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Richard Stallman Accosted For Tinfoil Hat
ndansmith writes "Bruce Perens posts in his blog about an amusing encounter between Richard Stallman and United Nations security at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. It seems that RFID technology, which Stallman opposes for privacy reasons, was used in the identification badges for the conference. From the blog: 'You can't give Richard a visible RF ID strip without expecting him to protest. Richard acquired an entire roll of aluminum foil and wore his foil-shielded pass prominently.' During a keynote speech, Stallman also passed around the tinfoil for other to use as well. It seems that UN security was not amused, however, as they would not let him leave the room for some time." What makes this even funnier, of course, is that tin foil hats won't stop them.
I love how these techno-leftists think RFID rechnology is just inherently evil without regard to whose using it and what purpose it is for, and yet say that P2P technologies like Bittorrent are great, even though the major purpose of it is copyright infringement.
It's just another example of hypocrisy.
What are you, kidding? He's a total asshole. If he didn't want a name badge with RFID in it (which is moronic itself), he could have just asked politely for a plain paper one. Oh, but if you're polite, and ask nicely, you're not "fighting THE MAN!" or whatever the hell Stallman thinks he's doing. So instead he has to be an asshole to the security guys who are just trying to do their job. And here's a news flash RMS: the security guys who had to deal with your bull aren't the people who decided to use RFID name badges and have no power to reverse that decision. So you're just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.
Why is it stupid? Millions of people wear RFID name badges every hour of every day, and I've not yet heard of anybody's privacy being compromised. I work at a county hospital in the middle of nowhere, and we have a RFID badge system. When you're talking about RFID tags you don't know are there, then you might have something to protest, but this is just stupid as all hell.
Comment of the year
Honestly, this is what you worry about? This is where you expend your free speech and ability to protest?
I proposed a variant of Munchausen's syndrom called Orwell's syndrome where people imagine the government is out to monitor them and get them.
Are are UFOs involved? We'll take those, too. Even the anal probes. You can hve the police who round up people based on ancient tribal division and ram them ass first on to stakes in the ground simply because it amuses them to do so.
I always wonder what youin the West would do in the face of true evil. Soil your panties and faint, I imagine. Especially the geeks like you. You think your SOCOM or Splinter Cell experience will serve you well if a governemnt rape detail came visiting?
Actually, after RTFA, I think that the reason he was not allowed to leave the room right away was not that he had wrapped his RFID badge in foil, but rather that he had (jokingly) talked about killing another participant.
Of course, everyone with common sense would've realised it was just a joke, but security people tend to take these things seriously.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Sounds like Bruce Perens made it up on the spot. I can't imagine hime or Stallman at the UN-conference. Fuck, why would they invite a bunch of fucking clueless smelly weirdos?
Fucking UN, fucking FOSS-communists.
Oh, and why is the body of Perens' article so fucking wide? He can't even grasp simple markup-languages, so how should I believe he has ever contributed anything constructive to GNOME (perhaps some architectural roadmap: 1. add bloat -> 2. add eye-candy -> 3. add more bloat -> 4. see 1. and 3.
The guy has balls
Yeah, wrapping foil round a badge. How courageous is that ? What a hero. If only he'd stamped his foot too, I would have wanted to father his children.
Richard Stallman is a nutcase.
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