There is nothing I can find in Soghoian's two posts that are any sort of criticism of Patterson, the security expert. It seems to be a huge and false claim of Wired's that there is any criticism of Patterson. Soghoian does criticize the reporter, who is a woman. Apparently for Wired, when you criticize one of their reporters, and their editor it's all out war to the death and here they played the gender card. It was…
Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
101–110 of 170 posts
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#102There is nothing I can find in Soghoian's two posts that are any sort of criticism of Patterson, the security expert. It seems to be a huge and false claim of Wired's that there is any criticism of Patterson. Soghoian does criticize the reporter, who is a woman. Apparently for Wired, when you criticize one of their reporters, and their editor it's all out war to the death and here they played the gender card. It was…
Seems simple to me. If you call us out for terrible reporting, we'll slander you as a sexist. Welcome to my hosts file Wired.
Would you mind sharing your hosts file, or some sanitized subset of it?
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Swap it for racism? Ok. A clear example of what he's talking about can be observed in the tendency particularly during the "Town Hall" meetings, and thruout the rest of the Obamacare debate to characterize anyone who disagreed with that piece of legislation as "Racist" for disagreeing with Obama. Because Obama is "Black", and those using this tactic agreed with him, so rather than respond to the points, they felt com…
To clarify, I don't object to the claim that people have wrongly used the "gender/race/etc card" when it isn't warranted. Of course this is disgusting. I take issue with the idea that, for example, if Obama were to play the race card, that this somehow represents an attack on "whiteness". This is ridiculous. > This line of attack is not a "reminder" it is an evasion of debate, and an attempt to reject intellectual di…
I've seen this type of ad hominem a lot and I'm not sure why so many people fall for it. I would take the historian every time. Aside from the well-studied facts showing that memory and eye-witness testimony are hugely inaccurate, in a movie about the 20s we would expect to see the 20s. We would want the period represented accurately as a whole, not one person's perspective. In a movie about Ray Charles, we would certainly like Ray Charles' input, but that is only because the movie is about Ray Charles' perspective.
To put it another way, if you're suffering an illness, does that make you an expert on the illness? Does it make you qualified to treat the illness? Clearly no, on both counts. Being a victim of racism isn't immune to anecdotal bias more than any other phenomenon. The cultural phenomenon of racism or sexism is not well-represented by a single person's experiences and it certainly doesn't give them any more license than an expert to attempt to proscribe a treatment.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#104I do not speak for him, but I think you can safely assume that the vitriol reserved for Chris is somehow co-incident with his preference towards working with the WSJ to bring cogent computer security reporting to a wide audience. My impression is that Wired sees this as a US vs. THEM kind of thing.
Delivering secure solutions to an audience that is unaware of the risks is always a dodgy proposition. Better informed customers would improve the market for those solutions and keep vulnerable persons from over-trusting a flawed product. We all benefit when this happens.
Chris is asking for better reporting, not male reporters. A very big difference indeed.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. The irony of discussing prejudice and in the same breath calling skinheads racists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead Please, please, please, read that page. Not only to save yourself and others the ignorance of believing skinheads are racists, but also because there's a culture and a people that will be forever denigrated because the media and parroting readers will continue to perpetuate this stereotype.
Off topic, but I find it puzzling that there's basically a handbook for a subculture trying to be different. It seems like a logical impossibility for a subculture to actually be unique and different, when there's essentially a dress code (short hair, levis, dr martens). I'm not trying to make any value judgements on the subculture, just trying to understand. Maybe the point is that the subculture / group itself is u…
So, I became a punk and started going to as many punk shows as possible.
All of a sudden, I certainly was not one of the cool kids, but I was part of a group that was disgusted by the cool kids. Thing is, our group had its own handbook. My friends were hardcore straight edge punks - we eschewed drugs and alcohol. We took much of our fashion sense from goth and grunge (really big pants, big boots, and lots of black). And, our particular group believed that we needed to be taken seriously, so we avoided mohawks and really bizarre piercings. We even had our own rituals - by Friday, we were so sick of everything that we needed to find a punk show so we could get into a pit and take some aggression out.
At the time, I thought I was a free thinker who became friends with a group of other free thinkers. But, to become that non-conformist, I had to conform to certain norms. In my example, your statement is correct - the subculture itself was unique, but we had very strict rules, a strict uniform, and rituals.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is "making money off feeling oppressed".
Untrue. I can't find the exact story I was thinking of, of a man in a wheelchair suing every business in his town that doesn't strictly adhere to ADA standards, but apparently it's not even as rare as I imagined. http://blog.therohogroup.com/index.php/2012/04/ada-drive-by-... http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/bullying_city_bi... And yes, you can say that these places should be handicap accessible, but there…
In the case of Hirsch, it's really hard to tell anything since an NY Post article (not a reputable source) appears to be the only primary source on the subject.
As for the ROHO post, the claim that they are raking in "huge amounts" of cash is pretty dubious. Even Hirsch with his 87 lawsuits would have brought in under $4500 total for his efforts. Not an insignificant amount of cash, but hardly a gold mine.
His lawyer, on the other hand...
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes the complaints are more common than the occurrence (I think that's pretty normal, though), but the occurrence isn't uncommon. Back in my reddit days I was accused of anti-semitism merely for saying that creating Israel at that particular location was a mistake. Was that a real person? A false flag troll? Who knows. I've also read accounts by Jewish people whose family members called them "self-hating Jews" becaus…
Reddit's users have always struck me as fantastically antisemitic. I think a lot of them do it for shock laughs, but the genuine article is present as well. Saying Israel shouldn't have been born in that location isn't the same thing as saying Israel shouldn't exist, but Israel is the only country whose mere existence seems to require justification. Framing Israel's political problems as if they can be easily solved…
Well, that's because most other countries weren't plopped down in the middle of an inhabited region, resulting in decades of violence and oppression that, and this part is critical, continue to this day. The US also shouldn't have been plopped down on the land inhabited by American Indians, but since the dust from that has mostly settled, it serves as a less poignant example of the dangers of nation-building. The lessons from history here should be obvious, but for reasons of nationalism and religion (by which I am referring to American Christians), those lessons are being obscured.
>Framing Israel's political problems as if they can be easily solved by not having an Israel certainly looks analogous to solving a Jewish problem by not having Jews.
I guess they look analogous? If you squint? I mean, for one thing, saying that establishing Israel was a mistake is not the same as saying that Israel should be dissolved.
For another thing, what "Jewish problem"? From context, I guess you're talking about the Nazis, but that "problem" was Hitler's accusation that the Jews were responsible for WWII. But unlike "Israel's political problems" (as you so delicately put it), that problem was a fiction.
Finally, while it clearly would not work to dissolve Israel at this stage, the problems with that plan do not significantly intersect with the problems of genocide.
I mean, I'm trying to be charitable to your analogy here, but it sounds to me like you're saying that people find "Israel shouldn't have been established there" offensive because it calls to mind an utterly false analogy.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Untrue. I can't find the exact story I was thinking of, of a man in a wheelchair suing every business in his town that doesn't strictly adhere to ADA standards, but apparently it's not even as rare as I imagined. http://blog.therohogroup.com/index.php/2012/04/ada-drive-by-... http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/bullying_city_bi... And yes, you can say that these places should be handicap accessible, but there…
That's not making money off of feeling oppressed. That's making money off of successful serial lawsuits. Whether or not they feel oppressed doesn't enter in to the business model. In the case of Hirsch, it's really hard to tell anything since an NY Post article (not a reputable source) appears to be the only primary source on the subject. As for the ROHO post, the claim that they are raking in "huge amounts" of cash…
Has Hirsch really been tortuously injured by the lack of handicap-accessible businesses? It doesn't matter. What matters is that he is using the fear of discrimination to justify a lawsuit (or 87). This is definitely going beyond my original point of the use of language. The original point was that I cannot give offense to you, offense is something that can only be taken. Therefore it is up to the audience to be damn sure offense was implied before it is taken.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you actually believe that calling someone a sexist (however 'careless' it might be) is an attack on the male gender as a whole Keyword being 'often' not 'always', and it's usually particular to the male/female gender issue rather than all majorities/minorities. In particular, if you read the article you'll see that both the critic who claimed sexism and the woman being critiqued throw the term "boy's clubs" abou…
> What I get concerned with is that the implicit acceptance of this wider issue claim tends to paint the majority as collectively guilty of issues which should be identified on an individual basis, which leads to more of the "us vs them" mentality that we're trying to eliminate. The "boy's club" mentality that a lot of people glean from the "tech zeitgeist", for lack of a better term, is not entirely unfounded. I thi…
Maybe you aren't obsessed with driving wedges between various groups in society, causing them to become factions with increasing animosity towards one another, but you're doing it.
It's odd: No group hates underprivileged, unattractive whites males nearly as much as privileged, attractive white males. It's a cruel form of preening.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you actually believe that calling someone a sexist (however 'careless' it might be) is an attack on the male gender as a whole Keyword being 'often' not 'always', and it's usually particular to the male/female gender issue rather than all majorities/minorities. In particular, if you read the article you'll see that both the critic who claimed sexism and the woman being critiqued throw the term "boy's clubs" abou…
> Right, which makes it all the more important to ensure that when racism/sexism claims are made, they are made legitimately and not casually, lest they be used as examples to dismiss, or ignore, genuine issues. Too frequently this line of argumentation is inflated and used to attack even legitimate claims of sexism/racism -- they can be used inappropriately turns into they are being used inappropriately halfway thro…