Or you can have it on Firefox right now with enigmail. Or well, you could. Maybe it doesn't work any more. I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.

there isn't an IoTa of awareness

What offends you may not offend me. And vice-versa. What serves no purpose for you, may serve a purpose for me. Be it intended offense, or otherwise, or both at once.

No one in the USA has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a particular group; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (of any size) may not offend another, nor a person of another grouping; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another.

And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not -- any more than you can guess what is offensive to me, or not.

Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. It does not rely on the idea that we "must not cause offense."

Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.

i stopped reading there

And I stopped reading there. See how that works?

insane != abstract

you don't get to redefine words as their opposite meaning and expect to sound logically coherent

"i'm going to redefine 'wet' as 'dry' and continue talking about climatology and expect people to still take me seriously..."

okay, crackpot

i'm not willing to entertain the mental gymnastics whereby moderation is defined as an extreme

you're nuts dude

Now, I grant you that most an entire generation having grown up with the idea that it's ok to steal IP, and the toxic idiocy of the "information wants to be free" crowd additionally muddying the waters, and the proliferation of people who just can't seem to keep their word, one might have reason to be cynical about this.

You've gone off the rails here. The "information wants to be free" crowd thinks as such precisely because information naturally (i.e., without the interference of law) is in the Public Domain to begin with. Creating a strawman argument claiming that they'd somehow twist that position to justify stealing from the Public Domain is not only offensive, but patently absurd.

i stopped reading there

how did that work with cuba? iran? north korea? china?

what you're asking for is massacred citizens

iran for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...

no matter how many intelligent, forward thinking students you have agitating in the cities, the government just calls up busloads of basiji thugs from the countryside and cracks skulls until change seekers shut up in fear. or worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

slow stead engagement is what really works

reactionary inflexibility simply means no change at all

welcome to reality

this is you:

http://www.politico.com/story/...

pragmatism, flexibility, realism, compromise always wins

inflexible ideological dogmatism is how you lose and are ignored

well yeah, by definition a rock star is very rare

so if you want a rockstar working for you, you better be ready to shell out big money or provide truly extraordinary perks

you can't just expect or demand rock star status from average or even above average programmers. you can't mold people's personalities like their technical proficiency. i suppose there does exist stress mitigating strategies someone can consciously adapt. but from the rock star i met, it is a sort of chilly immunity to even the concept of stress that is quite awesome to behold

that's why i quoted eisenhower

because when i met such a person, i immediately thought of someone functioning under the stresses of extreme combat. i thought of this person on the eastern front in wwii. what it would take to survive *real* stress, because stress in programming, while real, taken in perspective to something like fields of combat, is a joke

i always wondered if this person had indeed been in such an extreme stressful environment, like war. a sort of "once i've seen that, none of this shit impresses me." because indeed, nothing seemed to impress him. you could scream in his face and he would react the same as if you were casually discussing gardening. nothing phased the dude

what have you "won" exactly?

You "win" Turkish citizens annoyed with their government -- a win in the only venue likely to be able to create change there.

so you're for not opening diplomatic relations with cuba? we should just never ever ever reconcile or talk with cuba?

Diplomatic relations are not on the same level as corporate sponsorship of repression. Yes, we should talk to other governments, definitely including cuba, and yes, we should allow our citizens access if they wish to go there, and vice-versa.

But no, I don't think it is a positive thing when corporations adopt behavioral restrictions that are antithetical to freedom in general. It's not that I expect them to change, it's just that I don't like it, and as I am free to object and explain here, I do so.

we don't talk to iran? what is iran's attitude going to be then?

This is a straw man. I am all for talking to, and mutual visitation of, Iran (Cuba, etc.) These things allow cultural values to spread -- because generally, the dialog is quite open. I am not for FB repressing speech. These are not the same issues.

you are a dogmatic rigid ideologue

It's always entertaining to watch someone slinging mud at their own straw man.

If you want to know what I think, ask me. Don't put words in my mouth.

i have met a person with that stress proof personality, and above average talent. they exist. those are the rockstars

the absence of facebook won't make those problems go away.

I missed addressing that; responded a bit too quickly, sorry.

I consider this assertion to be flawed; here's why. FB has a very high public profile. Any visitor to the US that is exposed to social media is likely to be aware of both the institution and its reach. They can also learn that the reason "they can't have nice things" is because their government has stepped in the way of their citizens using religion as an excuse. Likewise, US family members who cannot connect with Turkish family members are likely to hold strong opinions, and share them.

If anything is going to make things change, I think that's far more likely than a FB presence that is repression-compliant.

Of course, this would require Zuckerberg and crew to operate using a metric quite different from the "maximize users as ad viewers" model, and that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

not sure if joking (look around here, there are some socially autistic morons on slashdot)

if you are joking, thanks for the laugh

if not, the middle way and compromise as an extreme is... stupid. not even logically coherent

ok, let's say you prevail. zuckerberg gives turkey the middle finger and doesn't censor images

ok, now facebook is kicked out turkey

what have you "won" exactly?

how has turkey changed in any way? you've given the authoritarians a win: they've successfully excised the evil western cancer of facebook from glorious turkey

and how will turkey change in the future?

so you're for not opening diplomatic relations with cuba? we should just never ever ever reconcile or talk with cuba? how has that strategy paid off to change cuba?

we don't talk to iran? what is iran's attitude going to be then?

you are a dogmatic rigid ideologue

you are exactly the same as what you don't like in turkey

and the fruits of your ignorant stubbornness is you HELP the people you don't like

pragmatism always wins

"i know you are but what am i" went out of style as rhetorically effective sometime around the second grade of elementary school. you don't even make any logical sense