Saturday, 11 February 2012

The Scale Of The Universe

Rolling Stones 'Wild Horses' Studio Playback


Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Mick Taylor and Jim Dickinson are listening to a recording of their Song Wild Horses. Taken from the documentary 'Gimme Shelter' from Charlotte Zwerin, Albert and David Maysles about the Rolling Stones and the Altamont Free Concert in 1969.
(Thanx Stan!)

Testet ölt- I (2012)


Testet ölt is an experimental rock band from Temerin (Vojvodina, Serbia), whose real psychedelic potential can be felt live since 2011. The lineup: Lenkes - guitar; Stupar - drums; Czini - keyboard.
(Thanx Ákos!)

♪♫ The Birthday Party - Fears of Gun/Dead Joe


Australia's link to secret Iraq prisons

Downer rubbishes Iraq 'black site' claims

Friday, 10 February 2012

Oops, My Facebook Friend Just Joined AQ

Erica Chenoweth: Confronting the myth of the rational insurgent

Hallelujah for Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour.
Born in Montreal in 1934 of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cohen was first a modestly successful poet. He learned guitar to pick up girls and got into songwriting partly because he was tired of being poor. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, came out in 1967, when he was 32. Probably it got green-lighted in the wake of Bob Dylan's success, when Dylan had demonstrated to record executives that you could make highly personal, elusively poetic, scraggly sounding records that the public would buy. Of course, Dylan was riding a folk wave when he emerged in the early ’60s, and Cohen caught that wave too.
I'd like to compare those two, in the process of looking back over Cohen's life and songs. He and Dylan have been working for decades without any visible connection or competition. In practical terms there is no competition, because Dylan has been by far the more visible and influential artist. But if Cohen has always sung in the shadow of Dylan, in the quality of the work I suggest he has been in nobody's shadow.
A long career has done Cohen well by me, and I imagine a lot of listeners. In the ’60s and ’70s, I liked a few of his songs well enough, though I found the voice and the tunes not as striking as Dylan's brassy honk and his unforgettable melodies in the folk days. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Mister Tambourine Man," any number of Dylan songs seemed timeless, as if they'd evolved through many voices over many years. (Some, including "Blowin' in the Wind," were based on traditional tunes.)
Cohen didn't do that, probably couldn't do that. He was never the tunesmith Dylan was, and in the early years his voice actually made Dylan's sound pretty good. Cohen sang in a tenor you could call "reedy" if you wanted to be nice, "nasal" if you didn't. They're both mediocre guitar players; any number of high-school students could play rings around them. Cohen's melodies tended to start at the bottom of his range, ascend toward the top of his range—which was not very far—then descend and screw around in the lower region for the rest of the verse. His early hit "Suzanne" is a case in point...

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A Brief History of Drones

'Do Not Track' Tool Promises Page Loads Up to Four Times Faster

Mind-Blowing Charts From the Senate's Income Inequality Hearing

Researchers Take Step Toward Creating "Cyborg" Insects for Surveillance

Interpol defends voluntary filter

The list, currently in use or on its way to being used by Optus, Telstra and Vodafone, has been seen by some as ineffective due to the ability of child abusers to easily circumvent it, and because it's a preventative measure, not a cure that would see creators of child-abuse material arrested.
However, in an interview with ZDNet Australia at the Kaspersky Lab Cyber Conference 2012 in Cancun, Mexico, Moran said that this criticism only really applies if the filter list is the only measure. He acknowledged its limitations, but stated that the stop page presented when access is blocked is an important tool in Interpol's arsenal against child abuse.
"What it is, essentially, is a prevention tool. Of course it's easy to go around ... but that's not the point. It's not a silver bullet ...It's like a speed camera on a road — you can slow down when you come up to the speed camera, and you can speed up when you've driven past ... but the reality is that it's reminded you that what you're doing is illegal.
"To suggest that blocking the internet or filtering ... is our only answer is wrong. It's also very important to realise that the vast majority of this 'trade' doesn't happen on the web. It happens in off-web services — IRC, newsgroups, peer to peer; I could go on and on and on. That's where we do our big work."
One of the newer tools that Interpol is using as part of this work is an emerging policing discipline that it calls victim identification.
"Material that is found on the internet is analysed in real time by analysts around the world sharing through the ICSE [International Child Sexual Exploitation] database in Interpol."
In a recent case in Massachusetts, US, an image was distributed through the ICSE database, analysed and determined to be a Dutch child, and the victim was subsequently identified. From this information, local law enforcement was able to track the perpetrator down, who was found to be running a child-care centre and abusing 84 victims in total.
"If the system didn't exist at Interpol, and if the Dutch victim-identification officer wasn't doing her job, that man would still be abusing children," Moran said.
"That type of scenario has happened many times from Australia, where material found in Australia is fed into our systems."
Moran stressed that the ability to track victims greatly assisted in leading law enforcement to the perpetrator.
"Don't forget that 86 per cent plus of child sexual abuse takes place within the home, so if you find the victim, you find the perpetrator."
Moran also addressed criticism that there is a perceived lack of transparency with the Interpol filtering list, as it is difficult to determine what destinations have made their way onto it.
"If you feel that the site has been badly blocked for whatever reason, click that link [on the stop page] and make a complaint, and it will be answered," he said.
At the moment, complaints are handled either by Interpol or via the Australian Federal Police (AFP), but Moran clarified that the AFP has the ability to veto the content of the list.
"We're not some super-national police force that makes decisions for national countries. We make the list available to the national central bureau, which is run by the AFP, and the AFP are the ones who push it on out. The AFP themselves can go through the list and verify that all of this content is justifiable."
Even if the AFP was unwilling or unable to put the resources in place to check the list, Moran said that Interpol would still open the list to scrutiny, so long as the investigating party was from a government agency or similar.
"The list is not public for a very good reason. We would welcome independent verification if somebody wants to come in and look at what we put on the list," he said.
Michael Lee @'ZDNet'

The Birthday Party - The Making of 'Mutiny'



The monarch of middlebrow

Bahrain (Then & Now)

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Five Things the Past Year Has and Hasn't Taught Us about Bahrain

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Michel Houellebecq, The Art of Fiction No. 206 (Paris Review)

“Do you like the Stooges?” Michel Houellebecq asked me on the second day of our interview. He put down his electric cigarette (it glowed red when he inhaled, producing steam instead of smoke) and rose slowly from his futon couch. “Iggy Pop wrote some songs based on my novel The Possibility of an Island,” he offered. “He told me it’s the only book he has liked in the last ten years.” France’s most famous living writer flipped open his MacBook and the gravelly voice of the punk legend filled the kitchenette, chanting: “It’s nice to be dead.”
Michel Houellebecq was born on the French island of La Réunion, near Madagascar, in 1958. As his official Web site states, his bohemian parents, an anesthesiologist and a mountain guide, “soon lost all interest in his existence.” He has no pictures of himself as a child. After a brief stay with his maternal grandparents in Algeria, he was raised from the age of six by his paternal grandmother in northern France. After a period of unemployment and depression, which led to several stays in psychiatric units, Houellebecq found a job working tech support at the French National Assembly. (The members of parliament were “very sweet,” he says.)
A poet since his university days, he wrote a well-regarded study of the American science-fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft in 1991. At the age of thirty-six, he published his first novel, Whatever (1994), about the crushingly boring lives of two computer programmers. The novel attracted a cult following and inspired a group of fans to start Perpendiculaire, a magazine based on a movement they called “depressionism.” (Houellebecq, who accepted an honorary place on the masthead, says he “didn’t really understand their theory and, frankly, didn’t care.”) His next novel, The Elementary Particles (1998), a mixture of social commentary and blunt descriptions of sex, sold three hundred thousand copies in France and made him an international star. So began the still fierce debate over whether Houellebecq should be hailed as a brilliant realist in the great tradition of Balzac or dismissed as an irresponsible nihilist. (One flummoxed New York Times reviewer called the novel “a deeply repugnant read.” Another described it as “lurch[ing] unpleasantly between the salacious and the psychotic.”) The Perpendiculaire staff was offended by what they saw as his reactionary denunciation of the sexual-liberation movement and booted him from the magazine.
Several years later, his mother, who felt she had been unfairly presented in certain autobiographical passages of the novel, published a four-hundred-page memoir. For the first and last time in his public life, Houellebecq received widespread sympathy from the French press, who were forced to concede that even the harsh portrait of the hippie mother in The Elementary Particles didn’t do justice to the self-involved character that emerged from her autobiography. During her book tour, she famously asked, “Who hasn’t called their son a sorry little prick?”...
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Bonus:

:)

♪♫ Spiritualized - I Think I'm In Love (Top Of The Pops, January 1998)


Bonus:
Soul On Fire & Sweet Talk & You Lie, You Cheat (Live on Jools 09.05.2008)

To the BBC and others: Twitter is not your competition


Santorum: Obama Has Put America On ‘The Path’ Of Executing Religious People By Decapitation

File Sharing in the Post MegaUpload Era

We are the media, and so are you

Mexican army finds 15 tons of pure methamphetamine

The Republican War on Contraception

Black Bloc

On Feb 6, America author and Occupy activist Chris Hedges wrote a piece for Truthdig.com titled “The Cancer in Occupy.” In it he criticized the violent actions of Black Bloc operatives within the movement, saying they are the greatest threat to the future of Occupy. The article has generated a heated debate online about non-violence, political strategy and protest in America, and has garnered a response by Anarchist thinker Dr. Zakk Flash.
Read both articles and weigh-in.
The Cancer in Occupy by Chris Hedges
The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe
Hedging Our Bets on the Black Bloc by Dr. Zakk Flash
Chris Hedges has written some of the most insightful analysis of the U.S. war machine in recent years. His 2009 book “The Empire of Illusion” was an exploration of how exhibition has eclipsed truth and meaningful connection in American society. His acknowledgment of the ease in which one can buy into such spectacles is a small part of why it was so odd to read his article on Truthdig attacking both anarchists and black bloc tactics entitled “The Cancer in Occupy.”
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Ja Rule Makes Every Wes Anderson Slow-Motion Shot Better

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The long road to Damascus

Not the best idea ever!!!

Federal Basketcases Inc.

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!!!

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Erwin Blumenfeld
Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn for Vogue, May 1939
Photo took place at the top of Eiffel Tower

Berlin

FBI releases files on Steve Jobs: he was 'a deceptive individual'

Syria uprising is now a battle to the death


Libya Struggles to Curb Militias as Chaos Grows

Should Libya rebuild Gaddafi hometown of Sirte?

Easy to figure out who Foxconn manufactures goods for...

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Thursday, 9 February 2012

Turn on, tune, in...investigate your subconscious?

Foxconn ‘hacked’ by group critical of working conditions

♪♫ Can - Spoon


Bonus:

Thank You Jay Dee (Act 2)


Downloads:
http://sthrow.com/act1
http://sthrow.com/act2
http://sthrow.com/act3
http://sthrow.com/act4
http://stonesthrow.com/jdilla

'Now' - The first 2 minutes of the new Dexys album

Longer snippet than posted previously...

Sacred Geometry DNA changes 2012 Mollecular Atom Consciousness

A form of very effective activism is attacking the television, encourage those around you to watch less TV, analyze TV for them.

China cannot stay out of Syrian chaos

Cyber Culture: Why hackers are being asked to come and have a go, if they think they're smart enough

Putin Is Already Dead

Concepts/Radicals

- McKenzie Wark
'Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace'
(1998)

Home


@earlxsweat

Homs Assault Goes On As UN Boss Slams Syria

Polishing Putin: hacked emails suggest dirty tricks by Russian youth group

Vladimir Putin flexes his political muscle at a summer camp organised by the youth group Nashi. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images
A pro-Kremlin group runs a network of internet trolls, seeks to buy flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and hatches plans to discredit opposition activists and media, according to private emails allegedly hacked by a group calling itself the Russian arm of Anonymous.
The group has uploaded hundreds of emails it says are to, from and between Vasily Yakemenko, the first leader of the youth group Nashi – now head of the Kremlin's Federal Youth Agency – its spokeswoman, Kristina Potupchik, and other activists. The emails detail payments to journalists and bloggers, the group alleges.
Potupchik declined to confirm or deny the veracity of the emails, but appeared to acknowledge that her email had been hacked. "I will not comment on illegal actions," she told the Guardian.
Nikita Borovikov, the current leader of Nashi, said: "For several years, I've got used to the fact that our email is periodically hacked. When I heard the rumours that it had been hacked, I wasn't shocked, and have paid no attention to this problem. I'm a law-abiding person, and have nothing to fear of hiding, so I pay no attention."
Apparently sent between November 2010 and December 2011, the emails appear to confirm critics' longstanding suspicions that the group uses sinister methods, funded by the Kremlin, to attack perceived enemies and pay for favourable reports while claiming that Putin's popularity is unassailable.
They provide particular insight into the group's strategy to boost pro-Putin coverage on the internet, which in contrast to television is seen as being ruled by the opposition. Several emails sent from activists to Potupchik include price lists for pro-Putin bloggers and commenters, indicating that some are paid as much as 600,000 roubles (£12,694) for leaving hundreds of comments on negative press articles on the internet. One email, sent to Potupchik on 23 June 2011, suggests that the group planned to spend more than R10m to buy a series of articles about its annual Seliger summer camp in two popular Russian tabloids, Moskovsky Komsomolets and Komsomolskaya Pravda, and the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Arkady Khantsevich, deputy editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, denied that his journalists accepted money for articles, a widespread practice in post-Soviet Russia.
"Yes, we wrote about Seliger, and will continue to," he said. "But the paper has never entered into a financial contract, including with political parties." He added that the journalist who covered the summer camp had written under a pseudonym, and the newspaper would not be investigating the claim.
A spokesman for Moskovsky Komsomolets's press service declined to comment: "I don't read what they write on the internet about MK being paid for stories about Seliger. It doesn't interest us." Komsomolskaya Pravda has not responded publicly and could not be reached for comment.
The leak comes as Putin faces the greatest challenge to his rule since first coming to power 12 years ago, with mass street demonstrations building momentum before a presidential vote on 4 March that is expected to return him to the presidency after a four-year interlude as prime minister.
Nashi was created precisely to stand up to any such challenge to Putin's rule. It was formed in 2005 after pro-democracy revolutions in neighbouring Ukraine and Georgia. Thousands of Nashi activists, mostly bussed into the Russian capital from neighbouring provinces, took to the streets in December as Russia's protest movement took hold after a contested parliamentary vote.
The Kremlin has been looking beyond the youth movement lately. On Saturday, the day of the latest opposition protest, the Kremlin turned out thousands of people at a rally in support of Putin's candidacy. Despite the fact that Putin remains Russia's most popular politician, reports were widespread that many of those demonstrating in his support had been forced by employers or paid to take part, echoing the picture painted in the emails of a regime determined to keep up the appearance of his popularity.
"These strategies – what they do on the internet and how they gather protests – are very similar," said Alexey Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger who is helping to lead the protest movement. "Their main problem is that they don't have real people who are ready to say something in support of them. They don't have one person who supports them for free. So they pay."
According to the emails, Nashi manipulates YouTube viewcounts and ratings, calling on paid Nashi activists to "dislike" anti-regime videos.
The emails show the particular attention Nashi pays to Navalny, whose anti-corruption blog and Twitter account have been instrumental in organising anti-Putin sentiment. Activists are seen proposing various ideas to Yakemenko – from projects that came to fruition, such as a cartoon video comparing Navalny to Hitler – to others that were rejected, including a suggestion that someone dress up like the blogger to beg for alms in front of the US embassy. Putin and his supporters continue to insist that opposition protests have been funded and provoked by the west.
The correspondence goes some way towards explaining the apparent paranoia, showing how Nashi, curated by Yakemenko and his recently deposed boss, the Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov, spends huge sums of money to create the illusion of Putin's unfailing popularity.
It appears to confirm that a host of pro-Putin stunts advertised as spontaneous acts by average citizens were in fact orchestrated by Nashi. Among these are a web-based group called I Really Do Like Putin and the all-female Putin's Army, which became notorious last summer after hosting a car wash in support of Putin and calling on women around the country to tear their shirts off for the leader.
Speculation that Nashi is behind pro-Putin stunts, pays internet commenters to troll anti-regime sites and orders DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks have long swirled around. But the emails, if confirmed, would provide an unprecedented look into the system's inner workings.
The Anonymous hackers told the online news portal Gazeta.ru, in an interview published late on Monday that they carried out the hack, planned since spring of last year, "as a sign of protest against the government's actions in the public internet sphere". "Our ultimate goal is to not allow bandits to bring the Russian internet to its knees," the group said.
The Russian government has so far avoided cracking down on internet freedoms, and both Putin and the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, have spoken out against internet censorship. Yet activists have long complained of co-ordinated attacks that have brought down websites or flooded commentary with pro-Putin spam. Several liberal websites, including those of the radio station Ekho Moskvy and the election monitoring group Golos, were brought down by DDoS attacks on the eve of the country's 4 December parliamentary vote.
"Everything that has been published, we already know," Navalny said. "[Nashi] undertake the organisation of provocative actions, both physically and on the internet."
Opposition leaders have also accused Nashi of being behind a series of attacks including repeated scuffles with the liberal youth leader Ilya Yashin and an incident in which ammonia-laced cola was thrown in the face of the former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov. Nashi denied being involved in the latter.
As British-Russian relations spiralled towards a low in 2006, the group launched a campaign of harassment against the former UK ambassador Tony Brenton after he met opposition groups. It has since turned its attention to the internet, analysts say.
The emails suggest a palpable concern within Nashi and the Kremlin after Russia's contested parliamentary vote on 4 December launched an unexpected protest movement that brought thousands on to the streets of Moscow for the first time. Activists write to Yakemenko proposing various "provocative actions" designed to discredit the quickly growing movement.
On 11 December, one day after up to 50,000 people gathered on Bolotnaya Square in an unprecedented show of discontent with Putin, Borovikov writes to Yakemenko to propose different means of dealing with the opposition. "If we don't do this all in time, these public opinion leaders will continue to protest on the streets and all this will turn into a Ukrainian Maidan," Borovikov writes, referring to the square in Kiev that hosted Ukraine's pro-democracy, "orange revolution".
Asked by the Guardian about the hack, Borovikov said: "I'm not ready to discuss any provocations. It's not correct to discuss this in principle. Unfortunately, it has become part of life to get into personal things, but it is not very nice to discuss it. It's amoral. To think Nashi, as a social youth organisation, has a lot of money is a delusion. The main resource of any social organisation is its people: people's time, people's efforts."
Yakemenko's office directed all queries to Potupchik, who did not answer subsequent requests for comment.
Revealing rumours long taken as fact, the emails are unlikely to have an effect on the opposition's methods or goals. Borovikov's alleged words may turn out to be prescient. "Either the powers fulfil our legal demands or people will turn out and refuse to leave," Navalny said.
Most of the leaked emails are brief and discuss the practicality of orchestrating the pro-Putin work that Nashi feeds on. One email provides a rare glimpse into a top activist's thinking, as Potupchik emails several Nashi leaders, known, in the group's lingo as commisars, to speak highly of Yakemenko.
"If someone thinks that they can be on my team and not play by my rules, they can leave," Potupchik, well known for her colourful language, allegedly wrote on 26 October 2011.
"If you think that in this country another person can be found who would create such a structure, who would drag into this work all the dregs of the provincial towns, who would make provincial shits into princesses of the capital, then fuck off. Maybe you're not happy with something. Maybe you're not paid that much, you don't like how you're treated, don't like your office, or your work schedule."
"I ask you not to bother me and to leave this horrible work."
Additional reporting by Ilya Mouzykantskii.
Miriam Elder @'The Guardian' 

Обвинить нас никто ни в чем не сможет

Russian Anonymous activists tell why they hacked pro-Kremlin officials' e-mails

What the RIAA Won’t Tell You: Users Matter

We really have to wonder when the message is going to sink in.  On January 18, millions of Internet users spoke out together in one of the most profound and effective uses of technology to organize political opposition in U.S. history, sending a clear message to Congress that voters will not tolerate crippling of the Internet. But big content remains tone deaf to this chorus of Internet users. 
This morning, the New York Times published a lengthy screed from Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, complaining about how “Google and Wikipedia” got in the way of efforts to ram through the Internet blacklist bills, never mind the massive collateral damage to Internet security, expression, and innovation those bills would have caused.  Techdirt's Mike Masnick has a great point-by-point response (noting, among other things, the profound hypocrisy of SOPA/PIPA proponents claiming the tide of opposition to the bills was based solely on “misinformation,” given that they have been feeding Congress and the public overblown statistics for years).
But it seems to us that the op-ed's really unfortunate message is that Hollywood still thinks the way forward is for a few executives to sit down together and make a deal. He calls on “the companies” that opposed the bills to come up with “constructive alternatives” and then have a "fact-based conversation" with the entertainment industries. MPAA chair Chris Dodd made a similar call a few weeks ago.  Even New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller seems to think this comes down to a few "players": in his own piece on the battle against the bills, he seemed to assume that Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales is the only person who matters on the other side of this debate.    
That’s precisely the wrong approachIt was great to see technology companies and platform hosts like Wikipedia stand up against SOPA and PIPA.  But the people Hollywood most needs to consult now are the users of the internet– the millions of people who have found their voice due, in part, to the emergence of technologies and platforms that allow them to speak to a bigger audience then ever before.
The truth is that a broad swath of public interest, consumer rights, and human rights groups were fighting these bills from the get-go, because we saw how they would harm users, not just technology companies and platforms.  Due in part to the hard work of this coalition in raising public awareness, millions of those users saw that, too, and that’s why they contacted their Congressional representatives. We weren’t scared by rhetoric, we were scared by what the bills actually proposed, and we were really scared that the proponents didn’t seem to understand their own legislation. 
Having succeeded in halting the runaway SOPA/PIPA train, Internet users don’t intend to just stand down and let a few tech companies, who need to worry about their bottom line along with the needs of users, or even crucial nonprofit organizations like Wikipedia, speak for everyone.  Indeed, it’s pretty ironic, and telling, that Sherman’s piece points to the “six-strikes” deal big content made with ISPs last year as a model for the “voluntary cooperation.” Users weren’t at the table when that deal was struck either, even though they’ll be stuck with much of the bill. If they had been, that deal could have been very different, and a lot more fair. 
So, Cary and Chris and even Bill, tell you what: when you are ready to have a “fact-based conversation” with the folks who opposed the bill, let’s do it.  But let’s include the users who are going to feel the real effects of attacks on the platforms and services that they rely on to create, innovate, and communicate.  
Oh, and one more thing: if we’re really going to have a fact-based conversation, let's include the technologists who actually understand the collateral damage that can result when you interfere with Internet architecture, and the economic analysts who are developing real numbers based on hard data, not spin. Thanks.
Corynne McSherry @'EFF'