Slashdot Mirror

the courts have also held that speech may not be forcefully restrained without due process; it matters little who is doing the restraining. The fact that restraint of speech principles apply to individuals, and not just government, is evident from a vast multitude of court cases. If you doubt this, you need only look up cases involving blacks in the South and the KKK, for example.

It's just that I sometimes get tired of people spouting off about what the law says when there's no basis in fact for their assertions.

If you're really interested in decisions about free speech, I'd suggest reading about them. Some good starting sources are the Electronic Frontier Foundation, http://www.eff.org/; and Find Law, http://www.findlaw.com/ as well as many papers and books availablle online, such as http://www.krusch.com/real/copyright.html and http://www.mttlr.org/volthree/foster_art.htm

I'm not from the US, so I may be ill-informed. It does seem that there are issues with travelling in the US, Even if you're american. Additionally, there are some (admittedly crack-pot looking) sites keeping a a list of government endorsed breaches of the first amendment.

Then of course, there's what appears to be the FBI acting as thought police.

Running diverse software on the roots is probably a Good Thing, but security through obscurity isn't

Man this is such a false meme, where did it get started? Obscurity by itself is questionable security, but as a component of a multi-layered security strategy it's perfectly reasonable.

• Security by obscurity is your world-readable /etc/passwd file, with the password data either hashed (obscured) or moved to the shadow file (also obscured). (And if your shadow password file isn't world readable, that's just more obscurity.)

• Security by obscurity is the fact that most people don't have the names & addresses of the personnel running the US military's nuclear weapons systems so that these people can't be blackmailed. Maybe these people can be trusted not to betray their country under torture and such, but keeping their identities non-public -- an obscurity measure -- is important too.

• Security by obscurity is Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" (*cough* Greenbrier Resort, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia)

• Security by obscurity is restricting access to your company's co-location facility, so that untrusted people can't get physical access to your equipment.

In short, in a broad sense, "security by obscurity" is a lot of good ideas, when you think about it. Any of these ideas can be an Achilles heel, but the solution there is not to cut off the heel altogether, but to wear sensible shoes when going out in the wilderness :)

To get back to the original topic, obscurity is a perfectly good tactic for the people running these DNS servers as part of their overall strategy for protecting the system. It's perfectly reasonable for certain aspects of their systems, processes, etc to be kept on a need to know basis. Sure, there is a benefit to keeping software source open as a security measure, though the benefit of doing that is debatable (and no, I'm not going to be the one to debate it -- I agree that it's generally a good idea but can understand some of the objections). But in this case, where the software is a black box to the outside world, and it's explicitly *not* meant for general DNS use (it's meant for authoritative servers only!) I don't see any particular harm in keeping their doors locked down pretty well.

Not that they're doing that in the first place. As another reply noted, you yourself write that both the betas & release will be available under a BSD style license :-)

But moreover, your objections are I think misplaced -- as are most of the people that blindly parrot the "obscurity is bad" meme. Think about what you're saying -- it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Claiming to know what Kubrick intended makes you as full of hot air as anyone else. Read this interview with him. I think it'll do more than anything I can try to say to you.

Show me another story by Clark or Kubrick with many meaningful anagrams and I'd be willing to believe they were hiding them here.

Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a bit of Googling:

Check out Dr Strangelove for some great examples. Among other things, there is a scene where Peter Sellers, in the role of the British captain Mandrake, plays around with variations on the letters P. O. E., trying to figure out the code to call back the planes. One relevant POE phrase would be "peace on earth", which is exactly what he was trying to save.

Consider the drug Alex is given in "Clockwork Orange" -- CRM-114. CRM is, of course, a SeRuM, so the name fits. CRM-114 is also the license plate of the car Alex & his gang go joyriding in, as well the name of the radio on the B-52 in Strangelove, the serial number of Discovery in 2001, and in Eyes Wide Shut is a hospital room -- "C [r[oo]m] 114" (and it shows up in other movies too, like "Back to the Future", but that's an aside).

In Kubrick's version of "Lolita", he has a character named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram for Vladimir Nabokov -- the author that wrote the original book.

In Eyes Wide Shut, there are a lot of examples of anagrams, puns, & general word play. A password is "fidelio", echoing the Latin for 'faithful' as well as an opera by Beethoven (which involved similar themes as EWS).

Or consider the much debated connection between "HAL" and "IBM." Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but the connection is strong enough to resonate with people.

Or consider the very famous scene from "The Shining", where the kid walks around shouting "RED RUM! RED RUM!", which is of course "MURDER" backwards.

You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.

As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.

Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epic poem.

Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean. I'd be willing to give this book a shot, if it could go any deeper than the critical interpretations I've already read on Kubrick & 2001.

Hell, the Slashdot groupthink crowd has dismissed it, so it must be good! ;)

Show me another story by Clark or Kubrick with many meaningful anagrams and I'd be willing to believe they were hiding them here.

Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a bit of Googling:

Check out Dr Strangelove for some great examples. Among other things, there is a scene where Peter Sellers, in the role of the British captain Mandrake, plays around with variations on the letters P. O. E., trying to figure out the code to call back the planes. One relevant POE phrase would be "peace on earth", which is exactly what he was trying to save.

Consider the drug Alex is given in "Clockwork Orange" -- CRM-114. CRM is, of course, a SeRuM, so the name fits. CRM-114 is also the license plate of the car Alex & his gang go joyriding in, as well the name of the radio on the B-52 in Strangelove, the serial number of Discovery in 2001, and in Eyes Wide Shut is a hospital room -- "C [r[oo]m] 114" (and it shows up in other movies too, like "Back to the Future", but that's an aside).

In Kubrick's version of "Lolita", he has a character named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram for Vladimir Nabokov -- the author that wrote the original book.

In Eyes Wide Shut, there are a lot of examples of anagrams, puns, & general word play. A password is "fidelio", echoing the Latin for 'faithful' as well as an opera by Beethoven (which involved similar themes as EWS).

Or consider the much debated connection between "HAL" and "IBM." Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but the connection is strong enough to resonate with people.

Or consider the very famous scene from "The Shining", where the kid walks around shouting "RED RUM! RED RUM!", which is of course "MURDER" backwards.

You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.

As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.

Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epic poem.

Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean. I'd be willing to give this book a shot, if it could go any deeper than the critical interpretations I've already read on Kubrick & 2001.

Hell, the Slashdot groupthink crowd has dismissed it, so it must be good! ;)

Show me another story by Clark or Kubrick with many meaningful anagrams and I'd be willing to believe they were hiding them here.

Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a few minutes of Googling:

Check out Dr Strangelove for some great examples. Among other things, there is a scene where Peter Sellers, in the role of the British captain Mandrake, plays around with variations on the letters P. O. E., trying to figure out the code to call back the planes. One relevant POE phrase would be "peace on earth", which is exactly what he was trying to save.

Consider the drug Alex is given in "Clockwork Orange" -- CRM-114. CRM is, of course, a SeRuM, so the name fits. CRM-114 is also the license plate of the car Alex & his gang go joyriding in, as well the name of the radio on the B-52 in Strangelove, the serial number of Discovery in 2001, and in Eyes Wide Shut is a hospital room -- "C [r[oo]m] 114" (and it shows up in other movies too, like "Back to the Future", but that's an aside).

In Kubrick's version of "Lolita", he has a character named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram for Vladimir Nabokov -- the author that wrote the original book.

In Eyes Wide Shut, there are a lot of examples of anagrams, puns, & general word play. A password is "fidelio", echoing the Latin for 'faithful' as well as an opera by Beethoven (which involved similar themes as EWS).

Or consider the much debated connection between "HAL" and "IBM." Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but the connection is strong enough to resonate with people.

Or consider the very famous scene from "The Shining", where the kid walks around shouting "RED RUM! RED RUM!", which is of course "MURDER" backwards.

You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.

As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.

Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epics.

Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean.

Show me another story by Clark or Kubrick with many meaningful anagrams and I'd be willing to believe they were hiding them here.

Kubrick used them all the time! Just to give a few after a few minutes of Googling:

Check out Dr Strangelove for some great examples. Among other things, there is a scene where Peter Sellers, in the role of the British captain Mandrake, plays around with variations on the letters P. O. E., trying to figure out the code to call back the planes. One relevant POE phrase would be "peace on earth", which is exactly what he was trying to save.

Consider the drug Alex is given in "Clockwork Orange" -- CRM-114. CRM is, of course, a SeRuM, so the name fits. CRM-114 is also the license plate of the car Alex & his gang go joyriding in, as well the name of the radio on the B-52 in Strangelove, the serial number of Discovery in 2001, and in Eyes Wide Shut is a hospital room -- "C [r[oo]m] 114" (and it shows up in other movies too, like "Back to the Future", but that's an aside).

In Kubrick's version of "Lolita", he has a character named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram for Vladimir Nabokov -- the author that wrote the original book.

In Eyes Wide Shut, there are a lot of examples of anagrams, puns, & general word play. A password is "fidelio", echoing the Latin for 'faithful' as well as an opera by Beethoven (which involved similar themes as EWS).

Or consider the much debated connection between "HAL" and "IBM." Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but the connection is strong enough to resonate with people.

Or consider the very famous scene from "The Shining", where the kid walks around shouting "RED RUM! RED RUM!", which is of course "MURDER" backwards.

You might not accept all of these examples. Fair enough. I know many of them aren't anagrams per se, but puns, allusions, and so on. So be it. I hope the pattern is clear enough all the same. Kubrick infused his movies with a lot of word play, and this all contributes to the larger meaning of each film. Did he do it deliberatey? I don't doubt that at least some of it was deliberate, but I also accept that a lot of it was probably done unconsciously -- the meaning may be there but perhaps not deliberately so. That's fine with me. But it's there all the same. That's what makes his films great.

As for the hexagonal exhaust thing, well, I can't really comment much on that one. It's worth noting though that, as the movie's FAQ page notes, food is a big symbol in 2001. The early apes feast on raw meat, while the early space travellers have increasingly bland foods, up through the pastey goo that Discovery's crew gets. It's not unreasonable to take that thread a bit burther & comment on how the 2nd monolith had "no meat", or about Discovery's "anus". Certainly our overreliance on technology is a big theme, and the fact that space travellers need machines even to eat & defecate is a very potent symbol to work into a movie like this.

Cut the guy some slack. I haven't read the critique in question, but this review & these comments are being way too harsh. Kubrick's films in general, and 2001 in particular, are a rich source of allegory. Just because you only wanna dwell on the techno-nerd aspects doesn't mean that the larger themes aren't there. Come out of your cubicle & look at the bigger picture. One of the articles on the Kubrick FAQ draws comparisons between the director and James Joyce, and they seem to be about spot on to me. Among other parallels, it cites a common use of puns (cf. examples above et al), encoded meanings (POE from Strangelove, "NO MEAT" from 2001, etc), portmanteau words (compound or layered meaning), and of course both of them set their masterpieces against the Homerian epics.

Is it too easy to find these kinds of patterns everywhere? I dunno, maybe, but who cares? Patterns are fun! Whether or not they were "deliberately placed", like the lunar monolith (a ha! another one!), they exist and are being found. Deny them if you want to, but it's much more fun to try to figure out what they mean.

I would guess that even the Libertarians (though I am not entirely familiar with their platforms), for the most part, agree with Justice Holmes, who stated: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

"Yelling fire in a crowded theater" makes a good slogan. Too good.

I wish people knew more about the case behind it -- Shenck vs. US (1919). Then maybe they'd be ashamed to use it as a rallying cry.

Schenck was only informing the public of their constitutional rights (and no one accused him of not portraying those rights accurately). he was accused of yelling firw in a crowded theatre THAT WAS ACTUALLY ON FIRE. The Justices of the time(many of whom I regard highly) wanted to avoid public tumult at any cost. Shenck spent (IIRC) over a decade in prison for simply pointing out constitutional rights, and he wasn't alone. There were several cases of 'grass roots' leaders being arrested for this. I believe even the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Upton Sinclair was arrested -- for reading the text of the Constitution to a lawfully asembled crowd. The Vietnam anti-war protests (or Slashdot) could easily be shut down under both the spirit and the letter of Schenk -- if it weren't considered, even within the legal community a dangerous and even bad precedent.

Here's a readable summary of Shenck and many other classic precedents involving the First Ameendment topics we see on Slashdot -- and for completeness and accuracy, you can check the actual ruling in Schenck, too -- no one is slanting the facts. The truth actually is that disgraceful

Remember, there are still plenty of places, in and out of the US where peace and order are considered more important than truth or justice. Not in your town? Oh yes - check your local high schools, for example (I have a kid in HS, just for the record). It's a basic human instinct going back to the monkeys

Here's some websites I found which discuss the issue:

• Fourteenth Amendment at Findlaw, with annotations. Especially see the "priviliges and immunities" section of the annotations, where the right to assemble and the right to petition the government are listed among those which states may not restrict. (Granted, those aren't the rights at issue here, but they are First Amendment rights.)

• The Fourteenth Amendment: First Amendment II? Excellent summary of a few relevant cases, how the courts' view of the Fourteenth Amendment has changed over time, particularly with a view towards the political philosophy behind it.

• The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. An article from the Yale Law Review. Extensive summary of relevant cases and discussion. Very long.

Still, it seems that the courts are currently applying First Amendment rights as if the Fourteenth Amendment also prohibited state and local governments from encroaching upon those rights. State and local ordinances are often struck down on the grounds that they violate citizens' First Amendment rights. One of the seminal cases seems to be Gitlow v. New York, in which Justice Sanford, delivering the opinion of the court, writes "[W]e may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the press... are among the personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States." Granted, as the analyses above mention, prior to Gitlow the courts did not necessarily see the Fourteenth Amendment as extending First Amendment prohibitions to State governments, since then the Fourteenth Amendment has, for the most part, been interpreted that way.

For a recent example, see City of Erie, et al., v. Pap's A.M.. The question at hand in this case was whether an ordinance enacted by the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, violated the First Amendment. While the eventual decision was that the ordinance was constitutional, both sides seem to implicitly accept that the First Amendment (via the Fourteenth Amendment) applies to laws passed by the city of Erie.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is, if you're asking whether this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment can be defended purely from the text of the amendment and philosophy alone, I don't know. But it is certainly the way the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted in practice for the past several decades.

No, spam does not present free speech issues. I am as ardent a free-speech advocate as anyone, but it is well established that a "No Soliciting" sign is not a violation of free speech, and that disregarding such a sign is actionable -- even by constitutionally protected groups, such as a religion.

1. Not a public forum
My e-mailbox is not a public space by virtue of connecting to the internet, any more than my driveway or front door are, by virtue of being accessible by public roads. Or even my USPS mailbox -- "[A] letterbox, once designated an 'authorized depository', does not at the same time undergo a transformation into a 'public forum' of some limited nature to which the First Amendment guarantees access to all comers." Justice Rehnquist in U.S. Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh, 453 U.S. 114 (1981) (skip down to Greenburgh)

2. The paper 'junk mail' analogy demolished
So how does paper 'junk mail' survive? Partly though lots of expensive lobbying, and partly through a special right granted to the USPS, whereby they have quasi-ownership of my mailbox. (The US is one of the few countries to have a "Statutory Mail Box Restriction") The USPS can even prosecute my neighbors for leaving a note in my mailbox that could have been mailed (18 U.S.C. 1725) even if I, as the owner of the mailbox permit and even welcome the hand-delivery. ("Greenburgh" and other cases) However, the USPS cannot 'choose' to deny delivery of "objectionable" bulk mail, per cases like Bol ger v. Youngs Drugs Prods. (1983) (though Judge Brandeis ruled they could 'choose' to refuse to deliver certain political newspapers in Milwaukee Social Democratic Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407 (1921) So much for freedom of the press)

However, to bring this back to 'spam', I as a private recipient can ban junk mail from my mailbox, by filing a form with the USPS. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court, despite the First Amendment arguments by the Direct Marketing Assoc. The whole DMA "free speech" argument for spam is based on a premise that has long been defeated for snail mail

3. Abuse of 'Opt-out' is a crime, and should be an additional charge
Finally, even if Federal Law requires an opt-out address, any savvy user knows that much of the spam on the Internet at large contains fraudulent opt-out options. Not only would 'opting out' put you at risk for 'harvesting' (and hence more spam), but most spammers are fly-by-night operators who are long gone by the time you hit 'reply'. In fact, a recent article investigated and found that the bulk of spam reaches dead addresses even for those foolish enough to accept the offer being made.

In short, such spam is useless to everyone, the sender, the potential customer, and the millions of 'innocent victims'. Most users never learn this, because they are conditioned to ignore the opt-out, after a few 'harvesting' opt-outs flood their e-mail with even more spam. Here one abuse (harvesting) creates a hospitable environment that supports another (fake opt-out), a cycle that repeats in many ways throughout the spam 'industry'.

If your workplace puts a fake (or placebo) certificate where the elevator inspection card belongs, is that not a crime even more serious than failure to have a timely inspection (the former is willful criminal intent, the latter may be an accident)? If a con artist is caught in the act of trying to cheat a citizen, is it just 'free speech' until they actually walk off with the cash? Similarly, a 'fake opt-out' should a crime separate from 'failure to comply with spam regs'.

As of April 19, 2000 at least 18 states had passed or were working on legislation to restrict or regulate spam. There are, of course, serious jurisdictional issues.

_____________

While telling people where to find copies of a document is, arguably, a free speech issue, posting verbatim copies of a copyrighted work clearly isn't.

Here's a link with more speculation on who Dr. Strangelove might have been, from the
alt.movies.kubrick FAQ

This old saw is very appropriate, but not in the way usually intended by people who trot it out. It originated in a case ( Schenck vs United States ) which exemplifies the governmental habit of invoking phony hob-goblins as an excuse to infringe upon civil liberties.

By saying "open the floodgates" to pornography, with no ability to do blocking, you have circumvented the ability of communities and of families to make and enforce their own decisions about what constititues community and family standards.

You seriously undermine your case by lumping together "families" and "communities". Families have certain natural prerogatives in raising children to the point where they are capable of independent judgment. Communities have no such prerogatives -- I am an unreconstructed unmutual when it comes to Hillary's Village.
/.