There's NO WAY they are going to liberalize patents in the slightest-- get real, Big Pharma patents forcing sick consumers to subsidise drug R&D & massive profits, is too big of a piece of what bought us this crappy government.
1. Take a couple of hackers
2. Don business suits.
3. Prepare an anti-wikileaks presentation
4. Pitch it to upcoming leak targets or perceived targets
5. Profit!
On second thought, nah, it'd never work. They'd never get past #2...
That's right, as less than half of those eligible actually vote. If instead they all voted a third party in protest, all the reps & dems could be on the outside looking in. Not holding my breath, tho....
Ayn Rand was an intelligent fruitcake, not a philosopher or a scientist. The basis of her ideas can be found in the sources quoted in Umberto Eco's The search for the perfect language, which is quite hard going but I think worth the effort.
Why is there this category of linguistic "experts" who are so hard to understand? It seems to me, that if they are such good linguists, they should be really EASY to understand...
Then again, the point they seem to be trying to make, is just how difficult communication is-- but if that's the point you're trying to make, doesn't it become a self fulfilling prophecy?
or is the general Slashdot crowd getting progressively stupider? Karl Popper solved the problem of the "scientific method" nearly a century ago. It's simple.
Yes, for the most part, but it then launched an army of obscurantists who simply weren't happy with that answer.
This smells more like an attempt to rehabilitate Ayn Rand as a genuine philosophical contribution than a book on logic.
I'm inclined to agree, but if it works as an antidote to post-structuralism, I might be willing to put up with it for awhile.
It seems to me, that since (and including) Wittgenstein, many philosophers have completely lost sight of the importance of eliminating the unnecessary. With Ayn Rand on one end, and Semiotics on the other, here's hoping they'll kill each other off...
If a left-leaning person is not even willing to hear from anyone labeled a conservative, I would posit that they are part of the problem as much as they harp on the right.
I would tend to agree, at least when that conservative makes well reasoned arguments (we can agree to disagree about the solutions, at least). But I would not consider Fox News in that category.
The times I've attempted to watch Fox, I've found the fallacious-arguments-per-minute rate to be so high that it's pretty impossible to make much sense out of any of it. In fact, it's a veritable textbook of such argument styles. I'm left to conclude that it's viewership must be pretty incapable of recognizing basic fallacies such as the straw man, false dichotomy, guilt-by-association, omission, etc.
I've caught "progressive" media making those sorts of fallacious arguments too, and I think it does neither the progressive nor conservative case well in using them.
No, it seems they are saying that reading them is not the problem, you are not allowed to call attention to their existance by posting anything about them to a public forum-- such as Slashdot for instance. I hope nobody here was hoping to get a job with the State Dept...
Never mind what illegal, immoral or just plain goofy activities were leaked, the RESPONSE the government has had to the leaks is far more telling. On one hand, Obama releases a memo that says, "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about
what their Government is doing." And out of the other side of his mouth he's talking about prosecuting Assange for providing just that very sort of transparency. What the government is WILLING to tell us they are doing is not going to be the interesting part, any more than it is a fact that the speech that most needs protection to be free is that which is unpopular.
If the government is uncomfortable with what has been showing up on Wikileaks, they should have thought of that before they set the precident by things like the Bush administration pardoning Scooter Libby for being instrumental in outing Valerie Plame, for the Obama administration granting immunity to AT&T for illegal wiretapping of US citizens. They set a good example with those, showing us that it's OK to illegally spy and leak, you can get away with it-- we let our buds off the hook on that all the time! If it wasn't for that kind of example-setting, they might have gotten a little more sympathy for the impact the leaks have had on their operations. As it is, it's the just deserts.
But the behavior that has resulted, suggesting an Assange assassination, prosecution for espionage, censorship akin to shutting down a newspaper's printing press because they don't like its politics. A complete attack on the messenger, the vehicle of freedom of speech, of speech that MOST needs protection because it is unpopular. While they may have legitimate issues with Bradley Manning leaking the info in the first place, the fact that Assange doesn't roll over and play dead and cover it up like Amazon did at the snap of the US government's fingers is WAY out of line. The real scandal here is not the shenanigans revealed in the leaked cables, but the responses they have had to the idea of a legitimate news publisher doing it's job-- publishing the leak itself. Behavior that shows that to them, while they talk a good game about transparency and freedom of speech, they are no different than any totalitarian government when it really counts.
Actually, I'd say that's even worse. Essentially they're pre-censoring people's opinions on the subject. Even such a post as yours on Slashdot would qualify as "posting anything about it on social media sites." But I gather you weren't interested in such a job yourself, were you?
"If you want a job with us, you'd better not let anyone know you have an opinion on Wikileaks and what it is." Yeah, that's the kind of State Department I want, one full of toadies who keep their opinions to themselves if they are at all associated with ideas that question the behavior of the United States. It seems to me that kind of thing is what got us this messed up government in the first place. Freedom of speech indeed. Never mind if you want to leak or publish something they want to keep secret, but if you even have an opinion about whistleblowing, you're banned.
I think vast swaths of the public go along with the outrage simply because they really don't want to know "the truth".
An insightful post for the most part. But with this statement, I'd say instead that vast swaths of the public don't want to have to figure out what the truth is, don't know how or don't want to spend the time or are just plain incapable of reasoning through such a process, and so they've decided that their "team" has got a line on the truth (Reps or Dems or whatever), and so they'll just parrot whatever is being sold to them as "truth" by their team and just get behind them, "right or wrong." And of course, their "team" is feeding whatever sort of apologetics is necessary to advance their hidden agendas (which seems to be far too often, lining their pockets with corporate contributions). The problem with this whole system, is those that are ignorant of the truth are essentially providing/investing far too much power in these "teams" who's interests have little to do with any kind of "truth," and for that matter, aren't really all that interested in giving anything but lip service back to their peon fanbase...
Well, in the US, when word gets out that there's a leak on the way, we've suddenly seen the affected parties get religion about "transparency," and try to beat the leak to the punch by opening up the info themselves, so they can spin it somewhat for themselves. The definition of "transparency" has to go through a bit of a different transformation when hundreds of thousands of secrets are flying out the door at once.
In the future, perhaps the solution is for the gov't secret network to be sending a lot of clearly bogus information around along with everything else-- "Michelle Obama had a secret affair with George Bush," "Rush Limbaugh is an undercover Chinese spy." Enough junk, and if another "data dump" comes out, they can disavow all of it as being complete BS. You know, "plausible deniability" and all that...
After all this, we're likely to see a lot of Wikileaks clones out there before too long, all making a complete network of whistleblower sites. And if they get their interdistribution system designed well, perhaps they'll all get new stuff at the same time and none have any idea which was the source.
As it is, one has to wonder about how effective Wikileaks submissions system is-- do we know how it was found out who Bradley Manning is? Was there a "leak" in the Wikileaks submission process? That in itself could have a cooling effect on the release of secret documents.
In fact, I guess that's an argument for a government or business releasing information on who the leaker is, even when they don't actually know, because if it seems as soon as something interesting is released, someone always seems to get caught and punished for it, that could have an effect on anyone thinking about leaking anything...
Translation: "We don't care if the idea is any good or not, we oppose it in any case for political reasons." Is it any wonder why this country is so screwed up?
I agree that Democracy is the best idea we have. But in the US, what we have had for some time is a shill Democracy. A parlor game designed to make the people think that their vote has any effect. Where we need change, is in the things that the Republicans and the Democrats agree, where they disagree is just tag-team wrestling hijinks to keep us entertained. Things they agree on like giving corporations the power of individuals in elections (extraordinarly rich individuals). Things like barring third party candidates from the debates. Unlimited monitary political contributions. Things like accepting bribes from lobbyists. It may be free speech, but as was once said, freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Freedom of the speech of a dollar, is relative to the number of dollars being used. Suppose everyone was poor, except one guy who was rich-- he'd have the power to "fix" all the elections however he wants in our system. Sure, he has freedom of speech, but his money has grossly altered the playing field, and you can't just ignore that and still call the system fair and free. In elections, it should be one man/woman, one vote, one dollar. Otherwise the well to do have far more influence than the poor, and it's clear that noblesse oblige is not working. The rich guy may prefer to keep his business profits by destroying the environment that the poor depends on to live, his motivations cannot be trusted just because he "creates jobs."
The media could have helped out, but they've been co-opted. Notice how they act like attack dogs against Wikileaks on one hand, yet tell you all about how to surf the latest Wikileaks releases on the other. I guess they figure that's balanced coverage, eh?
Information is power, power to the people-- the revolution will be internet-ized, in HTML and mirrored.
Yeah, though once the big money starts to get hurt, that's when you'll see them order their lap dogs in Washington to go declare war on Wikileaks, and they'll snap to so fast you'll be shocked and awed...
Either that, or it's the "cries wolf" theory. Release enough boring stuff until it becomes a non-event, then when the really juicy stuff goes out noone bothers to notice because they're not interested in reading any of it anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
There's NO WAY they are going to liberalize patents in the slightest-- get real, Big Pharma patents forcing sick consumers to subsidise drug R&D & massive profits, is too big of a piece of what bought us this crappy government.
1. Take a couple of hackers
2. Don business suits.
3. Prepare an anti-wikileaks presentation
4. Pitch it to upcoming leak targets or perceived targets
5. Profit!
On second thought, nah, it'd never work. They'd never get past #2...
Darn. I was really looking forward to reading some of these confessions on WikiLeaks.
That's right, as less than half of those eligible actually vote. If instead they all voted a third party in protest, all the reps & dems could be on the outside looking in. Not holding my breath, tho....
No doubt he doesn't need a pension, as his 401k/IRAs are performing so well...
Just a lame excuse for Facebook to track YOUR location. Don't fall for it. An Amber alert near you "needs" to know where you are.
Ayn Rand was an intelligent fruitcake, not a philosopher or a scientist. The basis of her ideas can be found in the sources quoted in Umberto Eco's The search for the perfect language, which is quite hard going but I think worth the effort.
Why is there this category of linguistic "experts" who are so hard to understand? It seems to me, that if they are such good linguists, they should be really EASY to understand...
Then again, the point they seem to be trying to make, is just how difficult communication is-- but if that's the point you're trying to make, doesn't it become a self fulfilling prophecy?
or is the general Slashdot crowd getting progressively stupider? Karl Popper solved the problem of the "scientific method" nearly a century ago. It's simple.
Yes, for the most part, but it then launched an army of obscurantists who simply weren't happy with that answer.
This smells more like an attempt to rehabilitate Ayn Rand as a genuine philosophical contribution than a book on logic.
I'm inclined to agree, but if it works as an antidote to post-structuralism, I might be willing to put up with it for awhile.
It seems to me, that since (and including) Wittgenstein, many philosophers have completely lost sight of the importance of eliminating the unnecessary. With Ayn Rand on one end, and Semiotics on the other, here's hoping they'll kill each other off...
If a left-leaning person is not even willing to hear from anyone labeled a conservative, I would posit that they are part of the problem as much as they harp on the right.
I would tend to agree, at least when that conservative makes well reasoned arguments (we can agree to disagree about the solutions, at least). But I would not consider Fox News in that category.
The times I've attempted to watch Fox, I've found the fallacious-arguments-per-minute rate to be so high that it's pretty impossible to make much sense out of any of it. In fact, it's a veritable textbook of such argument styles. I'm left to conclude that it's viewership must be pretty incapable of recognizing basic fallacies such as the straw man, false dichotomy, guilt-by-association, omission, etc.
I've caught "progressive" media making those sorts of fallacious arguments too, and I think it does neither the progressive nor conservative case well in using them.
No, it seems they are saying that reading them is not the problem, you are not allowed to call attention to their existance by posting anything about them to a public forum-- such as Slashdot for instance. I hope nobody here was hoping to get a job with the State Dept...
Never mind what illegal, immoral or just plain goofy activities were leaked, the RESPONSE the government has had to the leaks is far more telling. On one hand, Obama releases a memo that says, "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing." And out of the other side of his mouth he's talking about prosecuting Assange for providing just that very sort of transparency. What the government is WILLING to tell us they are doing is not going to be the interesting part, any more than it is a fact that the speech that most needs protection to be free is that which is unpopular.
If the government is uncomfortable with what has been showing up on Wikileaks, they should have thought of that before they set the precident by things like the Bush administration pardoning Scooter Libby for being instrumental in outing Valerie Plame, for the Obama administration granting immunity to AT&T for illegal wiretapping of US citizens. They set a good example with those, showing us that it's OK to illegally spy and leak, you can get away with it-- we let our buds off the hook on that all the time! If it wasn't for that kind of example-setting, they might have gotten a little more sympathy for the impact the leaks have had on their operations. As it is, it's the just deserts.
But the behavior that has resulted, suggesting an Assange assassination, prosecution for espionage, censorship akin to shutting down a newspaper's printing press because they don't like its politics. A complete attack on the messenger, the vehicle of freedom of speech, of speech that MOST needs protection because it is unpopular. While they may have legitimate issues with Bradley Manning leaking the info in the first place, the fact that Assange doesn't roll over and play dead and cover it up like Amazon did at the snap of the US government's fingers is WAY out of line. The real scandal here is not the shenanigans revealed in the leaked cables, but the responses they have had to the idea of a legitimate news publisher doing it's job-- publishing the leak itself. Behavior that shows that to them, while they talk a good game about transparency and freedom of speech, they are no different than any totalitarian government when it really counts.
Actually, I'd say that's even worse. Essentially they're pre-censoring people's opinions on the subject. Even such a post as yours on Slashdot would qualify as "posting anything about it on social media sites." But I gather you weren't interested in such a job yourself, were you?
"If you want a job with us, you'd better not let anyone know you have an opinion on Wikileaks and what it is." Yeah, that's the kind of State Department I want, one full of toadies who keep their opinions to themselves if they are at all associated with ideas that question the behavior of the United States. It seems to me that kind of thing is what got us this messed up government in the first place. Freedom of speech indeed. Never mind if you want to leak or publish something they want to keep secret, but if you even have an opinion about whistleblowing, you're banned.
Yeah, they're all for transparency, as long as it doesn't apply to them...
I think vast swaths of the public go along with the outrage simply because they really don't want to know "the truth".
An insightful post for the most part. But with this statement, I'd say instead that vast swaths of the public don't want to have to figure out what the truth is, don't know how or don't want to spend the time or are just plain incapable of reasoning through such a process, and so they've decided that their "team" has got a line on the truth (Reps or Dems or whatever), and so they'll just parrot whatever is being sold to them as "truth" by their team and just get behind them, "right or wrong." And of course, their "team" is feeding whatever sort of apologetics is necessary to advance their hidden agendas (which seems to be far too often, lining their pockets with corporate contributions). The problem with this whole system, is those that are ignorant of the truth are essentially providing/investing far too much power in these "teams" who's interests have little to do with any kind of "truth," and for that matter, aren't really all that interested in giving anything but lip service back to their peon fanbase...
Well, in the US, when word gets out that there's a leak on the way, we've suddenly seen the affected parties get religion about "transparency," and try to beat the leak to the punch by opening up the info themselves, so they can spin it somewhat for themselves. The definition of "transparency" has to go through a bit of a different transformation when hundreds of thousands of secrets are flying out the door at once.
In the future, perhaps the solution is for the gov't secret network to be sending a lot of clearly bogus information around along with everything else-- "Michelle Obama had a secret affair with George Bush," "Rush Limbaugh is an undercover Chinese spy." Enough junk, and if another "data dump" comes out, they can disavow all of it as being complete BS. You know, "plausible deniability" and all that...
After all this, we're likely to see a lot of Wikileaks clones out there before too long, all making a complete network of whistleblower sites. And if they get their interdistribution system designed well, perhaps they'll all get new stuff at the same time and none have any idea which was the source.
As it is, one has to wonder about how effective Wikileaks submissions system is-- do we know how it was found out who Bradley Manning is? Was there a "leak" in the Wikileaks submission process? That in itself could have a cooling effect on the release of secret documents.
In fact, I guess that's an argument for a government or business releasing information on who the leaker is, even when they don't actually know, because if it seems as soon as something interesting is released, someone always seems to get caught and punished for it, that could have an effect on anyone thinking about leaking anything...
Translation: "We don't care if the idea is any good or not, we oppose it in any case for political reasons." Is it any wonder why this country is so screwed up?
I agree that Democracy is the best idea we have. But in the US, what we have had for some time is a shill Democracy. A parlor game designed to make the people think that their vote has any effect. Where we need change, is in the things that the Republicans and the Democrats agree, where they disagree is just tag-team wrestling hijinks to keep us entertained. Things they agree on like giving corporations the power of individuals in elections (extraordinarly rich individuals). Things like barring third party candidates from the debates. Unlimited monitary political contributions. Things like accepting bribes from lobbyists. It may be free speech, but as was once said, freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Freedom of the speech of a dollar, is relative to the number of dollars being used. Suppose everyone was poor, except one guy who was rich-- he'd have the power to "fix" all the elections however he wants in our system. Sure, he has freedom of speech, but his money has grossly altered the playing field, and you can't just ignore that and still call the system fair and free. In elections, it should be one man/woman, one vote, one dollar. Otherwise the well to do have far more influence than the poor, and it's clear that noblesse oblige is not working. The rich guy may prefer to keep his business profits by destroying the environment that the poor depends on to live, his motivations cannot be trusted just because he "creates jobs."
The media could have helped out, but they've been co-opted. Notice how they act like attack dogs against Wikileaks on one hand, yet tell you all about how to surf the latest Wikileaks releases on the other. I guess they figure that's balanced coverage, eh?
Information is power, power to the people-- the revolution will be internet-ized, in HTML and mirrored.
Oh look a high UID shill.
That's for sure-- looks like he may have as many as 200 ID's, all with numbers within a single digit of each other.
Some people sure work hard to be jerks. You'd think they would have something better to do...
Yeah, though once the big money starts to get hurt, that's when you'll see them order their lap dogs in Washington to go declare war on Wikileaks, and they'll snap to so fast you'll be shocked and awed...
Either that, or it's the "cries wolf" theory. Release enough boring stuff until it becomes a non-event, then when the really juicy stuff goes out noone bothers to notice because they're not interested in reading any of it anymore...
Wikileaks could easily filter information to further any agenda it sees fit.
Not without the original whistleblower knowing about it.
It is impossible to monitor Wikileak's integrity or transparency.
Incorrect. Whoever gave Wikileaks the docs in the first place would know if they were selectively released.
Yeah, that and regretting they gave illegal wiretaps by AT&T immunity from prosecution.