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CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

abc.net.au

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Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#221

Post by edsu »

SyneRyder wrote: post #192
xphos wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh that actually sounds a amazing I am always annoyed that I have to leave terminal so much to explore I can understand the common person being daunted by that but a terminal accessible browser client sounds lovely for a lot of use cases

For Gopher, I used to use a little terminal browser called Phetch: https://github.com/xvxx/phetch It's written in Golang and was last updated in 2022. There's a GIF on the Github page to give a feel of what Phetch & browsing Gopher in the terminal is like. I mostly use the Lagrange GUI client though, which is fantastic. Gopher still exists. If you're starting out, you can get your own "gopherhole" and Unix shell acco…

This makes me wonder if someone is putting the latest version of the Factbook on Gopher now. It might be a fun little project?

PS. Lagrange is a beautiful piece of software.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#222

Post by mzi »

detourdog wrote: post #200
mzi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once IP addressees became available to the public WWW browser became graphical. What does that even mean?

There was a time when only institutions were on the internet. Eventually one could get dial-up connection to a commercial entity. NYC's had an early commercial service provided by PANIX (Public Access Unix) and the San Francisco bay area had the Well. This was just a terminal connection where one could connect to other hosts on the internet through a dial-up connection. The modem would connect to a computer that had…

Mosaic, the first graphical browser was developed by National Center for Supercomputing Applications. They were of course not bound by dial-up or similar and probably didn't care for commercial offerings of connectivity in their priorities in development.

And before it, slip had been available and standardized for some time.

I would say what drove the adoption of commercial services was the graphical web, not the other way around.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#223

Post by array_key_first »

hexagonsuns wrote: post #162
sofixa wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bias if it's factual reality. You not liking it doesn't make it bias.

It is bias if your "factual reality" over-exaggerates the "facts" for the "bad guys" and under-exaggerates / completely neglects to report on the "good guys"

There are also genuinely good guys and bad guys. Reality, itself, has a bias. To think that ideology doesn't correlate at all with how moral you might act is, frankly, stupid. Not all positions are created equal.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#224

Post by seanw444 »

toyg wrote: post #86
stinkbeetle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly dark times when we can't even trust the CIA anymore.

This is a good joke, but it's also true that the whole charade of trying to look "institutional" and "fact-based" was a pretty decent way to go about pursuing the US agenda. "Hey we are the good guys, we show you real numbers" was a good line to push, and it could often show up the opposition as cranks and liars. Nowadays, nobody even pretends to not be a liar, from any side. There is no debate that even attempts to…

> In the long run, this can't hold.

It's always held, management just changes. Money and power are two fundamental constants to human nature.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#225

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

hexagonsuns wrote: post #162
sofixa wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bias if it's factual reality. You not liking it doesn't make it bias.

It is bias if your "factual reality" over-exaggerates the "facts" for the "bad guys" and under-exaggerates / completely neglects to report on the "good guys"

Which is true for all propaganda outlets.

But to put it with John Steward, what if reality itself has a left leaning bias?

What if left leaning people have empirically broader empathy [0] which could imply that right leaning people have in tendency worse personalities. I guess you would attest yet another biased article here.

[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#226

Post by sharkjacobs »

mannanj wrote: post #169

I don't understand why they created or obtained control of the world Factbook in the first place, anyone have a story around this? I thought the CIA was formed to represent rich people's interests and maybe in that way the Factbook was another trick to lend legitimacy to their organization.

> on July 26, CIA was officially born. Just a few months later, on October 1, CIA assumed all responsibility for the JANIS basic intelligence program. Shortly thereafter, JANIS was renamed the National Intelligence Survey (NIS), but continued along the same tradition, providing policymakers and military leaders with up-to-date data, maps, and other reference materials.

> In 1971, the Factbook was created as an annual summary of the NIS studies and in 1973 it supplanted the NIS encyclopedic studies as CIA’s publication of basic intelligence. It was first made available to the public in 1975 and in 1981 was renamed The World Factbook.

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/history-of-the-world-factb...

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#227

Post by elzbardico »

crumpled wrote: post #204
elzbardico wrote: post #131

I really wish more people funded Britannica or some other traditional encyclopedia. Most volunteers on Wikipedia do an excellent job, but sometimes the absence of traditional editorial structures shows its limitations.

Wikipedia is Creative Commons. Someone could conceivably publish a dead tree version that goes through an editor / editorial process. Imagine being an editor of Britannica. Without having domain knowledge into absolutely everything, you are forced to trust domain experts. Wikipedia has a marked advantage when it comes to building that trust, as the articles have been written under public scrutiny and with a great dea…

Trusting domain experts is precisely what I like in Britannica. I want an environment where real domain experts are not drowned by a mob of midwits.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#228

Post by [deleted] »

xphos wrote: post #120
detourdog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CIA World Factbook was one of the major sites to access for information using Gopher. I discovered it using Gopher and it was proof to me of the usefulness of Internet. I would cite it as a reason that someone might want to access the internet.

Can you add context on what Gopher is for the unknowning? I searched for it but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) is the only seemingly relavent thing I found not sure if thats exactly what your refering too?

[deleted]

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#229

Post by detourdog »

mzi wrote: post #222
detourdog wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when only institutions were on the internet. Eventually one could get dial-up connection to a commercial entity. NYC's had an early commercial service provided by PANIX (Public Access Unix) and the San Francisco bay area had the Well. This was just a terminal connection where one could connect to other hosts on the internet through a dial-up connection. The modem would connect to a computer that had…

Mosaic, the first graphical browser was developed by National Center for Supercomputing Applications. They were of course not bound by dial-up or similar and probably didn't care for commercial offerings of connectivity in their priorities in development. And before it, slip had been available and standardized for some time. I would say what drove the adoption of commercial services was the graphical web, not the oth…

I think the point I would want to make is the commercial availability of IP addresses drove the graphical browser adoption.

I read about graphical browsers in MacWeek in an article about SoundWire. This was a website that was selling music on the web. I believe fulfillment was through snailmail. There headquarters were in a Brooklyn apartment. I somehow contacted the owner (Joe a friend of Dang) and took the subway to his apartment to see a graphical browser in action. I don't know how long it took to actually get my own IP address but I know it took me a few days to get a MacPPP connection to actually work over slip.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#230

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

dylan604 wrote: post #134
Noumenon72 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the factbook is an actual book too? That's what I missed, I thought it was a webpage so this was referring to some other post.

The CIA Factbook being publicy available since 1971 has existed longer than the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook

That's a great logo. What a travesty.
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