Yes, having people who other people care about use your social network is a clear sign of desperation and not completely standard marketing.
You're dumb, I suggest not breathing anymore.
Honestly just about all of marketing looks like desperate pandering to me. By that I mean celebrity endorsements, bandwagon appeals, misleading statements, you know, just about anything other than letting the product or service stand on its own merits.
Just because it's standard practice doesn't make it less true. That a singer really enjoys Google+ has no bearing whatsoever on whether I am going to enjoy it. At least if it were someone famous for technical skill like Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox the endorsement would make sense, as one would assume people like that would recognize and appreciate a well-designed system.
But then they aren't going for a "here's why we have a superior service and this is what it can do for you" approach. They're trying to piggyback on the emotional hysteria surrounding a trendy performer. I guess the audience who happen to like pop are supposed to think something like this: "wow I sure like Lady Gaga's music, therefore it follows that I will like everything else she likes however far removed from music it may be -- yay, now I'm one step closer to becoming a clone of her, a truly worthy life goal indeed, surely that's better than having my own individual tastes and preferences". How is that not pandering?
Conspiracy theorists are impossible to argue with. No matter what evidence you show to the kooks they will just rationalise it away. Conspiracy theory derives from an inability to accept the chaotic nature of reality, that "random" events outside the control of any central power can utterly destroy someone's life. The belief in conspiracy theory is a belief that SOMETHING is actually in control: THE GOVERNMENT!
And if THE GOVERNMENT could just have its secrets revealed, or if it was destroyed, then all would be right with the world and peace and justice would reign.
The problem with all of this, what fuels the conspiracy theories, is that false-flag operations really do happen. The various governments destroy their own credibility by engaging in such things.
...would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started
Disagree. Some people simply want to "stick it to the man", defy authority, be rebellious, and work for "justice" in their own way. Or they just want to screw around with people. AnonyLulzSecWhatever is bound to form, regardless of the governmental circumstances.
Yes but they don't usually get an "organization" (however loose and/or leaderless) of like-minded people off the ground who act in concert to achieve shared goals. The kind of people you're talking about are usually lone wolves.
I mean, look at their choices of targets (both Anon and Lulz). If they just wanted to raise hell and rebel they wouldn't restrict themselves to the more corrupt corporations. They have a clear ethos that guides their choice of action. This is not random anarchy. It has a kind of logic more sophisticated than the way you categorize it. If they just wanted to screw with people, there are much easier targets which are not so well defended.
OK, I can't play Fox commentator any more, I have do this part straight both as a member of said media and as a person who doesn't like this level of stupidity. What planet do you live on? The only difference is that it is better hidden in England, they are subtle, something that has been entirely lost in this country because things are so blatant there is no need for subtlety.
Sounds like "not to quite the same degree" to me. You know, 95% is not to quite the same degree as 99%. If they are subtle it's because they are afraid to do so openly, because they don't feel like the people would tolerate the more blatant in-your-face what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it version. That's a credit to the people of England.
It's intuitive to those who possess no self control. There's no reason to model and expound it (and everything else you pontificated on in your pretentious nonsense); it's perfectly well understood under the simple term "vigilantism".
You completely misunderstood me. I don't like vigilanteism. Because I don't like it and would like to see less of it, I seek to understand how and why it happens. I observe it does not happen in a vacuum. I see that there is a sequence of events that has to first happen before anyone is tempted to engage in it.
Henry David Throeau said, "there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root is what I want to understand. If it reaches deep into the soil and has a firm hold, I want to know how it found such fertile soil, with what it was fertilized if you like.
I don't like vigilanteism because it should be completely redundant. I understand why it is not. As KRS-One said, there can be no peace without justice. If you really want to see the root of this, you have to address why so many people have so little confidence in legitimate authority. Those are hard problems that took generations to become this way. They will not be resolved overnight. The first step is to elevate the level of awareness to something beyond visceral disapproval of a surface manifestation.
The AC implied he/she is a member of Anonymous and I tend to believe that. So here we have such a person confirming what I have always said about why they do what they do. You think what, that just because I was not hostile, did not condemn or judge that person, did not try to impose my own brand of morality as though I were a superior being of some kind, that I celebrate the situation? No. I really don't. I just perceive that we've tried the adversarial thing for a while now and surprise, it creates more division and less understanding of how to prevent. That AC's honesty alone makes him/her worthy of civility.
Whether he is executed or not doesn't make the victim any less dead.
The idea is that both execution and say, life in prison are two ways to remove from society a person who has proven themselves to be violent and dangerous to others. I really doubt you are saying that there should be no serious consequence for convicted murderers. There's also another purpose for having a justice system: without one, these things usually turn into blood feuds, cycles of revenge.
The death-penalty debate is about which method is more appropriate. Both methods assume a murderer should be removed from general society.
I can't tell if you're talking about LulzSec or Sun being the "kid that needs a black eye".
I'm talking about neither of those. I'm talking about general principle. Your confusion stems from a misguided belief that I must be rooting for one "side" or the "other side".
Well argued, and good points. I'm assuming you studied debate? You never really put him down, only told him how to strengthen his position for a rebut. Good post. I like it.
Just about everything I know about argumentation is from paying attention and observing those who were more skilled than I. I have never formally studied it, other than thumbing through the book Art of Deception, but my main interest in that book was to better understand rhetoric and how it is used to deceive. The book is not very useful for those who view argumentation as a way to get closer to truth. The book is written for those who think a debate is a contest that they must win at all costs (I suppose to score a point or impress an audience or some other frivolous thing) no matter how wrong they may be. There are people like that and it is well to understand how they think.
Otherwise... Most of the time, formal study turns a living art into a dead thing to be dissected. I'd much rather have an intuitive practical understanding. The difference is, someone who only knows a thing from formal study is confused and uncertain when confronted with a new situation for which they do not have a battery of predetermined answers. I greatly prefer a fluid, dynamic, principled understanding. That kind of understanding is truly my own.
If I have the use of reason it is because I truly love reason. The flaws in the GP's post are therefore plain to me, with or without instruction.
When the government ceases to mete out justice this is what happens. Get over it. If you don't like it please fix the governments so we don't need to do this ourselves.
Thank you, kind sir or madam, whoever the anonymous figure may be. To me, what you say is the most intuitive thing in the world but for some it is a hard doctrine. They are stuck in a crime-and-punishment model that fails to account for why certain crimes happen in the first place. It's the same reason we have a War on Drugs instead of an expectation of responsible use.
I'm trying to model and expound this kind of understanding. I'm trying to contribute such that the conversation addresses the higher levels of how and why these things manifest, rather than the low level of how undesirable they might be. Therefore, it's nice to hear from someone else who understands this.
Rebecca Brooks: Arrested - former News International chief executive - hardly a low level employee
Les Hinton: Arrested - chief executive of Dow Jones - again hardly a low level employee
News International's share price has dropped 6%, which whilst isn't a fine, but will certainly hammer the profits of the organisation as a whole.
You have to bear in mind, most of this is going on in England, where there isn't nearly the obvious corruption you get in American politics. There is corruption - it's government and comes with the territory - but its no where near as blatant. Even the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police have resigned, even though they had nothing to do with it, nor any knowledge of it going on.
The real question is whether the top-level executives at News Corp were looking the other way. The other real question is whether we will acknowledge that the shareholders soundly deserve to feel the effects of what they have chosen to invest in. If assholes like those who run News Corp have a hard time attracting investors while more ethical companies have no such difficulties, that's a win for everyone.
Still, what you say is at least something positive and it is good to hear. I'm happy to discover I was wrong about something because it means I don't have to remain ignorant. Thank you for setting me straight on that part.
It's fortunate for everyone that this happened in England where the corporations don't dominate government to quite the same degree as in the US.
I don't know how things are in the U.K., but here in the U.S., if any politician so much as suggested trying this, there would be such a massive hue and cry from a huge section of the country about "Government overstepping their bounds!" and "Socialism!" that they wouldn't know what hit them.
If enforcing the law when an individual breaks it isn't socialism, then neither is enforcing the law when a corporation breaks it.
In fact you could even say it's less of an "overstep" or "socialist" when the law is enforced against corporations. I mean, supposedly we have government by the consent of the goverened, meaning individual people have a type of sovereignty that they have willingly surrendered as part of a social contract. Corporations, however, are entirely creations of the state. Since the state created them, it makes perfect sense for the state to regulate them with no need for recourse to any "social contract" type of argument.
Not that I disagree with your assessment of what would happen. The average American really has no idea what kind of vast, powerful interests are arrayed against them. Propaganda and demagoguery are their tools of choice because when the manipulations are successful, the victims think they are defending their own ideas.
Not in the US where those rednecks still have barbaric punishments like the death penalty for being retarded.
Yeah yeah, I know I'm replying to a troll, but...
He isn't on death row for being retarded. Saying that makes me question your mental abilities. He's on death row for murdering a 17-year-old. The fact that his IQ is 68 doesn't make the victim any less dead or his family any less bereaved at having to bury their child.
There are good arguments against the death penalty. The fact that so many people on death row turned out to be innocent (i.e. because of DNA evidence) is one of the most rational. After all, you can release someone who is in prison but you can't raise the dead. The logic here is quite straightforward. However, your emotional rhetoric and willingness to distort truth as you have done is only going to weaken your position.
There are no shortcuts to actually making a solid case about a worthy subject. No, you haven't discovered the first.
They're black hats, it's what they do. When some kid at school is acting like a total dipshit to everyone else and the authorities don't care, the solution is not to ask him politely to stop. The solution is to give him a black eye, then ask, then give him another if he refuses.
While I would place emphasis on the "authorities don't care" part, you're absolutely right. There are people with whom you cannot reason. In fact, they hate reason because reason would tell them to change their ways and they're addicted to the gratification and feeling of superiority they obtain from being that way. That kind of egomania is the only sort of (pathetic) life they have.
It is not your fault if someone will not cherish reason. That is their decision; let them reap what they sow. It does not make you a bad person to do what is necessary (but no more) to handle someone like that. It is in accordance with how they have chosen to live. In the case of a bully like in your example, it may in fact be a turning point in life that will end up being the best thing that ever happened to them. It would amount to giving him, albeit a harder way, the correction and guidance that his parents (or more likely, parent) so thoroughly failed to deliver.
After doing what needs to be done, then there is opportunity to take the high road and have an attitude of "sorry it came to this, but you had it coming." Gloating and being glad it happened would just make you a bigger bully who will eventually run into one who is bigger still. That path won't reform anyone. So yes, you're absolutely right but it has to come from a certain level of understanding. The real mistake is to coddle a person like that out of some misguided sympathy (what the unwise think is compassion) because they interpret it as weakness, as submission, and they'd be right.
So, because they did something ethically wrong and against the law it's OK to do the same to them? I thought we had gotten beyond the whole "eye for an eye" thing.
Until we decide that corporations should be second- and third-class citizens compared to breathing human beings, you can expect more of the same.
It's a serious mistake to blame vigilantes as though they happen in a vacuum. That kind of thinking has been tried for a very long time now and it has gotten us absolutely nowhere. It doesn't solve anything. Vigilanteism is the least of things it fails to address. It doesn't change anything. It provides more of the same problems we've always had.
Instead you need to look at the conditions of the environment, the steps that were taken to make them that way, and how they bred the desire to do such things. That's if you are actually interested in really working towards a solution for what you perceive as a problem, so interested in fact that you're willing to put aside the gratification of condemnation and try something that might work.
The root of the problem is that a corporation can do things that would cause any individual person to suffer some serious prison time. The equivalent of "prison time" for a corporation would be to freeze their assets and stop them from doing any business whatsoever for a set period of time. You may say "okay Causality but what about the rank-and-file workers who would be financially harmed by this?" To that I say, maybe that would make people more reluctant to work for known assholes like Rupert Murdoch and maybe that would be a good thing for everyone.
Just as a loan officer has to charge higher fees for risky loans, let Murdoch pay his employees above the standard rate to compensate them for the risk that his asshattery might get them shut down. That would be more like making corporations pay some of the social costs their tactics inflict on the world around them.
It's not like government was going to do anything to the corporation other than a slap-on-the-wrist fine that's certain to be less than the profits made by the act. That they may throw low-level employees under the bus doesn't change this. At least someone somewhere is trying to make sure that corporate malfeasance actually does have some kind of consequence.
I have always believed that a properly-functioning government, not owned by monied interests and willing to take effective and severe action against misbehaving corporations and their executives would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started. As I see it, they are only stepping in where the government has grotesquely failed. Everything that is bad about vigilanteism is caused by failing governments.
Not eager to reply to myself but I see the point of confusion was this line:
Sometimes I send an e-mail just to say "thank you" for the simple reason that they owe me absolutely nothing, yet I benefit from the work they have chosen to make freely available.
By that I meant when I want to make a donation, which is also a way to say thank you, but again not a support request. I wasn't going to mention the donation part but I see now that's the way to clarify this.
The bottom line is, I do something like that because it is my delight to give something back despite my modest means, not so I can impress anyone with "how generous I am" as though I do so for any reason except that I want to, so for that reason I can see how that one line was ambiguous. Still I think you're a bit frustrated and this has made you somewhat trigger-happy. In a way I can understand that. Dealing with the general public sucks and will remind you in a very in-your-face manner that the world is full of thoughtless, inconsiderate people.
I assure you, my spirit of gratitude and appreciation towards Open Source participants is not compatible with needlessly bothering them. That isn't how I show appreciation.
And then I, as lead (and often only) developer for several FOSS projects, get an email with a question, suggestion or bug report to my personal email. When I reply with "please use the mailing list", people like you, who, to them, "community" means that the lead developer needs to answer their questions directly, complain, get upset, and sometimes get downright rude.
As a lead developer, I want a community to form. This means that I want to give all people in the community a chance to answer your question, not only myself personally.
Shachar
If I were careless and thoughtless about it, it would create the situation you bemoan. Hint: I don't e-mail project leads for technical support. I don't do that because I'm not an asshole.
I use support forums for support. Do you see how my post never said "e-mail" anywhere and instead used the much more generic word "communicate"? Well, I'm not careless with my diction and that was worded deliberately. Most of my direct communication with developers and project leads was initiated by their response to a forum or mailing list post of mine.
You could have asked "hey with no evidence from you, I took it upon myself to assume that when you said 'communicate' you meant you e-mailed them personally, is that correct?". Instead you noticed that, among other interpretations, it could be interpreted in terms of your pet peeve. So, full of righteous indignation, you ran with it. Much good discussion is ruined this way.
I'd rather people take a breath once in a while and ask themselves if their assumptions have any grounds whatsoever before they tell someone what "people like you" do and how annoying it is. I like that better than following every post with a long list of disclaimers that reactive people who wish to jump to conclusions will ignore anyway.
The point was, you can post in a Windows-related forum and you aren't going to see Ballmer chiming in. He may occasionally do that for million-dollar customers, but he hasn't the time for little people like me.
The few times I have dealt with developers, it was welcome by them and by me. It is unfortunate that you have had negative experiences but you paint with a rather broad brush.
Patents won't cover the text; that's what copyright does.
But, there's one thing I wouldn't put past them. When e-books for college textbooks start to take off, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they come in a proprietary file format. The format itself and/or the method of rendering human-readable text from it certainly could be patented.
Then it would be even easier for them to a) kill off the used book market and b) change a couple of chapters around and create a "New Edition" that will be required next year.
Most of the thousand juggernauts you speak of are only juggernauts themselves because the patent system is the way it is. They'd much rather pay some miniscule fee than destroy their entire business model. It's going to need to get much worse before it gets better.
(emphasis added)
Isn't that so typically the case? I'd say there seems to be nothing more American than avoiding at all costs the use of foresight and prevention (i.e. before something turns into a crisis) but unfortunately, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on this.
Fools are the sort who really desire political power. Nothing is less evident to a fool than the fact that every large national crisis was once a small problem that could have been resolved with relative ease, but the failure to do so allowed it to grow and evolve into a monster.
The idea scales in both directions. It's true of individual personal lives and it's true of national affairs. Those who don't understand this think they are victims of misfortune. The reality is, an actual victim of misfortune that was completely unforeseeable and non-preventable is an extremely rare entity. On the national scale though, there is a grave injustice built into this: the fact that those who did see it coming are few and tend to be drowned out by the din of reactive fools. When they are affected by broken systems, they get to suffer along with those who really deserve it.
Funny how when politicians talk about "fairness" (really a puerile version of justice), distribution of wealth is the only kind they seem to recognize.
Linux is still "a community effort of users putting their minds together". There may have been a shift from the community made up mostly of individuals to corporations but it is still, a community.
Does it matter if a contributor is an individual, an individual contributing on behalf of a company or company contributing as long as the code is of good quality, is offered in ways that agrees with the norms of the community and does not violate any license used by the community?
Microsoft is contributing code because they are either using linux or they have people they are supporting who are using it hence they are part of the community effort.
It doesnt matter how little any individual or company cares about the GPL, all it matters is that they conduct themselves in a way that does not violate it.
I will tell you what really makes me personally feel like I am participating in a community. For most Open Source software I have used, if I have a question or a suggestion or simply some feedback, I can usually communicate directly with the maintainer or lead developer of the project. They are accessible. They are fellow human beings, not corporate conglomerates. There are no layers of sales reps or receptionists or PR personnel. Sometimes I send an e-mail just to say "thank you" for the simple reason that they owe me absolutely nothing, yet I benefit from the work they have chosen to make freely available.
It would be like calling up Microsoft and speaking directly to Ballmer about Windows. No regular Microsoft customer is ever going to do that. That's the difference between a community and a conglomerate. That, and with most Linux distributions users help each other as much as (if not more than) organizations provide formal support.
Spoken like an idiot who wasted a lot of resources on redundant protections against things that he's already paid taxes to protect himself against.
No, what makes one an idiot is to adamantly insist that I must be mistaken and then have zero ability to articulate where I have made an error in my reasoning. None of my argument rests on what taxes I pay or the purpose to which they are applied. In the usual wrong-headed knee-jerk format, you are addressing arguments I never made and then declaring yourself the victor. In your imagination perhaps you are, but nowhere else. Everyone else just sees the emotional volatility of an impotent fool who cannot make his case.
Address my observation about the horrible fashion in which FEMA handled Hurricane Katrina. There you will find my answer to your worship of tax money. Of course you have already had opportunity to do that. You won't address it because you can't. You know it contradicts what you just said so you don't want to contend with me, you coward.
Having cleared that up, I have a revelation for you: your feelings about something do not determine the truth of that thing. When you accept this, you will be one step closer to real adulthood. Until such time, you can get as angry as you like and call me as many names as you like. In fact, I take it as a compliment that I affected you so much without even trying. I could only do that if my words rang true and that's what you really can't stand.
Actually I have one thing to add to this, despite my reluctance to reply to my own post:
It leads me to suppose you already made up your mind that there is something wrong with preparedness and self-sufficiency (the real kind) and are clutching at straws to portray it in a negative light.
I think I know what you don't like about it. Both the situation and my personal general attitude reflect a belief that "if I did it, with modest means, then so can you; therefore, you have zero excuse for not doing the same." Many people think that last part is somehow terrible, like it's a cosmic injustice when failing to be a responsible adult causes that person to suffer in some way. This pathological sentiment is often mistaken for compassion.
The truth is, if no adult person ever suffered in any way whatsoever for poor decision-making, most human beings would never learn to make better decisions because most are not proactively living their lives and using foresight. It's a shame it so often has to be that way when learning things the easy way is, well, easy, but that's an individual choice. So long as they lay in it, I respect every adult's right to make their own bed as they see fit.
To do otherwise is to say you have a claim on their lives and quite simply, you don't. Admitting that you don't is difficult for those who do not wish to live and let live. This, in turn, is why freedom is so scarce on the planet. The evil people who want to control and micromanage the lives of others for their own selfish gain could not begin to equal the damage done by well-meaning people who don't realize that they hate freedom because they fear its possibilities. Without the large number of "useful idiots" in the latter category, the abominations in the former category would never achieve power.
No, as I pointed out this is an ambiguity built into the language. Yes, editors could have chosen a wording that's not ambiguous. But the context makes it clear, right in the summary - and in common sense.
I'm not going to reply in this subthread (replies to the current comment), because I'm interested in linguistics here - not in bashing Slashdot's editors. They've got plenty of faults, but that's offtopic to what I'm talking about.
Linguistics are only half of it. How skillfully you manage them (i.e. whether you avoid completely avoidable ambiguity) is the other half. You can pretend that natural languages are totally separate from the humans who use them, if you like. However, consider the vast multitude of words available and the grammatical structures that can be used. It should be self-evident that, from all these vaiables, the final diction that is chosen does boil down to how the language is used by the person using it. The writer is not merely an interchangable part in some industrial process because a different writer would word things differently.
I for one am glad that English makes no attempt to be completely idiot-proof. A language that tries to avoid every single potential ambiguity and misuse is also going to limit its own expressiveness. It is analogous to that Unix saying, that trying to prevent you from doing something stupid would also prevent you from doing something clever.
Also, while the wording of GP was a bit harsh, I cannot fault someone for expecting a paid professional to produce work meeting at least a minimal standard of quality. Would you want your doctor to practice medicine the same way these editors practice copy editing? I seriously doubt it, but if he/she did, maybe you'd enjoy answering a chorous of people who tell you to stop being so picky. The bottom line is that the professional could have acted like a professional and any "bashing" would have been stopped long before it started. Prevention is the very best and most superior way to handle these events. The cause-and-effect of this process is undeniable.
It's common that during disasters, citizens take things into their own hands by looting anything that they may need or want, hoarding it rather than sharing it with their neighbors in need.
If you are actually prepared and have stored the essentials you need, you'll find yourself far less tempted to loot or steal anything from anyone. You may, in fact, have excess you are able to share with family, friends, and neighbors.
That is what self-sufficiency means. It doesn't mean lynching black people or busting store windows and stealing TVs, stereos, jewelry, gold, guns, and food. How you conflate these things is hard for me to understand. It leads me to suppose you already made up your mind that there is something wrong with preparedness and self-sufficiency (the real kind) and are clutching at straws to portray it in a negative light.
Especially the whole lynching deal... the founding fathers were clear about their belief that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongly punished. That's why they set up a system in which police work is genuinely hard and those "pesky" civil rights make it hard. No matter what their citizenship or nationality I have a hard time considering someone a real American if they would reject this principle. They might technically be a citizen of the USA but they are devoid of any understanding of what this country is supposed to be about.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, having people who other people care about use your social network is a clear sign of desperation and not completely standard marketing.
You're dumb, I suggest not breathing anymore.
Honestly just about all of marketing looks like desperate pandering to me. By that I mean celebrity endorsements, bandwagon appeals, misleading statements, you know, just about anything other than letting the product or service stand on its own merits.
Just because it's standard practice doesn't make it less true. That a singer really enjoys Google+ has no bearing whatsoever on whether I am going to enjoy it. At least if it were someone famous for technical skill like Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox the endorsement would make sense, as one would assume people like that would recognize and appreciate a well-designed system.
But then they aren't going for a "here's why we have a superior service and this is what it can do for you" approach. They're trying to piggyback on the emotional hysteria surrounding a trendy performer. I guess the audience who happen to like pop are supposed to think something like this: "wow I sure like Lady Gaga's music, therefore it follows that I will like everything else she likes however far removed from music it may be -- yay, now I'm one step closer to becoming a clone of her, a truly worthy life goal indeed, surely that's better than having my own individual tastes and preferences". How is that not pandering?
Conspiracy theorists are impossible to argue with. No matter what evidence you show to the kooks they will just rationalise it away. Conspiracy theory derives from an inability to accept the chaotic nature of reality, that "random" events outside the control of any central power can utterly destroy someone's life. The belief in conspiracy theory is a belief that SOMETHING is actually in control: THE GOVERNMENT!
And if THE GOVERNMENT could just have its secrets revealed, or if it was destroyed, then all would be right with the world and peace and justice would reign.
The problem with all of this, what fuels the conspiracy theories, is that false-flag operations really do happen. The various governments destroy their own credibility by engaging in such things.
...would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started
Disagree. Some people simply want to "stick it to the man", defy authority, be rebellious, and work for "justice" in their own way. Or they just want to screw around with people. AnonyLulzSecWhatever is bound to form, regardless of the governmental circumstances.
Yes but they don't usually get an "organization" (however loose and/or leaderless) of like-minded people off the ground who act in concert to achieve shared goals. The kind of people you're talking about are usually lone wolves.
I mean, look at their choices of targets (both Anon and Lulz). If they just wanted to raise hell and rebel they wouldn't restrict themselves to the more corrupt corporations. They have a clear ethos that guides their choice of action. This is not random anarchy. It has a kind of logic more sophisticated than the way you categorize it. If they just wanted to screw with people, there are much easier targets which are not so well defended.
Sounds like "not to quite the same degree" to me. You know, 95% is not to quite the same degree as 99%. If they are subtle it's because they are afraid to do so openly, because they don't feel like the people would tolerate the more blatant in-your-face what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it version. That's a credit to the people of England.
It's intuitive to those who possess no self control. There's no reason to model and expound it (and everything else you pontificated on in your pretentious nonsense); it's perfectly well understood under the simple term "vigilantism".
You completely misunderstood me. I don't like vigilanteism. Because I don't like it and would like to see less of it, I seek to understand how and why it happens. I observe it does not happen in a vacuum. I see that there is a sequence of events that has to first happen before anyone is tempted to engage in it.
Henry David Throeau said, "there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root is what I want to understand. If it reaches deep into the soil and has a firm hold, I want to know how it found such fertile soil, with what it was fertilized if you like.
I don't like vigilanteism because it should be completely redundant. I understand why it is not. As KRS-One said, there can be no peace without justice. If you really want to see the root of this, you have to address why so many people have so little confidence in legitimate authority. Those are hard problems that took generations to become this way. They will not be resolved overnight. The first step is to elevate the level of awareness to something beyond visceral disapproval of a surface manifestation.
The AC implied he/she is a member of Anonymous and I tend to believe that. So here we have such a person confirming what I have always said about why they do what they do. You think what, that just because I was not hostile, did not condemn or judge that person, did not try to impose my own brand of morality as though I were a superior being of some kind, that I celebrate the situation? No. I really don't. I just perceive that we've tried the adversarial thing for a while now and surprise, it creates more division and less understanding of how to prevent. That AC's honesty alone makes him/her worthy of civility.
Whether he is executed or not doesn't make the victim any less dead.
The idea is that both execution and say, life in prison are two ways to remove from society a person who has proven themselves to be violent and dangerous to others. I really doubt you are saying that there should be no serious consequence for convicted murderers. There's also another purpose for having a justice system: without one, these things usually turn into blood feuds, cycles of revenge.
The death-penalty debate is about which method is more appropriate. Both methods assume a murderer should be removed from general society.
I can't tell if you're talking about LulzSec or Sun being the "kid that needs a black eye".
I'm talking about neither of those. I'm talking about general principle. Your confusion stems from a misguided belief that I must be rooting for one "side" or the "other side".
Well argued, and good points. I'm assuming you studied debate? You never really put him down, only told him how to strengthen his position for a rebut. Good post. I like it.
Just about everything I know about argumentation is from paying attention and observing those who were more skilled than I. I have never formally studied it, other than thumbing through the book Art of Deception, but my main interest in that book was to better understand rhetoric and how it is used to deceive. The book is not very useful for those who view argumentation as a way to get closer to truth. The book is written for those who think a debate is a contest that they must win at all costs (I suppose to score a point or impress an audience or some other frivolous thing) no matter how wrong they may be. There are people like that and it is well to understand how they think.
Otherwise... Most of the time, formal study turns a living art into a dead thing to be dissected. I'd much rather have an intuitive practical understanding. The difference is, someone who only knows a thing from formal study is confused and uncertain when confronted with a new situation for which they do not have a battery of predetermined answers. I greatly prefer a fluid, dynamic, principled understanding. That kind of understanding is truly my own.
If I have the use of reason it is because I truly love reason. The flaws in the GP's post are therefore plain to me, with or without instruction.
When the government ceases to mete out justice this is what happens. Get over it. If you don't like it please fix the governments so we don't need to do this ourselves.
Thank you, kind sir or madam, whoever the anonymous figure may be. To me, what you say is the most intuitive thing in the world but for some it is a hard doctrine. They are stuck in a crime-and-punishment model that fails to account for why certain crimes happen in the first place. It's the same reason we have a War on Drugs instead of an expectation of responsible use.
I'm trying to model and expound this kind of understanding. I'm trying to contribute such that the conversation addresses the higher levels of how and why these things manifest, rather than the low level of how undesirable they might be. Therefore, it's nice to hear from someone else who understands this.
Rebecca Brooks: Arrested - former News International chief executive - hardly a low level employee Les Hinton: Arrested - chief executive of Dow Jones - again hardly a low level employee
News International's share price has dropped 6%, which whilst isn't a fine, but will certainly hammer the profits of the organisation as a whole.
You have to bear in mind, most of this is going on in England, where there isn't nearly the obvious corruption you get in American politics. There is corruption - it's government and comes with the territory - but its no where near as blatant. Even the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police have resigned, even though they had nothing to do with it, nor any knowledge of it going on.
The real question is whether the top-level executives at News Corp were looking the other way. The other real question is whether we will acknowledge that the shareholders soundly deserve to feel the effects of what they have chosen to invest in. If assholes like those who run News Corp have a hard time attracting investors while more ethical companies have no such difficulties, that's a win for everyone.
Still, what you say is at least something positive and it is good to hear. I'm happy to discover I was wrong about something because it means I don't have to remain ignorant. Thank you for setting me straight on that part.
It's fortunate for everyone that this happened in England where the corporations don't dominate government to quite the same degree as in the US.
If enforcing the law when an individual breaks it isn't socialism, then neither is enforcing the law when a corporation breaks it.
In fact you could even say it's less of an "overstep" or "socialist" when the law is enforced against corporations. I mean, supposedly we have government by the consent of the goverened, meaning individual people have a type of sovereignty that they have willingly surrendered as part of a social contract. Corporations, however, are entirely creations of the state. Since the state created them, it makes perfect sense for the state to regulate them with no need for recourse to any "social contract" type of argument.
Not that I disagree with your assessment of what would happen. The average American really has no idea what kind of vast, powerful interests are arrayed against them. Propaganda and demagoguery are their tools of choice because when the manipulations are successful, the victims think they are defending their own ideas.
Not in the US where those rednecks still have barbaric punishments like the death penalty for being retarded.
Yeah yeah, I know I'm replying to a troll, but...
He isn't on death row for being retarded. Saying that makes me question your mental abilities. He's on death row for murdering a 17-year-old. The fact that his IQ is 68 doesn't make the victim any less dead or his family any less bereaved at having to bury their child.
There are good arguments against the death penalty. The fact that so many people on death row turned out to be innocent (i.e. because of DNA evidence) is one of the most rational. After all, you can release someone who is in prison but you can't raise the dead. The logic here is quite straightforward. However, your emotional rhetoric and willingness to distort truth as you have done is only going to weaken your position.
There are no shortcuts to actually making a solid case about a worthy subject. No, you haven't discovered the first.
They're black hats, it's what they do. When some kid at school is acting like a total dipshit to everyone else and the authorities don't care, the solution is not to ask him politely to stop. The solution is to give him a black eye, then ask, then give him another if he refuses.
While I would place emphasis on the "authorities don't care" part, you're absolutely right. There are people with whom you cannot reason. In fact, they hate reason because reason would tell them to change their ways and they're addicted to the gratification and feeling of superiority they obtain from being that way. That kind of egomania is the only sort of (pathetic) life they have.
It is not your fault if someone will not cherish reason. That is their decision; let them reap what they sow. It does not make you a bad person to do what is necessary (but no more) to handle someone like that. It is in accordance with how they have chosen to live. In the case of a bully like in your example, it may in fact be a turning point in life that will end up being the best thing that ever happened to them. It would amount to giving him, albeit a harder way, the correction and guidance that his parents (or more likely, parent) so thoroughly failed to deliver.
After doing what needs to be done, then there is opportunity to take the high road and have an attitude of "sorry it came to this, but you had it coming." Gloating and being glad it happened would just make you a bigger bully who will eventually run into one who is bigger still. That path won't reform anyone. So yes, you're absolutely right but it has to come from a certain level of understanding. The real mistake is to coddle a person like that out of some misguided sympathy (what the unwise think is compassion) because they interpret it as weakness, as submission, and they'd be right.
So, because they did something ethically wrong and against the law it's OK to do the same to them? I thought we had gotten beyond the whole "eye for an eye" thing.
Until we decide that corporations should be second- and third-class citizens compared to breathing human beings, you can expect more of the same.
It's a serious mistake to blame vigilantes as though they happen in a vacuum. That kind of thinking has been tried for a very long time now and it has gotten us absolutely nowhere. It doesn't solve anything. Vigilanteism is the least of things it fails to address. It doesn't change anything. It provides more of the same problems we've always had.
Instead you need to look at the conditions of the environment, the steps that were taken to make them that way, and how they bred the desire to do such things. That's if you are actually interested in really working towards a solution for what you perceive as a problem, so interested in fact that you're willing to put aside the gratification of condemnation and try something that might work.
The root of the problem is that a corporation can do things that would cause any individual person to suffer some serious prison time. The equivalent of "prison time" for a corporation would be to freeze their assets and stop them from doing any business whatsoever for a set period of time. You may say "okay Causality but what about the rank-and-file workers who would be financially harmed by this?" To that I say, maybe that would make people more reluctant to work for known assholes like Rupert Murdoch and maybe that would be a good thing for everyone.
Just as a loan officer has to charge higher fees for risky loans, let Murdoch pay his employees above the standard rate to compensate them for the risk that his asshattery might get them shut down. That would be more like making corporations pay some of the social costs their tactics inflict on the world around them.
Is it wrong that I'm amused to see this?
It's not like government was going to do anything to the corporation other than a slap-on-the-wrist fine that's certain to be less than the profits made by the act. That they may throw low-level employees under the bus doesn't change this. At least someone somewhere is trying to make sure that corporate malfeasance actually does have some kind of consequence.
I have always believed that a properly-functioning government, not owned by monied interests and willing to take effective and severe action against misbehaving corporations and their executives would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started. As I see it, they are only stepping in where the government has grotesquely failed. Everything that is bad about vigilanteism is caused by failing governments.
By that I meant when I want to make a donation, which is also a way to say thank you, but again not a support request. I wasn't going to mention the donation part but I see now that's the way to clarify this.
The bottom line is, I do something like that because it is my delight to give something back despite my modest means, not so I can impress anyone with "how generous I am" as though I do so for any reason except that I want to, so for that reason I can see how that one line was ambiguous. Still I think you're a bit frustrated and this has made you somewhat trigger-happy. In a way I can understand that. Dealing with the general public sucks and will remind you in a very in-your-face manner that the world is full of thoughtless, inconsiderate people.
I assure you, my spirit of gratitude and appreciation towards Open Source participants is not compatible with needlessly bothering them. That isn't how I show appreciation.
And then I, as lead (and often only) developer for several FOSS projects, get an email with a question, suggestion or bug report to my personal email. When I reply with "please use the mailing list", people like you, who, to them, "community" means that the lead developer needs to answer their questions directly, complain, get upset, and sometimes get downright rude.
As a lead developer, I want a community to form. This means that I want to give all people in the community a chance to answer your question, not only myself personally.
Shachar
If I were careless and thoughtless about it, it would create the situation you bemoan. Hint: I don't e-mail project leads for technical support. I don't do that because I'm not an asshole.
I use support forums for support. Do you see how my post never said "e-mail" anywhere and instead used the much more generic word "communicate"? Well, I'm not careless with my diction and that was worded deliberately. Most of my direct communication with developers and project leads was initiated by their response to a forum or mailing list post of mine.
You could have asked "hey with no evidence from you, I took it upon myself to assume that when you said 'communicate' you meant you e-mailed them personally, is that correct?". Instead you noticed that, among other interpretations, it could be interpreted in terms of your pet peeve. So, full of righteous indignation, you ran with it. Much good discussion is ruined this way.
I'd rather people take a breath once in a while and ask themselves if their assumptions have any grounds whatsoever before they tell someone what "people like you" do and how annoying it is. I like that better than following every post with a long list of disclaimers that reactive people who wish to jump to conclusions will ignore anyway.
The point was, you can post in a Windows-related forum and you aren't going to see Ballmer chiming in. He may occasionally do that for million-dollar customers, but he hasn't the time for little people like me.
The few times I have dealt with developers, it was welcome by them and by me. It is unfortunate that you have had negative experiences but you paint with a rather broad brush.
from CS 101 to advanced courses.
Patents won't cover the text; that's what copyright does.
But, there's one thing I wouldn't put past them. When e-books for college textbooks start to take off, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they come in a proprietary file format. The format itself and/or the method of rendering human-readable text from it certainly could be patented.
Then it would be even easier for them to a) kill off the used book market and b) change a couple of chapters around and create a "New Edition" that will be required next year.
Most of the thousand juggernauts you speak of are only juggernauts themselves because the patent system is the way it is. They'd much rather pay some miniscule fee than destroy their entire business model. It's going to need to get much worse before it gets better.
(emphasis added)
Isn't that so typically the case? I'd say there seems to be nothing more American than avoiding at all costs the use of foresight and prevention (i.e. before something turns into a crisis) but unfortunately, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on this.
Fools are the sort who really desire political power. Nothing is less evident to a fool than the fact that every large national crisis was once a small problem that could have been resolved with relative ease, but the failure to do so allowed it to grow and evolve into a monster.
The idea scales in both directions. It's true of individual personal lives and it's true of national affairs. Those who don't understand this think they are victims of misfortune. The reality is, an actual victim of misfortune that was completely unforeseeable and non-preventable is an extremely rare entity. On the national scale though, there is a grave injustice built into this: the fact that those who did see it coming are few and tend to be drowned out by the din of reactive fools. When they are affected by broken systems, they get to suffer along with those who really deserve it.
Funny how when politicians talk about "fairness" (really a puerile version of justice), distribution of wealth is the only kind they seem to recognize.
Linux is still "a community effort of users putting their minds together". There may have been a shift from the community made up mostly of individuals to corporations but it is still, a community. Does it matter if a contributor is an individual, an individual contributing on behalf of a company or company contributing as long as the code is of good quality, is offered in ways that agrees with the norms of the community and does not violate any license used by the community? Microsoft is contributing code because they are either using linux or they have people they are supporting who are using it hence they are part of the community effort. It doesnt matter how little any individual or company cares about the GPL, all it matters is that they conduct themselves in a way that does not violate it.
I will tell you what really makes me personally feel like I am participating in a community. For most Open Source software I have used, if I have a question or a suggestion or simply some feedback, I can usually communicate directly with the maintainer or lead developer of the project. They are accessible. They are fellow human beings, not corporate conglomerates. There are no layers of sales reps or receptionists or PR personnel. Sometimes I send an e-mail just to say "thank you" for the simple reason that they owe me absolutely nothing, yet I benefit from the work they have chosen to make freely available.
It would be like calling up Microsoft and speaking directly to Ballmer about Windows. No regular Microsoft customer is ever going to do that. That's the difference between a community and a conglomerate. That, and with most Linux distributions users help each other as much as (if not more than) organizations provide formal support.
Spoken like an idiot who wasted a lot of resources on redundant protections against things that he's already paid taxes to protect himself against.
No, what makes one an idiot is to adamantly insist that I must be mistaken and then have zero ability to articulate where I have made an error in my reasoning. None of my argument rests on what taxes I pay or the purpose to which they are applied. In the usual wrong-headed knee-jerk format, you are addressing arguments I never made and then declaring yourself the victor. In your imagination perhaps you are, but nowhere else. Everyone else just sees the emotional volatility of an impotent fool who cannot make his case.
Address my observation about the horrible fashion in which FEMA handled Hurricane Katrina. There you will find my answer to your worship of tax money. Of course you have already had opportunity to do that. You won't address it because you can't. You know it contradicts what you just said so you don't want to contend with me, you coward.
Having cleared that up, I have a revelation for you: your feelings about something do not determine the truth of that thing. When you accept this, you will be one step closer to real adulthood. Until such time, you can get as angry as you like and call me as many names as you like. In fact, I take it as a compliment that I affected you so much without even trying. I could only do that if my words rang true and that's what you really can't stand.
This is beneath you.
And they all had amusing moustaches. Makes them look really professional and worthy of respect.
Yes, facial hair is endlessly amusing. Of course.
I think I know what you don't like about it. Both the situation and my personal general attitude reflect a belief that "if I did it, with modest means, then so can you; therefore, you have zero excuse for not doing the same." Many people think that last part is somehow terrible, like it's a cosmic injustice when failing to be a responsible adult causes that person to suffer in some way. This pathological sentiment is often mistaken for compassion.
The truth is, if no adult person ever suffered in any way whatsoever for poor decision-making, most human beings would never learn to make better decisions because most are not proactively living their lives and using foresight. It's a shame it so often has to be that way when learning things the easy way is, well, easy, but that's an individual choice. So long as they lay in it, I respect every adult's right to make their own bed as they see fit.
To do otherwise is to say you have a claim on their lives and quite simply, you don't. Admitting that you don't is difficult for those who do not wish to live and let live. This, in turn, is why freedom is so scarce on the planet. The evil people who want to control and micromanage the lives of others for their own selfish gain could not begin to equal the damage done by well-meaning people who don't realize that they hate freedom because they fear its possibilities. Without the large number of "useful idiots" in the latter category, the abominations in the former category would never achieve power.
No, as I pointed out this is an ambiguity built into the language. Yes, editors could have chosen a wording that's not ambiguous. But the context makes it clear, right in the summary - and in common sense.
I'm not going to reply in this subthread (replies to the current comment), because I'm interested in linguistics here - not in bashing Slashdot's editors. They've got plenty of faults, but that's offtopic to what I'm talking about.
Linguistics are only half of it. How skillfully you manage them (i.e. whether you avoid completely avoidable ambiguity) is the other half. You can pretend that natural languages are totally separate from the humans who use them, if you like. However, consider the vast multitude of words available and the grammatical structures that can be used. It should be self-evident that, from all these vaiables, the final diction that is chosen does boil down to how the language is used by the person using it. The writer is not merely an interchangable part in some industrial process because a different writer would word things differently.
I for one am glad that English makes no attempt to be completely idiot-proof. A language that tries to avoid every single potential ambiguity and misuse is also going to limit its own expressiveness. It is analogous to that Unix saying, that trying to prevent you from doing something stupid would also prevent you from doing something clever.
Also, while the wording of GP was a bit harsh, I cannot fault someone for expecting a paid professional to produce work meeting at least a minimal standard of quality. Would you want your doctor to practice medicine the same way these editors practice copy editing? I seriously doubt it, but if he/she did, maybe you'd enjoy answering a chorous of people who tell you to stop being so picky. The bottom line is that the professional could have acted like a professional and any "bashing" would have been stopped long before it started. Prevention is the very best and most superior way to handle these events. The cause-and-effect of this process is undeniable.
If you are actually prepared and have stored the essentials you need, you'll find yourself far less tempted to loot or steal anything from anyone. You may, in fact, have excess you are able to share with family, friends, and neighbors.
That is what self-sufficiency means. It doesn't mean lynching black people or busting store windows and stealing TVs, stereos, jewelry, gold, guns, and food. How you conflate these things is hard for me to understand. It leads me to suppose you already made up your mind that there is something wrong with preparedness and self-sufficiency (the real kind) and are clutching at straws to portray it in a negative light.
Especially the whole lynching deal... the founding fathers were clear about their belief that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongly punished. That's why they set up a system in which police work is genuinely hard and those "pesky" civil rights make it hard. No matter what their citizenship or nationality I have a hard time considering someone a real American if they would reject this principle. They might technically be a citizen of the USA but they are devoid of any understanding of what this country is supposed to be about.