Although, in this case, you're right. The white West did de facto install Mugabe as a replacement for the popularly elected Muzorewa. Thanks to Jimmy (DumbAss) Carter.
That's pretty much my point.
Believe me, I am not in the least trying to defend Mugabe. He is not -and as you correctly point out, never was- a nice man. I didn't say he had my respect; I said that he had the respect of a lot of Southern African revolutionary leaders (Mbeki most notable among them), and that this respect remained long after even the pretense of respectability was gone.
I'm not in any way trying to defend Mugabe. I have black friends who are living in permanent exile because of him. He's a cruel, mad tyrant whose regime has destroyed what was once one of the most prosperous countries on the continent.
But to pretend that he performed this infamous feat in a vacuum is the height of folly. It's well-established fact that his power grab was made possible by military and para-military incursions into Zimbabwean territory by SADF forces, as well as acts of terrorism (including bombings and massacres of civilians) perpetrated by the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
It hardly beggars comprehension that many Zimbabweans -regardless of how they feel about Mugabe- might not think kindly of the West.
So when someone posts a statement to the effect that 'we' should just fill Mugabe 'full of holes', I feel the need to make it clear that this might not have the desired effect among Zimbabweans.
Why exactly some decent Western power has had that vile repugnant monster Mugabe filled so full of holes you could use him as a soup strainer is beyond me. That incompetent tyrant has turned Africa's breadbasket into a ill-run starving madhouse.
Because in sub-Saharan Africa, there are no 'decent Western powers'. Mugabe rose to prominence fighting for the independence of his country against the racist, white British-backed regime in Rhodesia. He managed to consolidate and justify his power because he was the only credible opposition to a concerted military and, yes, terrorist campaign managed by white South Africa and backed by several important resource extraction corporations. South Africa was itself backed by the US and the UK in numerous attempts to destabilise several southern African countries, including Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola. All of these countries suffered terribly, with literally millions dead.
The people of Zimbabwe may hate Mugabe now, but a lot of them hate the West a great deal more.
The plain fact is that Mugabe has become a nut-job and an embarrassment to his neighbours. But the reason Thabo Mbeki and other leaders were loth to turn on him is that they remember him as one of the only southern African leaders who actually kept his country in one piece in the face of the overwhelming power of the SADF. It's tragic that he's fallen so far, and more tragic that his people are being made to suffer for his delusions. But the plain fact is that Western countries have virtually no credibility in this region, having supported the repression of the people for generations.
Once again, the West has made a bed that others are forced to lie in.
I'm going to hazard a guess that they handed everything over to the Feds, but not to the public.
That's almost certainly true. Lamo pretty much said that in numerous interviews.
The question at hand is what Poulsen intends to do with the 75% of the logs that he has not yet published.
His defense attorney would be throwing a fit if he was entrapped and there was evidence to prove it.
It's possible that the discovery process hasn't yielded the logs (yet).
I suspect that this is one of the reasons why there's a concerted move afoot to shake these logs loose from Poulsen's grip. This kind of trial is pretty much open and shut. Did PFC Manning view, extract and release materials illegally? If the confession is true, then it's a slam-dunk, legally speaking.
Given the long odds against exoneration or even leniency, it makes sense for the lawyer to argue at least some of the case in the court of public opinion:
Expose the conditions of Manning's confinement as a way of bringing scrutiny on the Army's behaviour;
Begin to cast doubt about the means by which Manning's confession was obtained. This might not materially affect the case, as UCMJ is not very pliant where a suspect's privacy or rights of the accused are concerned. It might just make the public more sympathetic to Manning, though, and that's worth a lot because of the political nature of the case.
Put some heat on Poulsen, Rash and especially Lamo; try to destroy their character and credibility.
They could also contain information about their other informants/sources, which journalists typically try to protect. Withholding that info would actually be the height of journalistic integrity.
They could also contain information that shows that Manning was led to believe that he was being offered confidentiality by 'journalist' Lamo, who, in contravention of California law, had no intention of offering said protection. They could also explain how it was that Manning decided to confide in Lamo (with whom he had no prior association) in the first place. One of the points that Greenwald's column makes is that there's strong circumstantial evidence that Manning might have been led by Rasch or even Poulsen himself to believe that Lamo could be trusted, though they knew all the while that he was being informed upon.
I'm not a legal expert of any kind, so it's possible that this behaviour is not illegal, but it most certainly runs afoul of the basic tenets of journalism.
So the issue here is whether Poulsen and/or Rasch deliberately used the cover of journalism to trick Manning into revealing himself. If that's the case, then one or both of them quite rightly face being cast out of the journalistic establishment.
The problem here is that the only direct evidence of such a conflict is in Poulsen's hands. So he/we can't establish his integrity (or lack thereof) without releasing these documents.
So what Greenwald has suggested is that Poulsen either confirm or deny Lamo's public statements (made in the pages of the New York Times, no less). Poulsen has to date declined to do so. This doesn't reflect well on him as a journalist, because his stated reasons for withholding the transcripts are no longer valid. This leads to suspicion that there might be other reasons for him to hide them.
If you accept this line of reasoning, you can still argue that Poulsen and Rasch are patriots. You cannot, however, suggest that they are acting according to the dictates of journalistic ethics.
Hopefully this is a whoosh and there's some sarcasm I'm missing or something...
Dude, he's British. Nothing they write is not sarcastic, ironic or at least deadpan. Even when they write, "This is not in the least sarcastic, ironic or even deadpan."
Here's a quick primer on how to translate from the British:
British: What a fascinating idea. Translated: That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.
British: Please go on. Translated: For the love of god, would you please shut the fuck up?
British: Can I get back to you on that? Translated: Don't talk to me again. Ever.
British: It's a pleasure to meet you. Translated: Just looking at you makes me want to shoot myself. Or you. Perhaps both....
I've read that every human culture with the exception of one has it's own intoxicants. All but the Inuit (what are you gonna do, ferment whale blubber?) have found some form of mind alternation. Extending this to the rest of the animal kingdom, it's not surprising to me that other species are just as keen to how much fun booze or drugs can be.
You're not going to believe this, but... fermented walrus meat. I'm not kidding.
I lived on Baffin Island for three years, and during that time, I was regaled at length on a number of occasions with first-hand accounts of how the Inuit would cache stores of walrus meat under stones in October (to keep the ravens from getting it) for about six weeks. Once it had a pretty solid veneer of mold, they would take it out, scrape it off and ingest it with gusto.
According to those who tried it, it induced a mild, contented buzz.
No, I did not try it. I didn't even want to see it.
If a novelist writing 1000 words per day were able to type infinitely fast, he or she could save maybe an hour per day.
That is assuming that a novelist already knows on what to type and does not change his story while he is typing.
If you don't know what you're going to write, you should probably back away from the keyboard. Conversely, if you don't change what you type, you probably shouldn't be writing at all.
Perhaps they think of "journalists" or a better name would be "news paper fillers".
Don't make me laugh. If you don't think that conveying the facts of a story to fit an exact word count is hard, or that short prose is more difficult than long, you've never written any amount of material for publication. That's precisely why bad news writing is so much more evident than bad prose in a novel.
A novelist will be payed by quality more then by quantity. A newspaper filler will be payed more by quantity.
No, a news writer gets paid according to the prominence of their stories, If they're bringing in good quality news (i.e. good reporting and good writing), then they'll get paid well. Novelists, on the other hand, get paid according to the whim of the publisher, and that is derived from an educated guess about how well the book will sell. Dan Brown makes millions from shoveling buckets of literary shit while Graham Greene (probably the best writer in English in the second half of the 20th C) remains a somewhat minor figure outside of literary circles.
Just typing this short piece I went back 6 times to change (small) and I already knew what I wanted to say. (and changed 5 to 6, because I added the word small.)
"Even when composing this short piece, I made no fewer than 6 small edits."
Now for the moral that programmers have been struggling to express all through this thread: Good writers are good editors.
This reminds me of the Cargo Cult mentality mentioned in an article quoted a few days ago, here [fordham.edu], where the view of the cult is that technology is an immutable force of nature, not a tool mastered by man, and the idea that man can wield it is so foreign as to be unthinkable.
It's not so uncommon as you think. I live in Vanuatu, where most of the remaining South Pacific cargo cults exist. You and the learned professor give too much credit to the rest of the world, and not nearly enough to the ni-Vanuatu people.
I suppose I learned a lot about the Perl community though.
Larry may sound glib most of the time, but if you took the time to look, you'd see method in his madness. He chooses to make his points lightly, because that's an important part of the message. Perl as a language is designed to reflect the idiosyncrasies of the human brain. It treats dogmatism as damage and routes around it. As Larry wrote, it is trollish in its nature. But its friendly, playful brand of trollishness is what allows it to continue to evolve as a culture.
Strip away the thin veneer of sillyness and you'll see that everything I've written has been lifted directly from Larry's missive. Just because he likes to act a little silly doesn't mean he's wrong.
One of the worst things a programmer can do is invest too much ego, pride or seriousness in his work. That is the path to painfully over-engineered, theoretically correct but practically useless software that often can't survive a single revision. Perl as a language isn't immune to any of these sins, but as a culture, it goes to some lengths to mitigate against them.
My recent experience is that discussions of Perl quickly turn to discussions of Python, after people make statements like, "If it weren't for CPAN, Perl would be dead."
That's not too far from the truth, if you understand that statement to be analogous to "If it weren't for the US dollar, the American economy would be dead." It may only be one thing, but it's a pretty big thing.
No grasshopper, you fundamentally misunderstand the implications of that statement. Show me a problem in which there isn't more than one way to do it, and I'll show you a problem you haven't grokked properly yet. Perl is a language without ideology. If programming languages were religions, perl would be closer to atheism (sorry Larry) than to anything else. Yes, it sometimes does cast people adrift because they're forced to accept that there is no final arbiter, that sometimes choices do come down to indulging one's biases. The difference here is that we recognise that, and that you have no one to blame for the biases except yourself.
For a good programmer, this is one of the paths to enlightenment.
To abuse the ideology metaphor a little further, perl is democratic (and borderline anarchic) because it does not criminalise stupidity. Likewise, it doesn't always protect you from yourself. If you really want to do things a certain way, the language probably won't stop you, and might even help you.
And if you still don't get the freedom that perl provides, feel free to vacate the green space in front of my domicile. I'm not going to force you off, but I might laugh at you if you stay.
Having read some of the report, the narrative does actually deal at length on the Anonymous attacks, in spite of the fact that the summary states that "independent media and human rights organizations" are their focus.
So, please don't mod parent up. It's misleading. My apologies; I shouldn't have trusted the authors' summary.
But suddenly, when companies come under a DDoS that terminated business and froze funds of an organization that fights FOR more transparency and freedom of information, a DDoS becomes an attack on the freedom of speech.
No, this is just a case of a Computerworld 'journalist' editorialising and drawing false equivalencies between the DDoS attacks on WikiLeaks and other human rights organisations and those conducted by Anonymous. The Actual Report explicitly does not discuss the banks:
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is an increasingly common Internet phenomenon capable of silencing Internet speech, usually for a brief interval but occasionally for longer. In this paper, we explore the specific phenomenon of DDoS attacks on independent media and human rights organizations, seeking to understand the nature and frequency of these attacks, their efficacy, and the responses available to sites under attack. Our report offers advice to independent media and human rights sites likely to be targeted by DDoS but comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that there is no easy solution to these attacks for many of these sites, particularly for attacks that exhaust network bandwidth.
TL;DR: The Berkman report is talking only about the stifling effect of DDoS attacks on alternative media and human right organisations. Banks don't come into it at all -except in the fevered imaginations of certain 'tech journalism' hacks.
I am not at all convinced that getting the government involved will improve my life.
Fair enough. But it's possible to state categorically that leaving the incumbents entirely alone will make it worse. The Level3 spat, a number of other pronouncements and lobbying efforts all make that perfectly clear.
So unless you can suggest another means of imposing some sort of limitations on their abusive behaviour, this is the least worst alternative. Don't like the way it's going right now? There are mechanisms to address that. Rusted, creaking, archaic and inefficient mechanisms, yes. But mechanisms nonetheless.
It is possible that 2011 might be a year in which there could be some unspecified increase in what could loosely be termed malware that might be targeted in whole or in part to infect certain devices that might be considered mobile devices under certain definitions of mobile or device.
I believe the key to recording the Police is never to let Andy Summers solo for more than one measure. All the musicians went a little wild with the improvisations on the recent reunion tours and I think the songs suffered for the lack of restraint.
Also: Don't stand
Don't stand so Don't stand so close to them
Lowest common denominator sounds nice. The set of regulations that all nation states can agree on should be fairly lightweight, and the decision making process involved in keeping it up to date far less agile than the network itself. Now if governments also agree not to add their own layers on top this would be total win.
Dude, you really need to get around more.
In this context, Lowest Common Denominator means 'Every nation has the right to do whatever the fuck it wants within its own national borders, and in the context of the Internet, we're going to define "borders" so arbitrarily that nobody will be safe from their own government anywhere on the 'Net. Have a nice day!'
I'm a big fan of multi-lateralism in many cases, but in this particular case, the people who are most vocal are the ones whose interests are inimical to a free and open Internet. Hate ICANN all you like, but they are vastly preferable to the alternative.
For many players in this game, the fact that the Internet is working as designed leads to the conclusion that the design must be changed. For us, this is a case of 'It's not broken yet, so keep fixing it!'
I'm not a scholar on this subject, but I've written a few briefing papers on this subject for the government of the place I live, so I don't speak entirely from ignorance.
Guess he should have thought of that before committing a military crime while he was an active member of the military service. He is governed by a different set of laws that aren't nearly as nice as civilian laws.
Or at least, he might have thought of that BEFORE HE STARTED FUCKING BRAGGING ABOUT IT.
To see why that's so, just recall some of what Manning purportedly said about why he chose to leak, at least as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:
Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. ..
Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth regardless of who they are because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.
if i knew then, what i knew now - kind of thing, or maybe im just young, naive, and stupid . . . im hoping for the former - it cant be the latter - because if it is were fucking screwed (as a society) - and i dont want to believe that were screwed.
Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S.Government: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing so-called "insurgent" literature which, when Manning had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":
i had an interpreter read it for me and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PMs cabinet i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on he didnt want to hear any of it he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees
i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth but that was a point where i was a *part* of something i was actively involved in something that i was completely against
And Manning explained why he never considered the thought of selling this classified information to a foreign nation for substantial profit or even just secretly transmitting it to foreign powers, as he easily could have done:
Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?
Lamo: why didnt you?
Manning: because it's public data
Lamo: i mean, the cables
Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information try and get some edge - if its out in the open it should be a public good.
That's a whistleblower in the purest and most noble form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." Given how much Manning has been demonized -- at the same time that he's been rendered silent by the ban on his communication with an
Now what legitimate use is there in linking to that?
Forensics, for one. Without necessarily looking at the individual data, you can still infer a fair amount concerning the scope and nature of the attack by what data was compromised. Likewise, the kind of data being released tells you something about the attackers' motives. And if they were careless, date information and other metadata might also prove useful.
And all of this without necessarily looking at a single password.
Wonder how that works? Does it just average what direction all the difference mice are going, then move the cursor in that average direction [so everybody gets a vote on where the cursor should go]?
Congratulations! You just invented the digital Ouija Board!
and turn it into an opportunity to vent against the USA. How about discussing the Venezuela story on its own merits? Single internet access point for the whole country, controlled by the government, good idea or no?
I think limiting them to a single place on the Internets is a great idea. The noise from those things totally ruined the World Cup for me. Call me anti-democracy if you want - I never hear another frickin' Venezuela again, it's too soon!
If there must be such a thing as a Caps Lock key on conventional keyboards, I wish it could be banished (along with the Insert/Delete pair) to a hard-to-fumble-upon switch on the bottom of the keyboard or laptop.
Sounds like someone doesn't program using constants....
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty much my point.
Believe me, I am not in the least trying to defend Mugabe. He is not -and as you correctly point out, never was- a nice man. I didn't say he had my respect; I said that he had the respect of a lot of Southern African revolutionary leaders (Mbeki most notable among them), and that this respect remained long after even the pretense of respectability was gone.
I'm not in any way trying to defend Mugabe. I have black friends who are living in permanent exile because of him. He's a cruel, mad tyrant whose regime has destroyed what was once one of the most prosperous countries on the continent.
But to pretend that he performed this infamous feat in a vacuum is the height of folly. It's well-established fact that his power grab was made possible by military and para-military incursions into Zimbabwean territory by SADF forces, as well as acts of terrorism (including bombings and massacres of civilians) perpetrated by the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
It hardly beggars comprehension that many Zimbabweans -regardless of how they feel about Mugabe- might not think kindly of the West.
So when someone posts a statement to the effect that 'we' should just fill Mugabe 'full of holes', I feel the need to make it clear that this might not have the desired effect among Zimbabweans.
If that makes me a fool, then so be it.
Why exactly some decent Western power has had that vile repugnant monster Mugabe filled so full of holes you could use him as a soup strainer is beyond me. That incompetent tyrant has turned Africa's breadbasket into a ill-run starving madhouse.
Because in sub-Saharan Africa, there are no 'decent Western powers'. Mugabe rose to prominence fighting for the independence of his country against the racist, white British-backed regime in Rhodesia. He managed to consolidate and justify his power because he was the only credible opposition to a concerted military and, yes, terrorist campaign managed by white South Africa and backed by several important resource extraction corporations. South Africa was itself backed by the US and the UK in numerous attempts to destabilise several southern African countries, including Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola. All of these countries suffered terribly, with literally millions dead.
The people of Zimbabwe may hate Mugabe now, but a lot of them hate the West a great deal more.
The plain fact is that Mugabe has become a nut-job and an embarrassment to his neighbours. But the reason Thabo Mbeki and other leaders were loth to turn on him is that they remember him as one of the only southern African leaders who actually kept his country in one piece in the face of the overwhelming power of the SADF. It's tragic that he's fallen so far, and more tragic that his people are being made to suffer for his delusions. But the plain fact is that Western countries have virtually no credibility in this region, having supported the repression of the people for generations.
Once again, the West has made a bed that others are forced to lie in.
I'm going to hazard a guess that they handed everything over to the Feds, but not to the public.
That's almost certainly true. Lamo pretty much said that in numerous interviews.
The question at hand is what Poulsen intends to do with the 75% of the logs that he has not yet published.
His defense attorney would be throwing a fit if he was entrapped and there was evidence to prove it.
It's possible that the discovery process hasn't yielded the logs (yet).
I suspect that this is one of the reasons why there's a concerted move afoot to shake these logs loose from Poulsen's grip. This kind of trial is pretty much open and shut. Did PFC Manning view, extract and release materials illegally? If the confession is true, then it's a slam-dunk, legally speaking.
Given the long odds against exoneration or even leniency, it makes sense for the lawyer to argue at least some of the case in the court of public opinion:
They could also contain information that shows that Manning was led to believe that he was being offered confidentiality by 'journalist' Lamo, who, in contravention of California law, had no intention of offering said protection. They could also explain how it was that Manning decided to confide in Lamo (with whom he had no prior association) in the first place. One of the points that Greenwald's column makes is that there's strong circumstantial evidence that Manning might have been led by Rasch or even Poulsen himself to believe that Lamo could be trusted, though they knew all the while that he was being informed upon.
I'm not a legal expert of any kind, so it's possible that this behaviour is not illegal, but it most certainly runs afoul of the basic tenets of journalism.
So the issue here is whether Poulsen and/or Rasch deliberately used the cover of journalism to trick Manning into revealing himself. If that's the case, then one or both of them quite rightly face being cast out of the journalistic establishment.
The problem here is that the only direct evidence of such a conflict is in Poulsen's hands. So he/we can't establish his integrity (or lack thereof) without releasing these documents.
So what Greenwald has suggested is that Poulsen either confirm or deny Lamo's public statements (made in the pages of the New York Times, no less). Poulsen has to date declined to do so. This doesn't reflect well on him as a journalist, because his stated reasons for withholding the transcripts are no longer valid. This leads to suspicion that there might be other reasons for him to hide them.
If you accept this line of reasoning, you can still argue that Poulsen and Rasch are patriots. You cannot, however, suggest that they are acting according to the dictates of journalistic ethics.
Dude, he's British. Nothing they write is not sarcastic, ironic or at least deadpan. Even when they write, "This is not in the least sarcastic, ironic or even deadpan."
Here's a quick primer on how to translate from the British:
British: What a fascinating idea.
Translated: That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.
British: Please go on.
Translated: For the love of god, would you please shut the fuck up?
British: Can I get back to you on that?
Translated: Don't talk to me again. Ever.
British: It's a pleasure to meet you.
Translated: Just looking at you makes me want to shoot myself. Or you. Perhaps both....
I've read that every human culture with the exception of one has it's own intoxicants. All but the Inuit (what are you gonna do, ferment whale blubber?) have found some form of mind alternation. Extending this to the rest of the animal kingdom, it's not surprising to me that other species are just as keen to how much fun booze or drugs can be.
You're not going to believe this, but... fermented walrus meat. I'm not kidding.
I lived on Baffin Island for three years, and during that time, I was regaled at length on a number of occasions with first-hand accounts of how the Inuit would cache stores of walrus meat under stones in October (to keep the ravens from getting it) for about six weeks. Once it had a pretty solid veneer of mold, they would take it out, scrape it off and ingest it with gusto.
According to those who tried it, it induced a mild, contented buzz.
No, I did not try it. I didn't even want to see it.
That is assuming that a novelist already knows on what to type and does not change his story while he is typing.
If you don't know what you're going to write, you should probably back away from the keyboard. Conversely, if you don't change what you type, you probably shouldn't be writing at all.
Perhaps they think of "journalists" or a better name would be "news paper fillers".
Don't make me laugh. If you don't think that conveying the facts of a story to fit an exact word count is hard, or that short prose is more difficult than long, you've never written any amount of material for publication. That's precisely why bad news writing is so much more evident than bad prose in a novel.
A novelist will be payed by quality more then by quantity. A newspaper filler will be payed more by quantity.
No, a news writer gets paid according to the prominence of their stories, If they're bringing in good quality news (i.e. good reporting and good writing), then they'll get paid well. Novelists, on the other hand, get paid according to the whim of the publisher, and that is derived from an educated guess about how well the book will sell. Dan Brown makes millions from shoveling buckets of literary shit while Graham Greene (probably the best writer in English in the second half of the 20th C) remains a somewhat minor figure outside of literary circles.
Just typing this short piece I went back 6 times to change (small) and I already knew what I wanted to say. (and changed 5 to 6, because I added the word small.)
"Even when composing this short piece, I made no fewer than 6 small edits."
Now for the moral that programmers have been struggling to express all through this thread: Good writers are good editors.
It's not so uncommon as you think. I live in Vanuatu, where most of the remaining South Pacific cargo cults exist. You and the learned professor give too much credit to the rest of the world, and not nearly enough to the ni-Vanuatu people.
I suppose I learned a lot about the Perl community though.
Larry may sound glib most of the time, but if you took the time to look, you'd see method in his madness. He chooses to make his points lightly, because that's an important part of the message. Perl as a language is designed to reflect the idiosyncrasies of the human brain. It treats dogmatism as damage and routes around it. As Larry wrote, it is trollish in its nature. But its friendly, playful brand of trollishness is what allows it to continue to evolve as a culture.
Strip away the thin veneer of sillyness and you'll see that everything I've written has been lifted directly from Larry's missive. Just because he likes to act a little silly doesn't mean he's wrong.
One of the worst things a programmer can do is invest too much ego, pride or seriousness in his work. That is the path to painfully over-engineered, theoretically correct but practically useless software that often can't survive a single revision. Perl as a language isn't immune to any of these sins, but as a culture, it goes to some lengths to mitigate against them.
My recent experience is that discussions of Perl quickly turn to discussions of Python, after people make statements like, "If it weren't for CPAN, Perl would be dead."
That's not too far from the truth, if you understand that statement to be analogous to "If it weren't for the US dollar, the American economy would be dead." It may only be one thing, but it's a pretty big thing.
"There's more than one way to do it." translates to, quoting from Wikipedia, "This makes it easy to write extremely messy programs..."
No grasshopper, you fundamentally misunderstand the implications of that statement. Show me a problem in which there isn't more than one way to do it, and I'll show you a problem you haven't grokked properly yet. Perl is a language without ideology. If programming languages were religions, perl would be closer to atheism (sorry Larry) than to anything else. Yes, it sometimes does cast people adrift because they're forced to accept that there is no final arbiter, that sometimes choices do come down to indulging one's biases. The difference here is that we recognise that, and that you have no one to blame for the biases except yourself.
For a good programmer, this is one of the paths to enlightenment.
To abuse the ideology metaphor a little further, perl is democratic (and borderline anarchic) because it does not criminalise stupidity. Likewise, it doesn't always protect you from yourself. If you really want to do things a certain way, the language probably won't stop you, and might even help you.
And if you still don't get the freedom that perl provides, feel free to vacate the green space in front of my domicile. I'm not going to force you off, but I might laugh at you if you stay.
... and here I am, correcting myself.
Having read some of the report, the narrative does actually deal at length on the Anonymous attacks, in spite of the fact that the summary states that "independent media and human rights organizations" are their focus.
So, please don't mod parent up. It's misleading. My apologies; I shouldn't have trusted the authors' summary.
No, this is just a case of a Computerworld 'journalist' editorialising and drawing false equivalencies between the DDoS attacks on WikiLeaks and other human rights organisations and those conducted by Anonymous. The Actual Report explicitly does not discuss the banks:
TL;DR: The Berkman report is talking only about the stifling effect of DDoS attacks on alternative media and human right organisations. Banks don't come into it at all -except in the fevered imaginations of certain 'tech journalism' hacks.
I am not at all convinced that getting the government involved will improve my life.
Fair enough. But it's possible to state categorically that leaving the incumbents entirely alone will make it worse. The Level3 spat, a number of other pronouncements and lobbying efforts all make that perfectly clear.
So unless you can suggest another means of imposing some sort of limitations on their abusive behaviour, this is the least worst alternative. Don't like the way it's going right now? There are mechanisms to address that. Rusted, creaking, archaic and inefficient mechanisms, yes. But mechanisms nonetheless.
It is possible that 2011 might be a year in which there could be some unspecified increase in what could loosely be termed malware that might be targeted in whole or in part to infect certain devices that might be considered mobile devices under certain definitions of mobile or device.
Also: TERRORISTS!
... er, ooga booga.
I believe the key to recording the Police is never to let Andy Summers solo for more than one measure. All the musicians went a little wild with the improvisations on the recent reunion tours and I think the songs suffered for the lack of restraint.
Also: Don't stand
Don't stand so
Don't stand so close to them
I spent hours last night playing strip connect four with my wife.
You're obviously from Michigan, Minnesota or the Dakotas:
Lowest common denominator sounds nice. The set of regulations that all nation states can agree on should be fairly lightweight, and the decision making process involved in keeping it up to date far less agile than the network itself. Now if governments also agree not to add their own layers on top this would be total win.
Dude, you really need to get around more.
In this context, Lowest Common Denominator means 'Every nation has the right to do whatever the fuck it wants within its own national borders, and in the context of the Internet, we're going to define "borders" so arbitrarily that nobody will be safe from their own government anywhere on the 'Net. Have a nice day!'
I'm a big fan of multi-lateralism in many cases, but in this particular case, the people who are most vocal are the ones whose interests are inimical to a free and open Internet. Hate ICANN all you like, but they are vastly preferable to the alternative.
For many players in this game, the fact that the Internet is working as designed leads to the conclusion that the design must be changed. For us, this is a case of 'It's not broken yet, so keep fixing it!'
I'm not a scholar on this subject, but I've written a few briefing papers on this subject for the government of the place I live, so I don't speak entirely from ignorance.
Guess he should have thought of that before committing a military crime while he was an active member of the military service. He is governed by a different set of laws that aren't nearly as nice as civilian laws.
Or at least, he might have thought of that BEFORE HE STARTED FUCKING BRAGGING ABOUT IT.
If he valued his own safety more than anything, perhaps he would have. But let's look at his motivation for leaking the materials:
Well done anonymous, you've just handed Amazon their marketing for their hosting services for the considerable future.
AMAZON: We'll never, ever let you down[*]
[*] Unless we don't like you or you piss of a US senator.
Now what legitimate use is there in linking to that?
Forensics, for one. Without necessarily looking at the individual data, you can still infer a fair amount concerning the scope and nature of the attack by what data was compromised. Likewise, the kind of data being released tells you something about the attackers' motives. And if they were careless, date information and other metadata might also prove useful.
And all of this without necessarily looking at a single password.
Wonder how that works? Does it just average what direction all the difference mice are going, then move the cursor in that average direction [so everybody gets a vote on where the cursor should go]?
Congratulations! You just invented the digital Ouija Board!
and turn it into an opportunity to vent against the USA. How about discussing the Venezuela story on its own merits? Single internet access point for the whole country, controlled by the government, good idea or no?
I think limiting them to a single place on the Internets is a great idea. The noise from those things totally ruined the World Cup for me. Call me anti-democracy if you want - I never hear another frickin' Venezuela again, it's too soon!
...
... What?
Hmm? I suggest you read up on how TOR works.
I suggest you learn how the 'whoosh' works. 8^)
And this is why these leak sites should use TOR. And not TOR to Public Internet. TOR to TOR.
Too complex. TOR to TOR is a Traveling Salesman problem.
TOR to TOR. Salesman. Get it?
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...
*sigh*
All right, don't get up. I'll show myself out....
Sounds like someone doesn't program using constants....