Kudos for a well developed argument. I'm going to disagree in a few key areas, but I want to say right up front that if your premises are indeed valid, then your conclusions are solidly defensible.
Possession of bits of any source or type out not be a crime.
(I think you mean "ought not.") Intentional possession of information that is detrimental to the goals of a society are traditionally illegal. Intentional possession of government military strategic plans by someone who is not authorized should be illegal as an example. The types of information we deem illegal might be unreasonable, but the concept itself is not necessarily unreasonable. I think you and I could agree to more reasonable laws than our society currently has, but I don't think I could be convinced that there is never information that should be illegal to intentionally possess by anyone. I think I'd agree that it isn't the possession but the intentional aquisition that should be illegal, but intentional possession is the point I think is revelant.
imagine for a moment that its some point in the future and we know what everyone's thoughts were before they committed the criminal act
Laws and punishments are not only about defining and preventing crime, they are also about providing justice. Certainly the concept of justice gets ignored in the pursuit of better and more effective prevention of crime but it is not an unreasonable pursuit. If I could have been the judge and juror of the person who stole my daughter's bicyle, I certainly would have desired to understand how to change the behavior, but having her compensated for her loss by the person who caused it is justice. Perhaps they felt they needed it to deal with their desperate situation and didn't empathise with her and I'd certainly want that to be corrected, but I also would have wanted her to feel like it was reasonable to expect the thief to pay a fair compensation for their act, regardless of the motivations and thought processes of the thief.
if we... we will eventually know the true motivations behind all actions. If the universe is predetermined
These are two very big if's. In order to know the motivations we'd have to understand and record a lot more information about every person's every stimulus and thought than I think humans will ever accept. I don't think any human society will ever allow that level of intrusion. Aside from that, the idea that everything is predetermined, a clockwork universe if you will, isn't a new idea. I think Newton had a famous quote about it actually, but it doesn't comform to the current better understanding we have of the universe. There are no absolute laws for determining what will happen for any set of inputs. There are statistical probabilities that indicate that things will or won't happen, but they aren't absolute laws. Matter does pop into existance and pop out of existance and probabilities exist where real defined results don't. Erwin Schrodinger's (durn lack of unicode, sorry for spelling problem) objection of a non-determinalistic universe is popularly known by his cat in box thought experiment. The objection he had to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is common sense and experimentally proven wrong. The universe isn't determinalistic, no matter how much it does seem reliable.
People can and do alter their behavior based on potential consequences. Not everyone does and not every individual follows the probablility, but in the here and now real world, there is little hope that we can sufficiently understand and respond to every individual's personality development to prevent people from needing to understand that bad actions can have bad consequences.
Good and evil are concepts that are used to simplify a complex set of ideas.
There is no good and evil. There may be smart and stupid or competent and incomp
It does bias my opinion though. Where is all the money from our strong economic peroids? Spending like crazy during both cycles seems to be the standard for government. If you can't manage your debt because you can't stop spending whether you're in a boom or recession, then you crash, whether as an individual, a business or a government. I don't like crashing. I'm worried now that it is becoming harder and harder to avoid because, with a better understanding of Keynes theory comes a better understanding of how our government has failed to apply it.
The question of which provider historically provides the better value for spending varies greatly depending on which service or product is discussed and what the goals are. Government control can mean that large projects become affordable by virtue of economy of size but government control can also mean that large projects become far more expensive than free market options if the money goes to pay for bureaucratic overhead.
Municipal water supplies tend to be safer and less expensive than private ones so the monopoly situation is well founded in cities, but the opposite occurs in rural areas.
Phone service was more expensive when it was a government regulated monopoly, but it accomplished a valuable goal of creating an infrastructure that made it more universal than it would have been privately, so there was an an appropriate time for government spending and regulation of services and a time for that to taper off.
The relevant question to ask is, for any given service, which provider historically has given better quality and cheaper prices, government or private sector?
I'd certainly agree that it is a major consideration but public safety, infrastructure and freedom are all significant goals as well. Big organization, like Wal-Mart or government may be more effective sometimes, but bigger is not always better and sometimes bigger just means more middlemen to support and usually means less freedom.
You mentioned health care reform and health insurance reform hasn't met your criteria. Massachusetts didn't succeed by that criteria alone. "In just two years under the Massachusetts reforms, from 2005 to 2007, health care spending per capita rose an additional 23 percent." That's not to say it was a failure by every standard though, because "98 percent of all residents were insured last year. [as of 2011]". If the goal is to cost oriented alone, it has been a failure, but if the goal is to make sure those most in need of government intervention receive health insurance it has been a success.
NASA is an example of a strongly debatable expendature. Historically it has accomplished big goals that wouldn't have been accomplished in a free market, but now it is questionable if those big goals are more valuable than the less expensive free market capabilities. You could about double their budget with one percent of the military's, but you could also give a huge incentive subsidy to private companies with that same expenditure. The private companies are probably not going to be able to accomplsh the large goals, but they can accomplish a lot more small goals than NASA would, so the debate really is down to whether lots of significant small achievements are more worthy than a few large ones.
Interesting book reference by the way. I haven't spent much effort in that area of study, but it piques my interest.
You make a good case. I think I'm in favor of government spending on big technology projects and NASA's 0.5% slice of spending makes me feel like we're placing our priorities in the wrong place. When you mention the debt though, and I realize my personal share is $51,147.22 as it stands today, I really want to see us reprioritize. Debt is 103% of GDP right now and that's a pretty shocking figure. When you try to figure out how to deal with a debt like that, you need a growing economy or a shrinking budget, or preferably both.
Most economic theories I hear essentially say that you have to spend government (my!) money to make the economy grow, but there are solid arguments that making business more profitible makes the economy grow. (I won't defend either too strongly but look into the Laffer curve and Hauser's Law to see some of the points.) So I can't really decide. Which is better for most people in a sluggish economy, a shrinking or a growing government spending program?
(Apologies to my economics teachers who tried really hard to make me understand this type of stuff.)
(This has led to the odd sight of Republicans bringing Obama's budgets to the floor so they can say Democrats voted against them.)
Personally I think there is much the state governments should handle instead of the federal government, so I'm basically in favor of cutting the role of the federal government where reasonable responsiblities can be returned to the state. That's a lot of weasel words to say that state government spending is better than federal government spending, but not all the time.
So I'd rather see a congress locked into limited action rather than the rather abymissal results of a united one. There are exceptions where I think the federal government has a role, but over most of my lifetime, I've been continously disappointed in the "progress" when they do something "productive."
Summary: Please, please give me a "No" party to vote for. The republicans and democrats have both had plenty of examples where they voted for spending and increasing regulation when I strongly wish they had left that to the states, so I'm afraid I can't be happy to vote for either "retardicans" or "demotards" and carefully weigh each vote I make to try to figure out whether voting for somebody without a chance or voting against the slightly less terrible choice has the most impact. I can't remember the last time I was happy to vote for somebody that I thought might win.
It does strike me as slightly hilarious that you can get a situation where Democrats will vote against a Democrat budget and still call the opposition the "party of 'No'."
Why do we believe that people have a right to buy something that the seller doesn't want to offer?
Everywhere I can think of a rule that someone must sell service they don't want to offer, I see a constant frustration by people who don't feel their right to buy is being met sufficiently mirrored by frustration that a seller cannot provide the service they really want to provide.
I believe you have a right to free speech, but I don't believe you have a right to come into my home and spray paint slogans on my walls. Nobody thinks that such a limitation to your speech is censorship because nobody believes that I should be forced to allow you to infringe on my rights in such a silly way.
Yet we believe that your right to buy the type of service you desire from Verizon is sufficient to force them to give you the kind of access you want to something they own.
There is a difference between saying a government should not prohibit the people from stating their opinions and saying a government should force people to run their companies in ways that mandate what they must offer. There is a place for regulation, and in fact I'm generally supportive of NN, but the debate isn't simply "evil corporation vs uncensored speech" as it gets portrayed so often here. The debate is really "must internet providers be forced to offer specific access if freedom of speech is to be preserved?"
In my mind, the Internet is so crucial to freedom of speech that the answer is "yes" but the unresolved question for me is "how much?"
As much as I hate overregulation and tend toward Libertarian views, I think you're right. I dislike censorship more.
I like food labling laws. I like knowing that I can pick up any packaged item in the grocery store and have a good idea what it contains and doesn't contain. The laws force businesses to offer information they might prefer not to offer, but I think it is good for society to be able to expect to know what they're buying. I think I feel the same way about net neutrality, I think it should be clear exactly what services a provider is actually providing. Just like food labels, a lot of people will not care and most people won't ever look, but the option to look changes the dynamic of the transaction.
What I don't like is how NN usually means businesses can't offer some potentially profitible services. Comcast might offer Com-lite, a port 80 only service with preferential treatment to their advertisers for $5/month. Such a service could be profitable to Comcast and offer some some access to a whole class of users who wouldn't be able to afford any service otherwise. NN says it is better that fewer people have access than for those who can afford more expensive access to be limited.
I think there is a reasonable compromise, though I'm not sure how it should be best balanced. Still, I can imagine such a balance with reasonable requirements.
Anyone offering any kind of Internet service must classify themselves as either a provider of Internet or a provider of limited services.
Anyone offering both limited services and Internet, must offer Internet anywhere they offer limited services and cannot charge more for Internet than double the price of their least expensive limited service.
Anyone offering limited services must categorize each of the following clearly in any agreement or marketing as "Full", "Limited" or "Unavailable"
Access to all IPv4/IPv6 addresses
Access to all protocols
Uninhibited bandwidth to customers
Unpreferential bandwidth to other parties
Anyone offering Internet must provide "Full" for each of the previous listed options and additionally indicate as either "Limited" or "Unlimited" each of the following:
Access for the term of the agreement
Unpreferential bandwidth consumption
I'm sure the details aren't ideal and there may be far better ways to approaching the problem, but I would like to see the benefits of an option to offer either neutral or limited service play out in a market where consumers were clearly offered information about what is available.
I agree that Windows does have a better firewall than it used to, but saying it is no iptables is an understatement. Blocking incoming traffic is important and blocking outgoing traffic is important but the important thing for me about iptables is the ability to redirect traffic. I redirect traffic coming in on 80 to a completely different machine (or not if it isn't up) and capture outbound DNS and redirect it to my own server. I can do port-knocking to open up ftp, telnet or ssh to only friendly users and turn the rest away. My favorite trick right now is a monitor that looks at my logs and adds the IPs of hacking attempts to a block everything list that is dynamically updated. I write my own tools to some degree, but there are tools to do that reactive blocking automatically that I utilize as well.That the job I want and the Windows firewall is a far cry from capable in that regard.
There is a big difference between saying society is evil and saying some parts of society are evil. There is a big difference between saying government is evil and saying some parts of the government are evil. Society and government are big ideas with lots of parts and players and both have a mix of good and bad. I think a society as a concept is generally good and most societies are better than having no concept of group motivation. I believe that government as a concept is a reasonable method of giving structure to a society and as a reflection of the desire for a good society, is a concept that has worked in many instances to produce something better than anarchy.
The idea that lawlessness is better than law is questionable, but particularly in the area of a small group taking upon themselves the right to decide when they should do something harmful to others without oversight or accountability is something I think I can judge to be bad in at least this specific instance. The goals and activities are different from the method which is what causes my conflict. It is possible to appreciate my society and my government without agreeing with every decision or activity that brought to the current status. Likewise, I can appreciate the activity of turning in a harmful hacker, even if I generally disagree with the methods and structure of a group responsible.
Indeed. Can't mod here or I'd bump you up as insightful. As much as I stand by the idea of a rule of law, I'm not ignorant of the times that it wasn't the ethical choice. I believe subverting someone's computer system without an oversight and review structure, just because you disapprove of their actions, should be punished by law, but I'm not sure that all instances are unethical. Sometimes the question isn't whether "they just decided that they didn't like it anymore" but rather "is it more unethical to follow the law or to break it" and even more to your point "do I have a moral imperative to force a change of law?"
I've wondered about this myself sometimes. At the time it was set up, I can see why it made sense to elect representatives who then made a lot of decisions without direct feedback. Communication like we have today wasn't practical. Would it be better if my senators and congressmen were just automated polling and voting machines? I don't really know, though it is hard to believe it would be much worse.
I find it hard to trust either our society or our representatives too far. I think that's what holds me back from advocating a direct democracy. I'm not sure that it could be kept from being compromised and popular opinion isn't always right. As others have pointed out, racial prejustice, persecution and oppression have all been popular at some points and I think I prefer to have the opportunity to hold responsible and vote against a person within a couple years. It does make me consider term limitations in a more favorable light though.
I've given it some thought, but don't have a solid idea how the best possible system could be set up today. Anybody have a solid plan for how our system of government ought to be set up instead of how it is now?
I've taken the kids to a couple renassance fairs. Interestingly I'd never considered the romantic association, but come to think of it there might be a connection worth investigating...
I've never been in drama school though. Maybe if I had, I'd be able to reference "Dragonlance" novels as if other people could be expected to be familiar with the genre. Methinks the Coward doth protest too much.
Fair point. I don't agree with all the rules of all societies or all governments. I guess I can't assume people will realize I'm writing about a specific society or government. Nor to be completely fair, do I support the all the rules of my own society or government. I do believe that the law should be moral and breaking the rules and laws instead of trying to correct them should only be done at direst need.
Wow. Just wow. You write with such passion against people who disagree with you and consider them the root of all that is evil in this world. It almost reminds me of another group... but you took that analogy already.
Fair enough. I don't support all the laws that have ever been made. Nor do I believe that law is inherently moral. I believe it is our human responsibility to make it as fair, just and moral as possible and that society should submit to or change the law rather than ignore it.
The government I am subject to is an elected group of people with limited authority who reflect the wishes of the people who make their election possible. I'm not entirely satisfied with the mindset of the people responsible for electing them nor am I content with all the decisions they make on behalf of the society they are supposed to represent. I'm not sure how to counter the idea that I'm giving them a free pass or what I assume is a poorly worded analysis of my arguments, but I suspect being readily identifiable and writing clearly is better than angry slogan quotes.
When a group identifies themselves by a name, as Anonymous does, then I'm content to consider it specific enough for the discussion. If you prefer to identify them as "the group of internet activists who've claimed responsibility for specific activities and identify their group by the name Anonymous as opposed to the more common designation of people who do not wish to claim an identity in favor of being referred to as anonymos" then feel free to substitute that phrase each time you've seen me refer to Anonymous as a proper noun. I think the difference is clear enough for discussion and don't like typing enough to do it for you.
You really think that deceitful men in suits are any more virtuous than Anonymous? What is law if not vigilantism on paper?
I think some people who wear suits, just like many who do not, are virtuous. Not all of them are. I don't know whether an undefined group of deceitful men I cannot identify by their identies or actions would be more or less virtous than a group of internet activists I can identify only by thier professed identity group identification as "Anonymous" and supposed activities. If you want to pick a specific group of people, like a subset of congress for example, I can feel my analysis shifting.
Law is a reflection of the willingness of people to be represented by rules they submit to be judged on. Vigilantism is the assertion of a smaller part of the group that the laws the rest of society submit to are insufficient in their own judgment and the willingness to ignore the laws of society and the options to change those laws in favor of imposing their own will on other people.
You and I would agree that the some of the laws that our society has agreed to submit to are unjust and unfair. I think we'd agree that there have been many examples of people exploiting those laws immorally for personal gain. Perhaps we would disagree on how best to change the situation. I believe the the most moral thing to do is to convince a sufficient portion of the population to change the law. One of the small ways I do this is by saying what I think is true and most beneficial in public forums and backing my statements up with my own experience and identity.
I kind of chuckled to myself when I previewed that phrase, it does go a little to the melodramatic doesn't it? But then that was the tone I was trying to convey, so I decided to stick with it. Unless you're lol'ing at the irony of commenting as "Anonymous Coward" in reply, in which case that's a lot said with three little letters.
Ambigious? Maybe. "I love ambiguity more than most people."
Certainly I sometimes wish to remain anonymous and sometimes I do support groups of people who try to make a difference. The capital 'A' in Anonymous refers to a specific group who self identifies that way. Feel free to ignore the relevence of the discussion if you are so inclined, but most of us recognize the difference between windows and Windows, access and Access, and being anonymous or a member of Anonymous. I'm using an active email address and linking to my personal websites where you can find out who I am, what I do, my views and a pretty good cross section of my history. I think that pretty conclusively debunks the idea that I'm anonymous.
There is a difference between being anonymous and a member of the well documented group that identifies themselves with the moniker. I could take offence to being referred to as reading like a sociopath, but I don't think you used the word accurately. I'm little unsure how to respond to the idea that I'm "attacking nearly everyone at some point in time." Certainly I do argue against a variety of things I think are wrong, but I think I also support a number of groups and people I think do good. Maybe you ought to read a little more of what I've written if you'd like to address a particular point. It isn't hard to find more, much more about me. I'm not anonymous.
I think people who victimize children are evil. I think there are parts of society, parts of the media and parts of the government who contribute to evil or actively do harm children, but that wasn't the subject I was discussing. That would take a lot longer to break down into reasonable parts, but I'm open to discussion in another forum and not terribly hard to contact if you feel so inclined. I'm not anonymous.
I want to hate them. I believe in following the law. I believe in following the rules of society and government. I believe that doing bad things in the name of good is still bad. Still, it is hard for me to hold Anonymous as evil when they are doing good like this, fighting the evil (of child porn) and injustice (Sony.)
If you are an Anonymous member reading this, then know this, I am against you. I hold wrong what you do and how you do it, but what you are accomplishing... you have torn my ethical code. So here's to you, I raise a glass, may you be punished for your wrongdoing, may you suffer the consequences of your misdeeds, but despite that, may you accomplish the good things you aim for. If you have the balls to be willing to take the just desserts of what you have done and still have the guts to do what you feel is right, then kudos to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Kudos for a well developed argument. I'm going to disagree in a few key areas, but I want to say right up front that if your premises are indeed valid, then your conclusions are solidly defensible.
(I think you mean "ought not.") Intentional possession of information that is detrimental to the goals of a society are traditionally illegal. Intentional possession of government military strategic plans by someone who is not authorized should be illegal as an example. The types of information we deem illegal might be unreasonable, but the concept itself is not necessarily unreasonable. I think you and I could agree to more reasonable laws than our society currently has, but I don't think I could be convinced that there is never information that should be illegal to intentionally possess by anyone. I think I'd agree that it isn't the possession but the intentional aquisition that should be illegal, but intentional possession is the point I think is revelant.
Laws and punishments are not only about defining and preventing crime, they are also about providing justice. Certainly the concept of justice gets ignored in the pursuit of better and more effective prevention of crime but it is not an unreasonable pursuit. If I could have been the judge and juror of the person who stole my daughter's bicyle, I certainly would have desired to understand how to change the behavior, but having her compensated for her loss by the person who caused it is justice. Perhaps they felt they needed it to deal with their desperate situation and didn't empathise with her and I'd certainly want that to be corrected, but I also would have wanted her to feel like it was reasonable to expect the thief to pay a fair compensation for their act, regardless of the motivations and thought processes of the thief.
These are two very big if's. In order to know the motivations we'd have to understand and record a lot more information about every person's every stimulus and thought than I think humans will ever accept. I don't think any human society will ever allow that level of intrusion. Aside from that, the idea that everything is predetermined, a clockwork universe if you will, isn't a new idea. I think Newton had a famous quote about it actually, but it doesn't comform to the current better understanding we have of the universe. There are no absolute laws for determining what will happen for any set of inputs. There are statistical probabilities that indicate that things will or won't happen, but they aren't absolute laws. Matter does pop into existance and pop out of existance and probabilities exist where real defined results don't. Erwin Schrodinger's (durn lack of unicode, sorry for spelling problem) objection of a non-determinalistic universe is popularly known by his cat in box thought experiment. The objection he had to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is common sense and experimentally proven wrong. The universe isn't determinalistic, no matter how much it does seem reliable.
People can and do alter their behavior based on potential consequences. Not everyone does and not every individual follows the probablility, but in the here and now real world, there is little hope that we can sufficiently understand and respond to every individual's personality development to prevent people from needing to understand that bad actions can have bad consequences.
Good and evil are concepts that are used to simplify a complex set of ideas.
Well said, thank you for putting it so clearly.
It does bias my opinion though. Where is all the money from our strong economic peroids? Spending like crazy during both cycles seems to be the standard for government. If you can't manage your debt because you can't stop spending whether you're in a boom or recession, then you crash, whether as an individual, a business or a government. I don't like crashing. I'm worried now that it is becoming harder and harder to avoid because, with a better understanding of Keynes theory comes a better understanding of how our government has failed to apply it.
The question of which provider historically provides the better value for spending varies greatly depending on which service or product is discussed and what the goals are. Government control can mean that large projects become affordable by virtue of economy of size but government control can also mean that large projects become far more expensive than free market options if the money goes to pay for bureaucratic overhead.
Municipal water supplies tend to be safer and less expensive than private ones so the monopoly situation is well founded in cities, but the opposite occurs in rural areas.
Phone service was more expensive when it was a government regulated monopoly, but it accomplished a valuable goal of creating an infrastructure that made it more universal than it would have been privately, so there was an an appropriate time for government spending and regulation of services and a time for that to taper off.
I'd certainly agree that it is a major consideration but public safety, infrastructure and freedom are all significant goals as well. Big organization, like Wal-Mart or government may be more effective sometimes, but bigger is not always better and sometimes bigger just means more middlemen to support and usually means less freedom.
You mentioned health care reform and health insurance reform hasn't met your criteria. Massachusetts didn't succeed by that criteria alone. "In just two years under the Massachusetts reforms, from 2005 to 2007, health care spending per capita rose an additional 23 percent." That's not to say it was a failure by every standard though, because "98 percent of all residents were insured last year. [as of 2011]". If the goal is to cost oriented alone, it has been a failure, but if the goal is to make sure those most in need of government intervention receive health insurance it has been a success.
NASA is an example of a strongly debatable expendature. Historically it has accomplished big goals that wouldn't have been accomplished in a free market, but now it is questionable if those big goals are more valuable than the less expensive free market capabilities. You could about double their budget with one percent of the military's, but you could also give a huge incentive subsidy to private companies with that same expenditure. The private companies are probably not going to be able to accomplsh the large goals, but they can accomplish a lot more small goals than NASA would, so the debate really is down to whether lots of significant small achievements are more worthy than a few large ones.
Interesting book reference by the way. I haven't spent much effort in that area of study, but it piques my interest.
You make a good case. I think I'm in favor of government spending on big technology projects and NASA's 0.5% slice of spending makes me feel like we're placing our priorities in the wrong place. When you mention the debt though, and I realize my personal share is $51,147.22 as it stands today, I really want to see us reprioritize. Debt is 103% of GDP right now and that's a pretty shocking figure. When you try to figure out how to deal with a debt like that, you need a growing economy or a shrinking budget, or preferably both.
Most economic theories I hear essentially say that you have to spend government (my!) money to make the economy grow, but there are solid arguments that making business more profitible makes the economy grow. (I won't defend either too strongly but look into the Laffer curve and Hauser's Law to see some of the points.) So I can't really decide. Which is better for most people in a sluggish economy, a shrinking or a growing government spending program?
(Apologies to my economics teachers who tried really hard to make me understand this type of stuff.)
Personally I think there is much the state governments should handle instead of the federal government, so I'm basically in favor of cutting the role of the federal government where reasonable responsiblities can be returned to the state. That's a lot of weasel words to say that state government spending is better than federal government spending, but not all the time.
So I'd rather see a congress locked into limited action rather than the rather abymissal results of a united one. There are exceptions where I think the federal government has a role, but over most of my lifetime, I've been continously disappointed in the "progress" when they do something "productive."
Summary: Please, please give me a "No" party to vote for. The republicans and democrats have both had plenty of examples where they voted for spending and increasing regulation when I strongly wish they had left that to the states, so I'm afraid I can't be happy to vote for either "retardicans" or "demotards" and carefully weigh each vote I make to try to figure out whether voting for somebody without a chance or voting against the slightly less terrible choice has the most impact. I can't remember the last time I was happy to vote for somebody that I thought might win.
It does strike me as slightly hilarious that you can get a situation where Democrats will vote against a Democrat budget and still call the opposition the "party of 'No'."
Why do we believe that people have a right to buy something that the seller doesn't want to offer?
Everywhere I can think of a rule that someone must sell service they don't want to offer, I see a constant frustration by people who don't feel their right to buy is being met sufficiently mirrored by frustration that a seller cannot provide the service they really want to provide.
I believe you have a right to free speech, but I don't believe you have a right to come into my home and spray paint slogans on my walls. Nobody thinks that such a limitation to your speech is censorship because nobody believes that I should be forced to allow you to infringe on my rights in such a silly way.
Yet we believe that your right to buy the type of service you desire from Verizon is sufficient to force them to give you the kind of access you want to something they own.
There is a difference between saying a government should not prohibit the people from stating their opinions and saying a government should force people to run their companies in ways that mandate what they must offer. There is a place for regulation, and in fact I'm generally supportive of NN, but the debate isn't simply "evil corporation vs uncensored speech" as it gets portrayed so often here. The debate is really "must internet providers be forced to offer specific access if freedom of speech is to be preserved?"
In my mind, the Internet is so crucial to freedom of speech that the answer is "yes" but the unresolved question for me is "how much?"
As much as I hate overregulation and tend toward Libertarian views, I think you're right. I dislike censorship more.
I like food labling laws. I like knowing that I can pick up any packaged item in the grocery store and have a good idea what it contains and doesn't contain. The laws force businesses to offer information they might prefer not to offer, but I think it is good for society to be able to expect to know what they're buying. I think I feel the same way about net neutrality, I think it should be clear exactly what services a provider is actually providing. Just like food labels, a lot of people will not care and most people won't ever look, but the option to look changes the dynamic of the transaction.
What I don't like is how NN usually means businesses can't offer some potentially profitible services. Comcast might offer Com-lite, a port 80 only service with preferential treatment to their advertisers for $5/month. Such a service could be profitable to Comcast and offer some some access to a whole class of users who wouldn't be able to afford any service otherwise. NN says it is better that fewer people have access than for those who can afford more expensive access to be limited.
I think there is a reasonable compromise, though I'm not sure how it should be best balanced. Still, I can imagine such a balance with reasonable requirements.
I'm sure the details aren't ideal and there may be far better ways to approaching the problem, but I would like to see the benefits of an option to offer either neutral or limited service play out in a market where consumers were clearly offered information about what is available.
I agree that Windows does have a better firewall than it used to, but saying it is no iptables is an understatement. Blocking incoming traffic is important and blocking outgoing traffic is important but the important thing for me about iptables is the ability to redirect traffic. I redirect traffic coming in on 80 to a completely different machine (or not if it isn't up) and capture outbound DNS and redirect it to my own server. I can do port-knocking to open up ftp, telnet or ssh to only friendly users and turn the rest away. My favorite trick right now is a monitor that looks at my logs and adds the IPs of hacking attempts to a block everything list that is dynamically updated. I write my own tools to some degree, but there are tools to do that reactive blocking automatically that I utilize as well.That the job I want and the Windows firewall is a far cry from capable in that regard.
There is a big difference between saying society is evil and saying some parts of society are evil. There is a big difference between saying government is evil and saying some parts of the government are evil. Society and government are big ideas with lots of parts and players and both have a mix of good and bad. I think a society as a concept is generally good and most societies are better than having no concept of group motivation. I believe that government as a concept is a reasonable method of giving structure to a society and as a reflection of the desire for a good society, is a concept that has worked in many instances to produce something better than anarchy.
The idea that lawlessness is better than law is questionable, but particularly in the area of a small group taking upon themselves the right to decide when they should do something harmful to others without oversight or accountability is something I think I can judge to be bad in at least this specific instance. The goals and activities are different from the method which is what causes my conflict. It is possible to appreciate my society and my government without agreeing with every decision or activity that brought to the current status. Likewise, I can appreciate the activity of turning in a harmful hacker, even if I generally disagree with the methods and structure of a group responsible.
Indeed. Can't mod here or I'd bump you up as insightful. As much as I stand by the idea of a rule of law, I'm not ignorant of the times that it wasn't the ethical choice. I believe subverting someone's computer system without an oversight and review structure, just because you disapprove of their actions, should be punished by law, but I'm not sure that all instances are unethical. Sometimes the question isn't whether "they just decided that they didn't like it anymore" but rather "is it more unethical to follow the law or to break it" and even more to your point "do I have a moral imperative to force a change of law?"
I've wondered about this myself sometimes. At the time it was set up, I can see why it made sense to elect representatives who then made a lot of decisions without direct feedback. Communication like we have today wasn't practical. Would it be better if my senators and congressmen were just automated polling and voting machines? I don't really know, though it is hard to believe it would be much worse.
I find it hard to trust either our society or our representatives too far. I think that's what holds me back from advocating a direct democracy. I'm not sure that it could be kept from being compromised and popular opinion isn't always right. As others have pointed out, racial prejustice, persecution and oppression have all been popular at some points and I think I prefer to have the opportunity to hold responsible and vote against a person within a couple years. It does make me consider term limitations in a more favorable light though.
I've given it some thought, but don't have a solid idea how the best possible system could be set up today. Anybody have a solid plan for how our system of government ought to be set up instead of how it is now?
I've taken the kids to a couple renassance fairs. Interestingly I'd never considered the romantic association, but come to think of it there might be a connection worth investigating...
I've never been in drama school though. Maybe if I had, I'd be able to reference "Dragonlance" novels as if other people could be expected to be familiar with the genre. Methinks the Coward doth protest too much.
Fair point. I don't agree with all the rules of all societies or all governments. I guess I can't assume people will realize I'm writing about a specific society or government. Nor to be completely fair, do I support the all the rules of my own society or government. I do believe that the law should be moral and breaking the rules and laws instead of trying to correct them should only be done at direst need.
Wow. Just wow. You write with such passion against people who disagree with you and consider them the root of all that is evil in this world. It almost reminds me of another group... but you took that analogy already.
When used as a proper noun like I did, it does refer to a specific group.
Well said. Perhaps better said and more reasonable than my own post. Kudos to you.
Fair enough. I don't support all the laws that have ever been made. Nor do I believe that law is inherently moral. I believe it is our human responsibility to make it as fair, just and moral as possible and that society should submit to or change the law rather than ignore it.
The government I am subject to is an elected group of people with limited authority who reflect the wishes of the people who make their election possible. I'm not entirely satisfied with the mindset of the people responsible for electing them nor am I content with all the decisions they make on behalf of the society they are supposed to represent. I'm not sure how to counter the idea that I'm giving them a free pass or what I assume is a poorly worded analysis of my arguments, but I suspect being readily identifiable and writing clearly is better than angry slogan quotes.
When a group identifies themselves by a name, as Anonymous does, then I'm content to consider it specific enough for the discussion. If you prefer to identify them as "the group of internet activists who've claimed responsibility for specific activities and identify their group by the name Anonymous as opposed to the more common designation of people who do not wish to claim an identity in favor of being referred to as anonymos" then feel free to substitute that phrase each time you've seen me refer to Anonymous as a proper noun. I think the difference is clear enough for discussion and don't like typing enough to do it for you.
I think some people who wear suits, just like many who do not, are virtuous. Not all of them are. I don't know whether an undefined group of deceitful men I cannot identify by their identies or actions would be more or less virtous than a group of internet activists I can identify only by thier professed identity group identification as "Anonymous" and supposed activities. If you want to pick a specific group of people, like a subset of congress for example, I can feel my analysis shifting.
Law is a reflection of the willingness of people to be represented by rules they submit to be judged on. Vigilantism is the assertion of a smaller part of the group that the laws the rest of society submit to are insufficient in their own judgment and the willingness to ignore the laws of society and the options to change those laws in favor of imposing their own will on other people.
You and I would agree that the some of the laws that our society has agreed to submit to are unjust and unfair. I think we'd agree that there have been many examples of people exploiting those laws immorally for personal gain. Perhaps we would disagree on how best to change the situation. I believe the the most moral thing to do is to convince a sufficient portion of the population to change the law. One of the small ways I do this is by saying what I think is true and most beneficial in public forums and backing my statements up with my own experience and identity.
I kind of chuckled to myself when I previewed that phrase, it does go a little to the melodramatic doesn't it? But then that was the tone I was trying to convey, so I decided to stick with it. Unless you're lol'ing at the irony of commenting as "Anonymous Coward" in reply, in which case that's a lot said with three little letters.
Ambigious? Maybe. "I love ambiguity more than most people."
Certainly I sometimes wish to remain anonymous and sometimes I do support groups of people who try to make a difference. The capital 'A' in Anonymous refers to a specific group who self identifies that way. Feel free to ignore the relevence of the discussion if you are so inclined, but most of us recognize the difference between windows and Windows, access and Access, and being anonymous or a member of Anonymous. I'm using an active email address and linking to my personal websites where you can find out who I am, what I do, my views and a pretty good cross section of my history. I think that pretty conclusively debunks the idea that I'm anonymous.
There is a difference between being anonymous and a member of the well documented group that identifies themselves with the moniker. I could take offence to being referred to as reading like a sociopath, but I don't think you used the word accurately. I'm little unsure how to respond to the idea that I'm "attacking nearly everyone at some point in time." Certainly I do argue against a variety of things I think are wrong, but I think I also support a number of groups and people I think do good. Maybe you ought to read a little more of what I've written if you'd like to address a particular point. It isn't hard to find more, much more about me. I'm not anonymous.
I think people who victimize children are evil. I think there are parts of society, parts of the media and parts of the government who contribute to evil or actively do harm children, but that wasn't the subject I was discussing. That would take a lot longer to break down into reasonable parts, but I'm open to discussion in another forum and not terribly hard to contact if you feel so inclined. I'm not anonymous.
I want to hate them. I believe in following the law. I believe in following the rules of society and government. I believe that doing bad things in the name of good is still bad. Still, it is hard for me to hold Anonymous as evil when they are doing good like this, fighting the evil (of child porn) and injustice (Sony.)
If you are an Anonymous member reading this, then know this, I am against you. I hold wrong what you do and how you do it, but what you are accomplishing... you have torn my ethical code. So here's to you, I raise a glass, may you be punished for your wrongdoing, may you suffer the consequences of your misdeeds, but despite that, may you accomplish the good things you aim for. If you have the balls to be willing to take the just desserts of what you have done and still have the guts to do what you feel is right, then kudos to you.