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Or you could just read it here.

The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

...monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere...

Europe is not, was not and will not (in the forseeable future) be a country.

Right. I think they're going to call it Eurasia.

By using your definition, terrorism will NEVER cease to exist.

Bingo! That's the joy of a war on terrorism - it never has to end. Nothing like endless war to keep the people in line.

Bush's policies have made this country safer.

Nonsense. Bush's policiss have given more people than ever a motive to commit terrorist acts against the United States - and have made the U.S. government more of a clear and present danger to its own citizens than terrorism.

Last time I check, Congress gave the president the authority to attack Iraq. president clinton, that is. Oh, and by the way, they ALSO voted and gave president Bush the authority.

Which doesn't address the point that no declaration of war was made.

But my "measure of victory" is removing the terrorist and lawless regimes in afghanistan and iraq and replacing them with pro-U.S. democratic governments.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq was lawless (until we came in and destroyed the governments - sucky governments, true, but functioning ones), and Iraq had little to do with terrorism.

And why just Afghanistan and Iraq, in world full of nasty governments? Could it be...oil?

And if they're democratic governments, don't they get to choose whether or not they're pro-U.S.? Or do we again play the game of toppling democratic regimes that don't do our bidding?

What legal analysis? The assertion you took issue with -- whig's "GPL software is freer than public domain..." -- is not about law. Legal analysis doesn't answer it. Legal analysis might determine whether the GPL is enforceable, but that is assumed in whig's assertion.

It's also not about books. The effects of licensing, use, modification and redistribution are very different with books. How often is The Wind in the Willows patched? How many critical security holes does it have? Could the valuable manuscripts on my desk become corrupted if those holes in my copy of the book are not closed? How long is the wish list? How soon after development on the book stops do you expect it to become obsolete?

whig is using geeky shorthand here, and I think you have misunderstood. A single version of a program, dead and frozen for all time and released into the public domain, is less encumbered than it would have been if it had been released under the GPL. But software distributed under the GPL evolves while staying free. What popular public domain software do you know of that does the same? And what software do you know of that doesn't need to evolve?

Perhaps we're getting to why you started talking about a book. I don't think there are any good examples.

Releasing a work like The Wind in the Willows under the GPL is rare. You might be surprised to learn that in Kenneth Grahame's time (1859-1932) it was practically unheard-of.

You see, the GPL is largely about programs and source code.

Releasing programs -- not books -- under the GPL promotes freedom in the use and modification of software -- not including The Wind in the Willows, which is conventionally regarded as a book.

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

This is why. Some of us would like this book to remain fiction.

Grey goo

Big brother

Asteroid impact

Nuclear war

MS-Linux

Or you could just read the free, searchable online version here

'There are three stages in your reintegration,' said O'Brien. 'There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second stage.' ...

Do you remember writing in your diary, "I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. ...

'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore --'

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

"Pretty soon time will be copyrighted and so will words"

its called newspeak from 1984 try and keep up please.

Remeber now, sharing is stealing, never share your password, never try to understand how things work against the will of you masters and be grateful, very greatful all day long. Your letters will be read to eliminate the enemies of the United States. Your location will be known from the devices your carry and all of us will be much safer when we get the house of the future from Microsoft.

Anyone want to join me at the bridge? I'll be smashing my car and throwing my old M$ software into the cold waters. The hope for US software is the hope for all software, freedom. If the software in my cell phone and car were free, I might feel like I owned them.

Here's a few more links :

The history of :
hereand
here

And introduction to
here

Glad I could be of help.

I hope it's just you - it's better if they figure it out than your neighborhood script kiddy, because this way, the hole might get plugged before the damage is done.

Unfortunately, those who've been drafting the DMCA would probably disagree with me here...

Ignorance is power, I guess... :-(

Sounds like the record companies want to move another step closer to Orwell's 1984, where music was automatically generated for the proles by a machine called the versificator.

Is this why Big Brovahz had a hit single recently?

READ IT NOW

1984, George Orwell. (on-line version)

What are the odds on them starting to recruit children from the schools first...?

If the government begins to make motions that encryption should be forbidden or removed from the hands of civilians, we're in serious trouble. It will be one of the final death blows to democracy as we know (knew?) it today. When encryption is outlawed, it will mark the end of privacy in the United States. Then things get really bad.

online version of "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

Nope, it's passed into the Public Domain. (remember that? enjoy it while you can ;-)

You can find it online here

A 1984-based charity is a fantastic idea.

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

In 'Why Write?' and 'Politics and the English Language' (1948) Orwell argued that writers have an obligation of fighting social injustice, oppression, and the power of totalitarian regimes.

Room 101

(Everyone knows what's in Room 101)

What a great gift idea! If you were really cheap though, you could just mail them this link to an on-line version of the book.

Without any data to collect, no processing can be done and no inferences can be drawn.

It's in the best intrests (sic) of the analysts not to err, and by giving them (allowing them to take) more information you allow them to be more accurate.

Yes, but *why* should you need to give information in the first place. Should you not be "innocent until charged guilty"? And with regards to analysts' interests, they are there to produce results - if the criteria are set to value quantity rather than quality then mistakes below a certain level will be acceptable. How often, for example, does a Wall Street analyst successfully predict market movements? With a lot of the correlation and even conclusions on data being supplied by data-mining software, there is going to be less of the "obvious mistakes" being corrected. Finally, bear in mind that their best interest is not yours. In the case of marketing, the goal is not to "know the customer" or "develop a relationship" (to quote some cuddly marketspeak) it is to get you to spend more money on their products and services. Unless you are wealthy enough not to care about money (is that your butler reading Slashdot? Hi Mr Smithers!) this is probably contrary to your best interests.

...it's simply not true that I lose control over this information in these ways because I never had it in the first place.

Sadly, this is more true for US residents - Europe has stricter laws on computer data (you can demand a copy of information held on you and have it corrected if wrong). Nevertheless, when you supply information you usually have an expectation in which you see it being used (eg using a supermarket loyalty card gives the retailer an idea of your purchasing pattern). However, if that information was sold on to, for example, a debt-collection agency to whom you owed money, they may use it to determine how much you were spending on luxury goods (chocolate biscuits, fruit cake) rather than essentials and therefore be used as leverage to demand a higher payment level from you - or even to increase their interest rate *just enough* to stay within the bounds of affordability. In other words, limiting personal data transfer between companies allows you to better predict the consequences of divulging personal data.

...you won't be able to detect that he's purchasing that undetectable bubble lens camera

Filming someone in a public place (where the expectation of privacy is low) is not as serious a problem (until this is coordinated on a nationwide basis to the extent that everyone is filmed doing everything). However, filming someone in their home should be a very different situation - and similarly what you watch, what you listen to and what you do within your home should be off-limits unless you specifically state otherwise.

If we sit down and accept it as part of our lives we will gain the benefits from it...

Err...ever read George Orwell's 1984? Information gathered on such a global basis has *far* more opportunity for misuse than benefit. Do you think you are going to hear about corrupt Congressman X if his contacts in the TIA-Stasi are able to blackmail every journalist with personal information? What about if a community leader/trade union official/ordinary Joe takes a stand against the State on some issue and then sees all their personal details bared to public view? "Knowledge is power" is something that could be applied like never seen before - and all in the supposed "Land of the Free".

" Yes, but from that point they have a short period of time to bring you to a judge where they must convince him why they want to keep you."

I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla who's been imprisoned since May without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in to the FBI for being unamerican.

" Yes, but from that point they have a short period of time to bring you to a judge where they must convince him why they want to keep you."

I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla who's been imprisoned since May without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in to the FBI for being unamerican.

" Yes, but from that point they have a short period of time to bring you to a judge where they must convince him why they want to keep you."

I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla who's been imprisoned since May without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in to the FBI for being unamerican.

Can't the courts decide if a law follows the spirit of the constitution, so to speak? Yes, constitutionally Congress has the right to pass things like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act... but do you think preserving the copyright for a cartoon mouse created by a man who is long since dead is what our founding fathers had in mind? Copyright laws were created both to give the author/artist incentive to create new works *and* to ensure at some point new works could be created based on older stuff.

This is exactly how disney became so popular, by using the work of authors that had gone into the public domain! Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid are just a few examples of older works that Disney has used.

Now Disney, and other huge corporations like Sony etc. are trying to make sure that no one else can do what they have done. This, to me at least (I am not a Supreme Court Justice) goes against the spirit of the constitution. From the SFGate Story:The original decision made more than 200 years ago to limit the length of copyrights was deliberate and carefully considered. The goal, which was expressed at the time in letters written by Thomas Jefferson and others, was to allow newcomers to build on and improve works produced by others, but only after the original creators of those works were compensated fairly for their efforts. The reason: Human progress builds upon itself."

These companies are trying to stop progress, and trying to stop other from doing to them what they did to the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Victor Hugo.

True, it's not an example of a very well written book, but the future world he envisions in 1943 was pretty spot on. Many people have written essays on how it relates to modern life, and anyone reading it can instally draw comparisons to modern life. 1984 will still be relevant in 50 years. Unless it gets destroyed and "unmade".

To be honest, I think half the folk that cite 1984 have never read it. If you haven't, you can read it here.

Paris proudly congradulates Commrade Emmanuel Goldstein in his defeats of Big Brother.

All your ballot are belong to us.

You, sir, are rude and obnoxious. You are no better than the Jehova's Witnesses that everyone dreads to see at their door.

The irony is that you aren't even a real Christian, according to Matthew 6:5. You are one of those who publicly trumpet their piousness and how great it is, like a drug pusher on the street corner. Matthew had other words for you, too. If you are really a Christian, start practicing what your book says.

As was written in a text of vastly greater wisdom and wit than you appear to be able to appreciate,

CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

"Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war..."

1984

> maybe hidden behind some drywall

Ooooh... The Black Cat of computing...