Real journalists are always subversive. Howard Zinnsaid "But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth."
No, the ones you're identifying aren't journalists. They're cogs in the propaganda machine. Well-paid minions of the Ministry of Truth. They're the "circus" in "bread and circuses".
I know you meant this as a joke, but the underlying punchline isn't funny.
It wasn't particularly funny 40 years ago either, but that didn't keep it from being a fairly common joke:
Q: How do you contact the NSA? A: Just pick up the phone and start talking.
I think the major change is that we communicate in more ways than just the telephone nowadays, and the technical means to monitor those communications has gotten more pervasive and sophisticated... so more of our privacy is exposed.
It would have to freeze through first. If Enceladus were a solid ice cube (spheroid?), it might be brittle enough to fail by accumulated fracturing. But the tidal kneading that's cracking the surface is also keeping the core of the moon liquid. That's why it spews stuff through the cracks and why it mends itself again after a little while: the cracks seal themselves through surface freezing that deepens until it's as solid as the surrounding ice.
Think of arctic icepack growing and breaking up in an annual cycle, but driven not by seasons but by tidal stress heating over the course of its 1 1/3 day orbit.
True facts: If you try to light a beacon of freedom, it doesn't catch. Illuminates nothing. Dark, cold, non-flammable freedom.
But if you try to light a beacon of petroleum, it lights. Brilliantly. Oh, sure, lots of smoke and maybe a risk of wildfire or explosion. But light. Lots of it.
So, you tell me, what works better for a beacon: oil, or freedom?
Or alternately, "providing APIs and extensions to the user for whatever the wireless provider thinks the user needs, and the user can just suck it if they think they know better."
Honestly, if I wanted someone else to do my thinking for me, I might have bought into a certain other mobile device brand.
Trolls move the goalposts, quietly, hoping no one else notices.
You asked:
What's really crazy is when you start getting into repressed sexuality and our trend of serial killers. Did any of them have a girlfriend?
He answered (quite correctly):
There are serial killers with girlfriends, there are serial killers where the girlfriend was a co-conspirator. Further there were serial killers with lots and lots of boyfriends (Dahmer).
And your response was to deny your initial question by suddenly raising some invisible statistical criterion for "real serial killers".
I think we all know who the "no true Scotman" troll is here. Enjoy continuing to lose your arguments.
Do you know how much Semtex you can pack into a school bus?*
I don't either. And to make sure we never find out, we gotta either ban school buses entirely, or make them park and unload at least 1/4 mile away from their destination.
Walking is good for kids anyway.
*By having combined the words "Semtex" and "school bus", my communications are probably now flagged for maximum scrutiny. Yaah me!
Well, in all fairness, knowing now how the NSA works, you'd have to rewrite parts of "Johnny Mnemonic", becausee Jones the Dolphin would be an active NSA operative behind barbed wire and armed guards instead of a fun fair freakshow.
Maybe. Sometime, it appears that the government just caves. (Numerous bloodless revolutions are the recent examples, such as the various European "color" revolutions at the end of the 20th Century, or much of Arab Spring). And sometimes, it doesn't and one side or the other wins a bloody civil war, very often by grabbing the reins of some large portion of the national military. (Syria is an example in action; Libya is a completed example in recent history.) And sometimes, the armed populace wins by complete surprise. (Consider the 1989 Romanian Revolution. At least in that one, armed public action plus some fairly stupid decisions by Ceausescu's clicque meant that at the last moment, the Army switched sides and finished off the standing government.)
Came here to say this. Hope you get upmodded appropriately.
In Deepness, the Emergent civilization was a perfect confluence of authoritarian dominance, ubiquitous surveillance, and subordination of the individual to the state. But the keystone was ubiquitous surveillance.
I think blackmail is the only way this service will work.
"Nice little town square you have here. It'd be a terrible shame if it were to become associated with a nasty 3word tag like "skank.drugs.filth", right? Maybe we can help you out with that."
"I'm sorry I burned down your house, but the underbrush and dead trees were building up, so it's all for the better that I was playing with these matches and burned some of it off before it built up and caused a REAL fire. You know, the kind that would have burned down your neighborhood instead of just your house. Hey, put down that gun!"
Lady Justice is most often depicted with a set of scales typically suspended from her right hand, upon which she measures the strengths of a case's support and opposition. She is also often seen carrying a double-edged sword in her left hand, symbolizing the power of Reason and Justice, which may be wielded either for or against any party.
Since the 15th century, Lady Justice has often been depicted wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents objectivity, in that justice is or should be meted out objectively, without fear or favour, regardless of identity, money, power, or weakness; blind justice and impartiality.
It's a good principle. However, US Courts have consistently shown some weaknesses in the area of impartial justice when considering issues where the case has been shaped in terms of national security, warmaking, and the low-grade semi-state of emergency we seem to find ourselves living in.
But we already have a law that accomplishes the intents and purposes of the only ones who matter: corporations.
In their mindset, there's no such thing as responsible disclosure. Any disclosure damages them and must be prevented and, if necessary, strongly punished. That way they can continue being incompetent and insecure (and save lots of money, so more profits for everyone who matters), and anyone who tries to uncover vulnerabilities will be treated as the anti-profit criminal worm they obviously are.
The ones who pay for the laws have gotten exactly the law they want. NOTABUG Working as designed.
Aaaaand on behalf of the entire Slashdot community (particularly the part of it that doesn't want me speaking on their behalf, because I love pissing off those douchewads)... I'd like to welcome you to our community, Mr. Kaczynsky.
Please don't blow us up, even if we silently note the hypocrisy of loudly advocating disposing of all the untrustworthy elements of the "industrial-technological system" on a technofetishist on-line computer-based weblog. Well, please don't blow me up, anyway. Kthxbye.
Reality is irrelevant. Control, or the illusion thereof, is the only thing that matters.
That, and vengeance^wjustice.
Sorry. You're arguing from a perspective of what is reasonably called objective reality. This is bureaucracy, and whatever rules they operate under, they have nothing to do with objective reality. Arguments from reality are as relevant as bicycles for fish.
Slashdot Mirror
Real journalists are always subversive. Howard Zinn said "But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth."
No, the ones you're identifying aren't journalists. They're cogs in the propaganda machine. Well-paid minions of the Ministry of Truth. They're the "circus" in "bread and circuses".
I know you meant this as a joke, but the underlying punchline isn't funny.
It wasn't particularly funny 40 years ago either, but that didn't keep it from being a fairly common joke:
I think the major change is that we communicate in more ways than just the telephone nowadays, and the technical means to monitor those communications has gotten more pervasive and sophisticated... so more of our privacy is exposed.
Yeah. I'm not laughing either.
It would have to freeze through first. If Enceladus were a solid ice cube (spheroid?), it might be brittle enough to fail by accumulated fracturing. But the tidal kneading that's cracking the surface is also keeping the core of the moon liquid. That's why it spews stuff through the cracks and why it mends itself again after a little while: the cracks seal themselves through surface freezing that deepens until it's as solid as the surrounding ice.
Think of arctic icepack growing and breaking up in an annual cycle, but driven not by seasons but by tidal stress heating over the course of its 1 1/3 day orbit.
True facts: If you try to light a beacon of freedom, it doesn't catch. Illuminates nothing. Dark, cold, non-flammable freedom.
But if you try to light a beacon of petroleum, it lights. Brilliantly. Oh, sure, lots of smoke and maybe a risk of wildfire or explosion. But light. Lots of it.
So, you tell me, what works better for a beacon: oil, or freedom?
The Thai government was concerned about the risk of confusion: The "bahtcoin".
Yeah. You just did the Batman TV theme in your head. Admit it.
--Konrad, All Tomorrow's Parties
Or alternately, "providing APIs and extensions to the user for whatever the wireless provider thinks the user needs, and the user can just suck it if they think they know better."
Honestly, if I wanted someone else to do my thinking for me, I might have bought into a certain other mobile device brand.
Irony: opting out of language evangelism by loudly evangelizing language neutrality.
Put that in your unspecified recreational pharmaceutical apparatus and consume it, Alanis Morissette!
People seem to be all worked up about the use of the word "can't".
It's a perfectly legitimate, honest, non-fibbing word to use in this context. The context being "We can't be arsed to search that email."
Like I said, perfectly appropriate in context.
Trolls move the goalposts, quietly, hoping no one else notices.
You asked:
He answered (quite correctly):
And your response was to deny your initial question by suddenly raising some invisible statistical criterion for "real serial killers".
I think we all know who the "no true Scotman" troll is here. Enjoy continuing to lose your arguments.
Um... this is "tech.slashdot", not Ask Slashdot.
Which means that the answers being provided here have SOME hope of being appropriate and on-topic. That's probably a plus.
Sez you.
They say they have a secret court ruling to the contrary.
You can't see it. It's secret.
You can't challenge it. It's secret.
Now shut up and pick up that can.
Do you know how much Semtex you can pack into a school bus?*
I don't either. And to make sure we never find out, we gotta either ban school buses entirely, or make them park and unload at least 1/4 mile away from their destination.
Walking is good for kids anyway.
*By having combined the words "Semtex" and "school bus", my communications are probably now flagged for maximum scrutiny. Yaah me!
Well, in all fairness, knowing now how the NSA works, you'd have to rewrite parts of "Johnny Mnemonic", becausee Jones the Dolphin would be an active NSA operative behind barbed wire and armed guards instead of a fun fair freakshow.
Maybe. Sometime, it appears that the government just caves. (Numerous bloodless revolutions are the recent examples, such as the various European "color" revolutions at the end of the 20th Century, or much of Arab Spring). And sometimes, it doesn't and one side or the other wins a bloody civil war, very often by grabbing the reins of some large portion of the national military. (Syria is an example in action; Libya is a completed example in recent history.) And sometimes, the armed populace wins by complete surprise. (Consider the 1989 Romanian Revolution. At least in that one, armed public action plus some fairly stupid decisions by Ceausescu's clicque meant that at the last moment, the Army switched sides and finished off the standing government.)
Came here to say this. Hope you get upmodded appropriately.
In Deepness, the Emergent civilization was a perfect confluence of authoritarian dominance, ubiquitous surveillance, and subordination of the individual to the state. But the keystone was ubiquitous surveillance.
I think blackmail is the only way this service will work.
"Nice little town square you have here. It'd be a terrible shame if it were to become associated with a nasty 3word tag like "skank.drugs.filth", right? Maybe we can help you out with that."
"I'm sorry I burned down your house, but the underbrush and dead trees were building up, so it's all for the better that I was playing with these matches and burned some of it off before it built up and caused a REAL fire. You know, the kind that would have burned down your neighborhood instead of just your house. Hey, put down that gun!"
Lady Liberty has a blindfold for a reason.
Pedantry alert!
You mean Iustitia, Lady Justice:
It's a good principle. However, US Courts have consistently shown some weaknesses in the area of impartial justice when considering issues where the case has been shaped in terms of national security, warmaking, and the low-grade semi-state of emergency we seem to find ourselves living in.
I lived in Montana for a few years in my youth.
I can confirm that I was like unto the undead during that period. It was living death, except colder in the winter.
The only living thing there is cattle, and that's only because you can't market zombie beef yet.
But we already have a law that accomplishes the intents and purposes of the only ones who matter: corporations.
In their mindset, there's no such thing as responsible disclosure. Any disclosure damages them and must be prevented and, if necessary, strongly punished. That way they can continue being incompetent and insecure (and save lots of money, so more profits for everyone who matters), and anyone who tries to uncover vulnerabilities will be treated as the anti-profit criminal worm they obviously are.
The ones who pay for the laws have gotten exactly the law they want. NOTABUG Working as designed.
OMG I misspelled your name. I'm so sorry. So very sorry! Please, don't mail me any packages, I'm allergic to explosives!
Aaaaand on behalf of the entire Slashdot community (particularly the part of it that doesn't want me speaking on their behalf, because I love pissing off those douchewads)... I'd like to welcome you to our community, Mr. Kaczynsky.
Please don't blow us up, even if we silently note the hypocrisy of loudly advocating disposing of all the untrustworthy elements of the "industrial-technological system" on a technofetishist on-line computer-based weblog. Well, please don't blow me up, anyway. Kthxbye.
Reality is irrelevant. Control, or the illusion thereof, is the only thing that matters.
That, and vengeance^wjustice.
Sorry. You're arguing from a perspective of what is reasonably called objective reality. This is bureaucracy, and whatever rules they operate under, they have nothing to do with objective reality. Arguments from reality are as relevant as bicycles for fish.
Good point.
The program really should have been called "IngSocMint." Doubleplusgood bellyfeel.