Slashdot Mirror

Superglue + Ethernet port = No shit happens

But to be completely honest, I am a student myself, and I get completely pissed off by all the security measures at my school. Sure, it stopped/made it harder to do things such as what your trying to stop, but ultimately if you try hard enough, anythings possible. Ever heard of Mandrake Move?

At my school they disabled right clicking. It seriously impares one of my classes (digital design), which slows down the class because the teacher has to explain how to copy and paste without right click (yeah, we have got some retards in my class).

Anyway, ultimately, its your problem. You can try whatever you want, but there are so many proxies and there are many other ways to get around it anyway. One day, your students will find a way around it.

Good luck anyway, and I hope you decide to just more closely watch your students.

The only fool proof way to stop the internet is to disconnect....

Republican led Senate has approved the introduction of a new distance measurement unit. In a show of support for the embattled president, the U.S. Senate has approved the Dick unit which can be converted to approximately 1 dick = 1.5 inch. Keeping in mind U.S. military tradition and the historical origins of the American measurement system -- for example 1 foot being equal to the length of the King's foot -- the dick is equal to the length of the president's penis standing at attention. Vice-president "Dickhead" Cheney applauded the introduction of the new unit saying that he already finds using dicks very natural and enjoyable.

GOP Press Release
(1 Troller Park)

Already been done Kidsco, Toy Guns & Ammo.

ClearChannel is whining to the FCC about XM Radio's recent foray into localized traffic and weather reports."

Clear Channel contends that patiotism demands that traffic reports only recommend right turns and not any of those pro-Dixie Chicks, gay marriage-ing, terr'ist aiding lefty turns.

As for the weather, well, Clear Channel says it's sunny days with n'ary a terr'ist in the skies for all God's chilluns under GW Bush, and there'll be pie in the sky when you die , and you that ain't got rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him / And high office relations , you can join the army, if you fail .

But I saw you don't need a weather man/ To know which way the wind blows . I say pretty soon it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Cause I say the airwaves don't belong to a company in Texas, I say that this land belongs to you and me.

And I hope my playlist here (figurtively) kills Fascists

With sufficient financial motivation, laws will change it.

Laws can't change technology. Effective encryption is already out of the bag, and given that it will always be possible to create communication channels safe from Big Brother.

Hell, if things got bad we could bust out the modems, bring back UUCP with encryption on top. Old-school peer-to-peer networking. Communication doesn' have to be realtime, there was a Net before IP came to the masses. Mail and news would still get through.

Yes, John Q. Luser wouldn't be seeing it, he'd still be getting the pap fed to him from CNN.com/foxnews.com (pick your puppet), but guess what? That's going to be the case regardless of law. Anything not mainstream is underground, the only question is how far under.

Those who care about freedom cannot just sit back and assume that because the net is fairly free now, it always will be. Eternal vigiliance is the price.

Agreed. But so long as general-purpose computers (as opposed to DRM-crippled "media players") are in the hands of the masses, liberty is a little safer. And they can take my general-purpose computer from me when they pry the keyboard from my cold dead hands. (One of these days I'm going to print up a bunch of stickers with Woody Guthrie's old "This Machine Kills Fascists" slogan and give them to people to stick on their PCs.)

It might be USB, but I think the new ones are FireWire(tm).

Like so many of Zelazny's protagonists (Conrad from This Immortal and Sandow from Isle of the Dead being just two examples), Sam is very, very old at the time of the story, hinting that he may have been around long enough to actually know who Seeger was. No doubt Sam is to a certain extent Zelazny himself, projected into the future...as a vehicle for commenting on the present.

One of those books you can talk about all night long. :)

I keep seeing these draconian laws being passed by our government, and these orwellian systems being created and implemented by profit- and power-hungry corporations. It seems every day there's a different post to Slashdot describing some new method for controlling the flow of information and the freedoms that we should be taking for granted...

And what are we doing about it? Why do we keep allowing our rights and freedoms to be taken away?

Why are those in power doing this to us? That's easy to answer: Because they can. Because anybody in power will seek to extend their power and control.

Why are we allowing this to happen? I don't know. Some of us are fighting back as much as we can, but most of us simply post to Slashdot and complain.

Listen up! All this bullshit that we've been fed ("We live in a free country!", "The economy is doing great!"), it's all just that: bullshit! We're losing our rights and freedoms on a daily basis, our economy is fake (the drop on last Friday was equivalent to Black Tuesday in 1929), people all over the world are being forced into sweatshop slavery in the name of "economic progress", and our environment is being raped and destroyed at an alarming rate in the name of profit.

And most importantly? The technology that we all love and support is being turned back on us in order to control and monitor people. They're usurping something that they have no right to usurp. We have to put the power of technology back into the hands of the people!

It's time to fight back! It's time for a revolution!

http://www.indymedia.org - Support independant media!
http://www.soaw.org - Why are our tax dollars being spent on training murderers?
http://www.corpwatch.org - So you think only governments can oppress and censor?

http://www.spunk.org
http://www.infoshop.org - Communism is dead, Capitalism is close to it. There is another alternative, and it's time we started exploring it.

http://www.adbusters.org
http://www.rtmark.com
http://www.subvertise.org - Subvertising (also known as adbusting) at it's best.

http://www.ainfos.ca - Keep informed on what is happening in the world, from an anti-authoritarian, grassroots perspective.

http://www.a16.org - Seattle and D.C. are just the beginning.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

That's the question that needs to be looked at here. What can we, as a group, as a rising political force do to stop this?

Be careful to remember something: The powers that be ("Power Elite" according to C. Wright Mills, "Ruling Class" according to Marx and Bakunin) like computer geeks right now. They think that we're interesting little beings that do things they don't understand and make them lots of money doing it. But we could very easily fall out of favor with them very quickly. All it takes is some good ol' fashioned free speech to make them revile us more than independant organic farmers.

Right now, we keep basically silent. We may post to Slashdot or usenet and bitch and complain, but the Power Elite/Ruling Class don't read Slashdot or Usenet, because they can't control it (yet, be cautious, Andover). Once we start to speak out against the decisions they're making about the way we conduct our lives, they will hit us. And the louder we speak out, the harder they will hit us. This is the way it is, and has been for centuries.

Now, don't let me discourage you or anybody who's interested in making themselves heard. Quite the opposite, I think that's what needs to be done. Here's a few suggestions that I can think of:

Forget emailing or writing your senator. Honestly, when has that ever really worked? Instead, stage a sit-in protest in his office. Force your way in, and refuse to leave until he hears you out. Notify the press. Bring U-Locks and lockboxes in case they try to drag you out. Contact people from the Ruckus Society or Direct Action Network to learn more about how to plan such an action, and what your legal options are.

Print up some honest-to-goodness propaganda. Check out Subvertise or (if you're really talented) Adbusters for some inspiration. My belief about propaganda is that it should be radical and in people's faces. Don't sugarcoat things, and don't be afraid to challenge people's concept of what's right and wrong. A poster that screams "Copyright Is Theft!" or "Information Wants To Be Free!" is going to intrigue people a lot more than one that says "We think that the DMCA is dangerous to the free software community because of the implications blah blah blah".

Third, there's going to be a lot going on in Washington, D.C. on April 16th. Remember Seat tle? Well, this should be even better. Get your butt out there and make a case against the monopolization of intellectual property. You may want to learn about more of what's going on (it's not just software that IP affects), such as the situation with AIDS drugs in Africa, or the patenting of crops by Monsanto. Also remember that the people protesting are not against globalization (well, unless you count Pat Buchanen as a protester). What we're opposed to, to varying degrees, is corporate rule, greed, and how the Power Elite/Ruling Class are using the idea of "globalization" not to open borders for the prosperity of all, but to create a new form of colonialization. Intellectual property is one major way that they're doing this.

These are a few of the options. I know you said that we should work from inside the system, and that's fine and dandy, but the truth of the matter is that direct action gets the goods. You have to get in people's faces, make them feel a little squeamish (or sometimes downright terrified if the situation is urgent enough), and force them to deal with the issues on *your* terms, without the benefit of having a speech writer churn out the BS beforehand.

Michael Chisari