That's a very interesting post. I wanted to challenge you on just one point:
I have a real problem with the idea that the military is simply an arm of the governing party spin machine.
In the context of the USA? I agree. But I'd say the more realistic way of looking at it is not that the military can be swung around by its tail by the governing party, but that both government and military are currently influenced / suborned by the same block of interests. Neither has to be an arm of the other, they can both be attached to a (rather fat) body in the middle.
How can we change our plutocratic republic back into a democratic republic?
You need to bring about higher levels of Education in the population. If you try to bring about change just by leading people, you end up in the same place that the current leaders are in. Education encompasses both general learning and an awareness of what is going on in society today. Education is like the oil. Belief that things can be changed is the match. Get enough of the former and you can start something big very easily. Without it, you'll quickly find you can't generate enough heat to do anything.
I understood campaigns like "loose lips sink ships" to be about discussing confidential military details, rather than undermining morale. There's a piece on it here. Some of it can be taken as for morale purposes, but in the main it seems to be about preserving secrets from the enemy. War bonds were financially motivated and though I had to look up "Rosie the Riveter" and "Wendy the Wielder" they seem to be focused on encouraging women in the workplace.
But all this is a little beside the point. I'm not contesting that there was government propaganda directed at the US public during WWII (though surely it required less effort to explain why a mobilised Germany was a threat than Iraq is), I'm just pointing out that selling military secrets to the enemy is an entirely different subject to manipulating public opinion to justify military action or funding.
Don't disagree with your point. Just wanted to say that it's usually considered impolite to link directly to an image, rather than to the page itself. Especially with something that has gathered as much good will as xkcd. Just a minor and friendly opinion.
Fine - I'm much happier about you drawing parallels with McCarthy era witch hunts than with pamphlets air-dropped behind enemy lines. The anti-communist propagada is a much closer analogy. But ultimately we don't really need any analogies, do we? The situation is pretty clear - the US military was investigating ways of manipulating the opinions and understanding of the US public. I conclude that this is bad as will anyone US citizen who cares to understand what is going on in their country.
i would rather someone lie to me than kill me. so bring on the propaganda, from all directions. let it flow freely. beats suicide bombs and bombs from the sky
What you are talking about has to do with suppressing information to foreign enemies. This story is about governments using propaganda to manipulate its own people.
Your weird choice of "I'd prefer signs rather than monitored labour camps" is not a choice that is in any way presented by this story.
And as regards Ghandi, I'm not familiar with him saying the above, but I imagine that if it is correct, that he was advocating propaganda as an alternative to warfare, not a means of persuading people to support it.
Yes - I'd have a problem. The role of the government and the military is to serve and protect us as the people who pay for them both. The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour. When that happens, you know that they consider YOU a threat to themselves. And that strongly implies that your interests are not their interests.
Well they might try that. But they wont be getting any credibility back from me. I suspect a lot of people (with a lot more influence) would feel the same way.
You can't say "I'm honest, except when the temptation is really big." People don't accept that.
Schools, at least in the UK, are heavily stitched up by Microsoft. The GCSE examinations (that children here take at 16) in IT are specifically based on Microsoft products. It's the reason I refused a job as an IT teacher (much as I enjoyed teaching). What's the purpose of taking an examination in how to line up paragraphs in Word or sort a table in Excel? It's an instantly expiring qualification. What should be more focused on are the language skills or the maths that underlie these tools. Someone can learn advanced Word Processing on any given product in an afternoon. But instead, the British school system has been told by Microsoft (or bribed more likely) that they should spend two years teaching Ctrl+P. >:(
I hope the ISO body recognises that their permanent reputation is at stake here. The entire IT community knows that OOXML should not be approved and that Microsoft is in deep trouble if something other than their own proprietary format becomes the standard. If ISO approves OOXML, no-one will see it as anything other than gross corruption. No-one.
The thing is that tax evasion is something practiced exclusively by the dishonest and predominantly by the better off. Which produces an inequality with those who are unwilling to lie and usually poorer. The dislike is probably more attributable to these inequalities than to any great love of the government and its predilection for taking your money off you.
Your right about the CMYK. But can you think of anything else? Unless your a serious print shop CMYK is pointless.
This is true and I, as a GIMP user, don't feel impaired by lack of CMYK support. But there is a trickle down effect on popularity. If a product successfully gets used by the serious users, it increases usage amongst the less serious users. As just one example of this, it would be great to ask advice about something and find someone who used the same tools as you, rather than just assuming Photoshop as a given.
All of which is an interesting debate, but not a factor in this push. This is just an extension of the tax on blank media that goes to the music industry. I don't want this and I don't see why I should get dragged into it. But the whole system is dependent on not having some ISP users choosing not to opt in (because if the aim is stopping piracy, how would it work otherwise). Additionally, a system like this would be open to large scale abuse in increasing the power of the big labels, potentially raise prices of actually purchasing music and quite likely require extensive monitoring of your Internet traffic.All of these, but particularly the first and last, are solid reasons why this needs to be shot down now. The issue of whether the RIAA are nice or not can be separated neatly from this one (though I personally think they fall into the category of 'not nice,' myself).
Ah, found them! I'd been in there before but managed to miss those two in the epic list of commands. I can live without it being Ctrl+[ / Ctrl+] just so long as I have something I can use for that.
Okay - time to abuse Slashdot for some tech support. The one shortcut I've never been able to replicate in OO is the changing of font sizes. In Word it is Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+] for smaller or larger respectively. I've never been able to find an equivalent in Writer and it annoys me. Anyone know this one?
Okay - it's dubious, but I can see how they would at least make a legal argument that it was copyright infringement. That's a good explanation. But I don't quite get why they need to do this to spot bots. Presumably WoW has some sort of chat channel that the admins could use to communicate with players? If they roughly identify bots through their behaviour - e.g. the number of hours played, confinement to one location, repetitive actions or whatever gives the game away, could they not quickly confirm it by sending a message saying "Hey, enjoying the game? Could you just confirm your not a bot by answering this question, please..."
This is only a problem in a game like WoW where you can't lose items on death
Now I've never played WoW, but I understand that it is very, very popular. So when you say "Who cares?" I think the answer is likely to be a lot. You may not personally care for the set up of the game, but I think we can all agree that when the structure of a game is dictated by what is and isn't easy for bots to cheat at, that's an overall negative thing. Reducing options and choice = bad.
Agreed. From the sounds of it, this bot tool may impair the game, and they may have some moral or legal cause to try and stop it, but copyright and trademark infringment it is not.I think they need to find some other charge.
I'm sure some people can do some nice stuff with this, but what I'd really like to see is decent animated SVG in an open format. Can you imagine what Inkscape would be like with support for animation? Incredible - that's what. If some rich company (Google, Sun) wants to knock FLASH flying and bring about an open standard, that would be the short route to go.
I don't know if you're posting this excerpt in support of their actions, or merely providing interesting information. But I'll make some comments on the quoted paragraphs.
Whilst I empathise with their desire to disassociate themselves from the beliefs of this politician, their statement that they are "against censorship" is not compatible with their activities of spreading disinformation and drowning out of the original message.It's only bias and double standards that allow them to think they are not trying to censor the original movie. Their defence against that charge, if you look at it logically, is merely that they aren't completely successful in censoring the movie, not that they aren't trying to do so! And whether or not they are successful is a point of debate. After all, I tried to download what I was told was the movie, to find that it was an archive of pirated music. I personally avoid pirating music as I don't agree with it and now I find myself torrenting the bloody stuff. You can imagine that I resent being lied to.
If these groups wish to counter the message of the film, then they should produce a commentary to the film that addresses the points within it. If they can do this, then they will more successfully undermine the politician's beliefs and convince people of their case. If they can't do this, then they do not have an argument against what he says. Preventing people from seeing the film by whatever method is still censorship. Do I need to expand on what is wrong with that?
As the submitter of this story, I just wish to add that kdawson has rather heavily rewritten the original submission. Also, the link to the story on the BBC site, which was the original first link has been removed. It is here for those interested. I also had a look for the film on torrent sites and though I found something pretending to be the film, it turned out to just be some "music to inspire peace" and a README saying "we the Dutch don't support this politician."
Slashdot Mirror
What should it be spent on?
That's a very interesting post. I wanted to challenge you on just one point:
In the context of the USA? I agree. But I'd say the more realistic way of looking at it is not that the military can be swung around by its tail by the governing party, but that both government and military are currently influenced / suborned by the same block of interests. Neither has to be an arm of the other, they can both be attached to a (rather fat) body in the middle.
You need to bring about higher levels of Education in the population. If you try to bring about change just by leading people, you end up in the same place that the current leaders are in. Education encompasses both general learning and an awareness of what is going on in society today. Education is like the oil. Belief that things can be changed is the match. Get enough of the former and you can start something big very easily. Without it, you'll quickly find you can't generate enough heat to do anything.
Start with the education.
I understood campaigns like "loose lips sink ships" to be about discussing confidential military details, rather than undermining morale. There's a piece on it here. Some of it can be taken as for morale purposes, but in the main it seems to be about preserving secrets from the enemy. War bonds were financially motivated and though I had to look up "Rosie the Riveter" and "Wendy the Wielder" they seem to be focused on encouraging women in the workplace.
But all this is a little beside the point. I'm not contesting that there was government propaganda directed at the US public during WWII (though surely it required less effort to explain why a mobilised Germany was a threat than Iraq is), I'm just pointing out that selling military secrets to the enemy is an entirely different subject to manipulating public opinion to justify military action or funding.
Don't disagree with your point. Just wanted to say that it's usually considered impolite to link directly to an image, rather than to the page itself. Especially with something that has gathered as much good will as xkcd. Just a minor and friendly opinion.
In your case... like the blind leading the blind.
(skip the references - we don't need them)
Fine - I'm much happier about you drawing parallels with McCarthy era witch hunts than with pamphlets air-dropped behind enemy lines. The anti-communist propagada is a much closer analogy. But ultimately we don't really need any analogies, do we? The situation is pretty clear - the US military was investigating ways of manipulating the opinions and understanding of the US public. I conclude that this is bad as will anyone US citizen who cares to understand what is going on in their country.
Are we really reduced to these two options?
What you are talking about has to do with suppressing information to foreign enemies. This story is about governments using propaganda to manipulate its own people.
Your weird choice of "I'd prefer signs rather than monitored labour camps" is not a choice that is in any way presented by this story.
And as regards Ghandi, I'm not familiar with him saying the above, but I imagine that if it is correct, that he was advocating propaganda as an alternative to warfare, not a means of persuading people to support it.
Slight difference - they're "dropping" the propaganda pamphlets on us.
Yes - I'd have a problem. The role of the government and the military is to serve and protect us as the people who pay for them both. The role of these bodies is not to try and manipulate my judgement in their favour. When that happens, you know that they consider YOU a threat to themselves. And that strongly implies that your interests are not their interests.
Well they might try that. But they wont be getting any credibility back from me. I suspect a lot of people (with a lot more influence) would feel the same way.
You can't say "I'm honest, except when the temptation is really big." People don't accept that.
Schools, at least in the UK, are heavily stitched up by Microsoft. The GCSE examinations (that children here take at 16) in IT are specifically based on Microsoft products. It's the reason I refused a job as an IT teacher (much as I enjoyed teaching). What's the purpose of taking an examination in how to line up paragraphs in Word or sort a table in Excel? It's an instantly expiring qualification. What should be more focused on are the language skills or the maths that underlie these tools. Someone can learn advanced Word Processing on any given product in an afternoon. But instead, the British school system has been told by Microsoft (or bribed more likely) that they should spend two years teaching Ctrl+P. >:(
I hope the ISO body recognises that their permanent reputation is at stake here. The entire IT community knows that OOXML should not be approved and that Microsoft is in deep trouble if something other than their own proprietary format becomes the standard. If ISO approves OOXML, no-one will see it as anything other than gross corruption. No-one.
The thing is that tax evasion is something practiced exclusively by the dishonest and predominantly by the better off. Which produces an inequality with those who are unwilling to lie and usually poorer. The dislike is probably more attributable to these inequalities than to any great love of the government and its predilection for taking your money off you.
This is true and I, as a GIMP user, don't feel impaired by lack of CMYK support. But there is a trickle down effect on popularity. If a product successfully gets used by the serious users, it increases usage amongst the less serious users. As just one example of this, it would be great to ask advice about something and find someone who used the same tools as you, rather than just assuming Photoshop as a given.
All of which is an interesting debate, but not a factor in this push. This is just an extension of the tax on blank media that goes to the music industry. I don't want this and I don't see why I should get dragged into it. But the whole system is dependent on not having some ISP users choosing not to opt in (because if the aim is stopping piracy, how would it work otherwise). Additionally, a system like this would be open to large scale abuse in increasing the power of the big labels, potentially raise prices of actually purchasing music and quite likely require extensive monitoring of your Internet traffic.All of these, but particularly the first and last, are solid reasons why this needs to be shot down now. The issue of whether the RIAA are nice or not can be separated neatly from this one (though I personally think they fall into the category of 'not nice,' myself).
Ah, found them! I'd been in there before but managed to miss those two in the epic list of commands. I can live without it being Ctrl+[ / Ctrl+] just so long as I have something I can use for that.
Cheers,
-H.
Okay - time to abuse Slashdot for some tech support. The one shortcut I've never been able to replicate in OO is the changing of font sizes. In Word it is Ctrl+[ or Ctrl+] for smaller or larger respectively. I've never been able to find an equivalent in Writer and it annoys me. Anyone know this one?
Okay - it's dubious, but I can see how they would at least make a legal argument that it was copyright infringement. That's a good explanation. But I don't quite get why they need to do this to spot bots. Presumably WoW has some sort of chat channel that the admins could use to communicate with players? If they roughly identify bots through their behaviour - e.g. the number of hours played, confinement to one location, repetitive actions or whatever gives the game away, could they not quickly confirm it by sending a message saying "Hey, enjoying the game? Could you just confirm your not a bot by answering this question, please..."
Now I've never played WoW, but I understand that it is very, very popular. So when you say "Who cares?" I think the answer is likely to be a lot. You may not personally care for the set up of the game, but I think we can all agree that when the structure of a game is dictated by what is and isn't easy for bots to cheat at, that's an overall negative thing. Reducing options and choice = bad.
Agreed. From the sounds of it, this bot tool may impair the game, and they may have some moral or legal cause to try and stop it, but copyright and trademark infringment it is not.I think they need to find some other charge.
I'm sure some people can do some nice stuff with this, but what I'd really like to see is decent animated SVG in an open format. Can you imagine what Inkscape would be like with support for animation? Incredible - that's what. If some rich company (Google, Sun) wants to knock FLASH flying and bring about an open standard, that would be the short route to go.
I don't know if you're posting this excerpt in support of their actions, or merely providing interesting information. But I'll make some comments on the quoted paragraphs.
Whilst I empathise with their desire to disassociate themselves from the beliefs of this politician, their statement that they are "against censorship" is not compatible with their activities of spreading disinformation and drowning out of the original message.It's only bias and double standards that allow them to think they are not trying to censor the original movie. Their defence against that charge, if you look at it logically, is merely that they aren't completely successful in censoring the movie, not that they aren't trying to do so! And whether or not they are successful is a point of debate. After all, I tried to download what I was told was the movie, to find that it was an archive of pirated music. I personally avoid pirating music as I don't agree with it and now I find myself torrenting the bloody stuff. You can imagine that I resent being lied to.
If these groups wish to counter the message of the film, then they should produce a commentary to the film that addresses the points within it. If they can do this, then they will more successfully undermine the politician's beliefs and convince people of their case. If they can't do this, then they do not have an argument against what he says. Preventing people from seeing the film by whatever method is still censorship. Do I need to expand on what is wrong with that?
As the submitter of this story, I just wish to add that kdawson has rather heavily rewritten the original submission. Also, the link to the story on the BBC site, which was the original first link has been removed. It is here for those interested. I also had a look for the film on torrent sites and though I found something pretending to be the film, it turned out to just be some "music to inspire peace" and a README saying "we the Dutch don't support this politician."