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So THAT'S why I'm on the no-fly list

No, that's because you ordered those Paladin Press, Delta Press, and IMS catalogs.

I can't wait till Visa comes out.

I deal in free computers, and even wrote a book on the subject, and let me tell you, once Vista hits the streets, the whole world is going to be awash with perfectly good machines that I can load Linux on and then give away.

The part that's really making my mouth water is the fact that your present monitor will NOT work with Vista. This is too good to be true. At present, Big Bomb CRT monitors are just laying around like shells on the beach, free for the picking. Vista will then cause the exact same thing to happen with flat panels.

Machines with 60 gig hard drives, 2 gig CPU's, and half a gig of memory are going to become free for the taking. Load Linux on one and you've got yourself a damn fine machine, no matter how many bells, whistles, foxtails, and reflectors your next door neighbor might have on his machine.

I can't wait!!!

...I'm in the mood to shoot someone except it would be too loud...

Here ya go. I've always loved these guys.
As for the toothache...well, there's always this.

Link to Free Computers

The second half of the book describes very basic assembly proceedures for building a computer from scrounged parts and should be of no use to the hardware-savvy /. crowd. But the first half describes the business of getting parts and whole computers for NOTHING. Like it says in the blurb, I bought my first computer back in '90 and I've never bought one since. No lie.

These words are being typed on a P4 1.5ghz, 256megs memory, 60gig hd. Cost NOTHING. Maybe you won't do that good, but ANYBODY can get a free machine that will do just fine for writing, posting rubbish on /., or any other simple task.

The book also assumes you're gonna be running Windows. (Your free machine will invariably come preloaded with Windows. 98 is free and XP is rapidly getting that way.) Don't like Windows? Fine. Run Linux. THAT'S FREE TOO.

Computers are free once you learn how to do it.

Buy this book, you'll need it to, er, tweak you're employment history.

Indeed. You really must wonder about those people who INSIST on having their rights respected and who hold that funny little view that "Innocent until proven guilty" should be honored. Why it's downright SEDITIOUS! Everyone knows that anyone who complains that their privacy has disappeared is just a terrorist whose evil plan has been frustrated by all the attention.

These people really need to looosen their tin foil beanies and GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Everyone knows our overlords at Homeland Security and the DoJ respect the rights they've graciously allowed us to keep.

Perhaps those people should be rounded up and kept somewhere for safekeeping and let us HONEST, PATRIOT ACT COMPLIANT citizens get on with our lives without worrying about such potentially dangerous persons.

*hides his outlawed copy of the old US Constitution under the loose floorboard in the kitchen and looks around warily...*

...that US publishers now feel like they can't distribute books on hacking hardware, despite the array of them on other topics like:

- Building unlicensed automatic weapons and explosive devices

- Converting post-ban assault rifles for fully-automatic operation

- Breaking and entering

- Creating a counterfeit identity

I guess it's like the view that violence in a film is more appropriate for a wide audience than sexual content.

...that US publishers now feel like they can't distribute books on hacking hardware, despite the array of them on other topics like:

- Building unlicensed automatic weapons and explosive devices

- Converting post-ban assault rifles for fully-automatic operation

- Breaking and entering

- Creating a counterfeit identity

I guess it's like the view that violence in a film is more appropriate for a wide audience than sexual content.

I don't even know where to start attacking this post, so I'll just go through it piece by piece.

You are not being treated like a criminal when the government puts up traffic cams to monitor intersections,

I drive safely and, by and large, legally. And yet, I have been flashed by speed cameras on several occasions now when I wasn't going over the limit. Maybe they were the fakes with cheap sensors, maybe they were misconfigured, who knows? It was certainly very unnerving at the time, and I spent the next two weeks wondering if someone's error is going to result in a fixed penalty notice arriving on my doorstep that I'd then have to defend -- probably unsuccessfully, because the machines are all but assumed to be infallible. "Man shall not be judged by machine" is a fundamental principle that is easily forgotten, but sound nonetheless.

Ok then, let's keep the government out of ALL your business, like maintaining roads, catching traffic offenders and criminals, providing emergency services, funding public utilties like water and phone in remote areas, etc. - yeah that'll work.

Strawman. The only one of the above where cameras can be argued to be relevant is in catching criminals, and there is precious little evidence to support even that claim, since the systems go wrong so often that frequently they aren't of any use when they should be anyway. The fact that they are widely abused is beyond dispute, however.

But seriously, you have to realize that we live in a society: a group. You are not and cannot be a lone individual unaffected by rules that arise out of necessity when living in a (rather large) group.

There is nothing necessary about the cameras invading my privacy. Mankind has survived quite happily for a very long time without such devices. We live in a society that is governed by a few in a system that fundamentally encourages them not to act in the best interests of those they represent. You have only to watch the news this week to see how much several western governments care about the views of those they claim to represent.

Also, to imply that putting up cameras in public places is equivalent to "waiving all right to privacy" is a groce exaggeration. This doesn't give anybody permission to stop and search you, interrupt you in any way, or prevent you from doing anything (unless what you are doing is illegal, in which case your argument is no longer about privacy).

Ah, but in case you hadn't noticed, there are already legal bases for stop and search, arrest on suspicion and restriction of freedoms in most western countries, particularly the US and UK. Hell, we've all been merrily introducing laws in the interests of "counter-terrorism" that have eroded our civil rights more in the past few years than in the previous several decades. Just this weekend, there was a fabulous story in the news about a guy who was arrested under recent anti-terrorism legislation in the UK because he had a Muslim-sounding name and happened to have bought a book or two from Paladin Press.

No, this is not solely due to the cameras, but the arguments you make in their favour are exactly those that are regularly used to support all the other slow-but-sure evasions of our rights to privacy and freedom that have been occurring ever faster since 911. At the risk of a terrible misquotation, for this shit to succeed, all that is necessary is for thoughtful men to stand by and do nothing.

And lastly, try not to mix the issues of surveillance, and security of the accumulated data. Of course any government database that's not protected sufficiently (by laws and security measures) is somewhat of a threat to privacy, but that is IMHO not a reason to say that surveillance in public places is bad.

Governments have no secure databas