'What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.' -- "Government" is not your personal army.

'The crux of the matter here is that unlike the days of yore, where repressive regimes needed elaborate networks of secret police and informants to monitor communication, all they need now is control over the software and hardware we use. Our desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and all manner of devices play a role in virtually all of our communication. Think you're in the clear when communicating face-to-face? Think again. How did you arrange the meet-up? Over the phone? The web? And what do you have in your pocket or bag, always connected to the network? This is what Stallman has been warning us about all these years - and most of us, including myself, never really took him seriously. However, as the world changes, the importance of the ability to check what the code in your devices is doing - by someone else in case you lack the skills - becomes increasingly apparent. If we lose the ability to check what our own computers are doing, we're boned.'

'This program is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy. The program, implemented as a Firefox extension, simply contacts offshore domain name resolution services to obtain the IP address for any desired website, and accesses those websites directly via IP. Similar offshore resolution services will eventually maintain their own cache of websites, without blacklisting, in order to meet the demand created by SOPA.' -- A challenger appears.

'When covering the economy or military ventures, Western mainstream media often presents only part of the story – and that is easily understood if one checks alternative 'Net reports on the same issues. But today, at least two TV channels, Russia Today (RT) and Press TV, available in various cable packages, are providing provocative, fact-based reporting. It is a sad comment on Western programming that these two channels seem so good despite what would seem to be a relative paucity of resources. The suspicion is that Ofcom is getting ready not just to fine Press TV but also to make a case that Press TV ought to be banned from Britain. Likely, this will be the beginning of an effort to ban Press TV in America and Europe-proper as well. It won't do to have Iranian television blasting away while one is dropping bombs on Tehran, if that is the plan. In any event, if Press TV is banned for one reason or another, it will be Britain's loss and then perhaps the West's as well.'

'Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that "Roger Hayes" is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law. The British government doesn't want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay. When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, "This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request."' -- It is a fraud to conceal a fraud. (Maxims of Law)

'In what is being termed as pure Wall Street Gordon Gecko tactics, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has decided to make an offer of $150 billion to buy out Facebook. Inside sources within the kingdom suggest that the King is very upset with Mark Zukerberg for allowing the revolt to get out of control, Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported. In a personal meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and King Abdullah on Jan 25, 2011, Zuckerberg had promised that he would not allow any revolt pages to be formed on Facebook even while he allowed Egypt and Libya revolt pages to be formed. Left with no option, Abdullah advised by Goldman Sachs has decided to buy out Facebook and “clean out the weeds”. Most analysts believe that Zuckerberg will not take the offer and will wait for King Abdullah to up the offer to at least $500 billion.' -- [Spoof]

'The idea is to write a how-to on building mesh networks. The n00bs must understand it. Mesh networks are usefull, as they cannot be censored nor shut down. Later on that How-to can become part of Anonymous' uber-secret handbook regarding safety.' -- 'The first section of this article will focus on personal safety. Personal safety can be spoken of in two different spheres: Physical Safety and Internet Safety. It is important to remember that these two spheres overlap: a lapse of internet safety could lead to physical identification. However, by keeping in mind a few important rules you can drastically reduce the chance of being singled out and identified. The second section of this article will go into specifics regarding technology that can be used to communicate anonymously, maintain secrecy, and protest effectively.' -- http://goo.gl/SuY0f

'Introduction: The Internet remains one of the most powerful means ever created to give voice to repressed people around the world. Unfortunately, new technologies have also given authoritarian regimes new means to identify and retaliate against those who speak out despite censorship and surveillance. Below are six basic ideas for those attempting to speak without falling victim to authoritarian surveillance and censorship, and four ideas for the rest of us who want to help support them.'

'...in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air. What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80,000,000 people from the Internet? What will happen tomorrow, on the streets and in the credit markets? This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up.'

'Herdict Web is the first collaborative, real-time map of Internet accessibility. Herdict Web seeks to present a real-time picture of Web site accessibility and inaccessibility. By crowdsourcing data from individuals around the world, Herdict Web allows you to see what is inaccessible, where it's inaccessible, and for how long. You can see which countries have the most reports, and which Web sites are most often reported. You can track inaccessibility by country, by keyword, across regions, and over time. Your contributions are what drive the herd.'

CHANGE!!!

'...from what might be called the Communications Security Administration (CSA), we can expect a 'no send' list. If you're on the list, you can't send or post messages, and no reasons will be given. They will be arbitrarily restricting your ability to connect with people remotely. Consider also the invasive screening process at airports. Everyone is treated as a potential terrorist, until they pass the invasive screening process. Similarly, every message anyone tries to send will be treated as a 'potential cyber threat', until it passes an invasive 'threat filter'. Google is already deploying such a filter, and calling it a spam filter. Air travel and the Internet have been the 'great global connectors', of people and of ideas. The thrust of 'security' measures has had little to do with terrorism, and everything to do with making 'connection' more and more difficult. WikiLeaks is indeed the 9/11 of the Internet.'

JA: 'If you control the present, you control history and then you control all the decisions that are made based on history. What I said before is that political parties, philosophies, all limited by what is our intellectual heritage. What is the historical record. If you control the historical record, you are in control, you control what decisions can be made. If you do not know about something, you can not make an accurate decision. So that is extremely worrying, that in fact the Internet is the easiest thing in the world to control. -- ...people have been censored, and they do not reveal that they are censored. The reason that they do not reveal that they are censored is because it reveals to the readership that it has been been betrayed. So the censorship is being self censored. -- We are going to get harmonization. Question is; is it going to be the walls of China, is it going to be the Swedish press freedom act? Is it going to be an Internet full of black lists?'

'RT @anonops: Twitter.com now. Sorry to everybody. See you soon Twitter!!! FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! #anonops #payback #Wikileaks' -- (Later called off. Phew!)

'PayPal's vice-president of platform, Osama Bedier, told an internet conference the site had decided to freeze WikiLeaks' account on 4 December after government representatives said it was engaged in illegal activity. "[The US] state department told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward," he told the LeWeb conference in Paris, adding: "We ... comply with regulations around the world, making sure that we protect our brand." Though he later reined back the comments, saying that PayPal had not been contacted directly by the state department but had seen a letter it had sent to WikiLeaks, his remarks will undoubtedly intensify criticism from supporters of WikiLeaks that the site is being targeted for political reasons.'

'#Update – 12/8/2010 – 5:18 AM: Mastercard.com is still down with 940 computers in the voluntary botnet attacking the site all at once. We have 3 hours 57 minutes of recorded downtime so far. #Update – 12/8/2010 – 8:24 AM: Mastercard.com is still selected as the main target and has not came back online since our last report. 7 hours of downtime and counting. The amount of participants in the attackers chat room have soared to over 2200 people and there are currently over 1,700 computers in the voluntary botnet. Check back frequently for updates.' -- What do you mean, "*They* cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!

'Mastercard, which stopped processing payments to the whistle-blowing site, said the attack had had "no impact" on people's ability to use their cards. But the BBC has been contacted by a payment firm that said its customers had "a complete loss of service". In particular, it said that an authentication service for online payments known as Mastercard's SecureCode, had been disrupted. Other readers have also said that have had problems with online payments. The scale of the problems is still unclear. Mastercard has not responded to the claims.' -- MEDIC!

'DDoS attacks are flying across the Internet like there is no tomorrow. Check back frequently for updates.'

'...it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing. And as the backlash unfolds – first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly "discovering" that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the US government attempting to intimidate Columbia students... – the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive... There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down. ...when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.' -- Democracy: The God That Failed

'Really bummed that I can’t even browse craigslist. Do yall think Craigslist is dangerous for whores/humans/buyers/sellers? Have yall ever purchased illegal goods off craigslist? Should I steal stereos/cars and sell them on craigslist? Should I hold a prostitute against her will, and make her sell her body on craigslist? Should the internet be used as a marketplace, or just for social issues? CAn u really trust people on the internet? Do u know of any other good sites where u can buy a prostitute from the internet? Do u think craigslist is a useful tool, or is it a bad idea to get involved with any1 from craigslist?'

That last verse. Dude is the new KRS-ONE: http://youtu.be/iepqptjVwD4 -- You got dropped off the net cause the news you wrote was WACK!

'...we don't doubt that the Internet is under attack, and is indeed being censored, filtered and generally monitored. ...here at the Bell, we believe new technologies are difficult to stop. We recently noted the following: "Certainly, the princes of the era tried to control the Gutenberg press. They tried to license Bibles. They invented the concept of copyright, apparently. They confiscated and blacklisted books and various sacred texts. But the press, a new idea at the time, was unstoppable. It was the hot, new technology. Everyone wanted a piece of it." Information creates knowledge – which is propagating as we write. Generally, the tight grip that the elite, especially in the West, had in the 20th century is gone now. The damage to elite plans to centralize global governance or build a truly international one-size-fits-all currency is likely significant. When everyone is well-attuned to your top-secret plan, it's simply not so top-secret anymore!'

'The idea of a government takeover of the Internet is something of a dominant social theme in our view. The Anglo-American elite needs a WILLING suspension of disbelief. It is virtually impossible to keep a million, let alone a billion, people under control via dominant social themes if these themes are no longer considered credible. ...because of the past 20 years of Internet information, many of themes are no longer quite so believable. But more than that, we would argue that the MECHANISM ITSELF is fairly well understood now by a broad cross-section of individuals. And word-of-mouth is a powerful device. The idea that government is going to "take over" the Internet—turning it into an arid, electronic version of the USSR—is possibly far-fetched. Of course, such perceptions shall become increasingly popular as governments steps up their efforts to control this exasperating, truth-telling technology. But young technologies are hard to control, as are the young innovators they attract.'

'#Change ISPs: French law prevents suspended users from switching to another ISP, and Ofcom is expected to come up with a similar provision. It's unclear who will be in charge of this blacklist -- a copyright offender register, if you will. How long will suspended users be kept on the list? Will it lapse after a set period of time, like a police caution? Will you be able to see your record, like a credit record? Either way, ISPs may find themselves forced to check each new user, which could make the process of signing up to a new ISP even more of a chore than it already is.'

'Just how stupid does your government need you to be?'

'Congress hopes the Pornographic Media Concealment Act will ensure a lasting, respectable legacy for our nation, unmarred by the massive quantities of filthy porn we regularly consume.'

'It seems that numerous people are now aware of the centralizing tendencies of the modern Western sociopoliticial model. ...it will be interesting to see how the powers-that-be in Britain attempt to apply censorship techniques aimed at the Net and justify it. TalkTalk has apparently now announced that it will not follow the more draconian aspects of the law. The chances of British businesses and consumers meekly submitting to what is being planned is unlikely. Censorship rarely works as intended and what is censored by the state usually ends up being in more demand. In the case of Britain, we wonder how much more that previously open society can take before there is a backlash. Between the public cameras, the draconian fines and prison sentences for putting one's garbage in the wrong place or even defending oneself against home invasion, British society seems to us increasingly on the wrong track. Such a journey, history shows us, is not unstoppable, nor is the destination inevitable.'

'...the ability of big music and film companies to influence government and the absence of any proper debate or scrutiny ...the presumption that [customers] are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent... TalkTalk will continue to battle against these oppressive proposals – they will require ’secondary legislation’ before they can be implemented. -- ...we stand by our pledges to our customers: #Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it. #If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.'

'...we believe there is some validity to this argument. In fact, we've tried to make the point that the easy destruction of the Internet by the powers that be, like the all-powerful nature of the power elite itself, is a dominant social theme, a promotion of sorts. If you can (through promotional means) convince people that the forces attempting to run the world are so mighty that no change is possible, well, that's half the battle right there—if you're part of the elite anyway. Discourage people from trying to change their lot by issuing frightening books such as 1984 (George Orwell was a member of the British Secret Service) or set up websites that constantly harp on the implacability of an upcoming "one world empire" and you've gone some distance to intimidate people and discourage dissension. The Internet is in collision with almost every dominant social theme the power elite has developed recently.' -- Speculation on Orwell's fabianism inside. He was a society-ist not a socialist.

'What should alarm readers is the ease with which an analyst advocates active censorship and control of information channels to the public. This particular passage: "Wikileaks.org allows anonymous publication of information and records without oversight or accountability; anyone can post information to the Web site, and there is no editorial review, fact checking, or oversight of the posted information." ...should make the blood run cold. WikiLeaks scares this intelligence professional because there is no editor to lean on. No pinch point to choke off a story from (regardless of its truth or falsehood). Falsehood is not, in fact, what frightens the report's author. Quote the contrary, it is the accuracy of WikiLeaks' documents that alarms him. -- What will become of Zero Hedge when we irritate someone sufficiently? We remain convinced that the epic battle of our age will be between knowledge and ignorance.'

'Your choice to make moves against the pornography industry are not the sole focus of our actions, rather this is the final straw in a long chain of choices that inform us that you are preparing to censor your people, that you are no longer acting in their best interest. You are acting in direct opposition to the best interest of your citizens, and we intend to help them realize this, along with the rest of the globe as a message that we will not allow the internet to be censored by any group, organization, or government. We shall free your people from a country that is oppressing their right to access information; we shall be the shining beacon in the darkness that you are casting over the single most powerful tool available to humanity.'

'The ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) is instituting a ban on porn showing women with small breasts and female ejaculation (real or drawn). On Februrary 10th, Anonymous showed the Australian Government is displeasure with this proposal.' -- line(348,320,348,360); FAP(FAP);

'In A.D. 2010, war was beginning and on February 10th, Anonymous unleashed a massive Blitzkrieg on Australian government websites in a Shock and Awe commando raid dubbed Operation Titstorm. This marked the opening salvo of a war that had been brewing since March, 2009 when Wikileaks published an Xbox hueg list of dox on websites that The Final Boss of Australia and his sidekick -Communications Minister Stephen Conroy- had decided were too hot for Ausfags to handle without leading to the ruination of the nation and that were to be permab& from the country's delicate Internets tubes by the biggest set of dog curtains this side of The Great Firewall of China. -- ...[after] mocking Anon on national TV, the ceasefire was done for and Anon picked up Conroy's thrown gauntlet and announced that hostilities would resume and that this time, they weren't fucking around. -- "The Australian government will learn that one does not mess with our porn." —Anon'

'Hackers connected with the group Anonymous, known for its war against Scientology, this morning launched a broad attack on government websites. They are protesting against forthcoming internet filtering legislation and the perceived censorship in pornography of small-breasted women (who are thought to be under age) and female ejaculation. Several government sites were down and the hackers have promised to follow up by spamming government offices with pornographic emails, faxes and prank phone calls.' -- DOES NOT FORGIVE

'Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes. Aleks explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers. Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.'

'One of the absurdities of the UK’s list of banned people, is that quite a few of those on the list, including Savage himself, had neither tried, nor intended, to enter the UK. This was because the list, compiled by Whitehall types using Google and a little help from the intelligence services, was never really a practical measure. It was, as Smith herself said at the time, a way to showcase ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here’. ‘It’s a privilege to come to this country’, she continued: ‘There are certain behaviours that mean you forfeit that privilege.’ -- This shouldn’t be a surprise. A ban on unacceptable behaviour, on offensive speakers, is never a testament to the strength of a society’s norms and values. It is always its opposite, a sign of weakness.'

'Parents have always worried about the pernicious impact of youth culture, whether from comic books, rock and roll, or videogames. But in China’s rigid, hypercompetitive society, the Internet explosion represents more than a disciplinary annoyance. It is seen as an existential threat. And that helps explain why treating kids with supposed Internet addiction has become a national obsession. -- ...the rhetoric around Internet addiction grew even more hysterical: The Net was not just a public-health hazard but a national-security risk. In 2006, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League openly fretted about a “severe social problem that could threaten the nation’s future” and called Internet cafés “hotbeds of juvenile crime and depravity.” Official figures claimed that the Internet was responsible for up to 80 percent of high school and college dropouts and most juvenile crimes. A show on state-run television described the fight against Internet addiction as the Third Opium War.'

'Dominant Social Theme: Don't look now! ... We have pointed out in the past that a major way of killing true reporting is to ignore it. This is much different than heavy-handed USSR tactics of "making up" news. The Western way has always been more subtle, at least in the 20th century. Not so sure about the 21st because of the Internet. -- Conclusion: And what do we have today, after more than a century of news "improvement?" After 100 years of turning news gathering into a profession, of setting the "highest standards," of ensuring as much as humanly possible that all forms of bias were excommunicated from the news rooms? ... Why we have America's major networks NOT COVERING THE SCIENTIFIC STORY OF THE DECADE FOR A FULL TWO WEEKS AFTER THE FIRST REPORTS. Kind of makes you wonder where all the improvement's gone, huh? Unless it's on purpose ... Ya think?'

'Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts. Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime. The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings. It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.' -- How? By making a video game that simulates them instead? Oh, wait... -- '"[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."' -- Virtual Human Rights Act? LOL

HAHA! Gulag time.

On ideology: completes Rumsfield's epistomological genus with the idea that ideology manifests itself in those unknown knowns that contrive to create new known knowns to disguise the knowability of unknowability; that in our increasingly cynical culture, ideology provides for us each an other onto which we can project heldfast beliefs that make an alibi our own lack of belief but in the naive belief that the other doesn't also believe in a likewise projection; and that in a politically-correct, self-censorious culture, ideology has become the inventor of ever new forms of prohibition whose public acknowledgement of such is more strictly prohibited than that which was subject to the prohibition. -- Ends on a nice thought about google's motto of doing no evil being a forewarned apology for certain evil yet to be done.

The perception IS the reality. That's the inherent danger of the immediate consenus-making ability of twitter and other realtime platforms. -- Brendan O'Neill: "Illiberal liberalism" "Emotional incontinence" Righteous indignation/enthusiasm. That's the inherent danger of immediate action/reaction/gratification as opposed to taking the time to think things through – "Boring, hard work," as Nick Cohen puts it. (As a #moralmaze tweeter said, links to in-depth resources provide the best alibi for "shallow" twitterhappy tweetstormers.) Nick Cohen: "There's a lot of utopianism. It's very shallow and very transient. A lot of it is apathetic. It's people affirming themselves." -- RE #moralmaze. It's not surprising to see tweeters so overly keen to defend any and every perceived threat to twitter, though it's not like its going away—calm down. Defending both their newly-felt right to be heard and the social/cultural capital they've built up over the years... TWITTER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Down the memory hole. What kids can't know: '"It has been thought that an increase in carbon dioxide will lead to global warming. While carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing over the past 100 years, there is no evidence that it is causing an increase in global temperatures." -- "The behavior of the atmosphere is extremely complex. Therefore, discovering the validity of global warming is complex as well. How much effect will the increase in carbon dioxide will have is unclear or even if we recognize the effects of any increase." -- The Wayback machine has the missing web page for posterity: http://web.archive.org/web/20060129154229/http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/atmos/ll_gas.htm'

'There have always been people who have found reasons to take offence. A generation ago, protest was hard work. Now Facebook groups and trending topics on Twitter can, if they ignite, produce mass protests from nowhere. -- The ease of net communication explains why so much abuse appears in comments boxes. But it also undermines the authenticity of many mass protests. The targets feel as if they are on the receiving end of genuine popular feeling, when typically the anger directed against them is shallow and transient. -- A mob fighting a good cause is still a mob. To fight back, you need to remember that although the internet age is hugely expanding the number of complaints, the old rules still apply. Whether you are the owner of a tiny blog or the editor of a national newspaper, if someone points out an incorrect fact, you correct it; if someone challenges an argument, you argue back; and if someone says that you must think what they think, you ignore them.'

'...there was something gratuitous about what Brendan O’Neill described as the liberal cause-hunter’s ‘two-minute’ hate. All the commentaries, the blogs, the tweets – all seemed a little too desperate to voice their disapproval, to reveal how disgusted they were. It was a spectacle of feelings, a seething mass of self-affirming emotional incontinence, a carnival of first-person pronouns and expressions of hurt and proxy offence. I feel, therefore I am. -- ...important for the spleen-venters was the act of claiming the moral high-ground as offended, as hurt, as a determined victim of something that they no doubt searched out on the web. This act of searching out offence and proclaiming the depth of one’s feelings from online rooftops threatens free speech. ...the danger of such a vast explosion of offence-taking is that it inhibits, creating a ‘you-can’t-say-that’ culture in which one is scared to speak one’s mind, whether its contents are moronic or not.' -- THE THOUGHTPOLICE IS YOU

75mins Channel 4 documentary on the cult of environmentalism and the politically-motivated supression of scientific method/skepticism. Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST FIGHT IN PEACE

'The New York Times reported this week that lawmakers in Britain and France have proposed requiring disclaimers and warning labels on photo-shopped images of models. "When teenagers and women look at these pictures in magazines, they end up feeling unhappy with themselves," a British MP explained, as if government power to secure the happiness of women and girls was simply self-evident. This is not harmless official maternalism: a government that concerns itself with the happiness or psychological well-being of its citizens is a government that will prohibit conduct or speech deemed psychologically harmful, or simply not conducive to happiness. -- Human malevolence is a problem the law can't solve and often can't even punish, without grievous infringements on liberty. The cost of a right to feel good about yourself is everyone's right to be free.'

'"China's going to be the largest Internet market in the world. If Google isn't the leader there, will it really be the leading search company in the world?" -- Baidu's success has been inflated by questionable practices.' -- Paid censorship, search tampering, state-sponsored evil, etc

#AGAINST -- Thomas Aquinas: "[In going beyond the boundaries of God] they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.” -- Lorenzo Scupoli: “They make an idol of their own understanding.” -- Paul Griffiths: “In a world where curiosity rules, unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device ... amounts to nothing less than a ... radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.” -- John Henry Newman: “In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control.” #FOR -- Pascal: “Curiosity is only vanity.” -- Jonathan Robinson: “What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy.” -- Amen to that.

'The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found. "The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong." One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field's gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll – and the rest have been in the past.' -- Useful idiots are useful

'CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773, which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency. The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.' -- America Offline.

'*Following approved article contains*: Accurate report on addition of Seedstore.com to the World Wide Web; Emphasis on China’s commitment to free and open exchange of ideas; With 12 in total, almost too many Internet sites for public to choose from.'

'Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren't really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. Steve Jobs has confirmed that every iPhone routinely checks back with Apple to make sure the apps you've purchased are still kosher; Apple reserves the right to kill any app at any time for any reason. But why stop there? If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.' -- B&

'“...appealed to the media not to use Twitter names because, they say, doing so could put people’s lives in danger.” One of the difficulties of asking us to not identify our anonymous sources is that, given how easy it is to stage hoaxes on Twitter, we have tried to identify those feeds that seem most reliable and we have reason to believe are actually coming to us from inside Iran. In other words we have tried to point only to feeds that have established a reputation for accuracy in the past few days. That said, it is entirely likely that the authorities in Iran may well be monitoring these Twitter feeds themselves and we will refrain from identifying individual feeds from now on.' -- With no verifiable usernames and the spread of Tehran timezone spoofings, it is '...impossible for journalists to trust that any Twitter feeds are in fact coming from inside Iran.'

"In The Know panelists discuss whether seeing images of dead babies and bludgeoned prostitutes in our sleep is desensitizing Americans to violence."

"Consider what might happen if a scholar releases a book on radical Islam exclusively in a digital format. The US government, after reviewing the work, determines that certain passages amount to national security threat, and sends Amazon and the publisher national security letters demanding the offending passages be removed. Now not only will anyone who purchases the book get the new, censored copy, but anyone who had bought the book previously and then syncs their Kindle with Amazon—to buy another book, pay a bill, whatever—will, probably unknowingly, have the old version replaced by the new, “cleaned up” version on their device. The original version was never printed, and now it’s like it didn’t even exist. What’s more, the government now has a list of everyone who downloaded both the old and new versions of the book."

W.R. Bio detailed three patterns: #1. Sex talk. "A group met for pairing off." [This] is one basic pattern that groups can always devolve into, away from the sophisticated purpose... #2. The identification and vilification of external enemies. ...nothing causes a group to galvanize like an external enemy. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies. #3. Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique. --- [G]roup structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members. The user of social software is the group, not the individual.'

"wondering if googlefail was a test of how the world would respond to a googlefail. glad we handled it with calm and decorum #googmayharm"

"Despite their differences, psychoanalysis and AI have always shared theoretical affinities –among these, the challenge to the idea of the autonomous, intentional actor, the need for self-reference in theory building, and the need for objects such as censors to deal with internal conflict. The strength and the weakness of object theories are the same in both psychoanalysis and AI: the strength is a conceptual framework that offers rich possibilities for models of interactive process; the weakness is that the framework may be too rich. The postulated object may be too powerful: they explain the mind by postulating many minds within it."

"A prosecutor said Minerva - who was rumored to be a retired financial market worker - is in fact a 30-year-old jobless man who only learned about foreign exchange markets through self-education." -- Because nobody can learn things for themselves; nobody can have an opinion without a university certificate to back it up. FFS!

"The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet user outside China to surf the web as if they were in China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It's open source, free and easy." -- Hehe

"Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results?" -- No! I want objective search results, not to be trapped in my own ignorance bubble. This is user-centered design gone mad.

"The Great Habbo Raid of July 12 (Fuck you, Europe), 2006 was an online version of The Million Man March to protest the racism of the Habbo mods. It was the first of a series of raids to end all raids."

"Shi Tao is serving a 10-year sentence in prison for writing articles calling for political reform in China. Yahoo helped put him there. FuckFlickr is open-source image gallery software that won’t narc you out. We created it as an alternative to hosting your photos on a certain Yahoo-owned photo sharing site." -- Host your own.

'Spore says "no" to nipply bits!'

"ParanoidLinux is a Linux distribution inspired by Cory Doctorow's Book, "Little Brother". Its goal is to provide the user with a linux system that is designed under the assumption that the owner is under attack or surveillance from the government..."

"What are the risks of pooled consciousness to society and individuals? #people become slaves to public opinion, behave, have experiences because of what will go in their neural feed (already see this behavior in Facebook)"

Facebook banned at work? Use this: "use Google's language translation service as a web proxy. The trick is to tell it to convert from English to English." URL: http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.facebook.com (in theory!)

Smart soda: "Got a blog or website? Undermine censorship by publishing fragments of censored material on your site."

"It's like some sort of love affair, stripped of the courtship phase. I feel bathed in safety."

John Gilmore said “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”

"In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world."

"The 2-channel forum is a Japanese internet phenomenon. This single site has more influence on Japanese popular opinion than the prime minister, the emperor and the traditional media combined... conversations hosted here have also influenced stock prices"