Books (novels)

Books I've read recently:

Miles Errant by Lois McMaster Bujold
It was very good. I went through it in two evenings and poof it was awesome. Charismatic underdog takes on governments and corporations in a war-scifi world and wins.

The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond
He makes sense of hacker culture. Which I thought was impossible. Win.

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling
Crazy crazy cyberpunk post-apocalyptic scifi.

Why I support Wikileaks

Well, let's start with why I shouldn't support Wikileaks.

• Some bad shit has come out of Wikileaks. Diplomacy will be more difficult for a while. Diplomacy is the thing that stands between us and war. I like diplomacy and hope that it thrives in all its finicky confusing glory.
  http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/79483/wikileaks-round-iii-will-it-matter-much
  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/08/a_bad_name.html
• Encouraging people to break national security is not good for national security, and national security exists for a reason. (Sometimes a misguidedly-applied reason, but in truth there are many things that are a good idea to keep secret, like troop movements.)
• Releasing this specific bit of info could be bad bad bad (although shouldn't these sites be protected?) http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-wikileaks-reveals-global.html

Why I support Wikileaks:

• Because I've read an enormous number of scifi books, and that number included 1984 and brave New World and everything that Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross has ever written, and when the government starts suppressing more information, it is soon a very very bad time.*
  
• When Amazon and Paypal stopped serving Wikileaks, it was because they were afraid of political pressure, and not because of a violation of their company's Terms of Service. The ToS violation was the excuse. The fear of the government was the cause.
• (The following is in the words of Z and rancor, but I agree) "They're doing the right thing, because in a democratic society, transparency is a good above all others." "You can't vote for things properly if you don't know what people are actually doing." "Without information, there is no accountability."
• The infographics are awesome
  http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662770/infographics-of-the-day-whats-in-those-leaked-diplomatic-cables
  http://www.fastcodesign.com/1661985/infographic-of-the-day-a-guide-to-the-wikileaks-war-memos
  http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/11/wikileaks_us_embassy_cables_the_visualizations.html
  
• The bodies of the cables have not been published to the public (which makes me sad, but which might be a good idea... I can't know that because I don't know what's in them!) The full text is only available to a few large news agencies, who aren't releasing it.
  But you can download the cable metadata here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-data

So there you have it. Not very complete, not very elegant, not very informed... but these are the baseline reasons behind my current opinions.

List of Wikileaks mirror sites (it is long and I am pleased) http://www.twitlonger.com/show/79s9r1

Have I donated money to WIkileaks? I believe so. I hope I did. I remember donating to Wikipedia, but that's and entirely different organization. Am I likely to donate to Wikileaks? Yes, when they have a Paypal-substitute up again. Why? Because I they need it, and because I think they'd do good things with it. Why not until there's a faux-Paypal working? Because I'm lazy. Such is humanity. I'm not a very good revolutionary... which is probably a good thing.

*I very much want to read a scifi book which has a plot like so: government starts supressing and regulating the free flow of information. Through intelligent political maneuvering by hackers, the government is quickly and without fuss returned to its place.