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Re:Allow me to be the first (Score:5, Interesting)
by Mattcelt (454751) on Friday July 22, @05:31AM (#13133439)

I wrote about this a while ago. Here's the text:

"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Reminds me of this scene from Matt Bracken's novel Enemies Foreign and Domestic , which is a fictional account of how that line-of-thinking would actually work in practice. It's not much of a spoiler to say that the novel is about a terrorist incident staged by government agents so they can expand their powers (since that's obvious in the first chapter). The following scene takes place at an anti-terrorist checkpoint on the highway:

The young father in the white Ford Taurus, the second car from the front of the line said, "No sir, I won't open my trunk without a warrant, and I do not 'consent' to be searched."

The Virginia National Guard corporal standing outside his driver's side window looked around, confused. This situation had not come up before. Could this guy just refuse? Was that allowed?

The holdout's young blond wife said, "Martin, just do like he says. Don't make trouble; the girls are frightened."

"Honey, it's the point of it. This is still America, and there's still a Constitution."

"Daddy, why are there soldiers here? Is there a war?" asked seven year old Danielle from the back seat. Her four year old sister Ashley next to her in her booster seat sucked her thumb, afraid without knowing why.

"No sweetie, there's no war. The soldiers are helping the police to look for some bad men."

"Criminals daddy?"

"That's right sugar plum, criminals."

Another man walked up to their window. Martin Palmer could not tell if he was from the military or the police: he was dressed in black from his helmet to his boots, with no badge or insignia in sight. The man in black rapped on his driver's side window with the steel muzzle tip of his black submachine gun. "Open up! Get out! Now!"

"Officer, do you have a warrant? What's your 'probable cause' to search our car?" Martin Palmer was trying very hard not to show the fear he felt, holding onto the wheel to keep his hands from visibly shaking. He hoped he did not sound as afraid as he felt. He remembered reading about the Eagle Scout in Maryland who had had his face shot off a few years ago by an FBI undercover agent with an M-16 rifle after a mistaken traffic stop. Palmer had not yet heard about today's accidental police shooting in Virginia Beach of the man in the black pickup truck. His wife could not stand listening to news talk radio and they played soft rock music CDs instead.

"My 'probable cause' is you're an asshole who refuses to give consent for a search, that's what! Now get out! Out! Out!"

ATF Special Agent Alvin Bogart was having a bad day, and now he was angry enough to chew up barbed wire and spit out nails. He was angry because it was Sunday afternoon, and he was pulling the absolute shit duty of all time manning a FIST checkpoint, instead of kicking back on his recliner in his den with a cold Budweiser in his hand, watching the Eagles play the Carolina Panthers. For this he had become a Federal Law Enforcement Agent?

He was angry because he was pulling his second consecutive day of twelve hour checkpoint shifts, which really meant a 14 hour work day, only with no overtime pay like the State Troopers were raking in. And worse, he knew that he had to do it again tomorrow and the next day and it looked like forever. If he had wanted to pull this kind of shit duty, he would have joined the Border Patrol!

He was angry because he had to walk around all day in full tactical gear in almost 90 degree he

• "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
  http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966707109/ 104-5327902-9960761
• Mercury ion complexes added into your drinking water decreases your I.Q. instantly. : http://crashrecovery.org/Lor2_QTS_700kb_QD.mov
• Computerized T-valves were added in 2004 into the Los Angeles water supply system to remotely facilitate customized additives into the drinking water. Public Extermination Project http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/115676.php by Janet C. Phelan

I assume that not all indymedias are run this poorly, but I really don't care what is going on in other cities, so I have nothing to compate it to.

This link is representative of typical Indymedia content - judge it for yourself.

uglf communique 05.01.2005"

Perhaps after reading some examples of what Indymedia calls journalism they decided that extending journalistic protection to them might be considered insulting to real journalists.

Well, Indymedia covered the Tlalnepantla massacre [1] where a lot of other news sources didn't. They do seem to be very, very biased, but it's better for information to be collected for me to sort out what's useless, biased drek than it is for someone else to decide what's drek and filter it for me (both because that person is in a position of power to be corrupted and because I hate not having all the information).

If you want to find out about Indymedia, read some of the sites and issues they cover and some of their editorials. At the very least, you can gain terms to Google for from Indymedia (try it with Tlalnepantla).

[1] Citizens of this town tended to decide elections via a town council, then when a consensus had been reached, the official vote was cast using the Mexican ballot. Because everything was hammered out in the council beforehand, you could walk away from the thing knowing who the elected candidate was going to be. At the end of 2003 (or the beginning of 2004), this election was held again, but instead of everybody going to vote after the council, only about 10% of the people cast ballots. The result was that a local do-nothing politician (these kinds of guys really are everywere) who'd screwed up several positions in the past was elected mayor. The citizens had decided at the council who they wanted using the same process they'd used before Mexico was a country, and now the Mexican government was forcing them to accept the elected-by-ballot screw-up.

The Tlalnepantlans declared fricken autonomy. You hardly see that these days, but it's a significant event, and it's hard to imagine actually doing it when autonomy has been just a word for so long, but they did it.

The Mexican government reacted in the same way European nobility reacted hundreds of years ago. They moved to put down a full-tilt revolution and stormed the town with guns-a'blazin, killing dozens of unarmed Tlalnepantlans. There's video of the thing floating around somewhere if you want to see for yourself.

But if you want to know what Indymedia is, its an underground network of journalists. You can check it out and judge for yourself

Here are the sites

Radio4All
Live Radio
Wikipedia IndyMedia

Hey they held some poor kid over here in custody for 12 days for attempting to steal an ice cream, so spamming should deserve years!

Why is white-collar crime somehow not deserving of punishment like gaol? Some kid who steals a $30K car, screams down a street and writes it off against a tree is expected to end up gaoled, but someone causing a nuisance to far more people and costing millions of dollars is not because he didn't get his hands dirty doing it?

If doubleclick were like Ford they would have bought out Mozilla and eliminated AdBlocking, just like Ford and others did with streetcars.

I'm not too worried about the future adoption of Linux, because 50 governments (all levels) are switching to Linux http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11507. html

That's the top-down takeover. Then, there's Mobilis, the $220 laptop from India, and the bottom-up takeover. MSFT will be squeezed from both ends of the market. http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/05/41418.p hp

Here's a MSFT hater who smells blood.

Clayton

Yes, Wikinews precedes this, and has a larger scope. There is also a quite large and serious grass-roots news effort, Indymedia, with branches and local reporters in the US, UK, and (I gather) many other countries.

Problem is... how many of them have RSS? Wikinews doesn't seem to, which is why I'd forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. The idea of a web-based news service without RSS is a bit pointless, never mind a news service that aims to be innovative. Hopefully they'll get that sorted soon :)

Living in New York is an expensive lifestyle. But on the other hand, New York cops really seem to enjoy themselves when it comes to corruption. Take for example last year's Republican convention. New York Cops did their best to round up thousands of people, stick them in an asbestos contaminated concentration camp and then charge them with crimes they never committed.

The Banno Story - Corrupt nyc cops lie, the DA encourages and participates in the lies.. get caught red handed
Police Perjurers
another story related to the new york DA editing/manipulating video tapes

Google the story, hundreds of cases have been dropped because the Police were inventing stories that never happened and then having the DA charge innocent people with full knowledge.

Here's a link to Indymedia's shut down the convention! page. I guess these Indymedia guys have a right to hold whatever event they want unmolested, but those who do not have Indymedia's opinions do not have any such right. The idea of "shutting down" a meeting you do not like is (or should be considered) quite un-American.

no i obviously do not support the filtering of Chinese internet access. nor do i support the filtering of American journalists covering wars such as Gulf War I or Gulf War II. nor do i support tv stations that won't let high school students air commercials about non-smoking. nor do i support radio stations that play the same content across the continent. nor do i support the concentratrion of media ownership in the hands of a very powerful few much to the detriment of people like us.

free speech isn't just about being able to shout, it's also about hearing every voice you need to hear. for analysis of how speech is not truly free in North America see Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

However flawed it is, support Indy Media in your town.

and what are we talking about? we're talking about Free Speech It is not just about howling to keep the Right, it is remembering that it has to be exercised continually in defense of it -- and that includes questioning how we exercise it.

oh and in answer to the first question about "upset" about it, well we're talking about the Toronto Sun which is just desperate to be seen as a hot and important news source.

Yes, I and other austin-ites will be at this hearing. Do you know what time???

Also posted the relavent information on the Austin Indymedia site.

Surprising that you got into MIT (or maybe you didn't.. you know, you might just be lying to make point here!! *gasp*!!).

Actually, yes, I'm an MIT alumnus. I don't think MIT makes its alumni records public on the web, but you can check for my photo in Technique (the MIT yearbook); I'm in the book for the class of 1992. If that still doesn't satisfy you, I'm sure you can call the Institute and verify that a Robert Poole did in fact study there from 1988 to 1992. I believe the registrar's office should have that information. I'd place a scan of my diploma online, but I don't feel like being a target of identity theft.

From the wikipedia article[...]

Since when has Wikipedia been an authoritative source of any information? Since just about anyone can contribute, the peer review and fact checking that would go into any garden variety encyclopedia would seem to be missing. But let's ignore that for the moment:

The term "X Windows" (in the manner of "Microsoft Windows") is officially deprecated and generally considered incorrect, though it has been in common use since the inception of X and has been used deliberately for literary effect, for example in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook.

So, basically, the Wikipedia article backs me up on this. The term has been in common use since the inception of X. How is this quote in any way, shape, or form a negation of what I wrote? Oh, yes... they "deprecated" the term "X Windows." Which doesn't stop people from continuing to use the term, regardless of whether some people want the term to die for political reasons. The X Consortium is free to request that people use one of the officially "blessed" names for X11. That doesn't mean I have to do what they ask.

And that thing about RMS and other MIT people calling it X WindowS (not by mistake) -- yeah, right. I believe you.

Well, besides the fact that the very Wikipedia article you quoted admits that the term "X Windows" has been in common use since the inception of X (i.e., since X was created, which was at MIT), I actually have some articles I can point you at:
A transcript of Richard Stallman's speech at NYU on May 29th, 2001
Section 29.21 of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
A site containing choice quotes from RMS
A transcript of an interview with RMS
In addition, there's at least one other article I couldn't track down, but it was cited recently on Slashdot.

And BTW, common usage doesn't make 'then' and 'than' interchangeable. It's still an error when you do that. Same thing with X.

Actually, no, you're comparing apples and oranges here.

First off, "common usage" is not to be confused with "common errors." People make common grammatical and spelling mistakes for a variety of reasons; for instance, two words might sound the same or similar but be spelled differently. (Thus, the confusion of "then" and "than.") The two words are not used interchangeably except by the ignorant.

Examples of common usage trumping antiquated grammar or spelling rules:

• So-called "split infinitives." Once upon a time, a grammarian who thought that Latin-derived rules of grammar should apply to English decided that infinitives should never be split. Most modern English authorities agree that there's nothing wrong with split infinitives, and in fact, the split infinitive form of a sentence is often less cumbersome to speak. (Spoken language is primary; written language derives from spoken language.) So, "To boldly go where no man has gone before

Article's a few years old, but will give you a starting place for searching.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/200 0-08-11/xtra_feature2.html

This one's only a year old:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/01/277711.sh tml

And something that looks like an essay on the subject:
http://www.sexuality.org/l/mscott/ssex01.html

As with software, there's ambiguity in the meaning of the English word "free". Most of the discussion here is focussing on "free as in beer". Price is important to many, natually enough, not least because of the intrusion required online to make sure you've paid.

But I suspect a lot of /.ers are more concerned with "free as in speech". This is often, but not always, connected to the pricing. "Free" newspapers are owned by businesses whose reason for publishing is to make money: if you're not paying upfront for the paper, then all their revenue is coming from ads, and they thererefore have even more need to keep their editorial policy in line with their advertisers. It's already been pointed out above that supposedly "independent" news media like the BBC aren't all that independent: running a news site really well costs money, and the BBC is still reliant on an increasingly pushy and spin-loving UK government to pay its bills.

Having a no-charge business model also puts pressure on costs, and makes getting cheap or "free" (i.e. no-cost) content all the more attractive. The independence of the reporting can suffer as a result. The NYT has coincidentally just run a story about how the White House is pushing pro-government "news" stories to the networks, paid for by the taxpayer, which don't always clue the viewer who produced them. This isn't necessarily a conspiracy, it's just "good business". The same conflict of interest exists in a corporate-owned newspaper, online or hardcopy.

I think many people attribute a sense of mission to their news provider. Some people think FOX tells it "fair and balanced", and watch it for that reason. Good for them. I personally would rather watch Bullwinkle re-runs than FOX News, but that's beside the point. Consciously or unconsciously, a lot of people believe that their favorite news provider is mostly "telling the truth" about what's going on in the world, and are unable or unwilling to see conflicts of interest, especially when they're unaware of how their favorite news provider's business model works. I simply don't believe that a GE-owned news business is always going to tell the truth about what GE gets up to.

The one large-scale attempt that I'm aware of to build a global news network which is free both of corporate and government control is Indymedia. Their quality varies anywhere from excellent first-hand reporting, to the truly awful. Freedom is like that: you have the freedom to write something which some people really want to hear, and other people really hate. The US and some European govts have been cracking down on Indymedia lately, which doesn't bode well for freedom of speech. This is true even if you don't like Indymedia's anarchist/left-wing editorial policy: people have the right to report the news as they see it. You equally have a right to redress if lies are told about you.

So the Indymedia model is far from perfect. How then can an international news network operate which is free of both corporate and government interference? If 100% free-as-in-freedom news isn't possible without a regular revenue stream, then how do you at least maximize the freedom AND the quality of the content?

PS: BugMeNot helps you skirt around that "free" registration with the NYT.

Who is going to buy a Powerbook now when MacRumorSecrets says there is going to be a much faster Powerbook G5 around the corner?

Welcome to the computer industry. There is always Something Faster (tm) around the corner. And just as a side-note, I think everyone who has ever purchased an Apple product has gotten "bitten by Apple", myself included. It's a harzard of buying anything in such a rapid-paced industry.

Apple isn't looking to hamper first amendment rights, and I doubt they will.

Except that's exactly what will happen here. If the courts require the rumor site to divulge their sources, it's will become a precendent that can be used to do the same to others. Look up "chilling effect" and "stiffle" in a legal dictionary and get back to me. Imagine you are a journalist and you are reporting on some sensitive issue in the government. You have an inside source who can give you information to help keep the government accountable. Trouble is, there is a law that requires you to tell a court who your source is. Are you going to publish? Will your source let you publish? Not only is this a violation of The First, it has other negative side-effects as well, stomping out whistle-blowers and other mechanisms for any kind of accountability. Wow, what a worthy sacrifice so that Apple can stick it to some smuck who violated an NDA.

And guess what, blogs and sites like theses AREN'T OFFICIAL MEDIA.

So wait, you have to be a government-approved or corporate entity to be "official media" and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment? You mean CNN or NBC get to hide their sources but Indymedia can't? What a load of tripe. Get real and take an introduction to American government course. (Who knew the downfall of the United States would begin with the removal of Civics from standard highschool education...?) In case you were not aware, the First Amendment doesn't say "official media", it reads as follows.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

(Emphasis added.) I see no mention that this is a right protected by privilege, it simply implies "the people". Also, the spirit in which this was written strongly suggests that the Framers wanted people to have the freedom to challenge establishments by open exchange. But, don't take my word for it. Let's refence legal material at Cornell on the subject.

The most basic component of freedom of expression is the right of freedom of speech. The right to freedom of speech allows individuals to express themselves without interference or constraint by the government. The Supreme Court requires the government to provide substantial justification for the interference with the right of free speech where it attempts to regulate the content of the speech. A less stringent test is applied for content-neutral legislation. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence. The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicates a message.

Despite popular misunderstanding the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citiz

reminds me of this..

http://arkady.indymedia.org/media/docs/NSA_touchgr aph.gif

Weather monitoring station. Probably somewhere high up for the sensors, with a more convenient location for the display. Presumably, these will be LAN appliances some day, needing only ethernet.

Digital interface for an aerial antenna. If you ever want to transmit pirate TV like the telestreet movement in Italy, or do the A/D conversion of over-the-air television closer to the source.

Lighting control bus. Like X-10 works over power lines, perhaps more flexibility would be available if the control circuit has its own data bus.

Irrigation control. Depending on climate, of course.

Whole house audio.

Whole house video.

Toaster network.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, except for the obvious computer network thing, of course.

Now, I won't disagree that "open source journalism" is just a buzzword that was created on a blog somewhere, but have a little patience; they're trying to describe something we don't have a word for yet. And the words we do have are weighted down with pos./neg. connotation. Really, what we're talking about here is non-corporate media, which can encompass anything from indymedia.org to powerlineblog.com to engadget.com.

I dunno about anybody else, but I'm tired of the negative, cynical, close-minded mindset that so envelopes slashdot about such issues. Open-source is an ideology, and it's an extremely important one. But let's not deride people whose interest lies outside of technological pursuits; people who (gasp!) use technology to do work rather than work on technology. Bloggers have different opinions and interests than you. Is that so wrong? Can they not be united in the struggle against the corrupt and fascist mainstream media/evil software companies? Do they not value their freedom, just as we do?

Furthermore, I've read many posts in this thread already, and even open-source advocates can't seem to agree on what open source is! Some say it's a way of working cooperatively. Some say it's simply not closed-source. Could I pry a few minds open here and suggest that it is both and much more? It is nothing less than the united struggle against tyrrany, the tyrrany that we all KNOW that those in power will impose if given the chance. Without our resistance ("our" including all who stand up for their rights), can you imagine the distopian hell we would live in? We only have to look into our recent history to find examples, and we only have to look to totalitarian states currently in existance to realize the importance of freedom.

Simply put, open-source is about freedom and openness (glasnost). Surely most of us here recognize the power of open-source, but we do not yet know it's full potential. Conversely, we do not yet know the power of blogging. Yes, "blog" is just a stupid word, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that blogging has the power to take down totalitarian governments. If, through the internet, people in a restrictive regime are enabled to communicate effectively the government no longer controls the flow of information. When that happens, a critical mass can be achieved and revolution is possible. Look at Ukraine's election for a recent example.

Blogging is not just ranting and boring shit (although that boring shit might actually serve as "cover" for the more explosive material), it's about communication, freedom and openness. Blogging and open source are going to change our world. Are they over-hyped? Well duh. Who do you think is doing the hyping? The mainstream media, because they don't know how to do anything else. And if you hate blogs because the media hypes them, well then I guess you're just buying what they're selling.

Just like on my blog, I don't expect anybody to care or read what I have written, but I feel a heck of a lot better for having written it. Mod me as you will.

Depends who you are. Do you remember the Indymedia case a while ago, where their server was claimed by the powers that be, apparently abusing some anti-terrorist legislation, that is so secret we're not allowed to ask about it.

If I was in that kind of business, I'd want to flush my logs quite often. Governments have a habit of asking for a little information, and then collecting more than they are legally allowed to.

Recently servers in the UK belonging to The Indipendent Media Center were taken down at the apparent behest of the Swiss and/or Italian police, with the apparent involvement of the FBI. According to Rackspace the host the request was under the Multual Legal Assistance Treaty, a treaty designed to foster cooperation in cases of international terrorism, kidnapping, and money laundering. Indymedia's running newswire is here.

The story also showed up on /. . The Register has nice coverage including information from the italian police confirming their involvement here A follow up appers here. Crucially the drives were (at the time) carrying photos of Italian, and Swiss police taken during the G8 Protests in Genoa Italy. The photos show Swiss policemen, photographing protestors, as well as provate legal documents relating to Indymedia's court cases being levelled against the Italian Police.

So the long and short being, yes such laws could be passed but, in the wake of a law for the prevention of terrorism, kidnapping, and money laundering being used to sieze legal documents including photos of police officers, I'm not holding out too much hope.

Why worry about cops first and not the (always) bad guys?

Because crime isn't actually as bad as you'd think from watching TV.

In reality, most of us live in an age of incredibly low crime rates, even those of us who live in cities in America. I've never even seen a gun, and the one time I was within a mile of an actual violent crime, there were so many cop cars (and bikes and helicopters) after the guy it was like a scene from The Blues Brothers.

Sure, there are exceptions; maybe you live in Gary, Indiana or inner city DC. But for most of us, the chances of being beaten up or having our stuff stolen by law enforcement are much greater than the chances of the same happening because of a violent criminal.

Someone in your apartment block deals drugs? Guess it's time for a drug forfeiture sweep. Doesn't matter if you're found innocent, you can kiss your worldly possessions goodbye.

Selling video signal clarifiers or bootleg arcade game emulators? You could be the next person to be raided by the Department of Homeland Security. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Sharing lots of files? Thanks to Bill Clinton, copyright violation in sufficient quantities is now a felony, and you could find the feds kicking down your door.

Political protester? It's now routine for protesters (whatever the cause) to be illegally mass-arrested in advance to get them off the streets, mistreated in jail, and then freed without charge once the event being protested is over. That's if you're lucky; if you're unlucky, the cops engineer a riot and wade in with the tear gas and batons. If you're really unlucky, they discover that you once sent a pair of boots to a Chechen rebel or contributed to an Islamic charity, and you suddenly disappear to jail indefinitely, or to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured.

I don't lie awake at night worrying that my next-door neighbors might steal my stuff; even if they did, I have insurance, and it's just stuff. I do sometimes worry that I might get arrested or "disappeared" by the US authorities.

If you have a country you like, go looking for one of their big newspapers and then see if they have it in translation. You can learn a lot about their culture that way, plus your own as you see how they view you.

For example, Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is a German newsmagazine, but they have an English website and daily email service. Note that I didn't link to their main page, but to what I found to be some interesting commentary...

Indymedia is another source for underreported and off-beat items.

Monsanto's very own website has a press release detailing a settlement with the SEC and DOJ for bribing officials in Indonesia and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Indymedia has further links.

This is interesting -
Monsanto bribes officials
Apparently Monsanto doesnt like to play by the rules either.

Sorry, but rape does happen in US torture centres. If you had just googled around for a minute, you would have found enough stories about it. Two examples I could find:
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/21 /article06.shtml
http://qc.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/1303.php

The indymedia article has even links to photos. So instead of accusing people of lying, you could have done some 1 minute research yourself and find that it does happen.

I guess this would also be a good time to remind people that the US also managed to shut down 22 IndyMedia sites, administered by groups around the world and physically located in the UK. More from the EFF here.

Not only has this copyright bill gone through, they also just passed an Electronic Surveillance bill that "regulates the use of surveillance devices (data, optical, listening and tracking devices) by law enforcement agencies and.... also significantly widens the circumstances in which they can be used and the types that can be used." where is the government free space??

Not only has this copyright bill gone through, they also just passed an Electronic Surveillance bill that "regulates the use of surveillance devices (data, optical, listening and tracking devices) by law enforcement agencies and.... also significantly widens the circumstances in which they can be used and the types that can be used." where is the government free space??

http://www.indymedia.org These people do a great job of this already. There are places like:
southafrica.indymedia.org
-or-
portland.indymedia.org
...that give direct information about South Africa or Portland, respectively. Thanks for your time and take it easy.

http://www.indymedia.org These people do a great job of this already. There are places like:
southafrica.indymedia.org
-or-
portland.indymedia.org
...that give direct information about South Africa or Portland, respectively. Thanks for your time and take it easy.

...just mirror Indymedia. They've even done all the hard work of attracting the troll community for you.

I agree with all the comments about Plone being great, if Plone existed before we started developing MKDoc then we probably wouldn't have bothered... If you like Plone but want a CMS written in Perl then check out MKDoc.

MKDoc doesn't yet have such a big community around it yet but it's only just been GPL'ed...

The PHP CMS's are great if you don't have root, if you do then the Zope, Perl and Java ones are worth checking out.

Another one that hasn't been mentioned here is Java Mir the Indymedia CMS.

I agree with all the comments about Plone being great, if Plone existed before we started developing MKDoc then we probably wouldn't have bothered... If you like Plone but want a CMS written in Perl then check out MKDoc.

MKDoc doesn't yet have such a big community around it yet but it's only just been GPL'ed...

The PHP CMS's are great if you don't have root, if you do then the Zope, Perl and Java ones are worth checking out.

Another one that hasn't been mentioned here is Java Mir the Indymedia CMS.

Actually - Diebold is a public corporation - stock symbol DBD.

Sequoia is a child of De La Rue which is also a public corporation. (Although interestingly, they made a lot of money last year producting Iraqi banknotes) "This was primarily driven by the impact of the exceptional order in relation to Iraq banknotes announced in July 2003.".

http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/34704.ph p

The indymedia link above has an analysis of the Florida voting which shows that Bush's vote percentage for all brands of voting machines - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia increased in 2004 in 59 of 67 counties.

The glaring exception was the single county that used the ES&S release 4.3 which showed an increase of ~15% for Kerry.

If you watch the film on Votergate, about halfway through the film, you can watch the clip from "Topic A" where Howard Dean uses Access to easily change the database file.

Now, let's be brutally honest: How many people think that non-federal government offices (and maybe even federal offices) have IT support properly maintaining and securing the computers on the network?

How many of those machines are behind any type of firewall?

This doesn't have to be a "vast right-wing conspiracy." This could be as simple as a few kids fooling around, WarGames-style.

Now, I readily admit that I voted for Kerry. I am not saying Kerry was robbed of the election and readily accept a Bush victory if there was a fair fight.

However, was this a fair fight? Even if Karl Rove wasn't masterminding a subversion of the e-voting machines, and it was just kids (or just programming bugs) causing these errors, I would still not consider this a fair fight.

Also remember: Diebold's CEO promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush. Again, it's not a smoking gun, but it does make you start to wonder.

Thom Hartmann, host of a nationally syndicated progressive daily radio talk show, claims that evidence is mounting that the 2004 U.S. election results were hacked. 'When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how.' Hartmann offers more details in this article, saying '...I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.'

I predict Chuck Hagel will run for President for the Republicans in 2008. And he will win.

The only way he won't is if he is defeated in primaries or the election by a 60% majority. Anything smaller can be usurped by sabotaged e-voting machines.

This site does not represent all Iraqis. It's just a site set up by an American guy called Steven Moore (he worked for the American occupation administration). He clearly if not pro-Bush agenda, then clear job description as a USA-paid PR guy. So the site has some blatant lies and a lot of creative distortion of facts.

Read more about it in this Indimedia article: The truth about "thetruthaboutiraq.org".

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2004/10 /299874.gif

What about the Italian constitution, then?

Art. 13.

Personal freedom is inviolable.
No form of detention, inspection or personal search is allowed, nor any other restriction of personal freedom, except for a justified action of the judiciary autority, and only in those instances and by the means the law accounts for.

In exceptional instances of need and urgency, which must be among those accounted for by the law, the public security authority can adopt temporary provisions, communication of which must reach the judiciary authority in the following forty-eight hours; if the judiciary authority does not confirm such provisions in the following forty-eight hours, they are to be considered null and devoid of any effect.

Any and all instances of physical and moral violence on people subject to any amount of restriction of personal freedom are punished.

Maximum terms for any precautionary imprisonment are estabilished by the law.

[notes for translation: "judiciary authority" means a competent judge or court; "public security authority" means the police.]

Yet more and more you hear in the media--and I mean indepedent media-- that such principles are violated, especially the part about "violence on people subject to any amount of restrictions of personal freedom".

Oh, and since Italy repudiates war as an offence for the people of other nations and as a mean to solve international controversies (Art. 11), our soldiers in Iraq aren't there to "bring democracy" like other nations do--just to "help for humanitary efforts".

Oh, there's probably nothing illegal about it. That's just innuendo and uncertainty pushed by the democrat party and repeated by the press as if it were news.

http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/12700. php

You can say it is legal because it is email, but at the least it is predatory and unethical. Unfortunately, behavior such as this is probably going to create a whole new set of laws regulating the behavior.

Let's see. There is some reported voter registration fraud. Here is a case in Ohio were a registrar was paid with cocaine and registered "Dick Tracy" and "George Foreman":
http://www.cleveland.com/crime/plaindealer/index.s sf?/base/iscri/109818543096130.xml

along with non-anecdotal evidence of potential fraud (higher incidence of registrations from incorrect address).

There is record voter registration in important states:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/10/17/MNGAB99QEA1.DTL

The democrats have supposedly hired many lawyers to monitor polls, etc.:

http://www.voanews.com/english/US-Democrats-Republ icans-Deploy-Lawyers-for-Possible-Election-Battles .cfm

Al Gore is telling blacks to "vote early" so their vote will count, presumably not like the last time:

"Early voting is a good idea," he said. "You want to give them plenty of time to count all the votes."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/24/gore.ap/

In all, it seems like the making for a very big mess, and I think this election, with things so close, I for one would be suspicious and at least investigate.

One thing I find interesting about this story, is that there is no evidence of any actual wrongdoing, just innuendo, but perhaps this is just part of the democrat playbook, which is to allege claiming voter intimidation, whether it's true or not:

http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/12700. php

Go read a few sections of The Truth About Iraq, and see if any facts pop out at you as being in direct opposition to the "facts"

Basically it says the guy behind The Truth About Iraq is some sort of PR adviser for politicians. I'd rather have my "facts" from an independent source. Multiple sources if possible.

That should explain their own website :)

Portland IMC

I always turn to Indymedia when looking for coverage about a protest...

By the time it becomes a regular problem, you won't be ABLE to complain. Well, at least not in a meaningful way.

Also assumign this is just a single instance theres almost zero chance of it being politcal...

Hello, have you actually read Indymedia? Yeah, sure, it's not political. I also hear there's a lovely bargain on a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.

An FBI spokesperson, Joe Parris, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the FBI issued a subpoena to the provider who hosted the Indymedia servers in the U.K., but that it was "on behalf of a third country." (1) Daniel Zapelli, senior federal prosecutor for Geneva (Switzerland), confirmed that he has opened a criminal investigation into Indymedia coverage of the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian. (2) Zapelli will provide details of that investigation at a press conference on Tuesday. Federal prosecutor of Bologna (Italy) Marina Plazzi stated that she is investigating Italy Indymedia because it may "support terrorism." (3) Plazzi says she will provide more information on Thursday, October 14th.