Yep-- why should we care about their privacy? They showed us with the AT&T case, that they don't care about ours. At least Wikileaks is getting us a little payback for the moment. If it wasn't for the fact that illegal wiretapping acts by AT&T got immunity, maybe we'd be a little more sympathetic, eh? As it is, whoever leaked those docs is my hero. I don't care how boring the darned docs actually are, as long as they don't want us to have them that's enough for me...
Yes, theoretically, the only people who need signature-based AV are those who don't keep their security patches up to date, and those people aren't going to keep their virus definitions up to date either, so what's the point?
No, this is just "free-market can do no wrong" spin doctoring. Before people started walking out on their mortgages because they were underwater, several critical industries (not to mention the Fed-- see "Alan Greenspan") were convinced that home prices could never really go down. So it became the goose that laid the golden egg and greed completely took over-- "flippers" jumped into the market to make a quick buck, inflating the housing demand beyond those who just needed a place to live, construction of houses went nuts and bloated the inventory, and the banks decided to relax their standards and bundle mortgages to average out the few failures. It was a house of cards that took several years to build up, and it came down in record time. Sure, bailouts and stimulus were disgusting, but frankly, given the fact that armies of mortgage brokers were allowed to pitch attractive home buying scenarios to neophyte buyers (hey, it's expensive, but the value of your home is skyrocketing, so it's a great investment and if you get into trouble you can just refi or sell it and still come out ahead, etc. etc.) I don't blame anyone who walks out of an unrealistic mortgage they're now in.
To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks.
All I want to know is, just what kind of catastrophe has to happen before the general populace is going to get this all-too-obvious fact through their thick skulls?
Except the American people aren't so much apathetic as they are misguided (largely by the Media), from the wrestling-like tag-team hype that inspires them to just get behind "their" party, right or wrong, and apparently think that will fix everything...
It's worse than that-- I have 4 phone numbers, and only one of them has the area code of where I actually live-- and one has the area code from another state. Number portability means that you get lots of robocalls from idiots in other districts or states that I couldn't vote for if I wanted to...
Problem with this is, the newer ones appear to be more cheaply made-- I had one that lasted years just crap out, ordered a new one, and it lasted about two months before the keys started becoming unresponsive. Then I tried an Adesso model, but the feel really sucks.
This shows that sometimes you will do better when you're actually nice to potential customers, and don't try to ram things down their throats or P. T. Barnum them.
I certainly don't want the social web to be in the control of a single entity that gets to decide how my data is going to be handled, and has control over my privacy.
There are several solutions in-the-works for this, and it seems that it wouldn't be too hard for one of them to catch on, given the fact that they could easily offer interesting features that Facebook would never offer because they would lose too much control.
It seems to me that a standard for independent data repositories that are controlled by each individual and are capable of hosting their personal content-- sort of like the core of a personal web page that can then be plugged in to the social framework.
But certainly Facebook has the momentum at the moment, so it will take some focus and a killer app or two.
Possibly taking an existing system that may be closer to a more independent structure, and adapting it to be more Facebook-like would be an angle-- for example, taking Second Life and tying the data elements into a non-virtualized Facebook-like interface. Or perhaps something like that already exists. Not everyone wants to move around in 3D and talk to goofy avatars in order to see what all their friends are doing, but the independence of the user data in other experiments in social web interactions may already be developed and have some existing standing-- an existing user base to leverage. Just a thought...
I was looking at a demo setup over at Costco the other day. For a moment, I thought- hey, this is looking pretty good! The reason I thought that, is I looked at the back of the blu-ray 3D player, and thought I was looking at separate left and right component outputs. I would have walked out with that blu-ray player and some 3D movies if that were the case! The idea that I could take a ~$200 player and feed it to separate projectors and use passive polarizing glasses would be really great-- and using off-the-shelf 2D projectors. Then all I would want is a 3D vidcam so I could make my own material. But shuttered glasses? Forget it-- I don't care what the refresh rate is, I could care less about a system that requires you to buy active glasses for each viewer. On closer inspection of that blu-ray player, the two rows of three RCA outputs turned out to be a single tricolor output, stereo audio and a compvid connector that were lined up as two rows of three that got me thinking it was separate outputs. My hopes were dashed. Useless-- I'd never buy one as it is. Doomed to failure because of the short-sightedness of the industry who has already chosen for you the 3D technology you are going to have. A more componentized system that made fewer assumptions would have been much more flexible.
Worse than that, how about a Wifi connected security camera. All this effort to "connect your toaster to the internet," and now that we have some of that stuff they want to bar anything that isn't running an ineffective self-serving technology like anti-virus (clue: only detects the latest threats *after* the infection-- hello?). And not all of these devices are upgradable. Get bent, Microsoft-- take your world domination schemes and shove them up your ___...
I think UI design should have an option to put menus on the side now, to handle the wider formats.
Windows already does-- I've had the taskbar on the left side of my screen for years now-- works much better than that crappy autohide feature. But it is fun to watch other people try to use my system, they keep banging the pointer at the bottom of the screen wondering why the taskbar isn't popping up and it's right there in front of their face on the left side-- wide monitors allow me to devote a good inch width to the taskbar on the side and I think it works way better that way...
Half of the clutter is the stupid "someone commented on someone's status." I NEVER want to see that from ANYONE-- the first time I did, I thought, "oh, I didn't even know they were sick!". I can use a Greasmonkey script, but that's often inconvenient. Remove those, and that would be a huge improvement in the experience. It looks like someone left debugging turned on in the code.
Also, I find the "hide" feature virtually never accomplishes what I'm after. I don't recall the specifics at the moment because I stopped using it some time ago because it was never useful.
Because you know, they're all salivating over metering based on bandwidth, where botnets will just raise their revenue. In the long run, the ISPs may end up being the actual source of some of those botnets.
At the very least, they're not in the habit of offering services without charging for them-- so you could expect to see a "botnet detection" fee on your bill if they work out a detection scheme that is workable.
Oh, that's right. There are some quaint souls out there that still watch NETWORK TELEVISION, without modern technologies like Tivo. And you see, there's this new technology called the DVD. With Netflix and/or renting, borrowing or buying DVDs, I can watch TV shows and movies whenever I want, and the only commercials I ever see are a few trailers for other films. In fact, my local library has a great selection, and it's what I'm getting for paying my property taxes, so I might as well get my money's worth there, eh?
Things the parties DO matter to the corporations, tax reliefs, bailouts, rolling back regulations, etc. The corporations won't even allow a third party in the *debates* because they'll ask uncomfortable questions that neither of the "big two" parties will dare touch on because they're both sucking at the big teat... And of course, the corps own the media too so third party ideas don't get the slightest bit of coverage...
But hell, what do we care, *our* team is going to win! Bah. When I was first able to vote, some 30+ years ago, it was obvious to me that there's no difference between the Rs and the Ds except smoke and mirrors. Nothing has changed in the slightest, except they've both gotten even more corrupt and self-serving (and who would have thought that possible).
Yeah, the problem is, in the US for most of the populace it's really not about the ideologies, but about the membership-- "we like the Dems because they're *our* team, we've always liked the Dems." Same with the other side-- it doesn't matter what "their team" does, it's *their team*, right or wrong. It's all black & white-- good guys vs bad guys thinking. If one of "our" guys does something really stupid, then he's either one of their guys in disguise, or something on the other team that *made* them do it, or we just minimize the impact of it-- "oh, it's no big deal, anyone could have made a mistake like that..."
That's why the corporations have been able to push the whole mess in their direction, because the politicians follow the money, and the populace simply votes for their team no matter what.
Which the corporations like just fine. What they don't like is any idea of a third party, because then they'd have to shell out the payola for yet another candidate. There's no chance in hell of a third party winning much of anything, because they'll get NO corporate money whatsoever (no matter WHAT their platform), and that's where most of the money is. And of course, none of the "team player" populace will vote for anyone that's not on their team, so third parties have a snowball's chance in hell...
Couldn't we all just generate gigabytes worth of random data chunks that we "copyright" and then pass around a bit-- wouldn't we then qualify for some of that gravy as "rights holders"? Just how do you define a "rights holder" here anyway-- at the very least, shouldn't Slashdot get a piece of that as compensation for all of us here who are rampantly copying other people's content without paying for it in reading these forums?
"If wikileaks dies..." - Depends on its death. If Assange is arrested, deported to the US, tried and sent to jail or executed, NOBODY will rise to take wikileaks' place because of the fear factor.
You probably should learn a little more about the internet before making such a claim. Future versions of "Wikileaks" could easily be hosted on spambot networks or rogue or compromised sites, and regardless of what technologies you use to attempt to track IP or MAC addresses, may come from sources that are completely anonymized. One case in point-- seen how great those attempts at clamping down on spam have been working? A few idiots that don't know how to cover their tracks get press now and then when they are caught and jailed, but the level of spam traffic doesn't even hiccup. Leaks coming from more "rogue" sources likely will not even have attempts made at redacting anything. And sticking an envelope of paper in a mailbox is still pretty anonymous, even if the addressee is a well-known media outlet. The biggest problem they might have is credibility, but that's not a problem if they can provide some means of verification of the accuracy of the information.
And if it wants to be free, would you like your bank account details, credit score and other sensitive stuff that might deprive you of a job out for everybody to see?
Chances are, he doesn't need to release that-- it's likely already out there if you know how to look for it.
If you really want to get into the the theory behind it, it's actually quite simple. We now use one space to avoid "rivers of white" in text. In short, if you look at a sample of documents that have been double spaced after the punctuation, you'll start to notice lines of white that run throughout the document. This distracts the reader and lowers the readability of the document.
This is a silly argument. I haven't been distracted by noticing "rivers of white" since the first days of the NEC spinwriter, and that was only due to really bad justification programs. And anyway, just what is your problem with it? Are you getting paid by the character or something? I DO get distracted by sentences that seem jammed together, pretty much like the ones you see here on slashdot that have only one space with proportional fonts, where the space is far skinnier than it is in monospaced fonts. You can get away with one space in monospaced font, because you're getting a full-width separation. But with proportional spacing, things just seem all jammed together because of the skinny space. Inter-sentence punctuation is separated by a single space-- with the comma for instance, or periods in abbreviations. This should be differentiated from the spacing between sentences. Lack of double spacing essentially produces run-on sentences.
Yes, but Slashdot DOES strip . <- there's 4 's separated by spaces after the period, or at least were when I entered it-- and they are preserved in the edit box through the preview, but do not show up in the rendered version...
Notice when you read shit on the internet it is single spaced after punctuation, and not double spaced?
One of the many deficiencies of HTML.
Perhaps. I'm in the habit of putting an after periods when I write for HTML. Problem would be solved, if it wasn't for comment editing code that strips them out (such as here on Slashdot which you can see here since I put 4 nbsp's separated by spaces after the periods in this paragraph, and despite the fact they are preserved through the preview, they are having no visible effect). The deficiency is not strictly with HTML, but with some of the editors that work with it.
Though I agree that HTML does not make it easy to maintain double spaced sentence separation. I hate reading single-spaced sentence text, I always notice it and it looks ugly. Perhaps I should insert
<br>
after every sentence, and while that would look ugly too, at least it would show my displeasure with the sentence police who have apparently decided that we will not use two spaces...
This is the kind of bullshit you hear from people who don't have a fucking clue what regular people are like. Sure, it's possible that a government may hide their activities from the public in an attempt to deceive or control them. Much more often, however, the government needs to keep information from the public because the public is full of panicky morons. And yes, sometimes a restriction on information is vital to national security. Traditional media doesn't "fail" to expose this information; they have enough sense to determine what benefits the public and what doesn't. Assange clearly lacks any fucking iota of that kind of sense.
This is the kind of bullshit you hear from people who just can't keep from going all Pollyanna over their government, or quite likely, just their particular political party.
The problem here is, the US government is also full of panicky morons. Powerful panicky morons, with armies and secrets, and mostly indebted to powerful corporate interests.
I'll take the panicky morons of the public over that sort any day.
If restriction on information is vital to national security for other than very short-term situations such as impending military actions, or possibly witness protection and a few limited other cases, then I'd say our national security is not very robust, and it's likely to get worse. When national security is dependent on keeping mum about how badly a war has been going, then we have a serious problem.
I think of it like a business. If you have a manager working for you who isn't telling you the truth about how his work is going, you should fire him. If he simply avoids telling you anything at all about how his work is going, and you find out about it, regardless of how his work is going, you should fire him. The Congress & the President are hired managers, and we have not just a right, but a responsibility to check up on what kind of job they are doing for us. The only way to keep the cockroaches out of the foundation is to keep turning over the rocks and shining lights into the dark corners. In that regard, we could use an army like Julian Assange, because it seems to me we've just seen the tip of the iceberg...
In 2000 I voted for Nader, and have every time he's run. I knew if enough people did that in 2000 it would throw the election to Bush, but I figured that things needed to get much worse before enough people would recognize that voting either R or D is the root of the problem. Well, Bush won, and exceeded my wildest expectations with regards to making things much worse. But then I realized in 2004, that it still wasn't enough-- you see, there is this ingrained "team A" or "team B" mentality-- "our team, right or wrong." Most voters are completely oblivious to how bad their team screws things up, all that is important is "our team is better than the other team," and "if something is wrong, it absolutely must be something the other team did." It's an air-tight apologetic for the two-party status quo. As long as that is the case, it's going to be more of the same. The US is terminally infected with the team-player-voter virus, and at this point, it doesn't seem to matter how much worse things get, the team-player apologetic will always bail the system out at the voting booth.
Nevertheless, I continue to apply the following voting algorithm, despite my realization it is probably hopeless: 1) vote for the non R or D candidates that would seem to be most likely to win if there were no Rs or Ds running, and 2) if there's only an R and D running, vote for whoever is not already in office.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep-- why should we care about their privacy? They showed us with the AT&T case, that they don't care about ours. At least Wikileaks is getting us a little payback for the moment. If it wasn't for the fact that illegal wiretapping acts by AT&T got immunity, maybe we'd be a little more sympathetic, eh? As it is, whoever leaked those docs is my hero. I don't care how boring the darned docs actually are, as long as they don't want us to have them that's enough for me...
Yes, theoretically, the only people who need signature-based AV are those who don't keep their security patches up to date, and those people aren't going to keep their virus definitions up to date either, so what's the point?
No, this is just "free-market can do no wrong" spin doctoring. Before people started walking out on their mortgages because they were underwater, several critical industries (not to mention the Fed-- see "Alan Greenspan") were convinced that home prices could never really go down. So it became the goose that laid the golden egg and greed completely took over-- "flippers" jumped into the market to make a quick buck, inflating the housing demand beyond those who just needed a place to live, construction of houses went nuts and bloated the inventory, and the banks decided to relax their standards and bundle mortgages to average out the few failures. It was a house of cards that took several years to build up, and it came down in record time. Sure, bailouts and stimulus were disgusting, but frankly, given the fact that armies of mortgage brokers were allowed to pitch attractive home buying scenarios to neophyte buyers (hey, it's expensive, but the value of your home is skyrocketing, so it's a great investment and if you get into trouble you can just refi or sell it and still come out ahead, etc. etc.) I don't blame anyone who walks out of an unrealistic mortgage they're now in.
To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks.
All I want to know is, just what kind of catastrophe has to happen before the general populace is going to get this all-too-obvious fact through their thick skulls?
Except the American people aren't so much apathetic as they are misguided (largely by the Media), from the wrestling-like tag-team hype that inspires them to just get behind "their" party, right or wrong, and apparently think that will fix everything...
It's worse than that-- I have 4 phone numbers, and only one of them has the area code of where I actually live-- and one has the area code from another state. Number portability means that you get lots of robocalls from idiots in other districts or states that I couldn't vote for if I wanted to...
and I don't care if you like it because I have my fingers in my ear and I'm humming...
Problem with this is, the newer ones appear to be more cheaply made-- I had one that lasted years just crap out, ordered a new one, and it lasted about two months before the keys started becoming unresponsive. Then I tried an Adesso model, but the feel really sucks.
This shows that sometimes you will do better when you're actually nice to potential customers, and don't try to ram things down their throats or P. T. Barnum them.
I certainly don't want the social web to be in the control of a single entity that gets to decide how my data is going to be handled, and has control over my privacy.
There are several solutions in-the-works for this, and it seems that it wouldn't be too hard for one of them to catch on, given the fact that they could easily offer interesting features that Facebook would never offer because they would lose too much control.
It seems to me that a standard for independent data repositories that are controlled by each individual and are capable of hosting their personal content-- sort of like the core of a personal web page that can then be plugged in to the social framework.
But certainly Facebook has the momentum at the moment, so it will take some focus and a killer app or two.
Possibly taking an existing system that may be closer to a more independent structure, and adapting it to be more Facebook-like would be an angle-- for example, taking Second Life and tying the data elements into a non-virtualized Facebook-like interface. Or perhaps something like that already exists. Not everyone wants to move around in 3D and talk to goofy avatars in order to see what all their friends are doing, but the independence of the user data in other experiments in social web interactions may already be developed and have some existing standing-- an existing user base to leverage. Just a thought...
I was looking at a demo setup over at Costco the other day. For a moment, I thought- hey, this is looking pretty good! The reason I thought that, is I looked at the back of the blu-ray 3D player, and thought I was looking at separate left and right component outputs. I would have walked out with that blu-ray player and some 3D movies if that were the case! The idea that I could take a ~$200 player and feed it to separate projectors and use passive polarizing glasses would be really great-- and using off-the-shelf 2D projectors. Then all I would want is a 3D vidcam so I could make my own material. But shuttered glasses? Forget it-- I don't care what the refresh rate is, I could care less about a system that requires you to buy active glasses for each viewer. On closer inspection of that blu-ray player, the two rows of three RCA outputs turned out to be a single tricolor output, stereo audio and a compvid connector that were lined up as two rows of three that got me thinking it was separate outputs. My hopes were dashed. Useless-- I'd never buy one as it is. Doomed to failure because of the short-sightedness of the industry who has already chosen for you the 3D technology you are going to have. A more componentized system that made fewer assumptions would have been much more flexible.
Worse than that, how about a Wifi connected security camera. All this effort to "connect your toaster to the internet," and now that we have some of that stuff they want to bar anything that isn't running an ineffective self-serving technology like anti-virus (clue: only detects the latest threats *after* the infection-- hello?). And not all of these devices are upgradable. Get bent, Microsoft-- take your world domination schemes and shove them up your ___...
I think UI design should have an option to put menus on the side now, to handle the wider formats.
Windows already does-- I've had the taskbar on the left side of my screen for years now-- works much better than that crappy autohide feature. But it is fun to watch other people try to use my system, they keep banging the pointer at the bottom of the screen wondering why the taskbar isn't popping up and it's right there in front of their face on the left side-- wide monitors allow me to devote a good inch width to the taskbar on the side and I think it works way better that way...
Half of the clutter is the stupid "someone commented on someone's status." I NEVER want to see that from ANYONE-- the first time I did, I thought, "oh, I didn't even know they were sick!". I can use a Greasmonkey script, but that's often inconvenient. Remove those, and that would be a huge improvement in the experience. It looks like someone left debugging turned on in the code.
Also, I find the "hide" feature virtually never accomplishes what I'm after. I don't recall the specifics at the moment because I stopped using it some time ago because it was never useful.
Because you know, they're all salivating over metering based on bandwidth, where botnets will just raise their revenue. In the long run, the ISPs may end up being the actual source of some of those botnets.
At the very least, they're not in the habit of offering services without charging for them-- so you could expect to see a "botnet detection" fee on your bill if they work out a detection scheme that is workable.
Oh, that's right. There are some quaint souls out there that still watch NETWORK TELEVISION, without modern technologies like Tivo. And you see, there's this new technology called the DVD. With Netflix and/or renting, borrowing or buying DVDs, I can watch TV shows and movies whenever I want, and the only commercials I ever see are a few trailers for other films. In fact, my local library has a great selection, and it's what I'm getting for paying my property taxes, so I might as well get my money's worth there, eh?
Things the parties DO matter to the corporations, tax reliefs, bailouts, rolling back regulations, etc. The corporations won't even allow a third party in the *debates* because they'll ask uncomfortable questions that neither of the "big two" parties will dare touch on because they're both sucking at the big teat... And of course, the corps own the media too so third party ideas don't get the slightest bit of coverage...
But hell, what do we care, *our* team is going to win! Bah. When I was first able to vote, some 30+ years ago, it was obvious to me that there's no difference between the Rs and the Ds except smoke and mirrors. Nothing has changed in the slightest, except they've both gotten even more corrupt and self-serving (and who would have thought that possible).
Yeah, the problem is, in the US for most of the populace it's really not about the ideologies, but about the membership-- "we like the Dems because they're *our* team, we've always liked the Dems." Same with the other side-- it doesn't matter what "their team" does, it's *their team*, right or wrong. It's all black & white-- good guys vs bad guys thinking. If one of "our" guys does something really stupid, then he's either one of their guys in disguise, or something on the other team that *made* them do it, or we just minimize the impact of it-- "oh, it's no big deal, anyone could have made a mistake like that..."
That's why the corporations have been able to push the whole mess in their direction, because the politicians follow the money, and the populace simply votes for their team no matter what.
Which the corporations like just fine. What they don't like is any idea of a third party, because then they'd have to shell out the payola for yet another candidate. There's no chance in hell of a third party winning much of anything, because they'll get NO corporate money whatsoever (no matter WHAT their platform), and that's where most of the money is. And of course, none of the "team player" populace will vote for anyone that's not on their team, so third parties have a snowball's chance in hell...
Couldn't we all just generate gigabytes worth of random data chunks that we "copyright" and then pass around a bit-- wouldn't we then qualify for some of that gravy as "rights holders"? Just how do you define a "rights holder" here anyway-- at the very least, shouldn't Slashdot get a piece of that as compensation for all of us here who are rampantly copying other people's content without paying for it in reading these forums?
"If wikileaks dies..." - Depends on its death. If Assange is arrested, deported to the US, tried and sent to jail or executed, NOBODY will rise to take wikileaks' place because of the fear factor.
You probably should learn a little more about the internet before making such a claim. Future versions of "Wikileaks" could easily be hosted on spambot networks or rogue or compromised sites, and regardless of what technologies you use to attempt to track IP or MAC addresses, may come from sources that are completely anonymized. One case in point-- seen how great those attempts at clamping down on spam have been working? A few idiots that don't know how to cover their tracks get press now and then when they are caught and jailed, but the level of spam traffic doesn't even hiccup. Leaks coming from more "rogue" sources likely will not even have attempts made at redacting anything. And sticking an envelope of paper in a mailbox is still pretty anonymous, even if the addressee is a well-known media outlet. The biggest problem they might have is credibility, but that's not a problem if they can provide some means of verification of the accuracy of the information.
And if it wants to be free, would you like your bank account details, credit score and other sensitive stuff that might deprive you of a job out for everybody to see?
Chances are, he doesn't need to release that-- it's likely already out there if you know how to look for it.
If you really want to get into the the theory behind it, it's actually quite simple. We now use one space to avoid "rivers of white" in text. In short, if you look at a sample of documents that have been double spaced after the punctuation, you'll start to notice lines of white that run throughout the document. This distracts the reader and lowers the readability of the document.
This is a silly argument. I haven't been distracted by noticing "rivers of white" since the first days of the NEC spinwriter, and that was only due to really bad justification programs. And anyway, just what is your problem with it? Are you getting paid by the character or something? I DO get distracted by sentences that seem jammed together, pretty much like the ones you see here on slashdot that have only one space with proportional fonts, where the space is far skinnier than it is in monospaced fonts. You can get away with one space in monospaced font, because you're getting a full-width separation. But with proportional spacing, things just seem all jammed together because of the skinny space. Inter-sentence punctuation is separated by a single space-- with the comma for instance, or periods in abbreviations. This should be differentiated from the spacing between sentences. Lack of double spacing essentially produces run-on sentences.
Yes, but Slashdot DOES strip . <- there's 4 's separated by spaces after the period, or at least were when I entered it-- and they are preserved in the edit box through the preview, but do not show up in the rendered version...
One of the many deficiencies of HTML.
Perhaps. I'm in the habit of putting an after periods when I write for HTML. Problem would be solved, if it wasn't for comment editing code that strips them out (such as here on Slashdot which you can see here since I put 4 nbsp's separated by spaces after the periods in this paragraph, and despite the fact they are preserved through the preview, they are having no visible effect). The deficiency is not strictly with HTML, but with some of the editors that work with it.
Though I agree that HTML does not make it easy to maintain double spaced sentence separation. I hate reading single-spaced sentence text, I always notice it and it looks ugly. Perhaps I should insert
after every sentence, and while that would look ugly too, at least it would show my displeasure with the sentence police who have apparently decided that we will not use two spaces...
This is the kind of bullshit you hear from people who don't have a fucking clue what regular people are like. Sure, it's possible that a government may hide their activities from the public in an attempt to deceive or control them. Much more often, however, the government needs to keep information from the public because the public is full of panicky morons. And yes, sometimes a restriction on information is vital to national security. Traditional media doesn't "fail" to expose this information; they have enough sense to determine what benefits the public and what doesn't. Assange clearly lacks any fucking iota of that kind of sense.
This is the kind of bullshit you hear from people who just can't keep from going all Pollyanna over their government, or quite likely, just their particular political party.
The problem here is, the US government is also full of panicky morons. Powerful panicky morons, with armies and secrets, and mostly indebted to powerful corporate interests.
I'll take the panicky morons of the public over that sort any day.
If restriction on information is vital to national security for other than very short-term situations such as impending military actions, or possibly witness protection and a few limited other cases, then I'd say our national security is not very robust, and it's likely to get worse. When national security is dependent on keeping mum about how badly a war has been going, then we have a serious problem.
I think of it like a business. If you have a manager working for you who isn't telling you the truth about how his work is going, you should fire him. If he simply avoids telling you anything at all about how his work is going, and you find out about it, regardless of how his work is going, you should fire him. The Congress & the President are hired managers, and we have not just a right, but a responsibility to check up on what kind of job they are doing for us. The only way to keep the cockroaches out of the foundation is to keep turning over the rocks and shining lights into the dark corners. In that regard, we could use an army like Julian Assange, because it seems to me we've just seen the tip of the iceberg...
In 2000 I voted for Nader, and have every time he's run. I knew if enough people did that in 2000 it would throw the election to Bush, but I figured that things needed to get much worse before enough people would recognize that voting either R or D is the root of the problem. Well, Bush won, and exceeded my wildest expectations with regards to making things much worse. But then I realized in 2004, that it still wasn't enough-- you see, there is this ingrained "team A" or "team B" mentality-- "our team, right or wrong." Most voters are completely oblivious to how bad their team screws things up, all that is important is "our team is better than the other team," and "if something is wrong, it absolutely must be something the other team did." It's an air-tight apologetic for the two-party status quo. As long as that is the case, it's going to be more of the same. The US is terminally infected with the team-player-voter virus, and at this point, it doesn't seem to matter how much worse things get, the team-player apologetic will always bail the system out at the voting booth.
Nevertheless, I continue to apply the following voting algorithm, despite my realization it is probably hopeless: 1) vote for the non R or D candidates that would seem to be most likely to win if there were no Rs or Ds running, and 2) if there's only an R and D running, vote for whoever is not already in office.