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Comment Re:It has always been true (Score 2) 794

Freedom of publication. But can you afford to pay for the press, the ink, the distribution?

Freedom of broadcasting. But can you afford the license fee for the frequency, the cost of powering the transmitter?

Freedom to gather. But can you afford to take a day of work, the travel expenses? Can you get a meeting place?

This is not a case of wikileaks not being able to afford services, this is a case of wikileaks being denied services from private companies due to political pressure on those companies.

Submission + - Paypal withdraw Wikileaks donation service (bbc.co.uk)

ItsIllak writes: The BBC are reporting that Paypal are the latest company to abandon Wikileaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). Paypal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices!
News

Submission + - WikiLeaks Leaves Amazon (huffingtonpost.com) 1

akeeneye writes: Amazon dumps Wikileaks that is. The Huffington Post reports:
"Amazon.com Inc. forced WikiLeaks to stop using the U.S. company's computers to distribute embarrassing State Department communications and other documents"
I'm embarrassed to be an Amazon customer at this point.

Government

Submission + - Wikileaks booted from Amazon (abc.net.au) 1

dakameleon writes: Wikileaks has been booted from its Amazon hosting, and has now shifted to being hosted in Europe. Senator Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement."This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website," which raises the question whether this was requested by the government. Senator Lieberman said Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks "is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material". Wither free speech and reporting?
Security

Submission + - Amazon Pulls Plug On WikiLeaks (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: Amazon has pulled the plug on WikiLeaks, the site that earlier this week began releasing a mammoth collection of confidential U.S. State Department diplomatic cables. 'WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted,' WikiLeaks said about 3 p.m. ET on its Twitter account. 'Free speech the land of the free ... fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.' According to reverse IP traces run by Computerworld, WikiLeaks is now hosted by a Swedish firm, Bahnhof Internet AB, which is headquartered in Uppsala, a city approximately 44 miles north of Stockholm. As of 3:30 p.m. ET, the primary WikiLeaks site was available to Computerworld staffers in the U.S., but some attempts at reaching the URL failed.

Comment Re:let me clear your mind. (Score 1) 606

The issue we have now is that we cannot trust the government to properly classify reports and cables. Many things are left unlawfully classified in order to cover up embarrassing events. In general I agree that there are instances when sensitive information needs to remain secret, but it is clear in my mind that our government has not applied the necessary level of discretion in their classifications to warrant unquestioned trust. Wikileaks provides that questioning, which one would hope would guide the government's actions in the future.

Long story short: People act to a higher ethical standard when being watched.

Comment Re:Amazing (Score 1) 768

If people willingly buy from a seller that they know is intentionally subverting safety restrictions in order to buy apples at a lower price, then yes, those people do hold a portion of the blame. Sellers respond to consumer demand, so consumers do have an obligation to demand safety. In fact in situations where the sellar is a corporation, consumers are often the only potential source of any ethical behavior.

Comment Re:Good luck in university (Score 1) 1345

And woefully underprepared to deal with the social interactions required to advance through society. I would expect many of the parents of unschooled and home schooled kids to not want their children to 'advance' through society, but it is unfair to them to not allow them the opportunity of learning these skills (and other skills the parents are not strong in). A very interesting documentary, SURFWISE, investigates Doc Pascowitz and his form of unschooling. The perspectives from the children are especially illuminating and detail the benefits and pitfalls of this kind of education.

Of course this all comes down to the quality of parents. If you have involved, knowledgeable, curious, parents unschooling may be advantageous, but if the parents are ignorant we as a society are going to have huge problems down the line. The single biggest advantage schools offer is multiple perspectives. As my significant other says "I would hope my children would have access to more knowledge than I am able to provide."

I also expect that many of the "I am smart and I was was bored in school and don't use any of it now, so school is obsolete" commenters do not fully appreciate the impact school may have had on them. It seems difficult for me to think that they did not have at least one influential teacher in their past who had a unique view of the world, not to mention the smaller positive contributions from the many other teachers (liked or not) which are harder to evaluate. Surely, they can read and write, and I would expect schools to have at least some positive impact on those skills.

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