Yet something else for the Internet Watch Foundation to keep an eye on. There needs to be a repository where people can freely read the ebooks (or at least search for keywords) so that indecent or potentially illegal material can be found and blocked before these materials can be purchased or downloaded. Deep packet inspection may be necessary in the transmission of these materials across boarders.
I hope this is satire.
If not, I say to you that if you want to engage in censorship you will always be able to find some noble-sounding "for the children" type of excuse for doing so and lots of misguided people with good intentions and no understanding of the Law of Unintended Consequences will happily and fervently join you in this cause. That doesn't make it right, however.
Again I hope this was satire. If it isn't, and if you fully understand my paragraph above and comprehend the incredible amount of damage that naive but well-intentioned people can do and still think that you have some kind of "holy cause" that overrides these concerns, I invite you to tell me why, for I believe that the weakness of that position is easy to reveal. If it was satire, then I think you already revealed how shallow this mentality is:-).
My wife doesn't read bodice-rippers, but most of the sci-fi/fantasy books she reads has a strong romantic or relationship component. IE Vorkosigan Saga, Wizard's Rule series, etc.
If she likes the Wizard's Rule series by Goodkind, I think she'll really enjoy the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. If she likes dark fiction with a strong tragic-hero element, I think she'll also enjoy the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock, particularly the Elric books.
Thank you for elucidating this clear-headed position. I hope your comment raises the level of discourse on this and other boards re: the issue of freedom vs. security.
Your appreciation is a delightful thing. Thank you.
It's a joy to me to be able to elevate a discussion. If you've read my posts before you know that primarily I like to take a mundane discussion and reveal the simple principles that are behind all of the perceived complexity. I do so with the hope that people find their own way, part of which involves discarding ideas and temptations that are beneath them and do not serve their highest purpose. To do that, to ask a person to discard something to which they are clinging, you must show them that there is something better with which it can be replaced, something that is good and true and able to stand on its own without such grasping and clinging. Otherwise you are merely attacking their position -- that has a time and a place but it is a lower expression and therefore is not a constructive act.
Everywhere I see weak and incomplete people who think that if only they had this-and-that or if only they could control this-and-that then they would finally be whole -- then if they are thinkers, they wonder why life is empty and ordinary and dissatisfying, why they have inner conflict and why they are so easily angered or frustrated. I want something so much better than that for them. I believe that each person needs to find their own understanding, that this is too important to trust to the various agendas and monied interests and authority structures that offer ready-made, pre-packaged worldviews intended for mass consumption. It is a great joy for me to see people become whole and strong and upright and difficult to deceive, for I believe that this is our nature and that it is based on love and compassion and joy and truth.
The ability to expound real truth, so that it is self-evident though sometimes difficult truth to those who are ready to hear it, is something I consider a great gift. This gift is really not a possession that belongs to me; it is more like inspiration that equips me. Its insight makes seemingly complex things become easy and simple and clear. I have a deep respect for it, especially since it is freely given to me out of pure grace with no concept of whether I have done anything to "earn" it. I feel like a steward who has been entrusted with a power and may be held accountable for how it is used. What we do to others we also do to ourselves and thus karma is quite real; this is not because of any external force judging us or imposing anything on us, but rather because of the nature we take on by everything we do. It is like the idea that "we are not punished FOR what we do, but BY it" except that it applies equally to the negative and the positive.
There's not really such a difference between you and I, or between humanity and us; everything is interconnected and we have but one essence. I perceive that most of our suffering is caused by ignorance of this manifest reality. The actual reality of life is an incredibly lovely and noble thing that is filled with beauty and purpose. There simply are not words to describe how wonderful it really is. It is far better than anything we would dare to imagine or dream about. No one can see the true reality and still retain the angers and frustrations and negativity, for actual understanding and wisdom quickly reveal how false and self-defeating those aberrations truly are. Any small contribution I can make towards such spiritual growth is my privilege and is deeply precious to me.
and then you endorse companies with misleading domain names.
Per Clark Howard, anyone who wants a free copy of their credit report should instead go to annualcreditreport.com. That's the official site that's sponsored by Equifax, Experian, and Transunion.
I have no connection to either site but honestly, freecreditreport.com annoys the hell out of me with their advertisements and they have faced government action several times in the past because of misleading advertising. So, I can't say I'm eager to see them succeed and if one is mentioned then the real thing should be mentioned also IMHO.
99% of all now-dead lifeforms on this planet consumed oxygen for the majority of their lifetime. It is clearly a toxic substance that must be controlled!
While were at it, lets ban airplanes because terrorists have used them before...and cell phones...terrorists love cell phones...ooh! and encryption.
Sure all of these technologies are used for millions of benign or helpful reasons for every malignant use, but banning things is so much easier, and more fun!
Also, it will help spur the economy, because the would be terrorists will have to buy cameras to take pictures of their targets.
Terrorists love secrecy, too. Therefore, we should make all classified documents public information. That'll show 'em!
Wow. They make our politicians a bunch of idiots and they make the populace willing to give up their freedoms for the sake of safety. These terrorists are a hell of a lot more dangerous than we thought!
"they" could look up the address in a phone book, we better make publishing the address of the schools (or other buildings) illegal.
Of course nobody will go to school since it's illegal to give out the address.
Somehow I'm thinking "they" were able to find targets before google maps existed.
"They" were. Humans have fought each other for all of known history. Only recently have there been technological means of reconissance. Reconissance managed to get done before there were satellites and online maps or computers. Even if this map-blurring were 100% effective at its stated purpose (my bet is that it won't be), all it would accomplish is the removal of one potential method. Unfortunately, there are many potential methods. This is just a feel-good worthless measure at best. At worst, it's an excuse for closer state control and regulation of online services -- anyone with some sense has known that politicians have desired that for a long time now. If it's like so many other things, all they need to do is wait for a good enough excuse.
For anyone who thinks this will accomplish anything, I say to you that it's the height of hubris to assume that you are so clever while your enemy is so stupid. Many needless deaths and military defeats have resulted from this sort of thinking. If you're not a strategist and don't understand these basic things, is it so much to ask that you refrain from making strategic decisions? The reality is that if some criminal group really wants to wreak havoc and if they don't give a damn about their own lives and are willing to die in the attempt to do so, there's not a lot you can do to stop them. At least not without destroying whatever freedoms we have left, which is what any truly effective measures would do. I didn't cause this to be true and I don't like it either, but we seriously need to work with the reality of the situation if we are to understand or accomplish anything.
I think we forget that you're a lot more likely to die by being struck by lightning than by being hit by a terrorist attack. I'm so tired of the level of cowaradice that this particular issue reveals. Our ancestors (speaking of the USA) realized that there are things that are more important than life itself, such as freedom, which is why they were willing to go to war to fight and die for those things. Personally, I'd rather keep all of my freedoms even if that meant that my chances of dying in a terrorist attack were increased 100-fold. For those of you who think that's an extreme position or an unwise choice, I have a question: if not for something truly good and wholesome and wonderful that fills your life with purpose, such as the freedom to be who you are and live your own life, what exactly are you living for that makes you so afraid of death, especially a particularly unlikely death? If you have them, what kind of message does your cowardice send to your children? That you should give up everything that is sacred to you for any fear or any bully who comes along? No wonder you are so afraid of dying; the breath in your lungs is the only thing about you that seems truly alive.
I don't believe I'm taking what you said to an absurd level; rather, I believe you did that yourself. This is your exact quote: "I'd much rather people finally learn, once and for all, to never believe anything they see or hear or read without first confirming it themselves or testing whether it's consistent with what they already know to be true."
Yes and you rejected that as absurd. I am saying that there is a non-absurd way to go about doing this and your lack of familiarity with that way is not evidence against its existence.
The "consistent with what you know to be true" can encompass a very large body of information, especially if you are well-read and are well-familiar with logic and reasoning and argumentation. When that is the case, you are no longer impressed by the appearance of a highly complex issue becuase you can see that even those have a certain underlying simplicity. This process is not nearly so difficult as you are making it, it just isn't effortless either (though with more skill, it will feel that way).
I realized that perhaps you didn't quite mean to go that far.. but surely you can see that's not quite what you said? I know the sentiment you're trying to get at... but I'm not sure how practical it can be. I know all news outlets spin so much they get 99% of the story wrong... but at the same time, I'm not sure how any person can live their life and attempt "first confirm [the facts] themselves" at the same time.
You're argument is that you can develop a "skill" to see past the nonsense. I'm not so sure you can, short of going to the source yourself, which is likely too high of a burden. Because of this, I rarely even bother with "the news." For some stories, fine... I don't think you could say Katrina was made up, nor the crashing of the jet in the Hudson river. But as soon as there's any analysis or debate, or if the story involves politics.. you're pretty much left with nothing useful.
Yes I did mean to go that far. I am quite careful with my words and their implications, partly because I know how quick other people sometimes are to assume that I made such an elementary mistake. Accept or reject what I propose as you see fit, but please do not reword it or put words in my mouth or posit that I must not have meant what I very plainly said. That doesn't really help anyone. I know you did so honestly but there are a variety of dishonest techniques that use these methods as well and the resemblence to those might hamstring what you are saying in the eyes of your audience.
My best answer to you would be to consider police interrogators. They deal with people who want to lie to them all of the time. From criminals who want to get away with it to accessories who don't want to be implicated, they see all sorts of deception. They have time-tested, tried-and-true techniques that they use because they know that all forms of deception will eventually reveal inconsistencies if you can only examine them well enough. They know that when a suspect makes a positive claim, that claim is falsifiable or can be made falsifiable. They know that if multiple suspects are conspiring to lie, no matter how much they might get their story straight there will eventually be significant contradictions. The only question at all is how long it will take to find them or how much pressure must be applied before they occur.
The media is a real treat when it comes to this kind of examination. They very often use blatant propaganda techniques and intellectually dishonest practices. Some of them will frame debates in order to guarantee a desired outcome that maintains the status quo. Others will never outright lie to you, except that they will omit facts that don't suit their interests. They flagrantly use logical fallacies and bandwagon appeals and groupthink and, to put it mildly, the flaws in what they present are generally really fucking obvious to anyone who knows how to reaso
This is absurd. You may as well just not believe anything you've not witnessed first hand. Do you doubt Katrina happened because you didn't verify it? How did you verify it? Because the same thing was published everywhere? That doesn't seem any better... how many times have ONE outlet gotten it wrong, and the others swarm and re-report the same error? So now you're left with actually going there and seeing the damage for yourself...
You can take something to an utterly absurd degree and then claim that therefore, the thing must be inherently absurd. That doesn't make it true, of course. If it were inherently absurd, you wouldn't need to use a technique like that to show that this is the case. In fact, you can destroy the value and usefulness (for yourself, anyway) of any good idea by doing that. Honestly this is rather silly and it is beneath you, or it should be. That's not an insult because what I am saying is that I believe you can do better than this.
My bet is that you feel that the effort required to be extremely difficult to deceive is an undue burden and you don't like this. Because you don't like this, you're playing shoot-the-messenger which requires you to either insult me, which you have not done, or to clutch at straws in an attempt to discredit, as you just did. You're almost certainly not malicious because this is one of the mildest forms of shoot-the-messenger. I am not suggesting that this is deliberate on your part. Like any other mistake, you can do this without ever intending to. That's not because you're a bad guy or because anything is wrong with you -- it's because you're a human being. In fact, most people will make mistakes like this unless they make a conscious effort to avoid them. The whole point of the scientific method and the various systems of reasoning and logic is that people will do these things unless they learn not to. I don't mean to offend you by saying something that seems obvious; I just say this because I am hoping you will derive some value from what I am trying to tell you and if I tempt you to get defensive then that almost certainly won't happen.
As far as whether it's an undue burden, my answer is that this is a skill like any other. It doesn't take long to become proficient and not much longer still for it to feel effortless. Developing this skill has many benefits other than avoiding disinformation; it also exercises your mind and sharpens your wits. For me, it also tends to reinforce a deeper and humbling respect for the power of knowledge. I would add that there are things that are far too important to trust to anyone else; the worldview you use and the possibilities you acknowledge and the things you are willing to accept as true are definitely in that category.
If anything, your example of a single outlet misreporting something and then having its error republished by many other sources is an argument in favor of the kind of skepticism I am advocating. It's an example of how easily such a thing could accidentally happen. There are, of course, dishonest sources of deliberate disinformation, too. Then there are sources of information that won't tell you anything that is false, but will omit information that they feel does not suit their interests (perhaps it would make their advertisers look bad). Because of these things, there is no substitute for critical thinking and a willingness to cross-reference and confirm information that has any importance to you. A thorough familiarity with propaganda techniques and logical fallacies is quite helpful as well.
I apologize if this was long-winded; brevity can be a challenge for me sometimes. I felt that you were sincere and therefore that it was worthwhile to take the time to give you my real answer to your objection. If anything I said here helped you in some way, then it was worth my time many times over.
No, it does not. An anonymous statement holds no weight and thus cannot be defamatory. At least, not enough to rise to the level of court intervention. These types of cases should be thrown out (without wasting all this effort) and our government's resources put to better use. And Dunkin' Donuts needs to grow a pair.
I agree. All this means is that anonymous posters need to start using Tor and other technologies because otherwise, they will find you if they want to do it badly enough.
If it were up to me, the right to anonymous free speech would greatly outweigh the right to sue someone for libel. That would even mean eliminating the ability to sue an anonymous user for libel. I'd much rather people finally learn, once and for all, to never believe anything they see or hear or read without first confirming it themselves or testing whether it's consistent with what they already know to be true. I'd much much rather see that happen than try to use the courts to track down and sue every last false source of information. It's like a "default-allow" firewall versus a "default deny".
I see where you are coming from, but I still can't agree that people should eat food and drive cars that they can't afford. I don't to see how health care should be any different.
I think the whole problem there stems from how health insurance morphed to health care. If you want to go see a doctor every year, pay for it. If you get run over by a truck, that's what insurance is for. Insurance is for the unforseable, not the routine. The problem is the line that has to be drawn, and it becomes a pretty grey area, so it's ended up that the insurance company is expected to pay for everything, which of course drives up the cost.
Wondered off on a tangent there... oops.
Indeed. I can't remember where I heard this, but this is an explanation I've heard: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank or get an oil change or replace the tires you would file a new claim.
So you're talking about morals. And too many people think of the moral law as restrictive and break it.
And if they are thinkers, then they wonder why they have inner conflict or they wonder why they aren't truly enjoying their lives. What you refer to as moral law is not some system that can be cheated. Speaking not of human institutions but of what you might call karma or "divine law", we are never punished for what we do. We are punished by what we become when we do it. No one evades this and there are no exceptions. This is also why truly and unselfishly doing good is its own reward, so long as it's genuine.
The only reason why that moral law was ever written on stone or written on paper is because people have forgotten what it means to love one another. It's like that quote from Socrates in which he says (paraphrase) "I do because of my philosophy what other people do only because of fear of the law." Socrates was far stronger and far happier doing what he knew was right because he genuinely wanted to than anyone who was merely intimidated by overwhelming state power could ever be. Unlike those people, he also needed no master and was well able to live his own life. Read Phaedo and you will see that this man feared neither death itself nor a country that failed to appreciate him.
No one who merely follows a list of guidelines can have that kind of strength. Therefore, if people think that the moral law is some obstacle that limits or restricts them, then that is unfortunate, but they ultimately will have to draw their own conclusions.
I agree with the thrust of your argument, but take issue with your second paragraph. Surely if we have achieved a standard of living so comfortable, we should now extend that benefit to all the people before moving on to esoteric symbols of triumph.
Many generations have been where we are then fallen backwards because it was only ever part of the world that had those benefits. You can never afford to sit back when you have enemies.
We've had the physical ability to feed, clothe, and shelter every last man, woman, and child living on this planet since the late 19th century. An economy based on scarcity is one of the main reasons why we have not done so and I did address this issue. Overcoming this is not what I would consider an "esoteric symbol of triumph." It would be more like a first step.
Maybe I'm being too critical, but I'm sure this is crucial if we are to progress. the population of the planet has been increasing by a billion every 12 years (recent historically speaking) so we will hit 7 billion this year. Are we all to become worker ants or have some control ? So we need to stick together. One hand washes the other.
We're worker ants right now. Worker ants, or cogs in social machinery, however you like to phrase it. This has been a strongly dehumanizing influence. What we are seeing right now is the breakdown of this system because it is reaching the limits of its sustainability. If you understand the meaning of "problem, reaction, solution" or Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" then you are no doubt aware that there are globalist forces that would like to use this breakdown as an excuse to form a one-world government of a totalitarian nature. Their first goal is to dissolve the sovereignty of the United States, primarily by bankrupting it. This is why it doesn't matter who is in the White House, they're all puppets of the monied interests that got them elected in the first place. Some of them may even be people with genuinely good intentions but they are what Vladimir Lenin referred to as "useful idiots".
For those globalist forces, the present time represents their end-game. They call it the "new world order." The good news is that their hubris is becoming apparent. I believe that their model of control by manipulation is as obsolete as the unsustainable systems that are now decaying. The general public is becoming more and more aware that something has seriously gone wrong somewhere but most of them don't yet realize the extent of it. They still think that anything in politics happens by accident. When something far worse than the Great Depression gets here, and it's coming, when the abuses of authority become more and more blatant and flagrant, people will start to wake up even more than they are already. Ghandi proved how effective passive resistance is when you are dealing with an opponent who is well-prepared for you to either rebel or conform, which are your two wrong options because they both make you become like what you oppose. Never underestimate the power of refusing to participate, for it is your "third option".
As far as "will we have some control", we're already about as disenfranchised as we can be, speaking strictly of the people as a group. There is nowhere for us to go but up and once the people realize that, it will be inevitable and I think it will be peaceful. These are some interesting times indeed.
I agree you with you for the most part here, and I also could not in good conscience work for someone like the RIAA, however there's a few critical parts to this equation you seem to be overlooking.
A fair percentage of those people have probably worked there since before the RIAA even started all this shit. Would you suggest they should put themsevles (and their families) through everything involved with finding alternate employment / being unemployed (like they have to now anyway, but still..)?
I'm not sure about the U.S., but here in Australia the majority of the population have no idea about the horrible injustice being sought by the RIAA and their ilk - it's just not newsworthy enough outside of places like/.. A lot of people who were seeking employment and landed a job there may have had no clue about the less savory things being done there.
From the inside, I'm sure the RIAA would be feeding its employee's their own breed of propaganda to 'boost morale' and convince them that they're not evil. Most people would take the easy/conforming way and take that at face value.
...just because we here on./ all think the RIAA a corrupt, deceptive, evil corporation, doesn't mean that everyone else sees them that way.
Now Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and certain other industries that have been know for decades of doing 'really, really bad stuff' - those are the ones that should have a hard time trying to fill vacancies, but even then - wave the right amount of $$$ around and most people will happily put aside their morale dilemas and come up with some way to justify it to themselves.
My answer is that people need to work these things out for themselves. The whole point is to obtain discernment and wisdom so that you don't need me or anyone else to know for whom to work or to know how to handle the discovery that your living contributes to the needless suffering of others. These are important matters and there is much personal growth to be attained by dealing with them and finding your own solutions. I would not presume to try and take that away from another person, especially not with the misguided idea that I'm doing them any favors by telling them how they should live or by handing out easy answers that don't challenge them.
I'll add that if you will just learn to observe people, it isn't difficult to understand when you're dealing with immoral people who have no concern for the suffering they cause. There is a certain quality, what you may call "the spirit behind it", to everything that they say and do that is quite unmistakable. It's incredibly subtle, but if you can learn to genuinely see it just one time you will have no problems identifying it afterwards. Because of this, their smooth words and winning smiles are thoroughly unconvincing to anyone with any sort of discernment. Cultivate that discernment first and you won't have to believe internal propaganda and you won't have to wait for what is "newsworthy" in order to know these people when you see them, or in the case of a job interview, when you're dealing with them. Their nature can be known before they go far enough down the path they're on for their nature to bear fruit in the form of outwardly-visible wrongdoing. If outwardly-visible wrongdoing is your first observation that you are not dealing with honest people, it's because you have missed many signs and warnings first.
Average people have to see the fruit before they know the tree which is why they're average. The idea of identifying the direction in which something is headed whether it's travelled one millimeter in that direction or one parsec is alien to most people. They instead wait until it has reached its destination and revealed its full nature before they are willing to call it what it is. They probably do this because they don't know what discernment really is and are afraid of being called "judgmental", which is something q
Yeah, that's because almost no one seems to understand the difference between service and subservience. One is mindful and willing cooperation because you believe in a purpose, the other is mindless submission that robs you of human dignity. Holding people personally responsible for any atrocities they commit is one way to remind them of the difference. It's probably not the best way because it emphasizes punishment as deterrant and not wisdom as prevention.
In a way we're between a rock and a hard place when it comes to this issue. The "powers that be" would like to preserve the centralized authority structures and the ready obedience of mindless myrmidons who execute their wishes and form the basis of their power. At the same time, they want to say that you will be punished for following certain orders, which implies that at least sometimes you are expected to think for yourself enough to question their authority. So we get these solutions that are based on prosecution and punishment for these thankfully rare events because the enlightened understanding that would represent true prevention also happens to dissolve the social machinery through which it moves (to borrow a phrase from McKenna), an option that is thoroughly distasteful to the statists.
Once you get an idea of the forces at work, the flawed ideas that compromise human beings, none of this is difficult to understand.
Take Osama's chauffeur, for example, who was kept for years (and probably still is) in our lovely concentration camp at Gitmo. What did he actually do, other than being connected to/working for a genuine bad guy?
Which is pretty funny considering that Osama bin Laden's brother, Sheikh Tarek bin Laden, and his construction company have very close ties to the Bush family, including of course former Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. In fact the more research you do, the more both the "good guys" and the villians seem to all be one big happy family. They are all connected to each other and either know each other or know each other's immediate families. Anyone else think it's just a little, I dunno, odd, that the media hasn't made this common knowledge? I mean, you'd think that'd be newsworthy considering the utter trivia that's tirelessly discussed about other celebrities and public figures.
By the same standard that was good enough to indefinitely detain somebody without charging them with any crime, a certain former President should be at Gitmo, too. That's if we're going to invest so heavily in guilt by association. Intentional or otherwise, we Americans certainly haven't lost our sense of irony.
What you ascribe to the RIAA is really a part of our modern Western culture, where nothing lasts very long. It really began when the production of material goods went from one or two at a time in a skilled craftsman's shop to large factories cranking out mountains of identical merchandise. The individual craftsmen's touch on a pair of shoes or a piece of furniture was lost. Modern technology has made it possible for anyone to mass produce art and music in a similar way. Copyright laws must exist only if human creativity, especially in music and literature, is perceived as a commercial product to be bought and sold like any other product. Musicians created their music and painters created their paintings long before anyone had ever thought of copyright. They were content and delighted in having their fellow human beings partake in and be included in the joy of creativity of their art. People with means who enjoyed the art who were not so gifted, took care of the physical needs of these highly gifted ones. These creative artists could put all the effort and creative joy into their work without worrying about where their next bowl of soup was coming from.
I would say that in the past, skilled craft was essential because there was no other way to produce durable, useful goods. Now we have factories and mass production and economies of scale to take care of our material needs. The mistake we have made is that we act now like everything is a product and that craftsmanship or artistry have become more obsolete.
What we could do instead is decide that we have raised our material standard of living to where we can now apply craftsmanship and art to higher expressions of our humanity rather than mundane material survival. An economy based on scarcity (as opposed to what is called a resource economy) and a monetary system based entirely on debt (fiat currency, the Federal Reserve and similar systems that the same international bankers have implemented in every industrialized country) and therefore unsustainable are the main reasons why this has been held back. If we can overcome these things, we would find that we stand at the brink of a new Renaissance far greater than anything that has been imagined before. That is our current challenge.
I agree very much with Bill Hicks when he said that the reason why things are so fucked up right now is that we are undergoing evolution. Hicks went on to say that our institutions are crumbling because they are no longer relevant. Much of the abuses (in my opinion) perpetrated by the RIAA and others have been about these institutions trying to use force, typically the force of law, to remain relevant. I think they are merely prolonging the inevitable. This is a tough time because the old control-and-manipulation-and-coercion based ways of keeping order have to give way first before something new and better can replace them. The unrest and dissatisfaction that is so prevalent right now is part of this process. The one thing that is certain is that our current system is not sustainable. It absolutely must and will either radically change or cause its own collapse. I think something much better is coming that will be based on true love and respect and appreciation for ourselves and each other, for the simple reason that we've tried almost everything else and everything else doesn't work.
I don't quite get why people got so mightly pleased when they hear that someone of whom they don't approve now gets to spend a bunch of money to deal with the fact they just got sued.
Because if this lawsuit is successful, it could help to end a long series of persecution and, in my personal opinion, abuse of the legal system (IANAL). This is a good thing. There are solid principles involved here that have nothing to do with personal feelings of "approval".
It's simple. There are times when wrong things go on. There are times when the legal system has a good chance of correcting those wrong things. This is one of those times.
Because your neighbor could sue you for the fact that your hubcaps are too shiny, and the reflections aren't being properly stopped by their tinfoil hat. And you'd still have to hire a lawyer.
If that bore any resemblance to "ending persecution and abuse" then I would see your point. It doesn't, so I don't. Frivolous lawsuits do happen. All frivolous lawsuits are lawsuits; this does not mean that all lawsuits are frivolous. I mean no offense, but please tell me that I have misunderstood what you were getting at, that you in fact are not advocating a position with such a glaring and easily addressed flaw. It's quite easy and tempting to feel "jaded" about our legal system and this will cloud your reasoning if you allow it, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Is that a bible-thump I hear, way in the background? False idols?
I'm not sure what the GP intended by that concept, but I can tell you what it means to me. "Idolatry", when separated from all of the religious language (not such an easy task...) has a very simple meaning. It just means giving undue importance to something, or making a big deal out of nothing. To make up an example that I hope illustrates the point, consider a completely obsessed sports fan who knows the entire lineup of every football team by heart and watches every single game while his wife is neglected and starved for attention. Now, in the proper "order of things", his wife should be more important to him than the antics of professional athletes, for one represents love and commitment while the other represents entertainment. In this case, the man has made an idol out of football, even though he's not bowing down and worshipping anyone or anything.
Now consider the way marketing is done. There always has to be a big deal made of something that, most of the time, is really not very important or significant. It's always LATEST, FASTEST, GREATEST and there always has to be some kind of excitement attached to it. It's seldom "hey, maybe people will like this" and instead it's BEST THING EVER, BUY RIGHT NOW!!!! Few things that are marketed this way are essential to life and few of them would naturally inspire this sort of passion or enthusiasm; thus it is entirely artificial. There are only so many hours in a day, so someone who buys into the artificial hype would have to do so at the expense of something else that could have been given emphasis instead.
Here's another angle to consider: the companies that comprise the RIAA do not care about the content. They would just as soon sell you backwards recordings of Niels Bohr lectures as they would a solid hour of Robin Williams going "durrrr" if it made money. What the RIAA is concerned with is distribution and licensing of whatever it is that is being produced. That's it, the content is entirely secondary and merely a vehicle for acquiring dollars.
True, except that there is one concern about content that impacts the RIAAs of the world, which is the lowering of standards of excellence. If the public thinks something is crap, then it won't sell. Get the public conditioned to accept mostly crap and you can then sell more and more of your products without concern about the relative rarity of true excellence or the higher production costs that it might demand (due to taking more time to produce, if nothing else). Think of most of the popular music that is promoted by the RIAA, how little of it has any lasting or enduring value, how much of it does not require a ton of musical talent to write or to perform, and how the lyrical content is mostly immature prattle with no deep spiritual meanings and no ability to challenge its audience to think in new ways.
The advantages for the RIAA are that such musicians are plentiful. When a one-hit wonder or a mediocre band gets old and stops selling very well, there are thousands more ready and eager to take its place, waiting for their turn in the spotlight. The perceived advantge for the public is an inexhaustible supply of "new" music (though much of it is formulaic) so they can quickly move on to something else when they have depleted the entertainment value of their current favorites, which won't take long. From a commercial perspective, superficial entertainment with little or no lasting value is quite desirable. It moves product. All of this depends on a general public that, as a whole, is not too discerning and doesn't have specific, refined, individual tastes. If the RIAA knows anything, they know their market. What they choose to promote and not promote is no accident. So in that manner, they do care about content and from their perspective, they'd be crazy not to.
Before anybody starts in on the "Yay, less employees!" style rant, please remember that there are GOOD people who work at bad companies... not everyone is an evil backstabbing conniving shrew with the goal of proving that everyone is evil and owes them billions of dollars.
Of course, I have no proof of this "decent people" there, but one can only assume there would be.
This is why many religions have an idea called "right livelihood". The Buddhists are very good at using sensible terms with simple descriptions and so I borrow their term here, but it's a recurring theme appearing in many belief systems. It goes by different names but the concept is that part of having integrity involves earning your living in an honest way that causes as little harm as possible, whether that harm is intentional on your part or incidental.
I know I could not in good conscience work for the RIAA. I could not see the harm and the human suffering and persecution that they perpetrate and join up with them without having a lot of inner conflict. Most of that conflict wouldn't even be a conscious thing. It would manifest in terms of a general dissatisfaction, of the vacuous sort that "you need more stuff, latest fastest greatest" rampant consumerism is designed to fill. It would be the opposite of being strong and needing very little and having a joyous satisfaction with life that comes from trying as much as possible to live in harmony with other beings. It would cost me my principles and therefore my well-being, not in a catastrophic sense but in a subtle corrupting double-minded sense. When I say double-minded, I mean that sensation that one part of you is for something while another part of you is against that something. It's become common, but that is not at all normal and is properly regarded as a disease (or "dis-ease") state.
I'm not advocating a religion or a religious belief. I'm saying that sometimes concepts become incorporated into these beliefs for what you might call practical reasons. It's unfortunate that religion has become such a divisive tool for control but I think that for most of them, this was later added onto the original beliefs and observations to make them into "systems". Most of them started out as sincere efforts to experience true health and joy on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. You can see that if you can perform the not-so-easy task of unravelling and getting past the practitioners who know little about their own beliefs, the needlessly complex religious language, and the institutionalization and systematization of what are supposed to be personal beliefs. For most religions, I think the early founders would be quite horrified to see what their ideas have become, not unlike how the Founding Fathers would feel about the monstrosity that our federal government has become. In both cases, that does not mean that the original ideas were unsound, it means that the ideas become monsters when they turn into systems and demand that people conform to and become subservient to those systems. This process is in direct opposition to the idea that a belief is a tool or a helper that is there to give you ideas to consider, test, and accept or reject as part of your own personal quest to decide for yourself what you believe. The idea of "right livelihood" is one that I was thankfully able to test by observing other people instead of having to make my own mistakes and I have found it to be a sound idea.
If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
This is something I've never entirely understood about computing. Why should it be easy for someone with no knowledge of computers be easy to do relatively complex tasks, like a complex OS install or configuring a firewall?
Most people are too terrified to open the bonnet of their car to check the oil, and rely on paying someone to fix it when it breaks. Yet most people physically capable of driving a car would be able to check the oil and top it up correctly. A sizeable subset of these people could change the oil correctly, with a simple guide, but they still choose to spend money getting someone to do it for them. Why not spend money on getting someone to set your network up properly?
That's what gets me about this whole thing. So many users want to perform tasks they don't understand and they want this to have good results each time. No matter how kindly you tell them that this is unrealistic, they get upset and accuse you of being an "elitist" or they give you some crap about how "not everyone can be an expert" even when the bit of knowledge they would need in their specific case is a far cry from being an "expert". At the same time, they don't apply these unrealistic expectations to any other domain, as you have explained in your discussion about automobile maintainence. On top of this, computer and networking knowledge is very easy to find; the information is out there and readily available to anyone who wants to study it. In fact, I can't think of any other industry involving complex machinery or skilled labor that has anything approaching the wealth of freely available information and step-by-step guides that can be found for computing.
It's hard not to see these things and view those users as a bunch of spoiled children. I don't want to view them that way, I take no pleasure in it at all, but sometimes they seem to want me to do so. Certainly they act the part, and it's unfortunate because they could put that effort towards overcoming these challenges. Saying "this is how I learned and you are able to do the same" is a statement of equality, not elitism. It seems like it is only in computing that a person resents you for trying to teach him how to fish so that he can take care of his own needs and praises you for giving him a fish so he never gains his own understanding. Of course helping someone out is one thing, but I don't feel like I am really doing a person any favor if I encourage them to have a needless dependency on me for easy answers. I think that needless dependency is what we cultivate when we just hand out easy answers without explaining why something works or why it's the right answer and encouraging the person to develop their own understanding.
not everyone can understand or spend the time to learn iptables
Not everyone should be administering a network either. Any literate adult meets all of the requirements necessary to learn how to do so but there are plenty of people who should not perform this task. The system is self-correcting however; the ones who shouldn't have done so are the ones who have most of the problems. If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
The people who think that this simple observation somehow does not apply to them, or that getting pissed off at someone like me who points that out is going to change the reality of the situation, well, I bet they wonder why they have such bad "luck" with these things. You attempted something that you don't actually know how to do and experienced undesired results; what a surprise, it must have been those evil elitist geeks! Seriously though it's amazing how upset people get sometimes when you dare to suggest that there are tasks which require a bit of skill and that doing them without that bit of skill can cause problems. You'd think that this were some kind of highly controversial position for which there was no conclusive evidence.
To more directly answer your post, I think iptables itself is rather irrelevant. The story is about a router GUI, which would probably be a front-end to iptables. There are some very nice GUI tools available for iptables; if Open-WRT's offerings are on a par with them, then they would provide a way to edit firewall rules that's about as easy as it's going to get. I do think that a firewall is one of those few applications where there is some inherent complexity that cannot be made much simpler without severely compromising the device. It's like that Albert Einstein quote (paraphrase): "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
For that reason, I question the type of "easy to use" to which you refer. If you have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, then you should be able to handle any firewall and "easy to use" would mean automating what can be automated to save you some keystrokes and to avoid some unnecessary tedium. If you don't have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, it would probably mean dumbing things down to make up for your lack of understanding, which of course would result in a less thorough or a less accurate configuration.
Given the security issues that can arise from a misconfigured firewall, I would suggest that this is one area where enabling people who don't really understand what they're doing is asking for trouble. You're not really doing the less-knowledgable any favors by setting up a situation, in the name of convenience, where they are likely to have problems that they won't know how to solve. The good news is that there is abundant documentation on both TCP/IP and iptables, so anyone who is interested and motivated can easily learn how they work.
And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
The way I see it, the portion I paid for is my tubes. And unlimited means unlimited.
Indeed. If they received even one cent of public money towards building their infrastructure then net neutrality should be an absolute and uncompromised requirement. If they have a government-enforced monopoly like most (all?) telecoms, then net neutrality should be an absolute requirement.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet something else for the Internet Watch Foundation to keep an eye on. There needs to be a repository where people can freely read the ebooks (or at least search for keywords) so that indecent or potentially illegal material can be found and blocked before these materials can be purchased or downloaded. Deep packet inspection may be necessary in the transmission of these materials across boarders.
I hope this is satire.
:-).
If not, I say to you that if you want to engage in censorship you will always be able to find some noble-sounding "for the children" type of excuse for doing so and lots of misguided people with good intentions and no understanding of the Law of Unintended Consequences will happily and fervently join you in this cause. That doesn't make it right, however.
Again I hope this was satire. If it isn't, and if you fully understand my paragraph above and comprehend the incredible amount of damage that naive but well-intentioned people can do and still think that you have some kind of "holy cause" that overrides these concerns, I invite you to tell me why, for I believe that the weakness of that position is easy to reveal. If it was satire, then I think you already revealed how shallow this mentality is
If she likes the Wizard's Rule series by Goodkind, I think she'll really enjoy the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. If she likes dark fiction with a strong tragic-hero element, I think she'll also enjoy the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock, particularly the Elric books.
Thank you for elucidating this clear-headed position. I hope your comment raises the level of discourse on this and other boards re: the issue of freedom vs. security.
Your appreciation is a delightful thing. Thank you.
It's a joy to me to be able to elevate a discussion. If you've read my posts before you know that primarily I like to take a mundane discussion and reveal the simple principles that are behind all of the perceived complexity. I do so with the hope that people find their own way, part of which involves discarding ideas and temptations that are beneath them and do not serve their highest purpose. To do that, to ask a person to discard something to which they are clinging, you must show them that there is something better with which it can be replaced, something that is good and true and able to stand on its own without such grasping and clinging. Otherwise you are merely attacking their position -- that has a time and a place but it is a lower expression and therefore is not a constructive act.
Everywhere I see weak and incomplete people who think that if only they had this-and-that or if only they could control this-and-that then they would finally be whole -- then if they are thinkers, they wonder why life is empty and ordinary and dissatisfying, why they have inner conflict and why they are so easily angered or frustrated. I want something so much better than that for them. I believe that each person needs to find their own understanding, that this is too important to trust to the various agendas and monied interests and authority structures that offer ready-made, pre-packaged worldviews intended for mass consumption. It is a great joy for me to see people become whole and strong and upright and difficult to deceive, for I believe that this is our nature and that it is based on love and compassion and joy and truth.
The ability to expound real truth, so that it is self-evident though sometimes difficult truth to those who are ready to hear it, is something I consider a great gift. This gift is really not a possession that belongs to me; it is more like inspiration that equips me. Its insight makes seemingly complex things become easy and simple and clear. I have a deep respect for it, especially since it is freely given to me out of pure grace with no concept of whether I have done anything to "earn" it. I feel like a steward who has been entrusted with a power and may be held accountable for how it is used. What we do to others we also do to ourselves and thus karma is quite real; this is not because of any external force judging us or imposing anything on us, but rather because of the nature we take on by everything we do. It is like the idea that "we are not punished FOR what we do, but BY it" except that it applies equally to the negative and the positive.
There's not really such a difference between you and I, or between humanity and us; everything is interconnected and we have but one essence. I perceive that most of our suffering is caused by ignorance of this manifest reality. The actual reality of life is an incredibly lovely and noble thing that is filled with beauty and purpose. There simply are not words to describe how wonderful it really is. It is far better than anything we would dare to imagine or dream about. No one can see the true reality and still retain the angers and frustrations and negativity, for actual understanding and wisdom quickly reveal how false and self-defeating those aberrations truly are. Any small contribution I can make towards such spiritual growth is my privilege and is deeply precious to me.
Per Clark Howard, anyone who wants a free copy of their credit report should instead go to annualcreditreport.com. That's the official site that's sponsored by Equifax, Experian, and Transunion.
I have no connection to either site but honestly, freecreditreport.com annoys the hell out of me with their advertisements and they have faced government action several times in the past because of misleading advertising. So, I can't say I'm eager to see them succeed and if one is mentioned then the real thing should be mentioned also IMHO.
Boycott oxygen!
99% of all now-dead lifeforms on this planet consumed oxygen for the majority of their lifetime. It is clearly a toxic substance that must be controlled!
It's almost as dangerous as dihydrogen monoxide!
While were at it, lets ban airplanes because terrorists have used them before...and cell phones...terrorists love cell phones...ooh! and encryption.
Sure all of these technologies are used for millions of benign or helpful reasons for every malignant use, but banning things is so much easier, and more fun!
Also, it will help spur the economy, because the would be terrorists will have to buy cameras to take pictures of their targets.
Terrorists love secrecy, too. Therefore, we should make all classified documents public information. That'll show 'em!
Must have been those damn terrorists!
Wow. They make our politicians a bunch of idiots and they make the populace willing to give up their freedoms for the sake of safety. These terrorists are a hell of a lot more dangerous than we thought!
[end sarcasm]
Agreed, think of it this way.
"they" could look up the address in a phone book, we better make publishing the address of the schools (or other buildings) illegal.
Of course nobody will go to school since it's illegal to give out the address.
Somehow I'm thinking "they" were able to find targets before google maps existed.
"They" were. Humans have fought each other for all of known history. Only recently have there been technological means of reconissance. Reconissance managed to get done before there were satellites and online maps or computers. Even if this map-blurring were 100% effective at its stated purpose (my bet is that it won't be), all it would accomplish is the removal of one potential method. Unfortunately, there are many potential methods. This is just a feel-good worthless measure at best. At worst, it's an excuse for closer state control and regulation of online services -- anyone with some sense has known that politicians have desired that for a long time now. If it's like so many other things, all they need to do is wait for a good enough excuse.
For anyone who thinks this will accomplish anything, I say to you that it's the height of hubris to assume that you are so clever while your enemy is so stupid. Many needless deaths and military defeats have resulted from this sort of thinking. If you're not a strategist and don't understand these basic things, is it so much to ask that you refrain from making strategic decisions? The reality is that if some criminal group really wants to wreak havoc and if they don't give a damn about their own lives and are willing to die in the attempt to do so, there's not a lot you can do to stop them. At least not without destroying whatever freedoms we have left, which is what any truly effective measures would do. I didn't cause this to be true and I don't like it either, but we seriously need to work with the reality of the situation if we are to understand or accomplish anything.
I think we forget that you're a lot more likely to die by being struck by lightning than by being hit by a terrorist attack. I'm so tired of the level of cowaradice that this particular issue reveals. Our ancestors (speaking of the USA) realized that there are things that are more important than life itself, such as freedom, which is why they were willing to go to war to fight and die for those things. Personally, I'd rather keep all of my freedoms even if that meant that my chances of dying in a terrorist attack were increased 100-fold. For those of you who think that's an extreme position or an unwise choice, I have a question: if not for something truly good and wholesome and wonderful that fills your life with purpose, such as the freedom to be who you are and live your own life, what exactly are you living for that makes you so afraid of death, especially a particularly unlikely death? If you have them, what kind of message does your cowardice send to your children? That you should give up everything that is sacred to you for any fear or any bully who comes along? No wonder you are so afraid of dying; the breath in your lungs is the only thing about you that seems truly alive.
Yes and you rejected that as absurd. I am saying that there is a non-absurd way to go about doing this and your lack of familiarity with that way is not evidence against its existence.
The "consistent with what you know to be true" can encompass a very large body of information, especially if you are well-read and are well-familiar with logic and reasoning and argumentation. When that is the case, you are no longer impressed by the appearance of a highly complex issue becuase you can see that even those have a certain underlying simplicity. This process is not nearly so difficult as you are making it, it just isn't effortless either (though with more skill, it will feel that way).
Yes I did mean to go that far. I am quite careful with my words and their implications, partly because I know how quick other people sometimes are to assume that I made such an elementary mistake. Accept or reject what I propose as you see fit, but please do not reword it or put words in my mouth or posit that I must not have meant what I very plainly said. That doesn't really help anyone. I know you did so honestly but there are a variety of dishonest techniques that use these methods as well and the resemblence to those might hamstring what you are saying in the eyes of your audience.
My best answer to you would be to consider police interrogators. They deal with people who want to lie to them all of the time. From criminals who want to get away with it to accessories who don't want to be implicated, they see all sorts of deception. They have time-tested, tried-and-true techniques that they use because they know that all forms of deception will eventually reveal inconsistencies if you can only examine them well enough. They know that when a suspect makes a positive claim, that claim is falsifiable or can be made falsifiable. They know that if multiple suspects are conspiring to lie, no matter how much they might get their story straight there will eventually be significant contradictions. The only question at all is how long it will take to find them or how much pressure must be applied before they occur.
The media is a real treat when it comes to this kind of examination. They very often use blatant propaganda techniques and intellectually dishonest practices. Some of them will frame debates in order to guarantee a desired outcome that maintains the status quo. Others will never outright lie to you, except that they will omit facts that don't suit their interests. They flagrantly use logical fallacies and bandwagon appeals and groupthink and, to put it mildly, the flaws in what they present are generally really fucking obvious to anyone who knows how to reaso
...that such a thing could happen. Incompetence or corruption, which is worse?
Incompetence, if only because so many people are so quick to excuse and defend it. There are not a lot of apologists for corruption.
This is absurd. You may as well just not believe anything you've not witnessed first hand. Do you doubt Katrina happened because you didn't verify it? How did you verify it? Because the same thing was published everywhere? That doesn't seem any better... how many times have ONE outlet gotten it wrong, and the others swarm and re-report the same error? So now you're left with actually going there and seeing the damage for yourself...
You can take something to an utterly absurd degree and then claim that therefore, the thing must be inherently absurd. That doesn't make it true, of course. If it were inherently absurd, you wouldn't need to use a technique like that to show that this is the case. In fact, you can destroy the value and usefulness (for yourself, anyway) of any good idea by doing that. Honestly this is rather silly and it is beneath you, or it should be. That's not an insult because what I am saying is that I believe you can do better than this.
My bet is that you feel that the effort required to be extremely difficult to deceive is an undue burden and you don't like this. Because you don't like this, you're playing shoot-the-messenger which requires you to either insult me, which you have not done, or to clutch at straws in an attempt to discredit, as you just did. You're almost certainly not malicious because this is one of the mildest forms of shoot-the-messenger. I am not suggesting that this is deliberate on your part. Like any other mistake, you can do this without ever intending to. That's not because you're a bad guy or because anything is wrong with you -- it's because you're a human being. In fact, most people will make mistakes like this unless they make a conscious effort to avoid them. The whole point of the scientific method and the various systems of reasoning and logic is that people will do these things unless they learn not to. I don't mean to offend you by saying something that seems obvious; I just say this because I am hoping you will derive some value from what I am trying to tell you and if I tempt you to get defensive then that almost certainly won't happen.
As far as whether it's an undue burden, my answer is that this is a skill like any other. It doesn't take long to become proficient and not much longer still for it to feel effortless. Developing this skill has many benefits other than avoiding disinformation; it also exercises your mind and sharpens your wits. For me, it also tends to reinforce a deeper and humbling respect for the power of knowledge. I would add that there are things that are far too important to trust to anyone else; the worldview you use and the possibilities you acknowledge and the things you are willing to accept as true are definitely in that category.
If anything, your example of a single outlet misreporting something and then having its error republished by many other sources is an argument in favor of the kind of skepticism I am advocating. It's an example of how easily such a thing could accidentally happen. There are, of course, dishonest sources of deliberate disinformation, too. Then there are sources of information that won't tell you anything that is false, but will omit information that they feel does not suit their interests (perhaps it would make their advertisers look bad). Because of these things, there is no substitute for critical thinking and a willingness to cross-reference and confirm information that has any importance to you. A thorough familiarity with propaganda techniques and logical fallacies is quite helpful as well.
I apologize if this was long-winded; brevity can be a challenge for me sometimes. I felt that you were sincere and therefore that it was worthwhile to take the time to give you my real answer to your objection. If anything I said here helped you in some way, then it was worth my time many times over.
No, it does not. An anonymous statement holds no weight and thus cannot be defamatory. At least, not enough to rise to the level of court intervention. These types of cases should be thrown out (without wasting all this effort) and our government's resources put to better use. And Dunkin' Donuts needs to grow a pair.
I agree. All this means is that anonymous posters need to start using Tor and other technologies because otherwise, they will find you if they want to do it badly enough.
If it were up to me, the right to anonymous free speech would greatly outweigh the right to sue someone for libel. That would even mean eliminating the ability to sue an anonymous user for libel. I'd much rather people finally learn, once and for all, to never believe anything they see or hear or read without first confirming it themselves or testing whether it's consistent with what they already know to be true. I'd much much rather see that happen than try to use the courts to track down and sue every last false source of information. It's like a "default-allow" firewall versus a "default deny".
I see where you are coming from, but I still can't agree that people should eat food and drive cars that they can't afford. I don't to see how health care should be any different. I think the whole problem there stems from how health insurance morphed to health care. If you want to go see a doctor every year, pay for it. If you get run over by a truck, that's what insurance is for. Insurance is for the unforseable, not the routine. The problem is the line that has to be drawn, and it becomes a pretty grey area, so it's ended up that the insurance company is expected to pay for everything, which of course drives up the cost. Wondered off on a tangent there... oops.
Indeed. I can't remember where I heard this, but this is an explanation I've heard: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank or get an oil change or replace the tires you would file a new claim.
And if they are thinkers, then they wonder why they have inner conflict or they wonder why they aren't truly enjoying their lives. What you refer to as moral law is not some system that can be cheated. Speaking not of human institutions but of what you might call karma or "divine law", we are never punished for what we do. We are punished by what we become when we do it. No one evades this and there are no exceptions. This is also why truly and unselfishly doing good is its own reward, so long as it's genuine.
The only reason why that moral law was ever written on stone or written on paper is because people have forgotten what it means to love one another. It's like that quote from Socrates in which he says (paraphrase) "I do because of my philosophy what other people do only because of fear of the law." Socrates was far stronger and far happier doing what he knew was right because he genuinely wanted to than anyone who was merely intimidated by overwhelming state power could ever be. Unlike those people, he also needed no master and was well able to live his own life. Read Phaedo and you will see that this man feared neither death itself nor a country that failed to appreciate him.
No one who merely follows a list of guidelines can have that kind of strength. Therefore, if people think that the moral law is some obstacle that limits or restricts them, then that is unfortunate, but they ultimately will have to draw their own conclusions.
We've had the physical ability to feed, clothe, and shelter every last man, woman, and child living on this planet since the late 19th century. An economy based on scarcity is one of the main reasons why we have not done so and I did address this issue. Overcoming this is not what I would consider an "esoteric symbol of triumph." It would be more like a first step.
We're worker ants right now. Worker ants, or cogs in social machinery, however you like to phrase it. This has been a strongly dehumanizing influence. What we are seeing right now is the breakdown of this system because it is reaching the limits of its sustainability. If you understand the meaning of "problem, reaction, solution" or Hegel's "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" then you are no doubt aware that there are globalist forces that would like to use this breakdown as an excuse to form a one-world government of a totalitarian nature. Their first goal is to dissolve the sovereignty of the United States, primarily by bankrupting it. This is why it doesn't matter who is in the White House, they're all puppets of the monied interests that got them elected in the first place. Some of them may even be people with genuinely good intentions but they are what Vladimir Lenin referred to as "useful idiots".
For those globalist forces, the present time represents their end-game. They call it the "new world order." The good news is that their hubris is becoming apparent. I believe that their model of control by manipulation is as obsolete as the unsustainable systems that are now decaying. The general public is becoming more and more aware that something has seriously gone wrong somewhere but most of them don't yet realize the extent of it. They still think that anything in politics happens by accident. When something far worse than the Great Depression gets here, and it's coming, when the abuses of authority become more and more blatant and flagrant, people will start to wake up even more than they are already. Ghandi proved how effective passive resistance is when you are dealing with an opponent who is well-prepared for you to either rebel or conform, which are your two wrong options because they both make you become like what you oppose. Never underestimate the power of refusing to participate, for it is your "third option".
As far as "will we have some control", we're already about as disenfranchised as we can be, speaking strictly of the people as a group. There is nowhere for us to go but up and once the people realize that, it will be inevitable and I think it will be peaceful. These are some interesting times indeed.
I agree you with you for the most part here, and I also could not in good conscience work for someone like the RIAA, however there's a few critical parts to this equation you seem to be overlooking.
My answer is that people need to work these things out for themselves. The whole point is to obtain discernment and wisdom so that you don't need me or anyone else to know for whom to work or to know how to handle the discovery that your living contributes to the needless suffering of others. These are important matters and there is much personal growth to be attained by dealing with them and finding your own solutions. I would not presume to try and take that away from another person, especially not with the misguided idea that I'm doing them any favors by telling them how they should live or by handing out easy answers that don't challenge them.
I'll add that if you will just learn to observe people, it isn't difficult to understand when you're dealing with immoral people who have no concern for the suffering they cause. There is a certain quality, what you may call "the spirit behind it", to everything that they say and do that is quite unmistakable. It's incredibly subtle, but if you can learn to genuinely see it just one time you will have no problems identifying it afterwards. Because of this, their smooth words and winning smiles are thoroughly unconvincing to anyone with any sort of discernment. Cultivate that discernment first and you won't have to believe internal propaganda and you won't have to wait for what is "newsworthy" in order to know these people when you see them, or in the case of a job interview, when you're dealing with them. Their nature can be known before they go far enough down the path they're on for their nature to bear fruit in the form of outwardly-visible wrongdoing. If outwardly-visible wrongdoing is your first observation that you are not dealing with honest people, it's because you have missed many signs and warnings first.
Average people have to see the fruit before they know the tree which is why they're average. The idea of identifying the direction in which something is headed whether it's travelled one millimeter in that direction or one parsec is alien to most people. They instead wait until it has reached its destination and revealed its full nature before they are willing to call it what it is. They probably do this because they don't know what discernment really is and are afraid of being called "judgmental", which is something q
Except that even the slightest hint of authority can, in fact, drive people to kill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Yeah, that's because almost no one seems to understand the difference between service and subservience. One is mindful and willing cooperation because you believe in a purpose, the other is mindless submission that robs you of human dignity. Holding people personally responsible for any atrocities they commit is one way to remind them of the difference. It's probably not the best way because it emphasizes punishment as deterrant and not wisdom as prevention.
In a way we're between a rock and a hard place when it comes to this issue. The "powers that be" would like to preserve the centralized authority structures and the ready obedience of mindless myrmidons who execute their wishes and form the basis of their power. At the same time, they want to say that you will be punished for following certain orders, which implies that at least sometimes you are expected to think for yourself enough to question their authority. So we get these solutions that are based on prosecution and punishment for these thankfully rare events because the enlightened understanding that would represent true prevention also happens to dissolve the social machinery through which it moves (to borrow a phrase from McKenna), an option that is thoroughly distasteful to the statists.
Once you get an idea of the forces at work, the flawed ideas that compromise human beings, none of this is difficult to understand.
Which is pretty funny considering that Osama bin Laden's brother, Sheikh Tarek bin Laden, and his construction company have very close ties to the Bush family, including of course former Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. In fact the more research you do, the more both the "good guys" and the villians seem to all be one big happy family. They are all connected to each other and either know each other or know each other's immediate families. Anyone else think it's just a little, I dunno, odd, that the media hasn't made this common knowledge? I mean, you'd think that'd be newsworthy considering the utter trivia that's tirelessly discussed about other celebrities and public figures.
By the same standard that was good enough to indefinitely detain somebody without charging them with any crime, a certain former President should be at Gitmo, too. That's if we're going to invest so heavily in guilt by association. Intentional or otherwise, we Americans certainly haven't lost our sense of irony.
I would say that in the past, skilled craft was essential because there was no other way to produce durable, useful goods. Now we have factories and mass production and economies of scale to take care of our material needs. The mistake we have made is that we act now like everything is a product and that craftsmanship or artistry have become more obsolete.
What we could do instead is decide that we have raised our material standard of living to where we can now apply craftsmanship and art to higher expressions of our humanity rather than mundane material survival. An economy based on scarcity (as opposed to what is called a resource economy) and a monetary system based entirely on debt (fiat currency, the Federal Reserve and similar systems that the same international bankers have implemented in every industrialized country) and therefore unsustainable are the main reasons why this has been held back. If we can overcome these things, we would find that we stand at the brink of a new Renaissance far greater than anything that has been imagined before. That is our current challenge.
I agree very much with Bill Hicks when he said that the reason why things are so fucked up right now is that we are undergoing evolution. Hicks went on to say that our institutions are crumbling because they are no longer relevant. Much of the abuses (in my opinion) perpetrated by the RIAA and others have been about these institutions trying to use force, typically the force of law, to remain relevant. I think they are merely prolonging the inevitable. This is a tough time because the old control-and-manipulation-and-coercion based ways of keeping order have to give way first before something new and better can replace them. The unrest and dissatisfaction that is so prevalent right now is part of this process. The one thing that is certain is that our current system is not sustainable. It absolutely must and will either radically change or cause its own collapse. I think something much better is coming that will be based on true love and respect and appreciation for ourselves and each other, for the simple reason that we've tried almost everything else and everything else doesn't work.
Because if this lawsuit is successful, it could help to end a long series of persecution and, in my personal opinion, abuse of the legal system (IANAL). This is a good thing. There are solid principles involved here that have nothing to do with personal feelings of "approval".
It's simple. There are times when wrong things go on. There are times when the legal system has a good chance of correcting those wrong things. This is one of those times.
If that bore any resemblance to "ending persecution and abuse" then I would see your point. It doesn't, so I don't. Frivolous lawsuits do happen. All frivolous lawsuits are lawsuits; this does not mean that all lawsuits are frivolous. I mean no offense, but please tell me that I have misunderstood what you were getting at, that you in fact are not advocating a position with such a glaring and easily addressed flaw. It's quite easy and tempting to feel "jaded" about our legal system and this will cloud your reasoning if you allow it, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I'm not sure what the GP intended by that concept, but I can tell you what it means to me. "Idolatry", when separated from all of the religious language (not such an easy task...) has a very simple meaning. It just means giving undue importance to something, or making a big deal out of nothing. To make up an example that I hope illustrates the point, consider a completely obsessed sports fan who knows the entire lineup of every football team by heart and watches every single game while his wife is neglected and starved for attention. Now, in the proper "order of things", his wife should be more important to him than the antics of professional athletes, for one represents love and commitment while the other represents entertainment. In this case, the man has made an idol out of football, even though he's not bowing down and worshipping anyone or anything.
Now consider the way marketing is done. There always has to be a big deal made of something that, most of the time, is really not very important or significant. It's always LATEST, FASTEST, GREATEST and there always has to be some kind of excitement attached to it. It's seldom "hey, maybe people will like this" and instead it's BEST THING EVER, BUY RIGHT NOW!!!! Few things that are marketed this way are essential to life and few of them would naturally inspire this sort of passion or enthusiasm; thus it is entirely artificial. There are only so many hours in a day, so someone who buys into the artificial hype would have to do so at the expense of something else that could have been given emphasis instead.
True, except that there is one concern about content that impacts the RIAAs of the world, which is the lowering of standards of excellence. If the public thinks something is crap, then it won't sell. Get the public conditioned to accept mostly crap and you can then sell more and more of your products without concern about the relative rarity of true excellence or the higher production costs that it might demand (due to taking more time to produce, if nothing else). Think of most of the popular music that is promoted by the RIAA, how little of it has any lasting or enduring value, how much of it does not require a ton of musical talent to write or to perform, and how the lyrical content is mostly immature prattle with no deep spiritual meanings and no ability to challenge its audience to think in new ways.
The advantages for the RIAA are that such musicians are plentiful. When a one-hit wonder or a mediocre band gets old and stops selling very well, there are thousands more ready and eager to take its place, waiting for their turn in the spotlight. The perceived advantge for the public is an inexhaustible supply of "new" music (though much of it is formulaic) so they can quickly move on to something else when they have depleted the entertainment value of their current favorites, which won't take long. From a commercial perspective, superficial entertainment with little or no lasting value is quite desirable. It moves product. All of this depends on a general public that, as a whole, is not too discerning and doesn't have specific, refined, individual tastes. If the RIAA knows anything, they know their market. What they choose to promote and not promote is no accident. So in that manner, they do care about content and from their perspective, they'd be crazy not to.
Before anybody starts in on the "Yay, less employees!" style rant, please remember that there are GOOD people who work at bad companies... not everyone is an evil backstabbing conniving shrew with the goal of proving that everyone is evil and owes them billions of dollars.
Of course, I have no proof of this "decent people" there, but one can only assume there would be.
This is why many religions have an idea called "right livelihood". The Buddhists are very good at using sensible terms with simple descriptions and so I borrow their term here, but it's a recurring theme appearing in many belief systems. It goes by different names but the concept is that part of having integrity involves earning your living in an honest way that causes as little harm as possible, whether that harm is intentional on your part or incidental.
I know I could not in good conscience work for the RIAA. I could not see the harm and the human suffering and persecution that they perpetrate and join up with them without having a lot of inner conflict. Most of that conflict wouldn't even be a conscious thing. It would manifest in terms of a general dissatisfaction, of the vacuous sort that "you need more stuff, latest fastest greatest" rampant consumerism is designed to fill. It would be the opposite of being strong and needing very little and having a joyous satisfaction with life that comes from trying as much as possible to live in harmony with other beings. It would cost me my principles and therefore my well-being, not in a catastrophic sense but in a subtle corrupting double-minded sense. When I say double-minded, I mean that sensation that one part of you is for something while another part of you is against that something. It's become common, but that is not at all normal and is properly regarded as a disease (or "dis-ease") state.
I'm not advocating a religion or a religious belief. I'm saying that sometimes concepts become incorporated into these beliefs for what you might call practical reasons. It's unfortunate that religion has become such a divisive tool for control but I think that for most of them, this was later added onto the original beliefs and observations to make them into "systems". Most of them started out as sincere efforts to experience true health and joy on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. You can see that if you can perform the not-so-easy task of unravelling and getting past the practitioners who know little about their own beliefs, the needlessly complex religious language, and the institutionalization and systematization of what are supposed to be personal beliefs. For most religions, I think the early founders would be quite horrified to see what their ideas have become, not unlike how the Founding Fathers would feel about the monstrosity that our federal government has become. In both cases, that does not mean that the original ideas were unsound, it means that the ideas become monsters when they turn into systems and demand that people conform to and become subservient to those systems. This process is in direct opposition to the idea that a belief is a tool or a helper that is there to give you ideas to consider, test, and accept or reject as part of your own personal quest to decide for yourself what you believe. The idea of "right livelihood" is one that I was thankfully able to test by observing other people instead of having to make my own mistakes and I have found it to be a sound idea.
If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
This is something I've never entirely understood about computing. Why should it be easy for someone with no knowledge of computers be easy to do relatively complex tasks, like a complex OS install or configuring a firewall?
Most people are too terrified to open the bonnet of their car to check the oil, and rely on paying someone to fix it when it breaks. Yet most people physically capable of driving a car would be able to check the oil and top it up correctly. A sizeable subset of these people could change the oil correctly, with a simple guide, but they still choose to spend money getting someone to do it for them. Why not spend money on getting someone to set your network up properly?
That's what gets me about this whole thing. So many users want to perform tasks they don't understand and they want this to have good results each time. No matter how kindly you tell them that this is unrealistic, they get upset and accuse you of being an "elitist" or they give you some crap about how "not everyone can be an expert" even when the bit of knowledge they would need in their specific case is a far cry from being an "expert". At the same time, they don't apply these unrealistic expectations to any other domain, as you have explained in your discussion about automobile maintainence. On top of this, computer and networking knowledge is very easy to find; the information is out there and readily available to anyone who wants to study it. In fact, I can't think of any other industry involving complex machinery or skilled labor that has anything approaching the wealth of freely available information and step-by-step guides that can be found for computing.
It's hard not to see these things and view those users as a bunch of spoiled children. I don't want to view them that way, I take no pleasure in it at all, but sometimes they seem to want me to do so. Certainly they act the part, and it's unfortunate because they could put that effort towards overcoming these challenges. Saying "this is how I learned and you are able to do the same" is a statement of equality, not elitism. It seems like it is only in computing that a person resents you for trying to teach him how to fish so that he can take care of his own needs and praises you for giving him a fish so he never gains his own understanding. Of course helping someone out is one thing, but I don't feel like I am really doing a person any favor if I encourage them to have a needless dependency on me for easy answers. I think that needless dependency is what we cultivate when we just hand out easy answers without explaining why something works or why it's the right answer and encouraging the person to develop their own understanding.
Not everyone should be administering a network either. Any literate adult meets all of the requirements necessary to learn how to do so but there are plenty of people who should not perform this task. The system is self-correcting however; the ones who shouldn't have done so are the ones who have most of the problems. If you a) don't know how to properly do something and b) refuse to learn how to properly do it, then it makes sense to ask (or hire) someone else to do it for you.
The people who think that this simple observation somehow does not apply to them, or that getting pissed off at someone like me who points that out is going to change the reality of the situation, well, I bet they wonder why they have such bad "luck" with these things. You attempted something that you don't actually know how to do and experienced undesired results; what a surprise, it must have been those evil elitist geeks! Seriously though it's amazing how upset people get sometimes when you dare to suggest that there are tasks which require a bit of skill and that doing them without that bit of skill can cause problems. You'd think that this were some kind of highly controversial position for which there was no conclusive evidence.
To more directly answer your post, I think iptables itself is rather irrelevant. The story is about a router GUI, which would probably be a front-end to iptables. There are some very nice GUI tools available for iptables; if Open-WRT's offerings are on a par with them, then they would provide a way to edit firewall rules that's about as easy as it's going to get. I do think that a firewall is one of those few applications where there is some inherent complexity that cannot be made much simpler without severely compromising the device. It's like that Albert Einstein quote (paraphrase): "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
For that reason, I question the type of "easy to use" to which you refer. If you have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, then you should be able to handle any firewall and "easy to use" would mean automating what can be automated to save you some keystrokes and to avoid some unnecessary tedium. If you don't have a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP, it would probably mean dumbing things down to make up for your lack of understanding, which of course would result in a less thorough or a less accurate configuration.
Given the security issues that can arise from a misconfigured firewall, I would suggest that this is one area where enabling people who don't really understand what they're doing is asking for trouble. You're not really doing the less-knowledgable any favors by setting up a situation, in the name of convenience, where they are likely to have problems that they won't know how to solve. The good news is that there is abundant documentation on both TCP/IP and iptables, so anyone who is interested and motivated can easily learn how they work.
And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
The way I see it, the portion I paid for is my tubes. And unlimited means unlimited.
Indeed. If they received even one cent of public money towards building their infrastructure then net neutrality should be an absolute and uncompromised requirement. If they have a government-enforced monopoly like most (all?) telecoms, then net neutrality should be an absolute requirement.