71–80 of 108 posts
It is so painful to witness elected stupidity in action. My sympathies to all the Royal & Mitterrand voters - seems like Sarkozy is rapidly becoming the new G.W. Bush.
Nah. Barack Obama is already the new GWBush. So Sarkozy must be the new Obama. Or something like that.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. [1]
[1] http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/csimiami/wontgetfooledagain.h...
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I agree that even the Great Firewall of China can easily be beaten by simply using Tor, however, it is now our democratic duty to prevent this from becoming a necessity in the western world.
I am writing this from China and unfortunately it is the other way round. Tor is beaten by the Great Firewall of China. Since the list of nodes is available to anyone who connects to the Tor network, blocking them is trivial. So most of the time it is not possible to connect. And when you do manage to connect the speed will make 14.4 kbit/s modem feel fast.
Keep your cowardly, sniveling, risk-averse, myopic, GREEDY fucking agenda OFF OF MY INTERNET! You've already done quite enough, thanks. I was going to come up with a more level-headed and well reasoned response here, but I guess the first bit really sums it up. There are days where I wonder if Academia didn't have the right idea with Internet 2.0. Whatever happened with that anyway?
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I agree that even the Great Firewall of China can easily be beaten by simply using Tor, however, it is now our democratic duty to prevent this from becoming a necessity in the western world.
Democracy is highly overrated. What we need is a strong constitution that guarantees individual freedom. 51% of the population imposing their beliefs on the other 49% can lead to highly undesirable outcomes. Censorship, racism, systematic discrimination based on sexual orientation or religion come to mind. Democracy is fine as long as the role of the elected government is essentially limited to the protection of indi…
Look at the US, just before the Civil War. Or even pre Civl Rights act. Were all natural born Americans given the right to pursue happiness?
There's a lot of things that make a country work well. Not all of them are in the constitution. New rules need enforcement. There's a lot of levels of government, and a lot of public institutions (such as the police, judiciary, and education systems), and they virtually never work together.
Sometimes, there's no abstraction layers that make sense, and you just have to talk about fixing stuff that's broken.
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While I agree with most of what you say, I'm not so sure " large majorities in favour of free communication over the internet " Do you have any data to back this up? My guess is that if you frame it the right way, most people would vote for censoring the Internet
If by favoring free communication over the internet you mean "my email will be private", I think you can safely assume large majorities will be in favor of it.
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Tell Chinese government how impossible it is to control the internet. The Great Firewall of China (GFC) is advancing very fast. Just a few years ago even an unencrypted proxy abroad would do the trick, and yet most people did not know how to set it up and did not care enough to find out. Nowadays even VPNs and SSH tunnels are commonly blocked. It is not trivial to bypass the GFC and it is only getting harder by the t…
That isn't really the internet, just a web proxy.
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If by favoring free communication over the internet you mean "my email will be private", I think you can safely assume large majorities will be in favor of it.
Not at all. If the question is "Should the government be able to access email to track down pornographers and terrorists?", the answer is that 99% of the population is in favor of it.
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The easily-persuaded pretty much describes the majority of the electorate, at least in my country. The average American votes against his best interest. The official response to any opposition to totalitarian tactics is .. FUD. Something only less blatant than what I have written above.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but have you considered how you would disprove the alternate possibility that the "easily-persuaded majority" is a bogeyman conjured up by the media to explain why the candidate that everyone you know voted for wasn't elected?
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While I agree with most of what you say, I'm not so sure " large majorities in favour of free communication over the internet " Do you have any data to back this up? My guess is that if you frame it the right way, most people would vote for censoring the Internet
If by favoring free communication over the internet you mean "my email will be private", I think you can safely assume large majorities will be in favor of it.
Well, people are very protective of their email, that's why. Email is the key to a person's online identity and should be guarded like one's wallet or house keys. But wait until the children are brought into the debate. "Of course, everyone knows _you_ are legit, but there are predators creeping around in the seedy underbelly of the internet. These sexual predators will prey on your children through email and social networking sites. We need safeguards in place to ensure that predators are not able to operate freely on the internet and thus ensure your and your family's freedom and security."
Those predator shows on MSNBC where they basically entice some disturbed person with a made up fantasy, parade him in front of the cameras, talk about all the what-ifs and then arrest him only to have him show up on the next episode reinforces this. Aside: It drives me bonkers when the host says, "You came here to meet a 14 year old boy. What would have happened if we were not here?" I'll tell you. Absolutely nothing. Because there was no 14 year old boy in a chat room looking to meet 45 year old child molesters and there was no 14 year old boy waiting for him in the house.
There are smart people- good parents- who will eat that kind of crap up. They are the kind of parents that are involved in their children's lives. They help them with homework and know their friends and their friend's parents. They talk to their children about risks and staying safe. These are the kind of parents who have the least to worry about, but also the ones who will argue most passionately in favor of policies like this.
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Not at all. If the question is "Should the government be able to access email to track down pornographers and terrorists?", the answer is that 99% of the population is in favor of it.
That's quite the claim and I don't believe it for a second.
1. Season 4, episode 9 "Numbers"