That's very interesting, considering the FBI has jurisdiction over child pornography investigations. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no jurisdiction in the matter, so why would they be the ones raiding Tor Relay operators looking for child porn? Do you have any actual cases you can share where ICE is raiding places looking for child porn?
My misrepresentations? I just quoted your own words back to you, champ. You said the state of affairs today is reflective of the way women have " constructed a reality" for themselves.
I don't know what reality you live in, but the one i live in sure isn't one in which the women have written all the laws and seized power in a bloodless coup.
It's not trolling to point out that your reasoning is flawed, and that your conclusions are therefore baseless.
Sorry, but if I require a predetermined mindset to be "capable of understanding your point," then your point wasn't very supportable to begin with. Thanks for letting us know.
I'll see your baseless speculation and conjecture, and raise you an "it's unpossible my hero could be a jerk!"
I am not willing to ever assume guilt whatsoever.
There is a difference between "assuming guilt" and allowing for the possibility that he may actually be a world-class asshole. In the grand scheme of things, it is far more likely that he's a jerk who treated some girls poorly than that he is the target of a "conspiracy" to smear him that involves the US & Swedish governments, two girls who have - by all reports - supported him in the past, and now a member of the Icelandic Parliament who is also an ardent supporter of Wikileaks. I know that the conspiracy answer allows your hero to be a white knight in shining armor, but sometimes people with the best of intentions and motivations in one area also behave badly in other areas of life.
is that he is not actually facing any charges yet.
And you don't think that giving interviews and press statements about the investigation have detracted from his ability to represent Wikileaks at all then?
Nobody's requiring anybody to get permission "to express dissent," so I'm not sure what your point is.
Assange has made quite clear what his viewpoints are, and has stated his criticisms quite clearly. They've been reported by news outlets all over the world. So whose dissent is being stifled again?
I see. So your assertion is that men are incompetent to write fair laws, and so women are to blame for setting up 'unfair' laws and "constructing" a reality for themselves?
Yeah, that stands to logic. And sorry bro, any citation that starts with, ""The Frontman Fallacy" is a term I invented myself," is pretty much a non-starter.
Be honest - no matter what happens, you're going to ascribe it to a conspiracy. Even if he's eventually found guilty and there's solid evidence to support the conviction, you'll simply change your tune to "Yeah, well, the US obviously fabricated that evidence and made the Swedish government dance to its tune."
Things don't have to be common to be of a great deal of concern.
Using your own numbers, then... there is an 8% chance that Assange is being accused falsely, and a 92% chance that he is being accused, and there is something to the accusation.
A simple numerical comparison will tell you which is "more likely" to be the case here (hint: 92 > 8), unless you are suggesting that a full 43% or more (meaning 51% of reported rapes are lies) of the accusations are actually false, but our legal system and standard of proof is so lax that men are constantly railroaded on accusations with no basis in fact.
for a man to turn them down is an assault on the very foundations of the reality the women have constructed
Yes, because women have spent centuries dominating society and constructing a liberal state that clearly favors women and punishes women. I mean, look at all the women in leadership positions in government and industry, jesus, it's a wonder that all men aren't forced to have vasectomies at age 1.
Sorry brother, but if you're going to bitch about the state of the laws today concerning rape, you have to also cop to the fact that by and large, MEN have written them, MEN put them on the books, and MEN enforce them. This bullshit about "women perverting the law" is pretty rhetoric on a site with few women, but it doesn't hold up to the historical facts - namely that in the vast majority of the western world, the laws we live under are primarily written, interpreted, and enforced by men.
No, if he steps down, even temporarily, he would be sending a clear signal that he believes the mission & purpose of Wikileaks is much more important than his own reputation and ego.
And he would give himself time and energy to devote to defending himself against the allegations, wouldn't it be great if he exposed the US government in COURT with evidence they're behind this "character assassination"?
Or, to put it another way, the world may as well just declare that the US government has reiterated its commitment to denying people the ability to disseminate information which is classified.
But yeah, yours sounds better if you're trying to pretend that all of the data being leaked was available via standard freedom of information requests.
It is not uncommon for people in a leadership role to take a "leave of absence" or "administrative leave" when there is an allegation of some sort of impropriety like this. It is usually publicized as "taking time to review the situation with lawyers & mount a defense," by the person taking the leave, and it also sends a clear signal that the "organization" is not embroiled in some sort of tawdry legal battle.
When the case finishes up, if the defendant is declared not guilty, they can step back into their previous role; if they're declared guilty, the organization is not tarred with the "we support and employ rapists/molesters/etc" brush.
If Wikileaks is about more than Mr. Assange's fragile ego, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that he should take an administrative leave from his duties to mount a defense. If this were just an "intelligence operation" to smear Mr. Assange, I think it would be a lot more convincing than the keystone kops operation we've seen so far with charges being levelled and then withdrawn.
so they're not going to do that. Way to discourage good works, folks.
That's as tenuous a conclusion as saying "because you've befriended some poor people on facebook, therefore you're a bad credit risk."
You're sort of ignoring the whole "review of assets" bit that banks and mortgage companies do. "Well, you have millions of dollars in property and investments, but you're friends with a guy who just lost his job. Sorry, can't give you a loan."
Anybody asserting that Facebook is going to be the only thing that determines whether or not you get a loan has an agenda to push.
I guess if you have lots of money to throw around you could give your 18 month old a fragile $600 device, but I think the smarter move would be to go with something designed to survive the kind of abuse kids that age tend to dish out to their toys.
Yes, it's a much better idea to sit them in front of an $800 - 2000 device with latches, ports, springs, hinges, and cords, and other moving parts all over it.
So here's a crazy idea: don't leave the 18-month old child unattended around expensive and fragile electronics of any sort!
I sat with my 22 month old nephew and we played with an iPad for about 2 hours on a recent visit, and he loved it. He had a blast playing with a few different pieces of music software I loaded (Leaf Trombone, Ocarina, some keyboard/synthesizer application, and a drum pad app that he really liked), as well as a couple basic games. Other than a lot of fingerprints all over the screen, it survived just fine, despite him landing a few full force slaps and thumps on the screen.
If you have an iPad, the kid isn't going to destroy it unless you hand him a hammer, an iPad, and walk away for 15 minutes while he stands above a floor surface made entirely of jagged chunks of granite.
Just give them free uncensored access to information and they will soon figure everything out themselves.
Sure, because the people in power who control the infrastructure and the government don't have a vested interest in keeping their population ignorant and subjugated.
I'm sure if the population just asks, the Taliban will run broadband lines to every house in Afghanistan and issue everybody a linux machine, plus a university education.
Don't ask me to judge the United States, I don't know the facts, and I'm certainly not going to take the word of a random poster on slashdot as a basis to form my opinion.
(C WUT I DID THAR?)
Besides, if the US is governed by such horribly evil people, you should be hoping that more and more jihadists are created to topple the US government and enact a nicer Taliban-style government in its place, right?
I mean, since it's not our place to say that Sharia Law and a dark ages outlook on human rights are bad, there's nothing wrong with them, whereas our laws & government are just geared towards invasion & subjugation, and rotten to the core.
The "clueless sucker" argument is enough to explain why someone would buy them the first time.
It's not enough to explain why they *keep* buying apple products, and why Apple products have one of the better customer satisfaction ratings in the industry.
If you buy something and feel that you've been bait-and-switched and your new device absolutely doesn't live up to the marketing hype, you're not going to tell people that you "love" your new purchase, and plan to buy another.
So because other governments (including our own) do evil things, we cannot judge what is and is not evil? If that's the case, by what standard are you judging the US "the most abusive of them all"? If we can't judge the actions of the Taliban to be evil, then how can we judge the US, or any other government, to be evil, or to be engaging in evil activities?
A government that sanctions mutilation as punishment, represses of ~50% of its population, that executes people in public stadiums, that sanctions stoning, that chops off a woman's thumbs for wearing nail polish, that carves off a woman's ears and nose as punishment for running away from a husband she claims is abusive, who harbor and support jihadist training camps... this is naked evil.
To withhold your judgement that they are evil in light of the things we know about them is, as I said, a hallmark either of willful ignorance or of unmitigated laziness. This does not mean that it is then impossible to judge other actions by other governments to be evil, or that everybody fighting the Taliban is "good". Reality has too much nuance for it to be that simple.
tl;dr: Moral relativism is a cute trick, but it is insufficient to make your point.
It's the Apple crowd wading in here telling us we're idiots for wanting the choice - most of us don't care that your devices are crippled, you paid your money, you took your (last) choice, so that leads me to ask why do Apple followers feel the need to evangelise every little decision that the company makes?
Because the person I responded to specifically stated, "I still haven't seen a good argument for wanting the choice to use Flash taken away from you." So I shared my reasoning for why I didn't care that the choice to use Flash was taken away from me.
What blows my mind is that people would buy a phone knowing it doesn't support flash, and then bitch about how their phone doesn't support flash. Or buy one phone that does, and then bitch about how some other phone doesn't. If I felt I needed Flash, I would've bought a Nexus One. They're nice phones from the few minutes I've been able to play with one, and Android is also pretty nice on the models (mostly Samsung & HTC) that I've seen.
I'm not saying "no iPhone user wants Flash," I'm saying "I'm okay with not having flash, because I don't need it, and haven't had any issue using the sites that I use normally." I never said it wasn't anecdotal evidence, and I never said it was generally applicable to all iPhone users. I answered the GP poster's question as to "why" somebody would think it's okay to lose the choice to run Flash. I'm somebody, and I think it's okay, so... why not share my experience?
And, incidentally: your survey doesn't show that "55% of iPhone users" want Flash. It shows that "55% of respondents" think the iPhone should support Flash. Respondents were "anybody with a web browser who decided to respond to the techworld poll." Think that that number probably includes quite a few people who aren't iPhone users? I do.
As far as why I feel it's fair, the answer is simple: you know it's not a feature up-front. There's no deceptive 'iPhone supports flash! buy today!' marketing, and it's not like they rolled out the feature, and then revoked it. It's a design decision - just like they didn't include USB ports & microSD slots, just like they don't support certain Bluetooth profiles.
Who's telling you you're not free to choose? Was there an iPhone that did support Flash, but which they revoked your rights to run Flash on? Was there an iPad that did that? Did they sucker you into buying a device by telling you it would run flash, and then shout "HA HA GOTCHA SUCKER!" after you bought it?
Your choice, when it comes to Flash, is to either buy a device that supports it, or to buy a device that doesn't support it.
When you buy a car, the manufacturer "takes away your choice" to move the car pedals like a bicycle... so if you value foot-pedals, you probably don't want a car as your mode of transport.
Sure, and there's the rub: without somebody drawing the line in the sand and saying "Flash is dead," how do you get out of the rut we're in today, with sites serving buggy, crashy, or just-plain unusable content?
"Everything supports flash" - so why develop any new alternate technologies? Designers have no incentive to do so without a popular device to target that doesn't support their current de facto standard. Remember, before Firefox gained significant popularity, lots of designers wrote IE-only sites, because the alternates to IE were so rare that it simply wasn't worth the cost of developing a site that supported other browsers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's very interesting, considering the FBI has jurisdiction over child pornography investigations. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no jurisdiction in the matter, so why would they be the ones raiding Tor Relay operators looking for child porn? Do you have any actual cases you can share where ICE is raiding places looking for child porn?
My misrepresentations? I just quoted your own words back to you, champ. You said the state of affairs today is reflective of the way women have " constructed a reality" for themselves.
I don't know what reality you live in, but the one i live in sure isn't one in which the women have written all the laws and seized power in a bloodless coup.
It's not trolling to point out that your reasoning is flawed, and that your conclusions are therefore baseless.
Sorry, but if I require a predetermined mindset to be "capable of understanding your point," then your point wasn't very supportable to begin with. Thanks for letting us know.
I'll see your baseless speculation and conjecture, and raise you an "it's unpossible my hero could be a jerk!"
There is a difference between "assuming guilt" and allowing for the possibility that he may actually be a world-class asshole. In the grand scheme of things, it is far more likely that he's a jerk who treated some girls poorly than that he is the target of a "conspiracy" to smear him that involves the US & Swedish governments, two girls who have - by all reports - supported him in the past, and now a member of the Icelandic Parliament who is also an ardent supporter of Wikileaks. I know that the conspiracy answer allows your hero to be a white knight in shining armor, but sometimes people with the best of intentions and motivations in one area also behave badly in other areas of life.
And you don't think that giving interviews and press statements about the investigation have detracted from his ability to represent Wikileaks at all then?
Nobody's requiring anybody to get permission "to express dissent," so I'm not sure what your point is.
Assange has made quite clear what his viewpoints are, and has stated his criticisms quite clearly. They've been reported by news outlets all over the world. So whose dissent is being stifled again?
I see. So your assertion is that men are incompetent to write fair laws, and so women are to blame for setting up 'unfair' laws and "constructing" a reality for themselves?
Yeah, that stands to logic. And sorry bro, any citation that starts with, ""The Frontman Fallacy" is a term I invented myself," is pretty much a non-starter.
Be honest - no matter what happens, you're going to ascribe it to a conspiracy. Even if he's eventually found guilty and there's solid evidence to support the conviction, you'll simply change your tune to "Yeah, well, the US obviously fabricated that evidence and made the Swedish government dance to its tune."
Using your own numbers, then... there is an 8% chance that Assange is being accused falsely, and a 92% chance that he is being accused, and there is something to the accusation.
A simple numerical comparison will tell you which is "more likely" to be the case here (hint: 92 > 8), unless you are suggesting that a full 43% or more (meaning 51% of reported rapes are lies) of the accusations are actually false, but our legal system and standard of proof is so lax that men are constantly railroaded on accusations with no basis in fact.
Yes, because women have spent centuries dominating society and constructing a liberal state that clearly favors women and punishes women. I mean, look at all the women in leadership positions in government and industry, jesus, it's a wonder that all men aren't forced to have vasectomies at age 1.
Sorry brother, but if you're going to bitch about the state of the laws today concerning rape, you have to also cop to the fact that by and large, MEN have written them, MEN put them on the books, and MEN enforce them. This bullshit about "women perverting the law" is pretty rhetoric on a site with few women, but it doesn't hold up to the historical facts - namely that in the vast majority of the western world, the laws we live under are primarily written, interpreted, and enforced by men.
No, if he steps down, even temporarily, he would be sending a clear signal that he believes the mission & purpose of Wikileaks is much more important than his own reputation and ego.
And he would give himself time and energy to devote to defending himself against the allegations, wouldn't it be great if he exposed the US government in COURT with evidence they're behind this "character assassination"?
Or, to put it another way, the world may as well just declare that the US government has reiterated its commitment to denying people the ability to disseminate information which is classified.
But yeah, yours sounds better if you're trying to pretend that all of the data being leaked was available via standard freedom of information requests.
It is not uncommon for people in a leadership role to take a "leave of absence" or "administrative leave" when there is an allegation of some sort of impropriety like this. It is usually publicized as "taking time to review the situation with lawyers & mount a defense," by the person taking the leave, and it also sends a clear signal that the "organization" is not embroiled in some sort of tawdry legal battle.
When the case finishes up, if the defendant is declared not guilty, they can step back into their previous role; if they're declared guilty, the organization is not tarred with the "we support and employ rapists/molesters/etc" brush.
If Wikileaks is about more than Mr. Assange's fragile ego, then it's not unreasonable to suggest that he should take an administrative leave from his duties to mount a defense. If this were just an "intelligence operation" to smear Mr. Assange, I think it would be a lot more convincing than the keystone kops operation we've seen so far with charges being levelled and then withdrawn.
Yes, if you're paranoid and have no notion of how credit scores work, you should do this immediately.
That's as tenuous a conclusion as saying "because you've befriended some poor people on facebook, therefore you're a bad credit risk."
You're sort of ignoring the whole "review of assets" bit that banks and mortgage companies do. "Well, you have millions of dollars in property and investments, but you're friends with a guy who just lost his job. Sorry, can't give you a loan."
Anybody asserting that Facebook is going to be the only thing that determines whether or not you get a loan has an agenda to push.
You are correct, sir! It just requires a few all-nighters hacking on the org chart, dintchoo know?
Don't go ASKING for them. You'll learn quickly that there's plenty of room for blue balls in a house with a new child. :)
Yes, it's a much better idea to sit them in front of an $800 - 2000 device with latches, ports, springs, hinges, and cords, and other moving parts all over it.
So here's a crazy idea: don't leave the 18-month old child unattended around expensive and fragile electronics of any sort!
I sat with my 22 month old nephew and we played with an iPad for about 2 hours on a recent visit, and he loved it. He had a blast playing with a few different pieces of music software I loaded (Leaf Trombone, Ocarina, some keyboard/synthesizer application, and a drum pad app that he really liked), as well as a couple basic games. Other than a lot of fingerprints all over the screen, it survived just fine, despite him landing a few full force slaps and thumps on the screen.
If you have an iPad, the kid isn't going to destroy it unless you hand him a hammer, an iPad, and walk away for 15 minutes while he stands above a floor surface made entirely of jagged chunks of granite.
Sure, because the people in power who control the infrastructure and the government don't have a vested interest in keeping their population ignorant and subjugated.
I'm sure if the population just asks, the Taliban will run broadband lines to every house in Afghanistan and issue everybody a linux machine, plus a university education.
Your idealism is noble, but a bit naive.
Don't ask me to judge the United States, I don't know the facts, and I'm certainly not going to take the word of a random poster on slashdot as a basis to form my opinion.
(C WUT I DID THAR?)
Besides, if the US is governed by such horribly evil people, you should be hoping that more and more jihadists are created to topple the US government and enact a nicer Taliban-style government in its place, right?
I mean, since it's not our place to say that Sharia Law and a dark ages outlook on human rights are bad, there's nothing wrong with them, whereas our laws & government are just geared towards invasion & subjugation, and rotten to the core.
Right?
The "clueless sucker" argument is enough to explain why someone would buy them the first time.
It's not enough to explain why they *keep* buying apple products, and why Apple products have one of the better customer satisfaction ratings in the industry.
If you buy something and feel that you've been bait-and-switched and your new device absolutely doesn't live up to the marketing hype, you're not going to tell people that you "love" your new purchase, and plan to buy another.
So because other governments (including our own) do evil things, we cannot judge what is and is not evil? If that's the case, by what standard are you judging the US "the most abusive of them all"? If we can't judge the actions of the Taliban to be evil, then how can we judge the US, or any other government, to be evil, or to be engaging in evil activities?
A government that sanctions mutilation as punishment, represses of ~50% of its population, that executes people in public stadiums, that sanctions stoning, that chops off a woman's thumbs for wearing nail polish, that carves off a woman's ears and nose as punishment for running away from a husband she claims is abusive, who harbor and support jihadist training camps... this is naked evil.
To withhold your judgement that they are evil in light of the things we know about them is, as I said, a hallmark either of willful ignorance or of unmitigated laziness. This does not mean that it is then impossible to judge other actions by other governments to be evil, or that everybody fighting the Taliban is "good". Reality has too much nuance for it to be that simple.
tl;dr: Moral relativism is a cute trick, but it is insufficient to make your point.
Because the person I responded to specifically stated, "I still haven't seen a good argument for wanting the choice to use Flash taken away from you." So I shared my reasoning for why I didn't care that the choice to use Flash was taken away from me.
What blows my mind is that people would buy a phone knowing it doesn't support flash, and then bitch about how their phone doesn't support flash. Or buy one phone that does, and then bitch about how some other phone doesn't. If I felt I needed Flash, I would've bought a Nexus One. They're nice phones from the few minutes I've been able to play with one, and Android is also pretty nice on the models (mostly Samsung & HTC) that I've seen.
I'm not saying "no iPhone user wants Flash," I'm saying "I'm okay with not having flash, because I don't need it, and haven't had any issue using the sites that I use normally." I never said it wasn't anecdotal evidence, and I never said it was generally applicable to all iPhone users. I answered the GP poster's question as to "why" somebody would think it's okay to lose the choice to run Flash. I'm somebody, and I think it's okay, so... why not share my experience?
And, incidentally: your survey doesn't show that "55% of iPhone users" want Flash. It shows that "55% of respondents" think the iPhone should support Flash. Respondents were "anybody with a web browser who decided to respond to the techworld poll." Think that that number probably includes quite a few people who aren't iPhone users? I do.
As far as why I feel it's fair, the answer is simple: you know it's not a feature up-front. There's no deceptive 'iPhone supports flash! buy today!' marketing, and it's not like they rolled out the feature, and then revoked it. It's a design decision - just like they didn't include USB ports & microSD slots, just like they don't support certain Bluetooth profiles.
Who's telling you you're not free to choose? Was there an iPhone that did support Flash, but which they revoked your rights to run Flash on? Was there an iPad that did that? Did they sucker you into buying a device by telling you it would run flash, and then shout "HA HA GOTCHA SUCKER!" after you bought it?
Your choice, when it comes to Flash, is to either buy a device that supports it, or to buy a device that doesn't support it.
When you buy a car, the manufacturer "takes away your choice" to move the car pedals like a bicycle... so if you value foot-pedals, you probably don't want a car as your mode of transport.
Sure, and there's the rub: without somebody drawing the line in the sand and saying "Flash is dead," how do you get out of the rut we're in today, with sites serving buggy, crashy, or just-plain unusable content?
"Everything supports flash" - so why develop any new alternate technologies? Designers have no incentive to do so without a popular device to target that doesn't support their current de facto standard. Remember, before Firefox gained significant popularity, lots of designers wrote IE-only sites, because the alternates to IE were so rare that it simply wasn't worth the cost of developing a site that supported other browsers.