Cultural relativism has never been a part of my epistemological diet.

Plato held the position that there are absolute truths. The difficulty with cultural relativism is that, for example, under such an analysis capital punishment is entirely acceptable among cultures that believe it is a valid form of truth, and the same of course would apply to male (which also happens) or female genital mutilation. I laugh my arse off when I hear feminists, Marxists, socialists/Labour party members spouting cultural relativism, which really is the death trap of all thinking. However, and unlike bible bashers, they do at least try to find some form of truth, just not an objective one.

Rer: An award?

"An award for the man who's organisation today published the names and addresses of the remaining seven Jews in Baghdad?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/02/assange-hero-zero-swedes-pitiable

"Assange-the-hero vanished somewhere in that antisemitic and antifeminist slime. Sweden's relatively high measure of sexual equality and consciousness in gender questions is a matter of national pride. That a dodgy hacker from Australia started knocking it was not popular.

Not even the culture pages of Aftonbladet, which kept up their uncritical admiration for Assange longer than anyone else, can keep it up now. The noted leftwing commentator Dan Josefsson admitted recently that Assange was not the radical hero he had supposed, but "a solitary and shabby libertarian who wants to tear down democratic societies". "

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/42856/julian-assange-im-same-position-jews

"Julian Assange, the 39-year-old Australian behind the extraordinary leaks of US diplomatic cables and documents, told The Times that he believed the allegations and the publicity surrounding them were unfounded and motivated by “a mixture of revenge, money, and police pressure.”

He said: “All sorts of abusive statements were made against the Jewish people in the 1950s and before.

"I'm not the Jewish people, but the people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability [are in the same position].” "

Except to note that the net has been ripe with observations on Assange and antisemitism for months, no further comment is necessary.

Re: Pity that Mr Assange is not, say, a Chinese citizen,

Assange has actually put something similar to that rumour about, among many others:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=5

"The name Assange is thought to derive from Ah Sang, or Mr. Sang, a Chinese émigré who settled on Thursday Island, off the coast of Australia, in the early eighteen-hundreds, and whose descendants later moved to the continent. Assange’s maternal ancestors came to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century, from Scotland and Ireland, in search of farmland, and Assange suspects, only half in jest, that his proclivity for wandering is genetic."

http://www.theweek.co.uk/people-news/3283/julian-assange-experiment-gave-me-white-hair?asid=957a34b3&hidecomments=1

" Equally bizarre was his response to her questions about his unusual surname. He told Brooke: "Some people think it's French or African. My mother is French. My grandfather was a Taiwanese pirate."

When Brooke refused to believe the pirate story, Assange seemed hurt, telling her: "He was a pirate and landed on Thursday Island where he met and married a Thursday Islander woman. They went to Queensland." "

Re:"we, journalists"

"He's being ironic, right?"

Ya can have a right ol' shindig down at the Walkleys cobber, an' no mistake:

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

What we most of all like to do is have a few glasses of the amber nectar before going up on stage, and then having a physical confrontation to decide on matters epistemological:

"Australian journalism's most prestigious night descended into chaos[4] when Glenn Milne physically and verbally attacked rival journalist Stephen Mayne live on stage at the 2006 Walkley Awards.[4]

As presenter Mayne prepared to present an award to Morgan Mellish of The Australian Financial Review,[5] a "red-faced"[4] and "seemingly intoxicated"[6] Milne lurched onto the stage before launching a tirade of verbal abuse at Mayne; Milne then lunged at Mayne and pushed him off the stage,[5] screaming at Mayne that he was "a disgrace".[4]"

Oh yeah, we 'journalists' sure know how to do things in style. ;-)

Re: A little context is needed here...

Doesn't make good headlines though. These days even Auntie Beeb is preoccupied with the task of constructing tabloid one liners. Fortunately for me I am a good cook and the taste and smell of my labours destroys these things. :-)

Re: Correction.

Stop minimising his offences and conviction; he was convicted on 25 counts (for very serious offences) and, as we can now see, the sentence was a gross mistake. As I've indicated previously, early offences are good predictors of later ones, and Assange is a lesson here; his current round includes fencing stolen secrets, including his (to understate the case) egregious edit of the helicopter incident. He should have been extradited for his hostile acts on Pentagon hardware, and there were others: "Police also found details of hundreds of stolen passwords for networks around the world along with the dates when he obtained them. Among them were passwords for the US Air force 7th Command Group in the Pentagon." Assange also hacked computers to monitor the Australian Federal Police investigation into *his* criminal activities, after which he said to the judge "Your honour, I feel a great misjustice [sic] has been done and I would like to record the fact that you have been misled by the prosecution"

Me suggesting? I have made no suggestion, but I can tell you that there is no visible legal, technical reason why his extradition ought not to go ahead, though I am sure that he will continue to hold open air weepy sessions to curry favour and replace his diminishing band of supporters. Moreover, attempting to read what is going on in the black box is for people who believe in Cracker, fairies at the bottom of the garden and mediums. You cannot. No one can. It is impossible. The nearest that you can get to this is in reading behavioural data in meat space and inferring by analogy. That's forensic speak (see my earlier comments on John Locke for a clarification on that term, should you need it).

Furthermore his magnum opus would appear to consist of various ways of stealing information (for which he was convicted) and then fencing it (ostensibly when taken by Bradley Manning, whom he has left to the wolves, excluding a minimal defence fund contribution) whilst claiming ownership; the proposed pay wall, the 'auto' biography (released because, in spite of his cold feet, he had signed an agreement and had *taken* an advance fee from the publisher which they were entitled to recoup). Indeed, when the Guardian started publishing some of the data his hissy fit was of massive proportions, because he believed them to be 'his'; oh no Jules, the data belong to the original owners, not to you. In addition the Americans should have extradited him at the time of his first offence, since this was a substantial criminal offence (a predictor) committed on their servers by a man who can certainly not claim that he was hunting UFO data.

To understand more about him you might want to read the things that he written and said, including his tart comments about the expendability of informants in Afghanistan, who presumably may eat cake.

Bradley Manning? A few crumbs from the Assange table to help defray some legal costs, that's all. Plausible deniability, as with international power politics/real politik, the very sort of thing he supposedly opposes. One cannot make a Wikiomelette without cracking informant heads. After all, did Jules himself not say of the Afghan informants that they chose? Here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351927/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-new-book-Afghan-informants-deserve-killed.html

"Assange's apparent gung-ho attitude in an early meeting to naming U.S. informants stunned his media collaborators, the new book claimed.

The title said he told international reporters: 'Well, they're informants so, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.' The book continues: 'There was, for a moment, silence around the table.'"

Well that's a good predictor where Manning's health is concerned.

Re: @Br0die

Which leads to several other points. 1) ephebophilia is not paedophilia, 2) the laws on sexual intercourse and age in the UK were changed during Victorian times due to the number of child prostitutes and the campaigning activities of a reformer, 3) there are countries where sexual intercourse with people younger than 16 is legal, 4) biology has the habit of making 'children' sexually active/mature/capable of reproduction.

Genuine paedophilia is genuinely repugnant. Genuine mistakes are genuinely sad. In between there are many points of debate that I have seen elicit immature responses from Reg readers, possibly trolls, who have made unsavoury accusations that have been deleted by moderators.

For sure I'd like to see that part of the criminal justice system involved explain and justify themselves in full glare, and I'd like to see the blackmailer dealt with severely, also in full glare; it was clearly using a sensitive topic to raise money in a targeted manner. People whose blackmail practise is targeted, selective, deliberate are among the lowest of creatures. This is the lowest and most disgusting form of entrapment, and entrapment is very definitely a form of recruitment.

OK, but just one small point here; it can alter routers (not windows machines)? I'd like to know more about that as it is causing me a little discomfort, for obvious reasons. How does it attack router settings?

Re: Understatement of the year

Well, like Dame Edna Everage she's moist too. ;-)

Re: Wikileaks

Shit happens when you party naked, and Jules knew that he was a partying-oh.

Re: The Usual Tabloid Politics About Immigration

"Sorry. Typical bloody left wing too. It's one area in which... Sorry, it's one of the areas in which they are all as bad as each other."

It is unwise to so typify opposition to increasing the population of one of the most densely populated countries in an over populated world. We are not self sufficient in food (production decreased by 5% since the cold war 'ended'), we are not self sufficient in energy (which is a dwindling resource), we are not self sufficient in fertilisers (peak phosphate has been passed, and Morocco is the main producer), and our water resources are subject to drought, both because of over consumption and because of climate change. Thus we have increasingly lower reservoirs, and we find that farmers are increasingly not allowed to use river water for irrigation purposes.

Worse still, by continually building more houses and the support systems these require (roads, shops, hospitals, car parks [...]) we further restrict the trickle down of water into underground aquifers at the same time as increasing the probability of flooding, of which we have seen a lot of late.

We were overpopulated at the beginning of the last century.

As to being 'typically left wing', it is not; even after the last election, when they were under no illusions about the opposition to their immigration policies, Labour conference attenders were remarking on their disappointment that the agenda was not more 'internationalist', that they wanted to see more immigration. That's left wing for you; rooted in fantasy island thinking, rather than based on the reality that we have to reduce the population of this world, and thus of the more densely populated parts of it, or we will die due to over consumption of resources.

Demonising people by describing their opposition to their country being over populated as attributable to a political view is not merely politically dangerous (because the implication is that they are racist) but is also dangerous in terms of the survival of a national group:

"[...] in my view, mass migration and the management of immigration is now the greatest challenge facing all European governments. We have to get away from the notion that anyone who wants to talk about this issue is somehow a racist; they are not, they are intelligent, ordinary people who are interested in the future of their own country"

Dr John Reid, UK Home Secretary, in a speech at DEMOS on 9 August, now gone from the cache but partly quoted here:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/cohesion/immigration.php

I have yet to see anyone offer any kind of a priori or a posteriori proof that opposition to immigration is racist, 'right wing'. It appears to me to be thoughtless, when thought is very definitely the order of the day. Otherwise, for catch all thinking, -11 out of 10

Too many releases for developers of add on components to keep up. I install portable versions into a True Crypt container for trialling and am not impressed and, I am ineffably sad to say, I find myself creeping across the desktop to use IE for some sites.

@Lee Dowling

I saw Frost interview Emin once; when asked, her response was that it's art because she says so.

Re: Zero. I.e. nothing.

I haven't laughed so much since Tracey Emin's tent and sleeping bag went up in flames. In fact I wanted the aftermath to have a preservation order stuck on it (there's a pun about stuckism here), and hope the museum rodents manage to leave a pellet of shit or two in the thing.

Re: Huh?

Photoshopped! ;->

Re: Another amazing quote from Assange

Thank you for putting into words something that has been plaguing me for months. In a word, this man has demonstrated beyond all doubt that he is a duplicitous hypocrite. Time for that beer I think.

Re: @ratfox

For the nth time, Assange's counsel was advised they wanted him for questioning and to charge him. Assange very soon after disappeared and resurfaced in the UK; that is absconding. The Swedish CJS simply want justice to take its course, as it would have had Assange not fled the jurisdiction. As it is he has made himself the villain of the piece, even though he may claim otherwise. He lacks credibility, as do all absconders. He ought to be fined for evading justice, not suing. Absolutely not.

Re: @AC puleeez give me a break.

Exactly. I am relieved that he is going back to the jurisdiction he fled, so conveniently after the Swedish police informed his counsel that he was to be interviewed and arrested. All this BS about the EAW misses the point that on grounds of absconding alone he must go back. So I am going out for a pint tonight. I advise Jules to buy a few bottles of English beer whilst he has the chance. It may be that he only be able to dream of the stuff for a couple for the next couple of years. Unless of course the Swedish CJS gives him a public lathering and expels him, declaring him persona non grata, stripping him of his few remaining assets.

Re: Sweden not his final stop

"If he get extridited to Sweden he'll end up in a US jail."

Wrong. The Swedes have said they will not extradite him to the US without prior approval from the UK. The UK not extradite for a capital offence.

re

He did not ask. He absconded. His lawyer was told that the police wanted to question him and he magically disappeared. Later, at one of his appearances in court, his Swedish advocate claimed he'd not heard anything from the police, only to later confess in court that he had just found a text from them dating back to the crucial period, saying they wanted him to report.

Assange absconded.

As to the US, the Swedes have made it abundantly clear that the UK would have to agree on any putative extradition to the US from Sweden, and the UK does not allow extradition for capital offences. These data have been mulled over many times, and I am surprised that people are bringing up old, withered and burned chestnuts in the face of public iterations by Swedish and UK officials.

The man must attend court.

Re: The Common Sense Approach...

"...is to keep R&D suystems isolated from the Internet; if they cannot find it on hacking into the public-facing system, they can't nick it, after all. yes, it's a simple approach, but hells bells, it was engineers who came up with KISS, after all"

In precisely that way, when I started using Demon Internet 20 years ago their customer data servers were on a private intranet with absolutely no link to the wider internet. Reading about (e.g.) US armed forces being 'hacked' I am always surprised. Not to excuse Msrs McKinnon and Assange's informants, but how the *hell* could this be possible in the first place. There should be no link at all to the 'internet', DARPA heritage or not

"Proof positive that Apple care about your security."

But Apple products do not have security problems. Security problems are for Pee Cee's! If only Steve Jobs were here to answer a few questions about this.

Re: @AC 22:11

"What really irritates is those cases where the Met knew the card had not been used by the owner (in one case, evidence that card user lived in russia) but withheld this information from the prosecution to "improve" the case against known innocents."

This is what I was earlier alluding to in another post. I would have thought that most posters in Reg fora would have the wisdom to know that there is always the risk of ID theft, and you're right; "when you assume you make an ass out of u and me"! (Not you, of course.)