On Cablegate

Just a couple of points on the wikileaks thingy. The United States as far as I know is still a functioning democracy. It operates diplomatic missions all over the world. One of the functions of those missions is data acquisition. At its core data acquisition  involves talking to people. In this respect foreign embassies are similar to the press. And like the press these diplomats have an obligation to protect their sources. Unlike the press however diplomacy is a function of the state, and if that state is a democracy then the diplomatic function is ultimately under the control of the electorate though it's elected representatives.

Julian Assange is a computer hacker. He reports to no government and cannot be elected out of his position at Wikileaks. He is subject to no ethical authority apart from his own sense of right and wrong. In a sense Mr. Assange has placed himself godlike over the interests of  a democracy of 300 million to some presumed personal higher utopia of world openness. Even some cursory social contact should have hinted to him that openness and the human condition are seldom to be mixed. Human beings will rarely speak about the predilections of their acquaintances publicly. Facebook is full of horror stories of those naive fools who candidly discuss the shortcomings of their friends and employers. Its a certain road to ostracism.

The theft of diplomatic cables is, of course theft. The use of these stolen documents by Wikileaks is of course accessory to theft. As a criminal organisation then Wikileaks needs to be prosecuted according to existing laws. As for Wikileaks ushering in a new era of openness I think that the opposite will occur. People will talk less because they will will be unable to trust that what they say in confidence won't become public forum and used against them at some future date. How engendering such distrust is a good thing only Julian Assange can say.
Who talks to a known gossip?

Some examples of the sort of problems that these leaks will cause can be found here and here

this is just weird

Apparently sex with cyberwhores is just as damaging to marriage as real sex with real whores. I had no idea until now that these virtual reality sites even existed. Doesn't say much for my cyber-worldliness does it. What motivates people to create these kind of sites? Can you imagine the conversation between the marketing and engineering departments?

E: We have the new range of avatars

M: Great! Where are the genitals?

E: Genitals?

M: Yup we can sell em! We cater to narcissism. You want bigger boobs and balls? No problem, we provide the upgrade.

E: Ok we can make those...anything else?

M: Need some BDSM gear too. Where's that?

E: BDSM gear?

M: Well people like to experiment you know. What safer place than in a virtual environment.

E: OK BDSM gear. Got it. Check. Anything else?

M: Yes there is significant demand to make the avatars fully interactive with other aspects of the program.

E: In English please.

M: The avatars need to be able to have sex with anything, pets, inanimate objects, you know...

E: Okayyyy....

As an Engineer it just seems like a huge waste of bandwidth to create sites catering to virtual sex. It has a sort of juvenile appeal (in much the same way as a farting contest) but really, is this what software designers went to school for?

PS. Be on the lookout for cyber condoms, cyber stds, cyber hiv blah blah blah. You heard it here first.

PJ