Which is fine by me. I don't have a problem with Intelligent Design by itself. Now, when people try to push to have it taught in science classes or given equal time with scientific theories with vast amounts of evidence supporting them, then I have a problem with it. As a concept in and of itself, meh, whatever.
In fact, I see Intelligent Design as a step in the right direction. It's essentially theists saying "okay science, you might be right -- BUT GOD DID IT ZOMG!" As an intellectual I find it to be a bit of a cop-out, but I also see it as a recognition that science might actually have it right, and also a step away from strict Biblical interpretations, both of which I consider to be extremely good things.
It's the distinction between faith and religion. I have no particular problem with people who have faith in god; I don't share it because my mind won't allow me to accept something without evidence beyond not knowing something ("god of the gaps"), but I don't mind that they can. I do have a problem--a major problem--with religion. To quote Jefferson, with its "tyranny over the mind of man." Its self-importance, its "knowing" it's right until it can't possibly deny it's wrong anymore, the atrocities committed by it and for it, the way it is used as an excuse to sanction pretty much every horrible action in human history from wars and sacrifies to the Crusades and Inquisitions to justifications of witch hunts and slavery to modern-day gay bashing. All of these things I loathe. But actual belief that there's a higher power? Not my cup of tea, but go ahead. If nothing else it forces people to think about what god is and what he would really think and really want, and to make those decisions as individuals or communities and not as billion-member denominations who are more than happy to do all your thinking for you.
As I said, as long as they don't try to consider such belief on the same levels of merit of actual scientific process and theory or force it on people in the name of "equality," I couldn't care less if that's what people believe.
I'm not disagreeing with you that there were multiple failures at multiple levels of the management chain.
But wouldn't using an unsalted hash vulnerable to dictionary attacks be the mistake of "low-level programming flunkies?" Why should any management-level people know what the hell a hash or a salt is, much less be micromanaging their programmers to that extent? Isn't that why you hire coders in the first place -- for their expertise in doing things the right way?
It seems that way to you, perhaps. Not to me, or many others.
If you want to claim that seeing sex psychologically devastates children, that's fine -- but that's quite the statement, and you're going to have to do better than your personal hunches. The link between sexual molestation and psychological issues is already established. Calling it a small step between something that professionals agree on and something conservative Christians pull from their rears is.. well, in your terminology I guess I'd call it a "smell step." The rest of the world would call it a ridiculously huge leap.
It's just like the debate on sex education. Should we teach our kids about sex and how to have it safely, or simply that sex is naughty unless you're married? And with due respect to the people who disagree, they're trying to frame it as a debate that should be given equal consideration on both sides -- but it's not. The reality is that the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and 9 in 10 teachers all believe there is a need for comprehensive sexual education, and the other side has... people who don't want their kids to have sex until they're married.
Informed consensual sex is not harmful, neither to children nor adults. Unsafe sex is harmful. Unsafe sex leads to pregnancy and STDs. A condom alone will prevent 99% of pregnancies, and action on the woman's side as well will increase that to levels akin to being struck by lightning. They also offer strong protection against STDs -- particularly when children are informed about them, exposed to them, have them available to them and have the sexual stigma removed so they feel like they can get and use them instead of fucking in the back of a car to hide from the parents.
From personal experience, I remember my first ejaculation was to prime-time TV before I knew what sex was. All I knew at the time was that rubbing my penis on the bed right then felt pretty damn good and when it happened, I literally jumped to my feet and tried to make it to the bathroom thinking I had somehow made myself pee. The idea that a teenager won't be a horny little toad as long as he doesn't see a sex video game or porn is ludicrous at best. Everything is already there, implanted in their brains and all you can do is hope they either don't do it or at least do it responsibly. I'd rather have children be educated and have protection available than bet on abstinence and pretend it's not a problem, and I'm also not willing to take anything from adults--intentionally or otherwise--betting on that horse.
The taboo way we're handling sex is far more hazardous to children than sex itself.
That theory would work far better if I weren't a web developer by profession.
Maybe there is some hidden complexity to delicious that I do not see; I only use it via browser plug-in as a bookmark sync, not the website itself. But I see an extremely simplistic database with users, bookmarks and tags, the output of which is some extremely simple HTML pages or an RSS feed. Infrastructure, as I already said, is a concern -- but not exactly a staggering one.
What, exactly, are you claiming is going to take large swathes of time? Or are you simply talking about of your ass because you have no idea how to do something so it must be hard?
What are the odds someone will buy the software but keep it going the same without any of the people?
Why wouldn't they? Delicious could be coded in, what, a week by a solo coder? With maybe another week or two to code the browser plugins? (I've never coded one for either browser, so I have no real means to estimate that.)
The reality is, delicious isn't that special. Whatever value it might have to some other company is in its users and its data, not the code or the people. Infrastructure is a concern, but it is with or without the people coming with it.
What makes either of you think he cares about surviving? He's not a young man; he's going to die, and relatively speaking, it's not likely to be that much longer. If he takes it into his head that it's considerably more important to him to create a legacy, well, starting a nuclear war is going to get your pictures in the history books.
Still, I think that if the threat of nuclear war becomes real that there is suddenly a highly increased chance of a coup that ends with Kim Jong-Il's head being thrown into South Korea. I understand the average people in the country are on the brainwashed side, but surely some of the top military commanders and people in government aren't. His son, for example, purportedly studied in Switzerland until 1998. There are at least a handful of people there who know how that course of action will ultimately end, and may decide that being alive and well in a country that doesn't glow outweighs their loyalty to a man trying to get himself killed for a legacy.
I imagine the fact that he is a felon in Australia with a history of mental breakdowns would top the list. And no, I'm not talking about anything to do with Wikileaks.
Never. Nor is contributing by producing clients for operating systems associated with open source a requirement. Nor anything else other than, you know, complying with the license.
Somebody just wanted to bitch and moan, and Slashdot, having lost any standards years ago, saw the words "open source" and published it. Huzzah.
I think killing you would be justice. Do you really want to play this game through to its conclusion? Do you think idiots like you are the ones who will come out on top? Our corporate and governmental douchebag overlords will come out on top, with a pile of corpses and business as usual in their wake.
If you think people deserve to die, grow a pair and go kill them. Otherwise shut the hell up about justice. Not having the balls to commit your own crime doesn't give you an acute sense of justice, it gives you an acute case of cowardice.
So in your little hypothetical, the major problem is that Google will provide something that users will like and use? OH NOES!
Too often people rail on and on about choice, but what they really mean is the freedom to choose their way or clearly there must be some flaw in the system. Is it worth trading choice for convenience? Not for me, but you also have to realize that, somewhat paradoxically, trading choice for convenience is a choice. As long as people know, or can know with a little bit of research, what exactly they're buying, I couldn't care less what that ultimately entails (at least so far as there is enough competition for their to be a real consumer choice, but that's a different matter for a different day).
You have to be careful though. There was an article on Slashdot not too long ago that says players are finishing less and less games as a general rule. The further you let them get, the more risk you run that they won't necessarily care that they didn't technically beat it. There are few games where actually beating the game matters (something like Dragon Age, for example, since Dragon Age 2 will import your decisions from the first game and tailor the world around them), especially in the age of YouTube where there's a pretty damn good chance you can simply log in and find the ending cinematic if that's what's important to you. It's really only the people who want to beat it to say they've beat it that will care, and that is apparently a relatively small and shrinking number.
And yet despite your smartass reply, Amazon--including S3, EC2 and their other hosting-related features--are making money hand over fist. Have you investigated the possibility that Slashdot is, you know, not a great indicator of mainstream opinion?
If I were going to host a website in the cloud that leaked classified government documents, I would not use Amazon. For just about any other purpose where cloud hosting was appropriate to begin with, I would continue to consider them in exactly the same way as before.
If you want to take your money elsewhere because you don't agree, you're more than welcome to. But stop pretending this is somehow ignoring consumers and a faulty business plan.
Really? Amazon cannot say whether or not WikiLeaks had rights to material that a federal crime and possibly a capital one was committed in order to obtain? They may or may not be legally responsible for it, I'm in no position to parse what I am certain is complicated legal issues around that, but they damn sure didn't have rights to it and that is abundantly clear. Biased much?
We're taught that honesty is the best policy when we're two years old and our parents want us to tell them we stole the cookies without getting into some kind of debate about moral relativism or the reality that the world almost never operates in black and white and have imparted only the vaguest concepts that there are bad people in the world to us.
After that, we are expected to grow up.
If we lived in a world where everybody was best friends and unicorns danced around farting rainbows, it would be solid advice. We don't, and it isn't. We have interests (personal, national, religious and otherwise) and so do other people in the world, and those interests will often stand opposed. Sometimes, whether somebody's morals or greed, we are forced into conflict with these opposing interests. Most people of the world live in some type of hierarchical society, where the choices are climb over people or stare up at their asses -- and regardless of which choice you may make or which choice you believe is best and even whether or not you're ultimately right, there are people who are more than happy to trample you if it gets them one step up the ladder -- more money, more power, more women -- whatever their definition is.
Being honest only works insofar as those you are dealing with are honest. And not just pretending to be honest, but actually being so. Politics is little more than never-ending games of poker. You bluff, you push, you make assumptions about what cards the other players have and how they're playing the hand and you act on them. You keep your cards hidden. It isn't go fish; you don't have to tell people what you're doing, holding or playing.
So no, I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let Iran know that Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabi and the UAE were discussing bombing the shit out of them. I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let people you're going to have to work with either way on such trivial matters as North Korea, Iran, nuclear proliferation, missile defense and international economic cooperation know that you find them to be a corrupt group of fascists playing at democracy or that their leader is a puppet with a former leader's hand up his ass to the elbow. I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let North Korea know that China thinks it is about to collapse politically and that it should be reunited under the control of Seoul, particularly when that particular opposing player is batshit insane and a nuclear power who has no problem sinking warships or shelling islands to try to exact more bribes to stop. I damn sure don't find any of that to be a good idea because Mommy once told me honesty is the best policy.
Mommy is a smart woman and she gives good advice, but she also didn't raise her son to be a moron who would rather suck his thumb and take the world at face value than to realize that he is a big boy now and think soundly. Why are you pretending otherwise?
If you want to debate the issues on their merits then do so. Just stop with the juvenile platitudes.
So what? He's right. Substitute the word "leader" for "power" -- all he's saying is that a leader does what he thinks is best and not necessarily what is most popular. Since it's quote day, one from Rosalynn Carter: "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be."
It is, in essence, the difference between direct democracy and representative democracy: Do we want things determined by a poll ("the will of the people") or do we want to elect people we believe will make the right decisions even if we disagree?
I remember a quote from Tony Blair back when the Iraq War stuff was just starting: "There is a tendency for the world to say to America, "the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out," and then to worry when America wants to sort them out." In fact, we see some of the truth of this in the leaked cables: Saudi Arabi, Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emerits -- all asked us to bomb the crap out of Iran. They did so behind closed doors for various reasons, but they did so. Do you really believe they are the only countries that do or that this is the only issue they talk about?
That's not to say that everything a leader (or the US) does is correct, or that it is always an attempt at pure practicality and not, consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to further self-interest, but yes, the definition of a leader--the definition of power--is to, you know, lead. Leaders don't ask where we'd like to go and followers don't have the power afforded to a leader. If it takes a leaked cable for people to realize that, that's hardly a failing of the person who said it or the country who didn't.
No. Nor is it even as you describe just because you beg the question about his motives and imply it can't possibly be patriotism even if he thinks it is.
I see a lot of your posts, and they're almost always talking about being smart and thinking clearly -- that only applies when you're not trolling, I presume?
Does anyone -seriously- think that if Assange were locked up / killed / whatever, that this sort of thing would stop?
Honestly? Yes.
Oh, maybe not when Assange is killed. But kill him in the most brutal way you can think of and still maintain at least a small amount of deniability (which roughly translates to: just don't get caught) and dump his corpse somewhere visible and you've sent an extremely strong message to whoever takes up the mantle next. And in all likelihood, there will be someone for which the process can simply be repeated.
I expect two will be more than enough to end the stream of volunteers who are willing to announce who they are. There may be another who tries again more secretly, which would make doing the same to him more tricky and also more vital, but I think it can be done. Three dismembered corpses would put an end to Wikileaks.
But honestly, the reality is that Wikileaks can simply be waited out. By and large, the reality is that outside of sites like Slashdot nobody really gives a flying fuck about them. They might read what was leaked--some of it is quite interesting, even if it shouldn't have been released--but what serious good has been accomplished by them? Their most supportable action, the first attack video they released, had no effect. Their Iraq and Afghanistan war leaks had no effect; I have yet to come across a single person who changed their mind about a single thing related to either war because of the information. This leak has people mostly pissed off because it is even further from defensibility. The backlash is big and growing, as we can see by articles like this one. I've completely 180'd my opinion of Assange and Wikileaks as the process has gone along, from "good for him" with the video to "holy crap does Assange have a mammoth ego" on the Iraq/Afghan documents to "this is obviously nothing but a vendetta against the United States" this time.
These leaks are damaging, but not in a way that will change anything. Politics is politics; people are going to continue to talk to one another about how things should be done and what their assessments of certain people and situations are in private, and those conversations are going to continue to be relayed up the chain of command. Decisions will continue to be made with that information and the consultation of allies in mind. Sometimes you will sit across the table from people you loathe and despise and smile at like you were best friends; hell, that's almost our entire policy with China. As we've seen with North Korea lately, politics can very easily turn not only deadly, but into war -- and that's only the latest example of it for which there are countless throughout history. It's not going to change.
Really, their stream of material will end. I don't know how much they have or how long they can continue to string it out, but eventually it will stop. What the focus needs to be on more than anything is closing up the obviously gaping holes that would allow them to get the information in the first place. Make some examples of those people too. Make it abundantly clear to anybody who has access in the future that yeah, you'll probably get the information out there and then you'll be executed -- game on. That will kill Wikileaks and other sites like it without needing to go after them directly.
But if you just wanted an answer to your question then yes, I believe a few murders would stop the organization cold. I'm also not sure how much there really is to Wikileaks beyond Assange that isn't smoke and mirrors, but that's a discussion for another time.
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I think 100+ years spent in a tin can with other people is something that has such an incredibly high chance of causing extreme psychological issues that I would not agree to send them, volunteers or not. And it raises a whole host of ethical issues as well, such as whether the travelers would have some right to kill one another if they perceived a threat or what to do with some immortal space traveling hero should he try to return to society and be utterly unable to reintegrate, similar to how a lot of ex-felons are when they are released.
Unless we're talking Starship Enterprise-style accommodations here, I would do everything in my power to stop trips like that from ever happening.
What do you think the practical effects of these leaks are? Maybe a minister or two in various countries have to resign. China might actually execute a few of them (to hell with proving they were actually guilty). In most cases, there will be no change -- no change at all, much less effective change that isn't just swapping one corrupt person with another.
So now, by and large, we have somebody who is not only corrupt but pissed at us for saying so. We still have to work with these people; remember, these leaks come from diplomatic cables, meaning they are in places where the US has official diplomatic presence. It's incredibly rare that we would close up shop and leave, nor is it necessarily in our interests to do so even if they are irrepairably corrupt; we're there for a reason.
And that, quite frankly, is the most innocuous possible consequence. Before I came here, a headline in my CNN news feed was (paraphrasing) "Leaked documents expose talks between US and Israel about Iran." I just rolled my eyes and moved on. I didn't even want to know. Now we're in territory that, hyperbole aside, really can get people killed.
Take North Korea as an example. They are, as a matter of course, belligerent. It's not only their negotiating strategy to make people give them things so they don't look like the totally inept, careless regime they are, but also a show of bravado to their own military so that they don't simply slit his throat and take over, which would be somewhat similar to how Kim Jong Il's father ended up in power. Politics, right? Right. So the United States and South Korea decide that it's good to remind the North that getting any extra belligerent is a poor idea, and do so as war games and joint exercises. They even let slip that they're debating bringing in a carrier strike group as part of the operations--a carrier being the most visible and most potent projection of power in any arsenal short of nuclear weapons (which you can bet are also in theater on a submarine or two, but we're just not going to announce that). A carrier that they probably do not want to bring and have no intentions of bringing, but which gives them a bargaining chip--they can give the "concession" that the aircraft carrier they likely had no intentions of moving in won't be moved in. In any event, this makes China get uppity and they release a statement about operations in their "exclusive economic zone," a wording that carefully avoids calling it their territorial waters because they know it is not. Politics. Emboldened by China's statement and assuming they have a necessary degree of Chinese protection, North Korea decides that the only logical response to "watch how belligerent you are" is to become more belligerent, and they begin to shell an island under dispute, killing South Korean soldiers and, if one were going to be technical, once again violating the cease fire that ended the Korean War -- though nobody is actually going to get technical about it. This is, incidentally, after the North sunk a South Korean naval vessel and killed dozens more of its soldiers. The South has declared that if North Korea pulls any shit like this again, they're going to retaliate. And if there's anything we know about North Korea, it is that they would not let a retaliation go un-retaliated against. What shape that might take, nobody knows. Whether or not it puts the 30,000 US troops in South Korea in the middle, all but guaranteeing and necessitating US involvement in a counter-attack and quite possibly kindling anew the Korean War, nobody knows. And if that should happen, whether or not nuclear weapons become involved again -- nobody knows. Kim Jong Il is plenty crazy enough to use them, and once there are nukes in the air I don't see how the US can possibly react other than to launch their own en masse and obliterate the North permanently.
Politics. And people are dead, with the strong likelihood of more coming. It is a dangerous game, and this is only one of the latest episodes.
I don't have any problems with them going after the pirates, especially if they make this "fine" a reasonable figure
I do. I have a major problem with it. They're going to make people pay a fine? Who the fuck do they think they are? They are not the police. They are not the government. This is nothing but legally-sanction extortion.
If they think these people are doing something wrong, so be it. Sue them -- fairly, none of this 200 John Doe lawsuits in a random jurisdiction where the cases get mysteriously dropped if the person actually fights back. Let the courts hear whatever evidence they think they have, let them make a finding of fact, pronounce a verdict and let it be enforced. I think it's stupid, but it's their right.
What is not their right is to demand anybody pay a "fine" based on their interpretation that they did something Really Bad(tm) and the average person's inability to litigate even a winning case. In short: Put up or shut up. You think you have a case? Then bring a case. Anything else is extortion.
Part of the problem is that there are many different types of outrage even just as it relates to the two wars in question.
Some people, including probably a majority of those outraged people on Slashdot, either find all wars to be crimes and murders or this particular set of wars--Iraq in particular--to fall into that category. I firmly believe that Assange and Wikileaks in general also falls into this category. This camp will not find a great deal of support. Most people do not like war, but they also realize that sometimes they are worth fighting. Or that in either event, once the troops are on the ground that screaming "MURDERERS!!!" is just going to get you drowned out and marginalized. The US in particular has a history of that behavior with Vietnam that I believe we are firmly ashamed of, which also causes us to pull back probably a bit too far in the opposite direction.
There's another camp that believes that anybody who dies who isn't a "bad guy" was somehow murdered. If a gunfight takes place in a city street and a civilian gets killed, they want heads to start rolling. Again, this is a camp that will find little support. As another poster said, war is hell and it always will be. Much as some people hate the term "collateral damage," and much as labeling deaths as such may not bring back the deceased or bring any comfort to their loved ones, calling people murderers because they accidentally hit the wrong person is not something most Americans, or most people of the world I hazard to suggest, find themselves comfortable with.
Another camp believes that accidents happen during wars, but that only intentional misconduct or gross negligence should be punished. By and large this receives significant support. However, that group is further fractured into people who believe that is what takes place (and thus while any particular wrongdoing they see sucks, also believes it will be handled appropriately) and those who find government conspiracies to murder people and cover it up. The latter camp particularly swells with people who saw the original Wikileaks release of the helicopter attack. I admit, that video seems like pretty damning evidence and it makes me wonder why charges were not leveled. But at the same time, we saw charges leveled in other cases for rape or murder. We saw all sorts of peoples' careers ending for inappropriate but far less severe things like stacking naked prisoners and taking photos. But this, where there appears to be video evidence of crimes, where that video evidence is leaked and distributed worldwide and gives incredible fodder to those who don't like the US or the wars, where the absolute perfect example presents itself to make a few public examples and help clear up the military's reputation -- this is defended. Why? Maybe there really is something to the idea that the video isn't showing everything. Maybe it's a case of 20/20 hindsight, or of Monday morning quarterbacking from across the planet by people who weren't there and don't know why what happened happened. Or maybe it was murder. I don't know.
And then of course there's the group that believes that it's war and everybody should STFU.
In any event, like most things, the extremes tend to dominate the debate and the center just rolls its eyes and moves on to something more productive. I'm one of those. I don't hate war as some show of how enlightened I am, and while I don't support the wars we're currently engaged in I also don't find that to be grounds to paint everything that happens with some hyper-negative brush. I believe that if crimes were committed that people should be held accountable, but also that the burden of proof can't simply be "turns out you were wrong" by some anti-war civilian seeing half the story on video from across the globe, or to some international agency that may or may not have their own particular agendas at stake. Being a soldier in a war zone sucks enough without implanting in their heads the idea that they had better second
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Which is fine by me. I don't have a problem with Intelligent Design by itself. Now, when people try to push to have it taught in science classes or given equal time with scientific theories with vast amounts of evidence supporting them, then I have a problem with it. As a concept in and of itself, meh, whatever.
In fact, I see Intelligent Design as a step in the right direction. It's essentially theists saying "okay science, you might be right -- BUT GOD DID IT ZOMG!" As an intellectual I find it to be a bit of a cop-out, but I also see it as a recognition that science might actually have it right, and also a step away from strict Biblical interpretations, both of which I consider to be extremely good things.
It's the distinction between faith and religion. I have no particular problem with people who have faith in god; I don't share it because my mind won't allow me to accept something without evidence beyond not knowing something ("god of the gaps"), but I don't mind that they can. I do have a problem--a major problem--with religion. To quote Jefferson, with its "tyranny over the mind of man." Its self-importance, its "knowing" it's right until it can't possibly deny it's wrong anymore, the atrocities committed by it and for it, the way it is used as an excuse to sanction pretty much every horrible action in human history from wars and sacrifies to the Crusades and Inquisitions to justifications of witch hunts and slavery to modern-day gay bashing. All of these things I loathe. But actual belief that there's a higher power? Not my cup of tea, but go ahead. If nothing else it forces people to think about what god is and what he would really think and really want, and to make those decisions as individuals or communities and not as billion-member denominations who are more than happy to do all your thinking for you.
As I said, as long as they don't try to consider such belief on the same levels of merit of actual scientific process and theory or force it on people in the name of "equality," I couldn't care less if that's what people believe.
I'm not disagreeing with you that there were multiple failures at multiple levels of the management chain.
But wouldn't using an unsalted hash vulnerable to dictionary attacks be the mistake of "low-level programming flunkies?" Why should any management-level people know what the hell a hash or a salt is, much less be micromanaging their programmers to that extent? Isn't that why you hire coders in the first place -- for their expertise in doing things the right way?
It seems that way to you, perhaps. Not to me, or many others.
If you want to claim that seeing sex psychologically devastates children, that's fine -- but that's quite the statement, and you're going to have to do better than your personal hunches. The link between sexual molestation and psychological issues is already established. Calling it a small step between something that professionals agree on and something conservative Christians pull from their rears is.. well, in your terminology I guess I'd call it a "smell step." The rest of the world would call it a ridiculously huge leap.
It's just like the debate on sex education. Should we teach our kids about sex and how to have it safely, or simply that sex is naughty unless you're married? And with due respect to the people who disagree, they're trying to frame it as a debate that should be given equal consideration on both sides -- but it's not. The reality is that the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and 9 in 10 teachers all believe there is a need for comprehensive sexual education, and the other side has... people who don't want their kids to have sex until they're married.
Informed consensual sex is not harmful, neither to children nor adults. Unsafe sex is harmful. Unsafe sex leads to pregnancy and STDs. A condom alone will prevent 99% of pregnancies, and action on the woman's side as well will increase that to levels akin to being struck by lightning. They also offer strong protection against STDs -- particularly when children are informed about them, exposed to them, have them available to them and have the sexual stigma removed so they feel like they can get and use them instead of fucking in the back of a car to hide from the parents.
From personal experience, I remember my first ejaculation was to prime-time TV before I knew what sex was. All I knew at the time was that rubbing my penis on the bed right then felt pretty damn good and when it happened, I literally jumped to my feet and tried to make it to the bathroom thinking I had somehow made myself pee. The idea that a teenager won't be a horny little toad as long as he doesn't see a sex video game or porn is ludicrous at best. Everything is already there, implanted in their brains and all you can do is hope they either don't do it or at least do it responsibly. I'd rather have children be educated and have protection available than bet on abstinence and pretend it's not a problem, and I'm also not willing to take anything from adults--intentionally or otherwise--betting on that horse.
The taboo way we're handling sex is far more hazardous to children than sex itself.
That theory would work far better if I weren't a web developer by profession.
Maybe there is some hidden complexity to delicious that I do not see; I only use it via browser plug-in as a bookmark sync, not the website itself. But I see an extremely simplistic database with users, bookmarks and tags, the output of which is some extremely simple HTML pages or an RSS feed. Infrastructure, as I already said, is a concern -- but not exactly a staggering one.
What, exactly, are you claiming is going to take large swathes of time? Or are you simply talking about of your ass because you have no idea how to do something so it must be hard?
Why wouldn't they? Delicious could be coded in, what, a week by a solo coder? With maybe another week or two to code the browser plugins? (I've never coded one for either browser, so I have no real means to estimate that.)
The reality is, delicious isn't that special. Whatever value it might have to some other company is in its users and its data, not the code or the people. Infrastructure is a concern, but it is with or without the people coming with it.
Too expensive. They should outsource it to Mechanical Turk...
What makes either of you think he cares about surviving? He's not a young man; he's going to die, and relatively speaking, it's not likely to be that much longer. If he takes it into his head that it's considerably more important to him to create a legacy, well, starting a nuclear war is going to get your pictures in the history books.
Still, I think that if the threat of nuclear war becomes real that there is suddenly a highly increased chance of a coup that ends with Kim Jong-Il's head being thrown into South Korea. I understand the average people in the country are on the brainwashed side, but surely some of the top military commanders and people in government aren't. His son, for example, purportedly studied in Switzerland until 1998. There are at least a handful of people there who know how that course of action will ultimately end, and may decide that being alive and well in a country that doesn't glow outweighs their loyalty to a man trying to get himself killed for a legacy.
I imagine the fact that he is a felon in Australia with a history of mental breakdowns would top the list. And no, I'm not talking about anything to do with Wikileaks.
Never. Nor is contributing by producing clients for operating systems associated with open source a requirement. Nor anything else other than, you know, complying with the license.
Somebody just wanted to bitch and moan, and Slashdot, having lost any standards years ago, saw the words "open source" and published it. Huzzah.
I think killing you would be justice. Do you really want to play this game through to its conclusion? Do you think idiots like you are the ones who will come out on top? Our corporate and governmental douchebag overlords will come out on top, with a pile of corpses and business as usual in their wake.
If you think people deserve to die, grow a pair and go kill them. Otherwise shut the hell up about justice. Not having the balls to commit your own crime doesn't give you an acute sense of justice, it gives you an acute case of cowardice.
So in your little hypothetical, the major problem is that Google will provide something that users will like and use? OH NOES!
Too often people rail on and on about choice, but what they really mean is the freedom to choose their way or clearly there must be some flaw in the system. Is it worth trading choice for convenience? Not for me, but you also have to realize that, somewhat paradoxically, trading choice for convenience is a choice. As long as people know, or can know with a little bit of research, what exactly they're buying, I couldn't care less what that ultimately entails (at least so far as there is enough competition for their to be a real consumer choice, but that's a different matter for a different day).
Makes piracy harder/less valuable as well.
Ignore this post please. Just testing something.
You have to be careful though. There was an article on Slashdot not too long ago that says players are finishing less and less games as a general rule. The further you let them get, the more risk you run that they won't necessarily care that they didn't technically beat it. There are few games where actually beating the game matters (something like Dragon Age, for example, since Dragon Age 2 will import your decisions from the first game and tailor the world around them), especially in the age of YouTube where there's a pretty damn good chance you can simply log in and find the ending cinematic if that's what's important to you. It's really only the people who want to beat it to say they've beat it that will care, and that is apparently a relatively small and shrinking number.
And yet despite your smartass reply, Amazon--including S3, EC2 and their other hosting-related features--are making money hand over fist. Have you investigated the possibility that Slashdot is, you know, not a great indicator of mainstream opinion?
If I were going to host a website in the cloud that leaked classified government documents, I would not use Amazon. For just about any other purpose where cloud hosting was appropriate to begin with, I would continue to consider them in exactly the same way as before.
If you want to take your money elsewhere because you don't agree, you're more than welcome to. But stop pretending this is somehow ignoring consumers and a faulty business plan.
Really? Amazon cannot say whether or not WikiLeaks had rights to material that a federal crime and possibly a capital one was committed in order to obtain? They may or may not be legally responsible for it, I'm in no position to parse what I am certain is complicated legal issues around that, but they damn sure didn't have rights to it and that is abundantly clear. Biased much?
We're taught that honesty is the best policy when we're two years old and our parents want us to tell them we stole the cookies without getting into some kind of debate about moral relativism or the reality that the world almost never operates in black and white and have imparted only the vaguest concepts that there are bad people in the world to us.
After that, we are expected to grow up.
If we lived in a world where everybody was best friends and unicorns danced around farting rainbows, it would be solid advice. We don't, and it isn't. We have interests (personal, national, religious and otherwise) and so do other people in the world, and those interests will often stand opposed. Sometimes, whether somebody's morals or greed, we are forced into conflict with these opposing interests. Most people of the world live in some type of hierarchical society, where the choices are climb over people or stare up at their asses -- and regardless of which choice you may make or which choice you believe is best and even whether or not you're ultimately right, there are people who are more than happy to trample you if it gets them one step up the ladder -- more money, more power, more women -- whatever their definition is.
Being honest only works insofar as those you are dealing with are honest. And not just pretending to be honest, but actually being so. Politics is little more than never-ending games of poker. You bluff, you push, you make assumptions about what cards the other players have and how they're playing the hand and you act on them. You keep your cards hidden. It isn't go fish; you don't have to tell people what you're doing, holding or playing.
So no, I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let Iran know that Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabi and the UAE were discussing bombing the shit out of them. I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let people you're going to have to work with either way on such trivial matters as North Korea, Iran, nuclear proliferation, missile defense and international economic cooperation know that you find them to be a corrupt group of fascists playing at democracy or that their leader is a puppet with a former leader's hand up his ass to the elbow. I don't particularly find it to be a good idea to let North Korea know that China thinks it is about to collapse politically and that it should be reunited under the control of Seoul, particularly when that particular opposing player is batshit insane and a nuclear power who has no problem sinking warships or shelling islands to try to exact more bribes to stop. I damn sure don't find any of that to be a good idea because Mommy once told me honesty is the best policy.
Mommy is a smart woman and she gives good advice, but she also didn't raise her son to be a moron who would rather suck his thumb and take the world at face value than to realize that he is a big boy now and think soundly. Why are you pretending otherwise?
If you want to debate the issues on their merits then do so. Just stop with the juvenile platitudes.
So what? He's right. Substitute the word "leader" for "power" -- all he's saying is that a leader does what he thinks is best and not necessarily what is most popular. Since it's quote day, one from Rosalynn Carter: "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be."
It is, in essence, the difference between direct democracy and representative democracy: Do we want things determined by a poll ("the will of the people") or do we want to elect people we believe will make the right decisions even if we disagree?
I remember a quote from Tony Blair back when the Iraq War stuff was just starting: "There is a tendency for the world to say to America, "the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out," and then to worry when America wants to sort them out." In fact, we see some of the truth of this in the leaked cables: Saudi Arabi, Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emerits -- all asked us to bomb the crap out of Iran. They did so behind closed doors for various reasons, but they did so. Do you really believe they are the only countries that do or that this is the only issue they talk about?
That's not to say that everything a leader (or the US) does is correct, or that it is always an attempt at pure practicality and not, consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to further self-interest, but yes, the definition of a leader--the definition of power--is to, you know, lead. Leaders don't ask where we'd like to go and followers don't have the power afforded to a leader. If it takes a leaked cable for people to realize that, that's hardly a failing of the person who said it or the country who didn't.
No. Nor is it even as you describe just because you beg the question about his motives and imply it can't possibly be patriotism even if he thinks it is.
I see a lot of your posts, and they're almost always talking about being smart and thinking clearly -- that only applies when you're not trolling, I presume?
Honestly? Yes.
Oh, maybe not when Assange is killed. But kill him in the most brutal way you can think of and still maintain at least a small amount of deniability (which roughly translates to: just don't get caught) and dump his corpse somewhere visible and you've sent an extremely strong message to whoever takes up the mantle next. And in all likelihood, there will be someone for which the process can simply be repeated.
I expect two will be more than enough to end the stream of volunteers who are willing to announce who they are. There may be another who tries again more secretly, which would make doing the same to him more tricky and also more vital, but I think it can be done. Three dismembered corpses would put an end to Wikileaks.
But honestly, the reality is that Wikileaks can simply be waited out. By and large, the reality is that outside of sites like Slashdot nobody really gives a flying fuck about them. They might read what was leaked--some of it is quite interesting, even if it shouldn't have been released--but what serious good has been accomplished by them? Their most supportable action, the first attack video they released, had no effect. Their Iraq and Afghanistan war leaks had no effect; I have yet to come across a single person who changed their mind about a single thing related to either war because of the information. This leak has people mostly pissed off because it is even further from defensibility. The backlash is big and growing, as we can see by articles like this one. I've completely 180'd my opinion of Assange and Wikileaks as the process has gone along, from "good for him" with the video to "holy crap does Assange have a mammoth ego" on the Iraq/Afghan documents to "this is obviously nothing but a vendetta against the United States" this time.
These leaks are damaging, but not in a way that will change anything. Politics is politics; people are going to continue to talk to one another about how things should be done and what their assessments of certain people and situations are in private, and those conversations are going to continue to be relayed up the chain of command. Decisions will continue to be made with that information and the consultation of allies in mind. Sometimes you will sit across the table from people you loathe and despise and smile at like you were best friends; hell, that's almost our entire policy with China. As we've seen with North Korea lately, politics can very easily turn not only deadly, but into war -- and that's only the latest example of it for which there are countless throughout history. It's not going to change.
Really, their stream of material will end. I don't know how much they have or how long they can continue to string it out, but eventually it will stop. What the focus needs to be on more than anything is closing up the obviously gaping holes that would allow them to get the information in the first place. Make some examples of those people too. Make it abundantly clear to anybody who has access in the future that yeah, you'll probably get the information out there and then you'll be executed -- game on. That will kill Wikileaks and other sites like it without needing to go after them directly.
But if you just wanted an answer to your question then yes, I believe a few murders would stop the organization cold. I'm also not sure how much there really is to Wikileaks beyond Assange that isn't smoke and mirrors, but that's a discussion for another time.
I think 100+ years spent in a tin can with other people is something that has such an incredibly high chance of causing extreme psychological issues that I would not agree to send them, volunteers or not. And it raises a whole host of ethical issues as well, such as whether the travelers would have some right to kill one another if they perceived a threat or what to do with some immortal space traveling hero should he try to return to society and be utterly unable to reintegrate, similar to how a lot of ex-felons are when they are released.
Unless we're talking Starship Enterprise-style accommodations here, I would do everything in my power to stop trips like that from ever happening.
I hear you're alright 99% of the time if you wrap your junk in a clear plastic bag before beginning the process.
What do you think the practical effects of these leaks are? Maybe a minister or two in various countries have to resign. China might actually execute a few of them (to hell with proving they were actually guilty). In most cases, there will be no change -- no change at all, much less effective change that isn't just swapping one corrupt person with another.
So now, by and large, we have somebody who is not only corrupt but pissed at us for saying so. We still have to work with these people; remember, these leaks come from diplomatic cables, meaning they are in places where the US has official diplomatic presence. It's incredibly rare that we would close up shop and leave, nor is it necessarily in our interests to do so even if they are irrepairably corrupt; we're there for a reason.
And that, quite frankly, is the most innocuous possible consequence. Before I came here, a headline in my CNN news feed was (paraphrasing) "Leaked documents expose talks between US and Israel about Iran." I just rolled my eyes and moved on. I didn't even want to know. Now we're in territory that, hyperbole aside, really can get people killed.
Take North Korea as an example. They are, as a matter of course, belligerent. It's not only their negotiating strategy to make people give them things so they don't look like the totally inept, careless regime they are, but also a show of bravado to their own military so that they don't simply slit his throat and take over, which would be somewhat similar to how Kim Jong Il's father ended up in power. Politics, right? Right. So the United States and South Korea decide that it's good to remind the North that getting any extra belligerent is a poor idea, and do so as war games and joint exercises. They even let slip that they're debating bringing in a carrier strike group as part of the operations--a carrier being the most visible and most potent projection of power in any arsenal short of nuclear weapons (which you can bet are also in theater on a submarine or two, but we're just not going to announce that). A carrier that they probably do not want to bring and have no intentions of bringing, but which gives them a bargaining chip--they can give the "concession" that the aircraft carrier they likely had no intentions of moving in won't be moved in. In any event, this makes China get uppity and they release a statement about operations in their "exclusive economic zone," a wording that carefully avoids calling it their territorial waters because they know it is not. Politics. Emboldened by China's statement and assuming they have a necessary degree of Chinese protection, North Korea decides that the only logical response to "watch how belligerent you are" is to become more belligerent, and they begin to shell an island under dispute, killing South Korean soldiers and, if one were going to be technical, once again violating the cease fire that ended the Korean War -- though nobody is actually going to get technical about it. This is, incidentally, after the North sunk a South Korean naval vessel and killed dozens more of its soldiers. The South has declared that if North Korea pulls any shit like this again, they're going to retaliate. And if there's anything we know about North Korea, it is that they would not let a retaliation go un-retaliated against. What shape that might take, nobody knows. Whether or not it puts the 30,000 US troops in South Korea in the middle, all but guaranteeing and necessitating US involvement in a counter-attack and quite possibly kindling anew the Korean War, nobody knows. And if that should happen, whether or not nuclear weapons become involved again -- nobody knows. Kim Jong Il is plenty crazy enough to use them, and once there are nukes in the air I don't see how the US can possibly react other than to launch their own en masse and obliterate the North permanently.
Politics. And people are dead, with the strong likelihood of more coming. It is a dangerous game, and this is only one of the latest episodes.
I do. I have a major problem with it. They're going to make people pay a fine? Who the fuck do they think they are? They are not the police. They are not the government. This is nothing but legally-sanction extortion.
If they think these people are doing something wrong, so be it. Sue them -- fairly, none of this 200 John Doe lawsuits in a random jurisdiction where the cases get mysteriously dropped if the person actually fights back. Let the courts hear whatever evidence they think they have, let them make a finding of fact, pronounce a verdict and let it be enforced. I think it's stupid, but it's their right.
What is not their right is to demand anybody pay a "fine" based on their interpretation that they did something Really Bad(tm) and the average person's inability to litigate even a winning case. In short: Put up or shut up. You think you have a case? Then bring a case. Anything else is extortion.
Part of the problem is that there are many different types of outrage even just as it relates to the two wars in question.
Some people, including probably a majority of those outraged people on Slashdot, either find all wars to be crimes and murders or this particular set of wars--Iraq in particular--to fall into that category. I firmly believe that Assange and Wikileaks in general also falls into this category. This camp will not find a great deal of support. Most people do not like war, but they also realize that sometimes they are worth fighting. Or that in either event, once the troops are on the ground that screaming "MURDERERS!!!" is just going to get you drowned out and marginalized. The US in particular has a history of that behavior with Vietnam that I believe we are firmly ashamed of, which also causes us to pull back probably a bit too far in the opposite direction.
There's another camp that believes that anybody who dies who isn't a "bad guy" was somehow murdered. If a gunfight takes place in a city street and a civilian gets killed, they want heads to start rolling. Again, this is a camp that will find little support. As another poster said, war is hell and it always will be. Much as some people hate the term "collateral damage," and much as labeling deaths as such may not bring back the deceased or bring any comfort to their loved ones, calling people murderers because they accidentally hit the wrong person is not something most Americans, or most people of the world I hazard to suggest, find themselves comfortable with.
Another camp believes that accidents happen during wars, but that only intentional misconduct or gross negligence should be punished. By and large this receives significant support. However, that group is further fractured into people who believe that is what takes place (and thus while any particular wrongdoing they see sucks, also believes it will be handled appropriately) and those who find government conspiracies to murder people and cover it up. The latter camp particularly swells with people who saw the original Wikileaks release of the helicopter attack. I admit, that video seems like pretty damning evidence and it makes me wonder why charges were not leveled. But at the same time, we saw charges leveled in other cases for rape or murder. We saw all sorts of peoples' careers ending for inappropriate but far less severe things like stacking naked prisoners and taking photos. But this, where there appears to be video evidence of crimes, where that video evidence is leaked and distributed worldwide and gives incredible fodder to those who don't like the US or the wars, where the absolute perfect example presents itself to make a few public examples and help clear up the military's reputation -- this is defended. Why? Maybe there really is something to the idea that the video isn't showing everything. Maybe it's a case of 20/20 hindsight, or of Monday morning quarterbacking from across the planet by people who weren't there and don't know why what happened happened. Or maybe it was murder. I don't know.
And then of course there's the group that believes that it's war and everybody should STFU.
In any event, like most things, the extremes tend to dominate the debate and the center just rolls its eyes and moves on to something more productive. I'm one of those. I don't hate war as some show of how enlightened I am, and while I don't support the wars we're currently engaged in I also don't find that to be grounds to paint everything that happens with some hyper-negative brush. I believe that if crimes were committed that people should be held accountable, but also that the burden of proof can't simply be "turns out you were wrong" by some anti-war civilian seeing half the story on video from across the globe, or to some international agency that may or may not have their own particular agendas at stake. Being a soldier in a war zone sucks enough without implanting in their heads the idea that they had better second