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Slashback: Protest, Similarities, Orbit
Show your truuuuueee colors ... h0mee writes: "Howdy! This has already been posted on slashdot, but we still need more volunteers showing up at the protests. This protest is being organized by the EFF against federally mandated censorware in schools and libraries. The protests are occuring on this friday in the SF Bay Area and the NYC areas. I'd like to remind slashdot readers on the completely cynical side that even small groups of protestors showing up will have big impacts, as the FCC will be caught completely off guard by hordes of angry geeks showing up- this protest can make a difference! Please check out the EFF's protest page on this for more info for coordination and ridesharing, or this rant on craigslist for SF bay locals. Show your geek pride, and help us distribute Clue to the FCC!"
Hey, stop looking at me! And no feeling, either! In response to CmdrTaco's recent post about Apple moving yet again to block the makers of Apple-reminscent themes, WillAdams writes:h "The response, and the original letter are up at http://www.macthemes.org.
They'd like a lawyer..."
Sounds fair. Soon lawyers defending Open Source will take over as the heros of the software world. "Didn't there used to be programmers, too, dad?"
Up in the air, Junior Birdman w00ly_mammoth writes: "After an aborted attempt, India has launched a satellite rocket. Signals from it were picked up in Canada. The Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, or GSLV-D1, is capable of giving the nation communication and military capabilities, according to western analysts. The US has been concerned about this development for a while. This could also rattle the aerospace industry, since it marks an entry into the lucrative satellite launch market."
(Invent your own aphorism involving ashes, phoenixes and plant life.) impaler writes: "Games Mania has a story with three people's views on the death of indrema. They interview Mark Collins (author of Linux Game Programming), Clinton Ebadi (me / that lamer that does nothing useful), and Steve Baker (of TuxKart fame). All three offer different opinions on why indrema went down."
Speaking of games, ryants writes: "OpenGL.org is reporting that NVidia's GeForce3 meets or beats the functionality available in DX8 via OpenGL extensions. This bodes well for Linux gaming." Take your grains of salt, head out back, and play some TuxKart;)
And furthermore, my mother used to tell me to eat all my food because there were starving children in India. 30 years later, I now weigh approximately 450 pounds. If India is actually firing off rockets now, I shall begin dieting.
I think the position was more like "If people don't want to see "indecent" websites, they can use filterware to prevent it themselves. The Internet should not be filtered for everyone against their wishes." The CDA was grossly unconstitutional anyway, and I'm glad it's gone.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It sure was nice for the EFF to let its members know about this...
Why dosen't the EFF let its members know? I am a paying member yet I NEVER get any email from them and yes I have signed up to the newsletter...
I think part of the point is that with censorware they may not go to playboy.com, but they can still got to genitalhospital.com, or a few thousand other porn sites, while you are blocked from some ligitmate research sites because they have the word breast, or are hosted on the same megaserver as some porn site, or promote abortion (making it harder to research Roe v. Wade)...
It's simple. There was a window of opportunity for a real next-generation console, but it slammed shut the day Playstation 2 shipped. With Xbox going into the PC hardware side of the gaming market, and Sony dominating the "entertainment center" approach, there's only room for one or two more players, max. Nintendo is on their way to the market, and even Sega couldn't keep up. How's a product like Indrema going to make any splash at all in mid-to-late 2001 against that competition?
If they had shipped a product last summer, there might have been a niche to exploit, but it was too late. The other possibility would have been an alliance with TiVo - both companies had Linux-based equipment (albeit on different processor platforms) and perhaps a hybrid TiVo/Indrema gaming console/TV recorder could have carved out a place in the market. Though the cost of the hardware would have gone up quite a bit accordingly.
As much as an Open Source gaming system would have been cool, better the company die now while there's less money at stake than build a lot of consoles that sit on shelves because they don't play Playstation, Xbox, or Dolphin games.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
People seem to forget that the moon is an incredibly strategic place for a military base. Think about it, you're up there at the top of Earth's gravity well... minimal effort is required to toss big-ass rocks down on your enemy. See Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" for an rough draft of the required engineering. ;-)
Of course, establishing any kind of long-term moon base is an extremely challenging project.
I think one thing that helps India is the southern tip of the Indian sub-continent is much closer to the Equator than any Chinese launch facility.
This means the Indian space agency can better use the assist of the Earth's rotation, so you don't need a fairly large launch rocket like the US, China and Russia has to do from their native launch sites. It's the reason why the European Space Agency built their launch pads in French Guiana--only 6 degrees north latitude from the Equator. It's also why Boeing headed the Sea Launch consortium that has a floating launch platform; the floating platform is at the Equator out at sea when the rocket is launched, so you don't need a big rocket to achieve geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Still, this sign is funny
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Anyone viewing porn in the library can already be asked to leave, under existing library policies and terms of service. Just like if you had a problem with someone whacking off to a physical Playboy mag in the next study carrel. Likewise for school libraries, especially since you could just require students to login. You wouldn't leave kids alone in the classroom to tell dirty jokes and intimidate girls, why would you leave them alone in the school library long enough to do so? (In reality, of course, you can't stop young boys from telling dirty stories no matter what you do, which makes the effort to ban the virtual extension of this all the more addlepated.) Sorry, the intimidation factor is a red herring.
Censorware isn't about preventing porn, it's about control. Although those that want to control information may start off with the best intentions, I refuse to submit to that kind of control.
I agree that in a perfect world there are some things that kids wouldn't be exposed to until they're ready, but in Real Life kids are already talking about it and surfing the Internet for it at home anyway. The only way you can really protect them is to talk to them beforehand and explain how the world really is. If they're forewarned, they aren't going to be any more intimidated by the occasional school library porn than they will be by the myriad jokes they hear in the restroom every day.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Even if you believe that, you should still be outraged. Your education dollars are going to be spent on pork -- subsidising the filter makers -- and in exchange for that money, you will get nothing. The software doesn't work. None of it will work w/out strong AI.
It's fraud, pure and simple. The victims of this bill aren't just everyone who believes in the Bill of Rights, but also everyone who pays taxes that would have gone to education and are instead going to be diverted to bogus snakeoil software companies.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It was in EFFector 14.06, sent out at the beginning of April.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Still a long way (about 5-10 years) to go before launching sats can be turned into a business in India I think!
The GPS satellites are not immense. They are middlin' in size, and much smaller than most of the communications satellites being built today. They are also in a fairly high 12 hour orbit, and they can't reenter. They simply don't have enough delta-velocity on board to come close to reentry.
All of the above is unclassified information, but I assure you it's true.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Why not leave the whole issue up to local discretion?
More like "let's detain everyone who looks suspicious. Who cares if most of them are innocent, we'll still cut down on crime, right?" Oh wait, we actually do that.
Well, I guess that the constitution really isn't worth much these days anyways. Remind me again why public-school students have no First Amendment rights?
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Oh, I see.... [backing away]....
Well, I'm not getting involved in that debate right now....
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
>Oh please, that argument has been heard a million
>times and it wasn't that original to begin with.
Uh, since when does an argument have to be original to be valid?
>Porn is defined as such by a general consensus.
Community decency standards vary between communities and as a function of time. There was a time when it was illegal to mail information about contraception through the mail.
>Yes because schools are not there to pass on ALL information.
Do you want to know why so many kids don't take the dangers associated with drug use seriously? Because campaigns such as "Just Say No" hammer in the idea that drugs are 100% bad and there is no good reason to use drugs. Then reality sets in and a kid tries ecstasy for the first time. "Wow," they exclaim. "The adults were lying, this stuff feels good. Therefore, the adults were also lying about how this stuff can kill people." Trust is gained through honesty and disclosure.
"[T]hough all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" John Milton, Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England (1644).
As Shaw put it, The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
But that's irrelevant to the issue at hand; opposing a federal mandate for the use of censorship software - software which has repeatedly been shown not to work - is eminently reasonable.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If Socrates had been "reasonable", he would have shut up, saved his life, and been forgotten.
If Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson had been "reasonable", we'd still be a British colony.
If Gandhi had been "reasonable", so would India.
If Rosa Parks had been "reasonable", persons with dark skin would still be sitting in the back of the bus.
Remember that Chinese protester who wouldn't move from in front of the tank? "Unreasonable" in the extreme.
The terrors of Nazi Germany were fought by "unreasonable" resistance fighters, and "unreasonable" people who hid refugees.
All these people refused to accept the social concensus - they refused to be "reasonable". "Reasonable", in this sense, is simply another way of saying "either cowardly, apathetic, or ignorant".
This is obviously some strange new usage of the word "effective" that I have never encountered before.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Trying to seperate yourself from the mainstream may make you feel superior, but it will get you nowheres."
So then basically you can't do anything. If there is a problem, you cannot protest, because protest would be non-conformant, and non-conformancy is looked down upon. How the hell did we get into this situation. This is not a good thing. This is an AWFUL thing. "Think what we want you to think. Act how we want you to act."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Protesting like this does nothing except isolating them from the mainstream. Without mainstream support, all that they are is a group of extreamist nuts who will ever be taken seriously in a democratic country.
Another problem is that while some thing, like reverse engineering restrictions are bad, goes futher, into things that most people disagree with.
If you ever want to be taken seriously, you must take a more reasonable stance.
As above please do not moderate me down because you disagree with me.
Sorry, i accidentally posted as an AC.
In a democracy there are two sources of protection. One is the courts, and they are ideally not influenced by public opinion. The second in from the legistative body, and they should ideally be influenced by public opinion. In order for the majority to protect the rights of the minority they must not only see why it is important, but _understand_ why it is important.
The only way that you're rights will ever be protected is if the mainstream understands the importance of it. Protesting moves in the opposite direction, and if large enough, with the possibility of 'mob mentality' taking over, you will lose all credibility.
Trying to seperate yourself from the mainstream may make you feel superior, but it will get you nowheres.
While I am not philisophiscally opposed to censorware in schools,
1) The use of censorware, or any specific requirements on the type of censorware should be entirely up to local district policy. The Federal government should not be mandating or regulating it use.
2) I don't belive any currently available products do their job well enough to be allowed in schools.
3) Experience has shown that policies involving censorware are neither well defiened nor reasonable.
4) Teachers and school librarians are so poorly trained/educated in the use of computers to make good recomendations to school districts or to effectively enforce an acceptable use policy.
In short, I don't believe it is currently wise to implement censorware in schools, and if it ever were, I don't think the federal goverment should have anything to do with it. Therefore I support the EFFs protest.
I also happen to think that censorware doesn't solve an important problem. I don't think that seeing some porn on the internet is going to scar children for life. As much as purveyors of censorware would like to convince you, their software *isn't* going to protect people from meeting pedophiles in chat rooms or irc. While I think the supposition that reading violent neo-nazi propaganda causes school violence isn't without merit, that starts to look very much like free speech to me. If students are deliberately seeking out that kind of material for whatever reason (research, curiosity, teen angst, desire to form a militia), I don't think it is right to censor them. Aside from the philisophical reasons, from a practical standpoint censorware vendors have shown gross incompetence when selecting what material to block, and seem to resort mostly to blocking any potentially controversial material, such informationa about the holocost, women's rights, homosexual rights, religon, and medical information on breast cancer.
People who say things like "The solution is to build better censorware" are usually too drunk of the technilogical progress of the last 30 years to realize that not every problem is a simple matter of engineering. We don't know how to make good censorware, and the chances of someone being able to make good censorware in the next 5-10 years is, IMO, negligible. Certainly a combination of blacklists and whitelists, open or closed, is woefully inadequite, and none of the heuristic methods seem to be any good.
How great a percentage of the people who were not yet born back in late 60's or early 70's (or weren't old enough to comprehend) truly appreciate the fact that u.s. (maybe) wen't to the moon and (emphasize on the following) *beat the soviets*. It is not so much that you wen't to moon, but that you beat your nemesis while doing it.
Yes, americans are patriotic about heroes but put things into modern perspective and a lot of that is lost. Like I said earlier there is no cold war anymore. No nemesis, no true nationalism.. Corporatism and stock markest yes,..
I really doubt that any american would question them being the undisputable world power #1. Having established this status some puny asian nation isn't really going to make much of a difference whether they'll make it to the moon or not. U.s. still rules and money matters.. Infinite budgets to beat your ark rival are a thing of the past in u.s. BUT *not in india or especially china!*
Neither one of those countries can really threaten (no a silly plane with 24 men doesn't count) the u.s. aside doomsday scenarios and nobody really wins at those..
Space race was a product of cold war that is long gone and forgotten along with nationalism.. It's all about the money nowadays.. Wish it weren't, though..
This is not posturing. This is not bragging. This is an inherent aspect of the concept itself.
As the saying goes, inoffensive speech needs no protection, because no-one tries to censor it.
EFF is so concerned about not spamming its members that they often miss sending out notices about events. The EFFector is the only ongoing email they send to members. Unless an event happens to be announced in an issue of the EFFector I end up finding out about EFF activities from Slashdot or some other media source.
Assuming that you go to a high school, I think that students have much better things to do with thier time in school than to look up porn. I go to a high school with 500 of the most immature people i have ever known. However, I would say that out "Acceptable Use Policy" is violated no more than 2 or 3 times a week, and most of the time it is not having to do with porn. We have no internet blocking software and it does not seem to be a problem. I think your guess of about half the school looking up porn is groundless and way off. My theory: students can easily look up porn at home in their own privacy. The risk of looking it up in a building crawling with authority figures just isnt worth it. Of course, for a few the risk IS the fun, but those types of students are looking for approval from their friends (i.e. class clowns) and are not looking up porn because of other reasons. I support restricting access to explicit sites, but not at the price that it comes at right now. I say keep internet blocking software out of schools until the software actually does what it is supposed to do.
When I went to highschool in the US, our school did not have any censorware, and I don't think I know of anyone looking up porn. I mean, these kids arn't going to masterbate at school, I think the only reason that they try to get it is because they can't. They're more intrested in 'hacking' at school then wanking.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I think that federally mandated censor ware is innappropriate, however, I think that censorware in schools in not necessarily a bad thing altogether. I go to a school with about 2500 students, and i guaruntee, if we didn't have censorware, a large portion of the students would be spending the majority of their "research" time on playboy.com and porn and all sorts of things that are not at all related to what they are supposed to be doing.
Not having censorware would be nice, for those of us who follow the rules. However, I am betting that nearly half of the people in my school would NOT follow the rules if there was not "bess" in place. It would be incredibly difficult to control, any schoolteacher knows that if the ENTIRE class is disruptive, it is nearly impossible to keep control of it. There are enough people that cause trouble in my school to make the internet connection at school more of a burden than a resource...and our school board would gladly drop the axe on something that allows students access to porn and such. The censroware isn't perfect, and often annoying, but it is effective and saves a lot of time for teachers.
The anti-salmon
Maybe, just MAYBE, there isn't actually widespread opposition to censorware in schools & libraries. I for one am not against some form of censorship in schools. These are schools for crying out loud. There are some things that should be blocked out of schools.
Libraries are a different issue, but I find myself unable to support protests because my moderate stance in unwelcome with the EFF.
And I am NOT saying that censoreware is perfect. It's obvious that it's not, but the solution is even more obvious. Build better censoreware with open lists of what is blacklisted.
Moderators: What I've said may be unpopular, but do not mark me down as a troll or flamebait because I'm serious and this is a legitimate point of view.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
And, of course, those of us who believe that their little girl should be able to walk through the library without having to watch teenagers leaving animal sex videos running should also feel free to show up to these protests and demonstrate support for filters on public internet access terminals.
Once again, it must be pointed out that:
1. Nobody claims filters are perfect. They don't have to be. An argument that they aren't perfect is no argument.
2. If you want to bypass the filter, you can. Simply ask the librarian. Censorship is not an issue.
3. This is about PUBLIC ACCESS. People have a right to be able to go to the library without being intimidated by teenagers leaving porn around as a "joke".
Again, I encourage anyone who believes in reasonable filtering to show up at these rallies so that we don't risk suffering under the tyranny of the minority.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
They also have long term tensions with their neighbor to the far north, China. Thus it pays to have both satellites as wel as long range missles. And then they can get their own telemetry without having to depend on the USA, etc.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This was sent to the EFF in regard to the CIPA and the rallies going on today.
Hello,
I would like to add my support for this online. I'm not currently able to
attend the rally in NYC, though I would if I could. This legislation cuts
down on neccessary freedoms - I have never seen in the Constitution where it
says that children shall be second class citizens to whom the Bill of Rights
does not apply. However, what is worse, it causes the censorware companies
to be subsidized with taxpayer money. I am incensed that part of the money
freedom-loving, anti-censorship Americans pay as taxes will then go to
support censorship and the trampling of the constitutional rights of
children. These companies have never done a single thing right; their
products are faulty and do not work as advertised, and furthermore are not
needed. They do not deserve to be subsidized by the people of the U.S.
I will also be investigating into the matter of which representatives
are/have voted for this atrocity, and I will certainly weight that into my
decisions of who to vote for in the next congressional elections. I will
try to do my part to prevent those who love censorship and hate freedom from
being in power in this nation.
I urge everyone else to get off their duffs and get involved! If I could go to that rally in NYC, I would. Write your congressmen. I intend to send a copy of this to mine.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Perhaps a bigger issue (at least for the libertines and constitutionalists), is not whether or not there should be censorship software in the schools, but whether or not it is right for the federal government or even a state government to be dictating censorship at all.
Some might say that this idea is the epitomy of the "middle road" requested in a previous thread. I disagree. I think this idea is the most extreme stance -- that of demanding that the decision to withhold anything from my children remain MY decision and not that of a federal or state entity.
I am well aware of the extent of my wishful thinking. At this point it would probably take another revolution to get our rights back.
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
From Yahoo: A key aspect of the GSLV is its Russian engine that uses liquid oxygen as a fuel that helps place the satellite in orbit as high as 36,000 km in space.
It's hydrogen. Oxygen is oxidizer. Hydrogen is fuel.
GSLV uses hodgepodge of technologies: the L40 strap-ons and second stage L37.5 are from Ariane heritage, first solid stage S125 is Indian, the third stage C12 "cryo-12" is Russian KRB 12 "Kryogenic Rocket Block, 12 ton".
The vehicle has interesting flight profile: the core first stage burns out first at 100 seconds, and strap-ons are going until 160 sec., hauling an empty steel cylinger for a whole minute before stage separation.
What do they need long range missiles for? Pakistan's not THAT far away!
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Sorry, too addicted to TuxRacer.
TuxRacer has all the elements of a classic video game... penguins and herring. Anything more is just featurebloat. :)
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
After reading the EFF's protest page, I'm left confused as to what they're actually protesting. They complain about blocking software overblocking the good stuff and underblocking the bad stuff. While I don't disagree with that assessment, it seems to imply that if blocking software actually worked correctly, they might not be in opposition to it in public institutions?
Okay, it's obvious that the spirit of their protest is against any censorship whatsoever, regardless of whether the intended sites are censored properly or not. But throwing this argument in there only seems to hurt their cause. What if blocking software could be made to function in a very reliable, thoughtful, nonbiased way (not really possible, but what if)? By using this argument as a component of their protest they only hurt themselves IMHO.
I can't quite bring myself to agree with their anti-censorship tack, however. While I can see some argument to leaving library computers unblocked (at least for adult patrons), I can see no reason whatsoever to allow kids in schools to be able to surf wherever they want. I don't want my kid getting exposed to pr0n until I'm damn ready to explain the facts of life first. If censorship software does *any* good whatsoever, then I support its use in schools at least. If parents feel it's important for their kids to be able to surf anywhere they want, let them do it at home then.
Other interesting notes about the GSLV is that it puts India in the Heavy Lifter Club (USA, Russia/CIS, EU, Japan, China). The rocket can put about 5 tonnes into LEO, and the US Gemini capsules only weighed around 3 tonnes each. Now, if they really get their act together, and/or buy Russian technology, they have a small chance of beating out China as Space-Faring Power #3.