Anonym.OS a Boon for Privacy Geeks?

The Hosting Guy writes "Wired is running an article about a live CD that makes anonymous browsing easy enough for everyone. 'So easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks.' Anonym.OS makes extensive use of Tor, the onion routing network that relies on an array of servers passing encrypted traffic to permit untraceable surfing."

Comments

Re:Speaking of anonymous....

[John Frink]

So does anyone know just how much porn there is on the internet? I'm looking for hard statistics cause most "normal" people don't get it when I refer to my connection as a "porn pipe".

OK...what the HELL

[TripMaster Monkey]

Sorry to go offtopic here, but I don't really care at the moment.

I submitted this story over TEN HOURS AGO. At the time of this post, my submission is STILL 'pending'. Meanwhile, the same story submitted by a linkwhore gets accepted.

And Taco wonders why everyone is so pissed off about story selection. THIS IS WHY, TACO.

Re:OK...what the HELL

[zbuffered]

I was sympathetic when I read your post, but then I scanned up to your name, and I recognized you. I agree with the first AC in this. If I had never heard of you I would have agreed, but you're a minor celebrity on this site, and although that's something to be proud of, it is to some extent a bad thing for the community at large.

The value of this site, besides the rare funny joke, is that in a community of 500,000 or so geeks, for each small niche there is a geek for whom that is his focus. He then posts insightful comments and gets modded up.

Don't get me wrong, noteworthy posters on this site can be a good thing, but someone who has something to say about everything (I won't name names but you can check my foe list for names you recognize to see what I'm talking about) actually dilute the SNR on this site.

Again no offense, and I do appreciate your posts, this is just a generalization about this site.

Re:OK...what the HELL

[iced_773]

I once had a story in "Pending" state for TWO MONTHS, until it was finally rejected. Your submission will probably be the dupe of this story in a few days.

Re:OK...what the HELL

[TripMaster Monkey]

I once had a story in "Pending" state for TWO MONTHS

Holy crap...and here I am beating my breast over ten measly hours. Thanks for putting my particular grievance in perspective, but this only underscores the underlying issue: that story submission on Slashdot is fundamentally broken (CmdrTaco's protestations notwithstanding).

Re:Privacy Geek

[MightyMartian]

The real question you have to ask yourself is whether it will let Martin Fink check out pages so that he can satisfy is perverse and repugnant desires.

Fact: *BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: FreeBSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save *BSD at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:un-molestation

[kfg]

The idea that one might live one's life in private and without fear of molestation is a *very* recent phenomenon.

"Matsuo Munefusa, alias Basho (1644-94), was a Japanese poet and writer during the early Edo period. He took his pen name Basho from his basho-an, a hut made of plantain leaves, to where he would withdraw from society for solitude."

KFG

Why do you care?

[Improv]

Seriously. Why does it matter to you? The story's up, that's what matters. Don't think there's an obligation to hand a day in the sun to you.

Re:Why do you care?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Seriously. Why does it matter to you?

Because I believed I had a chance to contribute to the content on this site. In the past, after numerous rejected submissions, I had simply given up attempting to submit stories. While some of my submissions were rejected because others had submitted them earlier, many were rejected despite the fact that no one else submitted them at all, and a disconcerting number were rejected, only to appear later accredited to someone else.

Recently, CmdrTaco posted a discussion regarding the controversy regarding the perceived irregularities in submission acceptance. An excellent discussion ensued, in which I took part. After this exchange, I had a renewed sense of faith in the story selection mechanism, and when I read about the Anonym.OS story, I decided to go ahead and submit it to Slashdot. Unfortunately, ten straight hours went by while my submission languished in 'pending' limbo, neither accepted nor rejected, while the story itself was posted under another name (an obvious linkwhore).

The story's up, that's what matters.

Certainly, this is true. The story is up, and as that was my intention in the first place, that is what matters. However, I do resent going to the trouble to research the story, write it up, submit it, only to have my submission ignored while another (inferior) write-up took its place. I don't believe my resentment in this case is unreasonable.

Don't think there's an obligation to hand a day in the sun to you.

I'm certainly not looking for a 'day in the sun'...if that was my intention, garnering first post in a discussion would certainly be sufficient (as my legion of AC detractors will certainly attest). I submit stories for the same reason I post here: to try to enrich the Slashdot community through my contribution. Unfortunately, the process of Slashdot story selection doesn't seem to be as nearly free of ulterior motive as CmdrTaco would have us believe. I personally would prefer to believe otherwise, but Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Barring any ground-shaking developments, I'm through submitting stories to Slashdot. This is the last straw. I'm well aware that the powers-that-be have no obligation to me, but conversely, I have no obligation to them. Why should I go to the effort if my submisions will simply be ignored? Taco, if you're out there, I'd appreciate a reply (and an explanation, if available), but if not, it's too bad, but there it is.

Re:Privacy Geek

[Paua Fritter]

Don't get me wrong, I think email and IM should be treated as inherently private - so much so that the usage of encryption seems wrong, insomuch as it implies that only encrypted email/IM should be covered by privacy laws.

Laws?!

Didn't you get the memo? The law doesn't apply to the Bush administration because it is at war and at times of war the laws are made to be broken.

Laws will certainly give you a semblance of privacy, but if you want actual privacy you are barking up the wrong tree putting your faith in the privacy laws.

MOD DOGDUDE DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a known troll and Microsoft apologist.