When we get to that point, then sound the alarm. As it is, we're not there yet.

I find it to be less of a reason to try something out and more looking for insight from others. I can look at a toolbox and bang around with a few tools on my own. But I might overlook the finer points of a particular tool. If someone has a better understanding of those tools and can point out some great uses, then that will certainly give me something to look out for when poking around on my own. I may not find things to my liking. But hopefully I won't be missing something that I would have found really useful.

It stops being funny when people truly believe - much like Scientology.

The article is over five years old, but I think it still is quite applicable today: The Submarine. The trick seems to be having awareness of this manipulation, looking for it, and being able to communicate those findings. Politics breeds that kind of watchdog (especially in the current environment). But I don't think you'll find it in every arena on every issue.

That's not to say your view lacks insight. I suspect there is a lot of news that is news because it was in the news - especially within tech. But I also suspect that simply leaves tech news wide open to manipulation either by priming the pump or providing information to feed the cycle beneficial to your message. And unlike the political arena, tech watchdogs rarely become the news which greatly reduces the effectiveness of uncovering manipulation.

Only if consumers are buying an Android phone. The advertising I see usually pushes the carrier or the manufacturer. Android is a bullet statement. For example, driving in to work I heard an Ad for Cricket offering the Ascend phone "powered by Android" (manufactured by Chinese company Huawei - I suspect this is right in line with the subject at hand). Which leads me to wonder what name will come to mind if the consumer looks at their device and decides it's a crappy phone. Will they blame Cricket, Huawei (which doesn't even get air time - maybe consumers will identify it simply as the Ascend), or Android?

I stopped using Debian mostly because it was too slow to update.

I both envy and loathe you. More envy. When are you outfitting your roadster with a custom engine tone?

Because the tech they were selling at $120k is not the tech that they're selling at $50k.

No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

I'm sure the RIAA would prefer you to simply delete everything and buy it again. Just to be sure. Remember... these are the folks who swore it was illegal to rip your own CDs and firmly believed you should have an individually purchased copy of media for each individual player you used.

Let's take the "collateral murder" video as an example. There are two versions. One edited, one raw. The version that gets linked and advertised is the edited one. The one that edits out footage of weapons within the group of men accompanying the reporters yet can highlight cameras, spends time to re-play callous banter from troops, and zoom in and label blurry dots that turn out to be children in a vehicle. This isn't just presenting leaked documents. This is carefully edited footage containing commentary with a specific goal in mind; propaganda.

Don't discount the grandstanding. Assange talks up each release despite the fact that these data dumps, while interesting, tend to offer few insights of criminal activity. At least, nothing that comes close to the grand-standing that Wikileaks and its supporters claim. But it all looks rather dire if you don't actually dig in to the material.

I don't claim that Wikileaks is fabricating what they release. But what they're producing isn't necessarily truthful either.

Which is great if what we're getting is truth. Wikileaks produces propaganda. Anonymous and lulzsec seem to produce little more than ego trips. What we have is groups thrashing around and creating really handy political targets for said "worse people" while producing very little for the effort. If anything, they are likely to be damaging the efforts of those who are or would be whistle-blowers producing evidence of real issues.

Enough with the Packt spam already!

(I'm just trying to get ahead of the curve)

Excellent post. This is why I find Bitcoins interesting even though I have no interest in mining or trading Bitcoins.

A point of interest on the history of currency. Shells were also a common form of currency. There are examples of currency rates crashing when traders flooded the cowrie shell market. There are also examples of European traders trying to pass off glass beads (high tech at the time) as cowrie shells (and suffering brutal justice when caught). Precious and semi-precious metals were often used. But then you had variations on the weight and alloy of various currencies. You had forged coins that altered these variables as well as clipping that shaved portions of the metal off to be recovered with the intent to pass off the coin at full value. And even during these early time periods, we had bank notes and bills of trade that were entirely paper documents representing value beyond the actual physical value of the note.

The history of currency alone is rather interesting and there are echoes of it being represented in the Bitcoins story.

Bah. Bitcoins represent a number of interesting concepts. Currency alone is a rather fascinating thing that touches on psychology, economy, history, and one of the earliest forms of information technology. Toss in some cryptography, peer-to-peer / decentralisation, etc. and there's no end to the facets of this subject.

That doesn't mean you have to buy in to Bitcoins. Keep in mind that these Bitcoin stories are more than simple "yay Bitcoin - buy buy buy" that you would expect from advertisements / spam. There are negative sides being covered by these stories. But if you have no interest in anything remotely related to Bitcoins, then by all means... don't click on the damn article that says it is, in fact, about Bitcoins.

This is less about being obsessed with control and more about ensuring one's efforts aren't disrupted.

This is, in fact, a Facebook issue. You better believe any channel I set up would include routine backups. And I would expect anything existing on owned architecture to offer fewer restrictions than Facebook.

Changing between channels is disruptive. It is much better to have a set channel once and continue using it. That's why we have niggling little things like domain names that we control no matter where or what hosts it. If you control of a channel, you can alter the underlying details at will. I do agree that communication is a cheap commodity item. And it's a cheap commodity item that someone like a state government should be able to provide on their own without piggybacking on some proprietary 3rd party's "free" service.

Although - the existing user base is a fair point. But at the same time, I find it hard to believe that the existing user base is so important to creating a community for Government business. Are we really claiming that Iceland can't convince its citizens to contribute without involving their Facebook account?

No - those other objections are also real. Just to drive home the point - I would scoff at Iceland inviting comments by providing the email address "icelandpm99@aol.com" as well.

Of course I said it has value. Facebook is about providing a platform for people to give them data (and much more than many realized). That data is sold. I find it questionable whether that behavior has any value to Iceland or any other governmental body.