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One year ago a number of explosions rocked the Tube in London. As you know, the tunnels weren't damaged for the most part. All that would happen (God forbid) if anyone tried to blow up a tunnel would be to cripple the traffic in Manhattan (which pretty bad as is) but it would take a lot of explosives to actually destroy a tunnel from within if it's a tube. Another example - Moscow Metro Feb 6, 2004, when an explosion happened in a packed rush-hour train. Also no damage to the tunnel. However, when some idiots were installing a billboard illegally above a metro tunnel (also in Moscow), they successfully managed to penetrate the tunnel using a pile that was being driven, right into a train that happened to be in the tunnel at that exact moment. Thankfully nobody was hurt in this incident. See this Pictures of the pile: here and here. View topside and another pic

One year ago a number of explosions rocked the Tube in London. As you know, the tunnels weren't damaged for the most part. All that would happen (God forbid) if anyone tried to blow up a tunnel would be to cripple the traffic in Manhattan (which pretty bad as is) but it would take a lot of explosives to actually destroy a tunnel from within if it's a tube. Another example - Moscow Metro Feb 6, 2004, when an explosion happened in a packed rush-hour train. Also no damage to the tunnel. However, when some idiots were installing a billboard illegally above a metro tunnel (also in Moscow), they successfully managed to penetrate the tunnel using a pile that was being driven, right into a train that happened to be in the tunnel at that exact moment. Thankfully nobody was hurt in this incident. See this Pictures of the pile: here and here. View topside and another pic

An example you want? Here is one, judge for yourself how good it is.

There are countries other than United States, and those other countries often have sane copyright laws (probably because they didn't have legislature as corrupt as US one). In those countries music and other works of art fall into public domain much faster than in USA.

Some works were always in public domain. Take, for example, songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, even when he was alive. Other works, of other artists, were copyrighted but became public domain long ago, according to laws of that country.

It is a big mistake to treat the whole world as an extension of USA. The world is much larger, and it is not obeying the same insane laws that americans do. Most of the world does not even care about american "top 40" or whatever it is called. Most people on the planet would not listen to those sounds even if they are paid to do so. Finally, most artists in the world have nothing to do with RIAA.

[All links pulled from google's first page for each letter - sick, ain't it?]

A web application needs to be tested. You can test it in your own favorite environment, but if you have some unusual hacked up thing (say, Englightenment running on Slackware, with your own private mutation of Mozilla, all with lots of customization) you're just going through the motions. You have test it in whatever environment your users are likely to use: Windows/IE, Windows/Netscape, Lynx, Opera, WebTV. Hey, if your typical user is running wget on Linux/Nintendo, get out your joystick and fire up the virtual keyboard. If you want to lecture the user on his stupidity, fine, but don't pretend that it's part of the design process.

Remember Thorvalds Law: the user is always right.

<RANT>
I'm getting pretty tired of slashdotters accusing each of being "kneejerk", "party line", "PC", etc. That itself is a kneejerk reaction, and a pretty lame one at that. If a post begins by accusing somebody of thoughtcrime, please reconsider. At best, you're being unnecessarily rude. At worst, you're thinking with your spleen.
</RANT>

__________________

It begins It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The text is here Try reading it to find out the difference betweem Smith and Goldstein

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by
Emmanuel Goldstein

Winston began reading:

Chapter I
Ignorance is Strength

So Winston Smith, you will agree is the better name to assume

Another ONtopic comment here

Mind you, that the director of the movie is Andrei Tarkovski -- a very interesting figure in Russian cinematography. You may want to check out Stalker as well, and then read the original book by Strugatski brothers, called The Roadside Picnic (here is entire text of the novel in English, and here in Russian).

Mind you, that the director of the movie is Andrei Tarkovski -- a very interesting figure in Russian cinematography. You may want to check out Stalker as well, and then read the original book by Strugatski brothers, called The Roadside Picnic (here is entire text of the novel in English, and here in Russian).

Fun as bashing abuses of "freedom" in America is, it's better reserved for other stories. The question at hand is: whether the controvertial information storage will be relegated to countries where the US can't directly intervene.

People have brought up good points on the treaties of Bern, Paris, and various other international agreements. What some of the American posters don't seem to understand is the spirit in which russian hackers tend to understand these agreements - namely that they were made for the purposes of convenience among big governments after WWII, specifically, for the convenience of America. This is not to insult anyone individually (well, maybe a few politicians, but no one here), but Russians, in general, don't tend to like American foreign policy very much. One could say they regard Americans as intruding, interfering sods who have no business messing with the world to suit their imperialistic tendencies. (e.g. Bosnia). But again, that's not the subject here. The point is that when America makes something illegal, it only encourages hackers over there to continue doing what they would have done anyway. (And let's settle the whole "international agreements" deal right now - I haven't heard about the UN coming forward to prosecute the Danish hackers on behalf of MPAA. The MPAA is lobbying the American Congress, not an (officially) international organization...does that tell you something?)

Besides all of which, the whole notion of copyrights as it is applied today (and as others have excellently pointed out) is utterly absurd. A copyright is supposed to unequivocally guarantee a given person's authorship for a given idea (and give them the opportunity to make money off it, if they choose, for a given period of time). A copyright is not supposed to be a weapon for greedy publishers to punish anyone who *might* interfere with their profits. If I read Einstein's work in e-text, I won't go out and claim that I came up with relativity. If I use his work, I'll cite it as an e-text. I'll give him the recognition that his copyright entitles him to. But spreading Einstein's ideas electronically (assuming the "copyright" is still in effect) is illegal since some fscking a**hole over at Huffton Mifflin or wherever *might* earn a couple bucks less this year. The issue at stake is the profits of American companies - do you think anyone else in the world, not just Russia, will give a flying fsck about that? Don't be rediculous!

The idea behind the whole thing is to make information more available for use by everyone. A similar idea rests behind the OpenSource movement, the GPL, etc.. Sites like that aren't out to infringe on the authorship of a given person for an idea. They aren't claiming that they came up with the stuff (in this case wrote the music or the words). And if anyone can logically explain how someone typing up the words to a song will *in any way* hurt the artists that wrote them, I would *love* to hear it. Or how making the text of a written twenty years ago will hurt the author (who wasn't getting that much in royalties to begin with, and now is probably getting next to nothing) will hurt it's author. (As an example of the latter, I can point out Maxim Moshkow's library here. For those that don't read Russian, the site hosts over 1.2 G of e-text (mostly translations) of a great number of works. Kinda like Guttenberg, but on a slightly larger scale)

By way of official disclaimer, I don't agree with true violations of copyright law (for example stealing someone's work). But I won't exactly go out of my way to make sure that the MPAA or whoever else gets that extra little bit of money. The purpose of this "undernet" is to make sure the information is available until the legislators realize that they can't rob the public in the same way forever, and change the laws (and then we'll start all over again).

One more point on, on foreign aid. Someone mentioned the importance to Russia of foreign aid. Here's a little inside info on that aid: it's not helping anyone. The aid goes from American banks to Russia, and then promptly to unnamed swiss bank accounts of the politicians responsible for receiving it. If you don't believe me, think about it this way - the money that Russia has received is enough to rebuild two economies, were it not being skimmed by the mafi...I meant the government. Begging your pardon...I misspoke. :) Yeah, they can go and shut down one server. In responce two more will open somewhere out in Vladivostok. Another cultural point - Soviet censorship couldn't stop "forbidden" books from being read (the so-called "Samizdat" - self publishing), during the worst of Stalinist times. I fail to understand how American companies with the aid of the American government intend to stop this information now.

And if they manage to do so....what does that tell you about American government?

I would happily sign my name to this, but with the state of "American freedom" being what it is, I think I'd rather not.

--Woland

Because Orwell's Animal Farm is available completely free. You can get it here.

Bad people are communists, bad people are capitalists. Communists just don't understand the free market, and generally don't understand democracy, but that doesn't make everything they
do eeeevil.

Communists are a lot worse than that, believe me, I've had first-hand experience. But the idea of adopting Linux as an "official governement OS" is certainly nice, even if the whole PRC story really is untrue. Governments must use open-source; wasting taxpayers' money on commercial software is outrageous, I think.

Anyway, it's quite a contrast with what's happening over in Russia. If the DoJ makes life too hard for Bill Gates, he can always come to Moscow and take over the Kremlin. They'll let him have it, gladly. MS Kremlin? Do you know that Word 97 is the official format of the Russian tax police? You can download the income tax forms from their page, but only in Word 97 format... Now that really makes me mad. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Microsoft tax", doesn't it?

Once again I feel the urge to post the link to 1984 and let those who may not have been interested before have a chance at it again. Mr. Orwell has it right it seems he only got the dates wrong. Wannabe members of the "Inner-Party" need not bother as they already know whats coming. To them I say bite me. To all others I say good luck and I'll see ya in the Ministry of love. Long live Goldstein.

Besides saying me too I also have an URL for respond (the page also has some docs):

http://kulichki-lat .rambler.ru/moshkow/PC/faxserver/horsthp.txt

Let me just say that we are using it here and it really works well. Users can just print to a special printer and after one second (or so) respond comes up and asks for the phone number and some other information. Very easy to set up too.

And it it is very cost effective :-))

Ciao Jens.