High Plains Thumper <highplainsthumper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> Homer on Sunday :
>>> Linonut spake thusly:
>>>> Homer fired off:
>>>
>>>>> Joe Barr's understandably belligerent reaction:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.linux.com/articles/38081
>>>>
>>>> Interesting:
>>>
>>> [snip litany of Microsoft's racketeering] More Blogworthy material.
>>
>> Definitely. Gold mind rediscovered. The sad thing is that US law is too
>> weak to combat such criminal behaviour.
>
> It is not so much the law, but the lack of pursuit for justice. Those
> most worshipped are the wealthy and athletes.
>
> The trolling in this newsgroup is a good indicator.
>
I find the lack of morals displayed by the trolls and by so many
"business" people to be deeply disturbing. The willingness to lie in
order to make money is appalling. Who doesn't despise disingenuous
people?
One interesting thing I've found in my career when coming across such
people is that they assume that everyone else is as crooked as they are,
so that anyone taking any position on anything must, by definition, be
pushing an convenient viewpoint rather than a well-researched and
understood assessment of the facts as they are presently understood.
A particular upshot of this is that ignorance of facts begins to become
an advantage, at least to the spinners and liars, since they have yet
less reason to apply any value system against their dishonest spiel.
The "mad scientist" as an amoral and dangerous character has often been
the focus of daemonisation in literature and the popular press, yet it
is the genuine scientist who is typically best-placed to assess facts
in a rational and dispassionate way. Why don't politicians like this?
Well, because it means that the scientists will not necessarily uphold
the position the politicians are taking. Why is this bad? Well,
probably, because lots of companies have spent large sums of money
securing the support of politicians for their wares in some way or other,
and politicians fear scientists more than almost anyone, because they
are clearly learned and are considered to be fiercly independent of
political influence. Should a scientist stand up in public and say, for
example, that global warming is a problem, and it's likely that burning
oil is contributing to that problem, then politicians and companies need
to think fast indeed in order to address the distinct possibility that
the scientist will be listened to.
Much the same applies in this technology and computing world. If an
apparently learned person speaks out to say that, for example, Windows is
not very secure, and Linux is more secure, then it's highly likely that
the learned person might just be listened to. Particularly if there
be a lot of evidence to support that position, for example, counts of
the number of viable viruses and exploits in the wild for each system,
or the number of each system currently compromised in some way.
One way of reducing the impact of that learned person is to invent other
knowledgeable folk (Bartko et al) and use them to pollute the river of
information with suitable disinformation. If enough people contribute
enough pollution to the river of truth, then the impact of the learned
people will surely be diluted in the minds of the interested by not so
knowledgeable observers. We rely very much on journalists to help us
sift through the muddier waters of the river of truth, and Joe Barr was
one of the best.
In the linux advocacy HOWTO, it suggests that good advocates will avoid
hyperbolae in discussions, and ideally avoid any kind of unsupported
opinion, and stick only to facts. Whilst this is an admirable goal, it
suffers a singular drawback, which is that there is no real definition
of a "fact". There is, however, scientific method, which aims to
establish provable models by trying to disprove them. Any model which
withstands such testing gains credence amongst the scientific community,
and will be adopted, at least until a better model is found. The whole
approach is dependent on some key pre-conditions, however. Firstly, and
perhaps most importantly, in order to attempt to disprove a "current"
theory, it's usually necessary to have a good grasp on all of its
antecendants, and how they were disproven. The upshot here is that it
can take many years of learning before an averagely competent scientist
can begin to criticise the models of others, let alone propose one of
their own. Thus, there is an ever widening gap between these day to day
practitioners of scientific thinking, and the normal, non-scientifically
trained public.
That gap, the one between the scientific thinkers and the non-scientific
general public, is the one which is occupied by marketing and sales
activities, by propaganda machines, by trolls and by liars. Is the
propagation of arguments by scientific method ever going to be able
to clean the polluted river of truth? Without educating the public in
general, it seems unlikely. The tactic of out and out lying is hard to
deal with. Unless you've sworn some kind of oath, like in a court of law,
say, then being dishonest is not generally considered to be illegal,
even when it's being done deliberately in order to relieve people of
money. By ensuring that the dishonesty is hard to track back to the
originators, by, say, employing "advocates" in different geographies,
or using Usenet in order to plant anonymous insults, then the usual
laws against dishonest trading can be avoided. The gap, however,
can also be filled by good journalism. For every press release and
marketing or sales pitch, we can have a good journalist or commentator,
explaining the issues in a form which is valid and yet more accessible to
those without the detailed training. Joe did an excellent job of this,
both through his "dweebspeak" primer, and by exercising his very broad
knowledge of computing languages and machines. His CLI for Noobies book
is another excellent example of how he was able to bridge the gap.
It's rather sad to reflect that the laws being enacted as a part of
the current round of globalisation seem to be almost 100% aimed at
furthering the financial gain of existing global players, with almost no
consideration for the rights of small businesses, consumers, citizens,
education, charity, poverty and so on. Patent laws are being reviewed,
but only in order to extend the number of things which can be patented,
and the scope of those patents in terms of objects, time periods
and so on. The push by "media" companies to force ISPs to police
the activities of internet users is an interesting first step towards
making the ISPs some kind of semi-independent state, but without any
kind of independent or quasi-independent legal system, political system,
police force, advocates and so on. To date, I think such states only
exist within aircraft and ships which sail or fly through international
waters or air-space, where the captain of the vessel in question is the
undisputed authority in all respects.
We don't expect expert witnesses to be necessarily available on ships
or aircraft, however, we do very much expect them to be available in our
normal judicial process. There is no room at all for expert witnesses,
however, in the proposals from the ISPs. The judge, jury and executioner
is the media company. If that company decides that they /suspect/ a
user of doing something illegal, then that, in their view, is enough
to start a process which in fairly short order can result in an ISP
disconnecting a paying customer who may have done nothing wrong at all.
Why does this relate to trolling on usenet? Quite simply because both
are based around assertions being made for pure financial gain, with no
expectation of or requirement for supporting evidence. Whilst I do not
condone copyright violation, I equally do not condone media companies
being given control by proxy of ISP accounts of the general public,
nor do I condone the establishment of ISP's networks as jurisdictionally
independent entities, like ships or aircraft. There is a clear and strong
moral requirement for time and effort to be expended in the search of the
truth, in terms of the scientific establishment of a series of statements
which best fit the available evidence, through the debate by independent
parties and assessed by an independent audience.
When all that has failed, then our final recourse is for an independent
press. For journalists to seek out the failings in the system and to
expose those failings to the public at large, combining their knowledge
of technology, scientific method, legal debate and the praticalities of
marketing. This is precisely what Joe Barr did, many many times over,
in between his perhaps more mundane but more idealistic work of editing
the learned debates and articles about the linux community and its works.
His best known was the Barkto affair, and he will always be remembered
for that work.
He will be missed by all of us.
--
| mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| Open platforms prevent vendor lock-in. Own your Own services! |
|
|
