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Sony has been a big supporter of groups that lobby for a three strike rule on copyright violations. According to them, copyright protections are so important that people caught violating it three times should have their internet access removed. While I disagree with the claim, I think Sony should at least hold themselves to how they feel the world should work.

So therefore all it should take is three copyright violations by Sony itself and they should feel obligated to remove themselves from the internet.

An example of such three copyright violation performed by Sony could be:

• Sony copyright violation with GPL covered PalmOS emulator[1]. They violated the license by performing distribution under a different license terms and therefore violated the copyright.
• Sony copyright violation with GPL covered worked included in XCP[2]. Again, they violated the license and therefore violated the copyright when they redistributed the covered works.
• Sony copyright violation of Sintel. They claimed license terms which conflicted with creative commons license terms when they added it to the youtube Match ID system.

The fact that Sony's website is still online suggests that Sony wishes there to be one law for everyone else and an exception for them. This game that copyright law is important only as long as someone other than Sony is violating it needs to stop. People need to learn that as long as they continue to buy products and services from Sony, then Sony will use that money to continue the historical trend lobbying to inhibit others for violating the same laws that Sony itself blatantly violates.

[1] http://docs.gnu-designs.com/sony/

[2] http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/sony27s-xcp-drm-system-violates-gpl/

To protect the legitimacy of copyright requires first halting the businesses that have profited on violating it's terms. To protect the legitimacy copyright requires bringing down Sony.

...aaaand, here's some code to use to make your own (which I just posted about only yesterday

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use XML::RSS;
use HTML::Strip;
use File::Slurp;

my $url = 'http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml';

binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");

my $hs = HTML::Strip->new();
my @newscanary = '';

my $rss = XML::RSS->new();
my $data = get( $url );
$rss->parse( $data );

my $channel = $rss->{channel};

foreach my $item ( @{ $rss->{items} } ) {
        my $title = $item->{title};
        my $date = $item->{pubDate};
        my $desc = $hs->parse($item->{description});

        # Word wrap the output at 70 characters
        $desc =~ s/(.{70}[^\s]*)\s+/$1\n/xg;

        push @newscanary, "$title\n$date\n" . "-"x70 . "\n$desc\n\n\n";
}

write_file('canary.txt', @newscanary) ;

my $boilerplate = read_file('boilerplate.txt', {binmode => ':raw'});
my $newscanary = read_file('canary.txt', {binmode => ':raw'});

print $boilerplate, $newscanary;

$hs->eof;

BTW in the UK refusal to provide a password or passkey to decode an encrypted device is punishable with several years in jail. You have no right to remain silent in the UK, and it's beginning to look like the US is headed down the same path.

I'll take the jail time, thanks. I'm not going to let the threat of jail time compel me to revoke my own morals or those of generations of people who will come after me. It's our rights we're standing up for here.

I wrote a post about this over 5 years ago, when it first happened: http://blog.gnu-designs.com/no-you-may-not-have-my-encryption-keys

What a coincidence... 10+ years of my collected Palm gadgets are up for sale too.. make me an offer :)

"How about if by installing a GPS device they catch a serial killer the month before he was going to rape and murder your wife/girlfriend? Isn't that enough repay? Or it's never enough?"

There is absolutely no justification for invading my freedom or revoking my right to privacy, including any faux crimes that may be leveled as reasons. I will not, ever, reduce my own guard to freedom or privacy, just to protect my family. That is a slippery slope, and exactly why we are where we are today, with 80% or so less rights and privacy than we had when our founding fathers created the documents that founded this country.

Take a read at one of my older blog posts that should explain my feelings on the matter a bit more concretely.

You can read more about it here:

http://blog.gnu-designs.com/snapshot-backups-of-everything-using-rsync-including-windows

Basically I'm using rsnapshot to back up everything, Linux, BSD and yes.. even Windows, with relatively pain-free results. The added benefit (for the Windows users) is that they can browse the snapshot hierarchy (exposed via Samba), to get back any files they want from the hourly/weekly/monthly snapshots on the array.

It works beautifully here.

"The reason most (if not all of us) switched to and stayed with GMail in the first place back in 2004 and 2005 was the interface. Sure, it gave you a ton of storage space compared to Hotmail and Yahoo, but they've since caught up. What Microsoft and Yahoo haven't matched since then is the interface. Show a user IMAP through Thunderbird and Gmail side-by-side and see what interface they prefer."

I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. Gmail's interface is, hands-down, one of the clunkiest interfaces I've ever seen, and violates dozens of usability guidelines. Look where "Compose" is vs. "Reply" for one great example. How can I sort? What about removing "Labels" from a group of messages? No can do with Gmail.

Put Gmail side by side with something like Evolution and THEN ask what users would prefer. Yes, Thunderbird is clunky, but it wasn't meant to compete with Gmail. Look at something like Novell Evolution that has a LOT more power and flexibility over Gmail and you'll never go back.

Oh, and Evolution has "offline" Gmail as well, and always has. I love how I can treat all of my Gmail accounts as one single account if I want, unify the Inboxes, see all "Unread" email in a single folder (without creating a contrived filter as you would have to in Gmail), sees all folders and "Labels" as standard IMAP folders, allows me to read/reply online or off, and a whole host of other things Gmail can't and probably will not ever do.

Nope, Gmail's web interface is great in a pinch, but for actual, productive use of Email as an application and not just a replacement for "offline IM", I'll stick with Evolution thanks.

And I definitely know of what I speak because I've been doing this for a very long time (integrating Evolution with Gmail with Thunderbird across 3 platforms, transparently).

If they're already a sex offender , then they've already been convicted, and presumably done whatever time/penance for their "crimes", right?

What if they just say "No." when asked for their passwords? What can happen? Is it a crime to deny someone the right to violate your rights now? Remember, criminals have rights, just like the rest of us. You can't just slap some "rider" on their crime and force compliance.

And more importantly, what would handing over those passwords do to protect the rights and privacy of those who have been "offended"?

• Does having a sex offender's password protect another child from harm? No .
• Does having a sex offender's password stop them from opening up a new account? No .
• Does having a sex offender's password reduce their own right to privacy, as well as everyone else's privacy? YES .

If someone has already done their time and chooses to go online and join some knitting mailing lists or decides to take up scrapbooking (let's not forget that women are an equal, if not larger percentage of sex offenders, caught and convicted, not just men), does some government lackey then log into their email account "just to make sure" there's nothing incriminating in there? Do they log into all of the systems they have access to? I just don't see the point.

Nothing good can come of this.

Do the government lackeys change the password, locking out the original owner? Do they send emails on their behalf? I don't see the point of asking for this information, since it can provide ABSOLUTELY zero additional security to the "offended", nor can it stop a determined prior offender from creating a new identity and account.

This does nothing, except further erode our existing privacy and rights and sets a precedent that is impossible to undo, once ingrained. The government has proven themselves time and time again to be incapable of properly handling data in a secure way (losing emails, warrantless searches and wiretapping, etc.) that handing them this information would be downright stupid.

Seriously, " Just Say No ", and let them slap you with contempt or a fine, then fight that in court, instead of setting a precedent that erodes all of our rights; those who are not being convicted of any crimes.

I have access to systems that requires password access to, that I will NEVER give access to anyone from any government, especially if they say I "have to" give them the password. (But I've already made this clear before).

For how long? A year? 5 years?

I'd much rather go to prison, than reduce the collective privacy of millions of other people from that point forward into the future, and strip the whole country down to a point where we were 200+ years ago. Our founding fathers DIED to provide us the rights we're so willing to just give away now, in exchange for a little less "involvement".

But I've already mentioned this before, 3 years ago.

I realize that "slowing down" may seem like an obvious tactic to some (and maddeningly annoying to others), but there are plenty of other ways to save fuel costs... improper tire pressure, improper alignment, excess weight in the trunk and others are documented and explained there (I count 13 other things in the article linked here).

Give it a read and pass it on, you might help others conserve as well.

"Please give the key to these files, or we will confiscate your PC. The problem is encryption doesn't work. The moment you do not give them the key, you will be put on the 'no-fly' list faster then you can blink."

There's already plenty of case law against that, so you're still safe. One particular case, United States v. Boucher is particularly interesting, because it DOES directly involve contraband.

But you are protected by the 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution which prohibits them forcing you to turn over your key/passphrase/etc. Period.

Until they sack the 4th Amendment (and believe me, they're trying!), we're still protected.

"Please give the key to these files, or we will confiscate your PC. The problem is encryption doesn't work. The moment you do not give them the key, you will be put on the 'no-fly' list faster then you can blink."

There's already plenty of case law against that, so you're still safe. One particular case, United States v. Boucher is particularly interesting, because it DOES directly involve contraband.

But you are protected by the 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution which prohibits them forcing you to turn over your key/passphrase/etc. Period.

Until they sack the 4th Amendment (and believe me, they're trying!), we're still protected.

"If there is evil, harmful data coming through our borders on laptops, then surely there is also evil data in people's minds. Should we find a way to search those too?"

This is precisely what they're doing with their new Behavior Detection Officers and other subversive procedures.

Might want to think hard about what's on your laptop if you're going to be passing through a US international airport.

What's on my laptop is a 320 gigabyte AES-256 luks-encrypted LVM volume set sitting on an encrypted physical drive. This is unlocked using a 32-character passphrase which is not stored anywhere but in my brain. Without that passphrase you basically unpack a kernel and recognize the hardware... and that's it.

I use Ubuntu on my laptop, and this is all configured out of the box on that distro.

Requiring me to unlock my encrypted volume using that password immediately violates my 5th Amendment rights, and is hence, unconstitutional.

So once again, Privacy 1, Government 0.

They seem to keep forgetting that it is the PEOPLE who gives the government their power, not the reverse.

While I am a staunch privacy advocate (just read my blog for more examples going back 7+ years), I have to object to the statement you said here:

and then missed call logs deleted for the time in question.

If they are taking the phone and removing the SIM card, copying it with a SIM duplicator, and then analyzing the contents of the phone itself, it is ENTIRELY possible (and probably likely the reason) that there ARE no "missed call" logs on the phone, because the phone was not turned on when it was being analyzed.

If I turn off my phone and 20 people attempt to call me, they'll get my voice mail. When I turn the phone back on, those "missed calls" aren't automatically appended to my call log... since my phone never received them. I will, however, receive the voicemail notification, which I can then check and review.

And the other side.. "Man Can't Be Forced to Divulge Encryption Passphrase"

I see the value of this, for "honest" contributors and companies who wish to contribute back, and ensure that those contributions are kept public and available, but... have we just opened another loophole in the licensing?

Let's say I write NeatNewWebService v0.1, and I release it under the APL. Now LoathingBastardCompany decides they like it (and I should note, something very similar has happened before).

LoathingBastardCompany takes the code, modifies it heavily inside their company, and begins using it, exposing it publicly to clients and customers.

How am I supposed to know that they're using it? How do I tell that my code is actually powering their web service? How can I enforce the APL, if there's no way to determine if it is indeed being used?

In a previous situation (see above), the company in question took our code, pulled out all of our names, ripped out the license file, changed a few About screens, and sold it to their customers and clients, at high costs. The only way we'd ever be able to gain access to the binary to debug it and find out that it was 100% our code, would be to pay that price to examine it. (In our case, they gave away our viewer code as demos to display their content (prepared with our distiller tools), so we found it easily).

But how does this happen when you're interacting with the APL code via a web service? And how do you do it, if that web service is in public, but closed usage?

Either you don't give out your address, meaning that you cannot make wide use of it, or you get too much spam.

Or you install dspam, and never have to worry about it again. I haven't seen a single spam in my Inbox IN OVER 3 YEARS now, nor have any of the users I host mail for.

Thousands of spam messages are blocked or quarantined every day, and I never see them, unless I decide to check the quarantine (which is web-based). I put graymilter in front of that, and the incoming malware connections on port 25 dropped significantly.

I have no problem sticking my public email addresses out anywhere, because I simply don't get spam anymore. Problem solved.

Either you don't give out your address, meaning that you cannot make wide use of it, or you get too much spam.

Or you install dspam, and never have to worry about it again. I haven't seen a single spam in my Inbox IN OVER 3 YEARS now, nor have any of the users I host mail for.

Thousands of spam messages are blocked or quarantined every day, and I never see them, unless I decide to check the quarantine (which is web-based). I put graymilter in front of that, and the incoming malware connections on port 25 dropped significantly.

I have no problem sticking my public email addresses out anywhere, because I simply don't get spam anymore. Problem solved.

Another in a series of my Dragons posts, this time about more invasion of my rights. This Guardian Unlimited article talks about the police wanting to make it illegal to withold encryption keys when asked for them.

They also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by refusing to disclose their encryption keys.

Let me just publically reply to that with one word: NO .

My encryption keys are put there to keep YOU out, permanently. If you do not have the right to see the information, data or other bits encrypted by my (exceptionally-strong) keys, you simply wont get access to it.

Threaten me with jail, throw me in jail, do what you think will work to get me to turn over my keys it will not work. I would rather spend a lifetime in jail protecting my data, than give you the irrevokable right to invade my privacy and freedoms and the freedoms of others who would come after me.

The persuit of freedom and upholding those freedoms is worth more than my life or the lives of any of my friends or family. They dont have my keys and torturing them will not get me to give them up. I have an incredible tolerance to pain, some would say inhuman in some cases (Ive had doctors tell me this several times, as I underwent E.R. procedures without any numbing agent).

Shipping me off to some other country that allows torture to try to extract my encryption keys will result in one of two things:

1. A frustrated torturer, who is unable to extract my keys
2. A dead suspect, after enduring hundreds of different torture methods, unsuccessfully

Either way, you dont get my keys, or my data, or anything I dont elect to give you. Pain, medications, whatever you think will work, will not. My willpower and tolerance is stronger than anything you have.

Let me reiterate, you will not get my encryption keys, under pain of threat, physical pain, medication or otherwise. Either I will be dead, or you will give up. Either way, you have nothing.

Are we clear? Good.

Years ago, I worked for ${BIGGEST_PHARMA} when they were making the switch to users having to have 2 authorizing signatures on a form before they were given Internet access, and allowing all users access to the live Internet. This was back in 1997/1998 timeframe, when most people were still using dialup at home to get to the net.

Initially, the Powers-that-Be that ran the network topology, fed a list of 'bad words' into their filters, and blocked any content based on that. They filtered on words like breast, sex, penis and other body parts of people and animals.

Suddenly, they noticed a dropoff in their productivity, because now internal scientists were no longer able to search for papers and articles on 'breast cancer', 'determining sex of mice', 'erectile dysfunction', and so on. Scientists were blocked from legitimate searches for legitimate content, and so the filters were relaxed and removed almost entirely.

Searching for 'bomb', or 'genocide' or 'terrorism', is certainly not an indicator that you wish to perpetrate those crimes, or are a terrorist yourself. Heck, I converted the entire 9/11 Commission Report to clean, validated HTML, and it gets an enormous amount of hits. You should see the kinds of search criteria that brings people to the page:

Here are the top 50 from today:

1 4 2.03% 911 tower jumpers
2 3 1.52% islam
3 2 1.02% american airlines 911
4 2 1.02% bin la din
5 2 1.02% fdny ladder 123
6 2 1.02% fdny units respond wtc
7 2 1.02% islam history
8 2 1.02% islamic historical places
9 2 1.02% muslim harassment
10 2 1.02% norad%27s job 911
11 2 1.02% prevent continued growth islamist terrorism
12 2 1.02% rise of al qaeda
13 2 1.02% sheikh mohammad makki
14 2 1.02% tawfiq deek
15 2 1.02% terrorist entrepreneur
16 2 1.02% the 14 survivors who escaped the impact zone of south tower
17 2 1.02% the near capture of bin ladin in 2004
18 2 1.02% unity of effort in the congress
19 2 1.02% usama
20 2 1.02% usama bin ladin
21 2 1.02% vaughn allex
22 1 0.51% # of fdny firefighters killed in south tower
23 1 0.51% 000 years for revenge: international terrorism and the fbi - th
24 1 0.51% 1996 when the taliban arrived in afghanistan
25 1 0.51% 2 ziad jarrah
26 1 0.51% 2007 united states of america director of fbi
27 1 0.51% 265d-ny-280350
28 1 0.51% 9 11 commission report united states
29 1 0.51% 9 11 renew
30 1 0.51% 9/ 11 tower jumpers
31 1 0.51% 9/11 339
32 1 0.51% 9/11 attribute
33 1 0.51% 9/11 hijackers herndon virginia
34 1 0.51% 9/11 pilots photos
35 1 0.51% 9/11 university of arizona students hanjour
36 1 0.51% 911 attack pilots training school
37 1 0.51% 911 commission report 339
38 1 0.51% 911 designs
39 1 0.51% 911 muslims
40 1 0.51% 911 pilots training florida
41 1 0.51% 911 report
42 1 0.51% 911 stewardess amy sweeney
43 1 0.51% 911 twin tower jumpers
44 1 0.51% aal11 cvr
45 1 0.51% abu musab waleed al shehri
46 1 0.51% air traffic control
47 1 0.51% air traffic controller in question was later stabbed and killed
48 1 0.51% al qaeda defeated ussr
49 1 0.51% al qaeda organization committee
50 1 0.51% alias don diego fbi

Easily solved... and you didn't mention anything about security, so let me help. I wrote about it previously.

I've been moving more and more of my data off to TrueCrypt on Linux/Windows or GELI on the FreeBSD side to lock things down. So far, it works great.

Or, as I understand England has done, simply make it illegal to withhold your keys from government agents.

As I wrote about almost exactly 2 years ago to the day, this is our calling.

How do we answer?

Withhold your keys, indefinitely.

Let them keep asking for them. Keep saying NO! If they jail you for it, go. If they keep asking, keep saying NO.

Stand up for what you know is wrong, and let millions of others do the same.

Remember, we put our government into place to represent our best interests. When they fail to do so, they should step down themselves, or we should replace them.

Wendy Seltzer was our pro-bono, FSF-appointed attorney for a few years when we were investigating a commercial company (not intentionally linked here, they don't deserve the hits) for using our GPL code without complying with the license.

All we wanted, was for them to bring themselves into compliance... and they insisted that they were, and we were wrong, and that the GPL was "...subject to interpretation". So we contacted the FSF and they gave us Wendy. It's been a few years now, and we never really got final closure on the situation, so I'm not sure where it stands at this point. (past copyright infringement does not just vanish if you stop violating it in the present, however).

I have collaborated with Wendy over numerous dozens of emails and personally met her to sit down with the CEO of aforementioned alleged-infringing company in New York, and I can say that she really knows her field. I'm happy that she's doing good things for the EFF, they need someone of her skillset on-staff.

I have nothing but praise for her abilities and her skills. She was a brick wall between our project and the commercial company who tried to threaten us many times with their millions of dollars of investor money to try to silence us.

If Wendy is on your side, it's a good thing. It's where she shines the best.

Wendy Seltzer was our pro-bono, FSF-appointed attorney for a few years when we were investigating a commercial company (not intentionally linked here, they don't deserve the hits) for using our GPL code without complying with the license.

All we wanted, was for them to bring themselves into compliance... and they insisted that they were, and we were wrong, and that the GPL was "...subject to interpretation". So we contacted the FSF and they gave us Wendy. It's been a few years now, and we never really got final closure on the situation, so I'm not sure where it stands at this point. (past copyright infringement does not just vanish if you stop violating it in the present, however).

I have collaborated with Wendy over numerous dozens of emails and personally met her to sit down with the CEO of aforementioned alleged-infringing company in New York, and I can say that she really knows her field. I'm happy that she's doing good things for the EFF, they need someone of her skillset on-staff.

I have nothing but praise for her abilities and her skills. She was a brick wall between our project and the commercial company who tried to threaten us many times with their millions of dollars of investor money to try to silence us.

If Wendy is on your side, it's a good thing. It's where she shines the best.

I've posted my list back about a year ago, and I still use every single one of them every day... (I also describe how to get around a "bug" in FF that forbids non-standard port connections). Check it out here. I also spoke at my local LUG about the same thing in January.

Here's a list of the extensions I'm currently using in my Firefox build (you can see how I have it tricked out with all of my theming and extensions over here):

• Sage, a really slick and fast rss aggregator/reader for Firefox. It docks on the sidebar and is visible with a simple Alt-S keystroke. Very nice, and easy for me to catch up on some quick headlines when I need to.
• AdBlock Plus with the AdBlock Filterset G Updater to stop the flood of useless ads from coming at me. I did have to add one small rule for Google's ads, because I do actually like the recommendations they provide from time to time, and it helps out sites I visit with a little revenue. That regex looks like this: @@*.googlesyndication.com/*
• Web Developer, a very useful and slick toolbar/menu driven suite that allows me to do all kinds of things to websites I'm viewing, including validation, showing where their css classes are, manipulating forms, cookies, images, and dozens of other features. Hands-down, the most-useful extension I have as a developer/tweaker of web content.
• PrefBar, another powerful extension I use every single day. This one allows me to change the capabilities of my browser with a simple click of a checkbox. Want Java enabled? Click. Sick of popups? Click. I have Colors, Images, Javascript, Java, Flash, Popups, Proxies, Pipelining, Referers, Cache on my bar. Its completely customizable, and very well-done.
• SwitchProxy lets me manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. I can also use it as an anonymizer to protect my system from prying eyes. I have Squid, Squid + Privoxy, Privoxy + Tor and i2p enabled in my configuration at the moment. Quick and easy, and one status-bar dropdown lets me change from one to another.
• FasterFox gives me a little boost by auto-configuring some parameters for faster browsing, such as link prefetching, pipelining, DNS cache, paint delay, and others.
• ForecastFox, weather.. in my status bar. I've changed the icons a bit with a separate icon pack called Lansing, which is nice adn small and out of the way. Minimal is the way to go on my toolbars and status bars.
• Linky lets me open or download all or selected links in a page, image links and even web addresses found in the text in separate or different tabs or windows. A simple right-click on any link or web address, and away I go.
• Google PageRank Status gives me a quick overview of the PR of a site in the current view. This is useful as I do a lot of web work, and knowing what kind of sites get a decent or poor PR is useful information.
• SearchStatus is another SEO toolbar fo

I've posted my list back about a year ago, and I still use every single one of them every day... (I also describe how to get around a "bug" in FF that forbids non-standard port connections). Check it out here. I also spoke at my local LUG about the same thing in January.

Here's a list of the extensions I'm currently using in my Firefox build (you can see how I have it tricked out with all of my theming and extensions over here):

• Sage, a really slick and fast rss aggregator/reader for Firefox. It docks on the sidebar and is visible with a simple Alt-S keystroke. Very nice, and easy for me to catch up on some quick headlines when I need to.
• AdBlock Plus with the AdBlock Filterset G Updater to stop the flood of useless ads from coming at me. I did have to add one small rule for Google's ads, because I do actually like the recommendations they provide from time to time, and it helps out sites I visit with a little revenue. That regex looks like this: @@*.googlesyndication.com/*
• Web Developer, a very useful and slick toolbar/menu driven suite that allows me to do all kinds of things to websites I'm viewing, including validation, showing where their css classes are, manipulating forms, cookies, images, and dozens of other features. Hands-down, the most-useful extension I have as a developer/tweaker of web content.
• PrefBar, another powerful extension I use every single day. This one allows me to change the capabilities of my browser with a simple click of a checkbox. Want Java enabled? Click. Sick of popups? Click. I have Colors, Images, Javascript, Java, Flash, Popups, Proxies, Pipelining, Referers, Cache on my bar. Its completely customizable, and very well-done.
• SwitchProxy lets me manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. I can also use it as an anonymizer to protect my system from prying eyes. I have Squid, Squid + Privoxy, Privoxy + Tor and i2p enabled in my configuration at the moment. Quick and easy, and one status-bar dropdown lets me change from one to another.
• FasterFox gives me a little boost by auto-configuring some parameters for faster browsing, such as link prefetching, pipelining, DNS cache, paint delay, and others.
• ForecastFox, weather.. in my status bar. I've changed the icons a bit with a separate icon pack called Lansing, which is nice adn small and out of the way. Minimal is the way to go on my toolbars and status bars.
• Linky lets me open or download all or selected links in a page, image links and even web addresses found in the text in separate or different tabs or windows. A simple right-click on any link or web address, and away I go.
• Google PageRank Status gives me a quick overview of the PR of a site in the current view. This is useful as I do a lot of web work, and knowing what kind of sites get a decent or poor PR is useful information.
• SearchStatus is another SEO toolbar fo

I've posted my list back about a year ago, and I still use every single one of them every day... (I also describe how to get around a "bug" in FF that forbids non-standard port connections). Check it out here. I also spoke at my local LUG about the same thing in January.

Here's a list of the extensions I'm currently using in my Firefox build (you can see how I have it tricked out with all of my theming and extensions over here):

• Sage, a really slick and fast rss aggregator/reader for Firefox. It docks on the sidebar and is visible with a simple Alt-S keystroke. Very nice, and easy for me to catch up on some quick headlines when I need to.
• AdBlock Plus with the AdBlock Filterset G Updater to stop the flood of useless ads from coming at me. I did have to add one small rule for Google's ads, because I do actually like the recommendations they provide from time to time, and it helps out sites I visit with a little revenue. That regex looks like this: @@*.googlesyndication.com/*
• Web Developer, a very useful and slick toolbar/menu driven suite that allows me to do all kinds of things to websites I'm viewing, including validation, showing where their css classes are, manipulating forms, cookies, images, and dozens of other features. Hands-down, the most-useful extension I have as a developer/tweaker of web content.
• PrefBar, another powerful extension I use every single day. This one allows me to change the capabilities of my browser with a simple click of a checkbox. Want Java enabled? Click. Sick of popups? Click. I have Colors, Images, Javascript, Java, Flash, Popups, Proxies, Pipelining, Referers, Cache on my bar. Its completely customizable, and very well-done.
• SwitchProxy lets me manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. I can also use it as an anonymizer to protect my system from prying eyes. I have Squid, Squid + Privoxy, Privoxy + Tor and i2p enabled in my configuration at the moment. Quick and easy, and one status-bar dropdown lets me change from one to another.
• FasterFox gives me a little boost by auto-configuring some parameters for faster browsing, such as link prefetching, pipelining, DNS cache, paint delay, and others.
• ForecastFox, weather.. in my status bar. I've changed the icons a bit with a separate icon pack called Lansing, which is nice adn small and out of the way. Minimal is the way to go on my toolbars and status bars.
• Linky lets me open or download all or selected links in a page, image links and even web addresses found in the text in separate or different tabs or windows. A simple right-click on any link or web address, and away I go.
• Google PageRank Status gives me a quick overview of the PR of a site in the current view. This is useful as I do a lot of web work, and knowing what kind of sites get a decent or poor PR is useful information.
• SearchStatus is another SEO toolbar fo

I've posted my list back about a year ago, and I still use every single one of them every day... (I also describe how to get around a "bug" in FF that forbids non-standard port connections). Check it out here. I also spoke at my local LUG about the same thing in January.

Here's a list of the extensions I'm currently using in my Firefox build (you can see how I have it tricked out with all of my theming and extensions over here):

• Sage, a really slick and fast rss aggregator/reader for Firefox. It docks on the sidebar and is visible with a simple Alt-S keystroke. Very nice, and easy for me to catch up on some quick headlines when I need to.
• AdBlock Plus with the AdBlock Filterset G Updater to stop the flood of useless ads from coming at me. I did have to add one small rule for Google's ads, because I do actually like the recommendations they provide from time to time, and it helps out sites I visit with a little revenue. That regex looks like this: @@*.googlesyndication.com/*
• Web Developer, a very useful and slick toolbar/menu driven suite that allows me to do all kinds of things to websites I'm viewing, including validation, showing where their css classes are, manipulating forms, cookies, images, and dozens of other features. Hands-down, the most-useful extension I have as a developer/tweaker of web content.
• PrefBar, another powerful extension I use every single day. This one allows me to change the capabilities of my browser with a simple click of a checkbox. Want Java enabled? Click. Sick of popups? Click. I have Colors, Images, Javascript, Java, Flash, Popups, Proxies, Pipelining, Referers, Cache on my bar. Its completely customizable, and very well-done.
• SwitchProxy lets me manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. I can also use it as an anonymizer to protect my system from prying eyes. I have Squid, Squid + Privoxy, Privoxy + Tor and i2p enabled in my configuration at the moment. Quick and easy, and one status-bar dropdown lets me change from one to another.
• FasterFox gives me a little boost by auto-configuring some parameters for faster browsing, such as link prefetching, pipelining, DNS cache, paint delay, and others.
• ForecastFox, weather.. in my status bar. I've changed the icons a bit with a separate icon pack called Lansing, which is nice adn small and out of the way. Minimal is the way to go on my toolbars and status bars.
• Linky lets me open or download all or selected links in a page, image links and even web addresses found in the text in separate or different tabs or windows. A simple right-click on any link or web address, and away I go.
• Google PageRank Status gives me a quick overview of the PR of a site in the current view. This is useful as I do a lot of web work, and knowing what kind of sites get a decent or poor PR is useful information.
• SearchStatus is another SEO toolbar fo

Pedophiles and law enforcement on fishing expeditions aside, is there some way that you could protect yourself from being forced to provide access to your data?

Well, this IS post-9/11 times, so the quick answer is "NO!".

If you refuse to divulge your keys you will just be arrested and forced to divulge them.

If you refuse a request for your keys, you go to jail.

If you refuse further requests, you are now a "Non-combatant", and you lose your citizenship (yes, even Americans who are declared "Non-combatants" lose their citizenship).

As a non-citizen, you are now subject to the new Torture Laws, so you'll be sent to some other country to divulge your keys.

Just because someone says they WANT to see what you have, doesn't mean they should. Does the government have a reason to see my email? My files? My source code? NO.

Is it worth it to continue to use, support and encourage the use of strong encryption? YES!

This country was not founded by spinless people who gave in when they were threatened with pain or death.

It's just we've all been sitting "behind the wall" to see true increases. When the amount of mail that makes it past the filters doubles, total traffic may have increased 10 times or more.

I use dspam and haven't seen a single spam hit my Inbox in at least 3 years now. Not a SINGLE spam , and while a few false positives get trapped in the quarantine (JCPenny coupon emails for our daughter's photographs there or other vendor-specific offers), those are easy to retrain so any more go straight to the Inbox instead. My users love the interface and lack of spam, and I love not being involved in manually whitelisting every week.

I just recently added Graymilter in front of that, and now we see even less.. You can see the results to judge for yourself.

Not only do we no longer receive ANY spam in our Inboxes, but we also gain a huge amount of bandwidth and cpu cycles back because we're not accepting, processing and quarantining mail we are going to reject anyway.

I have no problem sharing and posting my email address in public, on mailing lists or anywhere else now because frankly... we've solved the spam problem.

The whole system works great, and I don't have to "reinvent the mail system of the Internet" to do it. Only those who can't properly configure their tools would suggest such an idea.

It's just we've all been sitting "behind the wall" to see true increases. When the amount of mail that makes it past the filters doubles, total traffic may have increased 10 times or more.

I use dspam and haven't seen a single spam hit my Inbox in at least 3 years now. Not a SINGLE spam , and while a few false positives get trapped in the quarantine (JCPenny coupon emails for our daughter's photographs there or other vendor-specific offers), those are easy to retrain so any more go straight to the Inbox instead. My users love the interface and lack of spam, and I love not being involved in manually whitelisting every week.

I just recently added Graymilter in front of that, and now we see even less.. You can see the results to judge for yourself.

Not only do we no longer receive ANY spam in our Inboxes, but we also gain a huge amount of bandwidth and cpu cycles back because we're not accepting, processing and quarantining mail we are going to reject anyway.

I have no problem sharing and posting my email address in public, on mailing lists or anywhere else now because frankly... we've solved the spam problem.

The whole system works great, and I don't have to "reinvent the mail system of the Internet" to do it. Only those who can't properly configure their tools would suggest such an idea.

Cat. Mouse. Cat. Mouse.

So now we just counter this illegal wiretapping (yes, its still illegal, even though they've passed a law that makes it "legal") with extra strong encryption and Civil Disobedience.

Use TrueCrypt with the AES-Twofish-Serpent algorithm on your PC (Linux, Mac or Windows). If you want to use something simliar on BSD, look into GELI encryption for those partitions.

For phones, you could look into encryption handsets or telephone scramblers. There's this one too, or the Cryptophone GSM Phone Encryption solution. Google around, there's quite a few hundred solutions in this space... stack them together for even more security.

Disclaimer: I don't personally know how strong these algorithms are on these handsets, so use at your own risk.

With VoIP, you could easily layer whatever encryption you want on top of it. Bounce your call through a few foreign routers, run it through Privoxy, Tor and i2p and you should be good to go. Yes, it will incur some latency.. but I'd rather sacrifice speed for security or privacy, wouldn't you? Here is an article on securing VoIP. Worthwhile reading if you're using it or considering it.

Cat. Mouse. Cat. Mouse.

Now its OUR turn.

You take from us, we take back.

My Linksys WRT54G (not GS) is a transparent Squid proxy already. I don't see why this ASUS machine can't do the same.

It points to a secondary FreeBSD machine for that, because I have a 5GiB cache on the Squid side. Everything is anonymized through Privoxy + Tor, with no configuration changes on the client side.

Users don't even know (or care) that their traffic is being proxied or anonymized at all.

For user data stored on the FreeBSD machine, I also use rsnapshot to do backups of another disk slice that is GELI encrypted as well, which works out very nicely for the overall solution.

Everything that goes out port 80 (or comes back in on the response) through the Linksys is redirected through the Squid server on the FreeBSD machine. iptables(1) on the Linksys does all the magic for me, as follows:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i br0 -s ! 10.0.1.6 -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to 10.0.1.6:3128
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o br0 -s 10.0.1.0/24 -d 10.0.1.6 -j SNAT --to 10.0.1.2
iptables -A FORWARD -s 10.0.1.0/24 -d 10.0.1.6 -i br0 -o br0 -p tcp --dport 3128 -j ACCEPT

There's more to it, but that should get you started. Its really easy to implement, and I'd trust my FreeBSD machine to process those packets faster than the processor on the Linksys ever could (not even considering the storage requirements for such a caching mechanism).

The Squid cache on the FreeBSD side resides on a partition that is GELI encrypted. Do I have anything to hide? No, but I do have a right to protect the identity of my users, their browsing habits and their data.

Everyone else should do the same (or similar).

The RIP Act forces suspects to reveal encryption keys on pain of imprisonment, whether charged with a crime or not. Useful, huh?

I hope they have enough room for all of us...

I'm not the only one who downright refuses to hand over encryption keys, there are thousands and thousands of us (just in the US). We used to be called Patriots (standing up for what we believe in and all), and now we're Un-American.

Oh how the Doublespeak times have changed, eh Orwell?

What's the point of a wiretap if we can encrypt? Or will encryption become illegal?

Why not, its already illegal to withold your encryption keys in the UK, the US is soon to follow.

If the current administration continues down the path its going, with its self-destructive, Holier-than-thou (and-everyone-else) mentality, thinking that they are the World Police, they may actually NEED these bunkers, not to defend against a foreign attack, but to defend against a domestic uprising .

Note to those who currently think they are in "power": WE the people, give you your rights and power, you do not give them to us. There are many more of us than you (and you are MADE of many of us). You might not want to get on our bad side, and you might want to consider re-reading your Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.

Scary but true, General Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA (yes, the one being accused of wiretapping millions of Americans without a warrant), doesn't even know the 4th Amendment, and insists he does. He's going for a position to head the CIA? Scary, scary stuff.

Repeat to yourself: Erosion of civil liberties... is a threat to national security.

Would that be the same 4th Amendment that Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA can't even quote correctly? Now this same person is vying for a spot heading up the CIA.

Apparently even quoting him the exact verbage of the 4th Amendment isn't enough to get him to listen and understand it.

"The use of encryption is... proliferating..."

The use of illegal government spying on innocent citizens is proliferating.

Your move now.

...(and no, you may not have my encryption keys).

If enough large companies are purchasing these to the degree that a company manufactures this equipment...exclusively.. doesn't that strike an interesting chord?

The irony is that the sabre-rattling crowd screams "Use encryption!", but what they don't realize is that encryption is essentially illegal, in the US. Sure, you can use it, but if you refuse to hand over your password, passphrase, keys.. you've broken the law, and will be arrested and jailed until you do hand over your keys/passwords.

Nice world we live in, eh?

Our obligation as a citizen of this great nation is to defend it against all aggressors, foreign and domestic . Defend the nation, not the government. It may not be necessary now, but may someday become necessary to defend this nation against the government, just as was done in 1776.

"Read the fucking constitution and look up some judicial records before you open your big, dumb mouth please. The law is very specific about protecting journalistic sources, there is supposed to be no way around it."

Didn't you get the memo? The Constitution was put on hold, in the name of national security. Besides, the NSA is already rewriting the 4th Amendment to suit their own needs now.

Pretty soon whistleblowing will be the norm and Thoughtcrime will be the next wave of neighborly telling-do.

Pointless, since it is illegal to not provide the key when asked by law enforcement who've gotten a warrant for it.

Let's see... go to prison for a crime they can't prove, or go to prison for not giving them your encryption keys...

I've already made my decision on that the moment I heard about it. Sorry, my encryption keys are for me, period. You will not get them and I will turn old and grey in a prison cell before you can even divulge one byte of the data they happen to protect.

Do I have anything to hide? No . Am I doing anything illegal? Absolutely not. . Does that mean you have a right to see what is inside my mail, documents, files, data? Absolutely not!

but again, that's easily handled with encryption now, isn't it?

Not quite, because its gainst the law to withold your encryption keys if you're asked for them.

Encryption is great (and I use it heavily on drives, mail, backups and everything that contains non-public data), but not when its against the law to use it. Lovely world we live in, isn't it?

...and here's my story, aptly named "The Customer is Always Wrong". The retailer was over-the-top abusive and profane. I guess there's always someone who feels they're right, when they're obviously in the wrong.

In fact, I wrote about exactly this topic 5 months ago. Interesting how it keeps resurfacing.

I'm happy with AvantGo; it may not be perfect for content creators (since they have to pay for a channel), but as a user I get quite a nice bunch of information. Replaces a daily newspaper.

AvantGo has LONG been surpassed by better, smaller, faster, more-capable, feature-rich, free tools.

Take a look at Plucker for the current leader in this space. Runs on everything (Windows, Linux, OSX) and on PalmOS, PocketPC, Linux PDAs. Has Python, perl, Java, C++ distillers, dozens more options than AvantGo, lots of third-party support and add-ons, and is significanly more visually appealing than the bloated, wasted space of AvantGo.

Feel free to read the (slightly old) comparison of AvantGo, Plucker and iSilo over here for more details.

Lots of screenshots of Plucker examples over here and Google's new RSS feeds in Plucker over here.

Let me be the first to say that we already have a system in place that solves this exact problem. Its called the MedicAlert System (commonly found in a metal bracelet).

My wife, a diabetic and celiac, wears one, and it works perfectly for identifying and retrieving the medical records of the patient in seconds. No need for an invasive, implantable chip, and the best part... you can take it off if you don't want to wear it (such as when attending rallies where carrying identification can be a problem).

Why should we enforce people who are not sick or those who do not have a "rough" medical history, to have a chip implanted in them?

I'll be the first in line to be gouging this out of my arm with a very sharp scalpel or other object. Sorry, I prefer my 4th Amendment Rights to remain true:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No thank you, you can't have my encryption keys (and yes, I would rather die before giving up those keys, even if they simply secured my cornbread recipe), and you most-certainly can NOT have my medical history, without my direct consent or approval, even in life-or-death situations.

Yes, I too upgraded to X.org, specifically to get the DynamicCLocks feature working on my Thinkpad T42p to increase battery life and reduce heat on the GPU.

Unfortunately, installing X.org, and JUST X.org, required the removal of 526 packages from my system (yes, exactly 547 packages, which you can see here, sorted alphabetically).

This included all of GNOME, themes, widgets, applets, all of KDE and related packages, pose (the Palm OS Emulator) and its foundation lib FLTK, abiword, OpenOffice.org, and hundreds of other packages.

After installing X.org back on, I was able to install about 100 of those packages back onboard, but now there's a nice diversion between the two xlib versions. I can't install Abiword for example, without pulling out gaim, gedit, gnome-core, and a few other libraries. Its like this with about 300 of the packages I had onboard before. pose won't install because it requires libfltk, and libfltk requires htmldoc. Installing htmldoc requires libfltk (another circular dependency).

This reminds me of the pain we went through with the libc5 => libc6 migration, except now we have the gcc4 ABI change and X.org breaking everything that uses a colored pixel.

Nice... it'll be a few months before its all sorted out, no-doubt.

Only when the government mandates that you leave your TV on all day will we have a problem (a la 1984.)

[...]

Television is still a business that derives its income from viewers, albeit indirectly. If people stop watching, then the advertisers stop paying.

[...]

The market is still driven by the consumer.

The market is changing, and we're already being taxed on media services that we don't even take advantage of ourselves. Look at this 2009 DTV mandate.. 15% of the cost we're already paying into it is going to pay for converters for people who can't afford to upgrade their sets to DTV-compatible sets. If I'm not going to be using DTV in 2009, why should I pay a tax just so my neighbor can, when he can't even afford the upgrade?

Companies are making more money through litigation in some cases than actual product revenue. Advertisers are making money by buying lists of names of people who will likely buy one of their other products, not necessarily from the media itself. When everything goes pay-per-view, you can bet there'll still be ads on the bottom of every television show.

If I pay for a program, I expect it to be commercial-free, ad-free, and I expect it to play on my player of choice. Once any of those rights are removed, it is no longer useful to me, and I just won't pay for it.

Speaking of the on-screen ads, what the fsck is up with these 1/3-of-the-screen-height advertisements for the NEXT show, while I'm watching my current show? Why do I care that "The Krall Show" is on at 11:45pm, when I'm watching CSI at 7pm?

The animation and annoying distraction of these ads is simply unacceptable (not to mention, is probably going to cause ADD in my daughter if she sees them over and over). When I pay for cable television, I expect to see the programs I'm paying for, not ads. Period.

But back on point.. soon we'll see television being paid for without direct customer input. We're already seeing it in many other technology markets. Sony did a customer survey to see what features people wanted in an mp3 player... and they promptly ignored them ALL, because they insisted that the one thing users wanted most, was to NOT be able to play standard mp3s on their Sony mp3 player, and instead, play proprietary format audio files instead. Suuuure. Companies are just producing crap, without a single care for what the customer wants. (I ranted about something very similar and related on my blog a few days ago, regarding headphones).

Note, I consistently use the word "customer" in my vernacular. We are not "consumers", we do not "consume" technology products. We do not "consume" media. Continuing to use this term belies the exact problem we're trying to solve with these companies. We don't belly up and eat at the "trough" of technology.

All we need on top of DTV + Broadcast Flag is a 2-way video camera (1-way cameras already exist in many devices [phones, laptops, etc.]), and George Orwell's future is our present. Don't believe me?

Look at the recent article a few days ago about how teachers in Arizona are going to be using complete electronic curriculum, no printed books. Who is to say that they can't change a sentence or two and basically "rewrite" history? The Ministry of Truth would be proud of our current state of affairs.

Its happening in bits and pieces everywhere, and nobody who has the power to change it seems to care. Its scary.

Without a doubt the Coolmax 2.5" at newegg was the smallest, lightest, most-powerful I've seen, for under $20.00.

It came with all of the cables (usb and firewire), extra screws, a screwdriver, a faux leather carrying case, and it runs entirely on bus power. One of the cables has two usb ends so you can draw power from two usb ports to drive it, instead of using an AC adapter, but you'll only need one.

Its so small and light, I actually keep it velcroed to the lid of my laptop as a 3rd IDE drive when I need the storage.

Absolutely amazing purchase.

One thing though, STAY AWAY FROM COOLDRIVES.COM!. I bought a drive enclosure from them, they shipped me the wrong product, and a broken AC adapter. Their website is useless at finding contact info, so I called the manufacturer of the drive, and they said I was out of luck.

I gave them negative feedback through Yahoo's feedback mechanism and within MINUTES, someone from the company called me and was using profanity at me and calling me all kinds of wonderful names (details of the libel and slander on my blog).

Stick with newegg and partners, amazing service, fast shipping, and superior products. I couldn't be happier with my purchase of this drive enclosure. The vendor included everything I could possibly think of, and priced it very aggressively.