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Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

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Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#101

Post by csomar »

gbhn wrote: post #80
elliottcarlson wrote: post #73

I am surprised no one is concerned about this in regards to the safety of the callers. The government is obviously taking all steps in silencing in or outbound communication - with the obvious control structure in place over communications, it would seem feasible for the government to trace calls to these specific numbers (even if they block them) and punish people who do so. Don't get me wrong, I want to know what i…

Of course. Protests and revolutions are dangerous business. It makes me thoughtful about whether I'd be brave enough to take advantage of these kinds of tools should the necessity arise.

I'm from Tunisia and in the Tunisian revolution When I asked some of my friends if they don't fear being caught for sharing sensitive materials and photos, they told me: Really? The government can know what you are doing on Facebook? May be these were just my friends...

But here is a more amusing story: A boy has a group in Facebook and shared some photos of the interior minister. He left his information out. The cops caught him and brought him to the ministry and abused him. When he was kicked out of the ministry, he met with a TV reporter and told his story and in the end he said that he's going to start a page where he'll put all of the government abuses and funny pictures about the government. The story made my day.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#102

Post by fauigerzigerk »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #73

I am surprised no one is concerned about this in regards to the safety of the callers. The government is obviously taking all steps in silencing in or outbound communication - with the obvious control structure in place over communications, it would seem feasible for the government to trace calls to these specific numbers (even if they block them) and punish people who do so. Don't get me wrong, I want to know what i…

I think prepaid mobile phones are much more widespread in countries like Egypt than they are in the US or Europe.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#104

Post by andylei »

p90x wrote: post #68
andylei wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how could they have not taken political positions? they could either bow to us federal pressure or not. by bowing to pressure, they acted politically, but if they had resisted, it would have been equally political.

They could simply follow the law and fulfill their contracts, could they not?

they did fulfill their contracts, which said that they can terminate service for any reason

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#105

Post by btilly »

sfphotoarts wrote: post #8

Thousands of years seemed to go by where uprisings didn't need social networking. The Babylonians didn't need Twitter when they rose up against the Assyrian Empire. The Inaros' didn't need Facebook when they confronted the Persians in Egypt (although they did have the help of the Greeks). Julius Caesar didn't tweet 'hey watch out Pompey' when he marched on Roma. Did the Sicilian Vespers need Twitter to alter the bala…

Let's just take one of those examples. The US revolution.

You are dead wrong in claiming that it happened without social media. They didn't have the same types of social media that we do today, but the version they did have they used to the hilt. Back in their day it was the printing press. Everything from pamphlets to Thomas Paine's Common Sense really were the social media of their day. And without them, the US Revolution could very well have failed.

Conversely were Thomas Paine alive today, can you doubt that he would have a blog and use twitter?

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#106

Post by khafra »

hugh3 wrote: post #64
jbri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's support brutal dictatorships on the off-chance that a revolution might result in an even more brutal dictatorship.

The sarcasm is unbefitting of the seriousness of the occasion. What if it's not an "off-chance" but a 90% probability. Or even a 50% probability? The situation the way I see it is this: currently the bad guys are in power. The opposition forces are the not-so-bad guys (liberal democracy types) and the much worse guys (radical Islamists). The Muslim Brotherhood ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood ) are,…

"Support" isn't a fine-grained enough word. Selling the revolutionaries guillotines is probably bad. Providing them the means to tell their story to the world is probably good.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#107

Post by JonnieCache »

csomar wrote: post #100
randomtask wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language Egyptians speak is Arabic. Voice recognition software for that language does exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAKHR_Software_Company#Speech_R...

Arabic has variants. Each Arabic country speaks a different variant, many words are changed. For example, in Tunisia, a good number of our daily used words are from French. But that language is only used in public; books and newspapers uses the original language.

You mean like english? And all languages?

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#108

Post by csomar »

JonnieCache wrote: post #107
csomar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arabic has variants. Each Arabic country speaks a different variant, many words are changed. For example, in Tunisia, a good number of our daily used words are from French. But that language is only used in public; books and newspapers uses the original language.

You mean like english? And all languages?

No, for English and French (the one I know), someone who understands the original language, can figure out most of the spoken language. However, for the variant of Arabic they can fail. My mother told me that in Kuwait native sellers turn to the original Arabic in order to be understood.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#109

Post by p90x »

guelo wrote: post #71
p90x wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal, Visa, Amazon took political positions in the WikiLeaks case. But you didn't like it because it went against your politics. Amiright?

Yes, I have a pro-freedom-of-speech politics. I like it when companies take my side on this and I don't like it when they don't. That seems simple and consistent. What do you stand for?

For profit corporations staying out of politics as much as possible, regardless of which side they take on an issue. Especially when the issue has to do with society in general and very little to do with their business as in the Visa Paypal case.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#110

Post by p90x »

andylei wrote: post #104
p90x wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could simply follow the law and fulfill their contracts, could they not?

they did fulfill their contracts, which said that they can terminate service for any reason

According to Wikipedia, PayPal claimed they canceled the service because wikileak's funding origination, Wau Holland Foundation, violated its "Acceptable Use Policy" by engaging in "illegal activities".

Wau Holland Foundation is responding by suing PayPal. That's how the law works.

Partisan politics has no place in business.

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