Enjoy! Always good to meet another of the newly-minted fireflyfans!

How much of the series had you seen before?

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Banazir

Seen Serenity yet?

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Banazir

Now:

"Context is everything, and getting there is half the fun."
    - J. M. Straczynski

So... context, please?

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Banazir

It's kinda depressing that China & Iran are cracking down on internet activity like blogging in a big way. And its working due to the reasons you mentioned. There are news reports that companies like Microsoft & Google etc., are allegedly tailoring their software as per the diktats of the Communist party to censor keywords, enable better tracking of users etc.,

While these companies may be justified in changing their practices, for the sake of business, once in awhile you hear of some great news of people/tech companies that do their bit to help their oppressed fellow men and women. This is something I found, that put a smile on my face.

OT: what is the name of the film you get your icon from? It's a film, right? I think I saw it once and I was thinking about it the other night and my inability to remember anything but the animation style and creepy music bugged me.

Thank yew!

I wondered, too, but never got around to asking auriam.

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Banazir

Carnivore doesn't really apply in this case for a couple main reasons.

1) It doesn't exist anymore. The FBI uses commercially available software for the kinds of things they were going to use Carnivore for.

2) Carnivore (as intended) would not have created a choke point, it would have used the choke points already present on the Internet. For example, if you have the Internet at your home then all of your data MUSt pass through your ISP. That's a choke point.

Additionally, Carnivore wasn't really as scary as a lot of people made it out to be. All it was for was to implement court-ordered email-taps. The main reasons it scared people were:

1) It has a scary name.

2) People thought it would monitor all of the traffic on the Internet and report on anyone who, for instance, used the word "Allah" or "Bomb" or "President" in an email. Aside from the fact that this would be illegal, it's far beyond the capabilities of the FBI or anyone else for that matter.

3) In a regular phone-tap, law enforcement has to tell the phone company what phone line it is that they're going to monitor and they have to do so with the cooperation of the phone company. This keeps law enforcement from "spying" on whoever it feels like (at least without the collusion of the phone companies). Carnivore (and the software suites the FBI has used instead) are simply a computer that the FBI plugs into the ISP's network. The ISP has no control whatsoever over what that computer monitors so theoretically, the FBI (or the agent operating it) could set it to monitor anyone else on the local network too. This, of course, would be an illegal search and there are legal measures in place to stop this (just as there are legal measures in place to keep the FBI from illegally breaking into your house, snooping around, and then leaving).

Ah, yes, but that is a normative view of information, not a positive view on the Internet.
i.e., you've stated an opinion about "the way things should be" vis-a-vis sharing of info, but not have not yet a position on whether the net does this or not, and if so, how or why.

In this case, the distinction is between what was say to would-be architects of the net, web, grid, and post-grid environments, and those who "merely" analyze it to understand its dynamics and hypothetical emergent properties.

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Banazir

I don't think the Internet has a consciousness. It's just a highly visible way of [examining] the interests and actions of humans.
Yes - and transmitting, amplifying, and retaining them. A complex information system has some properties of a human, namely memory and a reactive capability. That said, we don't require sapience/intelligence or sentience/consciousness for an entity to possess the ability to "recognize" damage and "route around it". Not even a central nervous system is required: a typical plant has an immune system that is very nearly as sophisticated as that of significant animal species.

The rub, IMO, lies in the word "interprets". Do we mean in the sense of an computer programming language interpreter (or compiler, as the formal terminology can be loosely adapted witht he proper undestanding)? Or a UN translator working as a real-time interpreter? The latter requires some understanding on the NET'S part (not its architect), while the former is algorithmically laid out.

Do humans try to get around censorship? Sure. They try to get the information anyone tries to hide from them (usually, it's not hidden unless someone wants it).
True on all counts (and relevant to my most recent post).

This sounds really noble and cool until you realize it applies everything, including pictures of children being sexually abused or the password to your bank account.
Please see my reply above to de_profundiis. Information comes in many varieties, from baneful to beneficial, and of the baneful varieties there are many that do not deserve formulation and propagation, depicting as they do crimes against individuals and humanity. Some information, if it wants to be free, is a late escapee from information jail. This, however, is still (mostly) a positive statement about content, rather than one about the reactive nature of the net.

"Should it?" aside, "does it?" How well-programmed is the net? Enough to recognized censorship as an exogenously-imposed absence of data? Enough to automatically attempt to correct for it?

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Banazir