NYTimes On Dealings With Assange 221
kaapstorm found an NYT story on Assange saying "Assange slouched into The Guardian office, a day late. Schmitt took his first measure of the man who would be a large presence in our lives. 'He's tall — probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3 — and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention,' Schmitt wrote to me later. 'He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days.'"
Based on the Cover..... (Score:5, Insightful)
You see? Assange is dirty and smelly; he can't be trusted! Real heroes look and smell fantastic!
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Meanwhile the NY Times is launching their own leaking site...
Re:Based on the Cover..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I figured you were making a snide quip which was cool, but now that your post has been modded "+5 Insightful" I feel the need to respond, not to your comment (I have no problems with it) but to the general attitude here that would see a joke not as a joke but as an elucidation of some conspiracy by the NYT author to smear Assange.
In an article about personal dealings with Assange and not about Wikileaks, describing the man through someone's eyes helps to ground the scene of the story, making it more vivid and engaging. Did he not appear disheveled, did he not look tired? If indeed, then it's a vivid way of describing a man who had prioritized his work above even his own hygiene and upkeep, which gives you a sense of how involved and single-minded Assange was in pursuing his ideals -- it gives you the sense that he truly believes Wikileaks is important, more so perhaps than even himself. The short description can say all that without being tiresomely explicit. This kind of story-telling is what makes an article a captivating read, a veiled attempt to make Assange look bad is really the last thing it could be.
Just throwing some sense out hoping to dilute the deep cynicism and paranoia I see here.
I kindly ask everyone to read the entire article first before judging it as an attempt to discredit. I think it's a captivating story worth reading.
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B...but knowing what we think about something without even reading about it is how we show how smart we are here on slashdot!
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It's sensationalism, and personally I can't stand it. There's no need to exaggerate every attribute when describing a person or event.
The art of journalism is meant to revolve around giving a truthful depiction, not whichever depiction is likely to sell the most newspapers.
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>>It's sensationalism, and personally I can't stand it. There's no need to exaggerate every attribute when describing a person or event.
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that he really did dress like a slob and smell bad.
Lord knows this describes enough nerds.
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it gives you the sense that he truly believes Wikileaks is important, more so perhaps than even himself.
Although some other stories--like the one about him having two one-night-stands in a night--make you wonder about his priorities. And of course the extra hygiene angle, that two-bang night sounds all the more randy. Or funky. Or something.
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Although some other stories--like the one about him having two one-night-stands in a night--make you wonder about his priorities
Jealous much? This kind of thing is not uncommon, you know, and rarely-if-ever impinges on a person's politics. Why should Assange be treated differently?
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That's how many "personal" stories get published: looks are in the first place.
Actually, it's a basic human decency not to pay attention to the secondary (in this case, irrelevant to the story of how nihilism of world diplomacy works, how it became exposed and how TPTB are after the man in the center of this) drawbacks of the character and the GP was making a joke elucidating the dirty tricks of NYT.
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I kindly ask everyone to read the entire article first before judging it as an attempt to discredit. I think it's a captivating story worth reading.
Agreed, the article is well worth the time to read in entirety.
Re:Based on the Cover..... (Score:5, Insightful)
a veiled attempt to make Assange look bad is really the last thing it could be.
It seems you missed the earlier sentence, the one that says he "slouched into the office" and looked like "a bag lady." Both of those comparisons are explicitly uncomplimentary. I read the entire article when it was first published and what I took away from it was a writer who has some personal issues with Assange trying his damndest to wrap up his insults in a thin veneer of professional neutrality and wordsmithing.
For example, he took a shot at Assange for describing wikileak's goal as "scientific journalism" - which is the term wikileaks has been using for the practice of providing all source materials for a story to the reader along with the story itself. The writer hand-waved that the the NYT has been doing just that for years now, when as reader of the NYT online for years now, I can't recall them ever providing full sources and have frequently been frustrated by their lack of any sources.
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To anyone thinking it through, it implies that Assange is in fact a weirdo who does not bathe, and a dishonest manipulator who will clean himself up to make himself look better before the court. They are saying "He is not one of us. He is different, in a bad way. If he is different in this bad way, just imagine all the other bad ways he is different from us. For instance, RAPE!"
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Real heroes also don't rape women!
You mean like the troops [alternet.org] we're supposed to be supporting in flag-humping fervor?
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His point was that many people consider soldiers to be heroes, a-priori based on them having chosen to go defend our freedoms (or kill terrorists). In reality, some soldiers are heroic, many are ethical, and some are decidedly un-heroic. He was pointing out that we cannot assume that someone is a Real Hero just because they're a soldier, even if many of the soldiers _are_ worthy of our respect and accolades.
Re:Based on the Cover..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Based on the Cover..... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, except that's not what we're talking about here is it? We're talking about a weird Swedish law regarding sexual impropriety and you're talking about a violent rape. Intentionally muddying the waters by making disingenuous comparisons and then feigning surprise at the differing outcome isn't contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way. It is, in fact, trolling. It's a shame some of our mods can't see that.
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No, we're talking about an AC's accussations stating Assange had committed rape. He didn't, end of argument.
If you or the AC want to discuss sexual impropiety, *then* we'd look at the weird Swedish laws and the even weirder accussations leveled against Assange, but that's another subject altogether.
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I'm not saying anything about whether he's innocent or guilty. The issue here is that he's not being accused of RAPE by western definitions, and therefore your assertions about the behavior of the women involved (while specious and presumptive to begin with) is completely irrelevant. If you don't grasp that then I was giving you too much credit by calling you a troll, and so I apologize.
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Your Quote: "Real heroes also don't rape women!"
That is what we call a poor attempt to get a reaction out of modders here. If it weren't, then all this crap you have tried to use to prove my analysis wrong would have been contained in the initial post. Sorry, but I don't buy it.
The actions of the women are NOT irrelevant by any means. If there were ANY wrong doing on the part of Assange in these cases, what woman waits a week and continues living with the guy, throws him a party, then after he leaves the c
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You aren't saying? I'll say it flat out: this has nothing to do with battered woman's syndrome, which involves a woman in a relationship with an abuser. You do not get battered woman's syndrome from a casual sexual fling or a single instance of rape. For there to be battered woman's syndrome, there also must be battering, and NOTHING in any of the reports indicates violence on Assange's part.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you were playing devil's advocate or trying to inform, rather th
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I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you were playing devil's advocate or trying to inform, rather than attempting a nasty slander of Assange.
I'd hope my posting history would get me that much.
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Sorry, sorry, didn't see your nick at first. This topic just gets me pissed off for some reason.
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Me too! I just don't want to trivialize rape when it actually occurs.
you (Score:3)
please, troll me again.
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Didn't at least one of them have positive remarks posted online about their meeting between that night and when she met the other woman?
You see, here's where I have trouble (and it's something I see as an innate issue with the sex crime laws in a lot of places). Prove to me that she withdrew consent during the act, and not that she withdrew consent a few days later when she met the other woman. There is no evidence that the former is true over the latter aside from her own testimony and the words of a wom
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It's not for life
http://www.rainn.org/public-policy/sexual-assault-issues/state-statutes-of-limitations [rainn.org]
But you better hope you can keep them from changing their minds for 5-10 years, in the US at least. I don't know about Sweden, couldn't find anything with a quick search.
Re:Prove (Score:2)
"Introducing the Realtime Consent Monitor!
This is a personal device worn on the body that manages one's personal space. If the user desires intimate contact, the setting would be set to 0-distance tolerated. However, if during the act she decides she no longer consents, she can toggle the setting so that further close proximity creates a warning."
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Just in case I have to prove one day that she was actually enjoying herself.
Threesome? (Score:2)
I've heard this "threesome" rumor before, but as far as I know, there was no threesome. There were two women, and Assange, but the two women did not know about each other. There was no threesome. This is just a rumor meant to paint the women as slutty opportunists. I don't know whether they are telling the truth, but I know you aren't.
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Totally unrelated to what you are saying... but here's some more nerd street-cred in the article:
"They had run into a puzzling incongruity: Assange said the data included dispatches from the beginning of 2004 through the end of 2009, but the material on the spreadsheet ended abruptly in April 2009. A considerable amount of material was missing. Assange, slipping naturally into the role of office geek, explained that they had hit the limits of Excel. Open a second spreadsheet, he instructed. They did, and the rest of the data materialized — a total of 92,000 reports from the battlefields of Afghanistan. "
Who else but a nerd would know exactly about excel's row limit. I am amused.
His socks, shoes, coat, hair.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for sticking to the important stuff!
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No, because out of 9 pages detailing the relationship and story behind how they came to be working with Wikileaks, a couple sentences describing someone's first impression of Mr. Assange is clearly the most important. I can see why the submitter would zero in on that single paragraph, rather than the other content across the other 9 pages.
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No, because out of 9 pages detailing the relationship and story behind how they came to be working with Wikileaks, a couple sentences describing someone's first impression of Mr. Assange is clearly the most important. I can see why the submitter would zero in on that single paragraph, rather than the other content across the other 9 pages.
I can see how one would think think this if one was unused to reading a narrative and possessed a short attention span induced by years of sound-bites. In this day and age, we're unused to involved articles. But this one is, in fact, 9 pages of involved description of events. And just as in life - first impressions (and initial paragraphs) are not the full measure of a relationship. Of course, first impressions may set the tone of a given relationship. And I suspect that if the description of Assange w
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The article talks about more than Assange's clothes - but thanks for focusing on the important stuff.
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Re:His socks, shoes, coat, hair.... (Score:5, Informative)
From the NYT article:
Hasn't it been addressed already ad hominem that there was no "rocket-propelled grenade " and the object that has been carried was a camera? Did I miss something?
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Hasn't it been addressed already ad hominem that there was no "rocket-propelled grenade " and the object that has been carried was a camera? Did I miss something?
You missed the unedited version of the video. The edited version cuts out parts that show armed individuals within the group but goes to great detail to label the reporters (as well as to drive home how callous combat banter can be and highlight the children). You can find various places that offer some analysis of this, one of which is: http://oldbulllee.com/wikmassacre.htm [oldbulllee.com]
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Did I miss something
Yes, you missed the memo.
Memos.
Main point from memo 1: This is not an story about the murder and rape of civilians, nor about our dealings with people we claim are our allies. This is a story about Julian Assange (make sure to realise that's a foreign sounding name!). He is a traitor to his country and a terrorist! ... Whats that? Bradley? no, I don't know of anybody by that name.....
Main point of memo 2: Well, it turns out that Assange is not even American! He fooled us by speaking english and all. A
Who wants some hot... (Score:5, Funny)
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...character assassination!?
Piping hot character assassination?
Get em while they're hot!
You Sir? Some nice hot character assassination for the little lady?
And so the propaganda continues. We have people portraying Assange as a "saint" and a "digital Scarlet Pimpernel", ushering in a new age of truth and transparency. But anything remotely critical of this angel of the digital age is conspiracy and character assassination. Of course, then we have those who believe Assange is demon and conspirator, worthy of political assassination - or at least ignoring a few choice laws to warrent arrest. So there's more than enough noise to go around. Thanks for contri
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Do you even know what The Scarlet Pimpernel was about? Your literary reference-fu is weak.
It's not my characterization - I'm making a reference to what others [telegraph.co.uk] have called him. I also don't think he's an angel.
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Do you even know what The Scarlet Pimpernel was about? Your literary reference-fu is weak.
It's not my characterization - I'm making a reference to what others [telegraph.co.uk] have called him. I also don't think he's an angel.
I apologize. That's just the first I've seen someone say that and it struck me as just wrong. That's....actually worse that a UK paper's 'journalist' doesn't know what the book was about, to compare the two like that. Assange would be more aptly compared to Zorro, if Zorro was a douchebag.
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It's got META particles to keep the propaganda going 50% longer than normal propaganda!
You've got a wonderful future ahead of you working advertising for fast food franchises. That, or Fox News.
Re:Who wants some hot... (Score:5, Funny)
No thanks, I'm all full from that piping hot uncritical hero worship fanaticism I had for breakfast.
Re:Who wants some hot... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm full up on all the black and white thinking.
Guess what? There is a middle ground where Assange is not a hero, he is a human being, who does good and bad things. We can decry the rush to smear Assange without assuming he is a hero. Nothing in the post you respond to indicates hero worship, and so it really appears as though you are trying to smear all of Assange's defenders as mere unthinking "hero worshipers." Is that your intention?
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No it isn't mindless hero worship, and there is no need to denigrate those you disagree with as "mindless." There is an organized campaign to discredit Assange. This reporter may not be part of that campaign, but he is doing their work for them by painting Assange as weird and different. It is entirely valid to question the motives of anyone criticizing Assange, because of the very real, very powerful campaign to discredit him. Criticizing their motives does not imply hero worship of Assange.
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You shouldn't be watching Fox News so early in the morning, you know, it's bad for your health.
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...character assassination!? Piping hot character assassination? Get em while they're hot! You Sir? Some nice hot character assassination for the little lady?
Hey, it's the truth, and the truth is ugly. Wikileaks fans should know this. *cough*Collateral Murder*cough*
So, cry me a river.
with a review THAT off-topic (Score:2)
it really makes you wonder what "incentive" he was given, and by WHO.
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The NYTimes article is of course very well written and despite painting Assange as fairly unstable and paranoid, the events do seem believable. They aren't exactly unbiased in the matter though, so who knows who is right anymore. It doesn't really matter. This only serves to distract from what really matters: the leaked info, not the leak itself!
wikileaks of course tweeted about it [twitter.com]:
NYTimes does another self-serving smear.Facts wrong, top to bottom.Dark day for US journalism.
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He IS unstable and paranoid. That doesn't necessarily mean he's not doing something worthwhile, or he has no value as a human being, but let's be honest here, he has mental issues.
Re:with a review THAT off-topic (Score:5, Insightful)
If I knew the US government was gunning for me, and that at least a few of its politicians wanted me lined up in front of a firing squad, I'm sure "fairly unstable and paranoid" would be among several applicable adjectives that would be applicable.
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He IS unstable and paranoid. That doesn't necessarily mean he's not doing something worthwhile, or he has no value as a human being, but let's be honest here, he has mental issues.
It seems a certain level of paranoia is justified given multiple politicians in multiple countries have condoned, if not actively encouraged, violence against him. America does *not* have a good track record over the last decade or so when it comes to dealing with people it doesn't like.
Is he likely to get taken out by a hit squad ? Highly unlikely (at least not an American one). There is certainly a non-trivial chance of him getting spirited away into one of those delightful facilities Americans seem t
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that deaf, dumb and blind media sure play a mean hardball! /sorry
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Seems a rational description... (Score:5, Insightful)
for a man essentially in hiding, trying to avoid being extradited to an unfriendly (to him) country, which happens to have one of the most robust intelligence arms in the world.
Can't read TFA as a NYTimes account is required to access (where are the link tags? They're too helpful to exclude in the new layout/design).
Despite your politics I think you can appreciate the gravity of such a situation and how the attributable paranoia and personal apprehension may manifest itself within an individual.
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* - and increasingly, damn near everyone else
That pretty much describes me at times (often) (Score:2)
admit it. we are becoming a new species, new generations are. even some of the old generations are among us. thats why we dont fit in with the crap of this world, watching american idol and eating grease.
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admit it. we are becoming a new species, new generations are.
You do not understand the meaning of the word 'species'. Do not use words you do not understand. Thank you.
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Well, if you accept the "won't interbreed" definition of species then there's some truth to it.
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Well, it's rather likely he'll never be able to mate with anyone to produce viable offspring so it's probably a close enough description.
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But seriously, while all of us on this site are nerds, to some degree or another, some of use nerds really make this lifestyle look good. Maybe you should
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Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny that, the New York Times and The Guardian pissing on the guy doing the job they failed to do.
fuck you both. fuck you both very hard.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
That's EXACTLY why they'd piss on him.
The lamestream media is angry that someone is uncovering the truth about our government.
Re:Fuck 'em (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, the owners of the media are angry someone is uncovering the truth about their robber-baron lifestyle. The government is just a tool, and it is really our tool, we do not have to let the rich use it against us.
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I'm glad the Times and Guardian aren't doing what Assange is doing. I don't want a news source that withholds information as leverage like Assange is trying to do.
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I don't want a news source that withholds information as leverage like Assange is trying to do.
Do you honestly think you know enough about how major newspapers/publishing orgs operate to claim that they don't use information as leverage against competitors, it's readers or even sources?
I think your comment shows you don't know the first thing.
I'll give you an example: "Snow expected this weekend, stay tuned after this commercial break to find out how much and how it will effect your weekend plans."
So the news network is willing to let you die in a snowy car crash just so that you'll watch the next se
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Funny that, the New York Times and The Guardian pissing on the guy doing the job they failed to do.
You mean they failed to receive the windfall that Pfc. Manning provided Assange?
missing link? (Score:2)
does anyone have a link to tfa? article link is broken (not just slashdotted)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
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still not readable
just quote the damned thing already. fair use - fuck that!
quote it or stop linking to the damned NYT.
As long as we're talking about his appearance... (Score:2)
From the article:
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Re:curiouser and curiouser. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heros are real people (with flaws) who choose to do something amazing, by choice or by accident, and often because they feel it's necessary or self-serving.
Bradley Manning is the real hero (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone seems to forget that Julian Assange is just a credit-stealing con-man.
Bradley Manning put his career, and possibly his life (if convicted of treason) at risk to collect material to expose the treachery and hypocrisy he saw within US dealings with foreign powers - especially the recent wars. Whereas Julian Assange simply put the material on a webstie, then stole all the glory.
Assange even put up a website supposedly devoted to raising money for Manning's legal defense - then kept the money.
And it is
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Regardless of his motivation, the over-classification of all that is data to be hidden from consternation is good for nobody but the status quo.
Bradley, definitely the hero. No ifs, ands or buts.
Regardless of his motivation, the over-classification of all that is data to be hidden from consternation is good for nobody but the status q
Ahh, character assassination (Score:2)
That was what we were taught - the lower classes smell. And here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamentalas a physical feeling. Race hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot.
Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier
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Firget about the fashion section (Score:2)
By this time, The Times’s relationship with our source had gone from wary to hostile. I talked to Assange by phone a few times and heard out his complaints. He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared — rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets.
The Times is claiming that "it turned out" that Wikileaks made people targets to the Taliban?
But the Pentagon dropped that pretense back in summer 2010! What the hell, The Times?
So.... (Score:2)
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no, I will NOT login to their stupid site.
either post a free-in-the-clear article or don't post NYT links at all. if they don't WANT to be linked to, fine.
but if they want a link, they have to cease the stupid games.
if you MUST link to nyt, at least quote enough of the text for us to get the point.
(still better to just assume NYT does not exist; that's what they basically think of us 'freeloaders')
There was no paywall or login required to view the article. Your rant is misplaced.
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Firstly, it should be free because it was free from the start. It's greed and desire for control that has changed things.
Secondly, there is NO connection between whether or not something is free or not and whether or not the web and individuals are tracked in every way imaginable. If there was even some correlation, then we wouldn't see ads in magazines and we wouldn't see telecom and other businesses selling their customer databases to other companies at every opportunity. (Every time you see a "privacy
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