quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
The legality of that seems tenuous at best. I bet it'll be back up somewhere...

I don't know, I think Wikileaks is going to have a hard time demonstrating a compelling public interest.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I think information being freely available will help the world in the long run. Keeping secrets only helps people anecdotally, not pervasively, in my opinion.

Secrets protect the few, mostly, and often at the expense of the many.

Really? OK. Post your full name, Social Security number or equivalent, credit card number, ATM card number, PINs, and security code. Also, the names of all your sexual partners in the last two years would be appreciated.

Don't hold back now: this information wants to be free. For the good of us all.

Awesome. When he's done with that, I'm going to post some plans for advanced, miniaturized nuclear warheads, as well as The Idiot's Guide to Constructing Nukes.

Give that a few years to germinate, and I figure we'll get to two or three cities disappearing every week. The cockroaches are going to love all that free information floating around.

Don't be rude, Split: do you think Tiger68 can afford that sort of bandwidth overage?

But, but! The information! IT WANTS TO BE FREEEEEEEEE! Run, little informations! Run! Fly away! Be FREEEEEEEEE!

Sigh.

You guys are frightening.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: UberDog,

Oh, come on. It's always funny when lofty, naive academic ideals get beaten like Indian laundry on the rock of reality.

L M A O !

Goose, Gander and all that....

Seriously, nothing but low stress hazing. These pussies wouldn't last a week in an American high school back in the 80's.

Sir Charles (Barkley) supports "marriage equality" (the new code words for gay marriage rights) and Obama:
http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/ct/c1s2pPF1rY3K/

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Sigh.

You guys are frightening.

What? In another thread you said, "It's one of those things where you have to decide whether you want information to be free or not." Well, now it's your turn to decide. If you want information to be freely accessible, if you really think that secrets are a tool to protect the few at the expense of the many, then I think it's fair to ask you to start by putting an end your own secrets first. So put your money where your mouth is.

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
Oh, come on. It's always funny when lofty, naive academic ideals get beaten like Indian laundry on the rock of reality.

It isn't an ideal. The naive thing is to suppose that information can be controlled. that's the mug's game here.

It can't.

Humans are not in control of their culture, they haven't been in long time, maybe ever. It's optimistic, IMO, to think that big muscley governments control things, but they don't. Systems control things, systems we aren't running any more.

Technology is a force unto itself. We cannot suppress information "because it wants to be free" it doesn't want anything. It's like a virus and it will outstrip us all.

I find that, semi-ironically, proponents of big government, strong states and seeming "cynical" world views on man actually are the most optimistic because they still believe they have control over their lives.

The world persists despite all our attempts to pause it and ever shall.

Thinking otherwise is postively romantic to my mind.

quote:

Originally posted by BlueShift:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Sigh.

You guys are frightening.

What? In another thread you said, "It's one of those things where you have to decide whether you want information to be free or not." Well, now it's your turn to decide. If you want information to be freely accessible, if you really think that secrets are a tool to protect the few at the expense of the many, then I think it's fair to ask you to start by putting an end your own secrets first. So put your money where your mouth is.

That's a specious line of reasoning.

I'm not saying that information needs to be broadcast, I'm saying that attempts to hide it are largely futile if people want to find it. I'm also suggesting it operates independently of the humans who generate it.

What protects me is not that my information is well guarded but that is has no value.

Whereas Prince Harry's is well guarded and has high value.

But you are making an anecdotal argument and I am making a macroscopic observation which I find is much of the differences in the debating between myself and others here.

In addition to my propensity to skim text and post from the hip, of course. But I'm not here to win any arguments, I'm just here to hang outish.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Whereas Prince Harry's is well guarded and has high value.

Value? Value?! Christ, are you stuck in a small, poorly ventilated room with an open can of paint thinner?

You've got exactly ten seconds...actually, ten days (still won't make it any easier) to name something good a member of a royal family, any royal family, has done for society. "Charity" work, whereby they fly to Darfur for a day, in a Gucci flak jacket and YSL K-pot, to bemoan the plight of the poor natives there before flying back to the Burj al-Arab doesn't count. Feeding the tablods doesn't count, either.

Shit, Angelina Jolie does that, and she's got a better rack.

He's talking about the information, not the person.

I find I'm agreeing with Uberdog here. There is a difference between him wanting his information to be free, which he rightly doesn't, and the general idea that information wants to be free.

While the specific information about Harry was highly valued and guarded, I expect the press were forced into secrecy because the freely available information about Harry (the fact that he hasn't been seen stumbling out of West End night clubs for 10 weeks for instance) would have blown the story anyway.

quote:

I expect the press were forced into secrecy because the freely available information about Harry (the fact that he hasn't been seen stumbling out of West End night clubs for 10 weeks for instance) would have blown the story anyway.

According the the brit media they were asked to keep it quiet and did so. It seems that CNN was part of the agreement too. There was a caveat to the deal, if Harry did anything non-military the deal was off. So no club hopping in Kabul is what the article I read said about it.



Offhand I don't get the pulling him out thing. Do you really think anybody can tell the difference between one pasty faced brit in a helmet and all the others?

If he was killed though it would have limited the options of the Brit government I guess. With a pissed off Brit public the UK couldn't pull out of Afghanistan without appearing weak. After the London bombing the UK used rising Brit anger to justify and greater involvement in the war. How important are the royals in the UK? Americans tend to be fascinated by them since we never had royalty of our own.

My take is that it's not to protect him nearly as much as it is to avoid putting his comrades at increased risk since he's a bigger, more desirable target than random coalition forces (or whatever they're called).

quote:

Originally posted by Kradlum:
He's talking about the information, not the person.

I find I'm agreeing with Uberdog here. There is a difference between him wanting his information to be free, which he rightly doesn't, and the general idea that information wants to be free.

While the specific information about Harry was highly valued and guarded, I expect the press were forced into secrecy because the freely available information about Harry (the fact that he hasn't been seen stumbling out of West End night clubs for 10 weeks for instance) would have blown the story anyway.

Krad is right, I'm talking baout Harry's info being valuable to The Sun and the like, whereas my whereabout are, as yet, unlikely to sell tabloids.

quote:

Originally posted by theminx:
random coalition forces (or whatever they're called).

Other Targets.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I find that, semi-ironically, proponents of big government, strong states and seeming "cynical" world views on man actually are the most optimistic because they still believe they have control over their lives.

The world persists despite all our attempts to pause it and ever shall.

Thinking otherwise is postively romantic to my mind.

I was once stuck in an airport with a friend of a coworker who claimed that the President of the United States had no effect whatsoever on the policies of the US government. He was very upset that I, supposedly a person with an interest and some education in politics, would not argue this with him. My position was that his argument was so fundamentally idiotic that it was too painful to lower myself to the level of arguing it. It was like arguing the existence of oxygen, or of the sun. There is a reason most adults have no interest in arguing matters of substance with children.

I'm suffering a bit of deja vu for that day in the airport here, as I often do when engaging you, but we sally forth nonetheless.

What you perceive as a belief that lives (including our own) can be "controlled" is really a belief that lives are influenced by outside forces. That most people's decisions are influenced by the reactions they can expect from others. Governments can and do exercise various kinds of influence on people's lives. Usually coercive influence. I know you see that as awful and all. But having used the coercive power of the state to stop people from raping little girls or killing people, I reserve the right to maintain a grayer view of state power.

Governments cannot perfectly control anything. However, they can offer incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors which influence people's actions. It's not black and white, and it's not simple. So I know it hurts your brain to think about it, but that's what I believe at any rate. Perhaps someone else here believes that states or individuals are capable of perfect control, but I sincerely doubt that.

quote:

Originally posted by Splitcoil:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I find that, semi-ironically, proponents of big government, strong states and seeming "cynical" world views on man actually are the most optimistic because they still believe they have control over their lives.

The world persists despite all our attempts to pause it and ever shall.

Thinking otherwise is postively romantic to my mind.

I was once stuck in an airport with a friend of a coworker who claimed that the President of the United States had no effect whatsoever on the policies of the US government. He was very upset that I, supposedly a person with an interest and some education in politics, would not argue this with him. My position was that his argument was so fundamentally idiotic that it was too painful to lower myself to the level of arguing it. It was like arguing the existence of oxygen, or of the sun. There is a reason most adults have no interest in arguing matters of substance with children.

I'm suffering a bit of deja vu for that day in the airport here, as I often do when engaging you, but we sally forth nonetheless.

What you perceive as a belief that lives (including our own) can be "controlled" is really a belief that lives are influenced by outside forces. That most people's decisions are influenced by the reactions they can expect from others. Governments can and do exercise various kinds of influence on people's lives. Usually coercive influence. I know you see that as awful and all. But having used the coercive power of the state to stop people from raping little girls or killing people, I reserve the right to maintain a grayer view of state power.

Governments cannot perfectly control anything. However, they can offer incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors which influence people's actions. It's not black and white, and it's not simple. So I know it hurts your brain to think about it, but that's what I believe at any rate. Perhaps someone else here believes that states or individuals are capable of perfect control, but I sincerely doubt that.

It doesn't hurt my brain at all because it's a simplistic position.

I don't see coercion as awful or any such thing.

I just find the illusion of control people that I perceive to be like yourself to be childlike.

What you think of as a reasonable argument, is, to my mind, the spouting of one inculcated into a certain methodology of limited thought. Which is likely necessary for you given your various hints at your super secret work.

I assume your opinion gets you through the day.

But perhaps I am entirely wrong about you as you are about what I am discussing which really has nothing to do with anything you've mentioned.

I find your line of reasoning simplistic, Split, that's my real problem with it. It feels canned and overdone. Endemic of the reality in which you no doubt inhabit but increasingly outdated by a larger world that is leaving said microcosm behind.

If you want to play super ninja or whatever it is you purport to be, gun yourself up and do whatever it is you do for the government, that's your affair.

I just don't think the world you see through your Starlight Scope is the world as it actually marches forward through history. It reminds me of the views of the current administration who seem to think the globe is their sandbox and the rest of the world no longer wants to play with the petulant child.

What you call power I call reflexive fear.

What you call control I call a delusion.

Can the government make people do things? Sure.

But that isn't what I'm talking about, in fact, the desire and implementation of control is rather a distinct illustration of the base powerlessness of being.

It's a reflexive response to, fundamentally, being mortal and alone and afraid in a world that doesn't make sense.

You seem content in your world and your view of how things work.

That's probably a very happy position to be in.

Good for you.

I think your limited opinions are the sort of thing that gives people an excuse to resist meaningful change.

I'm not a liberal nor a conservative, I basically don't care about politics. I don't think politics moves the world. I think it's a visible manifestation of what really motivates history. I think the causality lies elsewhere.

Your views certainly make much sense to someone like you, I'm sure. But to me, they seem remedial.