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Pirates, Web 2.0, and Hundred Dollar Laptop
Update on the One Laptop per Child Project. dominique_cimafranca writes "Ethan Zuckerman gives a report on his visit to the headquarters of the One Laptop per Child project. Some details on practical design considerations such as the hinge, the rabbit ears, and why the hand crank was ultimately left out (apparently, Kofi Annan broke the crank on a prototype). Several pictures, and a look at the motherboard of the OLPC laptop."
TOR Calls Out Torvalds, Stallman on Web 2.0. theodp writes "In an unusual defense of partner CMP's trademarking of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly points a finger at Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in his rebuttal posts. TOR also says the blogger who posted the O'Reilly-approved cease-and-desist letter from CMP 'owes us an apology for the way he responded' (he got one)."
Fallout from The Pirate Bay Raid. Tyler Too writes "The Swedish national police website has been taken offline by a denial of service attack which started Thursday night. That's not the only fallout from the raid on The Pirate Bay: there's a demonstration planned in Stockholm on Saturday."
U.S. Government Ordered The Pirate Bay Shutdown? mkro writes "According to the Swedish government sponsored tv channel SVT, U.S. government officials -- after being approached by the MPAA -- requested the Swedish justice department to take down The Pirate Bay. According to the story, the Swedish justice department asked police and prosecution to act, but when they explained the laws are too vague, they turned directly to the state attorney and the chief of the national police force."
check out wednesday night on the weekly graph
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
...and get to puppetteer your own US foreign policy today!
MPAA: get Heathrow drug dogs sniffing DVDs!
RIAA: get Swedish police shutting down torrents!
GNAA: get chocolate buttsecks!
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Seems the DDoS has stopped and it hasn't been slashdotted yet, see while you can!
http://www.polisen.se/
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
And the guy's writing the article for IEEE Spectrum. Good luck in your next job.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
TOR Calls Out Torvalds, Stallman on Web 2.0. theodp writes "In an unusual defense of partner CMP's trademarking of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly points a finger at Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in his rebuttal posts. TOR also says the blogger who posted the O'Reilly-approved cease-and-desist letter from CMP 'owes us an apology for the way he responded' (he got one)."
If one reads O'Reilly's post, the entire endeavor undertaken in the post is to explain how USUAL the cease and desist letter that was issued is when defending a trademark. And then he cites Torvolds and other as examples of other people who have trademarks they wish to defend. There's no finger pointing going on, nor is there any oddity in his defense. Which again, is the whole point of O'Reilly's discussion. This entire thing has been blown way out of proportion, and i'm amazed that someone can read O'Reilly's piece and then go ahead and incorrectly convey the content.
What irony.
There are lives at stake here!
I sincerely hope that other governmental bodies of the world come to realize that the political influence of the U.S. is simply poison to them. They threaten every democratic society they influence with their agenda. I am increasingly ashamed, embarassed and angered by the tactics used by our government. While I believe it would be painful or maybe just disruptive, but I think that, for starters, the US should be excommunicated from the U.N. and N.A.T.O. alliances for their behavior. Talk about your "monopoly abuse" cases...
It's time other nations started to shun the US even more than they already do. Perhaps then some sort of balance could come from this. The next bout of elections will not come soon enough but even then I'm unsure of how much damage will be reversed.
The fallout from the Pirate Bay seizure is that the minister of justice (Thomas Bodstrom) has been accused of ordering the police to take action after pressure from the US government. Bodstrom, who is the initiator of the EU data retention directive, IP spoofing on Swedish main nodes, extended bugging laws etc., and also known as a proponent of a totalitarian big brother society, has been requested for constitutional hearings.
Pirate Bay will reappear in Ukraine, Russia, The Netherlands and three other countries. People have been very generous with equipment and hosting as soon as they heard it was the Pirate Bay folks asking for assistance.
The Swedish Police site, www.polisen.se, was taken out for a day with a sustained DoS attack. An investigation has been started.
The public is in favor of the Pirate Bay in numbers like 90-10 or so, and most are extremely critical of the action against the Pirate Bay, especially since the police used 50 police officers to seize two computer nerds and their legal representative. A whole slew of innocent operators were also having their machinery seized, in an unconstitutional manner.
The action may have a real political effect, come the September elections.
The Ombudsman of Justice has decided to launch an investigation to determine if there were any wrongdoings in the raid, including whether the swedish government pressured the police to take action.
Days of the US hegemony are numbered. The writing is on the wall. At the moment soverign states pay lip service but when the Euro shift comes and the dollar tanks US arrogance is going to be left screaming at the skies. Don't be ashamed of your govenment, do something about it. The USA was once a bastion of liberty and freethought, it's not too late to save your nations reputation from the ugly minority that weild disproportionate power.
The Swedish national police website has been taken offline by a denial of service attack which started Thursday night.
Because nothing increases support for your cause like DoSing a police website...
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I can't be the only one who first read that as TOR Publishing. I almost had a heart attack. I mean, I can deal with boycotting eBay, MPAA, RIAA, for their IP idiocy, but TOR? Do not play so cruelly with my fragile nerdy heart.
Seriously, I have never heard any one abbreviate Tim O'Reilly TOR.
It might also be worth to mention that by Swedish law it is highly illegal for a politician in the government to give orders to the police or other institution in specific matters such as this. It is called "ministerstyre" (minister's ruling?), and the law is in place as a means to stop corruption.
Dang-it... with the pirate bay shutdown, global warming is sure to pick up speed now.
I am d3matt
As a Brit, I vote no to that. We've stuck by the united states through thick and thin. For stupid decision after stupid decision, we've had your back. As a result, the rest of Europe hates us. If the united states were removed from the UN and NATO, well, you might as well just hand our asses to the french and germans on a plate.
So instead of cutting out on us, why don't you just elect a president that doesn't suck next time, 'kay?
Oh no... it's the future.
A US interest has acted abroad previously. This Wikipedia article details the war that Scientology waged against anon.penet.fi.
From the article
In September 1996, an anonymous user posted the confidential writings of the Church of Scientology through the Penet remailer. The Church once again demanded that Julf turn over the identity of one of its users, claiming that the poster had infringed the Church's copyright on the confidential material. The Church was successful in finding the originating e-mail address of the posting before Penet remailed it, but it turned out to be another anonymous remailer: the alpha.c2.org nymserver, a more advanced and more secure remailer which didn't keep a mapping of e-mail addresses that could be subpoenad.
Facing multiple criticism and attacks, and unable to guarantee the anonymity of Penet users, Julf shut down the remailer in September of 1996.
Truly a chilling possibility.
Did you intentionally miss the posters point?
The fact is the US pressured another government to take down a site that was LEGAL in the country it was in.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
CBC.ca had a story this week on the TV news too, where the MPAA is suing a young man in Vancouver for operating isoHunt. I guess they are stepping up the attacks on torrent sites.
Oh You POS
This is getting on my nerves: The RIAA and MPAA are not part the US Government. They hold no particular codified legislative, executive, or judiciary power, nor are they agencies a kin to the 3-letters (FBI, EPA, FDA, FCC, CIA, NSA, and so on).
The fact is that they are lobbyist groups; simply petitioners to the US Government. Sadly, they are wealthy, numerous, and well connected petitioners, so they get preferential treatment, but neither of them is a government body any more than any group of citizens. They way they "win" their cases is by having enough money and fear tactics at their disposal to dodge court time and exploit holes in the American judiciary.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
In other news, I've trademarked "404" (my slashdot user id number).
From now on, all use of "404" on the internet is subject to licensing fee.
Ok. Here is a crappy translation of the swedish article to english.
The US government behind closing of site
The US government was behind the raid against the filesharing network Pirate Bay yesterday, according to sources to the SVT news program Rapport.
In april a delegation with members of the justice department and the police met up with american authorities who brought the issue up by request of the MPAA. The interest organisation of Hollywood.
The justice department then requested the police and prosecutors to act. When they replied that the legal issues where unclear the minister of justice's secretary of state contacted the state prosecutor and the state chief of police who in turn ordered action.
Minister rule
The Pirate Bay has openly challenged right-holders within the film and music industry. Nevertheless many in the internet society are surprised of the actions of the swedish authorities.
This is what happened according to sources. The american interest organisation MPAA contacted the gorvernment in the white house. The american department of foreign affairs then contacted the swedish department of foreign affairs and demanded the issue with Pirate bay be solved.
According to the source the prosecutor and the police was ordered to act and describes the actions of the secretary of state as minister rule.
You're implicitly assuming that most of the pirated copies are a forgone sale. Most of them are likely to be teenagers who never would've bought from you anyway. Most people downloading are time rich, money poor.
You're also assuming that all those copies provided you with no exposure. For all you know that piracy may've been encouraging, not depressing, your sales.
Bottom line is you have no idea. So don't get all uptight about it.
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New game: Spot the lying astroturfer on /.!