people been discrediting scientology long before the net came about
but like any other religious cult (and that goes for the established ones too) you can’t stop people joining up in a free country
the uber-geek/”hacker” (it pisses me off how scum have taken over that culture as it was positive once) has a dark side as well, there is a lot of misogyny, stalking of people what they don’t agree with (including attacks on homes/vehicles/families/pets), worship of violence and war (especially the use of firearms and explosives to control opponents), the writing of worms/spyware/viruses, scamming the gullible – they aren’t actually all that better than scientologists!
if you support hacking a site what you don’t agree with or using it to discredit its followers – then it can go both ways, what if this site is targeted by the anti-drugs / anti-fun lobby? OK we have various security measures in place, but as we all know not all our visitors may have good intentions with what they do with the info they find
IMO its the same as US christian right vs Al-quaeda, two well matched enemies full of hate who will destroy a lot of innocents in their crossfire – their “hacking” attempts only boost the power of the IT security (i.e censorship/monitoring) industry.
the internet doesn’t have as much power as people think. A lot of it is now very effectively censored or monitored, and a great proportion of the world doesn’t even have it.
All that stupid fucking nerd-talk and baby language (and its dumbing down, not even a legitimate use of engineering terms like when you do need to discuss a complicated subject) is also a way of trying to keep the technology mysterious and out of the hands of “stupid people” (i.e “normal” people, including those who want to learn).
the hostility behind keyboards also puts a lot of good people off regularly using the net..
Even here in affluent Suffolk I know people who don’t have regular net access yet who literally live in the shadow of the labs where the British perfected the technology to bring broadband to normal people..
where the internet does make a difference to society its when people are doing positive stuff with it (like a lot of open source projects), not using it to spread conflict and attack…
