Your Right To Be An Idiot
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This opinion piece is very interesting. Actually most things that concern freedoms as we have come to know them in the US are interesting to me. And I've written before about unvetted or unverified information, but this piece does a much better job than I did.
It basically talks about the fact that in mainstream journalism there are mistakes made, and there always will be. And people will always deliberately do that, but there are rules for checking out information and stories for journalists. Yes they'll always make mistakes, but for the most part that have done a great job (spin aside).
But on the Internet there is no, or very little, checking being done. People post things emotionally without a second person to check them out. Stories get picked up and spread at amazing rates, and the race to be first, means that we can make bigger mistakes quicker. There are a couple examples given using Wikipedia, the open source, or citizen's encyclopedia. Someone posted a false biography as a joke, but who knows how many people accepted it as a fact. I know the few times I've been there I don't bother to log in or look for who has changed what. Heck, I know it would be easy for someone to slip something in there that lasted for quite some time.
Freedom of speech is very important in the US. I'd argue the world in general, but for sure it's one basis for the open society in the US. I know it gets abused at times and there are things we don't like, but that important freedom is one reason for the success of the US as a lasting democracy.
DBA's hold the quality and the integrity of our data as very important. We try to ensure that only "authorized" users can change this data and that our systems maintain the changes made as they are made. We can't control what data we get, but we often learn how to check the data we get and ensure that it is what our superiors expect. Sarbanes-Oxley makes our jobs more important and more critical and forces us to really pay attention to the controls we place on data.
The problem on the Internet isn't free speech or the unvetted information. Everyone has a right (I believe) to post most of what they wish or believe to be true. I think the "Fire" in the movie theater or malicious libel have consequences, but you have the right to post your Nazi beliefs.
The problem is that we too often take them as fact rather than opinion.
Steve Jones
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Dear Steve,
How about my Right to Read?????
I was amused to get this response when I clicked on your link to "This opinion piece"!
"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /news/politics/0,69903-0.html on this server."
Best regards,
Martin D. Fairbairn
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I read the editorial under discussion.
"the Luddite"'s first paragraph could not be more wrong:
"Let's get something straight from the get-go. The First Amendment is sacrosanct. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, the whole ball of wax -- it's the DNA of the United States, the stuff America is made of. You don't mess with it, ever. Without it, we're North Korea with a few shopping malls".
FREEDOM is a two-sided coin. Freedom on one side, RESPONSIBILITY on the other side. They are of equal importance.
But, responsibility requires effort and thought, obviously too much to ask of Tony Long.
Freedom does not include harming others. Printing lies or misleading information in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia is not freedom. It is simply intellectual laziness and a complete disregard of any harmful consequences that might result.
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Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /news/politics/0,69903-0.html on this server.
Apache/1.3.31 Server at http://www.wired.com Port 80 Since many couldn't read the article, why solicit responses? As to the comments from others, I have to agree that freedom requires commitment and responsibility to others, but more so to ourselves. I have always taken everything on the internet with a grain of salt. I feel it is my responsibility to assure myself of the truth. You can read the Bible, KJV or other, but you have to take a personal responsibility for what was left out or poorly translated, to learn the truth. Is there such a thing as truth in Politics? -
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
People say lots of things; there are civil courts to determine whether what they say is more expensive than the truth.
The truth hurts but to say anything else it's just very expensive. Freedom trumps responsibility.
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(Copied from Google' cache... just till wired gets their site fixed...)
"anyone else notice that the adverts at the bottom now are a double call on the backuppro...I know backups are important but geeze... its slowing the whole posting event... turning it into a religious experience.. not that i have anything against those... but theres a time and place for everything"
Anyway on to the article:
"Your Right to Be an Idiot
Let's get something straight from the get-go. The First Amendment is sacrosanct. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, the whole ball of wax -- it's the DNA of the United States, the stuff America is made of. You don't mess with it, ever. Without it, we're North Korea with a few shopping malls.
No lying, fear-mongering administration, no sanctimonious red-state senator, no judge with an ax to grind has the right to screw around with it. Even those of you far to the right of sanity must see the wisdom in that. Remember those guys with the powdered wigs and the tight breeches and the bad teeth? Jefferson and Hamilton and that mob? Those were your guys, once. For the sake of what follows, let's pretend the First Amendment still matters, even to you.
So, what to do with Wikipedia? And, in a broader sense, what to do with the free flow of information on the internet?
In a word, nothing.
Having access to the internet is a little like handing a kid a loaded gun. In the wrong hands it can be intellectually lethal. In terms of being a reliable source, the web is a minefield to be navigated very carefully. There is plenty of useful information to be had, but the place is a nest of vipers, too.
Wait a minute, sez you. Don't blame the internet. What about books? Books can be full of lies, too. They sure can. Lying has been around since man first 1.) evolved the ability to speak or 2.) got his sorry ass tossed out of the Garden of Eden. But the internet, with its instant access to vast amounts of information from an endless number of sources, is very different from anything that has come before.
Still, do you regulate the internet to "protect" us from ingesting information that is wrong, deliberately misleading, whacked out, even harmful? Uh-uh. That's your own responsibility, as an educated participant in a free society. (The "educated" part is a bit tricky these days, I'll grant you, but that's fodder for another column.)
There's an old expression in the newspaper business: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." In other words, make sure your bullshit detector is always on. Be skeptical of what you're told, of what you read. Cross-check your facts with other sources. What applies in the newsroom applies tenfold on the internet, where anybody is free to post any damned thing they want to.
Which brings us to Wikipedia, the so-called citizens' encyclopedia.
Yeah, so some cretin thought he was being cute by posting a false biography of John Siegenthaler Sr., a distinguished journalist who once served as an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, linking him to the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers. In copping to the deed, the guy said he didn't realize Wikipedia is considered, in the online world at least, to be a legitimate information resource. It was a joke, he said.
Siegenthaler, not surprisingly, hit the roof. (Especially since the bogus bio languished on the site for four months before it was finally removed.) He lambasted Wikipedia's credibility in an op-ed piece but, to his credit, never suggested that slapping tighter controls on the internet is the answer to this kind of idiocy.
He didn't even indulge in the great American pastime, filing suit. Instead he chose to accept the guy's apology. But Siegenthaler, the former publisher of The Tennessean who founded The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, understands the absolutely critical need to protect the right of free speech, especially in the current frenzied political climate.
While the founders couldn't have anticipated the internet, their imperative still stands. Freedom of speech trumps everything in a free society. (As long as nobody gets killed, which is why you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.) It has to. Without it, a society is no longer free. That's why the Nazis get to march through Skokie, Illinois, and why Rush Limbaugh gets to have a radio show. It's revolting sometimes, but to deny a single individual the right to free expression is to begin sliding down that slippery slope toward authoritarianism. The dulcet drone of Limbaugh's boorishness is the price you pay to breathe free.
The problem with a site like Wikipedia, of course, is that there is no responsible vetting process, no professional editors or fact-checkers on staff to verify accuracy. Wikipedia relies on you, the general public (or Wikipedians, in their argot), to fulfill that role and -- generally speaking and meaning no disrespect -- you're not qualified to do it. But you come at the right price (free), which keeps costs down. And Wikipedia argues, with some justification, that a factual error can be caught and fixed just as easily by an interested professor or a knowledgeable amateur as it can by an editor.
The trap is that nothing is vetted beforehand. Mistakes, deliberate or not, can only be caught after posting. Wikipedia presumes a kind of communal sense of responsibility, a belief that, given the opportunity, most people will be honest. As Hemingway once wrote in another context, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" The reality is that blind trust is something of a gamble. But in the wide-open world bequeathed to us by the internet, and in a free society generally, it's a gamble we have to be willing to take.
The alternative is too depressing to contemplate.
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Tony Long, copy chief at Wired News, spent many years in the newspaper business. "You meet the most interesting people there," he says. " "
Copied from Google.
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From a prior post...
Let's get something straight from the get-go. The First Amendment is sacrosanct. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, the whole ball of wax -- it's the DNA of the United States, the stuff America is made of. You don't mess with it, ever. Without it, we're North Korea with a few shopping malls.
...someone should tell GW before it's too late.
Terry
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GPF, You are dead on.
I was fishing once with a charter boat captain when we heard someone bragging about a very large catch on the VHF radio. What he told me next I have never forgotten:
"You're usually safe to believe about 30% of what you hear on the radio, but only if you take that 30% with a grain of salt".
Sad to say, but that's become sort of a mantra of mine lately. Still, the freedom to speak, read, watch, and listen to excactly what we choose when we choose to is a fundamental principle of a free society. How we react to the information we recieve is another thing altogether.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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While speaking of sides of a coin.........
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. ............
Thomas Jefferson
The man who said that above quote .. btw..i had hastily not ref'ed him properly, my apologises to all the nickels out there.
God I feel like james burke all of a sudden. Now comes the religeous experience.
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Thought this was interesting because people often think that "freedom of speech" implies "freedom from consequences". I have every right to walk into a large non-caucasion group spouting white supremacist garbage. However, that does not then give me protection from saying whatever I said. Same applies for my job. I can vocally and publicly disagree with my employer. They can then terminate my employment if they so choose.
I do think that anonymous posts need some sort of "face" put on them to help prevent abuse. Currently, if you smear someone anonymously, they have no easy/realistinc way to seek compensation for damages and furthermore have to disprove whatever was posted themselves.
Looks like this could be an interesting discussion. 🙂
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"Freedom of speech is important because it allows you to easily see who are your enemies. If a state prevents freedom of speech it cannot see who are its enemies, and treats everyone as an enemy." I heard this recently (source unknown) and thought it very wise.
You just have to look at states that abolished free speech last century to see the effects. Stalin killed his millions because they might be enemies. So did Hitler, so did Mao. Peron merely killed thousands, as did Pinochet, etc etc. Coupled with this was economic stagnation, poverty, and often famine.
Free speech is, long term, what keeps you and me alive. Without it, free-market economies wither and die.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
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Random thoughts...
so freedom of speech is not to be confused with speaking the truth for isn't truth only a perception...
you voice your opinion and for the most part try to couch it in diplomacy for only children who haven't learnt to dissemble blurt out the truth...
And in the words of the inimitable "dubbya" on the anti-war demos - "...democracy's a beautiful thing, and people are allowed to express their opinion, and I welcome people's right to say what they believe."..
sswords - this is what you meant right - people expressed their opinions and GW chose not to "react"...
Personally I believe that if I have nothing nice to say then I just won't say it...guess that's why I seldom speak...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Looks like our beloved leaders in Congress have been taking part in Wikipedia twisting; from childish insults to rewriting history:
http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3444567
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/United_States_Congress
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6033082.html
List of the edits here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_Staffer_Edits
These are the guys making laws for ethics in business?
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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>"Freedom of speech is important because it allows you to easily see who are your enemies..."
Yes. Brings to mind Usama Bin Laden. Ever read the Qu'ran?
If there is anything in this world that wants to squash your freedom and your life in the name of some twisted deity more than Islam, Im ready to listen.
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Just a note...Islam is not to blame...it's the "interpretations"...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!**
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