you could check the sticker that says "An expert has vouched for the quality of this article."
That sticker would be misleading though. The sticker would have to say "A user with access to the email address doctor.knowitall@college.edu has vouched for the quality of this article."
That sticker isn't reliable unless you check up on that expert, find out who they are, and how reliable their other assertions have been. Sort of the way that a set of fully referenced facts aren't reliable unless you check up on the sources cited. The only difference I can see is that it's more difficult to check up on the reliability of an anonymous "professor" than it is to click a few links to stories in major newspapers, scientific journals, etc.
Face it folks, getting information from third parties involves either a certain level of trust, or a fair amount of work. No amount of technology or internet ID schemes can make that go away. And while it may be true that people with valid professor email addresses are on average more trustworthy sources of information than the general public, I fear a system which assigns them a default status of "trusted".
I think one of the greatest strengths of Wikipedia now is that it is untrustworthy - everyone knows that the information is subject to the biases of its contributors, so they double check the data, and can't use it in papers, etc. If we start introducing systems where certain individuals are given a "default trust" status, we create a false sense of security. It allows people to think "Oh, this article has the Stamp Of Academic Approval on it, it must be true!" which is the same confusion that has led people to get angry when they think "Oh, this article is in an official-sounding site that calls itself an encyclopedia, it must be true!" and then realize that it ain't necessarily so.
If Citizendium claims to "vet" its users before they can endorse articles, the fallout is going to be even more bitter when its discovered that some of those endorsements are in fact bogus (and it will happen). Sure, it'll be harder to deface Citizendium, but because of the higher level of trust people are expected to put in it, the damage will be considerably worse.
We'd be bogged down in indecision so hard that nothing would ever get done [...] 85% of any given population is too dumb, uninformed, uninterested or simply lazy to make any judgment calls [...] Therefore, we should try not to ask them.
The commentary that you advance sounds a lot like the mocking criticisms that came from European monarchs when the US formed their democratic government. I mean, without someone to call the shots, how can you hope to get things done? You mean your government is run by roomfuls of arguing people with totally different agendas? Laughable!
And thus the grand experiment in "democracy" comes full circle, as the increasing distrust and alienation of people from each other causes them to mistrust their fellow countrymen to the point that they would rather be ruled once again by a handful of elite assholes than the collective will of their peers.
wouldn't that mean that people all over the world could find out about this?
It would, but protests are not about offering people the opportunity to seek out information. That's what a library is for - and libraries are equally if not more important to the functioning of a free society.
Protests are for forcing people who would not willingly seek out certain information to be confronted with information that they may not be interested in learning. This is why anti-war activists don't just leave a copy of their manifesto in the library and wait for people to go educate themselves. They make an outrageous ruckus - often only peripherally related to their argument - which causes the media and ordinarily disinterested people to take notice of the spectacle, and as a side effect, learn of their message.
So, an analog to this tactic in my mind would be to create videos and other internet media which are entertaining and "spectacular" in their own right, and then also include a political message. This way they will attract the attention of many people who would not ordinarily pay attention to a particular political issue. Ordinary joes watch TV coverage of the big anti-globalization protest because it's mildly entertaining, not because they actively want to expand their understanding of the intricacies of international commerce - that understanding is (hopefully) a side effect of the protesters injecting their message into new coverage. In the same way, if you can get people to watch your internet video simply because it's cool and funny, it will reach ordinary joes in the same way.
So the cop seems interested and offers to help finance it.
Slightly off-topic, but if a police officer actively assists or encourages the planning or commission of a crime, it's entrapment, and illegal. This does come up in "activist infiltration" cases, where an officer will infiltrate a group not just to take notes, but to pressure the group to commit crimes, like vandalism, sabotage, etc. in order to arrest members who take the bait. There is even photographic and video evidence of undercover police in protests trying to incite aggression towards police lines, presumably to weed out "troublemakers" and justify a violent police response.
I can search for your name/nick and bring up abut every conversation we ever had. Does that mean I violated some civil right you have? Am I breaking the law? No, I'm not a cop but I don't see where that would make a difference.
There is a difference, and it has to do with implied threats and a chilling effect on free speech. If you're tracking my every word at political meetings and protests, that's not too big a deal, because I don't have any realistic reason to fear that you would use that information against me, or even if you did, that it would be very detrimental to me.
However, if the police, or spy agencies are recording the same information, it becomes seriously intimidating to many people, especially when it's associated with political expression. People being persecuted (jailed, seriously harassed, slandered, assaulted, assassinated) simply because of their political speech is not an unknown phenomenon, here or in other countries.
You can argue about individual cases, and sometimes it's not cut and dry, but the point is that people have lost their jobs, reputations, and even lives because of government responses to free expression. So when the government begins monitoring and recording the activities of people on the basis of what free speech activities they are engaging in, many people see an implied threat that the information may be used to persecute them, and when people see an implied threat related to expressing a certain opinion, they're going to be a lot more timid about voicing that opinion. This is called a chilling effect, and though subtle, it's is a very real, very serious threat to our democracy.
If the NYPD was infiltrating PTA meetings and conservative think-tanks too, people probably wouldn't be as concerned, because they wouldn't feel that they're being targeted by law enforcement on the basis of their political positions. I don't think that realistically the NYPD gives a crap whether Pastors For Peace has a prayer circle against the war, but the methods of surveillance they're using give the strong impression that the cops consider anyone who expresses a specific political position to be likely targets of law enforcement, and so people from groups like Pastors For Peace will understandably feel intimidated.
So the obvious follow up question is, are these people reasonable in feeling intimidated, or are they just paranoid moonbats? There are ample accounts of police harassment, disruption and violence toward "good" protesters, meaning people who were breaking absolutely no laws and could not reasonably have been suspected of doing so. Cops are very fond of using legal loop holes to perform drug war-style raids on activist art studios, medical clinics, and meeting centers during the lead-up to a protest, in which equipment is seized and sometimes never returned. They are also fond of performing "pre-emptive arrests", in which groups of people who the police anticipates will cause trouble at a protest are arrested before they even reach the demonstration, only to be released with no charges when the event is over. These are not anomalies either, they have been observed consistently as a pattern in multiple cities during large protests, and it's reasonable to think they constitute a strategic policy. Included in this policy is the allocation of a portion of the police pro
it will give new users (kids that are being attracted to Ubuntu) a name recognition right away.
Ubuntu and RHEL are miles apart. It would be extremely difficult to get the people who are attracted to Ubuntu's user friendliness, modern feature set, and broad driver support to be turned on to an operating system whose primary niche is in a server rack. RHEL is primarily a reliable industrial strength server OS, and they put out a desktop distro on the side. Ubuntu is primarily a well designed, Mac OS-like desktop OS, and they include a lot of server features on the side (doesn't mean it's a bad server, but that's not its main emphasis).
For desktop features, Red Hat fans turn to Fedora because it's designed with an eye towards ordinary users as opposed to corporate data centers. You may be right that RHEL should be free, but Fedora definitely has an important and valuable place as a distro.
Letting people know things that only cause hysteria is not always a good idea either.
It seems like the crux of this argument is that because many people are stupid and misinterpret the information we give them, it's therefore justifiable (and in fact desirable) to conceal that information from everyone.
It's absolutely true that record-keeping in the food production industry is pathetically lax, but this is a problem that should be corrected for the sake of food safety, not a "fact of life" that should be accepted as immutable.
Just because we can keep food costs low by ignoring record-keeping doesn't mean it's a good idea. We can keep food costs low by eliminating existing meat inspections and food quality standards too, but few people would be willing to make that tradeoff. It's unfortunate, and it may cause food production costs to rise, but developing and requiring decent food tracking is important enough that we may have to do it anyway.
Yes I am. People think that Greepeace is ideological and speaks the truth, well that's not the truth per se. Greenpeace lives on people's donations that are fed by fear of technology. I hate that they feed on that.
Just because you don't like a group or their motivations doesn't mean everything they do or say is wrong. Even if you're arguing against Mussolini, you can't just say "Well you're a facist!" as a rebuttal to any point he makes, because let's face it, he may be right about some things. Come on, this is like debate 101 stuff - I'm a bit surprised that you'd think you could get away with that level of kneejerk rhetoric on Slashdot. We take our logic fairly serious 'round these parts;)
Useless crap is an inevitable side-effect of capitalism. Capitalists endeavor to make money, not to invent or produce goods that will be useful and beneficial to society (or anyone).
To that end, most capitalists try to produce things that people will spend money on (no matter how stupid), and promote advertising campaigns that will persuade even more people to take interest in whatever they're producing (no matter how stupid).
Capitalism as an organizing principle expects people to spend money on the "best" products, but the unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people who have $20 burning a hole in their pocket will spend it on the stupidest shit imaginable, thereby creating a booming industry in the stupidest shit imaginable.
Now, I'm not saying that a massive centrally planned economy is the appropriate response to this problem, but I am saying that it's a problem inherent to capitalism, and that any solution or mitigating measures would be inherently "anti-capitalist".
your friendly ethiopian coffee farmers would be now living out of subsistence farming, until of course, the next drought, were half of them would be dead by starvation
These coffee farmers would probably be better in the long term if they did focus on subsistence farming, and cultivating the soil and farming practices for growing food instead of coffee.
Coffee is sometimes in high demand, especially if it's from an exotic location like Ethiopia or a new bean. So many farming communities switch their production to growing coffee instead of their usual crops, because they can make bank.
Problem is, coffee depletes the soil severely, and requires a significantly different farming process. So these farmers sell what is a totally worthless crop to them to Americans (or US-ians, whatever) and use that money to buy food.
All's well, until the Ethiopian coffee craze drops off in the US, or the shipping company that moves coffee between Ethiopia and the US raises their rates (or decides Colombian coffee is more profitable this year), or a plague decimates the crop of the entire country (since they're all growing the same profitable bean). Suddenly, the seemingly sustainable lifestyle of growing cash crops isn't so great - farmers are left with depleted fields, the wrong methods and equipment for growing anything else, and no money to buy food.
So they starve. This happens frequently, but cash cropping is actively encouraged and pressured for by first world businesses (through international trade orgs. and exerting control over third world governments).
I can't agree more, I'm a bike commuter too and I'm happy with it on so many levels. I also save a huge amount of money by biking, because I don't even bother with fancy bike gear - a $20 thrift-store cycle is all you need to get started! Some more things I like about bike commuting:
- In the morning, biking helps wake me up and get my blood flowing, so I'm alert and in a good mood by the time I get to work.
- Biking home in the evening is a major "de-stresser" (at least for me). Any tension or "fidgetiness" I built up at work melts away as I ride, as opposed to drivers who often become even more frustrated from traffic, etc.
- Your commute becomes a sort of empowering personal game or challenge, because the speed that you get to work isn't decided by shit like speed limits, your car, gridlock, or other things you have no control over - it's determined almost entirely by how fit you are and how willing you are to push yourself. That makes it fun, but more importantly, it makes every trip an accomplishment to be proud of instead of a burden to be endured.
- Personal benefits aside, I don't have to feel (as) guilty about contributing to US dependence on Saudi oil barons, global climate change, and one of the major factors for US involvement in the Iraq war, because I don't buy gas!
Oh, and about the sweaty/clothes issue - I wear nice clothes in an office too, so I bring my clothes in a bag and take 5 min to sponge off and "quick change" once I get to the office. Works fine!
1 million people marched through central London before we joined America in a futile idiotic war against Iraq
...and then quietly went home that evening and watched the news, bemoaning the fact that the government ignored them.
Here's a tip. The government ignores protests because they believe that the protests will "do their thing" and then go away. And they're right. Often, protests can be helpful to an unpopular government because they allow people to scream and shout, get all that frustration out of their systems, and then go back to their normal life of supporting the government in practice (working, shopping, obeying all laws, paying taxes).
If you really want to change something, and it's as serious as a war that's killing hundreds of thousands, you don't just take a saturday to march in the streets for a few hours, you sit down in the streets in massive numbers, endure beatings and arrests, and stay there for days, weeks, as long as is needed to force the government to comply. Only when the powers that be realize that you're serious, and you're perfectly willing to cause serious and prolonged problems for them, will they listen.
NO -- I just dont think the majority of people can do anything about these war crimes, just as the majority of Americans and Jews have not done anything about their own ranks committing war crimes
There's a big difference between "cannot" and "have not". Every American holds a significant amount of power in their hands, and we could be actively using this power to rally others, organize like-minded Americans, and build a powerful movement against the current government. All significant social movements began as small cores of people devoting their time and energy to what they knew was right, and quickly gained steam as others caught on. We could be those people, here and now. We could all march on Washington next week and refuse to leave until we had justice - and believe me, as bad as we may believe our government is, they're not going to gun down tens of millions of peaceful people in the nation's capitol.
But we have not - instead we let off steam in political arguments and online messageboards and go on with our lives, waiting patiently for the next election when we'll be given the privilege of deciding almost nothing.
To me, this does make us each individually guilty to a certain extent, in the same way that the ordinary citizens of Germany were partially guilty of the crimes committed by their government.
We're not afraid of being powerless - we live in a society that is dedicated to making us feel powerless and comfortable. We're afraid of realizing fully the amount of power that each of us holds as a sovereign individual, taking responsibility for the things that we're doing with that power right now, and doing the unpleasant work of using our power in a morally acceptable way in the future.
The objective results are pretty inarguable, but the implication that the reason that the rats didn't fear the note they heard while drugged is that they had completely forgotten about it seems tenuous. The rats could just as easily become accustomed to the note, develop a different association with that note (like being drugged), or become unafraid of it for some other related reason.
The article supports the claim by saying the brain activity is different, but it seems that more complicated experiments would need to be done before it could really be claimed that memories could be wiped this way.
Free / open source software is a completely voluntary system, not mandated by any government
Open source software is, in fact, mandated by the government. The government forces everyone who modifies or distributes GPL code to adhere to the terms of the GPL. That's the reason it works so well. If you insist on thinking in one-dimensional "communism=gov't control,capitalism=freedom" terms, then surely this GPL business is pure communism:)
And anyway, if it weren't for the government enforcing licenses, open source wouldn't be voluntary at all. All intellectual property would instantly become "socialized", or common property, because there would be no laws to regulate its distribution or "ownership".
Oh, I agree. Maybe tradition was the wrong word, as you're right that the open source tradition has been around before commercial software, and arguably before software or intellectual property at all.
What I meant is that the current "regime" of Open Source, that is licensing software under GNU/GPL-type legal arrangements, was created as a response to the increasing commercialization of code that was being assembled for free by hobbyists. Early computer hobbyists tended to hold the "share and share alike" philosophy, and they provided their code for free and used other's code freely. They were dismayed at two trends: The tendency of individuals or companies to make profit from projects that they had volunteered their labor for, and the tendency of companies to copyright code and refuse to share it with hobbyists.
I agree with another poster's suggestion that this was more of a communalist or cooperative arrangement, although it did have strong elements of anti-authoritarianism, as a central drive for the Open Source movement was to give each person individual control over the code they used.
Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.
Lots of geeks are anarchocapitalists, so it makes sense that they'd want to claim the successful and popular open source movement as their own, but I don't think they're as similar as you assert.
Anarcho-capitalism is about profit and individual property as the central pillars of society. Open source is not about profit, and it's definitely not about private property.
Open source is a tradition that was established to fight back against those who sought to profit from proprietary computer code. It was introduced as a way to foster cooperation and support between those programmers who didn't seek to profit from their code, but did want to share it with other like-minded people. Open source has become so successful that entire profit-making industries have come to depend on it, but at its core Open Source is designed as a sort of "non-profit cooperative" for people who code for free. Open source is a gift economy - sure everyone gives gifts for different reasons, but they're still gifts.
The open source philosophy is also clearly against private property. Of course, the only form of property that open source involves is intellectual property, which many anarcho-capitalists claim is a special case, but I think the point should still be made that nobody owns open source code, and nobody can own it. Since private ownership of everything is a central tenet of anarcho-capitalism I can't see where the similarity is.
I know socialism is a bad word on Slashdot, because it means red commie soviets who are going to take away all our civil rights and make us live like in 1984, but personally, I see the open source movement as an example of voluntary socialism, or anarcho-socialism - programmers have decided that the existing market forces are abusing their property rights to producing crap software for ridiculous prices. So, they have voluntarily formed a network which allows them to share their resources in a non-market environment.
The reason open source software is so good is precisely because it's not driven by profit-oriented market forces, but by the diverse motivations and interests of many people and organizations. Obviously they're not doing it out of pure generosity, but in general when people develop open source code they're considering how to make good code primarily, not how to make lots of profit primarily.
Libraries lend materials, files on the internet are copied.
A lot of university libraries now provide "electronic documents", which are either emailed to you or made available via a URL when requested. These are electronic versions of copyrighted printed documents, and they're copied, or at least "made available" in a highly copyable format (like a web page) to anyone.
Then again, they may have some special arrangement with certain copyright holders, which would explain why everything isn't available digitally, but I'm not sure...
Would it be possible for a tor exit node to apply automatic filters to requests and replies
It's absolutely a technical possibility, but doing it is discouraged for a few reasons.
First, it's likely to be extremely ineffective. What are you gonna do, keep a list of all IPs, urls, etc that host child porn? Even commercials apps that filter the internet are unable to do this effectively. This is even more so for criminal activity - how do you automatically know whether a bitstream is being used for crime? There are certainly some cases where you could figure it out, but most of the time it'd be trivially easy to evade, and the false positive rate would likely be high enough that your node would be more of a burden to legitimate users than a positive addition to the network.
Second, it puts the operator of the Tor node in an even weaker legal situation. Operators of conventional Tor exit nodes have come under scrutiny by the government, ISPs, etc before, and they are generally able to escape any trouble by explaining that they operate an open router, and they have no control over the requests that originate from their IP. If you started policing the traffic that passed through your exit node, you'd lose that "common carrier" defense. By actively filtering malicious traffic, you're giving an implicit endorsement of all traffic that your filter allows to pass through.
the bigest limiting factor is a culture that refuses to be part of the success around it
It's clear that you have a paternalistic attitude towards poor people as a class, and although I think it's pompous and ignorant to assume that poor people just don't care as much as you and your economically secure peers, I'll try to argue based on your innocent world view, since it's likely that the only thing that will relieve you of that is actually living among and getting to know communities of poor people.
Let's say poor people are overwhelmingly culturally deficient. They're born to parents who are fine with being poor, and never want to do more than the bare minimum to survive - oh, and also get drunk. Since they live in the ghetto, they don't have teachers or mentors who will guide them through school, inspire or interest them in academic subjects or useful trades. They have nobody to advise them on how to deal with life issues, like how to spend money responsibly, how to apply for college, how to work towards a decent job. Their entire community, their whole environment, wants nothing more than to keep them there in the ghetto, poor and maladjusted.
Psychological factors like this are definitely one of the main influences on a young person's situation. If you're raised from birth with the understanding that you are to become a high-powered attorney like your father, your community supports that and your culture embraces that goal, it's likely that you'll end up there - or at least somewhere decent. If you're raised from birth with the understanding that you likely won't amount to much because nobody around here does, your community supports that, and your culture embraces that fate, you'll likely end up there.
This doesn't have anything to do with the will of the actual person, mind you. The attorney-to-be may be lazy and not give a fuck about being a lawyer, and shy away from that goal but their community and culture will continually push them in that direction. Conversely a ghetto youth may want nothing more than to be a lawyer, but their community and culture will push them away from that goal every step of the way.
These are facts that are true, but the possible interpretations of these facts are where it gets really messy, because their implications are very inconvenient for people who hold the neat, tidy philosophy that you do, i.e. "Poor people chose their plight, so they have no right to complain about it or be helped out of it".
I suggest taking the time to develop a more nuanced understanding of the situation - what's important is not figuring out who's lazy - there are poor lazy people, sure. What's important is figuring out why this supposed culture of poverty continues, and what can be done to fix it.
Yet, 25% of black males between the ages of 18 and 35 are convicted felons....there is a strong chance he really IS a criminal.
I can't back this up with a study (you didn't back your stat up, so it's fair game), but it seems obvious that people who post to Slashdot are several TIMES more likely to be involved in computer crime than the average American (they have a high degree of technical knowledge, and often an outsider social perspective). So I agree. Let's do away with all of this "innocent until proven guilty" shit and start seizing some Slashdotter's computers!
I mean why should we be worried about the fact that we're being prejudiced against a group of people who are mostly innocent? The fact is that they're probabilisticly guilty because of who they are (or what sites they visit), and it's a lot easier to just assume they're guilty than wait for them to actually commit an offense. So maybe some innocent people end up getting treated like criminals because of what messageboards they post to - but come on, the alternative is having to assume everyone is innocent (regardless of whether we like them or not) unless we have actual evidence of wrongdoing!
However due to social conditioning, people usually ignore their gut feelings which is a mistake. He also helped develop the model that the Secret Service uses to decide whether people who have made threats are probably harmless or likely to eventually commit violence.
You mean the good old "race/religion-checklist"?:)
I'm mostly kidding, but it's definitely undeniable that people's "gut feelings" are very often influenced by totally absurd stuff - both towards feeling comfortable when they shouldn't, and feeling uncomfortable when things are ok.
A large body of psychology and sociology will back this up. "Gut feelings" are basically attitudes that people have that they cannot rationalize. We get these feelings from things like television ads, being in large mobs (especially religious gatherings), or dealing with people who have certain social cues. For example, seeing someone in a police or doctor's outfit may cause a "gut feeling" of trust even if they don't act particularly trustworthy, whereas seeing the same person dressed like hobo will give a totally different feeling.
Essentially, gut feelings are prejudicial - they are reflections of our biases based on the subconscious associations we have with certain cues. Sometimes, it's undeniable that these cues turn out to be useful, but much of the time they're the reflection of backwards and silly shit like racism, fear of the unknown, and reflexive respect for authority figures. So maybe totally ignoring them isn't good, but odds are your "gut feelings" are wrong most of the time, and should be interpreted skeptically.
No, I agree. Personally, I think people should be able to put just about anything they want on their user page, including links to whatever profit-making ventures they want.
That's different from what the OP was asking for though - they wanted to essentially be able to sign each article they write or contribute to with a link to their site. In my opinion, that's too much unrelated content being placed on every article, and would lead to too many people trying to game the system in order to proliferate their links all over the encyclopedia.
Maybe based on your level, you can moderate, or over-moderate other people?
Sweet idea! So you can start as like a level 1, and if you slay enough vandals you can gain XP which you use to increase your various editing powers! Once you get powerful enough, you can get into the PvP game, where you use your high editor powers to revert and censor other editors!
But seriously. Giving people varying levels of "credibility" or "trust" or whatever really does turn a collaborative effort into a power game. Even with the very limited and fairly egalitarian system Wikipedia uses, there are frequent abuses of "admin" privileges - not to vandalize, but simply to exert personal control over an article or editor. People have been known to strive to get admin privileges solely so that they can have power over other users - sort of the way people abuse mod privileges on Slashdot.
I think the mod system on Slashdot is great, but it's not really a big deal to have control over a Slashdot thread. On Wikipedia, the allure of power on an incredibly popular and high-profile web site is much higher, and the potential for abuse of power therefore much more serious.
Slashdot Mirror
you could check the sticker that says "An expert has vouched for the quality of this article."
That sticker would be misleading though. The sticker would have to say "A user with access to the email address doctor.knowitall@college.edu has vouched for the quality of this article."
That sticker isn't reliable unless you check up on that expert, find out who they are, and how reliable their other assertions have been. Sort of the way that a set of fully referenced facts aren't reliable unless you check up on the sources cited. The only difference I can see is that it's more difficult to check up on the reliability of an anonymous "professor" than it is to click a few links to stories in major newspapers, scientific journals, etc.
Face it folks, getting information from third parties involves either a certain level of trust, or a fair amount of work. No amount of technology or internet ID schemes can make that go away. And while it may be true that people with valid professor email addresses are on average more trustworthy sources of information than the general public, I fear a system which assigns them a default status of "trusted".
I think one of the greatest strengths of Wikipedia now is that it is untrustworthy - everyone knows that the information is subject to the biases of its contributors, so they double check the data, and can't use it in papers, etc. If we start introducing systems where certain individuals are given a "default trust" status, we create a false sense of security. It allows people to think "Oh, this article has the Stamp Of Academic Approval on it, it must be true!" which is the same confusion that has led people to get angry when they think "Oh, this article is in an official-sounding site that calls itself an encyclopedia, it must be true!" and then realize that it ain't necessarily so.
If Citizendium claims to "vet" its users before they can endorse articles, the fallout is going to be even more bitter when its discovered that some of those endorsements are in fact bogus (and it will happen). Sure, it'll be harder to deface Citizendium, but because of the higher level of trust people are expected to put in it, the damage will be considerably worse.
Then you'll be wanting to check out YPOPs!, which provides a POP3 interface for Yahoo webmail.
We'd be bogged down in indecision so hard that nothing would ever get done [...] 85% of any given population is too dumb, uninformed, uninterested or simply lazy to make any judgment calls [...] Therefore, we should try not to ask them.
The commentary that you advance sounds a lot like the mocking criticisms that came from European monarchs when the US formed their democratic government. I mean, without someone to call the shots, how can you hope to get things done? You mean your government is run by roomfuls of arguing people with totally different agendas? Laughable!
And thus the grand experiment in "democracy" comes full circle, as the increasing distrust and alienation of people from each other causes them to mistrust their fellow countrymen to the point that they would rather be ruled once again by a handful of elite assholes than the collective will of their peers.
wouldn't that mean that people all over the world could find out about this?
It would, but protests are not about offering people the opportunity to seek out information. That's what a library is for - and libraries are equally if not more important to the functioning of a free society.
Protests are for forcing people who would not willingly seek out certain information to be confronted with information that they may not be interested in learning. This is why anti-war activists don't just leave a copy of their manifesto in the library and wait for people to go educate themselves. They make an outrageous ruckus - often only peripherally related to their argument - which causes the media and ordinarily disinterested people to take notice of the spectacle, and as a side effect, learn of their message.
So, an analog to this tactic in my mind would be to create videos and other internet media which are entertaining and "spectacular" in their own right, and then also include a political message. This way they will attract the attention of many people who would not ordinarily pay attention to a particular political issue. Ordinary joes watch TV coverage of the big anti-globalization protest because it's mildly entertaining, not because they actively want to expand their understanding of the intricacies of international commerce - that understanding is (hopefully) a side effect of the protesters injecting their message into new coverage. In the same way, if you can get people to watch your internet video simply because it's cool and funny, it will reach ordinary joes in the same way.
So the cop seems interested and offers to help finance it.
Slightly off-topic, but if a police officer actively assists or encourages the planning or commission of a crime, it's entrapment, and illegal. This does come up in "activist infiltration" cases, where an officer will infiltrate a group not just to take notes, but to pressure the group to commit crimes, like vandalism, sabotage, etc. in order to arrest members who take the bait. There is even photographic and video evidence of undercover police in protests trying to incite aggression towards police lines, presumably to weed out "troublemakers" and justify a violent police response.
I can search for your name/nick and bring up abut every conversation we ever had. Does that mean I violated some civil right you have? Am I breaking the law? No, I'm not a cop but I don't see where that would make a difference.
There is a difference, and it has to do with implied threats and a chilling effect on free speech. If you're tracking my every word at political meetings and protests, that's not too big a deal, because I don't have any realistic reason to fear that you would use that information against me, or even if you did, that it would be very detrimental to me.
However, if the police, or spy agencies are recording the same information, it becomes seriously intimidating to many people, especially when it's associated with political expression. People being persecuted (jailed, seriously harassed, slandered, assaulted, assassinated) simply because of their political speech is not an unknown phenomenon, here or in other countries.
You can argue about individual cases, and sometimes it's not cut and dry, but the point is that people have lost their jobs, reputations, and even lives because of government responses to free expression. So when the government begins monitoring and recording the activities of people on the basis of what free speech activities they are engaging in, many people see an implied threat that the information may be used to persecute them, and when people see an implied threat related to expressing a certain opinion, they're going to be a lot more timid about voicing that opinion. This is called a chilling effect, and though subtle, it's is a very real, very serious threat to our democracy.
If the NYPD was infiltrating PTA meetings and conservative think-tanks too, people probably wouldn't be as concerned, because they wouldn't feel that they're being targeted by law enforcement on the basis of their political positions. I don't think that realistically the NYPD gives a crap whether Pastors For Peace has a prayer circle against the war, but the methods of surveillance they're using give the strong impression that the cops consider anyone who expresses a specific political position to be likely targets of law enforcement, and so people from groups like Pastors For Peace will understandably feel intimidated.
So the obvious follow up question is, are these people reasonable in feeling intimidated, or are they just paranoid moonbats? There are ample accounts of police harassment, disruption and violence toward "good" protesters, meaning people who were breaking absolutely no laws and could not reasonably have been suspected of doing so. Cops are very fond of using legal loop holes to perform drug war-style raids on activist art studios, medical clinics, and meeting centers during the lead-up to a protest, in which equipment is seized and sometimes never returned. They are also fond of performing "pre-emptive arrests", in which groups of people who the police anticipates will cause trouble at a protest are arrested before they even reach the demonstration, only to be released with no charges when the event is over. These are not anomalies either, they have been observed consistently as a pattern in multiple cities during large protests, and it's reasonable to think they constitute a strategic policy. Included in this policy is the allocation of a portion of the police pro
it will give new users (kids that are being attracted to Ubuntu) a name recognition right away.
Ubuntu and RHEL are miles apart. It would be extremely difficult to get the people who are attracted to Ubuntu's user friendliness, modern feature set, and broad driver support to be turned on to an operating system whose primary niche is in a server rack. RHEL is primarily a reliable industrial strength server OS, and they put out a desktop distro on the side. Ubuntu is primarily a well designed, Mac OS-like desktop OS, and they include a lot of server features on the side (doesn't mean it's a bad server, but that's not its main emphasis).
For desktop features, Red Hat fans turn to Fedora because it's designed with an eye towards ordinary users as opposed to corporate data centers. You may be right that RHEL should be free, but Fedora definitely has an important and valuable place as a distro.
Letting people know things that only cause hysteria is not always a good idea either.
It seems like the crux of this argument is that because many people are stupid and misinterpret the information we give them, it's therefore justifiable (and in fact desirable) to conceal that information from everyone.
It's absolutely true that record-keeping in the food production industry is pathetically lax, but this is a problem that should be corrected for the sake of food safety, not a "fact of life" that should be accepted as immutable.
Just because we can keep food costs low by ignoring record-keeping doesn't mean it's a good idea. We can keep food costs low by eliminating existing meat inspections and food quality standards too, but few people would be willing to make that tradeoff. It's unfortunate, and it may cause food production costs to rise, but developing and requiring decent food tracking is important enough that we may have to do it anyway.
Yes I am. People think that Greepeace is ideological and speaks the truth, well that's not the truth per se. Greenpeace lives on people's donations that are fed by fear of technology. I hate that they feed on that.
;)
Just because you don't like a group or their motivations doesn't mean everything they do or say is wrong. Even if you're arguing against Mussolini, you can't just say "Well you're a facist!" as a rebuttal to any point he makes, because let's face it, he may be right about some things. Come on, this is like debate 101 stuff - I'm a bit surprised that you'd think you could get away with that level of kneejerk rhetoric on Slashdot. We take our logic fairly serious 'round these parts
Useless crap is an inevitable side-effect of capitalism. Capitalists endeavor to make money, not to invent or produce goods that will be useful and beneficial to society (or anyone).
To that end, most capitalists try to produce things that people will spend money on (no matter how stupid), and promote advertising campaigns that will persuade even more people to take interest in whatever they're producing (no matter how stupid).
Capitalism as an organizing principle expects people to spend money on the "best" products, but the unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people who have $20 burning a hole in their pocket will spend it on the stupidest shit imaginable, thereby creating a booming industry in the stupidest shit imaginable.
Now, I'm not saying that a massive centrally planned economy is the appropriate response to this problem, but I am saying that it's a problem inherent to capitalism, and that any solution or mitigating measures would be inherently "anti-capitalist".
your friendly ethiopian coffee farmers would be now living out of subsistence farming, until of course, the next drought, were half of them would be dead by starvation
These coffee farmers would probably be better in the long term if they did focus on subsistence farming, and cultivating the soil and farming practices for growing food instead of coffee.
Coffee is sometimes in high demand, especially if it's from an exotic location like Ethiopia or a new bean. So many farming communities switch their production to growing coffee instead of their usual crops, because they can make bank.
Problem is, coffee depletes the soil severely, and requires a significantly different farming process. So these farmers sell what is a totally worthless crop to them to Americans (or US-ians, whatever) and use that money to buy food.
All's well, until the Ethiopian coffee craze drops off in the US, or the shipping company that moves coffee between Ethiopia and the US raises their rates (or decides Colombian coffee is more profitable this year), or a plague decimates the crop of the entire country (since they're all growing the same profitable bean). Suddenly, the seemingly sustainable lifestyle of growing cash crops isn't so great - farmers are left with depleted fields, the wrong methods and equipment for growing anything else, and no money to buy food.
So they starve. This happens frequently, but cash cropping is actively encouraged and pressured for by first world businesses (through international trade orgs. and exerting control over third world governments).
I can't agree more, I'm a bike commuter too and I'm happy with it on so many levels. I also save a huge amount of money by biking, because I don't even bother with fancy bike gear - a $20 thrift-store cycle is all you need to get started! Some more things I like about bike commuting:
- In the morning, biking helps wake me up and get my blood flowing, so I'm alert and in a good mood by the time I get to work.
- Biking home in the evening is a major "de-stresser" (at least for me). Any tension or "fidgetiness" I built up at work melts away as I ride, as opposed to drivers who often become even more frustrated from traffic, etc.
- Your commute becomes a sort of empowering personal game or challenge, because the speed that you get to work isn't decided by shit like speed limits, your car, gridlock, or other things you have no control over - it's determined almost entirely by how fit you are and how willing you are to push yourself. That makes it fun, but more importantly, it makes every trip an accomplishment to be proud of instead of a burden to be endured.
- Personal benefits aside, I don't have to feel (as) guilty about contributing to US dependence on Saudi oil barons, global climate change, and one of the major factors for US involvement in the Iraq war, because I don't buy gas!
Oh, and about the sweaty/clothes issue - I wear nice clothes in an office too, so I bring my clothes in a bag and take 5 min to sponge off and "quick change" once I get to the office. Works fine!
1 million people marched through central London before we joined America in a futile idiotic war against Iraq
...and then quietly went home that evening and watched the news, bemoaning the fact that the government ignored them.
Here's a tip. The government ignores protests because they believe that the protests will "do their thing" and then go away. And they're right. Often, protests can be helpful to an unpopular government because they allow people to scream and shout, get all that frustration out of their systems, and then go back to their normal life of supporting the government in practice (working, shopping, obeying all laws, paying taxes).
If you really want to change something, and it's as serious as a war that's killing hundreds of thousands, you don't just take a saturday to march in the streets for a few hours, you sit down in the streets in massive numbers, endure beatings and arrests, and stay there for days, weeks, as long as is needed to force the government to comply. Only when the powers that be realize that you're serious, and you're perfectly willing to cause serious and prolonged problems for them, will they listen.
NO -- I just dont think the majority of people can do anything about these war crimes, just as the majority of Americans and Jews have not done anything about their own ranks committing war crimes
There's a big difference between "cannot" and "have not". Every American holds a significant amount of power in their hands, and we could be actively using this power to rally others, organize like-minded Americans, and build a powerful movement against the current government. All significant social movements began as small cores of people devoting their time and energy to what they knew was right, and quickly gained steam as others caught on. We could be those people, here and now. We could all march on Washington next week and refuse to leave until we had justice - and believe me, as bad as we may believe our government is, they're not going to gun down tens of millions of peaceful people in the nation's capitol.
But we have not - instead we let off steam in political arguments and online messageboards and go on with our lives, waiting patiently for the next election when we'll be given the privilege of deciding almost nothing.
To me, this does make us each individually guilty to a certain extent, in the same way that the ordinary citizens of Germany were partially guilty of the crimes committed by their government.
We're not afraid of being powerless - we live in a society that is dedicated to making us feel powerless and comfortable. We're afraid of realizing fully the amount of power that each of us holds as a sovereign individual, taking responsibility for the things that we're doing with that power right now, and doing the unpleasant work of using our power in a morally acceptable way in the future.
The objective results are pretty inarguable, but the implication that the reason that the rats didn't fear the note they heard while drugged is that they had completely forgotten about it seems tenuous. The rats could just as easily become accustomed to the note, develop a different association with that note (like being drugged), or become unafraid of it for some other related reason.
The article supports the claim by saying the brain activity is different, but it seems that more complicated experiments would need to be done before it could really be claimed that memories could be wiped this way.
What about the people who were enslaved
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Free / open source software is a completely voluntary system, not mandated by any government
:)
Open source software is, in fact, mandated by the government. The government forces everyone who modifies or distributes GPL code to adhere to the terms of the GPL. That's the reason it works so well.
If you insist on thinking in one-dimensional "communism=gov't control,capitalism=freedom" terms, then surely this GPL business is pure communism
And anyway, if it weren't for the government enforcing licenses, open source wouldn't be voluntary at all. All intellectual property would instantly become "socialized", or common property, because there would be no laws to regulate its distribution or "ownership".
Oh, I agree. Maybe tradition was the wrong word, as you're right that the open source tradition has been around before commercial software, and arguably before software or intellectual property at all.
What I meant is that the current "regime" of Open Source, that is licensing software under GNU/GPL-type legal arrangements, was created as a response to the increasing commercialization of code that was being assembled for free by hobbyists. Early computer hobbyists tended to hold the "share and share alike" philosophy, and they provided their code for free and used other's code freely. They were dismayed at two trends: The tendency of individuals or companies to make profit from projects that they had volunteered their labor for, and the tendency of companies to copyright code and refuse to share it with hobbyists.
I agree with another poster's suggestion that this was more of a communalist or cooperative arrangement, although it did have strong elements of anti-authoritarianism, as a central drive for the Open Source movement was to give each person individual control over the code they used.
Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.
Lots of geeks are anarchocapitalists, so it makes sense that they'd want to claim the successful and popular open source movement as their own, but I don't think they're as similar as you assert.
Anarcho-capitalism is about profit and individual property as the central pillars of society. Open source is not about profit, and it's definitely not about private property.
Open source is a tradition that was established to fight back against those who sought to profit from proprietary computer code. It was introduced as a way to foster cooperation and support between those programmers who didn't seek to profit from their code, but did want to share it with other like-minded people. Open source has become so successful that entire profit-making industries have come to depend on it, but at its core Open Source is designed as a sort of "non-profit cooperative" for people who code for free. Open source is a gift economy - sure everyone gives gifts for different reasons, but they're still gifts.
The open source philosophy is also clearly against private property. Of course, the only form of property that open source involves is intellectual property, which many anarcho-capitalists claim is a special case, but I think the point should still be made that nobody owns open source code, and nobody can own it. Since private ownership of everything is a central tenet of anarcho-capitalism I can't see where the similarity is.
I know socialism is a bad word on Slashdot, because it means red commie soviets who are going to take away all our civil rights and make us live like in 1984, but personally, I see the open source movement as an example of voluntary socialism, or anarcho-socialism - programmers have decided that the existing market forces are abusing their property rights to producing crap software for ridiculous prices. So, they have voluntarily formed a network which allows them to share their resources in a non-market environment.
The reason open source software is so good is precisely because it's not driven by profit-oriented market forces, but by the diverse motivations and interests of many people and organizations. Obviously they're not doing it out of pure generosity, but in general when people develop open source code they're considering how to make good code primarily, not how to make lots of profit primarily.
Libraries lend materials, files on the internet are copied.
A lot of university libraries now provide "electronic documents", which are either emailed to you or made available via a URL when requested. These are electronic versions of copyrighted printed documents, and they're copied, or at least "made available" in a highly copyable format (like a web page) to anyone.
Then again, they may have some special arrangement with certain copyright holders, which would explain why everything isn't available digitally, but I'm not sure...
Would it be possible for a tor exit node to apply automatic filters to requests and replies
It's absolutely a technical possibility, but doing it is discouraged for a few reasons.
First, it's likely to be extremely ineffective. What are you gonna do, keep a list of all IPs, urls, etc that host child porn? Even commercials apps that filter the internet are unable to do this effectively. This is even more so for criminal activity - how do you automatically know whether a bitstream is being used for crime? There are certainly some cases where you could figure it out, but most of the time it'd be trivially easy to evade, and the false positive rate would likely be high enough that your node would be more of a burden to legitimate users than a positive addition to the network.
Second, it puts the operator of the Tor node in an even weaker legal situation. Operators of conventional Tor exit nodes have come under scrutiny by the government, ISPs, etc before, and they are generally able to escape any trouble by explaining that they operate an open router, and they have no control over the requests that originate from their IP. If you started policing the traffic that passed through your exit node, you'd lose that "common carrier" defense. By actively filtering malicious traffic, you're giving an implicit endorsement of all traffic that your filter allows to pass through.
the bigest limiting factor is a culture that refuses to be part of the success around it
It's clear that you have a paternalistic attitude towards poor people as a class, and although I think it's pompous and ignorant to assume that poor people just don't care as much as you and your economically secure peers, I'll try to argue based on your innocent world view, since it's likely that the only thing that will relieve you of that is actually living among and getting to know communities of poor people.
Let's say poor people are overwhelmingly culturally deficient. They're born to parents who are fine with being poor, and never want to do more than the bare minimum to survive - oh, and also get drunk. Since they live in the ghetto, they don't have teachers or mentors who will guide them through school, inspire or interest them in academic subjects or useful trades. They have nobody to advise them on how to deal with life issues, like how to spend money responsibly, how to apply for college, how to work towards a decent job. Their entire community, their whole environment, wants nothing more than to keep them there in the ghetto, poor and maladjusted.
Psychological factors like this are definitely one of the main influences on a young person's situation. If you're raised from birth with the understanding that you are to become a high-powered attorney like your father, your community supports that and your culture embraces that goal, it's likely that you'll end up there - or at least somewhere decent. If you're raised from birth with the understanding that you likely won't amount to much because nobody around here does, your community supports that, and your culture embraces that fate, you'll likely end up there.
This doesn't have anything to do with the will of the actual person, mind you. The attorney-to-be may be lazy and not give a fuck about being a lawyer, and shy away from that goal but their community and culture will continually push them in that direction. Conversely a ghetto youth may want nothing more than to be a lawyer, but their community and culture will push them away from that goal every step of the way.
These are facts that are true, but the possible interpretations of these facts are where it gets really messy, because their implications are very inconvenient for people who hold the neat, tidy philosophy that you do, i.e. "Poor people chose their plight, so they have no right to complain about it or be helped out of it".
I suggest taking the time to develop a more nuanced understanding of the situation - what's important is not figuring out who's lazy - there are poor lazy people, sure. What's important is figuring out why this supposed culture of poverty continues, and what can be done to fix it.
Yet, 25% of black males between the ages of 18 and 35 are convicted felons....there is a strong chance he really IS a criminal.
I can't back this up with a study (you didn't back your stat up, so it's fair game), but it seems obvious that people who post to Slashdot are several TIMES more likely to be involved in computer crime than the average American (they have a high degree of technical knowledge, and often an outsider social perspective). So I agree. Let's do away with all of this "innocent until proven guilty" shit and start seizing some Slashdotter's computers!
I mean why should we be worried about the fact that we're being prejudiced against a group of people who are mostly innocent? The fact is that they're probabilisticly guilty because of who they are (or what sites they visit), and it's a lot easier to just assume they're guilty than wait for them to actually commit an offense. So maybe some innocent people end up getting treated like criminals because of what messageboards they post to - but come on, the alternative is having to assume everyone is innocent (regardless of whether we like them or not) unless we have actual evidence of wrongdoing!
However due to social conditioning, people usually ignore their gut feelings which is a mistake. He also helped develop the model that the Secret Service uses to decide whether people who have made threats are probably harmless or likely to eventually commit violence.
:)
You mean the good old "race/religion-checklist"?
I'm mostly kidding, but it's definitely undeniable that people's "gut feelings" are very often influenced by totally absurd stuff - both towards feeling comfortable when they shouldn't, and feeling uncomfortable when things are ok.
A large body of psychology and sociology will back this up. "Gut feelings" are basically attitudes that people have that they cannot rationalize. We get these feelings from things like television ads, being in large mobs (especially religious gatherings), or dealing with people who have certain social cues. For example, seeing someone in a police or doctor's outfit may cause a "gut feeling" of trust even if they don't act particularly trustworthy, whereas seeing the same person dressed like hobo will give a totally different feeling.
Essentially, gut feelings are prejudicial - they are reflections of our biases based on the subconscious associations we have with certain cues. Sometimes, it's undeniable that these cues turn out to be useful, but much of the time they're the reflection of backwards and silly shit like racism, fear of the unknown, and reflexive respect for authority figures. So maybe totally ignoring them isn't good, but odds are your "gut feelings" are wrong most of the time, and should be interpreted skeptically.
No, I agree. Personally, I think people should be able to put just about anything they want on their user page, including links to whatever profit-making ventures they want.
That's different from what the OP was asking for though - they wanted to essentially be able to sign each article they write or contribute to with a link to their site. In my opinion, that's too much unrelated content being placed on every article, and would lead to too many people trying to game the system in order to proliferate their links all over the encyclopedia.
Maybe based on your level, you can moderate, or over-moderate other people?
Sweet idea! So you can start as like a level 1, and if you slay enough vandals you can gain XP which you use to increase your various editing powers! Once you get powerful enough, you can get into the PvP game, where you use your high editor powers to revert and censor other editors!
But seriously. Giving people varying levels of "credibility" or "trust" or whatever really does turn a collaborative effort into a power game. Even with the very limited and fairly egalitarian system Wikipedia uses, there are frequent abuses of "admin" privileges - not to vandalize, but simply to exert personal control over an article or editor. People have been known to strive to get admin privileges solely so that they can have power over other users - sort of the way people abuse mod privileges on Slashdot.
I think the mod system on Slashdot is great, but it's not really a big deal to have control over a Slashdot thread. On Wikipedia, the allure of power on an incredibly popular and high-profile web site is much higher, and the potential for abuse of power therefore much more serious.