rightful access to the account. Ask Kevin Mitnick about requests for data, as he did that plenty. The difference between what Mitnick was doing and what Reuters did was that Mitnick said anything and everything to get simple-minded folks to send him what he wanted, whereas Reuters simply asked politely and had their request granted on the spot. If I call you on the phone and ask you for the source code for a new product your company is developing - saying something like, "may I please have the source code to project xyz emailed to me@somewhere.com?", and never make any fraudulent claims, or even say another word, whose fault is it when the source arrives in my inbox?
As for the argument about Reuters publishing the report, I could make a joke about fair use allowing you to time-shift things (never says you can't "shift it to the future";) ), but that might be in poor taste. The company has to publish the information at some point anyway, and in the current climate of scandals and such, it's probably better to do so sooner rather than later - but this doesn't really address what Reuters did. Did they have a right to publish a financial report which had no yet been made public? I think that depends on how it was obtained. If it were a case of an informant inside the company, I would have to say they have no right to publish that information, unless the company expressly allowed for the employee/informant to disclose company information. In this case, however, one or more employees for this company openly published the information on the company web server. Unless Reuters had good reason to believe the information was confidential and was given to them without the authorization and/or consent of the company in question, then I don't see where they've done anything wrong. This wasn't an informant, this was a web server publishing to hundreds of millions of people. The fact that it wasn't right out in the open is irrelevent. If anyone remembers, there wasn't much on the internet 10 years ago that was easy to find. If anyone wants to see what it's like, check out freenet 0.5. Does this make everyone who used the net in the 80's and early 90's criminals? You usually had to scour the landscape to find anything, yet all Reuters did was type in a URL. Reuters requested something which was handed over on the spot; did anyone even tell them it wasn't supposed to be published? I'm not saying Reuters didn't know that publishing the report would piss off that company; simply that they had a reasonable expectation of the ability to publish that which had already been made available to anyone with an internet connection by that company.
"Yahoo has the news about the new P4 who will run at nothing less than 3.06mhz."
It's just the latest in a long-running battle between AMD and Intel. Judging by the speed on this thing, and assuming it might actually be able to run at say... 3GHz, we're looking at a chip that can run 1,052,688,062,745 (over a trillion) times it's rated clock speed with no additional cooling!
Alrighty, so I downloaded the software for freenet 0.5, and I got everything installed and running in about 5 - 10 minutes; no big deal. So then, like any true geek, I had to start tinkering with the settings. Now, it still seems to work ok, but it's using a ton of CPU (about 30 - 40% on average of an AXP 1700), and I'm having a bit of trouble getting into some basic sites like The Freedom Engine, which I was able to pop right into last night. Of course, I didn't look to see what the defaults were, and I guess my main concern is that I might be making life difficult for others with a possible misconfiguration. So if someone who's a bit more knowledgable about this software could give me an idea of what the Performance settings under the Advanced Settings should look like, I'd greatly appreciate it. I turned up zip on google and saw nothing in the helps/docs/online helps about a default configuration. Personally, I'd rather have well-tweaked settings (for optimal performance for both me and people using my node) than the defaults. Anyway, here's some info to maybe narrow things down a bit.
System Config: AthlonXP 1700+ 1GB DDR more drive space than you can shake a tree at business cable (3.5mbps/384k) Win2k
Freenet is configured as follows: non-transient (duh) 10GB disk space allocated (willing to add more if needed) announce to other nodes is on Init Req HTL: 15 Max HTL: 50 Max connections: 40 Max Threads: 160 CPU priority: (lessthan)NORMAL (interferes with games and such is it's on normal, I suppose it's something to do with the thread scheduler, perhaps talking to the folks at distributed.net might help with that.)
If anyone can help shed some light on this for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. It's entirely possible that this is all normal; it's just that being new to freenet, I don't know what "normal" is in terms of software/network behavior. From what I've seen, freenet is a more secure/private version of the pre-WWW internet. I like the concept and I'd like to help out if I can get the software nailed down.
Re:Anyone gotten it to do anything usefull?
on
Freenet 0.5 Released
·
· Score: 2
"Yes, all of the $tology upper level stuff is on Freenet. Reading tt was a very enlightening experience."
I agree completely. Oh, one quick question though - did you find the part yet about how to stop levitating? I want to go to bed, but I can't get down.:(
"It needs smart kids (geeks even) as much as it needs stereotypical grunts."
So are you!
So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll join the Army on Monday... if Bush makes me a 5-star general on Tuesday. I'm not much for shooting at people, but I can certainly look at a map and yell, "go here!".
(west wing humor) Just make sure Nancy doesn't call me "admiral sissy-pants":-(
"Paraphrasing as "First they came for the murderers, and I didn't speak up because I was not a murderer", for example, rather loses the power of the original quote."
My point was that the rights of all must be protect, lest we risk losing our own. Your quote, "First they came for the murderers, and I didn't speak up because I was not a murderer" makes more sense in the context of my posting if you consider the idea of everyone who's been accused of murder being rounded up by police and incinerated without so much as a trial, or any chance to defend themselves. Rework the quote as such and it makes more sense: "First they came for those accused of murder, and I didn't speak up because I didn't murder anyone. Then they came for those accused of terrorism, and I didn't speak up because I'm not a terrorist. Then they came for those accused of other crimes, and I didn't speak up because I'm not a criminal. Then I was accused of a crime I didn't commit, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up for me."
Make a bit more sense? That's what I was trying to get across by referencing that quote; my apologies if I was too vague.
"Make sure you're placing the blame in the right place here... terrorism coverage means strong circulation and high ratings, which mean stronger ad sales, which equate to more profit for the media."
Yes, the media perpetuates the fear-mongering of the current administration. When the FBI/CIA-slamming started taking root about their pre-9/11 failures, what was the response? "Arresting" Jose Padilla and claiming to have stopped an "unfolding terrorist plot". Nevermind the fact that Wolfowitz later acknowledged that there was no plot (let alone one in the middle of being carried out), other than some "loose talk". And when the criticism of the Administration's actions began to surface, how did they respond? They raised the "alert level" based on loose, unconfirmed information gathered mainly from admittedly unreliable sources such as Abu Zubaida. From this page, "Zubaida is the source for numerous false alarms of recent months, including FBI warnings that terrorists would attack US banks, US shipping, or residential apartment buildings. Several US intelligence people, under condition of anonymity, have said that Zubaida is just playing with us, feeding false information to create panic."
So yes, we should place the blame where it belongs, so let me clear up what I'm saying: the media perpetuates the FUD, misdirection, and outright lies of the current administration. My mention of that line with 8 FUD-filled keywords was to illustrate a point - look at how people phrase things when they talk, and look for signs of BS, such as stringing tons of the usual FUD keywords together. The media isn't making this stuff up as they go along, it's being fed to them. The so-called "unnamed sources" and "sources within the administration" are usually low-level nobodies who feed lines to the media under the guise of a "leak" or "inside information". Watch The West Wing some time to see the communications dept's spindoctors hard at work sending just the right information (be it true, true but with a spin, or completely false) through staffers to the media. I remember one episode when the CJ was coaching Ansley Hayes, getting her to ask a reporter a question in just the right way as to get the reporter to report what CJ wanted him to. (This was just before the Congressional censure, at the beginning of the investigation by the special prosecutor)
"The back pedofiles, murderers, rapists, terrorists, etc. The little good they do is negated by all the bullshit they do. The liberal bastards can kiss my ass and will never get my support on anything."
"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up for me."
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Justice is blind, and all persons are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the rights of the lowest members of society are recognized, then everyone else doesn't have to worry about their rights. If you don't like the fact that our laws, our government, and our Constitution were created with the recognition that all (wo)men were created equal, then perhaps a country such as China is better suited for you.
"When is the last time you saw the ACLU take a pro-second amendment stance?"
First of all, when was the last time you saw second amendment violations that went unchallenged? The ACLU generally defends the rights and the people that no one else will defend. You've got one hell of a gun lobby protecting your second amendment rights, so there's never a need for the ACLU to step in and do something. The NRA has more money, more pull in Washington, and more power than the entire ACLU, and the NRA does basically nothing but defend the right to own a firearm.
You'd best try something else if you're going to argue against the ACLU protections of Constitutional freedoms...
I just saw one of the new ACLU ads (real player required) on this page, and I almost went nuts. It absolutely slams Ashcroft, and I'm about ready to send in another donation on that note. Keep ads like those coming, ACLU, and I'll keep my money flowing. That's a promise.
Slashdot Mirror
"No doubt there have been many individual Catholics who, in forsaking Church teachings, have brought shame to the institution as a whole. It is vitally important to make the distinction."
This is true in any organization, and is one of the inherent weaknesses of organized religion. That being said, the Catholic Church itself has, throughout the years, advocated everything from slavery, to torture, to execution.
"And that's only the last 30 or 40 years, imagine how much its changed in 800 or 1000 years!"
That's not the worst of it, as those are intentional changes, usually meant to clarify something or to make it fit better into context. The worst happened before printing presses were widely available. Monks would sit copying Bibles by hand, sometimes translating them into other languages as they went. Ever take a foreign language? Say a sentence in a foreign language, then translate it on paper; first putting it into context, then translating word for word literally. Meanings are lost/changed any time you translate something, and many sections of the Bible have been translated a dozen times or more. As another neat idea, type a sentence into Babblefish and start translating the same sentence over and over (copying the results into the translation window each time). Finally, translate it back into English. Does it look anything like what you started out with? More importantly, does it mean the same thing? (This used to work and was fun, haven't tried it recently.)
"And try to refrain from making wildly opinionated and unsupported comments about something as sensitive as religion...any religion."
While I agree it's never good to make "wildly opinionated and unsupported comments", I don't think that's the case here. After spending all my years in schooling up 'til college in either Sunday school (first 4 years) or a Catholic school (the rest), I learned a great deal about the Catholic Church and its history. And you know what? (S)He's right. The statements made aren't supported by links etc., but generally speaking, facts stand on their own. If you would like to debate anything that was said, feel free. I'm more than willing to find a plethoria of evidence to support each and every claim made in that post.
" BTW I am a cathlic, and I am not bashing, just curious."
Don't feel bad, I'm Catholic and I bash 'em all the time. Between 4 years of Sunday school and 9 years of Catholic schooling, I pretty much figured out that I want nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
" Is there any specific reason that the Vatican would pick HP over other candidates?"
Remember the Compaq merger? HP's got a reputation for fudging facts. Precisely what's required for a job involving the Catholic church and ancient texts.
Any bets on whether Verizon's CEO could list all the Rules of Aquisition off the top of his head?
" a telemarketer tried to sell me one of those telezappers i'm pretty sure it was a prank"
...
Call go something like this?
Telemarketer: Hi Mr. Cantel!
You: My name is Cantrell.
TM: Did we catch you at a bad time?
You: Well, actua...
TM: Goooood.. If calls like this annoy the hell out of you, you need the Telezapper!
You:
TM: It gets rid of those annoying dinner-time calls from lowlife telemarketers like myself!
*hangup*
""you own a free porn site, AND a pet store?""
"Actually, it's conceivable that both of those are part of the same business venture."
There's that Vulcan sense of humor we're all so fond of here on slashdot.
You think that's bad?
I was in Old Leonardtown in the summer of '00. Jackhammer right outside my window at 8am, AC off for two weeks, smelly workers (probably illegal immigrants) coming and going while they redid our kitchen (and helping themselves to anything we didn't have bolted down or locked away). The frequent power outages were a joy as well. I suppose the only nice thing was having a fat pipe to the net with virtually nobody else using it. Was a lovely time for friends on IRC.
" Only 6 out of 20 are generating revenue?"
Those 6 probably sold the furniture on eBay.
Lemme know when they get a working railgun ready for army troops and I'll be the first one to sign up. I'm an excellent shot, and I've got 6 years of Quake experience to prove it! Bet I can kick Rumsfeld's ass in Rail Arena!
"Having your avionics system fried while flying at 900 knots over enemy territory would be a bit more than annoying don't you think?"
I don't know, why not ask the original F-16 test pilots?
When the F-16 premiered, there was a wire-chaffing problem, which was then covered up as much as possible by the military and General Dynamics (designed the F-16). Basically, screws protruding into the sections of the plane housing most of the wiring were rubbing against the wires during flight; hence the wire chaffing. The mechanics wouldn't ever see a problem on the ground, but during flight every so often, the insulation would wear thin and all of a sudden, the elctrical system would completely short out. Congratulations, you now have the most computer-reliant fighter in the world flying without an electrical system. Basically, crashes were mostly either covered up completely or blamed on the pilots until General Dynamics could fix the problem.
"1. Pay millions to executives
;)
2. ????
3. PROFIT!!!"
2. Rob, cheat, lie, steal, defraud, forge, beguile, deceive, delude, misguide, misinform, misinstruct, mislead, distort, extort, exaggerate, misstate, befool, dupe, fool, gull, con, fudge, short, double-cross, betray, sell-out, spoof, bluff, two-time, bamboozle, hoodwink...
The list goes on and on
Now we can all choke Saddam while he's reading his email!
This right here is where the heart of my feelings on this issue rest:
;) ), but that might be in poor taste. The company has to publish the information at some point anyway, and in the current climate of scandals and such, it's probably better to do so sooner rather than later - but this doesn't really address what Reuters did. Did they have a right to publish a financial report which had no yet been made public? I think that depends on how it was obtained. If it were a case of an informant inside the company, I would have to say they have no right to publish that information, unless the company expressly allowed for the employee/informant to disclose company information. In this case, however, one or more employees for this company openly published the information on the company web server. Unless Reuters had good reason to believe the information was confidential and was given to them without the authorization and/or consent of the company in question, then I don't see where they've done anything wrong. This wasn't an informant, this was a web server publishing to hundreds of millions of people. The fact that it wasn't right out in the open is irrelevent. If anyone remembers, there wasn't much on the internet 10 years ago that was easy to find. If anyone wants to see what it's like, check out freenet 0.5. Does this make everyone who used the net in the 80's and early 90's criminals? You usually had to scour the landscape to find anything, yet all Reuters did was type in a URL. Reuters requested something which was handed over on the spot; did anyone even tell them it wasn't supposed to be published? I'm not saying Reuters didn't know that publishing the report would piss off that company; simply that they had a reasonable expectation of the ability to publish that which had already been made available to anyone with an internet connection by that company.
"any HTTP GET request is exactly that, a request. "May I have that resource, Server Sir?"."
At that point, when the server fulfills the request (in essence, a 'yes'), it is rendering consent that you may possess whatever it's sending. How can an inanimate object render consent? Simple; those who maintain the web server allowed it to do so. A computer may only ever do what it is told to do by a human being (at least at this point). In this case, a human being had to move said files onto the web server, and then moved them into the published folder, essentially ordering the server to give that resource to whomever requests it. The web server is little more than an extension of the employee or employees who maintain it. It's no different than having those same employees answering telephone calls from people requesting resources, and then either denying the request or fulfilling it.
There was no trickery, nor any deceit. There was a "may I have that?" from Reuters, and a "yes you may" from the web server. Fire the employee(s) who maintain the server; trash the server; cut the internet connection - but don't sue Reuters. Your problem is in-house folks, and this action only ensures that your employees will continue to handle your most sensitive data in a reckless manner.
As for Reuters, I'd have to say this is about as far as they can go. Obviously, trying passwords and such to access hidden data is evidence of fraud, in that you're trying to pass yourself off as the person who has rightful access to the account. Ask Kevin Mitnick about requests for data, as he did that plenty. The difference between what Mitnick was doing and what Reuters did was that Mitnick said anything and everything to get simple-minded folks to send him what he wanted, whereas Reuters simply asked politely and had their request granted on the spot. If I call you on the phone and ask you for the source code for a new product your company is developing - saying something like, "may I please have the source code to project xyz emailed to me@somewhere.com?", and never make any fraudulent claims, or even say another word, whose fault is it when the source arrives in my inbox?
As for the argument about Reuters publishing the report, I could make a joke about fair use allowing you to time-shift things (never says you can't "shift it to the future"
" overclocking is pointless cos the speed increase you get isn't worth the effort and money."
Yes, because entering my BIOS at POST and upping the FSB by about 10MHz is so incredibly time-consuming and costly.
"Yahoo has the news about the new P4 who will run at nothing less than 3.06mhz."
It's just the latest in a long-running battle between AMD and Intel. Judging by the speed on this thing, and assuming it might actually be able to run at say... 3GHz, we're looking at a chip that can run 1,052,688,062,745 (over a trillion) times it's rated clock speed with no additional cooling!
I may be an AMD fan, but holy shit, Intel. Bravo!
Alrighty, so I downloaded the software for freenet 0.5, and I got everything installed and running in about 5 - 10 minutes; no big deal. So then, like any true geek, I had to start tinkering with the settings. Now, it still seems to work ok, but it's using a ton of CPU (about 30 - 40% on average of an AXP 1700), and I'm having a bit of trouble getting into some basic sites like The Freedom Engine, which I was able to pop right into last night. Of course, I didn't look to see what the defaults were, and I guess my main concern is that I might be making life difficult for others with a possible misconfiguration. So if someone who's a bit more knowledgable about this software could give me an idea of what the Performance settings under the Advanced Settings should look like, I'd greatly appreciate it. I turned up zip on google and saw nothing in the helps/docs/online helps about a default configuration. Personally, I'd rather have well-tweaked settings (for optimal performance for both me and people using my node) than the defaults. Anyway, here's some info to maybe narrow things down a bit.
System Config:
AthlonXP 1700+
1GB DDR
more drive space than you can shake a tree at
business cable (3.5mbps/384k)
Win2k
Freenet is configured as follows:
non-transient (duh)
10GB disk space allocated (willing to add more if needed)
announce to other nodes is on
Init Req HTL: 15
Max HTL: 50
Max connections: 40
Max Threads: 160
CPU priority: (lessthan)NORMAL (interferes with games and such is it's on normal, I suppose it's something to do with the thread scheduler, perhaps talking to the folks at distributed.net might help with that.)
If anyone can help shed some light on this for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. It's entirely possible that this is all normal; it's just that being new to freenet, I don't know what "normal" is in terms of software/network behavior. From what I've seen, freenet is a more secure/private version of the pre-WWW internet. I like the concept and I'd like to help out if I can get the software nailed down.
"Yes, all of the $tology upper level stuff is on Freenet. Reading tt was a very enlightening experience."
:(
I agree completely. Oh, one quick question though - did you find the part yet about how to stop levitating? I want to go to bed, but I can't get down.
"Most geeks I know don't "take orders" very well"
:-(
You're absolutely right!
"It needs smart kids (geeks even) as much as it needs stereotypical grunts."
So are you!
So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll join the Army on Monday... if Bush makes me a 5-star general on Tuesday. I'm not much for shooting at people, but I can certainly look at a map and yell, "go here!".
(west wing humor) Just make sure Nancy doesn't call me "admiral sissy-pants"
"Paraphrasing as "First they came for the murderers, and I didn't speak up because I was not a murderer", for example, rather loses the power of the original quote."
My point was that the rights of all must be protect, lest we risk losing our own. Your quote, "First they came for the murderers, and I didn't speak up because I was not a murderer" makes more sense in the context of my posting if you consider the idea of everyone who's been accused of murder being rounded up by police and incinerated without so much as a trial, or any chance to defend themselves. Rework the quote as such and it makes more sense:
"First they came for those accused of murder, and I didn't speak up because I didn't murder anyone.
Then they came for those accused of terrorism, and I didn't speak up because I'm not a terrorist.
Then they came for those accused of other crimes, and I didn't speak up because I'm not a criminal.
Then I was accused of a crime I didn't commit, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up for me."
Make a bit more sense? That's what I was trying to get across by referencing that quote; my apologies if I was too vague.
"Make sure you're placing the blame in the right place here... terrorism coverage means strong circulation and high ratings, which mean stronger ad sales, which equate to more profit for the media."
Yes, the media perpetuates the fear-mongering of the current administration. When the FBI/CIA-slamming started taking root about their pre-9/11 failures, what was the response? "Arresting" Jose Padilla and claiming to have stopped an "unfolding terrorist plot". Nevermind the fact that Wolfowitz later acknowledged that there was no plot (let alone one in the middle of being carried out), other than some "loose talk". And when the criticism of the Administration's actions began to surface, how did they respond? They raised the "alert level" based on loose, unconfirmed information gathered mainly from admittedly unreliable sources such as Abu Zubaida. From this page, "Zubaida is the source for numerous false alarms of recent months, including FBI warnings that terrorists would attack US banks, US shipping, or residential apartment buildings. Several US intelligence people, under condition of anonymity, have said that Zubaida is just playing with us, feeding false information to create panic."
So yes, we should place the blame where it belongs, so let me clear up what I'm saying: the media perpetuates the FUD, misdirection, and outright lies of the current administration. My mention of that line with 8 FUD-filled keywords was to illustrate a point - look at how people phrase things when they talk, and look for signs of BS, such as stringing tons of the usual FUD keywords together. The media isn't making this stuff up as they go along, it's being fed to them. The so-called "unnamed sources" and "sources within the administration" are usually low-level nobodies who feed lines to the media under the guise of a "leak" or "inside information". Watch The West Wing some time to see the communications dept's spindoctors hard at work sending just the right information (be it true, true but with a spin, or completely false) through staffers to the media. I remember one episode when the CJ was coaching Ansley Hayes, getting her to ask a reporter a question in just the right way as to get the reporter to report what CJ wanted him to. (This was just before the Congressional censure, at the beginning of the investigation by the special prosecutor)
"The back pedofiles, murderers, rapists, terrorists, etc. The little good they do is negated by all the bullshit they do. The liberal bastards can kiss my ass and will never get my support on anything."
"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up for me."
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Justice is blind, and all persons are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the rights of the lowest members of society are recognized, then everyone else doesn't have to worry about their rights. If you don't like the fact that our laws, our government, and our Constitution were created with the recognition that all (wo)men were created equal, then perhaps a country such as China is better suited for you.
"When is the last time you saw the ACLU take a pro-second amendment stance?"
First of all, when was the last time you saw second amendment violations that went unchallenged? The ACLU generally defends the rights and the people that no one else will defend. You've got one hell of a gun lobby protecting your second amendment rights, so there's never a need for the ACLU to step in and do something. The NRA has more money, more pull in Washington, and more power than the entire ACLU, and the NRA does basically nothing but defend the right to own a firearm.
You'd best try something else if you're going to argue against the ACLU protections of Constitutional freedoms...
I just saw one of the new ACLU ads (real player required) on this page, and I almost went nuts. It absolutely slams Ashcroft, and I'm about ready to send in another donation on that note. Keep ads like those coming, ACLU, and I'll keep my money flowing. That's a promise.