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Slashback: Indymedia, Starfighter, Mozparty
An apology might be a nice start. Chris writes "The UK government has broken its silence on the Indymedia server raid and is claiming that there 'no UK law enforcement agencies were involved'; see Richard Allan's blog for the whole written answer. This means that the potential for taking legal action against Rackspace in the UK needs to be explored -- were any UK laws (eg the Data Protection Act 1984 or the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) broken? Are there any UK cyber law experts on Slashdot with any suggestions...?"
Is Google private enough for you? XeRXeS-TCN writes "Following on from the recent concerns reported on Slashdot about the Google Desktop, the CEO of Copernic has warned about user privacy. Google Desktop Search allows users to opt out of sending the company back detailed usage data, but it isn't possible to firewall it completely. Much more ominously, Google's product manager Marissa Mayer said she expected the private queries to generate more hits for google.com. Most people, she believed, would choose to combine personal and web searches resulting in more revenue for Google's ad business. More on this at The Reg."
If this is a dupe, then Murphy was right. Vcullen writes "The Formula that scientists recently proposed to calculate Murphy's Law has recently been turned into an easy to use online Murphy's Law calculator. So now you can work out what the probability of it happening on any given situation!"
Nice shooting, kid. Bravo! Jason Scott writes "Inspired by the Slashdot story about the arrival of 'The Last Starfighter: The Musical' off-Broadway, I drove from Boston to New York City and back in one day to attend a matinee. I have written a review of what I experienced on my weblog. As I say in the review, 'If spoilers do not interest you, if you only want the simplest of directions and want to make the next right move, then heed these words: if you live within driving, walking, bus or train distance of New York City, see this musical. Immediately.'"
And ottffs writes with his own impressions: "I was recently in Manhattan presenting at ACM Multimedia 2004 conference. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the premiere of 'The Last Starfighter: the musical' on Friday night. I have posted a review and some pics to my blog."There goes the next office party budget. JimMarch(equalccw) writes "After losing a major copyright case in which Diebold was punished for exercising their copyright in a wrongful fashion (copyWRONG?), the other shoe has dropped: the court says Diebold owes the ISPs and webmasters who complained a total of $125,000. "
Anyone care to start one for El Paso? loconet writes "Following the success of Mozilla's 1.0 release parties, where Mozilla supporters from all over the world celebrated the release of Mozilla 1.0, comes Mozparty 2 celebrating the upcoming 1.0 release of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. According to the Mozparty site, currently there are 1007 ppl partying in 109 parties from which the biggest party is in Mexico."
The Google privacy issues are not issues if people use it on their home machine with a single user accessing the machine as Google instructs. The software was never intended to be deployed in a business or other multi-user environment.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Firefox is notoriously bad at coming out on the days they say it will. November 6th? Not gonna happen.
My sig would have been a lot cooler if
Now if only Diebold would be punished for their crappy voting systems, we'd be in nirvana. :)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Sign up for the Mozparty in Gainesville, Florida here.
'The Last Starfighter,' an inquiry into the best response to the recent seizure of Indymedia's servers in the UK
Watch Alex as he blasts the evil goons from the DMCA/IP/Nasty Galactic Cluster Alliance! or something like that...
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Come on, give the guys a break, they were too busy protecting the sanctity of the political process. Besides, it's not like they were downloading music!
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
If the Diebold machines were perfectly accurate, they'd still only be recording the votes of idiots.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
... a virus or worm could exploit this google privacy issue?
You'll also wanna check out the Battlestar Galactica homage titled The Cylon King.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
The Indymedia thing to me sounds like a case of an ISP doing everything it can not to get into trouble. Its been shown time after time and even tested, ISPs will remove/giveup anything if they told. Even random people on Hotmail accounts have been able to order that information be taken down because it violates copyrights even though the copyright is fully explained on the actual page. We've come to a time when ISPs have no interest in sticking up for their clients, if someone can sue Rackspace then maybe it will send a message that ISPs have 2 sides to respect OR perhaps the law could just be changed to take all legal responsibility off their hands?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I don't know what they called it in the stage show, but in the movie the Starfighter is not the name of the ship. The ship is called a Gunstar. The being who fires the weapon systems of a Gunstar is called a Starfighter.
(And the pilot of a Gunstar is called a Starnavigator)
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
The more improbable that something will go wrong, the greater the chance that it will go wrong immediately and in a big way.
I mean, come on, don't these people read the Guide? The Starship Titanic immediately underwent a massive existence failure because some fool tried to use an improbability field and make it infinitely improbable that something would go wrong with the ship.
So, as a PSA to all: Do NOT trust low numbers from the Murphy's Law calculator. If you get a low score, then duck and cover.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Much more ominously, Google's product manager Marissa Mayer said she expected the private queries to generate more hits for google.com. Most people, she believed, would choose to combine personal and web searches resulting in more revenue for Google's ad business.
MOTHER OF FUCK! No! That's just wrong.
3 out of 5 things regarding the equasion for Murphy's Law are easily manipulated. Put the right man ( skilled ) with the right experience ( frequency ) on the right job with plenty of time. ( urgency )
Complexity can also be influenced up to a certain level; A large complex task can be broken down into numerous less complex elements. So basically, Murphy's law proves that while heeding common sense, people are less likely to screw up. Well done!
Hate me!
South Pole
It looks like there is a party on all 7 continents.
Ah, I'd love to welcome you to Slashdot, but we don't take kindly to AOL users here. Please turn in your geek badge at the door - a man named Roland will be collecting them.
Grew up there, didn't think there even was a damn tech community there. To put things into perspective, I thought Cleveland was nice after a decade in El Paso.
I came across this Diebold training video. Check it out.
There are some good questions on Spy Blog:
The contract was with Rackspace UK and Rackspace are a UK limited company... you can look this up with Companies House (UK office hours, they don't leave their mainframe connected to the net when they are not in the office!)... so there must be potential for breach of contract action(s) here...
Check term 10 of Rackspace UK's Master Service Agreement:
I rang Rackspace in the UK today, their Linux managed servers sales section, I asked them if they would host a box for me in the UK and if it could be exempt from UK laws... I didn't get very far... I asked to speak to her boss but she said they were both out... she said only the US company could speak about this matter...
For more background on this see Jebba's blog and also please sign the Indymedia Solidarity Statment!
PS Isn't it time for a Indymedia topic with a nice (((i))) logo... :-)
chrisc at indymedia.orgDirections.Evah!
party down dudes!
where's the live WEBCAM?
Nowadays, if you a little too freely participate in said culture, you're a pirate, one who can be imprisoned, bankrupted and hung out to dry in public. If you on the other hand deny the public the most basic right to participate in democratic discourse and attempt to destroy democracy, well, you'll be fined with pocket change...
When this latter behaviour is made criminal, then we can start talking about criminalising freeloading. Not before.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
And rightly determined that it was almost entirely a bunch of FUD puked up by some disingenuous wanker more interested in pushing their own barrow than 'informing' users.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
On a site like this, I doubt you are completely alone, but I would imagine the majority of /. has read this book.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I'll save MY partying for when they come up with a browser that words decently on a Mac... and I don't mean Safari clones, either, because Safari is the WORST!!
Omni
http://omniverse.blogspot.com/
Ah, if only we could somehow get Diebold to illegally download a CD. That should up the penalty to around 2 billion dollars ("just one CD, but it was ripped in a really fast computer").
I mean c'mon, abusing copyright law in an attempt to stifle discussion and discovery about America's most sacred process of government, that's one thing.
But when you download Nelly, the justice system PUTS THE SMACK DOWN ON YOU!
Visit America: Where Our Priorities Are Just A Little Fucked Up(tm)
However, in this situation, I can almost guarantee that the first flip would be heads because Murphy is better friends with me than with you, so :-p
wait...that isn't a good thing. :-(
Aside: I don't understand why my original post is being modded "Informative", and why people are taking it seriously. It was a (bad) joke...smile or something. ;-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Mathematicians have now come up with a rule for predicting the law of "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". They say the formula allows people to calculate the chances of Murphy's law (or Sod's law as it is also know) - and to even try and beat the bad luck.
The person is asked to rate the following factors on a 1 - 10 scale for the situation to be analysed
Urgency
Importance
Complexity
Frequency of doing this task
How skilled I am at this task
which are then mangled together through the online calculator. One presumes that an end result of ten is equal to a 100% chance of Murphie's Law coming into play.
Strangely enough, it is possible to get a score higher than 10 on the calculator.
The best and most extreme example of this is when all factors are rated as ten (Urgency, Importance, etc) except for the skill level, which is rated as 1. In this case, the end result is 40, which I presume to either indicate a 400% chance of Murphie's Law Striking, or a 100% chance that Murphie's Law will strike 4 times.
Applying this to modern problems, such as the typical county worker trying to manage an electronic voting machine system, is left as an exercise for the reader.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The only way to beat Murphy's Law is with Murphy's Law - ProfDark.
You can never underestimate Dumb Luck.
The highier the likelihood of Murphy's showing up the highier the chance of two of them showing up and screwing each other over. Ignorance just loves company.
How do you think people rise to their level of incompentency?
Have you ever talked to your boss before?
Google is a very mature brand in their market. Although I can't speak to it's veracity I read in Business 2.0 that Google has 96% awareness among (?domestic?) internet users.
While I think the press may slightly increase brand awareness among the non-internet using public, I really doubt they'll see more hits. As if people will read the story and rush to go online to see what 'this google thing' is all about.
Google has reached this point without any consumer facing advertising. I doubt a few dozen stories over a few weeks will actually increase their traffic in a statistically significant way.
Besides, this has a short shelf life. When was the last time you read about the GMail controversy (that is, until Desktop Search made it relevent again)
Anybody who watched The Lord of the Rings films is an AOL user, as the films were published by Time Warner, whose stock symbol was once AOL.
Shit happens. But it is seldom content to happen independently of other shit happening...
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
theancientones@kadath.com
At least we know that the Elder Gods (some of them anyway) favor open source.
I fear this does not bode well for Microsoft.
Did anyone else cringe when they went to sign up for a Mozilla Firefox party only to stop and realize that the site is basically one giant spam harvesting board??
--Matt
If I was Indymedia, I would look very carefully at the server before using it again. For all they know, monitoring software or a trojan could have been installed.
Googles search option LOCALLY combines LOCAL data with web search results. It is a feature you can turn off if you wish. At no point does it submit the resulting data to Google.
Google's (web) search intercepts the query and submits it to the web, and to the local search function, when results fromthe web are returned the results from the local search are merged (ON YOUR MACHINE).
How is this a privacy problem?
If you are paranoid about privacy then lock yourself in a box, or at the very least don't use free optional software that you have a problem with. Finally for the love of all that is good, quit wine'n about something that isn't forced upon you. People who use the software either aren't paranoid that google will invade their home, or they are too dumb, and oblivious, in which case they should be removed from the gene pool anyway.
Kind of like when GM, Firestone and Standard Oil were found guilty of criminal conspiracy when they systematically dismantled the electric public transportation with bus lines. "The court imposed a sanction of $5,000 on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of PCL when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1.211."
links:
American Ground Transport
The Street Car Conspiracy
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The Indymedia story now appears to amount to the US Department of Justice filing a "court order" out of US jurisdiction with a Bologna court under a MLAT, which Bologna passed along in its European legal mutuality with London. So Ashcroft could shut down Indymedia across two outside jurisdictions as readily as he could have in Missouri. Everyone in Europe who wants Bush out of their backyards better start emailing and calling everyone they know in the US, talking some sense into us and getting us to vote for Kerry. If Bush can do this during his last reelection vulnerability, his second term will see every "undesirable" in some Guantanamo gulag.
--
make install -not war
Yes, yes - by all means, OPEN THE SOURCE! Read it out loud, by firelight, on the equinox! The ancient ones will fill your mind to bursting...
Better not to RSVP this one.
--
make install -not war
I know someone in Last Starfighter, and I'm seeing it free next week. w00t.
Not more consumer awareness. It's got nothing to do with the "press" they are getting.
It's the simple fact that if people are searching their desktop/email/etc for something and they can also search the web with Google at the same time for no extra effort then a lot of people will do it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/378632/2004 -10-15/2004-10-21/0
Very easy to crash your browser, and should be fairly easy to set up and start finding crashing bugs. I already run firefox, but would love to see it not fail this easily.
That is exactly why I am always happy to know that I forgot something on a trip. If I forgot something and it was not particularly important, Murphy got one card and I can rest with the rest of my hand safely.
:)
Worse it is when you think you've got everything because you inevitably have forgot something - or will! - so I always look for the thing that I naturally must have forgotten, because that makes my world safer.
Take off every 'ZIG' !!
"bias" is just another way of saying that someone has an opinion you don't like.
just like, i'm saying you're biased towards fascism.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The most important one, I suspect, is the Human Rights Act, 1998:
So, they can't confiscate property unless some other law specifically allows it. I'm not sure what that law would be.
interesting legal idea: the government is now trying people under newer, harsher, more unreasonable "terrorist" laws. Example: trying drug dealers as "manufacturing chemical weapons" instead of the less frightening and less severe "drug trafficing". So if a criminal is caught and is going to be pounded by the "MAN" what he should do is to quickly hire someone to charge him of the same crime but under a less severe law and then he will quickly plead quilty before he is taken to trial for the more severe charges. Then because of U.S.A. 'double jepardy' laws the Gov. will not be allowed to procede with their case. Now IANAL, but I do recall a case where a murderer was found 'not guilty' and then evidence was later found prooving UNQUESTIONABLY that he did do the murder and he then admited that he did, but they could only then charge him for PURGERY (because he said he did not do it) and WOULD NOT/COULD NOT re-try him for the murder, so he spent (a maximum of) 7 years in jail because for purgery instead of 20+ (to life) for the murder. So the next time some company or organization cough*RIAA*cough sues one of us under the DMCA we just need one of our friends to sue us under existing copywright laws (when it applies), hand the pittance over to whoever is suing us and then tell them to shove the DMCA up their RJ45 plug.
Wow, that's just over 9 people per party! ROCK ON!
Tragic, looks like the geeks still can't get anyone to come to their parties. Maybe someone should call the Beastie Boys.
2376 ppl partying in 202 parties.
Thats almost 12 people per party. And still increasing...
Muahahahahahaaaaa! Was just reading the Slashback on the front page about the Indymedia fracas, opaque government heavy-handedness and Rackspace spinelessly grabbing their ankles and turning over IM's servers... And while I'm reading what do I see in the right-most column?
A Rackspace advert, on the theme of making you "an offer you can't refuse".
Oh, how we laughed...
Honestly, this thing works so well, you can get it from me only if you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Did these guys actually just commit corporate suicide in front of the entire internet?
Strangely enough, I just got spammed by Rackspace UK (using the email address I registered for linux_expo with). They are launching a large campaign just now - see here. I wonder if they are seeing any kind of move of users away from them due to this. I'd like to think so, but I don't know how well this issue has been covered in the mainstream media in the UK
This whole incident has made me glad that I've chosen a UK-only ISP. I'd hate to have my site taken down due to leverage on a US parent company. (Not that I do anything wrong, of course!)
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
Is it just me, or does _The Last Starfighter: the Musical_ sound like it ought to be the funniest thing since _Springtime for Hitler_?
(Hint to those wondering about _Springtime_: look for _The Producers_ instead.)
the only Firefox party that has LIVE music .
Not exactly Beastie Boys, but with music that sounds like Tom Waits, and free entrance (Firefox is free too), certainly worth your time.