Take a look at the collateral murder video before making statements like this:
Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.
Note that the helicopter pilots had to radio in for permission to kill the people on the ground (they did get that permission, of course) -- the Romans would not have had to radio in. A group of Roman soldiers would have slaughtered the people with weapons, and probably the "historians" (i.e. reporters) that were there with them, without first asking a higher level commander for permission. The "rules of engagement" in Roman times were not quite what they are today: the Romans won many battles by simply laying siege and letting people starve to death (can you find an instance of the United States Army laying siege and waiting for people to starve to death?).
Yes, the weapons are more deadly. The tactics and rules, however, are a lot less brutal. Yes, warfare is still brutal, but we really do hold back our armies. If you want to see what less restraint looks like, take a look at what is happening along the Congo-Rwanda border, and you will see the kind of restrain the US army is showing in Iraq.
This is not a "troll" post, it is a post that basically reiterates what Wikileaks said about the collateral murder video. Information about a war in a foreign country is not secret from the people living in that country, but for some reason our government wants to keep it secret from us.
In fact, those nuclear weapons have made the world far less safe, for the simple reason that retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike is not only absolutely certain, but would also carry with it extremely destructive consequences for the entire planet. We have come right to the brink of destruction multiple times now, because of human or computer error, or poor diplomacy.
What have we gained from this precarious position? Only peace between a handful of countries who keep their fingers on the trigger. The rest of the world still has war, with all the brutality, violence, and war crimes that come with it, and in several cases those wars are with (or were with, in the case of wars that occurred in the past) the very countries that have nuclear stockpiles.
It is absurd to claim that humanity is safer now than we were before the arms race. We live on the brink of destruction, and while we all go about our lives feeling safe, there are people who spend their time ensuring that at any moment, any country in the world could be completely destroyed, and others whose jobs involve planning how the entire world could be destroyed if some other country decides to execute a nuclear strike.
Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them?
In fact, sometimes we do, in countries where people are labeled "criminals" for being members of the wrong political groups or other abuses of human rights.
Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything
In fact, the Wikileaks volunteers do review the material that is submitted to them to ensure that it is not personal information about someone or other private information. They are not there to "release everything," they are there to release information that is of political or historical interest that some group of people is deliberately trying to keep secret from the public. You may disagree with that specific goal, but the least you could do is refrain from criticizing Wikileaks for things that they do not do.
Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release.
They did release it, so what is your point? The commentary on the video is their own take on it, but do not present this as them trying to hide the truth from people -- anyone can download an unedited copy.
Wikileaks released an unedited version of the collateral murder video, which anyone else could add commentary about the weapons to. Assange also explained the decision not to include commentary on the RPG, which was that in their opinion, the supposed RPG may have been a camera tripod.
The leaking of secret societies' material is in line with Wikileaks guidelines: Unless otherwise specified, the document described here...Is of political, diplomatic, ethical or historical significance. (emphasis mine).
As the article you quoted pointed out, Wikileaks did remove a book after being contacted about it. Yes, Wikileaks is run by humans, and humans do make mistakes, and at least they corrected that mistake when pressed on it. It is not like the Wikileaks staff went out searching for books to publish on their site; someone outside of Wikileaks thought it would be worthwhile for Wikileaks to publish the book.
Frankly, given that the US government has a plan in place to discredit Wikileaks (which was, of course, leaked on Wikileaks), any article which takes an overtly negative tone of Wikileaks is immediately suspect. Anything that criticizes Wikileaks without at least mentioning that it is an organization of loosely connected volunteers should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks, and we really should not be perpetuating it.
Well, admittedly, I do not have a great deal of experience in business settings where distributing internal modifications is a strategic problem (in fact, I have no such experience), so such a scenario is foreign to me. I was under the impression, however, that "works for hire" did not trigger the GPL distribution clauses (hence why an employee cannot claim a GPL violation if he leaves the company and wants to take code with him), and that contractor work would count as such "work for hire." I guess that lawyers will have to hash that one out.
How many of those grad students' Apple products were purchased with grant money (or otherwise supplied by their advisers)? My adviser sent an email out a few months back offering to buy us new computers of our choosing, up to a certain price which happened to be high enough for some of the lower end Apple products, and some of the students in our group opted for the Apple products (personally, I got a Dell "Precision" and discovered that, in fact, it kicks the pants off the Apple computers in the same price range).
That is all great except for the part where you claim that iAds is going to help libre software developers. Why would a libre software developer want to incorporate a proprietary, anti-user-freedom advertising platform into their code?
Or did you think "free software" was a reference to the price?
Does your company distribute the modifications you make? If not, and it sounds like they do not, then there is no problem other than your poor understanding of the GPL. If they do, and they insist upon releasing proprietary software, then you are stuck reinventing the wheel, plain and simple, and I really see no problem with that. If the community is going to do the right thing and release libre software, why should your company try to turn it into proprietary software?
This explains, of course, why the constitution explicitly forbids a particular group of people -- the government -- from doing certain things that individuals are not forbidden to do.
Why should any of us give a damn about freedoms for corporations? Take a look at the constitution of the United States of America some time, and you might notice that the document does not make many guarantees about freedoms for enterprises or corporations of any sort, although it does explicitly grant power to regulate commerce.
It means that their profits will not increase as rapidly as they increase right now. Yes, amazingly, that has become the definition of "bad for corporations."
You seem to be confused about the meaning of net neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with what information is allowed on the Internet. Net neutrality regulations are concerned with the level of service that ISPs provide -- in particular, we are talking about a requirement that ISPs provide non-discriminatory service.
Yes, I know, the government is involved, so automatically we should be distrustful. Never mind that it was Comcast that was caught deliberately interfering with BitTorrent traffic, and when this particular government agency told them to stop (an unequivocally pro-consumer move), Comcast sued them for it. Never mind that Time Warner, a company which controls both the production and distribution of a tremendous amount of news and entertainment, has been airing commercials on its cable networks opposing net neutrality.
Unfortunately, our elected representatives no longer represent our interests. Case in point: both democrats and republics in congress are taking a stand against net neutrality regulations, and there just are not enough third party representatives right now.
"OMG THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO CONTROL THE INTERNET!"
That is what typical people who do not understand the net neutrality issue think when they hear that the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality. It does not help that Fox news, the most popular news network in America, has people like Glenn Beck calling net neutrality a socialist plot.
Every Mac OS X user on this planet knows that there is an alternative -- Apple's entire marketing strategy is based on conveying the idea that the choice is between Windows and Mac OS X. Now, whether those user are aware of the dozens of other alternatives out there is another story.
They need to be able to run their applications on them, in exactly the same way they already run those applications
Not in my experience. I have seen people with no technical expertise at all switch from Windows to Fedora (GNOME) and have little difficulty after the first day or so.
The real impediment to people switching away from Apple's products is the amount of effort Apple has put into their marketing campaign. People are convinced that Apple's desktops and laptops are in a completely different category from every other company's desktops and laptops, and that Mac OS X is the greatest operating system in the entire world (never mind that PC-BSD is considered the easiest operating system to learn how to use, and that Mac OS X is routinely cracked faster than its competitors at pwn2own). People are willing to pay a substantial premium for Apple's computers and software, and that adds to their belief that they are getting something better than anything else out there.
Apple's customers also do not care about the issues that gave rise to the GPL -- just look at iPhone and iPad sales. Telling an Apple customer that switching to a libre operating system will free them from Apple's tactics is pointless, since they do not perceive Apple's tactics as a problem. All they see is software that they are convinced is better than everything else, and someone who is telling them that they should switch to be free of a problem they don't think they have.
If Apple wanted to subsidize Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, they would just release a version that runs on non-Apple hardware and charge more for it.
That issue has nothing to do with money, it has to do with marketing -- they have worked very hard for people to make a distinction between Macintosh and every other PC out there, and ensuring that their software only runs on Macintosh computers is part of that effort.
I bet schools would even jump on this to start saving some money
I hope they don't; the last thing we need is for children and teenagers to be exposed to even more advertising. Things are bad enough as is, we really need to be removing advertisements from schools instead of inviting even more in.
When have schools flocked to free (beer) software? It is rare to see schools using no cost operating systems, despite their wide availability. If schools migrated to an ad-supported Mac OS X, it would be because someone from Apple came to a school board meeting and gave a 4 hour presentation about how great it is for the school district to rely on Apple for software.
Keep in mind that Apple has, in the past, crippled the ability of users to debug certain processes in Mac OS X -- processes like iTunes -- presumably because they had a vested interest in thwarting those users. What makes you think that they would allow you to run kill on a process that makes them money?
Personally, I want to say that this is just FUD. Much as I disagree with Apple's tactics, I do not think they would bother shoving iAds in Mac OS X; I think it is more likely that they will just shove iOS (with iAds) onto more product lines, and reserve OS X for their most expensive workstations.
Well the only key I heard of being cracked was a 512 bit RSA key. I have heard that some of the newer calculators are using ECC, so it will be even harder to crack.
you're entitled to distribute it (if you can get it in the first place)
If I can get it in the first place. Did you give it to me, or did I illegally enter your home and take it?
If you give it to me, ask me to not give it to others, and then I choose to be an asshole and give it to others, then that makes me untrustworthy, but that is about it. You cannot claim that as someone who produced some creative work, you have the absolute right to dictate that some group of people is allowed to have it, and some group is never allowed to have it. In fact, we have a requirement that copyrights expire and that creative works enter the public domain for that very reason: people who make creative works are not gods.
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Our weaponry and style of war is far more ruthless today than the Romans could've ever dreamed of.
Note that the helicopter pilots had to radio in for permission to kill the people on the ground (they did get that permission, of course) -- the Romans would not have had to radio in. A group of Roman soldiers would have slaughtered the people with weapons, and probably the "historians" (i.e. reporters) that were there with them, without first asking a higher level commander for permission. The "rules of engagement" in Roman times were not quite what they are today: the Romans won many battles by simply laying siege and letting people starve to death (can you find an instance of the United States Army laying siege and waiting for people to starve to death?).
Yes, the weapons are more deadly. The tactics and rules, however, are a lot less brutal. Yes, warfare is still brutal, but we really do hold back our armies. If you want to see what less restraint looks like, take a look at what is happening along the Congo-Rwanda border, and you will see the kind of restrain the US army is showing in Iraq.
This is not a "troll" post, it is a post that basically reiterates what Wikileaks said about the collateral murder video. Information about a war in a foreign country is not secret from the people living in that country, but for some reason our government wants to keep it secret from us.
In fact, those nuclear weapons have made the world far less safe, for the simple reason that retaliation in the event of a nuclear strike is not only absolutely certain, but would also carry with it extremely destructive consequences for the entire planet. We have come right to the brink of destruction multiple times now, because of human or computer error, or poor diplomacy.
What have we gained from this precarious position? Only peace between a handful of countries who keep their fingers on the trigger. The rest of the world still has war, with all the brutality, violence, and war crimes that come with it, and in several cases those wars are with (or were with, in the case of wars that occurred in the past) the very countries that have nuclear stockpiles.
It is absurd to claim that humanity is safer now than we were before the arms race. We live on the brink of destruction, and while we all go about our lives feeling safe, there are people who spend their time ensuring that at any moment, any country in the world could be completely destroyed, and others whose jobs involve planning how the entire world could be destroyed if some other country decides to execute a nuclear strike.
None of that makes me feel very safe.
Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them?
In fact, sometimes we do, in countries where people are labeled "criminals" for being members of the wrong political groups or other abuses of human rights.
Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything
In fact, the Wikileaks volunteers do review the material that is submitted to them to ensure that it is not personal information about someone or other private information. They are not there to "release everything," they are there to release information that is of political or historical interest that some group of people is deliberately trying to keep secret from the public. You may disagree with that specific goal, but the least you could do is refrain from criticizing Wikileaks for things that they do not do.
Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release.
They did release it, so what is your point? The commentary on the video is their own take on it, but do not present this as them trying to hide the truth from people -- anyone can download an unedited copy.
Frankly, given that the US government has a plan in place to discredit Wikileaks (which was, of course, leaked on Wikileaks), any article which takes an overtly negative tone of Wikileaks is immediately suspect. Anything that criticizes Wikileaks without at least mentioning that it is an organization of loosely connected volunteers should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks, and we really should not be perpetuating it.
Well, admittedly, I do not have a great deal of experience in business settings where distributing internal modifications is a strategic problem (in fact, I have no such experience), so such a scenario is foreign to me. I was under the impression, however, that "works for hire" did not trigger the GPL distribution clauses (hence why an employee cannot claim a GPL violation if he leaves the company and wants to take code with him), and that contractor work would count as such "work for hire." I guess that lawyers will have to hash that one out.
How many of those grad students' Apple products were purchased with grant money (or otherwise supplied by their advisers)? My adviser sent an email out a few months back offering to buy us new computers of our choosing, up to a certain price which happened to be high enough for some of the lower end Apple products, and some of the students in our group opted for the Apple products (personally, I got a Dell "Precision" and discovered that, in fact, it kicks the pants off the Apple computers in the same price range).
That is all great except for the part where you claim that iAds is going to help libre software developers. Why would a libre software developer want to incorporate a proprietary, anti-user-freedom advertising platform into their code?
Or did you think "free software" was a reference to the price?
Does your company distribute the modifications you make? If not, and it sounds like they do not, then there is no problem other than your poor understanding of the GPL. If they do, and they insist upon releasing proprietary software, then you are stuck reinventing the wheel, plain and simple, and I really see no problem with that. If the community is going to do the right thing and release libre software, why should your company try to turn it into proprietary software?
This explains, of course, why the constitution explicitly forbids a particular group of people -- the government -- from doing certain things that individuals are not forbidden to do.
Why should any of us give a damn about freedoms for corporations? Take a look at the constitution of the United States of America some time, and you might notice that the document does not make many guarantees about freedoms for enterprises or corporations of any sort, although it does explicitly grant power to regulate commerce.
It means that their profits will not increase as rapidly as they increase right now. Yes, amazingly, that has become the definition of "bad for corporations."
When did Democrats start leaning left? When last I checked, they were a centrist party.
You seem to be confused about the meaning of net neutrality. Net neutrality has nothing to do with what information is allowed on the Internet. Net neutrality regulations are concerned with the level of service that ISPs provide -- in particular, we are talking about a requirement that ISPs provide non-discriminatory service.
Yes, I know, the government is involved, so automatically we should be distrustful. Never mind that it was Comcast that was caught deliberately interfering with BitTorrent traffic, and when this particular government agency told them to stop (an unequivocally pro-consumer move), Comcast sued them for it. Never mind that Time Warner, a company which controls both the production and distribution of a tremendous amount of news and entertainment, has been airing commercials on its cable networks opposing net neutrality.
Unfortunately, our elected representatives no longer represent our interests. Case in point: both democrats and republics in congress are taking a stand against net neutrality regulations, and there just are not enough third party representatives right now.
How about the FCC's action on Comcasts' interference with BitTorrent traffic?
"OMG THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO CONTROL THE INTERNET!"
That is what typical people who do not understand the net neutrality issue think when they hear that the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality. It does not help that Fox news, the most popular news network in America, has people like Glenn Beck calling net neutrality a socialist plot.
Hm...a flock of birds that performs surveillance...where have I heard that one before...
They need to know there are alternatives
Every Mac OS X user on this planet knows that there is an alternative -- Apple's entire marketing strategy is based on conveying the idea that the choice is between Windows and Mac OS X. Now, whether those user are aware of the dozens of other alternatives out there is another story.
They need to be able to run their applications on them, in exactly the same way they already run those applications
Not in my experience. I have seen people with no technical expertise at all switch from Windows to Fedora (GNOME) and have little difficulty after the first day or so.
The real impediment to people switching away from Apple's products is the amount of effort Apple has put into their marketing campaign. People are convinced that Apple's desktops and laptops are in a completely different category from every other company's desktops and laptops, and that Mac OS X is the greatest operating system in the entire world (never mind that PC-BSD is considered the easiest operating system to learn how to use, and that Mac OS X is routinely cracked faster than its competitors at pwn2own). People are willing to pay a substantial premium for Apple's computers and software, and that adds to their belief that they are getting something better than anything else out there.
Apple's customers also do not care about the issues that gave rise to the GPL -- just look at iPhone and iPad sales. Telling an Apple customer that switching to a libre operating system will free them from Apple's tactics is pointless, since they do not perceive Apple's tactics as a problem. All they see is software that they are convinced is better than everything else, and someone who is telling them that they should switch to be free of a problem they don't think they have.
If Apple wanted to subsidize Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, they would just release a version that runs on non-Apple hardware and charge more for it.
That issue has nothing to do with money, it has to do with marketing -- they have worked very hard for people to make a distinction between Macintosh and every other PC out there, and ensuring that their software only runs on Macintosh computers is part of that effort.
I bet schools would even jump on this to start saving some money
Keep in mind that Apple has, in the past, crippled the ability of users to debug certain processes in Mac OS X -- processes like iTunes -- presumably because they had a vested interest in thwarting those users. What makes you think that they would allow you to run kill on a process that makes them money?
Personally, I want to say that this is just FUD. Much as I disagree with Apple's tactics, I do not think they would bother shoving iAds in Mac OS X; I think it is more likely that they will just shove iOS (with iAds) onto more product lines, and reserve OS X for their most expensive workstations.
Is this not a fairly routine tactic?
Well the only key I heard of being cracked was a 512 bit RSA key. I have heard that some of the newer calculators are using ECC, so it will be even harder to crack.
you're entitled to distribute it (if you can get it in the first place)
If I can get it in the first place. Did you give it to me, or did I illegally enter your home and take it?
If you give it to me, ask me to not give it to others, and then I choose to be an asshole and give it to others, then that makes me untrustworthy, but that is about it. You cannot claim that as someone who produced some creative work, you have the absolute right to dictate that some group of people is allowed to have it, and some group is never allowed to have it. In fact, we have a requirement that copyrights expire and that creative works enter the public domain for that very reason: people who make creative works are not gods.