Comments on: Keep HOPE alive

By: Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties - Homeland Stupidity

Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties - Homeland Stupidity — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 01:53:54 +0000

[...] If you’re not sure if it will be worth contributing, I invite you to wait until next month and evaluate my coverage of the New Hampshire Liberty Forum. You can also evaluate my coverage of the HOPE Number Six conference last July: Free software, the hacker community, and libertarianism?; Saving the world with eBooks; Keep HOPE alive; Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It. [...]

By: Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It - Homeland Stupidity

Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It - Homeland Stupidity — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:09:03 +0000

[...] I attended HOPE Number Six back in July, and I heard rumors that day that one of the speakers had been arrested, but the details would not emerge until later. Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs was among the first to find out what happened and inform the public. [...]

By: Dana Hanley

Dana Hanley — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 03:26:36 +0000

oops, messed up the code. That whole thing is not supposed to be in italics.

By: Dana Hanley

Dana Hanley — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 03:24:25 +0000

"Education" comes from Latin "ex" meaning "out" and "ducere" meaning "to lead." It's primary meaning is to lead out, presumably out of ingnorance. Our public education no longer leads anyone anywhere, however. Instead, children are herded, tracked and forced into their little compartments to be "socialized." At its founding, our free and public education had a primary goal of establishing liberty. Now it is about socialization. I wrote about it a bit some time ago here.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 02:02:57 +0000

I never thought about the use of “Curiousity killed the cat” in this context.

By: Lenny Zimmermann

Lenny Zimmermann — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 15:07:18 +0000

It does seem like that once-exalted title of being a “self-made man” (think of the historical figures that applied to, such as Franklin and Edison) has been severely tarnished for no good reason at all. At least there are still a few fields where it still holds. The IT field is one where I have long seen cycles of hiring agents who alternately seek degrees and certifications as if they were some kind of proof of skill which are never taught in a classroom setting for some reason. (Namely that hacker attitude of ever seeking more knowledge and being able to do research and find and deduce answers in an ever-changing, infinitely vast field where memorization is the most useless of skills!)

I’ve seen it come and go where employers just won’t look twice at you without those credentials, and yet there are still a great deal of us out here with no degree and who refuse to get certifications but who constantly amaze with the sheer tenacity of the virtue of being “self-made” individuals. Thankfully there are still enough of us that this field still constantly fluctuates enough that this otherwise “professional” field still holds a place for us. Sadly those fields are very few and very far between these days. Maybe if we can impress enough folks into realizing that their “formal education” isn’t the only, or necessarily even the best, way then maybe, just maybe, we can rekindle that respect for for the “self-made” individuals, the hackers of the world. Somehow I can’t help but think that the very same spirit is inextricably linked with classically liberal ideals and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be rekindling more interest in libertarianism as well.